Saved by love Read online

  “Madame la Duchesse also sent these for you to choose which you prefer,” Jeanne added.

  She opened two boxes as she spoke.

  In one was a tiara of diamonds that encircled the head and which was very magnificent.

  In the other was a wreath of diamond flowers made by one of the great jewellers of Paris whom Yursa had heard was a genius at creating flowers.

  Jeanne took the wreath from its box and, when Yursa put it on her head, she thought that it was the most beautiful piece of jewellery that she could ever have imagined.

  Because she wanted to see the Duc without there being anything between them, she did not cover her face with the veil.

  She told Jeanne to arrange it so that it fell on either side of her face.

  Only when she looked in the mirror did she wonder if the Duc would have preferred it the other way.

  A moment later when he knocked at the door and then came in she saw by the expression in his eyes that she looked exactly the bride he wanted.

  She realised then why he had left her for his evening coat was now covered with decorations and one – a jewelled cross – hung round his neck onto his shirt-front.

  He held in his hand a small bouquet of star-shaped orchids and, when Yursa took them from him, their fingers touched and she felt a thrill run through her body like the warmth of sunshine.

  Then the Duc offered her his arm, she put her hand on it and they walked from the bedroom down the stairs and along the corridor.

  The Chapel belonging to the château was much smaller than the one at Montvéal.

  It had been built in the eighteenth century and was very beautiful.

  It was, however, difficult to see much of it because there were lit candles on the altar, before every Saint and along the windowsills beneath the stained-glass windows.

  It was a paean of light and Yursa knew that the Duc had ordered it as a thanksgiving because they were both alive and together.

  His Chaplain was waiting for them and the only other people present were two servers wearing red cassocks and lace-edged surplices.

  The Duc and Yursa knelt to receive the Sacrament.

  As they did so, she felt as if she could hear the voices of angels and hear the flutter of their wings in the arched roof above them.

  It was so real that when the Priest gave them the Blessing, Yursa was sure that, as the Duc had said, God was protecting them.

  Good had triumphed over evil and they were safe – safe for ever.

  When the Service was over, they walked back the way they had come.

  Now, when they reached the hall, Yursa was aware that everything was quiet and there were no servants to be seen.

  She was therefore not surprised when they entered her bedroom to find that Jeanne was not there either and she was alone with her husband.

  The only light came from a candelabrum by the bed, and, as the Duc came towards her, he thought that his wife’s eyes were shining like stars.

  “I love you, my darling,” he breathed, “and now you are mine!”

  Yursa lifted her face to his and thought that he would kiss her, but instead he lifted the diamond wreath from her head and put it with her veil on a chair.

  Very slowly, as if he savoured the moment, he put his arms around her and held her very close to him.

  “Is this – true – really true?” Yursa asked, “or am I – dreaming?”

  “If it is a dream, then we are dreaming together,” the Duc said softly.

  Then he was kissing her gently and reverently, as if the solemnity of the Marriage Service was still with him.

  Only when she tried to move a little closer to him did he say,

  “Let me take off my coat, I am afraid that my decorations might hurt you.”

  “I am very proud of them,” Yursa said, “and some time you must tell me what they all mean.”

  “They mean,” he answered, “that I have done a few good things in my life that I have been rewarded for and now because I know it will please you, I hope to do a great many more.”

  “That is what I wanted you to say.”

  He kissed her and now his lips were more passionate.

  He felt her stir and knew that her heart was beating as wildly as his as he undid the back of her gown.

  She gave a little murmur as it fell to the ground.

  Then, moving quickly closer to him, she hid her face in his shoulder.

  “Are you shy, my darling?” the Duc asked.

  “Shy – and a little – afraid,” Yursa whispered.

  “Of me?”

  “No – not of you – but in case you are – disappointed.”

  He made a sound that was almost a laugh.

  Then he picked her up and carried her in his arms to lay her gently down on the bed with her head on the pillows and pulled the sheet over her.

  She felt that she had walked into an enchanted dream.

  After having been so depressed and miserable during the afternoon, it was impossible to believe that what she was feeling now could be true.

  She felt the sunshine that was always part of the Duc’s kisses rippling through her like a golden stream.

  Then, as he lay beside her, she turned to once again hide her face against him.

  “Everything has been done in such a hurry,” the Duc said, “and I have therefore had no time to tell you, my beautiful, adorable little wife, how much I love you,”

  “I love you – too,” Yursa said, “but because I am so – ignorant about love – I am afraid – I might do something – wrong.”

  “That is impossible because you are perfect,” the Duc replied. “You are everything I have always sought for, always longed for and thought it impossible to find.”

  “Is that – true?”

  He knew as she spoke that she was remembering the many women there had been in his life and most of all, Zelée.

  His lips were on her forehead as he said,

  “I must explain to you, my lovely wife, that, although I have known many women, I have never, and this is true, felt for any of them what I feel for you.”

  “How can I be – different?”

  The Duc sought for words to explain the difference.

  Then he said,

  “You are too young to understand that a man can be attracted by a woman just because she has a beautiful body.”

  He felt a little tremor go through Yursa and sensed that she was jealous as he went on,

  “What a man feels for her and she feels for him is an entirely physical desire that dies away as quickly as it is kindled.”

  He knew that Yursa was listening and he continued,

  “What has happened to me is that, although a woman attracted me because I am a man, I find her brain so banal and her thoughts so commonplace that I have become bored with her whenever we are not making love.”

  “But – she attracted – you!” Yursa pointed out.

  “Just by her body and often there has been nothing else,” the Duc answered.

  Then he drew Yursa a little closer and said,

  “We are so closely attuned to each other. How else could you have heard me calling to you to save me or be aware of where I was?”

  “It does seem – extraordinary.”

  “That is because our minds are as one,” the Duc said. “And when I knew that I was in love with you, my darling, my heart went out to you and I think when I kissed your lips you gave me yours.”

  “It was – so wonderful and so – exciting,” Yursa murmured, “that I thought that you had – carried me up to – Heaven!”

  “That is what I want to do again and again and as I have already told you, it is something I have never felt with anybody else, except you.”

  Yursa moved to look up at him and he added,

  “But there is something else.”

  “What – is that?”

  “When we knelt just now in the Chapel,” the Duc said, “I knew that you felt as I did, that we received the Blessin
g of God. We were united by our love so that just as no man will ever mean anything to you, no other woman can ever mean anything to me.”

  Yursa gave a little cry of delight.

  “Is that – true, really – true?”

  “You know I could not say it at this moment unless it was true!” the Duc said in his deep voice, “and if I did lie, you would be aware of it.”

  “How can we be so lucky – so incredibly – wonderfully lucky to have – found each other?”

  The Duc did not answer and Yursa went on,

  “I am so foolish that I was – afraid of staying with you and I had already had my trunks packed – so that I could – leave tomorrow.”

  “Do you really think I would have let you go?” the Duc asked. “I knew when I went riding today that however long it might take me I would woo you, pursue you and hold you prisoner, if necessary, until you loved me!”

  “That is exactly what you – have done, and very quickly,” Yursa said. “I thought that I had lost you – and when you came out of the Crypt and put your arms around me – I knew that I had to hold you – protect you – and save you for the – rest of our lives.”

  As she spoke, she felt a little tremor of fear in case their lives would not last very long and the Duc said,

  “Forget everything except that we are under the protection of God and together.”

  Then he was kissing her; kissing her until she felt once again that he had taken her up into Heaven.

  He kissed her eyes, her cheeks and the softness of her neck, so that she felt as if the sunshine in her body was turning to flames and flickering through her.

  She was aware that there was fire on the Duc’s lips as he kissed hers until she was breathless and then he kissed her breasts.

  She wanted him to go on kissing her and for her to be even closer to him than she was at the moment.

  She did not understand what she was feeling, but the Duc did, and he knew that never in his whole life had he been so happy or so excited.

  At the same time he was experienced enough to know that he must be very gentle with Yursa so as not to frighten or shock her.

  Also that the spiritual side of their love must never be lost in the physical.

  But because Yursa loved him with all her heart and soul, everything he did seemed part of the Divine.

  When finally he made her his, she knew that the Gates of Heaven had opened.

  *

  Yursa woke to realise that what had roused her was the sound of the curtains being drawn back.

  It was still dark outside.

  Then, as she wondered why she was seeing a few faraway stars twinkling overhead, the Duc came back to bed and took her in his arms.

  She moved against him, feeling his strong athletic body against hers and, because she could not help it, kissing his shoulder to show that she loved him.

  Then because she was curious she asked,

  “Why have you drawn back the curtains?”

  “I thought we would see the dawn together,” the Duc said, “the dawn of a new day, my darling, the beginning for us both of a new life.”

  “Do you – still love – me?”

  “How can you ask anything so absurd?” he replied. “I adore you.”

  “And – you were not – disappointed in me?”

  “No woman could have been more perfect or more utterly and completely captivating. If I loved you last night, I love you a million times more today and I am sure that will double and increase tomorrow.”

  Yursa laughed.

  “That is what I was going to say to you and yesterday morning, when I woke up, I would not even admit – that I loved you.”

  “And what do you feel now?”

  “I adore and – worship you,” she said a little shyly. “That is what I want you to say. At the same time, you have to help me and inspire me to be very much better – than I am at the moment.”

  “I want you just as you are,” Yursa said, “and I am so happy that I feel as if you have put the stars that – have vanished from the sky – into my heart.”

  “That is what I intend to do,” the Duc said, “and, if I can give you the moon and the sun, that would not be enough to express my love.”

  She put out her hand and drew him a little closer to her.

  “You must be very – very careful,” she said, “because if I should lose you – I would want to die.”

  It flashed through both their minds how near they had been to death and the Duc said,

  “We have to live. There is so much for us to do and I think that France needs us or will need us in the future.” Yursa thought that was how the Ducs of Burgundy had felt in the past.

  She was sure that the Duc’s powers would increase through the years and, if troubles and difficulties came to his country, he would be a leader to whom the people would turn for help.

  He was the man she had dreamt about in her dreams, the hero whom she had always been afraid did not exist.

  “I love you – I love you!” she sighed. “How can – you be so – wonderful?”

  “I want you to believe that of me,” the Duc said, “then perhaps it is what I will become.”

  He thought as he spoke that it would be definitely something he would try to achieve so that his wife and his children would be proud of him.

  Then he thought, when he did come to die, he would not have lived in vain.

  Because Yursa was so soft and sweet and everything he had always longed to find in a woman only to be disappointed, he could only kiss her.

  He felt her respond to his kisses, as she had done before, with her heart and her soul.

  He knew too as her body quivered against his that he had awoken in her the first stirrings of desire, the first need of a woman for a man.

  He felt the softness of her skin and the exquisite curves of her breasts and knew that it would be impossible for him to have anything more adorable in his arms.

  His love was greater than the fire rising in him and that he knew he was again igniting within Yursa.

  It was a love that seemed to come from the Power that poured through them both and the vibrations that were the Life Force and that came from their souls.

  They had dedicated themselves to the same God who had protected them against the damnation of evil.

  It was something that he did not want Yursa to think about, but he felt in himself an overwhelming gratitude.

  It was a debt that he must repay throughout his whole life.

  Now because he could feel Yursa trembling against him and because he could feel the blood throbbing in his temples and his heart beating frantically, it was impossible to think of anything but her and his love.

  He kissed her until he knew that she was burning with a need of him as he burned for her.

  “I love you, my darling, my precious beloved little wife,” he murmured, “and I want you, I want you desperately now at this moment!”

  “I love – you, César,” Yursa whispered. “Love me – please – love me!”

  It was a cry that no man could refuse.

  As the Duc made Yursa his again, they both felt as if they were swept by an irresistible force into their own perfect Heaven.

  *

  Outside the dawn broke, the first rays of the sun swept away the darkness and it was light.

  Jeanne was in the kitchen of the château when one of the grooms arrived from Montvéal.

  He had ridden over to deliver a note from the Duc’s secretary.

  He saw Jeanne and, as they greeted each other, she said,

  “You’re early this morning, Gustave.”

  “I was told to bring this note for Monsieur le Duc,” the groom replied.

  “Has anything happened at Montvéal?” Jeanne asked.

  Gustave glanced over his shoulder to see that none of the other servants were listening.

  “I happen to know what’s in it,” he said confidentially.

  “That doesn’t surprise me,” Jean
ne remarked tartly. “There’s not much goes on up at The Château that you don’t know about!”

  “That’s true enough,” Gustave replied with satisfaction, “but this is something special, this is!”

  “What is it?”

  Because he could not bear to keep the news to himself, Gustave said in a low voice,

  “That Madame de Salône is dead!”

  Jeanne stared at him in utter disbelief.

  “I don’t believe it!”

  “It’s true enough. The woodcutters found her body first thing this morning when they were going to work.”

  “She was in the wood?” Jeanne enquired.

  “At the bottom of the rocks below the Chapel.”

  “Are you telling me the truth?”

  “Cross my heart! Battered she was – and wet! As if water had run all over her.”

  “It sounds peculiar to me, Jeanne muttered.

  “That’s what them woodcutters thought. Afraid they were to touch her, knowing what they’d heard about her and her wicked ways!”

  Jeanne was silent.

  Then she asked,

  “You say she’s dead?”

  “Dead as a doornail!” Gustave replied, “and they’ve taken her back to her home in a farm cart.”

  It struck Jeanne that it was poetic justice that Madame de Salône should be carried in a rough cart, because that was what she had used to kidnap M’mselle Yursa.

  She suddenly realised what a relief the news would be to the Duc and his new Duchesse.

  It would sweep away the last cloud over their happiness.

  It was almost as if it had come as a special Wedding present before anybody else was aware that they had been married.

  She knew too that it would please the old Duchesse, who had always disliked and mistrusted Madame de Salône, as well she might.

  “Well, you’ve brought good news, Monsieur Gustave,” Jeanne said, “so I’ll give you some to take back to The Château.”

  “And what might that be?”

  “It is,” Jeanne said speaking slowly and making her words more impressive, “that Monsieur le Duc and M’mselle Yursa were married last night, here in the Chapel!”

  Gustave stared at her in astonishment.

  Then he said,

  “That’s very good news, although it’s a bit of a surprise!”