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  As he walked in and closed the door behind him, she looked round and then she ran towards him.

  “Have they gone?” she asked breathlessly.

  “Yes, they have all gone and you were marvellous.”

  She looked up at him.

  Without even thinking he put his arms round her and pulled her against him.

  Then his lips found hers.

  As he kissed her he knew it was entirely different to any kiss he had ever given or received in his whole life.

  Her lips were very soft, gentle and unspoilt.

  He kissed her for a long time before he raised his head and as he did so she said in a whisper he could hardly hear,

  “I love you. How could you ever be so kind and so wonderful to me?”

  “And I love you, Vita. I have never known anyone who could be so brave in such difficult circumstances.”

  Then he was kissing her again.

  Kissing her as if he had been waiting for ever for the ecstasy that swept through him.

  Now he had found it he could hardly believe it was true.

  When at last Vita could speak, she said,

  “I suppose I ought to go and ask how Tom Brown is. If he had not screamed, we might not have noticed the thieves on our horses.”

  “I thought that too, my darling Vita. I asked Evans before I came to find you. He said that the nurses had put him to bed and he was very comfortable. He only had one painful bruise.”

  “Oh, I am so glad and we must find him a horse to replace the one he lost.”

  “Of course we must.”

  Then realising what he had said the Marquis added,

  “We is exactly the right word, Vita. I want to ask you, my precious one, if you will marry me.”

  He felt her move even closer to him.

  “Are you sure you want me?” she whispered.

  “I want you as I have never wanted anyone before. In fact I know now I have never really been in love until this very moment.”

  Then he was kissing her again and kissing her until they were both breathless.

  With a little murmur Vita hid her face against his shoulder.

  “You are so sublime and so perfect,” he breathed. “I am finding it hard to believe you are real.”

  “And you are like Apollo himself and I knew when you told me to think about him that all I really wanted to do was dream about you instead because I loved you.”

  “You knew you loved me, Vita?”

  “I could only think how terrible it would be when you left me,” she murmured.

  “That is something I would have no intention of ever doing,” the Marquis declared firmly.

  He kissed her again.

  Then as the door opened behind them, the Marquis released her.

  To his surprise a man was standing in the doorway.

  As she looked at him, Vita gave a little cry.

  “Papa!”

  She moved from the arms of the Marquis and ran towards the man who had just entered and flung herself against him.

  “Papa, you are here! When did you get back?”

  “I came back and heard yesterday when I reached London that my father was dead. I tried to be here sooner, but I have learnt now from Evans that the funeral is over.”

  As he was speaking, he was looking at the Marquis.

  Then he suddenly exclaimed,

  “Milverton! What are you doing here?”

  The Marquis smiled.

  “I wondered if you would recognise me. We met, if you remember, Sir Roland, at Carlton House.”

  “Of course I remember, but I was told downstairs it was a ‘Mr. Milton’ who had arranged the funeral and who was looking after my daughter.”

  “It’s a long story, which we will tell you later. But I am actually at this very moment asking your daughter to marry me.”

  For a brief second there was an expression of sheer astonishment on Roland Shetland’s face and then he said,

  “Of course I am delighted if you love each other.”

  Vita slipped her hand into the Marquis’s.

  “I do love him, Papa, and he has been so kind to me and coped with everything that has happened. Even those wicked and horrible horse thieves.”

  “That is exactly what Evans was telling me,” Sir Roland replied, “but I was not expecting to find you in the arms of the Marquis.”

  “The Marquis!” Vita exclaimed. “Are you really a Marquis, Mr. Milton? And I suddenly realise I don’t even know your Christian name.”

  “I am afraid I am a Marquis, Vita, and my name is Ivor and actually you have made me one thousand pounds for which I am most grateful.”

  “But how and – why? I don’t – understand.”

  “I will tell you about it later, but, for the moment, we should greet your father who must have endured a long journey here.”

  “Long and extremely difficult,” Sir Roland agreed. “Of course I would like to have been at my father’s funeral but I must be content with your wedding whenever it takes place.”

  They walked downstairs to the drawing room.

  Sir Roland was hungry after his travelling and so he ate paté sandwiches and drank a glass of champagne with relish.

  It was then that the Marquis suggested,

  “I have an idea that you may not approve of, but I would like it more than anything else in the world.”

  “What is that?” Sir Roland enquired.

  “That Vita and I should be married immediately.”

  It was now Vita who was surprised, but she slipped her arm through the Marquis’s and asked,

  “Do you really mean, Ivor, that we don’t have to wait the full six months of mourning?”

  “I mean just that,” asserted the Marquis. “If your father will permit it, we will be married tonight if possible – then disappear on a long honeymoon.”

  He paused for breath before he added,

  “When we come back, we will have a big party for you to meet all my relatives and for me to meet yours at my house in London. In addition there is a certain Duke you must meet, but more about him later.”

  “I think it’s a good idea,” said Sir Roland, “to be married at once as it would be very frustrating to have to wait for six months. If you are married tonight secretly, no one will know what has happened until you are away from England and spending your honeymoon in some outlandish spot.”

  “Not particularly outlandish,” the Marquis replied, “but we will certainly go to Greece and I have other ideas for the Mediterranean that I have always found delightful and which I am sure Vita will find entrancing.”

  “Anywhere with you,” Vita whispered, “would be wonderful.”

  The Marquis looked down at her and for a moment as their eyes met, they both forgot her father was present.

  Then the Marquis declared firmly,

  “Yes, we will be married tonight. Then tomorrow we will leave immediately on my yacht.”

  “It sounds too marvellous,” sighed Vita. “I adore the sea, but I would be happy anywhere as long as I was with you, Ivor.”

  “That is exactly what you will be, my darling.”

  Watching them Sir Roland thought he had never seen two people look so happy or so delighted with each other.

  He was very well aware of the Marquis’s positon in Society and he knew too he was exactly the sort of son-in-law he wanted for his daughter and they were obviously very much in love.

  Because Vita was so intelligent and very different in many ways to other girls of her age, he was certain they would be exceedingly happy with each other.

  “I will send for the Vicar and we will arrange your marriage immediately,” he said. “What I know will please you is that I came down from London with a new team of horses and I have beaten every record.”

  Vita gave a cry of delight and her father went on,

  “After you are married you must waste no time in leaving the country before anyone realises that someone as important as the Marquis of
Milverton has been caught at last!”

  The Marquis chuckled.

  “That is the right word for it. There is only one person who you can tell after we are well away and out of reach of what has occurred.”

  He then told them about the challenge that the Duke had given him and his friends at White’s, and how he had been on the verge of giving it up as an impossible dream as the search was becoming extremely mundane – that was until Vita had rescued him from the horse thieves and they fell so unexpectedly in love with each other.

  “It is the most romantic story I have ever heard,” Sir Roland exclaimed, “and one that will delight everyone when they hear it.”

  The Marquis held up his hand.

  “Don’t forget that will be in six months time and you must swear the Duke to secrecy too.”

  “I will do so,” Sir Roland assured him. “But the one person who must be told is His Royal Highness. You know as well as I do he likes to be the first to know every secret. He will be extremely offended with both of us if he is not informed confidentially as to what has occurred.”

  “I have already thought of that. What you must tell him is that we were married the day before you arrived and not the day after. In other words we were married secretly because we did not want a grand wedding the day before your father passed away. We had intended to go off on our honeymoon as soon as you returned.”

  “That at least is the truth,” affirmed Sir Roland. “I will make it clear to His Royal Highness that, as the rest of the family are being kept in ignorance and have been told you are merely visiting friends abroad, he will be the first to give a party for you when you return as man and wife.”

  The Marquis then threw back his head and laughed while Vita clapped her hands.

  “It’s more and more like a fairy story,” she sighed. “But I am so happy to be the Fairy Queen.”

  “Of course you are, but only I will be aware of how perfect you are until we return to England.”

  They enjoyed a very amusing luncheon and then Sir Roland announced meaningfully that he was going down to inspect his father’s grave and talk to the Vicar.

  As Evans and the footmen had left the dining room, the Marquis said,

  “If you arrange for our wedding to take place after dinner tonight no one will ever know either here or in the village that anything unusual has happened. We could then leave early tomorrow morning.”

  Sir Roland nodded.

  “That is a good idea. I am going to stay here and take over my father’s place and deal with any members of our family who will be sorry they were unable to attend the funeral. They will be only too ready to help me now that I am the ‘King of the Castle’, so to speak.”

  “I envy you your superb horses, Sir Roland, and I will entrust you with my precious Firefly who is, without exception, the best stallion I have ever owned.”

  “I will take very good care of him, Ivor. If he is at all homesick, I will send him back to Milverton Hall.”

  “I think he will be quite happy with you and thank Heaven it is safe here now those horse thieves have been imprisoned.”

  “We will be eternally grateful to you for facing up to them and not letting them get away with it.”

  Sir Roland had now heard the whole story and had found it almost unbelievable.

  *

  If the Marquis had arranged the funeral particularly well, Sir Roland was just as effective with the wedding.

  Wearing her prettiest white dress and putting on a veil just before she reached the Church, Vita and her father walked together down the drive.

  The stars were coming out in the sky and the moon was rising up above the trees. There was a silence and a strange quiet that comes out at night.

  It made Vita feel as if she had stepped into another world and was no longer human but part of Heaven itself.

  When they reached the Church, the flowers seemed even more beautiful than they had been earlier in the day for her grandfather’s funeral.

  Now there were six lighted candles on the altar and the moonlight shone through the stained glass windows.

  It made those in the old Church feel as if the Spirit of God was with them and angels and archangels were singing overhead.

  The Marquis was waiting for Vita in front of the altar.

  Sir Roland gave her away and the Marquis placed his signet ring on her finger.

  When they knelt to receive the Blessing, Vita was sure that they were not just four people in the Church, but they were surrounded by all those who had loved them.

  She knew that her mother was near her and even her grandfather was smiling his approval of their marriage.

  When they rose after the Blessing, the Marquis took Vita down the aisle on his arm and they stepped out into the night leaving Sir Roland in the Church with the Vicar.

  They walked in silence between the old oak trees and as they neared the house Vita pulled off her veil.

  In the moonlight it seemed to the Marquis that she wore a halo and it made her appear as Divine as the moon and stars themselves.

  There was only one sleepy footman to let them into the hall and they walked upstairs without him paying any particular attention to them.

  Only as they reached Vita’s bedroom did he kiss his wife’s forehead very gently.

  Then he walked into his room.

  In her bedroom Vita undressed, putting on a pretty nightgown and drew back the curtains so that moonlight swept into the room.

  She climbed into her bed and waited with just one candle alight by the bed.

  The Marquis came in and she drew in her breath.

  As he stood looking down at her, she knew that this was the most perfect moment of her life.

  The love in his eyes was the love she had always prayed she would find.

  The Marquis was thinking the same.

  It seemed incredible that at the end of his journey he had found the impossible.

  Someone who was perfect in every way.

  Someone who aroused in him feelings of ecstasy he had never known before.

  For some moments he stood looking down at her and neither of them said anything but reached out to each other with their souls.

  Even before he blew out the candle and climbed into the bed beside her, Vita knew that she was his.

  As he then pulled her gently into his arms, she felt as if she was flying to the moon and reaching out to touch the stars.

  It was a blessing they could never lose.

  “I love you, my precious, my darling,” the Marquis breathed passionately.

  His voice was very deep and different.

  “And I love you,” Vita whispered. “I love you with all of me. When you told me to think of Apollo, the God of Love, I could only think of you. But I was afraid you would never love me.”

  “I love you in a way that it is impossible to explain, Vita. I just know you are mine and we were created for each other when we were born. Nothing in the future will ever keep us apart.”

  “That is what I want you to say. Oh, darling Ivor, kiss me and teach me about love and make certain I will always do as you want.”

  “That is exactly what I am going to do. I know, my precious, that a vivid and exciting future lies ahead of us because we are together. We will explore the world and help everyone we meet to be as happy as we are.”

  Then he was kissing her.

  Kissing her gently but demandingly.

  Her kisses were the nectar of the Gods.

  When he finally made Vita his, they passed through the Gates of Heaven and reached the Divine.

  *

  A long time later when the moonlight seemed to fill the whole room Vita whispered,

  “I love you, my wonderful marvellous husband. I love you with all my heart and soul. There are not enough words to tell you how much.”

  “And I adore you and worship you, Vita. You are part of me. Nothing and no one can ever separate us.”

  They knew as they spoke that the moonli
ght was blessing them as well as Apollo.

  God himself had brought them both together in the strangest way.

  And God would never allow them to be parted.

  Where to buy other titles in this series

  The Barbara Cartland Pink collection is available for download at the following online bookshops :-

  www.barnesandnoble.com - epub format for the Nook eReader

  www.whsmith.co.uk - epub format for the Smiths/Kobo eReader

  www.firstyfish.com - epub format

  ebookstore.sony.com - epub format for Sony eReaders

  www.amazon.co.uk - For UK Kindle users

  www.amazon.com - For international Kindle users

  itunes.apple.com - for Apple iOS users

  www.barbaracartland.com - Printed paperbacks

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  SEARCH FOR A WIFE

  THE BARBARA CARTLAND PINK COLLECTION

  Titles in this series

  THE LATE DAME BARBARA CARTLAND

  CHAPTER ONE 1816

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Where to buy other titles in this series