In the Arms of Love Read online

  “You speak as if it will not happen again,” the Marquis observed.

  “I hope it – will,” Aspasia said in a low voice, “but I realise that you are a very busy person – and I have no wish to be a – nuisance.”

  “You have not been that since I first met you,” the Marquis said. “A surprise, a problem, a deep anxiety, but never a nuisance or a bore, Aspasia!”

  She felt that he must have been reading her thoughts.

  “That is what I – wanted you to say, for it is – something I am – very afraid of.”

  They were drawing nearer to the front of the house and she added,

  “Please – you must tell me when you – wish me to go – away. I would not want to outstay my – welcome like some guests who – never know when to leave.”

  The Marquis laughed.

  “Who told you that?”

  “It is what I have often thought when people call to see Uncle Theophilus,” Aspasia replied. “They stay and stay! There seems to be no polite way of getting rid of them.”

  She smiled.

  “I am sure you would be able to turn them out without their even being aware that you wanted them to go!”

  “I promise I will let you know if you are unwelcome.”

  “Thank – you,” Aspasia replied and hoped in her heart that it would be a long, long time before it happened.

  They went into the house, which she felt had a different atmosphere from any house that she had been in before.

  She could not explain it to herself, but it was as if she felt vibrations of happiness coming towards her and there was too a feeling of security as if the walls were like arms enfolding her and holding her close.

  She had wanted to see the Marquis’s pictures and now they were there, magnificent and entrancing.

  Almost before she was inside a room she found herself giving exclamations of delight at what she saw hanging on the walls.

  The Marquis looked at her with a smile before he said,

  “I want to talk to you, Aspasia, before your uncle arrives.”

  She looked at him apprehensively.

  It had been hot while they were riding and now she had pulled off her riding hat and put it down on a chair.

  Then after a moment’s hesitation she took off her riding jacket.

  Martha had washed and pressed her white blouse last night, but Aspasia thought that it must look very dull and dowdy compared to everything in the Marquis’s magnificent house.

  Then she forgot it as she walked towards him and saw that he was watching her.

  She reached his side and looked up at him enquiringly guessing that he had something important to say, but immediately feeling apprehensive in case it was something she did not wish to hear.

  She sensed that the Marquis was feeling for words.

  Then he said,

  “Last night before you came to my room I had been considering your future.”

  Aspasia stiffened.

  She was quite certain that this was going to be something that would make her unhappy.

  “There is – no reason why you should – trouble about me – now.”

  “You have plans of your own?” the Marquis enquired.

  “I was thinking when we were riding here,” Aspasia said in a small voice, “that it would be – best for me to go back to the – Vicarage and look after Uncle Theophilus – as I have done ever since – Mama died.”

  The Marquis looked at her as if to reassure himself that she was speaking sincerely and then he said,

  “I think that, if nothing else, would be a waste of your looks.”

  “M-my – looks?” Aspasia asked in astonishment.

  “You must be aware that you are very beautiful.”

  The Marquis spoke in his usual, quiet dry voice and went on,

  “When I first saw you, I thought that in London, even amongst the great beauties to be found there, you would cause a sensation.”

  “You – thought that when you – saw me at – Grimstone House?”

  The Marquis’s eyes twinkled.

  “I was not exactly visualising you at Carlton House or Buckingham Palace,” he said, “but I know now that wherever you were you would be acclaimed and complimented.”

  “Thank – you,” Aspasia answered, “but as you are well aware – it would only – frighten me and I don’t want to – receive compliments from – ”

  She could not find the right word, but the Marquis knew as he watched her that she was thinking of the men who had been at the dinner party given by the Duchess.

  She had been astonished and disgusted by their behaviour, yet she was aware that they were aristocrats who bore distinguished titles.

  “The men you saw the other night,” he said, “are not, thank God, representative of the majority of those who are born gentlemen.”

  He spoke sharply and Aspasia replied,

  “Please – I do not – wish to enter – Society. Jerry will be happy because he will be among the friends he met at Oxford – but I shall know – nobody.”

  “Except me!”

  Aspasia looked up at the Marquis and found it hard to look away.

  His eyes seemed to hold hers captive and there was a silence while they just gazed at each other before he said,

  “You would not be afraid with me?”

  “No – of course not! I am never – afraid with you. Actually it is only when I am with – you that I feel – safe.”

  “In which case I feel that you will find it easy to accept my plan for your future.”

  “What – is it?” Aspasia asked in a whisper.

  “That you should marry me!”

  For a moment she felt that she could not have heard him aright.

  Then, as she stared at him, her eyes seeming to fill her whole face, he put his arms around her and drew her close against him.

  “I will protect you and you will never be afraid again,” he said very quietly.

  Then his lips were on hers.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  For a moment Aspasia was too astonished to feel anything but surprise.

  Then the strength of the Marquis’s arms around her and the insistence of his lips on hers made her feel a strange, wild inexplicable sensation that she had never known before.

  It seemed to rise from her breasts into her throat and from her throat into her lips so that as the Marquis’s kiss grew more insistent she felt as if she became a part of him.

  It swept away her fears and everything else but an ecstatic rapture.

  He drew her closer still and, as his lips became more demanding and more possessive, Aspasia knew that this was what, without being aware of it, she had always longed for and dreamed about.

  This was love, the love she had discovered last night, but more perfect, more marvellous and more Divine.

  After what might have been a few minutes or a century of time, the Marquis raised his head to look down at her.

  He thought that, with her eyes wide and shining, her lips warm and rosy from his kisses and her hair flaming like fire against his arm, she was more beautiful than any woman he had ever seen in his whole life.

  “I love – you!” Aspasia whispered.

  “Are you sure of that?”

  “Very – very sure,” she replied. “But it was only last – night that I – realised what I – felt for you was – love.”

  “And now what do you feel for me?” he asked her.

  “That you are – magnificent – so magnificent that I could not think of you as – somebody I could – love.”

  “But you do love me?”

  “I did not – know that I could – feel like – this and that it was love.”

  The Marquis kissed her again.

  Then, as he felt her quivering against him, but not with fear, he knew that the sensations she aroused in him were different from anything he had ever felt before.

  When she could finally speak, Aspasia said,

  “Do you – really mean
– that I can – marry you?”

  “I have every intention of making you my wife.”

  “But – how – how can you – marry me when there are so many other – women that you could ask?”

  “I have never asked any other woman to marry me,” the Marquis replied. “And this is the truth, Aspasia, I never wished to be married until now.”

  “How can you – want me?”

  The Marquis thought that there were a hundred answers he could give her, but instead with a faint smile he said,

  “One good reason is because I cannot go on having sleepless nights with a pillow keeping us apart.”

  “I kept you – awake?” Aspasia asked with a note of concern in her voice. “I hoped I was – very quiet.”

  “You were but I found it impossible to sleep when you were so near to me.”

  He saw in her innocence that she did not understand and added,

  “I will explain why later on tonight.”

  “Tonight?” Aspasia questioned.

  “After we are married.”

  Her eyes widened and he saw sheer astonishment in them.

  “I have already arranged it with your uncle,” he said, “and when he arrives he will marry us in my private Chapel. Early this morning I sent to London for a Special Licence and I expect it will be here by now.”

  “Tonight?” Aspasia whispered.

  “There are many reasons for that too,” the Marquis said, “besides the pillow between us.”

  “What are – they?”

  “First because I want you to belong to me and I want to make sure that I can protect you from your own fears,” the Marquis answered. “Secondly because although your uncle could be here to chaperone you, I think it important that he should return to Little Medlock to look after Jerry’s interests.”

  He knew by the expression on Aspasia’s face that she understood that once it was known that the Duchess was dead, Mrs. Fielding and the other disreputable servants she had employed might steal or damage the treasures in the house that now belonged to Jerry.

  “Everything is arranged,” the Marquis went on. “As soon as news of the Duchess’s death reaches Newmarket, my Agent has my instructions to proceed immediately to Grimstone House with the local Solicitors.”

  Aspasia made a little murmur of gratitude.

  “They will take charge of everything,” he continued, “and will make an inventory of the house’s contents. I know that your uncle when he arrives, because he is so respected in the neighbourhood, will see that those who are no longer wanted on the estate will leave immediately.”

  “You have thought of – everything!” Aspasia exclaimed as she had done before.

  “I try to, but at the moment I am finding it difficult to think of anything but you.”

  “It is hard to – believe that – you really – love me.”

  “I will make you believe it.”

  “I think – I really am – dreaming,” Aspasia said. “Dreaming of my love for you and that – you love me and dreaming that I need no – longer be – afraid.”

  She gave a little shiver as she added,

  “I think I have been – afraid all my life – but especially so since I – went to – Grimstone House.”

  “When you go there again, it will be a very different place.”

  “You will – come with – me?”

  “Not only to Grimstone House,” the Marquis answered, “but everywhere else. I know, my darling, that you need me just as I need you.”

  “I do need you. I need you – desperately!” Aspasia cried. “Now you are holding me in your arms I am not afraid, but, although you will think it very – foolish, I will be – afraid, terribly – afraid if ever – I am alone.”

  “That is what I am here to prevent,” the Marquis said as he kissed her again..

  He thought as he did so that few women would be so courageous and so sensible after all she had been through.

  At the same time he was perceptive enough to know that the horrors of the last few days would take a long time to erase from Aspasia’s mind.

  The only way that could be done completely was to give her something else to think about and what could be more effective than love?

  Actually he found it very hard to believe that he should have fallen in love so completely and so overwhelmingly when he had so confidently believed that it was something that would never happen to him.

  He had known that first night at Grimstone House that Aspasia was different from anybody he had met before.

  When he had finally realised how pure and innocent she was, he had thought that she was unique not only for her beauty but for her character and personality.

  Yet some hard cynical part of his brain told him that a young girl who lived in a Vicarage and knew nothing of the world he moved in could mean nothing in his busy well-organised life.

  He was so confident that he was complete in himself.

  Yet when he had ridden away from the Vicarage having left Aspasia there, he had the uncontrollable feeling that he was losing something precious and something sublime that he might never find again.

  It was his brain that had laughed at him for being foolish, his brain which made him return to Newmarket after he had seen the Duchess

  But a very different part of him was urging him to see Aspasia once more to make sure that she was as different from all the other women he had ever known as he had found her to be.

  He had thought about her all the time he was riding back to where Charlie was waiting for him.

  He kept telling himself that what had happened was just one episode in his life that he would doubtless remember with amusement and that the Duchess’s outrageous behaviour was something that really was not his concern.

  But all the time he was telling Charlie what had happened at Grimstone House he could see Aspasia’s frightened blue eyes and feel her trembling as she had when he put his arm around her to take her from the dining room.

  When she had arrived unexpectedly and walked into the study, he felt first an irrepressible joy and then a very different feeling which, he admitted later, was jealousy because she was accompanied by a man.

  After Aspasia asked for his help and he saw how terrified she was of what was happening at the Vicarage, he had known that there was no escape for him nor did he wish for one for his life was now indivisibly woven with hers forever.

  With his usual acute perception, however, the Marquis was well aware that he must not frighten her more than she was frightened already.

  He was also still listening to some extent to the warnings of his brain that told him that it would be a great mistake to act precipitately and that whatever he might feel about Aspasia he was too old and far too sophisticated to be the husband of a young girl.

  Then last night when Aspasia had rushed into his bedroom to fling herself against him and later when he returned to find her almost frantic with fear that he had been killed or wounded he admitted that he was deeply wildly and irrevocably in love.

  Because the Marquis had great self-discipline and because he had known that her experiences had been traumatic in a manner that would make it difficult for her to think clearly, he had behaved, as he told himself faintly mockingly, ‘like a perfect gentleman’.

  Yet it had been an agony not to kiss Aspasia and, when she asked if she could stay with him, not to hold her in his arms all night.

  For the first time in his life the Marquis was thinking of a woman rather than of himself and he had lain awake making plans that he believed would make Aspasia happy.

  Now he knew by the radiance in her face that he had taken the right decision and that his instinct had not failed him.

  Aspasia looked into his eyes for one moment and then she gave a little murmur of contentment and put her head against his shoulder.

  The Marquis sensed that she had no wish to leave the shelter of his arms and he kissed her hair before he said,

  “You are not to worry, my darling
, Just leave everything to me. I promise you that now everything will be all right.”

  “Are you – bringing Jerry – home?”

  “Seeing how excited he was at the thought of a sea voyage and knowing it is what Charlie enjoys too, I thought it might be a good idea for the yacht to reach Plymouth before I tell them to return.”

  He was aware that Aspasia was wondering if there was another reason for this and he added,

  “I also felt that you would have no wish for Jerry to be involved in any way with the women or the servants we saw at Grimstone House.”

  “No – of course not!” Aspasia cried.

  “They will be turned out and because it will be his home I want him to see it as it must have been in your father’s time, a house of happiness that decent people will be eager to be invited to visit.”

  “You are so clever to think like – that,” Aspasia said. “It is just what Mama would – want.”

  “When we come back from our honeymoon,” the Marquis went on, “we will both help Jerry to put things straight and we will also together ensure that he meets the best of London Society and not the members of it who would be a bad influence on him.”

  “That is what Mama would have wanted too! Oh, how can I have been so lucky to have found you?”

  “I think you were the one responsible for that,” the Marquis smiled.

  “I was so – frightened,” Aspasia answered, “terrified of what you might be – like, but now I know that it was God or – Mama who sent me to – Grimstone House. Otherwise we would – never have – met.”

  “God certainly moves in mysterious ways,” the Marquis commented a little dryly, “but I agree, my precious one, that Fate has been very kind to us. And now that I have found you I will never let you go and that is why I intend to marry you, Aspasia.”

  “You are quite – quite certain it is – what you – should do?” she asked. “Suppose you regret having married me and find me too – stupid and – ignorant to keep you – interested?”

  “You already know some of the things that I find interesting,” the Marquis replied. “For instance you know a great deal about my horses, my pictures and I am looking forward more than I can tell you to showing you my other possessions.”

  “I shall – love that.”