Love and the Marquis Read online

  There was silence.

  Then Beryl said in a voice that he could hardly hear,

  “I – don’t – understand what you are – saying to me.”

  “What I am saying, Beryl, is that I need you and want you more than I have ever wanted anything in my life. I want you to give me the son you and I have never had, to bring him up here at Kingsclere so that he will be happy in the home that has belonged to his ancestors and that in time will belong to his children.”

  Now the Earl felt that Beryl was trembling and her eyes filled with tears as she asked brokenly,

  “Are you – really saying this to – me?”

  The Earl smiled in a way that every woman found irresistible as he answered,

  “I am asking you to marry me, my darling, and I think, as you need me and I need you, we could be very happy together.”

  Tears ran down Beryl’s cheeks.

  “I-I cannot believe – it,” she wept.

  The Earl released her hand and put his arms around her to pull her close against him.

  “I-I have – loved you ever since I can – remember,” she said, “and because I knew you were – out of reach and you could never – love me it really did not matter what happened to me because I could never – love anyone else.”

  The Earl did not reply.

  He merely moved her a little closer to him and his lips found hers.

  His kissed her until the rapture he aroused in her was so sweet, so sincere and unspoilt that he knew that this was what he wanted in his wife and in his home.

  “I love you!” he said quietly, “and I swear I will make you happy.”

  He knew as he spoke that his wandering days were over.

  He would settle down and would then fill his life with all the things he ought to do in his position rather than go on chasing rainbows, which were invariably disappointing.

  He was envisaging not only that he and Beryl could have a number of children before she was too old, but that it would bring them a joy that, with his horses, would fill his life and his raffish roving days would be forgotten.

  His kissed away the tears from Beryl’s cheeks and as he did so she said in a voice that seemed to vibrate with joy,

  “I love you! I love you and there is – nothing else in the world but you – and love.

  Chapter Seven

  “Oh, darling Papa! I am so, so glad. It is just what I have wished for you!”

  As she spoke, Imeldra kissed her father and then Beryl.

  “You are quite – certain you don’t – mind?” Beryl asked in a soft anxious voice.

  “You are exactly the wife that I would have chosen for Papa if he had asked me. I was terrified that he would marry one of those hard sophisticated beauties who always tried to shoo me away so that they could be with Papa alone.”

  “You know I would never do that.”

  Imeldra smiled at her.

  Then she said to her father,

  “Now you must hurry and get well, Papa. There is so much for you to do.”

  “I know that,” the Earl replied in a contented voice, “and I have not only to make plans for the Horse Show but also for my marriage.”

  He looked at Beryl as he spoke and held out his hand.

  Imeldra who knew him so well saw that his eyes were kind and tender and very different from the fiery glances she had detected between him and the other women since her mother had died.

  She had in fact often thought since Beryl had come to Kingsclere how well she fitted in and how both she and her father would miss her when he was well again and she went home.

  Now it seemed perfect that she could stay on and Imeldra also knew that, if the miracle she was praying for happened and the Marquis wanted her for his wife, she would not feel guilty in leaving her father alone.

  There was, however, a big question mark as to whether or when that would happen.

  She had lain awake night after night thinking of how she could let him know who she was without seeming to push herself onto him or making him feel after all that they had said to each other that he was obliged to marry her.

  She had seen so many women pursue her father and been aware of how instinctively he had resented their insistence and their demands when he wanted to be free.

  Perhaps the Marquis, once he no longer had the menacing mystery of his secret hanging over him, would want to enjoy himself as a bachelor and not at once be shackled in a new manner.

  Imeldra planned, as her father would have done, a dozen different ways that she could let the Marquis know her real identity without it seeming obvious.

  She went over them one after another, feeling somehow in her own mind that, as in a Fairytale, if he wanted her enough he would find her despite all the difficulties.

  Again it was too soon to think about such imponderables.

  In her calculations of how long it would take him to journey to Italy and back again, she thought it would be at least another month before he could return to England.

  Yet it was impossible not to think of him all the time and feel her vibrations going out to him and at times to know irrefutably that he was thinking of her.

  ‘I love him!’ she thought again and again.

  She could not help feeling a small pang of jealousy when she saw how happy Beryl was with her father.

  As she wished to leave them alone as much as possible, the following day immediately after luncheon she suggested to Beryl that if she was prepared to take over her turn to be with the Earl, she would like to go into the garden to pick some flowers.

  “Yes, of course, dearest, I will do anything you want,” Beryl replied instantly. “But you are quite sure you really wish to be alone? I cannot bear to think that I am preventing you from being with your adorable father as you always have been.”

  “I have never seen him looking so happy or so young,” Imeldra answered her, “and what is more important than anything else is to keep him feeling like that so that his leg will heal quicker than it would otherwise.”

  Beryl laughed.

  “We are always told that happiness heals the body as well as the mind.”

  “That is what we are doing to Papa.”

  As they left the dining room and Imeldra walked towards the front door, she was aware that Beryl was running swiftly up the stairs, eager to reach the Earl.

  It was a warm sunny day and she did not put on a bonnet but just walked into the garden as she was, carrying only a basket and the scissors that she intended to cut the flowers with.

  As she moved through the bushes of lilac and syringa to a part of the garden that her mother had always kept wild, it seemed almost a crime to take anything so beautiful from its natural place.

  In the wild garden there were also a number of magnolia trees in bloom. Their pink and white flowers were opening in the sun, making it a picture that was just breathtaking in its loveliness.

  Imeldra stood looking at them, wishing that she could share them with the Marquis.

  Everything at Marizon was so perfect that she knew beauty had the same appeal for him as it had for her and aroused a feeling almost like rapture within her breast.

  Because to think of him brought an irrepressible longing to her mind and heart, she felt the tears come into her eyes at the very intensity of it and the magnolia tree she was looking at suddenly became misty and out of focus.

  At that moment she heard footsteps behind her, but because she had no wish for anybody to see her when she was feeling so emotional, she did not turn round and only hoped that if it was one of the gardeners, he would pass by without speaking to her.

  Then the footsteps came to a standstill and she thought that it might be a servant with a message.

  Surreptitiously she wiped her eyes before she turned and as she did so she was totally transfixed.

  It was the Marquis who stood there, looking magnificently tall, broad-shouldered and attractive against the blossom and there was an expression on his face that she had not s
een before

  It was impossible to move and impossible to speak.

  Then very simply the Marquis held out his arms and with a little cry of sheer joy Imeldra ran towards him and he held her close against him.

  She could feel his strong heart beating against hers before his lips came down to take hers captive and it seemed as if the sun enveloped them and they were one with the beauty of the flowers.

  He kissed her fiercely, passionately, demandingly and she knew it was not only because he had missed her but also because he had been afraid of losing her.

  Only when a century, or so it seemed, of wonder had passed in which it was impossible to think of anything but the rapture he aroused in her and the ecstasy that seemed to fill the very air, the Marquis took his lips from hers and she cried incoherently,

  “I love – you! I love – you! But how is it possible that you are – here so – quickly?”

  As she spoke, she had a sudden fear in case he had discovered that what her father had told her was untrue and so had not gone to Italy.

  As if he read her thoughts, he merely pulled her closer still and asserted,

  “I am saved, my precious one, and now I can make you mine as you were always meant to be.”

  Then he was kissing her again, kissing her with a strength that had a touch of fire in it and yet Imeldra was not afraid.

  She knew that he was making her his own as she had been since the beginning of time and saying it not with words but with kisses that joined them so that they were no longer two people but one.

  Only when they were both breathless did the Marquis say in a voice that was unsteady and curiously hoarse,

  “How can you be so beautiful? Far more beautiful than when I last saw you. Then you were already a part of me and it is not only your face I adore but every little piece of you that is mine as well.”

  The way he spoke made Imeldra quiver.

  As she hid her face for a moment against his shoulder, she managed to ask him,

  “How did you – find me? I did not – expect you – back in England so soon.”

  The Marquis laughed and it was a very happy sound.

  “When you told me what I should do, I went at once to Paris.”

  “I told you?” Imeldra exclaimed. “How did you – know that the note was from – me?”

  The Marquis looked down at her very tenderly.

  “You cannot have forgotten how closely we vibrate to each other, my precious. Do you think I could hold the paper that you had written on or read the words on it without being aware that they came from you?”

  “You were – really sure of that?”

  “Very very sure!”

  But – you did not know that I had learnt – your secret.”

  The Marquis smiled.

  “I did not have to be a detective, my darling, to learn that and I will tell you all about it. But at the moment all I want to do is to kiss you and ask you how soon you will marry me.”

  He did not wait for Imeldra to reply, but kissed her until she held him away from her saying,

  “I am curious – terribly curious – and I never – dreamt that you would come here to find me.”

  “You underestimate not only my powers of deduction but my love as well,” the Marquis said reprovingly, “and that is something I will not let you do in the future.”

  His lips moved for a moment over the softness of her cheek.

  Then he said,

  “When you left Marizon so hurriedly without saying ‘goodbye’ to me, I could not at first understand what had happened.”

  “I thought – William Gladwin would tell you that – my father had had an – accident.”

  “I was told that before I asked the question.”

  Imeldra looked surprised and the Marquis explained,

  “When my visitor left, I was so depressed and upset that I wanted to be with you, not to tell you what had occurred, but merely to feel the closeness and inspiration you have always given me, besides the reassurance that somehow and in some way I could not at that moment visualise I would escape from the maze I had found myself trapped in.”

  Imeldra was listening, but she did not interrupt and he went on,

  “I asked the butler where you were and he replied, ‘Miss Gladwin has left, my Lord. A carriage came to collect her and I understand that her father has suffered a serious accident’.”

  “‘Left?’ I repeated, stunned by the information. ‘At what time did this happen’?”

  “‘Let me see – ’ he answered. ‘It was, my Lord, just after Miss Gladwin left the library where she’d been choosing a book that she went upstairs and I sent a footman with a note that had just arrived for her with a carriage’.”

  “So you guessed,” Imeldra said, “that being in the library I could have – overheard what you were – saying in the – morning room.”

  “I was sure of it,” the Marquis replied, “and I thought at first you had left because you were disgusted and shocked at what you had learnt.”

  “I was – neither of those – things,” Imeldra answered, “but only terribly worried about you and wondering desperately how I could – save you.”

  “How could I know that?” the Marquis asked. “I just thought I had lost you.”

  “I-I am sorry,” Imeldra whispered contritely.

  “I do not think I have ever known such torture as I endured thinking I would never see you again and yet while my brain told me one thing, my heart was very sure that you were thinking of me and still loving me.”

  “How could you – imagine I would ever stop – loving you?”

  She spoke so intensely with a touch of passion in her voice that the Marquis could only kiss her again.

  Only when they both felt that the wonder they were experiencing made it impossible for their legs to sustain them did they sit down on a bench beside a magnolia tree and Imeldra put her head on the Marquis’s shoulder while his arms were still around her.

  He kissed her hair and then her forehead before he said,

  “When I received the note telling me Madame Jolie was married to an Italian and knew quite surely that it came from you, it was as if the Heavens had opened and a shaft of sunlight swept away the darkness that had encompassed me for so long.”

  Imeldra looked up at him questioningly.

  “So you went to Italy?”

  “No, I decided I would start my search in France because my perception, which you and I both believe in, told me that it was the right thing to do.”

  He kissed her forehead again before he continued,

  “By then I already knew who you really are.”

  “How – could you have – known that?”

  The Marquis smiled.

  “Everybody at Marizon was talking about the dreadful accident that had just befallen our nearest neighbour, the Earl of Kingsclere.”

  Imeldra raised her face and the Marquis went on,

  “You forget, my darling, that I own racehorses and, since your father’s horses invariably beat mine, everything that happens to him is of vital interest to my grooms, my trainers and in fact everybody in the house from the new pantry boy to my housekeeper, who I really believe occasionally ‘has a flutter’.”

  Imeldra laughed before she enquired,

  “So you all knew that Papa had been involved in ‒ an accident.”

  “I was very sorry to hear it.” the Marquis said, “I also am an admirer of your father.”

  Imeldra looked at him in surprise and he said,

  “And I love his daughter more than I can ever tell her in words.”

  He would have kissed her, but Imeldra said quickly,

  “You have still not explained to me how you found out that I was Papa’s daughter.”

  “It was not very difficult,” the Marquis smiled. “I was suspicious that Mr. Gladwin was not really your grandfather and, when my Agent was informing me that the Earl had had an accident when driving to Dover and had been crushed by the imp
act of the stagecoach, I said, ‘I am very sorry to hear about his Lordship. As his wife is dead, I do hope that he will have someone competent to look after him and nurse him back to health.’

  “‘His daughter’s with him, my Lord,’ my Agent replied, ‘and I’ve always heard that Lady Imeldra thinks the world of her father.’”

  “So it was as easy as that!” Imeldra exclaimed.

  “I could not believe there were many young women in the County called ‘Imeldra’,” the Marquis said, “and besides, when I thought about it, there is a resemblance between you and your father that is inescapable.”

  “And knowing – who I was you went to – France.”

  “I not only knew who you were but I was able to guess where the information came from that you had sent me in such a disguised manner.”

  “What – happened?”

  “When I reached Paris,” the Marquis replied, “I went to see the Head of the Sureté and, my precious, I now know what a fool I was not to have done this very much sooner. It would have saved me a great deal of misery, bitterness and, of course, money.”

  “What did he say to you?”

  “He told me that he had been suspicious for a long time that Madame Jolie was obtaining money by blackmail in collusion with her brother who has a criminal record as a forger.”

  The Marquis paused before he added,

  “How could I have been so thick-headed as not to have investigated her claims before?”

  Because he sounded so self-accusing, Imeldra put her arm out protectively to draw him closer to her and, as if he understood what she was feeling, he smiled tenderly before he said,

  “It is all over now! There is no need to go into details. I discovered with the help of the Inspector that Jolie’s brother had forged the Marriage Certificate and the letters, supposedly written by my father, that she had shown me.”

  “How did she know about him?”

  “She had met him once when she sang at a large party at the British Embassy. It was my father’s first visit to Paris and he had been given an introduction to the Ambassador by the Foreign Office in England.”

  He paused before he continued,