Fire in the Blood Read online

  “Then what – did you do?”

  “After that everything was very easy!”

  “How could it have – been?”

  “First thing the next morning,” he replied, “I went to see your father’s publisher only to find that he did not work on Saturdays! I therefore had to follow him to his weekend retreat which was outside London.”

  He smiled as he carried on,

  “But before that I obtained a Special Licence from the Archbishop of Canterbury who happened to be dining as well with the Foreign Secretary on Friday evening, to marry somebody called Pandia Hunyadi.”

  “You were quite certain I – existed?”

  “Absolutely, I looked in your father’s last book, and found his dedication ‘to my daughter, Pandia’,” he answered. “Your father’s publisher confirmed what I knew already, and gave me what I did not know, your address.”

  “How could – you have been so – clever?”

  “It was not as difficult or as nerve-wracking as finding a manuscript that has been hidden for several thousands of years and then translating it.”

  He kissed Pandia before she could reply and, when he could speak again, he said,

  “Now I can help you to finish your father’s book and I have already told his publishers that I will write a foreword to it and I expect it to be given the same treatment my publishers give me.”

  “Will you – really do that?” Pandia cried, “How can you be so wonderful – so kind? I do want Papa’s book to be a success!”

  “It will be,” Lord Silvester said. “We will make sure of that! In the meantime, you have to help me with my book and that means we are leaving for Morocco at the end of the week.”

  “Do you mean – that I am – coming with you?”

  “I am certainly not leaving my wife behind!”

  “And – we are being – married – as you say – this afternoon?”

  Even as Pandia said the words she felt that they could not be true and she was merely dreaming what she thought he had said.

  “We are going to be married,” Lord Silvester said firmly, “and I think you might be hospitable enough to ask me to stay in this very attractive house!”

  “Stay – here?”

  “Why not?” he asked. “I have a house of my own which I am going to tell you about, but there is not time to go there at the moment because we will have so much to buy in London before we leave.”

  Pandia gave a little cry.

  “You are going too – quickly! You must be aware that I cannot – go to London – and I cannot – marry you because of Selene.”

  Lord Silvester put his free hand under her chin and turned her face up to his.

  “Now listen to me, my darling,” he said. “I am not a fool and, seeing how you are living here and having learnt from your father’s publishers how poor you have been, I know quite well what your sister did.”

  He paused before he went on,

  “I had a long talk with the Earl at the dinner party and he told me how your sister, alone and orphaned after her father and mother died, was brought up by your grandparents.”

  His voice was sarcastic before he finished,

  “They could not leave her to starve, even though they had been horrified at the way in which your mother had run away with a Hungarian Tutor.”

  Because Pandia felt embarrassed by what he was saying, she tried to move her face from his fingers, but he would not let her go, and continued,

  “If your sister could pronounce you dead, she can also think up a story to explain how after all, you are alive.”

  “How can she – do such a – thing?” Pandia asked in a frightened tone.

  “If she cannot invent an explanation, I can. You could have been left for dead in the desert, captured by Bedouins from whom I was able to rescue you, or alternatively, like Romulus and Remus, you might have been nursed by a wolf!”

  His eyes were twinkling and he was laughing as he spoke, but, because it sounded so embarrassing, Pandia blushed.

  As if he understood, he set her free.

  She hid her face against him and he said,

  “But, as I will not have you upset, we will have our honeymoon first and go to Morocco. When we get back, you shall dazzle, if it pleases you, the Social world as your sister has done.”

  “I-I don’t want – that,” Pandia answered him, “I just want to – be with you!”

  “That is what I want too, my darling. So, when we do return to England, we will go to the house I have just been left, but did not expect, in my Godfather’s will.”

  “He left you a house?”

  “A house and estate in Devon,” Lord Silvester replied, “which I visited a long time ago. It is very beautiful and close to the sea. I think we will find it the perfect place to finish your father’s book as well as mine before we set out again on our adventures.”

  “Is that what we are – going to do?”

  “That is what I hope you will want to do.”

  “Of course I want it!” Pandia cried. “I want it more than I can ever tell you – but I am afraid – terribly afraid – that it is something I-I – should not do.”

  “You have no decisions to make,” he said. “You will marry me and I have no intention of hiding my wife away and letting nobody see her!”

  His lips twisted a little cynically as he went on,

  “We will save your sister’s face and doubtless her marriage by making our story very plausible and, my darling, I shall be very proud of being married to the most beautiful Goddess who ever came down from Mount Olympus!”

  He drew her a little closer as he added,

  “We will live the life of the Gods which is, as we both know, the perfection that all men seek, but few are fortunate enough to find.”

  As if he wanted to make sure for himself that she was real and he was not dreaming, he kissed her possessively, passionately and in a way that was different from the way he had kissed her before.

  Then when they were both breathless he said,

  “God, how I love you! And I do not intend to wait any longer without making you my wife!”

  He rose to his feet as he spoke and said,

  “I will go to make arrangements with the Vicar for us to be married before two-thirty, which I believe is the prescribed time in a Protestant Church.”

  Because of the way he spoke Pandia could not help asking,

  “Would you – rather we were – married in any other sort of Church?”

  “It does not matter to me what the Church is called,” he replied, “so long as it makes you legally my wife. What really matters is that we are together, as we have been in the past and this time for Eternity.”

  There was a solemn note in his voice, which made Pandia know that he was speaking from his heart.

  Because she could not help herself she put out her arms to draw his head down to hers.

  “I love you!” she sighed. “I – love you so much that – it is going to take – all this life – at any rate – to tell you how much!”

  He held her against him so that their bodies seemed to melt into each other’s. Then he said,

  “Go and find something appropriate in which to be married, my lovely one. Whatever you wear, you will look to me like Persephone after you forced me to go down into Hades to find you!”

  Pandia laughed as he opened the study door and went into the hall.

  He put on his fur-lined coat which he had laid on a chair and picked up his hat, then once again he put his fingers under her chin to turn her face up to his.

  “Promise me you will not vanish before I come back,” he said. “I feel I have performed all the twelve labours of Hercules in my efforts to find you and I could not bear another dozen waiting for me if you disappear again!”

  “I-I will be – here,” Pandia replied, “and don’t let anything – happen to you between here and the Vicarage!”

  She thought as she spoke that it would make him laugh and it
did.

  At the same time she told herself that, although he had been to Mecca and had risked his life many times, she was still afraid of losing him because it seemed impossible she could be so happy or that her life could be so changed as if by the waving of a magic wand.

  Only when the front door had closed behind him did she run to the kitchen to find out if Nanny was there. “Nanny, Nanny! I am to be married this afternoon! And I am so happy that I cannot believe it is true!” Nanny stared at her. Then she burst into tears.

  “It’s what I’ve prayed for, Miss Pandia,” she sobbed. “I thought you’d never find a decent man living in this place with nobody to see you and Miss Selene pretending you don’t even exist!”

  “I not only exist, but I am the happiest person in the whole world!”

  Because her face was so radiant and she looked so lovely, tears poured down Nanny’s face.

  *

  Nanny was the only witness at their wedding, and she watched Lord Silvester take Pandia up the aisle on his arm.

  The Vicar was waiting for them at the Chancel steps and the organ was playing very softly.

  To Pandia the angels were singing and the whole Church seemed vibrant with love.

  There was a gown amongst Selene’s clothes, which she was certain her sister had bought for a garden party or some other very important occasion.

  Of white chiffon trimmed with real lace it was so beautiful and at the same time so spectacular that she could understand that having worn it once Selene would think it impossible ever to wear it again.

  It was the loveliest gown Pandia had ever imagined she could possibly own.

  There was a huge picture hat to wear with it, but she found a wreath of white flowers that went with one of the evening gowns and Nanny made her a veil of white tulle.

  She had nothing to carry in her hands and was therefore very touched when Silvester brought from the carriage he had travelled in from London a box in which she found a bouquet of white orchids.

  “How could you have been so sure you would – marry me today?” she asked.

  “I did not believe there could be any good reason why, once I found you, you should refuse to marry me!”

  He thought there was still a question in her eyes and added,

  “You see, I knew, my darling, that you loved me, just as I love you!”

  “How were you – certain?”

  “When I kissed you at The Castle you gave me your soul and that was what I had always been wanting and had never received from any other woman.”

  Without her saying anything, he saw the expression in her eyes,

  “You have no reason to be jealous, my precious. Of course there have been women in my life, some of them of very strange nationalities, but I have always, and this is the truth, been looking for the woman I knew was the other half of myself.”

  He smiled before he went on,

  “My studies in all the strange languages and manuscripts I have found told me that is what all through the ages men have always sought, usually to be disappointed.”

  He kissed her lightly before he said,

  “When I sat down next to you in the Church, I knew I had found the woman I had been seeking.”

  “But – suppose I had really been married – like Selene?”

  “Then, like Paris and Helen of Troy I would have snatched you away and started a war or a scandal!”

  “I am glad you did – not have to do that, but I am still – afraid that I should not really – marry you.”

  “You have no choice in the matter,” he answered.

  When they went back to the house from the Church, he produced a bottle of champagne and insisted that Nanny should drink their health.

  “You’ve made me very happy, my Lord,” Nanny said. “I was worried about my baby living here on her own. Yet somehow I thought one day God’d answer my prayers and she’d find the husband she deserved.”

  “I doubt if I will ever be that,” Silvester said, “but we will be very happy, Nanny. And just as my wife will now start a very different life from the one she has lived before, so will you!”

  Nanny looked surprised and he continued,

  “We are going to Morocco for our honeymoon. I therefore want you to close up this house and take everything that her Ladyship wants and of course yourself, to our new home in Devon.”

  “Do you really mean that – my Lord?” Nanny asked in a trembling voice.

  “Certainly I mean it! And you must be aware that nobody but you could make the nurseries ready!”

  Nanny’s eyes shone through her tears and Pandia made an inarticulate little murmur and hid her blushes against her husband’s shoulder.

  Only when Nanny had gone back to the kitchen with the tears still running down her cheeks did Pandia say shyly,

  “How could you say – that to Nanny? And how can you be – sure?”

  “Of course I am sure,” Silvester replied, “and that is why, my precious one, we must have our home ready for our family and somebody we can trust to take care of our babies when we set out for new horizons and new inspiration for the books we shall write together.”

  “That is what Papa would – want me to do, but I still cannot believe it’s – true that I shall really see all the places I thought I would know only in my imagination.”

  “You will see them, live in them and find life at times very uncomfortable,” he said. “At the same time, my darling, we shall be together.”

  “That is all I want,” Pandia replied. “Oh, darling, darling Silvester, how can it be true that I have – found you and that you love me and everything is so – perfect?”

  “I think you did not have enough faith in Fate and your instinct should have told you that there is always something we don’t expect round the next corner.”

  He laughed before he added,

  “In our ignorance we call it ‘destiny’, but it is really The Wheel of Life and Rebirth and the irresistible magic of love.”

  “You are saying all the things I want to hear and which I want to understand,” Pandia cried.

  “I will teach you about them amongst other things – ” Then, as he kissed her again, he said,

  “Now I am going to take you upstairs and we are going to rest after what has been a very exciting and emotional experience, the first and last time either of us will be married.”

  Pandia blushed and as, with his arms around her, Silvester walked with her up the small staircase, she whispered, “It seems rather – shocking to go to bed in the – daytime!”

  He laughed and his laughter rang out in the small house.

  “Now, my darling, you are being very English and very prosaic, but I think your father would have told you that for the Hungarians, together with a great number of other peoples, love-making is not confined to certain hours, days or weeks.”

  He pulled her closer to him and went on,

  “Love is something which should be available when we want it and I want you now at this very moment and I feel as if I have already waited a thousand centuries!”

  As he spoke, Pandia opened the door of her mother’s bedroom.

  It was a pretty and attractive room and, as she had dressed in it, the fire had been lit and she thought it was just as lovely as the bedroom at The Castle where Silvester had first kissed her.

  Then it was impossible to think of anything but that they were together!

  He lifted first the wreath from her head, then the veil and gently took the pins from her hair so that it fell in great waves over her shoulders.

  Then he pulled her against his heart and she felt him undoing her gown.

  “You make me shy,” she murmured.

  “I adore you when you are shy.”

  Her gown slipped to the ground and she had her face against his shoulder whispering,

  “Please do not – look at me!”

  “I want to look at you, touch you and kiss you from the top of your head to the soles of your feet.”
<
br />   The passion in his voice made it impossible for her to breathe.

  Then, as he carried her to the bed, she felt the light that came from him vibrate through her until she quivered with a wild and uncontrollable ecstasy.

  *

  A long time later, when it was dark outside and there was only the golden firelight, Pandia asked in a whisper,

  “Do you – still love me?”

  “That is the question I should be asking you, my precious one,” he said. “There is no need for me to tell you that I not only adore you and worship you, but I did not believe it possible for any man to be as happy as I am at this moment!”

  “I have – really made you – happy?”

  “So happy, my darling, that I am afraid that what the Gods have given me the Gods might take away and you will fly back to Olympus.”

  “I will never do that,” Pandia said, “because now I am with you and, although I cannot – express it as beautifully as you do, I know I am not a Goddess, but a woman and yet I am living in a special Heaven you have carried me to.”

  “Now I want to ask you that question,” Silvester said. “I have made you happy?”

  “Happy is not the right word,” Pandia replied. “You have picked the stars from the sky and put them in my breast. I have kissed the moon – and felt the heat of the sun. I have dived into the depths of the – ocean and found – you at the very bottom of it.”

  She spoke in a rapt little voice he did not miss.

  Then she added so softly that he could hardly hear,

  “I had no idea that – making love could be so – glorious – so wonderful – now I know why the Gods came down to earth to make love like human beings.”

  “That is what I wanted you to feel, my darling one and I have only just begun to teach you about love.”

  His lips moved across her forehead as he spoke.

  Then he gave a little laugh.

  “How could you really think you could pretend to be a married woman when you are so pure, untouched and completely innocent?”

  “I did not think – anybody would be aware of that – unless like you they had dared to – kiss me.”