A Dream from the Night Read online

  “That is what I want to do,” Olinda said.

  “Do you really mean that or are you saying it to please me?”

  He put his hand under her chin and tipped her face up so that he could look into her eyes.

  “Do you realise that I have never looked at you properly in the daytime?” he asked.

  “I was thinking that just now,” Olinda said. “We have always met in the darkness.”

  “A dream from the night,” he said softly. “But you are even more beautiful, my precious, when I see you with the sun on your hair and the light of it in your eyes.”

  He looked at her face as if he was taking in every detail until her eyelids fell and a faint flush rose in her cheeks.

  “You are – making me – shy,” she protested.

  “I adore you when you are shy,” he said. “I think that I have been rather afraid of the wise follower of the Goddess Athene who has told me what to do, who has set me impossible tasks and given me ideals that seemed to be completely out of reach.”

  He spoke softly and yet there was a note in his voice that made Olinda quiver.

  “And now,” he went on, “I find not an Amazon or a Joan of Arc, but someone very young and very lovely who can blush, something I thought women had forgotten how to do!”

  Olinda gave a little murmur and moved against his fingers, which were holding her chin, but his lips were on hers and once again she was his captive –

  When he raised his head, he said,

  “I have remembered something!”

  “What is it?” Olinda asked.

  “When I saw you in the shadows by the Duchesse’s bed, something stirred in my mind. You reminded me of someone, but I could not think who it was.”

  “Who – was it?”

  “The Virgin in Leonardo da Vinci’s first picture of the Annunciation!”

  There was a note of reverence in the Earl’s voice as he went on,

  “It is the picture he painted when he was very young and the Angel Gabriel comes to Mary at dusk. The bluish-green of the evening makes nature a part of the miracle and the Virgin’s hair is pale gold against it.”

  He kissed Olinda’s hair.

  “I have looked at that picture so often in the Louvre and it meant something special to me. Now I know it was you!”

  Olinda hid her face against his shoulder.

  “I am so – glad, so very very glad – you should – think of me like – that. I thought – ”

  “What did you think?”

  “That you would consider me – fast and – immodest because I let you – kiss me.”

  “Could I imagine that you were anything but pure and perfect?”

  He kissed her eyes and her forehead.

  “There is so much for me to discover about you,” he said. “So much I want to know, so much that I never thought to find in any woman.”

  “I am afraid – you may be – disappointed,” Olinda whispered.

  “How could I be?” he enquired. “Did you not tell me that real love involves the heart, the brain and the soul?”

  He waited for her reply, then, when she would have spoken, he took the words from her lips with his –

  Later, when they could speak again, he said,

  “I am conceited enough, my precious to believe that I can capture your heart.”

  “It is yours – already,” Olinda whispered.

  “And your mind will force me to exert myself, because many of the subjects I was interested in have been forgotten and my knowledge has become rusty while I wasted my time in Paris.”

  “I am sure that you are as clever as your father,” Olinda said. “I read that he was admired and respected by everybody.”

  “And if you are as brilliant as yours,” the Earl said, “I tremble to think how erudite our children will be!”

  “I want them to be just like you,” Olinda said and she blushed again as she spoke.

  “I think that they will have a great deal of their mother’s character,” the Earl smiled, “and certainly her beauty. Do you realise how beautiful you are, my darling?”

  “Please – tell me,” Olinda begged. “No one ever has.”

  “I will tell you until I convince you that you are the most beautiful person I have ever seen,” he answered, “but I have not quite finished. There is a third part of the love we talked about – the soul.”

  “You do believe we have one?”

  “I believe you have,” he answered. “I want you to help me find mine.”

  He drew her a little closer to him as he said,

  “When I was thinking of you and longing for the time to pass so that I could come to you, I looked up in a book in the library all that you told me about the Duchesse de Mazarin. You were right, Olinda. She made the King very happy because she gave him what none of his other loves had done.”

  “She inspired him!”

  “And that is what you have done to me! She brought him a new awareness of life and you have given me that too. And most important of all she gave him the love that he had always sought but failed to find.”

  “Can – I give you – that?”

  “You have given it to me already,” the Earl said. “You have brought me a love that I did not know even existed, a love so glorious, so perfect, and I know you are right, Olinda, it is part of the Divine.”

  “That is what I – thought when you – first kissed me,” Olinda whispered, “but I was – afraid you did not – feel as I – did.”

  “I knew that first kiss was quite different from any other kiss I had ever given or received,” the Earl replied. “But because it was so intense, so wonderful, I was afraid!”

  “Afraid?” Olinda asked.

  “That it was not real, that I was imagining the ecstasy of it.”

  He paused before he said,

  “I had not intended to kiss you. I had enjoyed talking to you, but somehow until that moment I had thought of you not as a desirable woman, but just as somebody understanding and ethereal, a being from out of this world.”

  “And when you – kissed me?” Olinda asked.

  “Then I knew that you were what I had always been seeking, the woman who was meant for me and was part of me.”

  “You did not – say so.”

  “I was too bewildered and for the moment so surprised, so spellbound by the wonder of your lips that I did not know what to do or what to say! After I left you, Olinda, I went to the Temple to think about you.”

  “If – only I had – known,” Olinda murmured, remembering how miserable she had been, thinking that he would consider her fast and immodest.

  “I could hardly believe it had really happened,” the Earl said, “and then the next night when you came to me when I was so desperate and I thought I had lost Kelvedon, I did not kiss you because we were so close to each other mentally that I felt our bodies should not intrude upon our minds.”

  “I understood – that,” Olinda said.

  “I thought you would.”

  Then to Olinda’s surprise, he stood up and drew her to her feet.

  “Now, my darling, there are no inhibitions and no reason for us to deny our love,” he said. “We belong to each other in every way and the only thing I want is that you should become my wife as quickly as possible!”

  “You are in – mourning,” Olinda said in a low voice.

  “As you are,” he answered. “Your Nanny told me what had happened when I arrived. I am so sorry, my dearest, it must have been very upsetting for you.”

  “I would not have wished my mother to suffer.”

  “I can understand that, but it leaves us both free, free to be together, Olinda. I cannot wait on convention or on the proper period of mourning.”

  She looked at him wide-eyed as he added,

  “One of the reasons I was a little longer than I meant in coming to you was that I stopped the night in London so that I could obtain a Special Licence. Are you prepared to listen to what I have planned?”
>
  “You know – I am.”

  He thought as he looked at her that all the sunshine from the sky was concentrated in her grey eyes.

  “We will be married very quietly and secretly because our marriage cannot be announced for some months and I will then take you to my house in Leicestershire”

  “Not to Kelvedon?”

  “Not for our honeymoon,” he answered with a smile. “I don’t wish you to be jealous of it and I want to concentrate completely and absolutely on my wife until she is sure that I love her more than anything in the world – even more than Kelvedon!”

  “Do you – really mean – that?” Olinda asked.

  “I mean it!” he replied. “And, although it may be hard to prove, I intend that you shall believe me!”

  He reached out his arms and drew her almost roughly against him.

  “You have to believe me,” he insisted masterfully, “and this is the one thing I shall brook no argument about. Do you understand?”

  Olinda gave a laugh of sheer happiness.

  “I want to – believe you.”

  He kissed her passionately and she felt a flame rise within her to respond to the fire on his lips and in his eyes.

  “You are mine!” he cried. “Every precious part of you and I promise you, my sweet, that you will have no rival, only interests that we will share and will belong to us together.”

  “I love – you!” Olinda whispered. “I want to – make you – happy.”

  “That is what you have made me already,” he answered. “And there is all the future for us to discover how great and marvellous that happiness can be!”

  He turned her towards the house and said with a sudden urgency in his voice,

  “Why are we wasting time? Let us get married, my precious! I am so afraid that you are, after all, only a dream and that when night comes you will vanish and I will lose you.”

  “You will never do that.”

  “Again you are right,” the Earl replied, “for you will be with me during the day and I shall hold you in my arms all night. That should make sure that you cannot escape.”

  He looked down at her face in the sunshine and, as if he could not help himself, he once again sought her lips. Then resolutely he took his arms from her and, taking her by the hand, started walking back towards the house.

  They moved towards the garden, but when they reached the bushes of wild roses and honeysuckle the Earl stopped.

  “Is this really happening to us?” he asked. “To you and me, Olinda? Is it possible for a man to move from the Hell of despondency into such a Heaven of happiness?”

  “It is possible when two people are – in love,” Olinda said. “I told you that real love is like the – Holy Grail and yet it is – possible to find it.”

  “As we have!” the Earl said.

  She looked at him with a radiance in her face that he had never seen on any other woman’s.

  “As we have, my sweet dream,” he repeated very gently.

  His lips found hers and they were no longer in a garden in the sunshine, but had reached the top of an inaccessible mountain and were enveloped in the brilliant blinding light of the Divine.

  OTHER BOOKS IN THIS SERIES

  The Barbara Cartland Eternal Collection is the unique opportunity to collect as ebooks all five hundred of the timeless beautiful romantic novels written by the world’s most celebrated and enduring romantic author.

  Named the Eternal Collection because Barbara’s inspiring stories of pure love, just the same as love itself, the books will be published on the internet at the rate of four titles per month until all five hundred are available.

  The Eternal Collection, classic pure romance available worldwide for all time .

  Elizabethan Lover

  The Little Pretender

  A Ghost in Monte Carlo

  A Duel of Hearts

  The Saint and the Sinner

  The Penniless Peer

  The Proud Princess

  The Dare-Devil Duke

  Diona and a Dalmatian

  A Shaft of Sunlight

  Lies for Love

  Love and Lucia

  Love and the Loathsome Leopard

  Beauty or Brains

  The Temptation of Torilla

  The Goddess and the Gaiety Girl

  Fragrant Flower

  Look Listen and Love

  The Duke and the Preacher’s Daughter

  A Kiss for the King

  The Mysterious Maid-servant

  Lucky Logan Finds Love

  The Wings of Ecstacy

  Mission to Monte Carlo

  Revenge of the Heart

  The Unbreakable Spell

  Never Laugh at Love

  Bride to a Brigand

  Lucifer and the Angel

  Journey to a Star

  Solita and the Spies

  The Chieftain Without a Heart

  No Escape from Love

  Dollars for the duke

  Pure and Untouched

  Secrets

  Fire in the Blood

  Love, Lies and Marriage

  The Ghost who Fell in Love

  Hungry for Love

  The Wild Cry of Love

  The Blue-eyed Witch

  The Punishment of a Vixen

  The Secret of the Glen

  Bride to the King

  For All Eternity

  King in Love

  A Marriage made in Heaven

  Who can deny Love?

  Riding to the Moon

  Wish for Love

  Dancing on a Rainbow

  Gypsy Magic

  Love in the Clouds

  Count the Stars

  White Lilac

  Too Precious to Lose

  The Devil Defeated

  An Angel Runs Away

  The Duchess Disappeared

  The Pretty Horse-breakers

  The Prisoner of Love

  Ola and the Sea Wolf

  The Castle made for Love

  A Heart is Stolen

  The Love Pirate

  As Eagles Fly

  The Magic of Love

  Love Leaves at Midnight

  A Witch’s Spell

  Love Comes West

  The Impetuous Duchess

  A Tangled Web

  Love lifts the Curse

  Saved By A Saint

  Love is Dangerous

  The Poor Governess

  The Peril and the Prince

  A Very Unusual Wife

  Say Yes Samantha

  Punished with love

  A Royal Rebuke

  The Husband Hunters

  Signpost To Love

  Love Forbidden

  Gift Of the Gods

  The Outrageous Lady

  The Slaves Of Love

  The Disgraceful Duke

  The Unwanted Wedding

  Lord Ravenscar’s Revenge

  From Hate to Love

  A Very Naughty Angel

  The Innocent Imposter

  A Rebel Princess

  A Wish Comes True

  Haunted

  Passions In The Sand

  Little White Doves oF Love

  A Portrait of Love

  The Enchanted Waltz

  Alone and Afraid

  The Call of the Highlands

  The Glittering Lights

  An Angel in Hell

  Only a Dream

  A Nightingale Sang

  Pride and the Poor Princess

  Stars in my Heart

  The Fire of Love

  A Dream from the Night

  THE LATE DAME BARBARA CARTLAND

  Barbara Cartland, who sadly died in May 2000 at the grand age of ninety eight, remains one of the world’s most famous romantic novelists. With worldwide sales of over one billion, her outstanding 723 books have been translated into thirty six different languages, to be enjoyed by readers of romance globally.

  Writing her first book ‘Jigsaw’ at the age of 21, Barba
ra became an immediate bestseller. Building upon this initial success, she wrote continuously throughout her life, producing bestsellers for an astonishing 76 years. In addition to Barbara Cartland’s legion of fans in the UK and across Europe, her books have always been immensely popular in the USA. In 1976 she achieved the unprecedented feat of having books at numbers 1 & 2 in the prestigious B. Dalton Bookseller bestsellers list.

  Although she is often referred to as the ‘Queen of Romance’, Barbara Cartland also wrote several historical biographies, six autobiographies and numerous theatrical plays as well as books on life, love, health and cookery. Becoming one of Britain’s most popular media personalities and dressed in her trademark pink, Barbara spoke on radio and television about social and political issues, as well as making many public appearances.

  In 1991 she became a Dame of the Order of the British Empire for her contribution to literature and her work for humanitarian and charitable causes.

  Known for her glamour, style, and vitality Barbara Cartland became a legend in her own lifetime. Best remembered for her wonderful romantic novels and loved by millions of readers worldwide, her books remain treasured for their heroic heroes, plucky heroines and traditional values. But above all, it was Barbara Cartland’s overriding belief in the positive power of love to help, heal and improve the quality of life for everyone that made her truly unique.

  A Dream from the Night

  Barbara Cartland

  Barbara Cartland Ebooks Ltd

  This edition © 2014

  Copyright Cartland Promotions 1976

  eBook conversion by M-Y Books