The White Witch Read online

  Worse still if he might even have to take her with him!

  He had often thought and even said jokingly that in his last incarnation he had been an explorer.

  “It must have been in the days,” he said, “when there was a great deal more of the world to discover than there is now. I am quite certain I would have travelled to strange places like Tibet, darkest Africa, and undoubtedly made an attempt on the North Pole.”

  Those who heard him say this laughed and considered it a great joke.

  But to the Marquis there was much truth in this thought.

  He wanted to remain a bachelor and he did not wish to be shackled in any way.

  The very idea of marriage made him remove himself quickly and definitely from any female who might have been suggesting it.

  He thought now that he had been very stupid in not realising that Locadi had never been satisfied with being married to an unimportant Peer who had very little money.

  The Marquis was not quite certain what her standing had been before she married. He imagined that Lord Marshall was the best amongst her suitors and so she had accepted him.

  But he had been a great deal older than her, although at least as his wife she was able to appear at the Opening of Parliament and to be accepted by the social world.

  Marriage!

  The Marquis found himself almost shivering at the idea.

  If he must marry, as he would eventually have to, it was certainly not going to be to someone like Locadi.

  A woman whom he could not trust if she was out of his sight. Now as he thought it over, he was more convinced that ever that she was determined to capture him.

  It was not only the charm from Haiti that worried him or the orchids.

  He thought that some of the food he had eaten in Locadi’s house might have contained an aphrodisiac, which had made their lovemaking even more passionate.

  At the time he had just attributed it to the fact that he had been abroad and celibate for so long. Or perhaps the wine he had drunk at dinner had been particularly stimulating.

  Now he was dubious.

  He gazed at the small object lying on his blotter.

  He recognised that any Priest of the voodoo in Haiti could supply this type of magic. There were many substances which their charms might contain or be treated with.

  The most alarming being the blood of a newly born child.

  There was no fire in the Marquis’s study as the weather was warm, so he lit the small candle on his desk which he used for sealing his letters.

  Then he had a better idea.

  He remembered someone telling him that if you accidentally broke a mirror you should throw the broken pieces into deep water. This ensured that you would not suffer the bad luck that would be expected otherwise.

  The Marquis had laughed at such superstition. But he had been assured that it was definitely true and neither good luck nor bad would ensue if the object was drowned.

  ‘I will throw it into the Serpentine,’ the Marquis told himself, ‘and there it can do no one any harm.’

  Then and there he decided he would go to the country.

  He felt no desire to meet Locadi and find himself in a position where she could ask him why his affections had changed. He did not wish to touch her again nor even to see her again.

  She was using black magic to attract him and the sooner he was completely rid of her the better.

  He did however recognise that it was going to be extremely difficult.

  Therefore his best solution to this problem was to leave London for the country. If he had not just come back from a long journey, he might have gone abroad again.

  However he now wanted to stay in England and to see his racehorses compete in some of the Classic races for which they had already been entered.

  The most prestigious was the Derby, which would take place in ten days time. Later he hoped, if he was lucky, he would win the Gold Cup at Ascot.

  *

  As was usual, having made up his mind, the Marquis wasted no time. He rang the bell and having sent for his secretary started to issue his orders.

  “You do realise, my Lord,” his secretary told him, “that you have not visited the castle for over a year.”

  “I know that, Barratt,” the Marquis replied, “but I expect to find everything in perfect order.”

  “I am sure Mr. Potter will have seen to that, my Lord,” Mr. Barratt replied, “but at the same time he would wish to receive notice of your impending arrival.”

  The Marquis considered for a moment before responding,

  “I think that would be a mistake. If all my instructions have been carried out as they should have been, even though I was abroad, they should be ready for me to arrive at any moment without a fanfare of trumpets to warn them.”

  “I hope you are right, my Lord. Actually I have not heard from Mr. Potter for some time, although he did write to me soon after you left for abroad to say that everything was in good order.”

  “That is all I need to know” the Marquis replied. “I will journey in my travelling-carriage drawn by the four horses I bought at Tattersall’s just before I left for Nepal.”

  “Very good, my Lord, and will you be leaving tomorrow morning?”

  “I am leaving in an hour’s time,” the Marquis decided, “so please instruct Wilkins to have everything packed and he of course will accompany me.”

  Mr. Barratt almost ran from the room.

  ‘It is just like the Marquis’ he thought, ‘to make up his mind at a moment’s notice and upset everyone.’

  The Marquis’s father had been a leisurely man, who had suffered much ill health in his old age. He had left everything he could to those he employed.

  The young Marquis was very different.

  It was perhaps, Mr. Barratt believed, because of an unhappy childhood.

  At the same time he has been brought up to be very conscious of his own stature and importance.

  ‘He likes to snap his fingers and expect the world to run to do his bidding,’ Mr. Barratt complained to himself as he reached his office at the back of the house, where he rang bells which made the servants come hurrying in to find out what was required.

  The Marquis meantime had walked to the window overlooking the garden in the centre of Grosvenor Square.

  He was not seeing the statue in the garden or the daffodils making a golden circle around it.

  Instead he was seeing the Priest who had taken him to a voodoo service in Haiti, where he had watched a strange dance of those who were already ‘high’ on a white drink they had imbibed.

  The voodoo rites were all very ancient and traditional and they always ended in an orgy which the Marquis found interesting but distinctly unpleasant.

  It was undoubtedly from Haiti that Locadi had obtained her love charm.

  The sooner he was rid of it the better.

  The one possession he had always been very careful to preserve was his brain. He had always despised people who took drugs of any sort, including painkillers and sleeping pills.

  “The most valuable blessing we possess,” he had said on various occasions somewhat pompously, “is our brains. The only possibility for me to talk to you and you to talk to me is by using our brains. If our brains are damaged, we are no longer ourselves.”

  The gentleman to whom he was speaking had not taken him seriously.

  “There is nothing wrong with your brains, Ivor,” he said, “and when you produce children they will doubtless be as clever as you are and of course will tell you they know better than you!”

  The Marquis however had not been listening.

  He was working it out for himself how many men wasted their brains and how many were unappreciated by those around them.

  He almost placed himself in the latter category, although he was well aware that everyone respected him.

  Then the thought occurred to him somewhat bitterly that it was his money and his title that they respected. Not the fact he could be
very much more intelligent than they were.

  Now he was running away but at the same time it was the most sensible course of action.

  As he thought his situation over, he remembered dreaming several nights ago of Locadi. He had seen her looking at him as if out of the frame of a picture.

  If she was using magic, she was sending her thoughts to him while he was asleep.

  She was willing him see her as one of the Marchionesses of Wynstanton whose portraits hung on the walls in Grosvenor Square and his other houses.

  She wanted to marry him and was therefore using every ploy to make him see her as his wife.

  ‘I must escape,’ the Marquis told himself, but he did not feel that he was being a coward.

  He had seen too much of magic as he had travelled around the world not to appreciate that in the wrong hands it could be very dangerous.

  It was not just the voodoo in Haiti which frightened him, there was also the same magic to be found in every country in the East.

  Sometimes in India it had seemed quite harmless. One of his servants there had told him that he wished to leave immediately as his father had died.

  “How do you know?” the Marquis asked.

  He knew the man’s father lived in Calcutta, and they were at that moment five hundred miles away.

  “My father dead, Lord say it,” the Indian had replied. “Family call for me. I go to them.”

  Because he was a good servant, the Marquis had been extremely annoyed at losing his services.

  However because he was so obviously upset by his father’s supposed death and determined that he must support his family, the Marquis had permitted him to leave.

  It was several months later when he had returned to Calcutta and saw the man again.

  He learned that his father had indeed died on exactly the night he had known about it. He was very grateful to the Marquis for allowing him return to his family.

  There was no possible way he could have been informed of his father’s death except through his mind and intuition.

  The Marquis had puzzled over this phenomenon and found the whole subject most interesting. It was something he would like to experiment with himself one day.

  It never occurred to him that a woman might use such thought transference on him or that she could make him think of her as his wife.

  He could perhaps be mesmerised, if that was the right word, into doing what she wanted.

  ‘I must retreat and think this situation through clearly’, the Marquis told himself.

  He was waiting impatiently in the hall while his travelling-carriage was being brought to the door.

  His valet, Wilkins, and the luggage were travelling in another carriage and would therefore arrive later at the castle.

  It was more usual, as Mr. Barratt had pointed out, for the servants to go ahead and prepare for the Marquis’s arrival. He only hoped that his Lordship would not in consequence be too uncomfortable.

  “I daresay I shall manage,” the Marquis said with a smile.

  “I should have brought it to your Lordship’s notice earlier,” Mr. Barratt continued, “that you permitted your grandmother, the Dowager Marchioness, to stay at the castle, as she wished to do, a week ago.”

  The Marquis stared at him.

  “I had indeed forgotten, Barratt. Do you mean to say that her Ladyship is there now?”

  “I am not quite sure, my Lord. If you remember her Ladyship wrote to you saying that she was suffering from various ailments, which her doctors thought might be alleviated if she stayed in the country now that the weather has improved.”

  “Yes, yes of course, now I remember.” The Marquis did recall as he spoke that the letter had arrived at the moment when he was hurrying to be with Locadi. She had sent a message to welcome him home and to say that she was counting the minutes until she would see him again.

  It had been a beguiling message. A mixture of pleading and passion that the Marquis had found difficult to ignore.

  He had not forgotten her stunning beauty on his travels, nor her passionate kisses.

  He had taken a carriage to her house in Lowndes Square. When he walked into her drawing room, he believed that she was undoubtedly the most glorious woman he had ever seen.

  As the butler closed the door behind him he had just stood gazing at her. With the swiftness of a serpent she had glided towards him and into his arms. She raised both hands and pulled his head down to hers. Her kiss had sent the blood throbbing in the Marquis’s temples.

  “I have missed you, oh, darling Ivor, how much I have missed you,” Locadi murmured.

  After that introduction he had forgotten everything except her and her sinuous body.

  Looking back, it was from that moment he thought that he had seemed to see her face wherever he went and she haunted his dreams.

  It was not that she ever mentioned anything about marriage, she was too clever for that. But it became increasingly apparent that she was exercising a subtle influence over him that made it impossible for him to think of anything but her.

  ‘I was a fool not to realise it was abnormal,’ the Marquis chastised himself.

  *

  The Marquis was driving with an expertise which made his groom look at him admiringly. He was concentrating on the road and driving his horses faster and faster.

  Yet he was still acutely conscious that Locadi was thinking of him and he could almost see her green eyes looking at him through the hedges on either side of the road. He could hear her voice in the rumble of the wheels.

  He was driving so fast that his groom began to regard him nervously.

  ‘I shall not be able to fight this problem with fear,’ he thought.

  He found himself wondering what was the antidote to black magic. Even if he knew what it was, where could he find it?

  Wyn Castle was fortunately not very far from London.

  Knowing that it would only take him under three hours to reach it, the Marquis was ashamed that he had not been there for so long.

  The castle had been in the family for several centuries. It had been refaced and enlarged during the reign of George IV. It was not therefore the perfect Palladian mansion which the Marquis would have preferred.

  Nevertheless the castle was an extremely impressive building. The tower had been built in Norman times and was listed in every guide book of Britain.

  As it was spring the gardens should now be particularly spectacular.

  Although he employed a good number of gardeners it had been worth every penny, the Marquis thought.

  Fountains had been added, a bowling green and a shrubbery which was a joy to wander in.

  The castle itself was a treasure house which he valued above all.

  The pictures which had been collected by his ancestors down the centuries were magnificent and rivalled those in the National Gallery.

  The French furniture in two of the rooms had been bought at the time of the French Revolution. They had been brought to England at the same time that the Prince Regent had sent his chef to the sales at Versailles, because he was his only servant who could speak French.

  There was also magnificent gold-framed furniture designed by Adam himself in 1750. In the study there were Regency pieces which the Prince of Wales, when he last stayed at Wyn Castle, had tried to persuade the Marquis to give to him.

  He had managed to avoid doing so by telling the Prince that they were entailed.

  “Of course,” the Prince had conceded, “and I suppose everything else in this beautiful castle falls into the same category.”

  “If I was threatened with bankruptcy I would have to go through it all with a fine toothcomb to see what I could sell,” the Marquis had replied. “But for the moment that uncomfortable situation has not arisen.”

  The Prince had laughed.

  “I am sure you are quite safe,” he said, “and the next generation will envy your sons in the same way that I am envying you.”

  The Marquis had been pleased with
the compliment.

  He had arranged an excellent party for the Prince with a number of very ravishing women. Everyone who played host to the Heir to the Throne understood that the Prince was quickly bored.

  When this happened, he tapped his fingers on the table and looked round impatiently. It was as if he expected a new amusement to spring up from the floor or drop down from the ceiling.

  To the Marquis’s satisfaction the Prince did not give any sign of being bored while he had been staying at the castle. Instead he enjoyed the meals and admired the pictures and furniture.

  ‘I suppose,’ the Marquis thought, ‘that now I shall have to invite His Royal Highness again, but for the moment I just want to think and wonder what I can do about Locadi.’

  He was well aware she would fight desperately to hold him and would undoubtedly continue to use black magic in the attempt to capture him completely.

  ‘I would not marry her if she was the only woman in the world,’ the Marquis told himself positively.

  At the same time he was alarmed. He had seen black magic at work and it was not to be taken lightly.

  But genuine black magic was something very different from the activities of the poor old women who had been hanged as witches. They had invariably been tortured into making a confession.

  Every European country had been abominably cruel to old women who were thought to be witches. It was a disgraceful attitude of which no one, including the Church, could be proud. That superstition, as the Marquis believed, was very different from the threat he was now encountering.

  He was almost convinced that Locadi was using the black magic of Haiti on him and he had been foolish enough not to realise that her name was a very common one in that country.

  She had used it because people had found it attractive and unusual in England.

  If he had been more alert, he should have seen the red light warning him of danger when they had first met.

  ‘I have to break and resist the spell she is casting over me,’ the Marquis mused as he drew near to the castle.

  At the same time he had no idea of how he could do so. If he had been in Haiti, in India or Nepal, he could have turned to someone wise in the knowledge of magic to help him. But where were such experts likely to be found in England?