The Marquis Who Hated Women (Bantam Series No. 62) Read online

  She did not appear to be interested in his explanation but bent down to pick up her valise.

  It was almost too heavy for her, but she took hold of it with both hands and mere was something so immature about her figure that the Marquis said:

  “If you are intent on running away alone, I should think again. You will not be able to manage without someone to look after you! So be a good girl, go home and think it over. I do not suppose things are as bad as you suspect.”

  “I have no intention of doing that.”

  “Then doubtless it is my duty to make you,” the Marquis replied.

  She gave a little cry and dropped the valise—this time on the edge of his foot. Then, before he could realise what was happening, she was running down the road away from him, moving with a swiftness which made her skirts fly out behind her.

  “Hi! Stop!” the Marquis shouted. “It is nothing to do with me. Stop, I tell you!”

  He picked up the valise preparatory to running after her, but at that moment he saw someone emerge from the shadows at the end of the street and he heard the girl give a cry of fear.

  Moving quickly and carrying the valise, which was in fact quite heavy, the Marquis hurried to where the girl who had run away from him was struggling.

  He saw that it was with one of the ragged men who hung about the streets at all times of the day and night in the hope of earning a few pence for holding a horse or, doubtless, if the opportunity arose, of picking a pocket.

  “Oi’ve got ’er, Guvnor. Oi’ll ’old on to ’er!” the man said as the Marquis approached.

  “Let me go! How dare you touch me?” the girl was saying furiously, pulling and trying to free her hand, which the man was holding with both of his.

  “Let her go!” the Marquis said in a tone of authority.

  He took a coin from his pocket and threw it on the ground.

  “Now be off with you!”

  The man bent down to snatch up the coin and did as he was told.

  As the girl stood rubbing her wrists the Marquis said quietly:

  “There is no need to run away from me. What you do is not my business, but I think you see already that there are certain pit-falls for young women who move about the streets alone at this time of the night.”

  “I had hoped to find a hackney-carriage.”

  “There might be one in Grosvenor Square,” the Marquis said. “That is where I am going, and if you wish I will carry your valise for you.”

  “Thank you, ’ the girl said. “I thought there might have been a hansom on the rank in Berkeley Square.” She paused, then added:

  “As a matter of fact, I have never been in a hansom. That will be an adventure in itself!”

  “If you are looking for adventure,” the Marquis said, “I can think of less dangerous ones than walking about London in the middle of the night.”

  “I am not doing it for pleasure!” she retorted sharply. “I have to escape! If I stay...”

  She stopped speaking, as if she felt she was being too confiding, and they walked on in silence.

  The wind that met them round the corner of Carlos Place made the Marquis shiver and he realised that his companion was shivering too.

  “Surely you should have brought a cloak with you?” he asked.

  “I have a shawl in my valise,” she answered, “but it would not have been easy to come down the rope with anything over my shoulders.”

  “No, of course not,” he said. “It is a somewhat uncomfortable way of leaving one’s residence.”

  “The night-footman sits in the Hall,” the girl said as if she thought he was being very dense, “and I thought if I tried to let myself out by the area door one of the servants would hear me. Another footman sleeps in the Pantry.”

  ‘I can understand your predicament!”

  She heard the laughter in his voice and said angrily:

  “It may seem amusing to you, but I have had to think this out very carefully, and when I thought you were going to upset all my plans I naturally had to run away.”

  “Naturally!” the Marquis agreed.

  “Now all I want is a hackney-carriage.”

  “Where do you want to go?” the Marquis enquired. “The cabmen are usually unwilling to drive far at this time of the night.”

  “I am going to Egypt.”

  “To Egypt?” The Marquis repeated the word in astonishment.

  “I am going to find my father.”

  “And you really intend to travel there alone?”

  “There is no-one to go with me,” she said, “and I must catch a very early train to Southampton before my Uncle finds out that I have disappeared.”

  The Marquis turned to look at her in surprise. As he did so, his own predicament suddenly came to his mind and he envisaged a possible solution.

  His yacht lay at Southampton, and if he left London before Shangarry could call on him to return his hat and cloak and ask the explanation for their presence in his house, it would mean that he was definitely “off the hook.”

  He followed up his train of thought and it seemed quite clear that once he was away from England the Shangarrys would have to find some other fool to pay their bills.

  It would undoubtedly be impossible for them to await his return if their creditors were as pressing as he had been led to believe.

  That, he thought with a sense of triumph, was exactly what he would do.

  He would take his yacht at once to the Mediterranean, as he had intended to do anyway in a month or so.

  No-one would be surprised. Shooting was over; there was too much frost for hunting; and the fact that he left London in January would not invite a query as to his reason for doing so.

  What was more, the Marquis told himself, it would definitely be a score off Inez Shangarry and her crooked scheming!

  “Damnit all, that is what I will do!” he said beneath his breath, and remembered that he was not alone.

  “Did you say something?” his companion asked.

  “Only to myself,” he replied.

  They had reached Grosvenor Square by this time and when the Marquis looked at the place near the garden where there was usually a line of hackney-carriages drawn by tired, underfed horses, there was not one to be seen.

  “I suppose really it is too late at night,” the girl beside him said nervously.

  “I am afraid it is,” the Marquis agreed. “But I have a suggestion to make which you might find helpful.”

  “What is that?” she asked.

  “I intend leaving London myself this morning,” he said. “It happens that I also shall be leaving from Southampton, and I have to find out about the trains.”

  He stopped as he spoke, having reached his house, to continue:

  “The direct line, as I expect you know, is from Nine Elms, the station before Clapham Junction. If you would like to wait while I look them up in Bradshaw, I dare say my footmen will be able to procure a hackney-carriage which will take you to the station.”

  “Why can I not go with you?” the girl asked.

  The Marquis looked at her as she spoke, and by the light of the moon that had come out from behind a cloud she saw the surprise on his face.

  “I am ... sorry,” she said humbly. ‘I realise I should not have suggested that.”

  “I think it quite a sensible suggestion,” the Marquis replied, “and forgive me, I should have thought of it myself, but I am not used to meeting young women who wish to travel to Egypt!”

  “I am quite used to travelling,” the girl said almost antagonistically. “You need not worry about me.”

  “I am not,” the Marquis answered, “but if it would be of any help to you I shall of course be delighted to escort you to the station.”

  He walked to the door as he spoke.

  It was a large, impressive house and his companion looked at it somewhat doubtfully before she said: “I suppose I ought not ... really to come ... into your house with you ... alone.”

  “If
you are worried about the propriety of it,” the Marquis answered, “I see in that little difference from your leaving your own home on the end of a rope, and if you are nervous as to my intentions, may I inform you that I spoke the truth when I said I hate women!”

  “Just as I hate men,” she said, and he thought the smile on her lips was rather attractive.

  “Then we are of accord in that sentiment if in nothing else,” the Marquis said. “I think you would be wise to come inside rather than stand in this cold, which might easily lead to pneumonia.”

  “Thank you,” his companion said with dignity. “As a matter of fact, I do feel frozen.”

  The Marquis knocked on the door, which was opened almost immediately by his footman who had been sitting in a round-topped padded chair in the Hall.

  He looked surprised at seeing his master without his hat or cape, apparently on foot and carrying a valise.

  The Marquis put the valise into the footman’s hand.

  “I want warm drinks, James, and something to eat brought to the Library,” he said. “Tell Hignet to attend me there.”

  “Very good, M’Lord.”

  The Marquis walked across the Hall and opened a door at the end of it.

  The girl preceded him into a large Library which looked out onto the garden at the back of the house.

  There were several lights burning and the footman who had followed them into the room turned up the gas. It was a comfortably furnished room, lined with books and showing every evidence of luxury and wealth.

  The Marquis walked across to his desk and opened several drawers before he found what he sought. Then he came to the fireplace, where the girl was crouching down, holding out her hands to the fire.

  “It was very silly of me not to bring a cloak,” she said. “Now that I think about it, I could have thrown it out of the window with my valise.”

  “As that missed me only by inches,” the Marquis replied, “to find myself suddenly enveloped in the folds of a heavy cloak might have been quite unnerving!’

  “I did not expect anyone to be about at that time of night.”

  She looked up at him and he saw that he had not been mistaken in thinking that she was pretty and that her eyes were large.

  They did in fact seem to fill her face, large, dark grey eyes, and she seemed very slender and frail in the firelight.

  “Now suppose we introduce ourselves?” the Marquis said. “I confess to being curious as to why you are setting out on this long and arduous journey by yourself.”

  “My name is Shikara Bartlett.”

  “Shikara?” the Marquis repeated. “It is a name I have never heard before.”

  “It is Indian,” she explained. “My father was exploring parts of India just before I was born, and Mama said he was determined that I should have an Indian name because he found them so attractive.”

  “Your father is an Explorer?”

  “No, he is an Archaeologist.”

  “Of course!” the Marquis exclaimed. “Professor Richard Bartlett. I have heard of him. I read the book he wrote on his finds in Persia.”

  “Papa is famous,” Shikara said, “but I have not heard from him for nearly nine months, and I am worried ... very worried as to what could have happened to him.”

  “You say he is in Egypt?”

  “Yes. He went off last spring to meet a man called Auguste Mariette, who had made some sensational discoveries near the Pyramids. He wrote to Papa about it, who of course decided to leave at once! So he asked his brother, Sir Hardwin Bartlett, with whom we were staying, to look after me.”

  “I think I have met Sir Hardwin,” the Marquis said, knitting his brow.

  “I am sorry for you if you have,” Shikara said. “He is a horrible, pig-headed, obstinate man and I hate him! If I had any sense I would have murdered him before I left!”

  “That sounds very blood-thirsty!” the Marquis laughed.

  “It is all very well for you to laugh,” Shikara said crossly, “but you do not know what I have suffered living with him.”

  She took off her bonnet as she was speaking and now the Marquis saw that she had fair hair in which there were golden lights.

  The flames leaping in the fireplace seemed to pick them out and make them shine and he realised that in fact Shikara was not only pretty but had a strange, unusual loveliness that he had never encountered before.

  “Whatever your Uncle is like,” he said, “surely it is rather drastic to run away as you are doing, having no idea of the difficulties in which you may find yourself without anyone to look after you?”

  “No difficulties could be worse than trying to persuade Uncle Hardwin that I have no intention of marrying Lord Stroud!”

  ‘Stroud?” the Marquis ejaculated. “He is a member of my Club, but he is old!”

  “Forty-four to be exact!” Shikara said. “But Uncle Hardwin thinks he would be a stable, restraining influence on me, and as my Guardian he tells me that I have no choice in the matter ... that I have to marry him.”

  ‘That I agree is ridiculous,” the Marquis said. “You are much too young to be married to a man of Stroud’s age.”

  He remembered coming across Lord Stroud at various Parliamentary parties, and he had spoken to him in White’s.

  He had always thought of him as a heavy, boring man who was prepared to pontificate at length on any subject and to lay down the law without listening to anyone else’s opinion.

  “You see, the trouble is that I am an heiress,” Shikara said confidingly.

  The Marquis raised his eye-brows and she went on:

  “I know it is vulgar to talk about money, but I do not suppose Lord Stroud, or the other men who have been pursuing me so ardently, would be so keen if Uncle Hardwin had not told them that I will be wealthy when I come of age.”

  “I think perhaps you are under-rating your personal attractions,” the Marquis said with a twist of his lips..

  ‘I suppose it makes it a better proposition if I am ‘twopence coloured’ rather than ‘a penny plain,’ ” Shikara retorted. “I know they want to get their greedy hands on the hundred thousand pounds which my mother left me when she died.”

  “That is quite a fortune!” the Marquis agreed.

  “That is what they think,” Shikara said, “but I am not going to marry any of them, whatever Uncle Hardwin may do to me!”

  “What do you mean by that?” the Marquis enquired.

  “Oh, he has threatened to beat me, to shut me in my room with only bread and water. He has used every threat in the calendar, but I will not give in to him ... I will not! Not if it kills me!”

  She spoke so violently that the Marquis could not help smiling. She was so small and fragile and yet she was snarling like a tigress.

  Then he realised that from his point of view he would make a great mistake if he became involved in Shikara’s predicament.

  It was one thing to defend a young girl who had descended on him literally from the sky above, but quite another to be involved in helping an heiress to escape from her lawful Guardian.

  “Surely you must have other relatives you could go to?” he asked tentatively.

  “If they would have me ... which I doubt,” Shikara replied. “They are all much too frightened of Uncle Hardwin to go against his wishes. He is the head of the family. Papa has always said that you might as well beat your head against the Rock of Gibraltar as try to make him change his mind about anything.”

  She paused, then said in a low voice:

  “He is determined that I shall marry Lord Stroud, but I loathe him! I would sooner be touched by a reptile.”

  “I can understand that,” the Marquis agreed. “At the same time...”

  He stopped.

  He decided he would not argue with Shikara, but he would make it quite clear that her problem had nothing to do with him, that he would not be involved.

  He opened the Bradshaw Guide, which he held in his hand, turned the pages, and after a moment said: />
  “I see there is a fast train leaving Nine Elms at seven a.m. It reaches Southampton at nine-fifty. That means we should have to leave here at about six o’clock.”

  “Is there no earlier one?” Shikara asked. “The house-maids get up at five-thirty and someone may see the rope dangling from my window.”

  “There is one at six-thirty,” the Marquis said, his eyes on the guide-book, “but it does not get to Southampton any earlier, as it stops at every station on the way.”

  “Then I suppose I had better chance it,” she said. “He would hardly look for me here.”

  “I think it is unlikely,” the Marquis agreed. ‘If you travel in my carriage I think it equally unlikely that your Uncle will suspect that I am your escort.”

  “You are right,” she said. “Thank you. That is what I would like to do.”

  The door opened and the Marquis’s valet came into the room.

  “You wanted me, M’Lord?”

  He spoke in a quiet, unhurried tone, as if it was quite usual for him to be awakened in the middle of le night and brought downstairs.

  “Yes, Hignet,” the Marquis answered. “We are leaving for Southampton at six o’clock. We shall join the yacht. Pack everything I will require.

  “Hot or cold weather, M’Lord?

  “I might go to the Mediterranean, or perhaps Morocco,” the Marquis answered.

  “Very good, M’Lord.”

  “As it seems unnecessary to awaken Mrs. Kingdom,” the Marquis said, “perhaps you would show this young lady to one of the bed-rooms where she can wash and tidy herself. I have asked for some hot drinks and food. I presume it is being prepared?”

  “The Chef has been notified, M’Lord,” Hignet answered. “And you’ll require food for the journey. Shall I prepare a hamper for two?”

  The Marquis hesitated a moment, then said:

  “Two hampers, Hignet. The young lady would prefer, I am sure, to travel in a carriage reserved for ladies only.”

  “Very good, M’Lord.”

  Hignet waited and Shikara carrying her bonnet moved to stand beside him.