63 Ola and the Sea Wolf Read online

For a moment he thought that it was empty and Ola had retired to her own cabin. Then he saw that she was curled up on the sofa asleep.

  The Marquis had decorated the Saloon in pale green because it seemed an appropriate colour to use at sea. That alone had been revolutionary as most yachts were upholstered in brown leather and it was fashionable to have oak panelling on the cabin walls.

  He could not have chosen a colour that was a more effective background for Ola’s fiery red hair.

  As the Marquis moved towards her, he saw that her eyelashes were very dark against her cheeks that were still pale from tiredness and in fact, as she slept, she looked very young and vulnerable.

  He sat down on the chair opposite her and it struck him that it was not surprising that she was tired seeing what a dramatic day it had been for her yesterday.

  Running away at dawn must have been a nerve-racking experience in itself. Then to learn of her cousin’s intentions towards her had been a shock, which was bad enough without the sudden fright of an accident in the fog.

  The Marquis had seen far too many accidents with carriage horses not to be aware that Ola was extremely lucky to have escaped unhurt.

  Her cousin, who had been driving, had obviously been flung onto the road and it was unlikely, the Marquis thought, that the wound caused by the stone he had fallen on would be his only injury.

  Usually in such an accident he would have fractured a limb, while in several cases the Marquis was aware people had broken their necks.

  He wondered whether the horses were hurt, then told himself sharply that it was none of his business.

  It was the brandy that was responsible for his having foisted himself with Ola and the sooner he was rid of her the better.

  Then looking at her he wondered how, after he had put her ashore, she would reach Paris.

  A post chaise from Calais would not have been difficult, for it was the usual route taken by travellers and the French with their shrewdness for making money had everything organised to suit the pockets of every class of person visiting their country.

  But Bordeaux was a long way from Paris and the Marquis began to think it might, in fact, be impossible for Ola to find a post chaise to take her, even with a frequent change of horses, directly to Paris.

  ‘I will not concern myself with her – I will not!’ he murmured.

  Then he told himself that she was so young, a lady, and as such, used to having servants, relatives, teachers and Governesses looking after her.

  ‘She will find herself a Courier,’ a critical part of his mind told him and he wondered if a Courier of any repute would take on a woman who was by herself.

  Moreover there were Couriers who were known to prey on travellers, charging them exorbitant sums and even being in league with robbers who would relieve them of their luggage and other valuables before abandoning them penniless in some isolated part of the country.

  ‘Damn her! Why did I ever meet her in the first place?’ the Marquis asked.

  As the words were spoken in his mind, Ola opened her eyes.

  For a moment she looked at him as if she wondered who he was. Then some memory came back to her and there was a smile on her lips that was very attractive as she sat up saying,

  “I fell – asleep. I am ashamed of my indolence when I might have been improving my mind with one of your books.”

  “What you were doing was very sensible,” the Marquis said. “It is extremely rough outside now. The wind is cold and there are gusts of sleet which are very unpleasant.”

  “All the same you look as if you have enjoyed it!” Ola remarked. “Perhaps you will let me go on deck tomorrow?”

  “It depends if it is safe.”

  Ola gave a little laugh.

  “I believe you are afraid that I shall break my leg and then you will not be able to be rid of me unless you throw me overboard!”

  What she was saying was so near to what the Marquis was thinking himself that he felt almost embarrassed.

  He did not reply and Ola added,

  “I promise you I will go ashore the moment you tell me to do so, but there is one thing I want to ask you.”

  “What is that?”

  “As we are going to Bordeaux and it is a town I have never visited and therefore know very little about, do you think that there is a good jeweller there?”

  “A jeweller?” the Marquis asked in perplexity.” What do you want with a jeweller?”

  It flashed through his mind that she might be expecting him to give her a present. He remembered so many women who had somehow lured him into a jeweller’s so that he could demonstrate his affection for them in what to them was a very much more practical manner than by kisses.

  Ola looked down as if she was shy and then said in a small voice,

  “I think – if I could have landed at Calais – I would have had enough – money to reach Paris – but, as Bordeaux is so much further away – I shall have to – sell some of my jewellery – and I don’t wish to be – defrauded.”

  “Surely you did not set off from home without having enough money to carry you to Paris?” the Marquis asked. “How much did you bring?”

  There was silence and he had a feeling she was not going to tell him the truth.

  “Don’t lie to me!” he said sharply. “Quite frankly, I am not really interested in your finances one way or another. If you want my help, you had better at least be honest.”

  “I-I was not going to – lie,” Ola replied. “I just did not wish you to think that I was – foolish to bring so little money with me.”

  “How much have you got?”

  “F-four sovereigns – and some – silver.”

  Before the Marquis could speak she added quickly,

  “Because Giles was coming with me – I thought it would be – enough.”

  “So you intended that he should pay for you, even before you learnt he wished to marry you?” the Marquis said scornfully.

  “Not at all!” Ola retorted. “He knew that, as Step-Mama has the handling of my fortune. she could pay him back anything I owed him – or else I would have given him a piece of – Mama’s jewellery. It is very valuable!”

  “Dear God! Do you mean to say that you are carrying it all in that case you had with you last night?”

  Ola nodded.

  “My dear child,” the Marquis said in exasperation, “do you really imagine that you can reach Paris without having it stolen from you and perhaps being knocked about or killed in the process?”

  “There is – nothing else I – can do,” Ola said defensively.

  She gave a little cry.

  “Oh, it is easy for you to find fault and say, ‘you should have known better!’ now that everything has gone wrong, but I trusted Giles when he said he would take me to the Convent. Now last night I thought of – something – else.”

  “What is that?” the Marquis asked in an unsympathetic tone.

  “Because Giles knows where I intended to go, he will, when he is better, look for me there – so I cannot now stay at the – Convent.

  The Marquis looked at her.

  Then where do you intend to go?”

  “I have not yet decided.”

  “But you have to go somewhere.”

  “Yes, I know, but there is no reason for me to worry you with my plans. You have made it quite clear that I am not your responsibility, which of course, I am not.”

  “No, of course not,” the Marquis agreed. “At the same time I am curious. You did mention an alternative last night, I think.”

  “Yes, I told you Step-Mama was always saying I would have to be a cocotte, but that I was not certain exactly what that means.”

  She looked at the Marquis as if he could supply the answer. When he did not do so, she went on,

  “I looked the word up in the French dictionary, and it said, ‘fille de joie’ – ‘woman of joy’ and I thought that must mean an actress of some sort. Is that not so?”

  “Not exactly – ” the Ma
rquis replied, amazed at her innocence.

  “I expect they will tell me what it is when I get to Paris. The trouble is I can hardly walk down the street asking for an instructor on how to be a ‘fille de joie’! Perhaps they would be able to tell me at a theatre?”

  She gave him a mischievous little smile as she went on,

  “The nuns would be very shocked! They thought theatres were the invention of the Devil and always warned us against visiting them, although we were allowed occasionally to attend the Opera House.”

  The Marquis was finding it almost impossible to know what he could say to this ridiculous ignorant child.

  He made up his mind.

  “The best thing I can do,” he said firmly, “is to sail to Plymouth. There I will engage a responsible Courier who will take you back to your stepmother.”

  Even before he had finished speaking Ola gave a cry of horror that seemed to echo round the cabin.

  “How can you suggest anything so abominable, so cruel, so treacherous?” she cried. “You know I cannot go back to my stepmother and you have no authority to send me.”

  She paused to catch her breath.

  “I called you a Good Samaritan, but you are a wolf in sheep’s clothing and your yacht is aptly named – you are a sea wolf and I hate you!”

  He rose from his chair as she spoke and, without looking at her, moved towards the door. It would have been a dignified exit except that a sudden movement of the yacht made him stagger and it was only with the greatest difficulty that he prevented himself from falling.

  When he had gone, Ola stared despairingly at the door as if she could not believe that she had heard him aright.

  He had seemed so kind, so helpful and she had thought at luncheon, apart from anything else, how interesting it would be to talk to him.

  Now, suddenly for no reason, he had turned against her and was behaving as badly in his way as Giles had behaved in his.

  “How dare he! How dare he treat me as if I was a child to be taken here or there without even being consulted!” she cried aloud.

  She wanted to scream in defiance at the Marquis and yet at the same time her instinct told her that, sea wolf or not, it would be best for her to plead with him.

  Then she knew by the tone of his voice and the squareness of his chin that he meant what he said and she would find it hard to dissuade him from doing what he intended.

  ‘If he sends me home,’ she thought, ‘I shall have to run away all over again and it will be more difficult another time.’

  She had the feeling too that the Marquis would make sure she did not escape while she was with him and she wished now that she had not entrusted her jewellery to him.

  She thought she now hated the Marquis as much as she had hated Giles.

  ‘Men are all the same,’ she muse. ‘They do not play fair unless it suits their own ends.’

  She wondered why the girls at school were always talking of men as if they were something marvellous and more desirable than anything else on earth.

  ‘I hate men!’ Ola told herself. ‘I hate them as I hate my stepmother! All I want to do is to live by myself and be allowed to have friends and do everything I want to do without being ordered about by anybody!’

  It had occurred to her a long time ago that when she was married she would always be at the beck and call of some man who believed he had authority over her.

  Perhaps that would be endurable if she was in love, but otherwise it would be intolerable. She thought because she was that rich she need be in no hurry to get married, but could wait until she found somebody whom she would like to live with, simply because he was kind and understanding and she would be able to talk to him.

  She had often thought in the past that it was difficult to find people she could talk to when she was at the Convent.

  The nuns gave orders and, when she was with her father, he talked to her but he did not converse. In fact neither he nor anybody else was interested in her opinions or her ideas.

  ‘When I talked to the Marquis at luncheon,’ she reflected, “he listened to me when I was describing the different ships I have sailed in in the past and he explained the things I wanted to know about his own yacht.”

  From the amount of books in his bookcase it struck her that he was interested in a great number of subjects she wished to know more about.

  ‘We will talk about them tonight at dinner,’ she had thought excitedly, but now he had made it very clear what he thought of her.

  She was an unwanted piece of merchandise which he would dispose of as he saw fit without even asking her opinion on the matter.

  ‘I hate him!’ she fumed. ‘I hate him because he has deceived me when I thought he was kind and honest.’

  She did not want to cry when she thought of her future, because it only made her angry.

  Somehow, in some way, she would get even with the Marquis because he had disappointed her when she had least expected it.

  “I am glad he is upset about something and I hope a woman has really hurt him and made him unhappy!” she cried aloud. “It will serve him right! If he ever told me about it, I would laugh because I am pleased he has been made to suffer!”

  This was all very well, but it did not solve her own problem and she told herself that now she had to escape somehow.

  There seemed no possibility of her doing anything of the sort unless she was prepared to throw herself into the sea.

  ‘Perhaps if I do so,’ she mused, ‘I should be drowned and it would be on his conscience for the rest of his life.’

  Then she told herself sensibly that he would merely attribute it to an unbalanced mind and forget all about it long before he reached the Mediterranean.

  But Ola was not going to be defeated.

  She sat back against the cushions and began to plan how she could elude the Marquis and his ideas in one way or another.

  ‘Perhaps if I stow away in the hold,’ she thought, ‘he will think I have gone ashore and I shall only be discovered when he is out at sea again.’

  It seemed quite a possible idea, except that she had the feeling he would make very sure that the Courier he engaged acted as a jailer too and there would be no escape at least until he was too far away even to know about it.

  ‘What am I to do? What am I to do?’ Ola asked herself.

  Then, as there was a sudden rasp of the wind in the rigging, which told her that there was still a gale outside, it occurred to her that perhaps the Marquis’s intentions would be circumvented not by her but by nature and they would not be able to dock in Plymouth as he intended.

  Chapter 4

  Ola was sitting on her bed, an expression of despair on her face.

  She had learnt from the Steward that The Sea Wolf would dock in Plymouth either tonight very late or first thing in the morning, depending on the wind and the tides.

  In the last twelve hours she had thought of nothing except how she could escape from the Marquis and prevent him from sending her ignominiously back to her stepmother.

  She had been sensible enough not to rage at him when they had luncheon together, but instead to talk about the races and the horses that took part in them.

  She realised he was surprised that she was not referring to what lay ahead, but, after a little stiffness at the beginning of the meal, he gradually relaxed and talked to her as if she was as knowledgeable as he was on the subject.

  Every hour that passed brought her nearer to her fate and she thought now that even her optimism was fading and there would be nothing she could do but leave the Marquis and set off with the jailer he would provide for her on her homeward journey.

  There was a knock on the door and Ola started.

  “Come in!” she said and the Steward who looked after her stood there.

  “Excuse me, miss,” he said, “but do you happen to have any laudanum with you? The Captain’s got such an achin’ tooth he can’t stay on deck.”

  “Oh! I am sorry!” Ola exclaimed. “I wish
I could help, but laudanum is something I never take myself.”

  The Steward smiled.

  “You’re too young if I may say so, miss, for such fads and fancies, but there was just a chance and the Captain’s groanin’ in his bunk like a lost soul.”

  Ola could not help smiling.

  Then she said,

  “Tell him to soak a little wool or a rag in spirit – brandy is best, although I daresay rum would do – and pack it round it, if possible into the tooth that is hurting. I remember my father doing that once.”

  “I’ll tell the Captain what you said, miss,” the Steward replied. “I know he’ll be very grateful.”

  He closed the cabin door and as he did so, Ola gave a little exclamation.

  She suddenly remembered that she might have some laudanum with her after all.

  When she left the Convent, many of the girls of her age had given her presents and among them had been a beautiful chinoiserie enamel scent-holder made in the reign of Louis XIV.

  It was very attractive and when she opened it, she found it contained three little bottles shaped like triangles so that they fitted together to make a whole. They each had enamelled stoppers and their glass was engraved with flowers.

  Yvonne, the girl who had given them to her, said,

  “I have put the most exotic perfume I could find in one, an eau de toilette in the second and you will have to fill the third yourself.”

  Ola had never actually used the bottles, but, because it was so attractive, the case had stood on her dressing table and when she was packing, thinking she might see her friend when she was in France, she had put it at the bottom of her trunk.

  She had not thought of it until now, but actually the third bottle contained laudanum.

  Soon after she returned from Paris she had suffered from the most acute toothache, which turned out to be an abscess.

  The doctor had been called to see her and he had promised to arrange for a dentist to visit her the following day.

  “Because I know what pain you’re in, Miss Milford,” he said, “I’m going to give you a little laudanum to take tonight so that you will sleep. Be careful not to take too much.”

  He had handed her a small bottle as he spoke and instructed her to take a few drops only.