Riding to the Moon Read online

  He was knowledgeable enough about women to be aware that Indira had a grace that was unusual, which together with her red hair and white skin, would have made her outstanding in any company, however many other beauties were present.

  He thought that she had certainly listened to him and Jimmy attentively when they had told her to seem quiet, reserved, modest and a little shy.

  Charles thought with a slight smile that, like himself, every man in the room was only too ready to protect her from highwaymen or anything else that menaced her.

  It was certainly a satisfaction to the two friends when the Marquis seated Indira on his right with Lady Sinclair on his left.

  They were aware that the spoilt beauty was infuriated at taking second place and equally aware that the Marquis, intent as usual on doing what he wished, was not in the least perturbed by her pouting red lips and the flounce with which she went into the dining room on the arm of another man.

  Indira was actually very hungry because she had been too frightened to linger at the Posting inn where her coachman had changed horses.

  She had therefore eaten only a little bread and cheese and drunk a glass of cider before she was ready to proceed on her journey and put as many miles as possible between herself and Mr. Jacobson.

  She was quite certain that he would not let her get away easily, but she thought that he would have no idea that her destination was a Convent.

  It was only after she had driven for some hours that she had realised with dismay that she had been obliged to tell the posting inn at Southampton where she was going and that when Mr. Jacobson made enquiries he would obtain the information he required.

  She therefore sat tense in the back of the carriage, willing the horses to go faster and still faster, knowing that the animals were of inferior breeding and that the last two had been too old to travel more quickly than what she considered to be a ‘snail’s pace’.

  But she had been saved and now she thought that she could never be sufficiently grateful to Charles and Jimmy.

  Because they seemed to her to be young and light-hearted, she was trying to think of them as if they were in reality her brothers and not the men she hated, who without the protection of her father made her desperately afraid both physically and mentally.

  She was afraid physically because they obviously considered her beautiful and on the ship she had been terrified that by some unscrupulous means of their own men would intrude on her in her cabin either in the daytime or at night.

  After her father’s death, she had ensured her safety at night by insisting that her lady’s maid sleep in her father’s cabin, which communicated with her own.

  Even then, she left the door open between them and instructed the woman at the slightest disturbance to run for the ship’s Officer who was on duty.

  Fortunately, there had been no need for such dramatics. At the same time Indira would lie awake shuddering at every footstep she heard and feeling that even in the dark she could see men’s eyes desiring her.

  It was only when her father was no longer with her that she realised how protective he had been all her life and that his company of secretaries, couriers and valets, wherever they had travelled, had all contributed to the wall of security she had always felt round her and yet had taken as a matter of course.

  Now that it was no longer there, she told herself, she had to become self-sufficient.

  Mentally she was too astute and too intuitive not to realise the difficulties and it was only when Mr. Jacobson struck real terror into her that she knew that only her quick wits could save her from being married to a man she had never seen but already loathed and despised.

  ‘I must never be in such a position again,’ she decided.

  She wondered if despite everything Charles and Jimmy had said it would not be better for her to enter a Convent.”

  She obviously could not go to the one which was now known to Mr. Jacobson, but it would not be the only Convent in England and she was quite certain that she would be accepted somewhere.

  But for the moment she was safe and, as she looked down the long table at the Marquis’s glittering guests, she thought it was the sort of company that her father would have wished her to be in and it was almost as if he had had a hand in bringing her here.

  “You are very quiet, Lady Mary!” the Marquis remarked beside her.

  “I am sorry if I appear rude,” she replied, “but I am in fact very hungry.”

  “Then I hope my chef will not disappoint you.”

  “I am sure he will not do that. But as you say he is a chef, can it be possible that he is French?”

  “Of course he is French,” the Marquis replied firmly. “No people in the world can cook as well as the French or have such an appreciation of food.”

  “I have always found the Chinese cooking very good,” Indira remarked.

  “I have heard that,” the Marquis replied, “but I cannot ever remember eating Chinese food.”

  “You should try it sometime, my Lord. It is exciting and imaginative, and the Chinese have for generations known how to appeal to the palate because they have studied health as well as philosophy.”

  There was an expression of surprise in the Marquis’s eyes as he said,

  “Are you really interested in those subjects?”

  “Of course,” Indira replied, “and I hope in a great many others besides.”

  “Such as?”

  As he spoke, the Marquis thought a little cynically that, with such astounding good looks, the most obvious subject for Lady Mary would be love and he wondered if she would be brave enough to confess it.

  “I find the Eastern religions,” she said in reply to his question, “fascinating and absorbing. Perhaps Buddhism is the most mystic, the most understandable of them all and the one which draws me most.”

  “Why is that? Because of its belief in reincarnation?” the Marquis asked. “And who do you fancy you were in your previous life, Cleopatra or perhaps the Queen of Sheba?”

  He spoke mockingly, thinking that, whenever the subject had arisen in the past, which was not very often, any woman present had always been convinced that she had been one of those exotic and enticing women.

  However, Indira did not answer and after a moment he said,

  “I am waiting for your reply to my question.”

  “I thought we were talking seriously,” she said quietly, “and, as it is obviously a subject that bores your Lordship, shall we talk of your horses, which Lord Frodham tells me are outstanding.”

  The way she spoke, the cold note in her voice and the expression he saw in her eyes made the Marquis feel as if she had suddenly confronted him with a naked sword.

  Never in his experience had any woman slapped him down in such a surprising manner and certainly not anybody who looked as young and lovely and, he thought, amenable as Lady Mary.

  “Forgive me,” he said after he had drawn in his breath. “I was not taking you seriously for the simple reason that it is very unusual in England to find any woman of any age who knows anything about the East.”

  Again to his surprise, Indira did not enthuse over his apology, but merely inclined her head as if she accepted it as her just due.

  “Are all these gentlemen here,” she asked, “taking part in your steeplechase?”

  “Now you are deliberately being unkind to me,” the Marquis protested. “I have apologised and quite frankly, I want to continue with our conversation about the East and go back to when I asked you why you were drawn to Buddhism more than to the other religions you have studied.”

  For a moment he thought that she would refuse to answer him.

  Then, as if she felt that politeness demanded an answer, Indira said,

  “It is the only logical way of explaining the different circumstances in which we are born and there is a justice in The Wheel of Rebirth that I cannot find in any other religion.”

  “You don’t think that the Christian attitude of promising a repentant s
inner a front seat in Heaven after death if he has suffered in this world is a reasonable one?”

  The Marquis waited and, when she obviously did not wish to elaborate on her reply, after a moment he said,

  “I have some books in my library which I feel sure you will find interesting. One of them, Shih Ching, was brought back to England from China many years ago by my great-great-grandfather. There is also an early edition of the Vedas, which I do not think can be found in any other library in Europe.”

  Indira turned her head to look at him, and now there was a light in her eyes that had not been there before.

  “Is this true?” she exclaimed. “How can you be so fortunate as to possess anything so unique? And please, will you allow me to see them before I leave?”

  “I shall be delighted to show them to you.”

  “Some of the Chinese have the most magnificently illustrated manuscripts in their houses,” Indira said, “but they are always very secretive about their possessions and will only show their books, their porcelain and their really precious drawings to somebody they think will understand the hidden meaning in them.”

  “They believed that you could do that?”

  “I was lucky enough to be my father’s daughter.”

  As she spoke, she realised she was thinking of her real father and not the Earl of Farncombe, whom she had adopted for her pretence role.

  To divert the Marquis’s interest, she said quickly,

  “I have always found it fascinating that every great Eastern religion always had an esoteric and secret side to it which was revealed only to the initiated. I expect you will remember reading that the ancient Egyptians, for instance, could conjure up fire by merely speaking a certain word from The Book of the Dead, which was read only by their specially chosen Priests.”

  “You are bringing back to me memories of things I have not thought about since I was at Oxford,” the Marquis replied. “There, as it happens, I studied Oriental history and I found it most intriguing.”

  “Then when you left Oxford you promptly forgot all about it,” Indira said lightly.

  “I did not forget,” the Marquis contradicted, “but I placed it at the back of my mind. It was Napoleon who spoke of ‘the cupboards of his mind’ and that is what I think we all do in one way or another. Although certain subjects may be shut away, you have only to open the door to rediscover them.”

  “I am sure that is true,” Indira agreed, “but some people have very few cupboards and some a ‘Bluebeard’s Chamber’ where it is best to leave the door closed.”

  She was talking as if she were with her father and they were exchanging points of view and arguing as if they were two dons fencing with each other in words.

  The Marquis was just about to reply when Lady Sinclair put her hand on his arm and said plaintively,

  “You are neglecting me, Seldon! And it is something that has never happened to me before. I am feeling very hurt by such unkindness.”

  She spoke in a little girl’s voice that he had found rather intriguing when he had first met her.

  Like all strong positive men, he believed he liked women to be small, clinging and feminine and Lady Sinclair with her pink and white beauty appeared to be all of that.

  She was also astute enough, after a long succession of lovers, to know exactly what appealed to men.

  She turned her large blue eyes up to the Marquis, as if she felt the childlike appeal in them would never go unrequited, but to her surprise he merely said,

  “I am sure, Rosie, that Lord Neville is only too ready to make up for my shortcomings,”

  As he spoke, he looked across her at her partner on her other side, a dashing rake, the youngest son of a Duke, who was looking for a suitable heiress to keep him in the comfort in which he had been brought up and which only his eldest brother had any hope of enjoying in the future.

  “If you think anybody could take your place, Seldon,” he replied to the Marquis, “you are very much mistaken. We have all tried and failed. Instead we hobble along behind you, grateful for the crumbs that fall from the rich man’s table!”

  The Marquis laughed.

  “You are very modest all of a sudden and that, I may tell you, Neville, is not your reputation.”

  “I am merely envious,” Lord Neville said. “I am also flattering you, Seldon, so that you will give me one of your best horses to ride in the steeplechase. I have nothing in my own stable good enough to compete with yours, so if you want me to finish the course in style, you must provide me with the means to do it.”

  The Marquis had anticipated this and he replied,

  “I have two horses for you to choose from, Neville, and I shall be interested to see which you prefer.”

  Lord Neville looked extremely satisfied at his host’s reply.

  Then, as if he thought he must ingratiate himself further, he said to Lady Sinclair,

  “Will you come tomorrow to help me choose the winner of this contest? I suppose you know that, as well as the Challenge Cup, there is a prize of two thousand guineas, which I could well do with at the moment.”

  “Are you seriously asking me to help you to defeat Seldon?” Lady Sinclair enquired. “It is useless, because he will win. He is too magnificent and too omnipotent to be defeated in any activity in which he competes seriously.”

  Her voice was very moving, but unfortunately the Marquis was no longer listening.

  He had turned once again to Indira, only to find, to his annoyance, that she was talking to the gentleman on her other side.

  He was a middle-aged but still raffish Peer who had a dull and conforming wife who never accompanied him to the Marquis’s parties.

  He was in consequence prepared to make the very most of his freedom.

  “I don’t believe,” he was saying to Indira, “that anything so exquisite or so overwhelmingly beautiful as you could possibly have come from India or anywhere except Paris. You have French chic written all over you and an allurement that has a special magic peculiar to French women and is quite inimitable.”

  As he uttered the fulsome compliments, he moved his face nearer to Indira and it made her recoil from him.

  The Marquis was aware that she was repulsed in a way he found hard to understand.

  Without replying, she turned to him and he saw an expression of fear in her eyes, which surprised him.

  He was intrigued and yet he was too wise to refer to it, but merely continued his conversation quietly on the subject of books.

  It was only when the gentlemen joined the ladies in the drawing room that the Marquis found himself, almost without meaning to, gravitating towards Indira, who was seated on a sofa near the fireplace.

  Because it was still chilly in the evening and the storm during the day had let a damp atmosphere outside, the fire had been lit and Indira was glad of its warmth.

  She was well aware that. after a few desultory words when they reached the drawing room, the majority of the ladies had left her alone while they gossiped amongst themselves.

  Lady Sinclair in particular ignored her, while she made it very clear to the other women who was the most important person at the Marquis’s party.

  “Dear Seldon has arranged this steeplechase especially for me,” she was saying in her childlike way. “It is the first time that ladies have been allowed to ride with the men and it will be a great triumph if I can win. But of course, as you know, Seldon likes to be first in everything.”

  “You mean we can ride too?” one of the ladies exclaimed. “Why did the Marquis not tell us when we were invited? I would have brought a horse with me who is a magnificent jumper!”

  “I am sure it would be a mistake for you to compete except on your own horse,” Lady Sinclair said quickly. “After all, the course will be very dangerous and the jumps are very high.”

  “I am sure, dearest Rosie, if they are safe enough for you, they will be safe enough for us,” one of the ladies said in a spiteful voice, “unless you are doing a little b
it of cheating by having special places in the fences made easy for you.”

  “I am sure dear Seldon would not do anything that was not completely honourable,” Lady Sinclair replied, “and he considers me a very fine rider.”

  “Well, I think it’s unfair that we were not told!” another lady insisted.

  Indira, listening, thought with amusement that Lady Sinclair had definitely asserted herself in a way they seemed to resent.

  She wondered if there was any chance of her riding one of Charles’s or James’s horses which they told her had been sent on ahead.

  She had no idea how good Englishwomen were as equestriennes, but she herself had ridden every sort of horse, including some very fine Arabian mares in North Africa.

  She knew that she would love to compete, not because she wanted the prize but for the thrill of jumping English fences and riding on an outstanding English horse.

  She thought she would ask Charles or Jimmy about it as soon as they came from the dining room, but the Marquis reached her first and, as he sat down on the sofa beside her, she realised that he was a man and instinctively, without questioning whether or not he would notice it, she moved away from him.

  He did notice and it surprised him.

  He had never yet met a woman who was not eager to be as close to him as possible and who sooner or later invariably irritated him by the way in which she made every excuse to touch him with her hands or to press her shoulder against him.

  That any woman and especially one as young and lovely as his new guest should deliberately widen the distance between them made him want to ask her the reason for it.

  Then, as he looked at her, he saw what appeared to be a flicker of fear in her strange eyes, which made him extremely curious.

  As if she forced herself to think of something other than his sex, Indira said,

  “The ladies are all talking about your steeplechase and I gather it is the first time they have been allowed to compete in it.”

  “Only over the first half, which is easier than what comes later,” the Marquis replied. “Are you telling me that you would like to join it?”

  There was a little silence before Indira said,