Love and the Marquis Page 6

  She knew again that she had surprised him and the Marquis said,

  “I want you to explain to me exactly what you mean by saying you feel that any beautiful thing you see becomes a part of you.”

  “It is difficult to put into words, But I just knew when I was standing in the ruins of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi and looked down at the view that had enthralled Apollo when he leapt ashore and made that part of Greece his own, that in the passing of a second it was as much mine as it was his.”

  She spoke very softly, thinking back and reliving the magical moment which had been engraved on her mind and heart.

  Then she looked at the Marquis and saw he was staring at her not so much with surprise or astonishment but with a kind of stupefaction.

  “Now I know I am dreaming,” he said. “You are not real, but have stepped out of one of my pictures to confound me, or you have dropped in from a passing star.”

  “I will arrive by whichever method you prefer, my Lord.”

  She meant to speak lightly, but somehow as she spoke the words sounded sincere and, as she glanced at the Marquis, it was difficult to look away.

  All through the dinner they sparred and duelled with each other in words, Imeldra doing everything in her power to surprise and provoke him.

  She was aware as the evening wore on that the Marquis’s look of cynicism seemed to wear off and his eyes were no longer as hard as they had been when they had first met.

  She knew too that when he laughed, which was frequently, the old butler who waited on them seemed surprised as if it was a sound that was not often heard at Marizon.

  The dinner was delicious and the Marquis looked magnificent sitting at the head of the table, which was decorated with gold candelabra and ornaments that exceeded both in age and value those at Kingsclere.

  This was slightly irritating to Imeldra, but she was also well aware that at Kingsclere the atmosphere was a much happier one than that at Marizon, which, as William Gladwin had already discovered had something wrong with it.

  She kept asking herself what it could possibly be and was aware that the discrepancy, if that was the right word for it, came from the Marquis himself.

  As dinner progressed and she amused and bemused him, she was aware that he relaxed.

  But there was still something she could not understand. A reserve, a tension, something within himself that she could feel so strongly and that it was almost possible to reach out and touch it.

  Imeldra had had a sensitivity or an instinct, whatever one liked to call it, of her own ever since her childhood.

  She could remember when she was small her Nanny saying to her,

  “You are fey, that’s what you are! If you’re not careful you’ll grow up to be a witch. Then where will you be?”

  “Flying on a broomstick!” Imeldra had replied.

  Her Nanny had not thought it funny.

  As she grew older, she found that she could assess people’s characters as soon as she met them and was seldom mistaken.

  “I hate that woman!” she had said once to her mother after a guest left. “She is bad!”

  Her mother had looked at her in surprise.

  “Why do you say that, dearest? I cannot say that Lady Bury is somebody I would wish to be my closest friend, but I know nothing about her to her discredit.”

  “She is bad and one day you will know that I am right,” Imeldra had insisted.

  Two years later the lady in question had been accused of cruelty to a stable lad who she thought was not looking after her horses properly.

  She had beaten him so severely with a riding crop that the boy’s parents had taken him to the Magistrates to protest at the injuries he had suffered.

  No charge was proved, but so much scandal had reverberated against Lady Bury that she had been forced to go and live abroad.

  At school Imeldra had been plagued by girls wishing her to read their fortune and it was something she had found far too easy to be enjoyable.

  She had known as soon as she was friends with them exactly what sort of life they would lead.

  The majority were likely to follow the pattern of any young woman in the Social world, first a marriage arranged by an ambitious mother, thereafter a dull existence producing babies in the country while her aristocratic husband enjoyed himself in London.

  Occasionally she sensed tragedy or despair and quickly avoided telling the girl what was in store for her, except where she thought it was possible to warn her in a subtle manner.

  It was a gift Imeldra was not proud of and she usually found it more of an inconvenience than a pleasure as she had told her father.

  “Your grandmother was Scottish,” he had answered. “There is also Irish blood in you and my father was very proud of his Cornish ancestry.”

  His eyes twinkled as he finished,

  “In other words, my darling, you are a mongrel with an abnormal amount of Celt in your blood. How then can you be anything but clairvoyant?”

  “It is a nuisance, Papa,” Imeldra complained. “It means I get to know all about anyone I meet far too quickly and certainly miss a lot of fun.”

  Her father had laughed again.

  “You should be grateful instead of complaining,” he said, “and as a punishment, you can now put on your witch’s hat and tell me what you think of the new Major Domo I have just engaged.”

  “I have seen him,” Imeldra replied, “and I think you have made a mistake.”

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

  “He is too pleasant and too oily to be trusted,” she answered. “Be careful of him, Papa, or I am quite certain he will cheat you.”

  Her warning had made the Earl take a little more trouble than usual in observing the new servant’s behaviour and within three weeks he discovered that the man was cheating him and dismissed him.

  Yet, as far as the Marquis was concerned, Imeldra found herself up against a strangely impenetrable barrier and it fascinated her.

  When after dinner they moved back to the salon, it was to find that the room was warm because the fire had been lit in the polished silver grate.

  Instead of sitting formally on the sofa as she had done before, Imeldra sat down on the hearthrug in front of the fire, holding out her hands towards it.

  “You are cold?” the Marquis asked.

  “I find it very cold in England in the winter,” Imeldra answered, “and I sometimes long for the sunshine of Egypt and the warmth of North Africa.”

  She had spoken without thinking and the Marquis asked,

  “What does your father do that you travel so extensively abroad?”

  There was a little pause as Imeldra thought swiftly.

  “He is an explorer,” she said, thinking that in a way this was true as the Earl was always exploring new places.

  She also made a mental note to tell William Gladwin what she had said.

  “You are not in the least like any explorer’s daughter who I may have seen,” the Marquis remarked. “They are usually over-hearty young women wearing heavy boots and veils over their topees to keep out the flies.”

  Imeldra laughed.

  “How do you know I don’t look like one when I am not dining in a house like this?”

  “Tell me about yourself,” the Marquis asked beguilingly, leaning forward towards her.

  She looked up at him and thought it was something that she would like to do, but she knew it would not only be indiscreet but there was every likelihood because of his reputation for correctness that he would force her to leave tomorrow for her grandmother’s.

  “What do you want to know?” she asked.

  “Why you are as you are and why you are so mysterious about yourself.”

  “Am I mysterious, my Lord?” Imeldra questioned. “I thought I had been very frank.”

  “You have been nothing of the sort,” he replied, “and I am well aware that everything you have said has been chosen purposely to bewilder me.”

 
; He paused for a moment before he continued,

  “Talking to you is like stepping into a maze. I think I have found the way, then suddenly I can go no further and I have to try again. So far I have never even been near to the centre of my objective.”

  “And what is that, my Lord?”

  “To know you, to understand why you are staying with me and why you look as you do.”

  Imeldra made a helpless little gesture with her hands as if it was too hard to explain.

  Then she said,

  “What else?”

  “So many questions that it is hard to choose,” the Marquis said. “But let me just try one. Have you ever been kissed?”

  Imeldra’s eyes widened.

  Then she replied,

  “Now you are being far too intimate on such a short acquaintance. Suppose I asked you that sort of question about yourself?”

  There was a silence before the Marquis responded,

  “Do you really think it is a short acquaintance? I feel, Imeldra, as if I have known you since the very beginning of time. But I thought we would never meet and that you were only a figment of my imagination and my dreams.”

  The way he spoke was so different from the way they had talked before when duelling with each other that Imeldra looked up at him in astonishment.

  As she did so, the Marquis put out his hands and, clasping her arms at the elbows, drew her forward so that she was kneeling at his feet.

  She did not struggle as it was impossible to do so.

  Still holding her and looking into her eyes, his face close to hers, he sighed,

  “I think you have bewitched me. What am I to do about it?”

  “What do you want to do, my Lord?”

  “You know without my telling you that I want to kiss you,” the Marquis answered, “but because you are a guest under my roof and because I deliberately invited you to dine with me alone, I am trying now to behave in the way that you call ‘correct’.”

  “Thank you,” Imeldra said. “I have never been kissed – and long ago I decided that the only person I would allow to do so would be the man I loved with my whole heart as he loved me.”

  She spoke softly and, although the Marquis was still holding her, she was not afraid but quite sure, although she had no grounds for thinking so, that he would not hurt or upset her.

  “That is what I guessed you would think and say,” the Marquis said. “How is it possible that we know so much about each other?”

  His voice was very deep. Somehow it seemed to strike a chord in Imeldra’s heart and she felt her whole being respond to him in a manner that she had never known before.

  She did not reply and after a moment he said,

  “Tell me what you feel about me. I have to know.”

  Then, as if he compelled her to tell the truth, Imeldra replied,

  “I have been puzzling ever since we met as to the reasons why you are not happy. You have everything and yet there is something wrong, which affects you deeply, but I feel that I cannot reach it.”

  The Marquis’s fingers tightened on her arms until it became painful. Then suddenly he released her so that she sat back on her heels and he rose to his feet.

  “As you say, there is something wrong and it is something I have no wish to talk about.”

  Then in a very different tone of voice that seemed somehow to grate on the air,

  “Let me show you my pictures, I am sure that you are more interested in them than in anything else.”

  He walked away from her as he spoke to stand in front of a portrait by Reynolds that she had admired earlier in the day.

  It was one of the Marquis’s ancestors wearing the red coat of his Regiment and standing beside his horse.

  The Marquis stood looking up at it and Imeldra knew that he was not seeing anything but the darkness within his own soul.

  She stood in front of the fire and suddenly felt cold as if he had shut her out and, because he had done so, she was alone with an emptiness that was like a barren desert.

  She did not speak. She only stood looking at him and as she did so she longed to help him.

  It was as if every nerve in her body was vibrating towards him because, although he had not said so, he needed her.

  The Marquis turned suddenly from his contemplation of the picture and they looked over the room at each other.

  For a moment neither of them spoke or moved.

  Then he said in a voice that seemed to echo around the walls,

  “For God’s sake don’t make it more difficult for me than it is already!”

  With that he went from the salon, leaving Imeldra alone.

  *

  Later when Imeldra was in bed she could hardly believe it had happened that the evening had ended so abruptly and yet she could not sleep from hearing such pain in the Marquis’s voice and knowing that he was suffering.

  ‘I can feel it,’ she thought to herself, ‘I can feel it in me and it is almost as though we were one person rather than two.’

  Because the explanation for this was frightening, she tried hard to think of her father, of her mother or of anything rather than the Marquis, but inescapably he was there with her.

  Imeldra awoke early, thinking that the dramatics of the night before were ridiculous and she must have imagined them.

  ‘I am getting in too far,’ she thought to herself.

  Then she asked why the simplest remarks should have such an effect on her and why, after they had laughed and duelled at dinner, there had been a change once they were alone in the salon.

  Because it was impossible to sleep any longer, Imeldra rose and rang the bell and, when Betsy appeared, sent her to ask if she could have a horse to ride.

  She was almost dressed before Betsy reappeared to say that there would be a horse ready for her at the side door in ten minutes’ time.

  Quickly Imeldra hurried into her riding habit and only when she had fastened her high-crowned hat trimmed with a gauze veil securely onto her head did she wonder if whilst riding she would encounter the Marquis.

  She had the feeling that he might think it a presumption that she would wish to ride his horses and then told herself that after what had happened the night before nothing unusual that either of them did would seem surprising.

  She went to the side door to find, as she expected, a very well-bred horse waiting for her with a groom to accompany her.

  She was helped into the saddle, her full skirts arranged behind the single stirrup, then set off leading the way to the front of the house and into the Park.

  The horse responded to her slightest touch and Imeldra knew that she had been given a perfectly trained animal in case she was an inexperienced rider.

  As she had ridden her father’s horses at home and in many of the countries in which they had travelled, she was not afraid of the most wild or spirited animal.

  Because this morning she wanted to think, it was a relief that she did not have to battle with a horse as well as with her own thoughts.

  They rode through the Park and the groom told her that on the other side of a fir wood there was the ground where the Marquis’s horses were trained.

  Imeldra thanked him for this information and rode onto a path between the trees, feeling that because they were dark and the sun found it hard to percolate through the thickness of their branches that the wood was mysterious and in a way impenetrable like the Marquis.

  On the flat ground beyond the wood was a gallop stretching for over a mile.

  As soon as she reached it, Imeldra just touched her horse with the whip and he set off at a gallop, which she felt would clear her mind and perhaps sweep away some of the problems that seemed to be closing in on her.

  She was halfway down the gallop when she saw a rider come from between some trees at the side of it and knew at once who it was.

  She did not pull in her own mount and knew that there was no need.

  As she reached the Marquis, his own horse leapt forward and they were
riding side by side at a wild speed that in itself was an indescribable exhilaration.

  They rode faster and faster and only when the end of the gallop was a short way ahead did they pull in their horses.

  As they came to a halt, Imeldra turned a laughing face toward the Marquis crying,

  “That was wonderful!”

  “I somehow knew you would ride as well as you do,” he commented.

  “Just as I knew you would seem part of your horse,” she replied without thinking.

  It was true. On his huge black stallion with its magnificent head the Marquis seemed in a way she could not describe a better rider even than her father, who was indeed exceptional.

  He might have been a God who had ridden down from Mount Olympus to be amongst the human race.

  The Marquis must have been following her thoughts for he said a little wryly,

  “Exactly! And if I have come from Mount Olympus, so have you!”

  “How did you know that was what I was thinking?”

  “In the same way that you read my thoughts,” he answered.

  “But I cannot read them all.”

  “I expect you will also have some secrets from me,” he said, “but I shall try to prevent that from happening.”

  Imeldra did not reply and after a moment he carried on,

  “I was actually expecting to see you later this morning and intended to apologise for my behaviour. I have no excuse except that it is a secret that cannot be told at present, if ever. All I can ask is that you will forgive me and we can continue where we left off at dinner.”

  Imeldra glanced at him from under her eyelashes as they both turned their horses to walk slowly back along the gallop in the direction that they had come from.

  “You have not answered me,” the Marquis resumed after a moment.

  “I am wondering what to say.”

  “Leave everything to me. There are so many things I want to show you, so much which I want to talk to you about and I am only afraid that you may leave me in the same inexplicable way that you arrived.”

  “Was it really so inexplicable?” she asked, thinking that William Gladwin was supposed to be her grandfather.

  “Completely and utterly inexplicable,” the Marquis answered firmly.

  Because she thought it wiser not to argue, Imeldra asked him,