Love and the Marquis Page 7

  “What do you plan to show me first?”

  “A million things,” he answered, “which may take me a million years. But as it is a fine day, shall we start with the Folly, which was erected for my great-grandmother?”

  “That sounds very exciting,” Imeldra said with a little lilt in her voice.

  “We will drive there,” the Marquis said, “and, as it takes a little time, could you be ready at eleven-thirty? And we will take our luncheon with us.”

  She flashed him a smile that seemed to have caught the sunlight.

  “It is something I should adore to do, my Lord.”

  “Then that is arranged,” he said and she knew that he was pleased. “And to celebrate it I will race you to the end of the gallop.”

  The Marquis won by a length and Imeldra told herself that it was because his horse was superior and larger than hers, but she realised also that he was such an exceptional rider that there was every likelihood of his winning on any horse, however indifferent.

  Because at the end of the gallop the groom was waiting, the Marquis raised his hat and said formally,

  “I expect Jim will take you back through the woods where there is a very pleasant ride down to the house. Good day for the moment, Miss Gladwin.”

  “Goodbye, my Lord,” Imeldra replied.

  As he rode away, she felt a little piqued because he was leaving her.

  Then she was sure that his reason for doing so was to ensure that the groom did not carry back tales to the stables of how they had met and he was protecting her against the gossip of his servants. .

  But she told herself that was ridiculous, considering they had dined together and he was taking her driving this afternoon.

  There was also the possibility that he might not wish to see too much of her and yet she was sure that was not the reason.

  ‘He is very mysterious,’ she thought and could not prevent herself thinking of him the whole way that she was riding back to the house.

  *

  It was such a delight that Imeldra found it hard to put into words to be driving in the high phaeton with its large wheels behind a superb pair of chestnuts and alone with the Marquis.

  She had been surprised when she came downstairs wearing one of her prettiest gowns with a chip-straw bonnet trimmed with a wreath of cornflowers to find that they were not to be accompanied by a groom.

  As they drove away with a large picnic basket in the back of the phaeton, almost as if she had asked the question, the Marquis said,

  “I have had these horses ever since they were born and I helped to train them. They will come when I call them and I feel that when I am driving them there is no need for me to bring a groom with me.”

  “How did you sense that was what I wanted to know?” Imeldra asked.

  He did not reply and, because she knew it was now so obvious that they could reach each other’s thoughts, any explanation was superfluous.

  “Will you show me your stables?” she asked.

  “I am only surprised that you have not inspected them already.”

  “You forget I only arrived yesterday, my Lord.”

  As she spoke, she felt as if she had already been here for years and the Marquis was part of her life. Then she told herself that she was being absurd.

  It was only because, while she was away at her school, she had not met all the interesting and exciting men that were always around her father, that the Marquis was making such an impact on her.

  ‘Also I am older,’ Imeldra reasoned and therefore a man obviously means more to me than men did when I was just a schoolgirl.”

  Yet some astute part of her brain was arguing that this was not true and already there was a closeness between herself and the Marquis that could not be explained away logically or reasonably.

  “When I saw you first thing this morning,” the Marquis said with his eyes on his horses’ heads, “I thought you were even lovelier than you were yesterday, but now I know that you are even more beautiful than you were this morning.”

  Because his voice was low and intimate, Imeldra felt a strange feeling in her heart and, because unaccountably she felt a little shy, she said quickly,

  “Somebody told me that you were very reserved, but that pretty speech makes me think they were mistaken.”

  “Shall I tell you that it is very unusual for me to make pretty speeches?” the Marquis asked, “Or are you aware of that already?”

  He did not wait for Imeldra to answer but queried,

  “Did you think of me last night?”

  “Did you expect me to do anything else?” she replied.

  “I do not mean about the way I behaved, for which I have already apologised, but of me as a man?”

  “It would be very difficult for me not to do so.”

  “You sound as if you tried.”

  “I tried, of course, I tried,” Imeldra answered. “I like puzzles, but not when I find them too difficult to solve.”

  “So that is what you are trying to do,” the Marquis said. “Well, please stop whatever you are doing.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it would be a very great mistake for you to solve the puzzle of the Marquis of Marizon.”

  “In saying things like that you must be aware that it makes me determined not only to solve your puzzle but also to help you.”

  The Marquis gave a short laugh that had no humour in it.

  “It is utterly and completely impossible for you to do that.”

  “Can you tell me why?”

  “No!”

  Imeldra gave a little cry.

  “You are making it very difficult for me, my Lord.”

  “Why should it be difficult?” the Marquis asked in an almost irritated voice. “And why do you want to talk of things that do not concern you?”

  He paused for a moment before he went on,

  “The whole thing is ridiculous. As your host I am trying to entertain a most attractive young lady who is staying uninvited in my house. Why can you not be a quite ordinary young woman and enjoy it – ”

  “ – and of course,” she interrupted, “feel flattered and honoured by your condescension.”

  “That is definitely not the sort of remark a young woman should be making to me,” the Marquis asserted.

  “And as a conventional young woman, if she was lucky enough to be entertained by the noble Marquis on one occasion, she would certainly not be invited a second time,” Imeldra said.

  “You cannot be sure of that. I might find her very entertaining.”

  “I doubt it and after she had goggled at you as she was so impressed by your appearance and your title, you would find yourself longing to be with the sophisticated beauties you have left behind in London.”

  The Marquis laughed.

  “How do you know I have left sophisticated beauties behind in London?”

  Imeldra thought she could tell him a great deal about the beauties with whom her father had spent so much time and also she suspected that the women who pursued him in London were very much the same as those who had chased him in Paris, in Rome and anywhere else in the world they had travelled to.

  But she thought to say too much would be revealing and she therefore said in an effort to prevent the Marquis from questioning her too closely,

  “How often has your Lordship been in love?”

  He took his eyes off the horses to look at her before he replied,

  “Will you believe me if I give you the truthful answer?”

  “That depends upon what it is.”

  “Then if we are speaking of love as I think you mean it, the answer is never!”

  “Why should the way I think about love be any different from anybody’s else’s?”

  “As I am quite certain,” the Marquis said, “that for you, coming from Mount Olympus, love is an ideal, an ecstasy with silver wings carried on the music of the spheres.”

  He spoke in a way that made Imeldra draw in her breath and she knew that
it was exactly what she had thought love would be like.

  It was the deep love that her father and mother had known and the love she sought for herself.

  Because she had no answer ready, they drove for a long way in silence.

  Then ahead of them she saw a strange monument not unlike the Leaning Tower of Pisa silhouetted against the sky.

  “Is that the Folly, my Lord?” she asked.

  “Perhaps it is the wrong word for it,” the Marquis replied. “It is a Memorial to love, a Temple erected by my great-grandfather whose heart was broken when his beloved wife died.”

  “Like the Taj Mahal,” Imeldra murmured.

  “Exactly.”

  “That is the ideal love,” Imeldra said.

  “Of course!” the Marquis agreed. “And the men who erected such lovely monuments had experienced the love that we were just speaking about.”

  “The love that you have never known,” Imeldra added.

  The Marquis did not answer her and, as she looked at him, she thought that the lines of cynicism on his face were deep in the sunlight.

  She thought too, although she was not certain, that his eyes were as hard and dark as they had been when she had first seen him.

  Chapter Four

  Having eaten a delicious luncheon, Imeldra looked about her.

  She thought that the Temple was like no building that she had ever seen before.

  Inside it was partly circular Grecian in style, partly Muslim with stone filigree windows that let in the sunlight to make strange patterns on the marble floor.

  There was a raised dais, again circular, and on the centre was a statue of Pan dancing as he played his reed pipes.

  Imeldra and the Marquis were sitting by the plinth of the statue with their picnic basket in front of them. Through the open door there was an exquisite view stretching out over the green valley.

  It was so unusual and at the same time so romantic that Imeldra felt as if she had stepped into another world and there was strange music playing all around them.

  This was partially due to the wind, which made melodious sounds as it blew through the dome of the building that rose high towards the sky so that it could be seen for miles around.

  But it was also, she thought, music that came from within her and the Marquis because they were so closely attuned to each other.

  Because the building was mystical and at the same time dedicated to love, the Marquis’s voice seemed to deepen when he spoke to her and she found it hard to look at him in case he should see the expression in her eyes.

  At first they talked of ordinary things, but there were strange silences when it seemed as if her heart was talking to his and there was no need for words.

  Now the Marquis leaned back to say,

  “Somehow you seem to fit in here so well as if you belonged not to this generation but to the past.”

  “All the same – I am looking forward to the future,” Imeldra replied.

  “That I can understand, but for me there is no future.”

  He spoke almost as if he was talking to himself and Imeldra gave a little cry.

  “What do you mean? How can you say such a thing?”

  “It is something I should not have said because you would not understand.”

  “But I want to understand. You know I want to – understand and as I have already said – to help you.”

  “You have done that already by letting me know that you exist and are who I have been looking for, although I was not aware of it.”

  The way he spoke made her look away from him and then out through the open door to the sunshine of the valley beneath them.

  As she did so, her profile was silhouetted against the white marble of the building and because she had taken off her bonnet while they ate luncheon, the sunshine on her hair made it seem as if there were little flames flickering on her head.

  “How can you be so beautiful?” the Marquis asked. “How is it possible for any woman in this age to look like you?”

  “The answer to that is very simple,” Imeldra answered. “I was born to two people who loved each other completely and idealistically as your great-grandfather must have loved the woman for whom he built this Temple.”

  “And you think that love is beautiful?” the Marquis asked her.

  “Of course it is,” Imeldra answered. “How could it be anything else? The world was made with love and for love and it is only men who have made it ugly.”

  She thought as she spoke of her father running away with Lady Bullington, whom he did not love in the same way that he had loved his wife, and felt that was an ugly love, a love that was concerned only with the body and not the mind and soul.

  She had forgotten that the Marquis was watching her and after a moment he asked,

  “What are you thinking? Who has hurt you? Who has dared to make you unhappy?”

  She did not reply and he added,

  “If it is a man, I will want to kill him!”

  The violence with which he spoke startled her and she turned to look at him in surprise.

  For a moment they stared at each other.

  Then the Marquis rose and walked down the steps from the dais towards the open door.

  Imeldra was afraid that he was about to leave her, as he had done last night and so she followed him.

  As she reached him to stand beside him, she said,

  “You are torturing yourself. Why can you not tell me what is – wrong?”

  He turned towards her and now his eyes were dark with pain and, because she could not bear him to suffer in such a way, she put her hands palm downwards on his chest and looking up at him pleaded,

  “Tell me – please tell me – I want so desperately to – help you.”

  “Why?”

  Imeldra sought for an answer and knew what it was.

  Somehow she should have expected it and yet at the same time she had shied away from it because it was too vast and too overwhelming to contemplate.

  Yet she knew the truth, even while her lips would not frame the words.

  Once again the Marquis was reading her thoughts. Very quietly so that it was almost a whisper on the wind, he said,

  “You love me!”

  Imeldra drew in her breath.

  Then with a sound that was half one of exaltation and half of pain he put his arms around her and his lips came down on hers.

  As he touched her, Imeldra knew that this was real love, the love she had felt for him ever since she had seen him and perhaps in an Eternity before they had met each other again.

  It was the love she had always believed would be hers and yet was afraid that she would not find it.

  Now as the Marquis’s lips held hers captive, she felt an ecstasy that was vaguely familiar because it had been in her dreams, rising within her until it became an unbelievable rapture.

  It was so glorious, so perfect, that it was the divine ideal of which they had spoken and that was love in all its sublime perfection.

  The Marquis drew her closer and still closer and his lips became possessive, demanding and passionate, yet at the same time there was a tenderness that she did not expect from him.

  It was as if, because she was infinitely precious, she knew that he would not hurt her.

  He kissed her until the Temple vanished and with it the world outside and there was only the light of the Gods and the music that joined them together and carried them higher and still higher towards the Divine.

  Only when the wonder of it and the ecstasy became almost too much to bear, did Imeldra give a little murmur and hide her face against the Marquis’s neck.

  He did not move, but his arms seemed to give her a security and safety that she had never known before.

  Only after a long while did he say in a voice hoarse, unsteady and almost unrecognisable,

  “I love you and there is nothing and nobody in the world except you!”

  Imeldra drew in her breath.

  “That is what I – feel.
I have – known you for many ­– many years and that is why we think alike – and feel alike.”

  The Marquis did not answer.

  He merely turned her face up to his and was kissing her again.

  Now his kisses were different and she knew with a sudden fear that he was kissing her frantically and fiercely because he believed that he must lose her.

  Yet it was impossible for her to think because the fire of the Marquis’s kisses awoke an answering flame within herself to ignite the fire that possessed her.

  It was inescapable but as she knew that he felt the same, it was a fire purified by love. What they felt for each other was very human and yet part of God.

  Only when they were both breathless did the Marquis say in a voice that was broken and hoarse,

  “How can I lose you? How can I let you go? You are mine, Imeldra, mine with every breath you draw and with every thought you think.”

  Because she believed that too, the agony in his voice frightened her and she asked him,

  “Why – must you – lose me?”

  He looked down at her, staring at her face as if he would engrave it on his memory for ever.

  Then he said,

  “Because I cannot marry you.”

  She stiffened and it flashed through her mind that, because of his rank and prestige, he would not lower himself to marry a social inferior, the granddaughter of a man whom he paid for his services.

  There was no need to put into words what she was thinking for the Marquis saw it in her eyes and he said angrily,

  “How dare you think such a thing! Do you really imagine that is the reason why I cannot ask you to be my wife? If you were born in the gutter, or were the daughter of a crossing sweeper, I would go down on my knees and beg you to honour me by giving me your hand in marriage. But that is something I cannot do.”

  “Why – not?”

  “That is what I cannot tell you,” the Marquis replied, “but, because there is a reason, you have to go away.”

  Imeldra felt as if an icy hand clutched at her heart, but she managed to say,

  “Suppose I – refuse? Suppose I – insist – on staying here – with or without – marriage?”

  Her voice trembled on the words and she saw the bitter smile that crossed the Marquis’s face.