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  Darice gave a little skip of joy and put her hand into the Marquis’s. “You are very kind, my Lord. I wish I was old enough to marry you.”

  “You will find in a few years there are plenty of men much more exciting than I am.” “Charis thinks you are the most exciting man in the world,” Darice replied, “and so do I!”

  The Marquis could not help looking at Ajanta, who had a mocking smile on her lips.

  He was well aware why she had not spoken since her arrival and was sure that, while she found it impossible to find fault, she had wanted to do so in order to prove her independence.

  Because he was so experienced where women were concerned, he knew by the way she walked and the angle at which she held her head that she was fighting against being overawed by him and his house, his arrangements and the fact that her family had succumbed to his charm.

  ‘I will make her do the same,’ the Marquis told himself. ‘Why should she be the odd one out?’

  The salon was a beautifully proportioned room and contained some extremely fine pictures.

  It was impossible for Ajanta not to feel them drawing her irresistibly, so that it was difficult for her to listen to what was being said and prevent her eyes from straying from one picture to another.

  “I am looking forward,” the Marquis said, “to showing you round my house and describing the treasures that have been accumulated over several generations by my forebears, who all had acquisitive habits.”

  “That was fortunate for you,” the Vicar commented. “I am afraid as a nation we have purloined from a great many countries their treasures to our advantage.”

  “And it is a magnificent heritage for our children,” the Marquis added.

  “Well, your son will be a very lucky young man,” the Vicar replied. “He will not only have treasures that are acclaimed all over the world, but what is very important, you will teach him to appreciate them.”

  “Yes, of course,” the Marquis agreed.

  He felt this conversation so soon about any son he might have must be embarrassing for Ajanta and he was not surprised, when putting down the glass of champagne from which she had taken only a small sip, she said,

  “I think if it is convenient, I would like to go upstairs and take off my bonnet and travelling cloak. I feel I am very untidy in comparison with such magnificence.”

  She did not make the last words sound exactly like a compliment and the Marquis with his eyes twinkling, replied,

  “You must forgive me if I have not had a chance to tell you that you outshine everything I possess and make even my most treasured pictures pale beside the glory of your hair!”

  He saw as he spoke the flash in her eyes that told him without words what she thought of his playacting.

  Charis, however, gave a cry of delight and clapped her hands.

  “That is really poetical!” she said. “You ought to write it down so that Ajanta will never be able to forget such beautiful words.”

  “I am sure she will not do that,” the Marquis said. Without replying, Ajanta walked towards the door.

  He opened it for her and, as he walked beside her into the hall, he said,

  “I was only teasing you, which I am afraid I find irresistible.”

  “I am glad I amuse you, my Lord!” Ajanta said coldly.

  “Later I want to talk to you alone,” the Marquis replied in a low voice, “but now I will send somebody to show you to your room.”

  He summoned a footman who was on duty at the far end of the hall, who hurried to obey the raising of his finger.

  “Take Miss Tiverton upstairs to Mrs. Flood.” “Very good, my Lord.”

  The footman went ahead and, as Ajanta started to follow him without looking at the Marquis there was a cry from the salon door and Charis and Darice, who had been finishing their chocolate cakes, came running across the hall.

  “Wait for us,” Charis cried.

  They ran up the stairs and, when they found Ajanta, they each took one of her hands to walk on either side of her.

  ‘At least we are here together,’ Ajanta thought and it was comforting.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Upstairs the housekeeper, Mrs. Flood, showed Ajanta into a very beautiful room, so exquisitely furnished that apart from the bed it was hard to believe that it was not a sitting room.

  The sofa and chairs had gilt frames and there was a French commode of the Louis XV period, which Ajanta had always longed to see.

  Her mother had taught her not only about art but also about period furniture and she was thrilled that she could recognise many pieces that until this moment she had known only from her mother’s description or from illustrations.

  “I expect you would like to change, miss,” Mrs. Flood suggested, as Ajanta took off her bonnet and travelling-cape.

  “Has my luggage arrived?” she enquired.

  “Yes, miss, but there’s no reason for you to wear one of the gowns that’ll have been creased by packing. Your gowns from London are in the wardrobe.”

  As she spoke, Mrs. Flood opened the doors of a very finely carved cupboard and Ajanta saw that a number of gowns were hanging inside it.

  Mrs. Flood took them out one by one and she knew as she looked at them that they were not only more fashionable than anything she had ever seen, but so stylishly made and so prettily ornamented that she could hardly believe they were for her.

  However, when she had put one on she knew that she looked quite different and certainly more attractive than ever before in her whole life.

  She had no idea until now that she had such a tiny waist or that a gown without being in the least immodest would accentuate the perfection of her figure.

  “You look lovely, miss, and that’s the truth!” Mrs. Flood said admiringly.

  “Thank you,” Ajanta replied.

  “His Lordship’s ordered tea in the blue drawing room and a footman is waiting to show you there.”

  “Thank you,” Ajanta said again.

  As she went down the stairs, she felt shy and she also wondered what her father would say when he heard that the Marquis had given her some new gowns.

  She found, however, that her family and the Marquis were not in the blue drawing room but in the library.

  The Vicar was already turning over the books the curator had selected for him and making exclamations of delight at finding rare volumes, which, as he kept saying, would be of inestimable value in his research.

  As Ajanta came in through the door to join them, she saw the expression on the Marquis’s face and knew he approved of her appearance.

  Although she told herself she must be very grateful for his kindness, she could not help resenting the fact that he was making a puppet out of her and she was dancing to his command.

  It was, however, Charis who recognised that she looked so different.

  “Ajanta! Where did you get that gown?” she asked in a whisper.

  “His Lordship gave it to me,” Ajanta answered, “but don’t say anything in front of Papa.”

  She realised that her father was unlikely to notice her appearance when he had books to look at.

  When the Marquis took them into the blue drawing room for tea, he stayed behind to talk to the curator and Ajanta felt a difficult moment had been avoided.

  In the blue drawing room the table was set with a magnificent display of silver tea things, beside every sort of cake and sandwich that it was possible to imagine.

  “Will you pour out?” the Marquis asked. “It is something you will have to get used to.”

  As Ajanta sat down in front of the silver tray and put out her hand towards the teapot, Charis exclaimed,

  “It’s so exciting to think, Ajanta, that you will be the Mistress of this wonderful house and hostess at lots of parties! Please, will you let me come to some of them too?”

  “Of course you can,” the Marquis replied, before Ajanta could speak.

  “And me?” Darice asked.

  “We must certainly have a p
arty in which you are included,” the Marquis replied.

  Darice gave a little cry of delight.

  “I want to have balloons and crackers at my party,” she said. “That is what one of our friends at home had, but she did not ask me, because I was too young.”

  “You will not be too young for the party I give,” the Marquis said.

  Ajanta frowned.

  She thought all this talk of parties would be certain to end in disappointment.

  He had said their pretended engagement might be for six months or perhaps only three, whilst the sort of parties that Charis and Darice were envisaging were those which usually took place in the winter.

  She was quite certain that by then they would be home in the Vicarage with nobody to entertain them and the girls would be bitterly disappointed.

  It struck her that while the Marquis thought he was being generous and, of course, condescending to the children of an impoverished Vicar, he was really giving them a taste of something which would soon be taken from them and which they would perhaps yearn after for the rest of their lives.

  ‘Money can be a menace if it affects one’s personality and character,’ Ajanta told herself.

  She was suddenly desperately afraid of what would be the outcome of this deception she was involved in.

  She finished pouring out the tea and, when Charis passed her the dish of cucumber sandwiches, she shook her head.

  “Oh, do eat something, Ajanta,” Charis begged. “This food is like ambrosia and we have never tasted anything like it before.”

  “You all three look as if you have climbed up onto Mount Olympus,” the Marquis commented.

  “Gods and Goddesses usually came down from Olympus to be amongst ordinary mortals!” Ajanta corrected.

  The Marquis smiled.

  “I am well aware that you are rebuking me, Ajanta,” he said. “At the same time I thought you might have conceded that figuratively speaking Stowe Hall is Olympus.”

  “Only, of course, as far as we are concerned.”

  “Exactly!” he replied mockingly.

  Once again they were challenging each other and duelling with words, which he found pleasantly stimulating.

  After tea he took them on a tour of some of the State rooms of the house and he found it surprising that Ajanta knew so much about the pictures, the furniture and even the tapestries.

  When she told Darice the story illustrated by one of the tapestries, which even he did not know, he asked,

  “How is it possible that you are so well informed? If you were a man, I should think that you had been to a University.”

  “Mere women can think and also read,” Ajanta flashed. “Most of them do neither,” the Marquis answered.

  He thought as he spoke that this was true of the women he had known.

  Leone, attractive though she was, never read anything except the Social columns in the newspapers and he felt the same could be said about the other women he had found alluring and desirable for a short time.

  “I am becoming more and more afraid, Ajanta,” he said aloud, “that you will turn out to be that terrifying creature known as a ‘blue-stocking’, in which case I promise you I shall run for the hills!”

  Charis gave a little cry.

  “Are you saying that you are not going to marry Ajanta after all, my Lord? Oh, please, if you don’t it, will make us all very very unhappy.”

  Ajanta’s eyes met the Marquis’s and he knew only too well what she was thinking.

  “I was only teasing your sister,” he said soothingly to Charis, “and clever though she is, let me assure you that I am cleverer still. So I shall not run away, but try to defeat her in every argument we have together.”

  Charis slipped her hand into his.

  “I will not argue with you,” she said. “I like to listen to you and I think everything you say is marvellous!”

  The Marquis thought this was the kind of attention he usually received from older women and again he looked provocatively at Ajanta.

  But she had turned away, with the little flounce of her skirts that had amused him before, to stare at a picture they had not yet inspected.

  When they went upstairs to dress for dinner, Darice was tired and to Ajanta’s relief there was a tray of delicious food waiting in her bedroom.

  “It makes me feel hungry,” Charis said.

  “It is for me!” Darice replied. “All for me!”

  “Of course it is,” Ajanta agreed, “and Charis, you will spoil your dinner if you eat anything now.”

  “It’s so exciting to be dining in a house like this!” Charis enthused. “Oh, Ajanta, I am so thrilled that you are marrying the Marquis! And, if we are to live here with you, it will be the most wonderful, glorious thing that could ever happen to us.”

  There was a little pause before Ajanta said,

  “What about – Papa?”

  She saw the expression in Charis’s eyes and felt as if she had struck her sister.

  “You are not saying,” she asked in a low voice, “that while you live here, Darice and I are to go back to the Vicarage? Oh, Ajanta, how could you be so cruel and unkind to us?”

  Ajanta did not speak and she went on,

  “You know Papa, when he is writing, he would not even remember we were there and we would be so lonely and miserable without you.”

  With difficulty Ajanta managed to say,

  “I am not married yet. There is plenty of time to consider everything later on. Go and change, Charis, while I put Darice to bed.”

  “I will come to your room when I am ready,” Charis said, “and if you have another new gown, I shall be very jealous!”

  When Darice had eaten her supper, she was in fact very sleepy because it had been a long day for her.

  She knelt by her bed and said her prayers for Ajanta as she had done ever since she was a baby and when she cuddled down against the pillows she said,

  “Goodnight, Ajanta! I love you, I love the Marquis and this is a very happy house.”

  She shut her eyes and by the time Ajanta had drawn the curtains she was asleep.

  Ajanta thought it was considerate of the Marquis to have put Darice in the room next to hers, which was actually the dressing room and Charis was only one door away in another large and beautiful room.

  To see that she was all right, Ajanta opened her door to peep in before she began to change.

  As she did so, Charis gave a scream and Ajanta saw to her surprise that Mrs. Flood and a housemaid were with her.

  “Ajanta! Ajanta!” Charis cried. “Come and see what the Marquis has bought for me!”

  Ajanta went into the room and saw Mrs. Flood was holding up a gown, as she had held up the ones that had arrived for her, which she had obviously just taken out of the wardrobe.

  It was exactly the sort of evening gown that a girl of sixteen should wear, but it was obviously expensively simple and could only have been designed by a dressmaker patronised by the Beau Monde.

  “Look at it! Look at it!” Charis was saying. “Can you imagine anything more wonderful, Ajanta?” “I’m sure it will fit the young lady,” Mrs. Flood said, “but if it needs a few alterations, Elsie here is very nimble with her fingers.”

  “It’s very pretty,” Ajanta managed to say.

  When she went to her own room, she was, however, feeling angry with the Marquis, because she felt he was in a way bribing her family as he had bribed her.

  He may have thought he was producing a play at Drury Lane or the Opera House, but what he was really doing was compelling her whole family by bribery and corruption into dancing to the tune he played.

  ‘When the Marquis no longer needs us,’ Ajanta thought, ‘he will throw us away as easily as he has picked us up, without even considering how many hearts he will break in the process.’

  It struck her that was what he did to the women who undoubtedly had played a large part in his life.

  But if they were heartbroken, they were old enough to look
after themselves, while Charis and Darice were too young and unsophisticated and would become disillusioned and doubtless for a time extremely unhappy.

  Ignoring the maid who was waiting to help her change, Ajanta walked to the window to stand looking out at the Park and the lake with its black and white swans moving serenely over the still water.

  The sun was sinking in a blaze of glory and not only was the sky crimson and gold with its radiance, but it seemed as if everything else was vivid as if touched by fire.

  It was very beautiful and yet it seemed to Ajanta as if it warned her of danger, the danger of what she was doing, the danger of subterfuge, the danger of stepping out of her own particular little world into the one occupied by the Marquis.

  ‘I have been very foolish to agree to this,’ she told herself. ‘I did try not to at the beginning.’

  She thought it had in fact been a battle between them in which she had been defeated.

  Because she was worried about her sister and about her own immediate future, she found it difficult to enthuse as she should have done over the beautiful gown that the maid brought from the wardrobe for her to put on.

  Mrs. Flood and Charis came into the room just as Ajanta was being buttoned up at the back and it was their admiration as well as her reflection in the mirror, which told her how becoming the gown was.

  The material of which it was made, was exactly the blue of her eyes and she wondered if the Marquis could have described her appearance in the order he sent to London or whether it was just coincidence.

  Then she told herself he had done it doubtless to display his organising ability and it was annoying that anybody should be so efficient in every detail in what he had arranged.

  “If there’s one thing of which I’m sure,” Mrs. Flood said, “it’s that his Lordship’s never had two lovelier young ladies to dine with him.”

  “Is that true?” Charis asked.

  “Cross my heart it’s the truth, miss, but it’s his Lordship who should be paying you compliments, not me.”

  She looked meaningfully at Ajanta as she spoke, who was aware that Mrs. Flood and she suspected all the servants in the house were wondering why they had been invited and if there was any ulterior motive for it.