The Magnificent Marquis Read online

  “One day you will find the answer,” Delia told him.

  “You are reading my thoughts again, Delia, and if you continue to do so, I will put up a barrier between us or you will have to stay in your cabin!”

  She glanced at the Marquis quizzically to see if he was speaking seriously.

  Then she knew that he was teasing her.

  “I am so sorry, my Lord, you must forgive me if I seem to be impertinent and taking advantage of the unusual situation that we find ourselves in. But it is because you are such an exciting and unusual person that I have to keep watching you and learning so much I did not know before.”

  The Marquis thought no one could have put it more perceptively or more intelligently.

  “Very well, Delia, I forgive you. But no peeping or prying and leave my thoughts to me, please. They are not suitable for a girl of your age!”

  Delia laughed.

  “When you say ‘a girl of your age’, you are thinking only of this life and the short time I have lived in it. What about all my other lives? If you added them all up, I am sure you would be extremely surprised.”

  “So once again we are back in that mythical world you believe in, but of which I am somewhat sceptical!”

  Delia gave an exaggerated sigh.

  “In that case I will have somehow to convince you of the truth before this journey is ended. Otherwise I will have failed those who have sent me to help you.”

  “And who are they?” the Marquis demanded rather sharply.

  Delia made an expressive gesture with her hands.

  “How easy it would be if we knew who is directing us, who is saving us from ourselves and who is inspiring us. As even you must admit, we are both inspired to find out more about our present and past lives.”

  He realised that once again they were embarking on one of those strange yet fascinating conversations in which he found himself striving to find an answer to everything that Delia contended.

  Invariably so far, although he was scarcely likely to admit it, she had been far more convincing in her assertions than he in his protestations.

  While they were talking, The Scimitar had begun to move slowly out of Valetta harbour.

  The sun was shining and turning the sea to the deep blue that has inspired poets and writers since the beginning of time.

  As if she felt she was missing something, Delia left the Saloon and ran across the deck.

  As she looked back at Malta, she thought the island looked very attractive, as she reflected that what lay ahead was so exciting that she could not put it into words.

  She ran to the front of the yacht and now the waves were breaking gently against the bow as the speed of the engines quickened.

  It was all so beautiful.

  It was the movement of the sea, the clouds and the seagulls that was especially thrilling and exhilarating.

  As she stood looking ahead, the Marquis joined her.

  He thought, as he did so, how smoothly the engines were turning and how The Scimitar was living up to all his expectations.

  He could see a rapt expression on Delia’s face and commented,

  “I know just what you are thinking. There is more excitement for you ahead and you are delighted that you are going forward rather than back.”

  “You are quite right, my Lord, but only you would understand, as other people do not understand, that it is not just a matter of making a voyage, but of seeing and feeling and learning something one has not seen or felt or known before.”

  The Marquis thought nothing could have expressed more brilliantly exactly what he himself was thinking.

  It was, although he just could not put it into words, something different from what in his past had been all too familiar.

  Then he asked himself somewhat cynically if it was possible that this young girl could waken him to aspects of life unlike from anything he had known before.

  Yet, although he did not want to admit it, he was thinking of issues that had never previously concerned him.

  In a curious way he could understand how much Greece meant to Delia and how she would rather see it than anywhere else in the world.

  “You are so right,” she murmured. “I have read all about Greece, but no book was ever enough and invariably I was left wanting more.”

  “What will happen if you are disappointed, Delia?”

  “I just don’t believe it would ever be possible to be disappointed with Greece. It has been responsible for so much of our modern civilisation and has inspired so many great people.”

  She spoke with such a rapt note in her voice that, the Marquis mused, it was very touching.

  At the same time he could not believe it possible that any young girl could feel so intensely about a country rather than about a man.

  After all, he told himself, that was what life was all about – the search for people who meant something to you, rather than the surroundings that, however attractive, were not really personal enough to be of any significance in the long run.

  “I know just what you are thinking, my Lord, that I am becoming over-excited about Greece and when I see it, I may be disillusioned.”

  “Yes, that is indeed my thought, Delia, so don’t over-excite yourself – please.”

  Delia laughed.

  “You have got it all wrong. Of course I want to see Greece as a place and its wonderful temples. But what I am searching for is what made the Greeks so remarkable at the time. It was not just the beauty of their country or their people.”

  “Then what would you be looking for?” he asked as she stopped speaking.

  “I think that I can only describe it as the spirit of Greece. The spirit that led and inspired them and made them different from any other peoples who have ever lived on this earth.”

  She drew in her breath and went on slowly,

  “Above all they gave us the power of thought – to inspire generations of those who came after them. All that must have come from a Power greater than themselves and which we have been seeking – ever since.”

  She spoke with a catch in her voice that he felt was even more moving than anything she was saying.

  She stood looking out at the sea ahead of them and the sunshine glittering on the waves and the Marquis knew that for the moment she had forgotten him and even what she had been saying.

  She was inspired by a Power he could not see and could not feel and yet he knew it was there.

  Perhaps it was the eternal and everlasting spirit of the Greeks or maybe it was something even more profound and more difficult to find.

  *

  That evening the chef exceeded himself at dinner with some delicious fruit, fish and spicy ingredients he had found at a market near the harbour in Malta.

  Delia put on the new dress the Marquis had given her.

  He had to admit that she looked even lovelier in it than he believed any woman could ever look.

  They talked animatedly through the meal, arguing with each other in the manner the Marquis was finding so intriguing.

  It forced him to come up with an intelligent answer to everything she expounded.

  He thought as dinner finished that it had been one of the most demanding meals he had ever experienced.

  At least a dozen times he found himself searching frantically for a reply to something Delia had said.

  He was aware that she was deliberately provoking him, taking an opposite view to almost everything he said.

  Several times they had both laughed helplessly at the other’s reasoning.

  As dinner finished, Delia pleaded,

  “Please be very kind and send the chef not only our thanks for such a delicious meal but also perhaps a glass of your delicious champagne. You know as well as I do how much a Frenchman enjoys that particular drink, because no one can make it as well as they do.”

  “You are quite right, Delia, and I certainly should have thought of it myself.”

  He called for the Steward and instructed him to take wha
t was left in the bottle of champagne to the chef.

  “Ask him to accept it,” he said, “as an expression of our gratitude for such an excellent meal.”

  “Pierre’ll like that, my Lord,” the Steward replied and carried off the champagne with a grin on his face.

  “What shall we do now?” the Marquis asked.

  “I noticed when I came onto your yacht, my Lord, that you have a small piano on board, but you have never referred to it, so I thought that perhaps you don’t care too much for music.”

  “Are you saying you would like to play the piano?”

  “Only if you don’t mind my doing so. My father for instance has always hated music and the piano at home is pushed away into a sitting room we never use. If anyone suggests music after dinner, he goes to bed.”

  “I will be very interested to hear what sort of music you can play, Delia, but perhaps I am like your father as I cannot bear amateurs tinkling away at the piano and I did not think that music would be another of your specialities.”

  “Why ever not?”

  “Because on the whole men play better than women and also, as I have said, I like very good music played by professionals and even then, I am not what you might call ‘a wild music fan’.”

  ‘Fan’ was a new word that had only recently come into use and Delia giggled.

  “I would like to play just one little piece of music, because I think that it will fit in with the moonlight, but if you feel it is awful, all you have to do is to walk out of the room and go on deck – and then I will join you.”

  The Marquis thought that he had no wish to be rude, but an orchestra and the best musicians played the music he really enjoyed.

  When such orchestras had played in London, he had gone to the Concert Hall alone and had not asked anyone to accompany him.

  He knew only too well when a woman was bored, how she would fidget about, touch her hair or even, as had happened to him more than once, powder her nose because she wished to draw attention to herself, as she resented the music taking his attention away from her.

  He had found Delia so unusual and amusing and he felt it would be an anticlimax if she played some girlish piece she had learnt at school and he would doubtless find it unmusical and boring.

  At the same time because she had suggested it, he supposed he would have to be pleasant about her talent.

  However, he now wished he had removed the piano – it had been put there simply because the women he had brought on board had asked if they could dance.

  They had wanted his arms round them and they had thought that drifting round the Saloon was far preferable to conversation.

  Not only had the music been a failure but also the parties and it was then that he had decided that when he was onboard his yacht, he was far happier alone.

  However, he thought it would be somewhat unkind to deny Delia the right to play the piano if that was what she wanted.

  He walked to the piano and opened it.

  “There is a sheaf of music tucked down the side, but I expect you have your own.”

  “Yes, that is so, my Lord.”

  She pulled out the stool that had been pushed under the piano.

  The Marquis walked away to sit down in one of the armchairs.

  He thought Delia’s back in the sparkling dress he had given her with her shining golden hair cascading over her shoulders was a most beautiful sight.

  She had certainly shone tonight even more than she had on other nights.

  He recognised that if she was in London, she would undoubtedly be feted as a great beauty within a week.

  Yet if they were now in London, he would have avoided her at all costs.

  He would have much preferred to be monopolised by some married woman like Silvia.

  He had never imagined that amongst the debutantes there was anyone who could think, talk and look like Delia.

  Very very softly Delia was touching the keys.

  Now she began to play in a manner that made the Marquis not only listen but stare at her as if he just could not believe his ears.

  He had never heard the music she was playing, yet he knew in a way it carried on the conversation they had just finished, which had stimulated his brain so that every word seemed inspirational and memorable.

  Now her music was doing the same.

  It was rousing feelings within him he did not know he even possessed.

  It made him listen enraptured whether he wished to or not.

  Delia played for about twenty minutes.

  Then she turned round as if she had been unaware of the Marquis, but was now looking to see if he was still there.

  When she saw that he was still sitting in the chair on the other side of the Saloon, she smiled and remarked,

  “I just felt for a moment I had to get that out of me. I do hope you were not too bored, my Lord.”

  “Now who on earth could have taught you to play the piano like that?” the Marquis demanded.

  “My mother at first, then, when I was at my school, I insisted on going to the leading musical professor in Paris. I am afraid it was very expensive, but he encouraged me to play what I wanted rather than the conventional pieces that the other girls were taught.”

  “Was that one of his compositions?”

  “I wanted to say in music all I was thinking about our discussion over dinner. You know, as I do, that there are not really any words for half the issues we were trying to express.”

  The Marquis knew this to be true.

  Yet he had never imagined he would hear them in music, which could move him as he had never been touched by music before.

  “Do go on playing,” he muttered.

  Delia shook her head.

  “No, I have said all I wanted to say and I think too I have told you all that I needed to tell you. It would be a mistake to add to it, my Lord.”

  The Marquis drew in his breath.

  “You are undoubtedly the most extraordinary girl I have ever come across. As I have said so often before, I don’t believe you are real.”

  “I too feel unreal, because I am wearing this lovely dress you gave me and you have told me that we are going to Greece. It is all so thrilling for me that only music can express what I have no words to say.”

  The Marquis rose to his feet and then their eyes met and only with the greatest difficulty did he force himself to break the spell by suggesting,

  “Come outside, Delia, and let’s look at the stars. Then we must retire to bed.”

  They walked out on deck.

  It was a warm night without a breath of wind.

  The moon was rising slowly up into the sky and it turned the whole of the Mediterranean to silver.

  They walked in silence to the bow of the yacht and stood looking out to sea.

  As well as the moon all the stars were reflected in the water.

  It was all so amazingly beautiful that the Marquis and Delia just stood transfixed without speaking.

  Afterwards the Marquis had no idea how long they had stood there.

  Then unexpectedly Delia turned and walked back to the door leading onto the deck.

  Before he could speak to ask where she was going, she had vanished.

  He thought for a moment that she had disappeared into the sky itself and was now one of the millions of brilliant stars.

  Then the Marquis understood, as he would not have understood before he had met Delia.

  The beauty they had just seen and the music he had just heard had expressed it all.

  She had known instinctively that words would only spoil total perfection.

  It was all so incredibly strange and something that had never happened to him before.

  Yet he understood how it had happened and in a way he had been feeling all that Delia had been feeling.

  He told himself again, as he went to his cabin, that she could not be real.

  But she was quite right.

  The only way for her to express who she really was, was
through music.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The next day at breakfast the Captain was given his orders to alter course and make as fast as possible for the West coast of Greece and the Gulf of Corinth.

  Delia had been out of bed early and was watching the waves breaking over the bow.

  She would have loved to visit Naples.

  But at present Greece was the most compelling and she was sure it would fulfil her expectations in every way.

  Over breakfast the Marquis, to tease her, suggested,

  “I think really that you should have a look at Pompeii. After all it is one of the great sights of the world.”

  She did not answer, but looked at him with pleading eyes.

  “All right! All right! I am only teasing. We are heading straight for Greece and we will spend as long as we dare gazing at the Goddesses, who I find hard to believe were ever as beautiful as you!”

  As if he had made a joke, Delia laughed.

  “Now you are flattering me, my Lord. It is only because you think I am going to be difficult about leaving Greece once we have arrived there.”

  “You forget I am on a mission, Delia.”

  “I am not likely to forget and I am really longing to interpret Arabic for you as soon as we meet the first person speaking the language.”

  They went out on deck after breakfast.

  “I am sure that English ship is signalling to us!” the Marquis suddenly exclaimed.

  Without saying more he ran towards the bridge and because she was intrigued Delia followed him.

  There was a British Destroyer apparently signalling in their direction.

  “It’s for us, my Lord,” the Captain called out, after peering through his telescope.

  “I thought it was, Captain, and I wonder why?”

  It flashed through his mind that perhaps something had happened back at home that would oblige him to return immediately.

  His grandmother was getting very old and he knew that he would be informed at once if she was dead or dying.

  He could not think of any other explanation, unless the Prime Minister had changed his mind and did not want him to proceed to the Suez Canal after all.

  He was still thinking of reasons why they should be intercepted when the Destroyer drew alongside the yacht.