The Wonderful Dream Page 8

  “I-I don’t – understand,” Claudia muttered.

  “What I am saying,” the Marquis answered, “is that I will give you a house in St. John’s Wood or anywhere else you fancy in London and I will be with you as often as it is possible. At least two or three times in the year we will be able to go abroad together in my yacht.”

  He spoke very tenderly.

  Yet, as he finished, he knew that Claudia still did not understand.

  Taking her hand in both of his he said,

  “You shall want for nothing. You shall have horses, jewels, servants, anything you require, my lovely one, but I cannot offer you marriage. You must try to understand that it would be utterly and completely impossible for me in my position as Head of a Noble Family.”

  “You – mean,” Claudia said in a voice he could hardly hear, “because – I am the – daughter of – Walter Wilton?”

  The Marquis did not answer and after a moment she asked,

  “D-does that – matter so much when you – s-say you – love me?”

  She felt the Marquis’s hand tighten on hers before he replied,

  “I want you! God knows I want you, but I am tied by my blood, by tradition and by the generations that have gone before and will come after me. I know it’s difficult for you to understand, but I cannot hurt those who look up to me and I cannot demean the name that has been part of English history all down the centuries.”

  He was choosing his words very carefully.

  Then he continued in a different tone,

  “If you are on your own, I don’t like to think about what will happen to you. There will be men, of course there will be men, dozens of them, wanting you, pursuing you and all behaving as the Prince behaved tonight.”

  Claudia made a little murmur of horror and the Marquis went on,

  “That is the choice you have to make, my darling, between being alone and fighting by yourself or allowing me to protect you and keep you safe. I will also love you in the way you should be loved.”

  There was silence before he added,

  “I am not going to try to persuade you, because I don’t want to frighten you. I am going to leave you to make the decision for yourself and you can give me your answer when we go home the day after tomorrow.”

  He rose from the bed.

  Then, as he was still holding her hand, he raised it to his lips.

  Very gently he kissed it.

  Then unexpectedly he turned her hand over and kissed the palm passionately and possessively.

  It was something that Claudia had not imagined happening.

  She felt a strange thrill run through her.

  Then, as the Marquis raised his head to look at her, she saw the same fire in his eyes that there had been in the Prince’s.

  Something within her responded to it.

  For a moment he just stood looking down at her.

  Then, as if he could not help himself, he bent towards her and kissed her.

  His lips were gentle and yet possessive.

  Then with what was an effort he stood up.

  “Goodnight, my lovely one!” he said. “Dream of me, as I shall dream of you.”

  Before Claudia could speak or even think, he walked across the room to the communicating door.

  As he reached it, he turned back and just stood gazing at her.

  Then he left, closing the door quietly behind him.

  CHAPTER SIX

  When the Marquis had gone, Claudia stared into the empty space where he had stood.

  It was as if she could not believe that he was no longer there.

  It was then it swept over her like a flood tide that she loved him.

  She had loved him ever since he had driven her away from the hotel, but had not realised that it was love.

  Then suddenly she realised that his reasoning for being unable to marry her was based on a misapprehension.

  She was not Walter Wilton’s daughter!

  As soon as she told him the truth, everything would be changed.

  The thought made her thrill with excitement.

  She jumped out of bed and started to run across the room just as she was in her nightgown.

  Then, as she reached the closed door, she was suddenly still.

  He had said that he could not marry her, although he loved her.

  But really he did not want to be married at all.

  If she told him who she really was and that her father was the Earl of Strathniven, he might feel trapped.

  He would feel the same as when he realised that he was being manoeuvred into marrying Princess Louisa.

  ‘But I must tell him – I must!’ her heart urged her.

  At the same time her brain told her that she would be putting him in a very difficult position.

  Then, just as if the whole situation clarified in her mind, she knew all too surely that he did not really love her.

  Her mother had loved Walter Wilton overwhelmingly.

  She had given up her husband’s title and her own. She had gone into exile because of her love.

  She had been well aware of the penalty she would pay for living with a man she was not married to.

  She would no longer exist as far as her parents and her family were concerned.

  She would be ostracised from everything that was familiar.

  She would lose everything she had known ever since she was a child.

  Yet her love had been big enough to face that and to take her baby with her.

  ‘That is love – that is real love!’ Claudia thought. ‘When absolutely nothing else in the world matters except the person who holds your heart.’

  Slowly she walked back to the bed.

  As she climbed into it, she suddenly felt cold and she shivered.

  The dream was over and the party had ended!

  Once again she was alone in the world with nothing but her memories.

  *

  Claudia awoke, knowing that she had cried herself to sleep.

  She realised that as the maid was pulling back the curtains that it was eight o’clock.

  She remembered what she had decided last night after she had cried and cried into her pillow.

  As the maid finished the curtains, she said,

  “I have a headache and I would be very grateful if you would have breakfast brought up here for me.”

  “I order it, señora,” the maid replied.

  It was twenty minutes later that the breakfast came upstairs and, when it was put down beside her, Claudia asked the maid,

  “Have His Royal Highness and my husband left the Palace yet?”

  “I see them drive away, señora, as I come up staircase.”

  “Would you please ask Her Royal Highness Princess Louisa to come and speak to me?”

  The maid left the room.

  Claudia had finished her breakfast by the time the Princess came bursting in.

  “You are not ill?” she asked. “I was waiting for you in the breakfast room.”

  “I have a – headache,” Claudia replied, “and please – I want your help.”

  “My help?” Princess Louisa asked in surprise.

  “I have had very bad news from London,” Claudia said. “My grandmother, whose illness nearly prevented me from sailing with my husband, has had a sudden relapse – I must therefore go to her at once.”

  “At once?” the Princess exclaimed.

  “If I wait until tomorrow, it may be too late and she may be dead,” Claudia explained. “She has always been very kind to me and I love her very much, so please – please, Your Royal Highness, help me to reach her as quickly as possible.”

  “Of course I will,” Princess Louisa promised. “I will go downstairs now and tell the secretary, who sees to all Papa’s travels and mine, when I go abroad, and he is very efficient.”

  “I am so very grateful!” Claudia sighed.

  The Princess left and Claudia quickly dressed.

  She called the maid and asked her to fetch som
e other maids to help pack her clothes as quickly as possible.

  By the time the Princess came back there were three maids putting Claudia’s clothes into the smart trunks that Lady Bressley had given her.

  “Everything is arranged,” Princess Louisa said, “and you have to leave in half-an-hour.”

  She paused before she added.

  “The secretary was surprised that you are travelling alone. He will send a Courier with you to the Station to see that you have a compartment to yourself.”

  Claudia thought that this was helpful and she thanked her.

  “I will come with you to the Station,” Princess Louisa said impulsively. “I must go and get my hat.”

  As soon as she had left the room, Claudia went to the secrétaire that stood near the window.

  She put a piece of crested writing paper down on the blotter and then she hesitated.

  Finally she wrote rapidly,

  “The dream is ended, so I have gone home. I have told the Princess that my grandmother, whose illness nearly prevented me from coming with you in the first place, is very much worse and may die.

  Sincerely

  Claudia.”

  She put the writing paper into an envelope.

  She was just about to seal it down when she had a thought.

  She went to the dressing table and took out her handbag.

  In it, unopened was the envelope in which the Marquis told her that he had put a cheque for one thousand pounds.

  On an impulse, she tore the cheque in two and enclosed it with her note in the envelope on which she wrote his name.

  She sealed it down.

  When the Princess joined her a few minutes later, they went down the stairs together.

  When they reached the hall, Claudia put the envelope addressed to the Marquis on a table.

  She knew that it would be given to him on his return.

  Outside one of the Royal carriages was waiting.

  Behind it was a less grand vehicle in which two footmen were placing her luggage.

  Claudia saw that the Courier who was accompanying her to the Station was supervising the operation.

  She and Princess Louisa climbed into the carriage.

  “I shall miss you!” Princess Louisa said sadly. “I do wish you could have stayed longer.”

  “When you come to England, perhaps we will meet again,” Claudia answered.

  “I would love that, but from what Papa said to me at breakfast, I think he is now considering taking me to Hungary.”

  “Is there a Prince there you might marry?” Claudia asked.

  Princess Louisa nodded.

  “He sounds rather exciting! Hungarians have the reputation of being marvellous horsemen and very ardent lovers.”

  Claudia felt somehow shocked that Princess Louisa should say such things.

  Then she told herself that she was being very prudish.

  Equally she did not wish to think about love at the moment.

  As they drove to the Station, she tried to listen to Princess Louisa and at the same time take her last look at Seville.

  It was a City that she had never expected to see and yet now she knew that it would always remain in her memory.

  She knew too that if nothing else she would never forget that the Marquis had kissed her last night.

  Everything at the Railway Station was arranged for her in the most Regal manner.

  She and Princess Louisa were taken into the Royal Waiting Room.

  One of the walls was embellished with an enormous Coat of Arms surmounted by a crown.

  They were offered a cup of coffee or a glass of wine and they both chose coffee at that early hour of the morning.

  “I shall miss you! I shall miss you!” Princess Louisa kept saying. “Oh, please, please come back and stay another time! I am sure that your husband will want to do so.”

  “I am sure he will,” Claudia agreed soothingly.

  When the train arrived, the Station Master came to escort Claudia to the compartment that had been reserved for her.

  To her delight it was in a sleeping car. These were rare, even in the trains that journeyed right across Europe.

  The Station Master informed her that she would have to change trains at Paris.

  He had telegraphed through to say that a compartment must be reserved on the train that was to take her to Calais.

  Claudia thanked him profusely.

  Then she said to Princess Louisa in French, because she thought that he would not understand,

  “I don’t think I have to tip the Station Master, but what about the porters?”

  “The Courier will see to all that,” the Princess told her.

  “And – my fare?”

  “The Marquis will pay for that,” Princess Louisa said casually.

  For a moment Claudia hesitated.

  She wanted to pay for herself out of the ready money that the Marquis had given her.

  Then she told herself that there might not be enough to take her all the way to England.

  Moreover, the Princess would think it strange that she did not wish to be beholden to her own husband.

  The two girls kissed each other affectionately and Claudia climbed into the carriage.

  The conductor, having been told that she was of importance, was waiting to take her to her sleeper.

  Claudia, however, stood at the door as the train moved off, waving to the Princess until she was out of sight.

  Her compartment was in the centre of the sleeping car so that it was not over the wheels.

  The conductor was only too willing to bring her anything she required.

  When Claudia was finally alone, she sat at the window to have a last look at Seville.

  And she was saying goodbye to the Marquis.

  ‘I shall never see him again,’ she told herself. ‘But I will never, never forget him!’

  She knew what she would never forget was the feeling of rapture when his lips had touched hers.

  She had no idea that it was possible to feel such sensations.

  When she thought it over, she felt that she should have guessed that she was in love.

  Every time she had seen him come into a room or speak to her, there had been a strange feeling in her breast that she had never known before.

  It was love and it was, she knew, the same feeling that her mother had for Walter Wilton.

  ‘That is the way I love him!’ she reflected as the train gathered speed. ‘But it is not the way he loves me.’

  The servants from the Palace had put newspapers into her carriage and there was also a magazine that was published in Seville.

  What she appreciated most was a large hamper and she realised that it would contain food to last for most of the journey.

  It meant that she would not have the expense of going to the restaurant car, if indeed there was one.

  Or, as was more usual on foreign railways, to buy packaged meals quickly when they stopped at a Station.

  There might also be men who would try to get into conversation with her because she was unaccompanied.

  ‘I am lucky, so very lucky,’ she thought.

  She might have had to return to England in Steerage Class in an Ocean Liner from Cadiz. That was what she had thought she must do when Lady Bressley had been killed.

  The day passed slowly because she could not help thinking about the Marquis.

  She wondered what he would say when he came back to the Palace and found that she had gone.

  Perhaps in a way he would be quite glad to be rid of her and she would no longer be a problem to him.

  She went over and over every word he had said to her last night, remembering especially the intonation in his voice.

  She could see the expression in his eyes when he told her that he could not marry her.

  She thrilled as she remembered the fire in them when he had kissed her.

  ‘I love him! I love him!’ she said to herself over and over again.

  T
he very wheels beneath her seemed to be repeating the words.

  ‘I love him! I love him! Completely and endlessly!”

  When she went to bed, she cried again because she was now so far away from him.

  *

  Claudia arrived in Paris early the next morning.

  It was a relief when the conductor informed her that there was an official to escort her to the train bound for Calais, which would first take her slowly round Paris to the Gare du Nord.

  A number of other people on the train were apparently changing to the same one as Claudia.

  She noticed that a number of English people looked at her curiously.

  All she had to do was to thank the official, who told her that he was acting on behalf of the Station Master and tip the porters, who had placed her luggage in the guard’s van.

  When the train was about to move off, she was locked into her reserved compartment.

  The train reached Calais in the middle of the afternoon.

  Now, for the first time, Claudia had to look after herself.

  With difficulty she found a porter and only because she begged him in her good French to help her did he condescend to find her luggage.

  She had no idea that because she seemed so young the porter had decided to befriend her.

  Without her suggesting it, he engaged a cabin on the Steamship that was to carry her to Dover.

  It was something that she had not thought of doing.

  However, when she looked at the rest of the passengers, she was grateful to be alone.

  She tipped the porter generously and he did not mind that she gave him English money.

  She thought that, if she had any sense, she would have changed some in Paris. But it had not occurred to her.

  Having been spoiled on the first part of her journey, she told herself that she should not complain now.

  *

  In the train from Dover to London, Claudia found herself in a Second Class carriage.

  It was filled with people who were either noisy or eating.

  The Steward on the Steamship had brought her a few sandwiches and she had, of course, long ago consumed the contents of the hamper.

  There had also been a choice of tea or coffee to drink.

  Now she felt hungry, but her fellow passengers did not offer her any of their large sausages and fat rolls.