171. The Marquis Wins (The Eternal Collection) Read online

  He thought now that the present he had bought for Cora Pearl could not be more appropriate.

  And again he wondered if his perception was not almost clairvoyant.

  He had seen in the shop of Oscar Massin, who was undoubtedly the most celebrated and most original jeweller in Paris, a necklace of black pearls.

  The Marquis had gone in expecting to buy one of the magnificent jewels that Massin had become famous for.

  His diamond bouquets and foliage had been acclaimed as the finest work of the century.

  The Marquis was actually considering whether he would give Cora Pearl a spray of eglantine and lilies-of-the-valley that seemed to shine with an iridescent light.

  Then he had seen the necklace of black pearls and he thought it was something that Cora did not possess.

  It would look sensational against her white skin, which was one of the most acclaimed elements of her beauty.

  What he had not expected was the black jet bed that he had made love to her in last night.

  He thought now with a twist of his lips that she would wear it for her next lover.

  He would doubtless be enthralled by the picture that she would make, naked against the black background, the pearls round her long neck.

  Then he told himself that it was a fitting end to a chapter.

  Even when he returned to Paris he would not be with Cora Pearl again.

  The Marquis liked variety in the women he bestowed his favours on for the simple reason that his interest in them was entirely physical.

  He found that they invariably had little to offer him apart from their bodies.

  When he wanted to talk on subjects that interested him, he talked with a man.

  Women to him were just flowers he liked to see about him and when a flower withered it was easily replaced by another.

  Now he thought about it he had never taken so much trouble over any woman as he had over Daniela.

  He supposed that it was because she was English and he had to behave like a gentleman.

  He had rescued her from an intolerable position that she found herself in through no fault of her own.

  At the same time he was certain that once they were aboard The Sea Horse he would find himself yawning until they reached England.

  He had to congratulate himself, however, that he had been clever in preventing the marriage and spiriting her away without causing too much commotion, except for Esmé Seabrooke screaming at him.

  He could not help wondering what had happened after he had left.

  He thought that the Clergyman would certainly demand an enquiry into the Comte’s background that would ensure that he would vanish as quickly as possible.

  ‘It’s all really quite amusing,’ the Marquis told himself.

  He found himself regretting that he would not see his second horse run in the races this afternoon, as he had intended to do.

  Both his horses would tomorrow start on a long journey by train until they reached Newmarket where his stables were.

  Out in the open and away from the trees that were part of the Black Forest the carriage was moving very swiftly.

  There was an expression of rapture on Daniela’s face.

  As the Marquis glanced at her, he knew that she was saying a prayer of gratitude to God for her escape.

  He thought it very touching.

  It was something that he had never known any other woman of his acquaintance do however fortunate she might have been either in love or at the card table.

  To be certain that he was not mistaken he said,

  “I may be wrong, but I have the feeling that you are saying a prayer for your escape. ”

  Daniela turned to look at him, her eyes very large in her small face.

  “Last night,” she replied, “I felt that my – prayers were – going up to – God like birds – flying into the – sky. I felt too as if I – flew with them.”

  “And God has helped you.”

  “He sent you to – save me,” Daniela said simply, “and I feel that – Papa and Mama had – a hand in it too – in fact I have a great many prayers to say.”

  Then, as if she thought that the Marquis was slightly sceptical, although she had no idea why she should feel like that, she added,

  “Papa always said that people were very ungrateful. They whined and complained when things went wrong, but never remembered to thank God when they went right.”

  “I suppose that is true,” the Marquis agreed.

  “They thank for presents,” Daniela went on as if she was following her train of thought, “but when I was a little girl, Mama used to make me count my blessings.”

  “I feel sure that you had a great number of them,” the Marquis remarked.

  “I was not thinking of toys and parties and the pony I used to ride,” Daniela answered. “Mama taught me to thank God for my eyes and my ears, my fingers and my toes, and also for my brain.”

  “Your brain?” the Marquis repeated in surprise.

  “That is certainly something you should be grateful for,” Daniela said. “Although I was pleading to your heart to have compassion – for me, it was your brain that made you clever enough to rescue me at the last moment – and it is your brain which is taking us now to join your yacht.”

  She paused before she went on,

  “It will be like the dolphin that guided Apollo to the Port in Greece beneath the Shining Cliffs.”

  There was a rapt expression on her face as she spoke which told the Marquis that, as a number of other women had, she was comparing him to Apollo.

  He had, however, forgotten about the dolphin and he thought that it was rather clever of Daniela to make the comparison.

  “I can understand, ” she was saying, “why you called your yacht The Sea Horse but perhaps The Sea Dolphin would have been a better name. ”

  “I do not believe that a dolphin would have been as swift,” the Marquis pointed out.

  “I suppose that is true,” Daniela replied, “and I am very very grateful for a horse that can gallop on water and carry me down the Rhine and home to England.”

  A little later the Marquis felt that the horses which had brought them quicker than he would have believed possible to the Rhine should be congratulated.

  Without his saying anything, when Daniela climbed out of the carriage, she went to pat each one of them.

  She had discarded her Wedding veil and thrown it on the floor and added the wreath of orange blossom that she thought she never wanted to see again.

  In fact she said as she took it from her hair,

  “If I ever marry – which I think unlikely, I will never – never wear a – wreath of – orange blossom!”

  “Why should you not marry?” the Marquis asked curiously, thinking that it was such a strange remark for a young girl to make.

  “I was thinking last night,” Daniela answered, “that it would be impossible to find someone who loved me for myself.”

  The Marquis thought that it was a ridiculous statement seeing how lovely she was, but she went on,

  “Papa always longed to have a son and I remember once when I was about ten hearing Mama say when she did not know that I was listening,

  “‘Oh, darling, if only I could have given you a son to inherit this house and all the treasures that you and your ancestors have collected, you would have been very proud of me.’”

  She remembered as she spoke how her father had put his arms round her and replied,

  “You are not to worry about it, my precious. We have Daniela, who is very like you, and what man could want more than to own two such very beautiful women?”

  For a moment her mother had just laid her cheek against her father’s and said,

  “As you well know, it is a great mistake for a girl to be rich. There will be fortune-hunters clustering around her, while the decent men will keep away because no man likes to have a wife richer than himself. ”

  Lord Seabrooke laughed and then he commented,


  “I am prepared to bet a considerable amount of money that if Daniela is as beautiful as you, a man will not worry as to whether she has a fortune or only a penny to her name.”

  He had kissed his wife on the cheek.

  “He will lose his heart irretrievably, as I have done, and then nothing else matters.”

  As Daniela was telling the Marquis what she had heard, she was looking out of the window.

  “Perhaps I shall be lucky like Mama,” she said, “but I have a feeling that there are a great number of – men like the Comte and once I am married – you will not be there to – help me escape.”

  “It does present a problem,” the Marquis replied quietly. “At the same time you are very young, Daniela, and you will find after you have been presented at Court by your grandmother and have attended a number of balls that you will meet a great many Englishmen who are much richer than you are.”

  He paused to smile at her before continuing,

  “You will therefore not be concerned with anything but your face and, of course, your heart.”

  Daniela did not reply and he had the feeling that she did not believe him.

  When she had patted the horses and thanked the coachman for the speed that they had achieved, she turned to look excitedly at the Marquis.

  He was already beginning to walk to where moored close to the riverside she could see The Sea Horse.

  Daniela saw, as she followed him, that a little further on under the shade of some trees there was a brake.

  It was drawn by six horses and it had, as the Marquis predicted, arrived before them.

  “Everything has happened just as you meant it to,” she said as she followed him to the gangway. “How can you be so – clever?”

  “I am pleased that my orders have been carried out,” the Marquis said. “I should in fact have been not only annoyed but also humiliated if anything had gone wrong.”

  The way he spoke was so positive that Daniela knew that it was the truth.

  She walked up the gangplank to where she could see the Captain of the yacht waiting for them and the Marquis introduced them.

  She shook hands and then a Steward opened a door of the superstructure, which she found led into the Saloon.

  It was then that she heard the Marquis say,

  “I wish to leave immediately, Captain, with the greatest speed that we are capable of achieving.”

  “Very good, my Lord,” the Captain replied.

  The Marquis just had time to tip the coachman of the brake before the gangplank was pulled aboard and The Sea Horse began to move downstream.

  Daniela was looking round the Saloon, which was decorated in green and hung with sporting pictures that she guessed came from the Marquis’s collection.

  As she felt the engines accelerate, she ran to the glass windows on both sides of the Saloon to gaze out at the shores they were passing.

  “We have Germany on one side of us,” she said to the Marquis, “and France on the other.”

  “That is exactly what I was going to tell you,” he replied, “but I can see that you are well informed. ”

  “I am trying to remember the legends I have heard about the Rhine,” she went on, “but I am sure, as you will know them better than I do, that you will be able to tell me about them.”

  The Marquis reflected that this was something he had never been asked before.

  He usually thought it a bore to take women with him to sea.

  They were invariably seasick and, because they felt that they had him to themselves and there were few other distractions, they were too demanding.

  This meant that they only wanted him to make love to them and they were interested in nothing except themselves.

  He remembered that last year he had made a mistake in taking a very pretty woman with a small party of friends up the Seine to Paris.

  He knew long before they had reached the gayest Capital in Europe that he had made a great mistake in bringing, as he said to himself, ‘coals to Newcastle’.

  He had thought that the journey would be amusing as they stopped at various places en voyage and ate at French restaurants where the food was superlative.

  But the woman he had with him was slimming in order to retain her eighteen inch waist.

  She therefore merely pecked at the delicious pâté de canard and refused the dishes that could only be produced by a French chef.

  By the time they reached Paris the Marquis was inevitably bored and he sent his party back by train without accompanying them and had vowed to himself, ‘never again!’

  The Stewards began to bring in their luncheon and, as Daniela looked at it, she said to the Marquis,

  “May I wait to change until after luncheon? I am very hungry!”

  “You look very attractive just as you are,” the Marquis said automatically as he would have said to any other woman he was with.

  Daniela, however, laughed.

  “You know that nothing could be more unsuitable than a bridal gown on a yacht! But as there is no one to impress except the fishes and I am sure you will forgive me for making a social gaffe!”

  The Marquis chuckled.

  “Let’s have a glass of champagne. We have a great deal to celebrate, but you must not drink too much until you have had something to eat.”

  He remembered how frightened she had been last night and he was sure that she had eaten very little dinner. He also suspected that she had been too terrified to have any breakfast.

  “I will be very careful,” Daniela answered, “and, although I would like to sip a little champagne, as you say, to celebrate, I would much rather drink lemonade or water.”

  As they sat down at the table, she took large helpings of every course that was served and praised what she ate in a way that told the Marquis that she had an unexpected knowledge of food.

  He did not comment on this until she remarked that the dish they were then eating was so good because of the truffles in it.

  “It is very difficult to find truffles in England,” she said. “In fact usually it is impossible. But in some dishes, especially this one, they make all the difference.”

  “How do you know so much about French food?” the Marquis asked. “I cannot believe that they employed a chef at the Convent.”

  Daniela laughed.

  “No indeed! We had very simple fare, which it was said was good for our souls. But Papa always loved haute cuisine and Mama became an expert in choosing what he enjoyed. In fact, when we sometimes had a French chef, she would teach him rather than let him teach us!”

  “Are you telling me that you can cook too?” the Marquis asked.

  “Not as well as Mama, but I am quite good,” Daniela admitted. “One day, if you will let me, I will cook all the dishes that were Papa’s favourites.”

  It struck the Marquis that it would be rather amusing to take her to some of the places in Paris where the food was considered superb. They were where the chefs vied to defeat each other like boxers in a ring.

  It made him think of a remark that a friend had made when he was last in Paris.

  “In this country you can seduce a man’s wife,” he said, “and steal his mistress, but entice away his chef and he will shoot you through the heart!”

  The Marquis had laughed at the time.

  He thought now that only in France could he find the very high standard of cuisine that he himself enjoyed.

  He had found in most English houses that the food was well cooked, edible, but lacking in imagination.

  However in his own houses, and especially at Crowle, he took immense trouble over the menus. But they were invariably fully appreciated only by his male guests.

  They talked about the food of different countries for quite a long time until the luncheon was finished.

  Then Daniela said,

  “Please, I am longing to explore the yacht, and could I speak to your chef and tell him how much I have enjoyed this delicious meal?”

  “Yes, of course,” t
he Marquis answered, “but I think perhaps you should change first.”

  She looked down at her gown as she spoke.

  He knew that she had actually forgotten that she was wearing a bridal gown.

  “Yes, of course, I must change,” she said quickly. “But is it really true, Mister Magician, that my own clothes are below?”

  “Unless some Siren from the Rhine has magicked them out of the porthole, that is where they will be,” the Marquis replied.

  Daniela jumped up from the table like a child.

  “I will go to look for myself, but I am quite certain that none of this is real – the yacht – the luncheon – or you!”

  As she reached the Saloon door, she looked back to say,

  “I am sure that I shall wake up to find this is all a dream!”

  Then she was gone and the Marquis, who had meant to escort her below, thought that she was very different from any other woman who had been aboard The Sea Horse.

  ‘She is only a child,’ he told himself, ‘and it will be a pity when she grows up and becomes self-conscious and is very demanding of every man who is attracted by her.”

  Then he thought, as he had when he was talking about her being presented at Court and going to balls, that it was not going to be easy.

  How could it be with Esmé insisting that she was her Guardian?

  When he thought it over carefully, he was certain that now, having been defeated in marrying Daniela off to her lover, Esmé would be planning to come to England.

  She could move into Seabrooke Hall and the Marquis began to wonder who among Daniela’s relations would be strong enough to cope with her.

  It would certainly need a man as ruthless and determined as himself.

  He wondered if he could somehow frighten Esmé away.

  Alternatively he could bribe her to live in Paris or take her to Court for illegally exploiting her stepdaughter in attempting to marry her to a bigamist.

  He realised that this last solution was extremely undesirable for it would mean a scandal and the inevitable publicity in the newspapers would undoubtedly harm Daniela’s reputation.

  That meant one of the other solutions must be tried in some form or other before anything more serious was considered.

  The difficulty was to find someone strong enough to cope with a woman who was completely unscrupulous.