63 Ola and the Sea Wolf (3 page)

“That was a long time ago and, if there was not the sea between us and France, I could ride to Paris or drive there in a
diligence
, although I believe they are very uncomfortable. I saw them often enough when I was at the Convent.”

“I cannot imagine either mode of travel would be particularly enjoyable,” the Marquis remarked dryly.

“I am not out to enjoy myself,” Ola retorted. “You will not understand that I am trying to escape from a life of such misery that you must be very insensitive not to appreciate how much I have suffered.”

“I am, as it happens, concerned with my own suffering at the moment,” the Marquis commented.

“What can that be? Have you lost a fortune at the gaming tables? Or been crossed in love? That is not compatible with your reputation, my Lord Marquis!”

She spoke sarcastically and was surprised by the expression of anger that contorted the Marquis’s face.

“You will keep a civil tongue in your head,” he said sharply. “Or I will leave you here to cope with your problems alone, which in fact I am certain would be the most sensible thing for me to do!”

Ola clasped her hands together.

“I am sorry – please forgive me – it was I know very rude – and I should not have spoken as I did. Please – please – help me! If you refuse to do so – I think I shall throw myself into the harbour. I doubt if anyone would notice and I should just be discovered floating out to sea in the morning!”

She spoke dramatically and, although he was angry, the Marquis was forced to laugh.

Then he said,

“I accept your apology, but in future, as you are at my mercy, I suggest that you curb your tongue and your imagination or I shall certainly abandon you to your fate!”

“Please – don’t do that!”

“If I was wise, that is exactly what I should do. It is no affair of mine whom you marry or do not marry and I have an uneasy suspicion that, if I was behaving with a vestige of common sense, I should send you back to your stepmother!”

“But you will not do so,” Ola said softly.

“I hate to think of what is the alternative.”

“I can tell you that,” Ola said in a small voice. “It is that you take me to Calais in your – yacht. Surely this fog will lift soon?”

As she spoke, she rose as if to go towards the door and look out.

At that moment there were heavy footsteps coming down the stairs and a moment later the landlord came into the room.

“I don’t know if you wish to say here the night, ma’am,” he said to Ola, “but I has a small bedroom empty and could accommodate you, though ’tis not so comfortable as the one the poor gentleman be in.”

Ola looked towards the Marquis.

“I am taking this lady with me,” he said and saw, as he spoke, the expression of delight that transformed Ola’s face.

On the other hand the landlord was obviously disappointed.

“What about the gentleman upstairs then?”

“He can look after himself when he gets better,” the Marquis replied. “But I understand this lady had a trunk with her in the carriage she was travelling in. What has happened to it?”

“The servant, who seemed unharmed,” the landlord replied, “is a-takin’ the horses to a stable at the top of the road.”

“Then send your man Joe to collect the trunk,” the Marquis ordered, “and he can follow this lady and me to where my yacht is tied up at the quay. It is not more than fifty yards from here.”

“I’ll get him down, sir,” the landlord answered.

He went to the bottom of the stairs and started shouting for Joe.

Ola turned towards the Marquis.

“You won’t regret this! How can I thank you?” she asked. “Thank you – thank you! I think you must be an angel sent to save me!”

“I think if the truth was told,” the Marquis replied, “I am slightly touched in the head or else the brandy I have imbibed was stronger than I anticipated”

“No, you are a Good Samaritan,” Ola enthused, “for, as I told you, I really have fallen amongst – thieves!”

Again, as she thought of her cousin upstairs, her eyes went towards the ceiling and the Marquis, seeing the lines of her long neck and the movement of light in her hair, told himself that he really was behaving like a fool.

He had sworn when he left home that never again would he have anything to do with women, except those who simply sold their favours to the highest bidder.

Never again – and this was a vow he intended to keep for all time – would he be fool enough to imagine himself in love.

Even to think of Sarah made him want to clench his hands and hit something, anything, anybody, to relieve the fury of his feelings.

And yet, despite this lesson, which should have made any man hesitate before even looking or speaking to a woman who called herself a lady, he had become quite inadvertently involved with this girl.

It was simply because it was impossible for him not to feel sorry for her in the predicament she found herself in.

On the other hand, how did he know whether what she had told him was the truth? It might be a lie like all the lies Sarah had told him.

He felt a sudden impulse to change his mind and tell her that after all she must find her own way out of her difficulties.

Or easier still, he had only to say that he was going outside to see what the weather was like, then to disappear in the fog and never come back.

That would be prudent and sensible perhaps, but it would also, he thought, be a caddish trick, such as he had never lowered himself to play in the past.

But nobleness, chivalry or sheer decency, call it what you will, had only succeeded in making him the cynic he knew he now was and would be for the rest of his life.

‘
Never trust a woman – they always betray you
!’

It sounded like a quotation he must have heard somewhere, unless it was a conviction that came from the depths of his heart.

The mere thought of Sarah had made him feel as if his body was on fire, while his anger swept over him and there was a red film in front of his eyes.

He wanted to curse her aloud and he wished now he had given himself the satisfaction of telling her plainly what he thought of her before he had walked away determined never to see her again.

‘Dammit all – I am running away!’ he had thought as he drove towards Dover.

But something sensitive and vulnerable within him shrank from the scene which would have followed had he told Sarah what he had discovered and seen with his own eyes.

She could have lied, she would have pleaded with him and, if she had finally suffered defeat and found that she could not again cajole him into wishing to marry her, she might have laughed at him!

That was something he knew he could not endure simply because he deserved it.

For the first time in his life, in his very successful career as both a sportsman and a lover, the Marquis, the most acclaimed and envied man in Society, had been hoist with his own petard.

Even now, a whole day after it had happened, he found it hard to believe that it was true.

He had become used to being a conqueror, he had grown used to knowing, although he told himself he was not conceited about it, that any woman he fancied was only too ready to fall into his arms.

Most of all there was no woman in the length and breadth of the Kingdom who would not jump at the chance of becoming his wife.

As soon as he looked at them, he would see the excitement in their eyes and it told him exactly what they longed for and undoubtedly prayed for.

“We will be married, my darling,” he could hear himself say to Sarah, “as soon as you are out of mourning. I cannot wait a day longer than I have to.”

“Oh, Boydon!” Sarah had cried, “I love you and I swear I will make you happy, just as you have already made me the happiest woman in the world!”

Her voice was very soft and seductive as she said the last words and, as her blue eyes looked up into his, the Marquis had believed that he had found the pearl beyond price, which he had always sought in the woman he would marry.

Then yesterday evening everything he had planned, his whole future, had fallen in pieces about his ears.

The Marquis awoke when he heard the anchor being raised and a few minutes later the yacht began to heel over as the sails were set and caught the wind.

He was aware that his head ached and his mouth felt dry and he knew that last night, contrary to his usual habit, he had drunk too much.

First the brandy had been surprisingly good at the inn on the quay and secondly, when he had returned to the yacht, he felt so depressed and incensed with life in general that he had sent the Steward for a decanter of his best claret, which he had drunk until the early hours of the morning.

Then, when he thought of last night, he remembered that he had brought a woman aboard with him and he asked himself if he had gone insane.

How, after all that had happened, after an experience that should have been the lesson of a lifetime, could he have been mad enough to involve himself with yet another woman and one who, if he was not careful, would undoubtedly be an encumbrance?

Then, because it was impossible for his thoughts to linger on anything for long, except the perfidy of Sarah, he recalled the reason why he was in Dover, why he had drunk too much and why in the cold and unpleasantness of March he should be contemplating a voyage at sea.

Thinking back, he could remember all too clearly the moment he had met Sarah.

He had been so occupied in London that he had not been down to Elvin last winter as much as usual.

He had been involved in many discussions and committees concerning the projected Reform Bill and in speaking frequently on other matters in the Chamber of the House of Lords.

He had also found that the new King, William IV, required his presence constantly at Buckingham Palace.

While it was flattering to be in such demand, it meant that he seldom seemed to have any free time for his own amusement.

It had therefore been almost with a feeling of playing truant that he had slipped away from London to Elvin to enjoy a few days hunting before the season ended.

He was well in the front of the field and enjoying one of the best runs he had experienced for a long time when crossing some rough ground his horse picked up a stone.

As he was riding one of his very best hunters, the Marquis dismounted and, letting the hunt go on without him, he realised that he must either try to dislodge the stone himself or find someone to do it for him.

He had, as it happened, nothing he could use as a probe except for his fingers and when he lifted his horse’s hoof he saw that the stone was embedded half under the shoe and if it was not extracted carefully the shoe would come away with it.

He looked around and saw that he was on his own estate, which was a very extensive one, and that only a short distance from where he was standing now was The Manor.

He remembered his agent telling him a year ago that it had been let to Sir Robert Chesney.

Ordinarily the Marquis would have called on a new tenant, but he had, in fact, forgotten Sir Robert’s arrival and, when he had come to Elvin, it had been with large parties and he had no time to pay courtesy calls on local people.

‘I shall have to make my apologies now,’ he told himself as, leading his horse by the bridle, he walked towards The Manor.

He went immediately to the stables, knowing where they were, and found an elderly groom to whom he explained his predicament.

The groom recognised him and touching his forelock said,

“Now don’t you worry, my Lord. I’ll soon get the stone away, then you can rejoin the ’unt. I can ’ear ’em now, drawin’ through Chandle’s Wood but I doubts they’ll find anythin’ there!”

“I imagine that is where the fox has gone to earth,” the Marquis replied.

“If ’e ’as, then they’ll ’ave to dig deep!” the groom smiled.

He took the horse as he spoke and led it towards an empty stall.

“While you are busy,” the Marquis said, “I will pay my respects to Sir Robert. He is at home?”

The groom’s voice altered as he answered,

“Sir Robert died last week, my Lord!”

“I had no idea!” the Marquis exclaimed.

He thought as he spoke that it was extremely remiss of his agent not to have informed him of the fact.

It would have been polite to send Sir Robert’s widow a letter of condolence or at least a wreath to the funeral.

“I be sure ’er Ladyship’d wish to make you’re acquaintance, my Lord,” the groom said.

The Marquis walked towards the front door, feeling uncomfortably that he owed Lady Chesney an apology.

An elderly manservant led him across the small hall into what the Marquis remembered was a charming drawing room at the back of the house overlooking the rose garden.

If he thought the room was charming, then so was its occupant.

She was certainly astonished to see him when he was announced, but he liked the way her voice, when she greeted him, was calm and composed and he certainly liked her appearance.

In a black gown that accentuated her clear skin, the gold of her hair and the blue of her eyes, Lady Chesney was certainly very alluring.

She insisted on sending for some refreshment and, as the Marquis seated himself opposite her, he began,

“I have only just learned from your groom of your husband’s death. I can only say how sorry I am not to have sent you my condolences and my sympathy, but now they are both yours.”

“That is very kind of you, my Lord,” Lady Chesney answered. “My husband had been ill for some years and the reason why we came here was that the physicians thought that the fresh air and the quiet of the country might do him good.”

She paused before she said with a little sob,

“Unfortunately they were – mistaken.”

That was the beginning of an acquaintance that progressed rapidly into friendship and from friendship into love.

The Marquis, riding away from The Manor, found it impossible to forget two blue eyes that had looked at him pathetically, curiously, then undoubtedly admiringly.

He had returned the next day, feeling that, as he had not sent a wreath to the funeral, at least he could provide the widow with exotic fruit and flowers from his greenhouses.