As she drew nearer to the ballroom and could hear the sound of the band, she moved more slowly, trying to think how she could find Shane.
She remembered that her aunt had gone to the Card Room, but there was still a chance that she might not be playing but might merely have settled her guests down at the Baccarat table and moved back to the ballroom to see what was happening there.
Sensibly Charlotte did not enter the ballroom by the main door, but instead managed to find her way to the other end of it.
Here she surreptitiously peeped into the room to see all the young guests who had been at dinner dancing a quadrille with exuberant verve.
Charlotte looked round for Shane and then with a leap of her heart she saw him almost opposite her, not dancing but talking to another man, a glass of champagne in his hand.
She looked at him intently, willing him to be aware of her. Then when she caught his eye she beckoned with her hand before she moved back into the passage.
A second later Shane was beside her.
“What is it?” he asked. “Why are you here alone?”
“I will tell you – everything, but let’s go – somewhere where we will – not be seen.”
There was a frantic note in her voice that Shane did not miss and, taking her by the hand, he drew her to a sitting room where there was no one except themselves.
As they went inside the room, he turned to lock the door behind them.
Charlotte realised what he had done and flung herself against him and, as his arms went round her, she cried,
“Oh – Shane – Shane, I love you! Tell me you – love me.”
“You know I do, my darling,” he replied. “But what has upset you?”
Then, as if nothing mattered except the fact that he was holding her close against him, his lips found hers and he kissed her until they both were breathless.
“I love you so – desperately,” Charlotte insisted when finally he raised his head. “If I cannot – marry you – I swear I will – kill myself!”
Shane kissed her again and then drew her to a sofa and they sat down side by side, his arms still round her.
“Tell me what happened after I left you in the salon,” he asked. “I wanted to wait for you, but I thought it would be a mistake.”
“Aunt Odele made me stay behind,” Charlotte replied. “She said that the Prince wanted to – show me the – Music Room.”
She felt Shane stiffen, but he did not speak and she went on,
“I knew, even as she said it, that she had arranged that he would propose to me there – and at the same time – I was sure that when he did, she would – announce it tomorrow – night at the ball.”
“Without first consulting your father and mother?” Shane asked wonderingly.
“Aunt Odele is so determined for me to – marry the Prince that I do not think she considers anything except that he should – propose and I should – accept him.”
“But you have not done so?” Shane asked.
“I escaped only – because I made Alana – come with us and, when we – reached the Music Room, she – started to play the – violin.”
Charlotte almost gasped the words, as if she realised how near she had been to disaster.
Then she went on,
“As soon as I saw that the Prince was – listening to her and not – watching me, I – slipped away and came to find you.”
“That was sensible of you, darling, but we cannot go on like this.”
“That is what I want to tell you. I have escaped for the moment, but later tonight or tomorrow, they will be just as – determined and Aunt Odele will – contrive somehow – however much I fight against it – that the Prince and I will be – alone.”
“That is something that must not happen.”
Shane rose from the sofa as if he felt that he must be on his feet and stood for a moment holding onto the mantelpiece and looking down into the fire.
Then he said,
“I want to ask you something.”
There was such a serious note in his voice that Charlotte was aware that what he was about to say was of importance and she clasped her hands together in her lap.
“What is – it?” she asked, her voice trembling.
“It is this” Shane replied. “I love you and as you know I have loved you for years. The only thing I want in my life is that you should be my wife. But, my precious, I have nothing to offer you, nothing except my love.”
“I want nothing else,” Charlotte answered him quickly.
She would have risen from the sofa, but he put out his hands to stop her.
“Don’t move,” he said. “I have to say this without touching you. If we face life together and if we marry with no money, you will live a very different way from how you have lived until now. I will work for you, I will do everything in my power to make you happy, but I cannot offer you any luxuries and you already know how poor my family is.”
“Do you think any of that matters?” Charlotte asked. “If I have to scrub floors and live only on potatoes, it will not matter as long as I can be with you. You say you have loved me for years, but I cannot remember a time when I did not love you. I belong to you. I am yours – and I could not let any – other man touch me.”
There was a throb in her voice and there was no doubt that the sincerity of what she said came from the very depths of her heart.
Shane looked at her, then smiled, and it illuminated his whole face.
“Then why should anything frighten us?” he asked.
He held out his arms as he spoke and she sprang up to run to him and he held her so close that she could barely breathe.
He kissed her until the room seemed to swing dizzily round them and they became part of the music that came from the ballroom.
After a long time Shane raised his head and said,
“I have to think, I have to plan, my darling, what we shall do. It’s not going to be easy, but I do not believe that there is any obstacle we cannot surmount together and the most urgent is how we shall get married.”
There was silence for a moment and then Charlotte said in a very low voice,
“Even if we – cannot get married – I want to be with you – to belong to you.”
Shane’s arms tightened and he answered,
“I adore you for saying that, but somehow I will find a way.”
He laid his cheek against her forehead and said slowly, as if he was thinking,
“I want you to go upstairs to bed. Undress quickly in case your aunt finds that you are not with the Prince and tries to make you come downstairs again. If she sends for you, claim you have a headache.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I am not quite certain,” Shane answered, “but I intend to find Richard and, when I have come to a decision, I will get in touch with you or he will”
“I understand. And, Shane, I am no longer frightened – but I shall just be praying that – everything will come – right for us.”
“It will!” Shane replied, a new positive note in his voice.
He kissed her again and then he went to the door, unlocked it and looked down the passage.
“I think if you go to the left,” he said, “you will find a staircase that will take you up to the first floor and from there you will be able to reach your bedroom without being seen.”
Charlotte nodded and then, as the music from the ballroom seemed to swell to a louder note, she started to run down the passage in the direction that Shane had suggested.
He stood watching her until she was out of sight, then he took a deep breath and walked in the opposite direction.
*
The Viscount was asleep when he heard somebody calling out his name.
He opened his eyes and as he did so he realised that he had been deeply unconscious and it was difficult for the moment to concentrate on what was happening.
Then he realised that the candle had been lit beside his bed and Shane was sittin
g beside him still in his evening clothes.
“What is the matter?” the Viscount asked. “It must be damned late.”
“It’s after four o’clock.”
“Did you wake me up to tell me that?”
“No, I have come to tell you that in an hour’s time I am taking Charlotte away with me.”
The Viscount sat up abruptly and pushed himself back against his pillows.
“What are you saying?”
“I am telling you what I intend to do,” Shane replied. “Actually it is something I should have done before we came here, but now I can afford it.”
The Viscount then swept his hair back from his forehead and complained,
“I may be very dense and thick-headed, but I cannot understand what you are talking about.”
Shane smiled.
“It’s not surprising. Do you know how much I have just won?”
“At Baccarat?”
“At Baccarat!” Shane replied.
“How much?”
“Nearly two thousand pounds!”
“I don’t believe it!”
“It’s true. And incidentally, I owe you twenty pounds.”
As he spoke, Shane drew two notes from his pocket and threw them down on the bed.
“Why do you owe me twenty pounds and what has happened?”
“I will tell you exactly,” Shane replied. “The Prince intended to propose to Charlotte tonight and was only circumvented from doing so by Alana. When I was told what had happened, I realised that I had to act quickly and stop being unsure of myself as I have been up to now.”
He paused for a moment before he added,
“It was Alana who made me realise that I was chicken-hearted and that, because Charlotte and I loved each other, nothing else was of any consequence.”
“How did Alana make you realise that?”
“We were talking when we drove together this morning and all day I have been thinking about what she said.”
There was silence for a moment and then the Viscount prompted him,
“Go on.”
“Tonight when Charlotte told me how she had escaped from the Prince, I sent her to bed and then went to find you.”
“I was in the ballroom,”
“I never got to you,” Shane explained, “because, as I walked away from where Charlotte and I had been hiding, I saw Lady Odele come out of the Card Room. Because I knew that she was going to the ballroom and I wanted to avoid her, I went instead to the room that she had just emerged from.”
There was a look in the Viscount's eyes that told him that he was beginning to understand what had happened.
“I stood just looking at the people playing Baccarat,” Shane went on. “Then my Celtic sixth sense or what Alana calls a belief in an omnipotent Power, seemed to tell me what I must do.”
He smiled at his friend before he continued,
“Of course, as usual, I had no money to spend, so I went up to your room and helped myself to twenty pounds that I knew you had stowed away in the usual place.”
The Viscount grinned.
“It’s always a mistake to trust even one’s best friend!”
“I would have paid you back, you dolt,” Shane replied, “but not as easily as I am able to do now.”
“Go on,” the Viscount urged him again.
“I went back to the Card Room, sat down at the Baccarat table and said to the Fates, ‘it’s time you gave me a break and it is now or never.’ So they obliged!”
“They certainly did.”
“Once I began to win other people’s money, I grew bolder. Then the Prince arrived.”
“The Prince?”
“I don’t know if he was upset that Charlotte had escaped him or whether it was something else,” Shane said, “but he seemed to be in a very strange mood and he started to play in what I should have thought was an extremely reckless fashion.”
“That does not sound at all like him.”
“That is what I thought. The older gentlemen began to take money off him and I did the same.”
“Did I hear you say that you won nearly two thousand pounds or was I still asleep?”
“You heard me,” Shane answered. “And by that time, as you can imagine, it was growing very late. In fact it was only about an hour ago that we finished playing.”
“What about my aunt?”
“I had a strong idea that she was perturbed over the Prince’s behaviour. She came in several times to ask him if he would join the dancers in the ballroom, but he refused and ignored anything else she had to say. Then, when she suggested that he should say ‘goodnight’ to his guests, he told her to do it for him.”
“He usually has such impeccably good manners.”
“Tonight he refused to leave the gambling table and did not even rise to his feet when Lady Odele said ‘goodnight’ to him in a very acid voice.”
“I would suppose that he was upset at not being able to propose to Charlotte,” the Viscount murmured.
“I don’t intend to give him another opportunity,” Shane asserted. “You must see, Richard, that this makes everything easy. At least Charlotte and I can keep ourselves for a year while we are in hiding from your father and mother and I have something else to tell you.”
“What is that?” the Viscount enquired.
“Judge Hudson was here tonight.”
“Yes, I know. I met him before dinner.”
“As he was leaving,” Shane said, “I took him on one side and asked him if he would explain to me a point in Law that would help a friend of mine.”
“What did you want to know?” the Viscount asked curiously.
“I asked the Judge whether, if a minor wished to be married and could not get in touch with her Guardian, who naturally would be her father legally, anyone else was entitled to give permission.”
“What did the Judge reply?”
“He said in those circumstances it is possible for the girl’s mother, her uncle or of course her brother, if he is of age, to act in loco parentis.”
“I never thought of that,” the Viscount admitted simply.
“I think the Judge was aware that it was a personal request,” Shane said, “because before he left, he put his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘good luck, my boy’.”
“Now I understand, Shane, do you want it in writing?”
“Of course.”
“And you are really leaving now?”
“As soon as Charlotte and Alana have everything packed.”
Shane gave a sigh that was one of relief.
“Everything is even easier than it might have been. For instance the trunks that Charlotte brought with her were all in a cupboard in her dressing room. Like all women she is determined not to go without her clothes!”
“Perhaps she realises that your money will not last forever,” the Viscount suggested.
“It will last long enough and I tell you what I am going to do, Richard.”
He spoke in such a positive manner that his friend looked at him in surprise.
“I have never seen you like this before, Shane. It seems our roles for the moment are reversed.”
Shane knew that he was referring to the fact that whenever they were together it had always been Richard who led, Richard who made the decisions and Richard who organised everything.
“I think,” he said quietly, “that knowing how close I came to losing Charlotte has brought me to my senses. In the future I hope I shall be more of a man than I have been in the past.”
“Whatever you are,” the Viscount replied, “you know you can rely on me. But you were telling me what you were going to do.”
“My father has some land he bought a long time ago in the very South of Ireland and, when I was thinking of somewhere to hide, I remembered that on the estate there is a rather attractive Georgian house, dilapidated of course, but labour there is cheap and it will not be difficult to have it repaired.”
He spoke slowly, as if he was seeing
in his mind’s eye what had to be done.
Then he continued,
“But what is more important is that it is a perfect place for breeding horses. As you know, it is something I have always wanted to do and with the money I have won and no rent to pay, I will soon be able to build up a stud that I am certain I can make enough on to keep us both in comparative comfort.”
“It sounds an excellent idea.”
“I thought you would agree, but nobody except you will know where we are until it is too late for your father to try to take Charlotte away from me or to annul the marriage.”
“You know you can trust me,” the Viscount insisted. “And now let me write the letter giving you permission to marry my sister.”
He then climbed out of bed and went to the beautifully inlaid Louis XIV desk that stood between the two windows.
Shane then lit the gas lamps and Richard drew a piece of thick parchment paper from the red leather case embossed with the Prince’s monogram that stood on the desk.
He wrote quickly, blotted the paper and put the letter into an envelope.
He handed it to his friend with a smile.
“I would have liked to give Charlotte away,” he sighed, “but I suppose you will manage without me.”
“I am grateful for your help and I hope it will not be long before you will be our first guest at Derryfield.”
“Is that what the house is called?”
Shane nodded.
“My father renamed it after he had bought it, but to my knowledge he has not visited it for at least ten years. We should be able to live there for at least another ten without his being aware of it!”
“Then you will certainly be safe at Derryfield,” the Viscount said with a smile.
As he rose to his feet he asked,
“What happens now?”
“I am going to change and then as soon as the servants are astir at about five o’clock, I shall say that I have to leave for Ireland immediately and order a carriage.”
“You are quite certain that no one will tell the Prince?”
“It’s very unlikely. He went to his bedroom after the Judge and the other guests had departed and he was so preoccupied with his thoughts that, although we climbed the stairs together, he omitted to say ‘goodnight’ to me.”
The Power and the Prince Page 10