“You are – here!” Indira said in a low voice. “I need your – help – ”
“I thought perhaps you would,” the Marquis replied.
He looked down at her and for a moment it seemed as if there was no need for words and they were speaking to each other without them.
Then the Marquis walked towards the desk and held out his hand to the Manager.
“I am the Marquis of Ardsley,” he said, “and I feel that, as Miss Rowlandson has just arrived in this country, she needs not only your assistance but mine as well.”
Mr. Mendi bowed before he replied,
“I am finding it very difficult, my Lord, to locate the late Mr. Rowlandson’s relatives, so your Lordship’s assistance in the matter would be very welcome.”
“Surely your father’s Solicitors would have their addresses?” the Marquis suggested.
Indira hesitated and to his surprise she looked embarrassed.
“It is – impossible for me to – communicate with them at the – moment,” she said, when she realised he was waiting for an answer.
“Why?” the Marquis enquired.
At that moment there was another interruption as a clerk came into the office through another door and with a word of apology went to the Manager’s side to say something that only he could hear and hand him a piece of paper.
The Marquis said quietly to Indira,
“How could you go away without telling me where you were going?”
“H-how did you – find me?” she parried.
“I have been to see Earl Bathurst at the Colonial Office, who told me a great deal about your father.”
Indira blushed and did not look at the Marquis as she said,
“I-I am sorry I – deceived you.”
The Marquis was about to reply, when Mr. Mendi interrupted by saying,
“This is very strange and please forgive me, Miss Rowlandson, but I suppose that this cheque for such a large amount is signed by you?”
Indira started and took from the Manager what the clerk had just handed to him and saw that it was a cheque made out for ten thousand pounds and signed ‘Indira Rowlandson’.
The signature was not in the least like her own and there was no need to ask who had presented it.
“It’s a forgery!” she said firmly.
“A forgery?” Mr. Mendi exclaimed.
The Marquis bent forward and took the cheque from Indira’s hands.
“Is the man who presented this still waiting?” he asked the clerk.
“Yes, sir.”
“Then call the porters and have him apprehended immediately,” the Marquis ordered.
The clerk looked at Mr. Mendi for confirmation and the Bank Manager nodded.
“We must certainly question him as to where he comes from and who has sent him, so do as his Lordship says.”
The clerk hurried from the room and Mr. Mendi sat down again in his chair.
“Have you any idea, Miss Rowlandson,” he enquired, “who could have forged this cheque?”
Indira drew in her breath and knew that there was nothing she could do now but tell the truth.
*
Driving beside the Marquis in his phaeton through the crowded streets of the City, she thought with a sense of relief, which was almost overwhelming, that she no longer had to be afraid.
The Marquis seemed to take over everything that concerned her in a manner which left nobody in any doubt that he was in command and she knew that it was only a question of hours before Mr. Jacobson would be imprisoned awaiting trial.
Before they left the bank, the Marquis told Mr Mendi that all communications relating to Mr. Rowlandson’s estate and anything that concerned his daughter were to be sent to Ardsley House in Park Lane.
As they were bowed out into Lombard Street, the Marquis’s groom told the carriage Indira had hired to follow them.
The Marquis then drove in a manner that made her feel that he had taken all her burdens from her and, as in her dream, she was flying up to the moon.
Since he was concentrating on his horses, they hardly spoke before they arrived in Park Lane and, as she walked across a marble hall and into a large comfortable study lined with books, she felt that it had the same atmosphere as the Marquis’s house in the country and it was almost as if she had come home.
He followed her into the study and said,
“I suggest you take off your bonnet and coat. I am going to give you a glass of champagne. I feel you need it.”
As he spoke with what she felt was a kinder voice than he had ever used to her before, she felt her love for him welling up inside her like a shaft of sunlight illuminating everything and sweeping away the shadows.
She had known when he came so unexpectedly into the Manager’s office at the bank that he was like an archangel delivering her from her fears and difficulties and most of all from the terror of being alone.
She told herself severely that he must never be aware of how much she loved him and that she would never behave in a possessive, over-intimate manner like Lady Sinclair and the other ladies who had fawned over him in the country.
Obediently she put her bonnet and her blue coat down on a chair and, tidying her hair with both hands, walked across the room to stand at the window looking out onto the garden which was at the back of the house.
The fragrance of the flowers in the beds and the trees with their leaves green against the sky, made her think of the beauty of Ardsley Hall, and she said spontaneously,
“Papa told me how beautiful England was in the summer, but I was so young when I last saw it that I had forgotten.”
“I am glad you think it beautiful,” the Marquis replied.
He walked to her side and handed her a glass of champagne, and, as she took it from him, he said,
“I think we should drink a toast because this is a very special day for both of us.”
She looked at him in surprise and he added,
“I have been clever enough to find you again and, as you have already said, you needed me.”
“I was not – expecting the Manager of Papa’s bank to be an Asian. I had assumed that he would be an Englishman and hoped he might invite me to – stay in his home until I could find – one of my relatives.”
“You will stay here with me,” the Marquis said, “and that is something I want to talk to you about.”
“There is – something I must tell you – first,” Indira interrupted.
“What is it?”
“Although I – deceived you by – pretending to be Lady Mary Combe – it was not quite so – wrong as it must – seem.”
She spoke a little hesitatingly, finding it difficult to put into words all that she wished to say.
Because she loved the Marquis, she could not bear him to believe that she had called herself a Lady of Title just because she was a snob.
She had not told Charles and Jimmy, but she thought now she must tell the Marquis that she had had a reason for choosing such a title.
“I am sure it is of no consequence,” the Marquis said, “but of course I will listen to anything you wish to tell me.”
“Lady Mary Combe is my – cousin and the Earl of Farncombe is my – uncle.”
She thought the Marquis still did not understand and she added quickly,
“Mama was his sister – but she died before he became so – successful and I knew when I – used Mary’s name that she would not – mind my – doing so.”
“I am glad you have told me,” the Marquis said, “although quite frankly, it is not of the least importance. What I really want is to be told why you minded what I thought.”
“Of course I minded!” Indira said quickly. “When you have been so kind, not only when we were in the country – but in helping me – now at this – moment – ”
There was a pause and then the Marquis said in a deep voice,
“Have you asked yourself why I should be so concerned about you?”
The way he spoke a
nd the fact that he was standing so near to her made Indira feel a little quiver go through her.
Because she was afraid that the Marquis might become aware of her feelings, she moved away from him to the centre of the room, where she set down her glass of champagne.
The Marquis did not follow her, but merely watched her, thinking that the sunlight on her hair was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
Unexpectedly he asked,
“Are you still afraid of me, Indira?”
“A-afraid?” she questioned.
“You were afraid when you arrived at Ardsley Hall,” he said, “and I knew during dinner that you were afraid of Wrotham. When I rescued you from him in the library, you told me that you hated men and yet you did not seem to be so afraid of me.”
He waited, until Indira said in a very low voice, as if she was tracing in her mind a sequence of events,
“You showed me your – Chinese poems – and the T’ang horse – and because of what – you said – everything changed.”
“Everything?”
“What I had been thinking and feeling. You – guided and – inspired me.”
He drew in his breath. Then slowly, as if he was still afraid that he might frighten her, he walked from the window to where she was standing by a round table on which there were a number of books.
She looked not at him, but at what lay on the table.
As he drew near to her, he knew that she quivered and he was almost sure it was not with fear.
He stood for a moment in silence before he said,
“When I received your letter on Sunday morning and thought that I would never find you again, I went to the library and took down the book of poems we had been reading. I opened it at random, Indira, and read a poem which seemed to me to be the answer to all that I was feeling.”
He paused and, as if Indira knew that she had to make some response to what he had said, she raised her eyes slowly and, he thought, a little shyly, and then found it impossible to look away.
Softly the Marquis said,
“Kuan-kuan cry the ospreys
On the islet in the river.
Lovely is the good lady
Fit bride for our lord.”
Indira did not move as he finished speaking, but only waited and he saw a sudden light come into her strange eyes.
Then, as the colour rose in her cheeks like the breaking of the dawn, she made a little incoherent sound and moved towards him.
His arms went round her and she hid her face against his shoulder as he held her very close to him.
“It was a message, my darling,” he said, “which I feel neither you nor I can disobey. How soon will you marry me?”
For a moment she was very still.
Then almost like the rhythmic movement of the sea or the sound of music, she lifted her face to his and he found her lips.
Because he knew it was the first time she had been kissed and was afraid of reawakening her fear, he kissed her very gently, almost without passion, as one might kiss a child.
Then, as he felt her whole body tremble against him and as her lips, soft and sweet, responded to his, his kiss became more insistent, more possessive.
He knew as he held her close and still closer that the feelings she aroused in him were different from any emotion he had ever known before in his whole life.
Somewhere at the back of his mind he realised that what they were feeling for each other was part of the poems they had read and of the vitality and vigour of the T’ang horses.
It was the beauty of his home and everything that he had once reached out to when he was young, then had lost when he grew older and cynical.
To Indira it was all the wonder, beauty, and glory of the East and the spiritual world she had sensed beneath it. It was inexpressible in words except when she talked with her father and then with the Marquis.
She knew now that all her studies with her Professors and what she had felt in the Temples and in the beauty of every country she had visited could be expressed in one word – Love.
Only when she felt as if the Marquis had swept her up and they were riding amongst the stars, did he raise his head and ask in a strangely unsteady voice,
“What do you feel about me now?”
Indira spoke what was in her heart as she said,
“I – love you – I love you! I know – the – hidden meaning of your poems – is my – love for you.”
The Marquis did not reply, but kissed her with slow, demanding, passionate kisses until her whole body vibrated to his.
Only when the world was forgotten and they were no longer human but like Gods did they come back to earth as if the strain was unendurable and for the moment they must again breathe normally.
The Marquis drew Indira to a sofa and then sat down with his arms round her.
“How can I have found you so unexpectedly, when I did not believe you even existed?”
“I never – thought there would be a – man who would – understand what I was – thinking and feeling – except Papa.”
“We have so much to discover about each other,” the Marquis said, “and, as it will take us a lifetime, we must be married at once so that we need not waste an hour or a day apart when we might be together.”
There was a note of passion in his voice that made Indira feel as if what he said was echoed within herself.
Then she gave a sudden little cry that was different and asked,
“Are you sure you should – marry me?”
“I have never been so sure of anything in my life as I am that you should be my wife.”
“But – you do not – understand.”
“What do I not understand?”
“That perhaps I am not the – right person for – you.”
The way she spoke made the Marquis look at her penetratingly before he said,
“What are you trying to tell me?”
“If I – tell you the – truth, will you – promise not to be – angry?”
“I could never be angry with you, Indira.”
“Or – anybody else – concerned with – me?”
His arms tightened round her and she knew perceptively that he thought she was speaking of a man and was jealous.
“No, no!” she said quickly. “It is not like – that. It is just that I have not told you the – real reason why I – pretended to be my cousin – when I came to – Ardsley Hall.”
“Tell me now.”
A little hesitatingly and shyly, she told him of the bet which Charles and Jimmy had made with each other after what they had overheard him saying in White’s Club.
The Marquis did not speak and she finished by saying,
“When they asked me to – help them and – enquired as to what Papa did, I told them he was a – trader.”
She looked up at him and now the fear was back in her eyes as she added,
“That is in fact what he was – and perhaps – because I am not – grand enough – when you think it over – you will not wish to – marry me.”
The Marquis laughed and it was a very happy sound.
“Can you really be so foolish as not to realise, my lovely one,” he asked, “that if your father was a pedlar in Cheapside or a small shopkeeper, I would still love you and still want to marry you? We have been together, my precious, in one life or another since the beginning of time and we will be together through all eternity.”
“You believe that – you really believe – that?”
“Of course I do!” the Marquis said. “Charles has won his bet and I will tell him so when we next see him.”
“And – you are not – angry with them?”
“How can I be anything but overwhelmingly grateful to the two young men who brought you to me? They shall be our first guests after we are married and we will never arrange a steeplechase without asking them to compete in it.”
He smiled and pressed his lips against her forehead as he said,
“But of co
urse you will beat them to the winning post, my darling, and me as well.”
“I have no wish to beat you at anything,” Indira replied. “When I left Ardsley Hall on Saturday evening – as I drove down the drive – I said in my heart, ‘goodbye, my guide, my Master, my love’, and that is what you will – always be to – me.”
“Your Master?”
“I want you to – teach me about – love.”
She hid her face against him and whispered,
“I am very ignorant – about – that and – perhaps I will – bore you.”
The Marquis was still.
In all his many passionate and fiery affairs, he had never known a woman who was pure and innocent.
He thought now that nothing could be more exciting or rapturous than to teach Indira, whom he loved with his heart and mind, the inestimable glory of love.
“I will teach you to love me, my adorable one,” he said aloud, “to love me as much as I love you!”
“I love you overwhelmingly – already,” she replied.
“My love grows – every time I look at – you – every time you – touch me and – every time I – breathe.”
The way she spoke made the Marquis pull her almost roughly against him and kiss her until they were both breathless.
Then he said,
“We have to be sensible for the moment, my precious one. I insist that you stay here tonight, but because it would be impossible for me to obtain a special licence for us to be married before tomorrow morning, I must make some arrangements for you to be chaperoned.”
“I want to be – alone with – you,” Indira said impulsively.
“That is what I want too,” the Marquis agreed, “and after tomorrow you will always be with me and in my arms, my heart, my mind, and my soul.”
Indira gave a little cry as she said,
“How can you say such wonderful – perfect things to me? How can I have been so lucky as to find you when to escape – all men I wished to enter a Convent?”
The Marquis laughed, but at the same time, as if he was afraid he might have lost her, he pulled her closer to him.
“I doubt if there is a Convent in existence which could keep you away from me,” he said, “and we both know, my darling one, that because we are aware of the Spiritual Force and the power that it gives us, we have a great deal to do in the world for other people. That is our Karma.”
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