“I don’t understand.”
She was hesitating how to tell him what was in her mind and he said,
“I think quite frankly it would be a mistake to be involved in words when there is a very much easier way for us to get to know each other and a very much more natural one.”
He walked towards Elmina as he spoke and she knew by the expression on his face that he was going to put his arms around her and kiss her.
Instinctively she put up her hands to prevent him and, stepping backwards, cried,
“No, no! It is too soon, much too soon – and I cannot let you – touch me!”
“You cannot let me?” the Marquis repeated. “I doubt if you would be able to prevent it and quite frankly, Elmina, you must allow me to know what is best for both of us in this.”
“No!” Elmina said. “No – please – I want to – talk to you!”
“There is nothing to talk about,” the Marquis replied. “I think you have forgotten that you promised in the Marriage Service to obey me and that is now what I expect you to do!”
He moved towards her again.
Then, as he put out his hand to take hold of her, Elmina reacted instinctively without really thinking about it.
One moment the Marquis was on his feet, pulling her firmly and determinedly into his arms.
The next, to his complete and utter astonishment, he found himself staggering backwards from a blow from something hard and strong which struck him in his solar plexus, and against which he had no defence whatsoever.
Then he was sitting on the floor looking up at his wife with an almost ludicrous expression of surprise on his handsome face.
Chapter Five
For a moment there was silence, then Elmina faltered,
“I-I am sorry – I am so – sorry.”
“How the devil did you do that?” the Marquis enquired.
He did not rise, but only sat looking at her as if he could not believe that it had really happened.
“I-I am – sorry,” she said again. “Please – don’t be angry.”
“I think I am more surprised than angry – ” he began.
Then, looking at her standing in front of him in her diaphanous nightclothes, he suddenly began to laugh.
“This cannot be true!” he said. “It’s impossible!”
Then, as she still stood there irresolute, not knowing what to do, he said,
“If you want to talk to me and I realise that it is something we must do, get into bed.”
As she hesitated, he added,
“If it will make you happy, I promise not to touch you.”
There was a note of sarcasm in his voice, which Elmina did not perceive because she was so perturbed at what she had done.
Actually the Marquis as he climbed slowly to his feet was thinking that, while he had known already that his wife was unusual, this was the most extraordinary thing that had ever happened in the whole of his life.
By the time he was standing up Elmina had slipped between the lace-edged sheets.
It was a very magnificent bed with a canopy of carved gold angels, the posts also gilded with hangings of beautifully embroidered eau-de-nil velvet, which had mellowed with age.
Against the pillows Elmina looked very small and insubstantial and, with her fair hair falling over her shoulders, it was difficult to think that she was anything but a child.
The Marquis, however, was aware, as she was not, of the transparency of her nightgown, which revealed the curves of her breasts and her large eyes looking up at him apprehensively were those of a woman.
He sat down a little gingerly on the side of the mattress facing her and said,
“Now let’s start again. Tell me first how you knocked me down in that extraordinary manner.”
“It was – Karate.”
“Karate!” the Marquis ejaculated. “How in God’s name can you know Karate?”
Elmina drew in her breath.
“I have been – practising it and Jujitsu for – over a year.”
“But how? – and where? I cannot imagine that there are many experts in that unusual science in Oxfordshire.”
Elmina gave him a little smile.
“The explanation is that Chang, one of my father’s servants, is a master at both arts.”
“He obviously has a very proficient pupil,” the Marquis said somewhat drily.
He rubbed the front of his body as he spoke and Elmina asked quickly,
“I-I did not really – hurt you?”
He shook his head.
Then he said,
“Now that you have demonstrated very forcibly that you do not wish to be touched, I am prepared to listen to your arguments as to why we should not lead a normal life as man and wife.”
Elmina looked embarrassed and turned her head away to gaze across the room.
He knew that she was wondering what she should say.
“I want the truth, Elmina,” he said firmly, “and if you think it is a mistake for me to do what I intended, I would like to hear from you a reasonable argument against it.”
“My first reason is – very simple,” Elmina said in a very low voice. “You are – in love with the beautiful Lady Carstairs!”
The Marquis stiffened.
“How can you possibly know anything about Lady Carstairs?”
The enquiry was so unexpected that Elmina turned her head to look at him, her eyes wide, the light from the candles glinting in them and making them seem very green.
“Everybody knows you are – enamoured of her.”
“What do you mean by ‘everybody’?”
She made a very expressive gesture with her hands and, as she did not speak, the Marquis went on,
“It is unthinkable that you should know anything about the lady in question, unless of course, you have listened to the gossip in London.”
“I did not see anybody when I was in London buying my trousseau,” Elmina answered. “But long before you asked Papa if you could marry me, everybody round here, in our house, yours and in the villages was talking about her Ladyship and how beautiful she is.”
“Are you really telling me the truth?” the Marquis asked.
For the first time since she had knocked him down Elmina smiled as she replied,
“Surely you know everybody talks about you in the neighbourhood? You are the most exciting, besides being the most magnificent, person they have ever seen! So naturally everything you do and every lady you love is of absorbing interest to the oldest inhabitants in the cottages no less than to those who live in the big houses.
“I can hardly believe it!” the Marquis exclaimed.
“Are you not being very modest about yourself? After all there have been a great many beautiful ladies, one after another, to keep us all interested.”
“I cannot imagine why your father and mother allowed you to listen to such gossip!” the Marquis said crossly.
“Papa and Mama talk about you too, of course they do, and you can hardly expect them to respect your good name, if that is what you are worrying about, considering you have never invited them to Falcon!”
Again the Marquis stared at her.
“You mean – they expected to be invited?”
Elmina’s laughter rang out and it was a very attractive sound.
“Everybody who was not invited, and that included all your neighbours, was very disappointed. They heard about your parties and waited expectantly for an invitation which never came.”
“I had no idea!” the Marquis murmured.
“I suppose you thought that your own friends would not mix with the locals,” Elmina said, “and I expect you were right. But you cannot expect those who are left out not to feel envy, hatred and malice.”
The Marquis sighed.
“Well, I suppose that is something we shall have to put right in the future. But I do promise you that apart from my steeplechases, I had no idea that I was expected to entertain people who were not my personal friends.”
“Neighbours long to be neighbourly and, of course, to see the glories of Falcon and to tell you how much they admire you!”
“I can hardly believe that!”
“But, of course, they do! They think you are overwhelming, arrogant, condescending but at the same time magnificent and naturally a very exciting person to talk about.”
“I asked you to tell me the truth and I must believe that you have done so,” the Marquis said somewhat ruefully. “But what we are more concerned with, Elmina, are your feelings towards me.”
She did not answer immediately and he went on,
“I realise now that I have been very remiss in not seeing more of you before we were married, but it never struck me for one moment, and I am being honest, that you were not delighted at the thought of being my wife. After all, you did say that you would like to marry me.”
“Yes, I said that,” Elmina admitted, “and it was true, but I was really thinking of you as the owner of Falcon – and, of course, your wonderful horses!”
“You mean you wanted my title?”
“No, definitely not!” she exclaimed. “I have admired you for years when I saw you out hunting and I always watched you secretly riding in your steeplechases. I knew then that no man in the world could ride as well as you!”
Her voice changed as she went on,
“But having heard so much about the – beautiful ladies you – spent your time with, I realised I had – no chance at all of – competing with them.”
The Marquis looked at her sharply as if he suspected that she was not telling him the truth, but he did not interrupt and Elmina continued,
“I therefore could only hope – while your offer to Papa to marry me – was made in such an – abrupt manner that in time – I could – interest you as a person – and you might find me a pleasant companion – and someone you could share your interests with.”
She spoke hesitatingly, as if she was choosing her words with care and the Marquis listening intently felt that in what she was saying there was a great deal left unsaid.
“What other interests?”
There was a little pause before Elmina replied,
“Do you really want to know – or are you just being – polite in asking me these questions?”
“I really want to know,” the Marquis said finally. “I think, Elmina, it is essential that we be completely and absolutely honest with each other.”
“I-I will try,” she said simply. “Perhaps you will understand when I tell you that I have always been a – terrible disappointment since the moment I was – born.”
“Why?”
“Because Papa so desperately wanted to have a son and Mama was convinced before I actually arrived in the world that I – was a boy.”
The way she spoke and the expression in her eyes told the Marquis how much she had suffered later in knowing of her parents’ disappointment.
“It was not until I was nearly fourteen that Desmond arrived unexpectedly,” she went on. “For some years previously Papa had been treating me as if I was a boy and I was aware every minute of every day I was with him how much he resented the fact that I was only a girl!”
She gave a little sigh before she continued,
“It was then I began to realise that, as I would never be as beautiful as Mirabel or Deirdre, the best thing I could do would be to try to be as intelligent as a man.”
Again the Marquis looked at her as if he could hardly believe that she was telling the truth.
Then he asked,
“And how did you set about that?”
“I think it was soon after I had first seen you riding in a steeplechase, which, of course, you won and I watched you every time you came out hunting.”
“How old were you then?”
“Twelve or thirteen and I was also beginning to hear about your love affairs.”
The Marquis’s lips tightened, but he did not say anything and Elmina continued as if she was looking back into the past,
“I realised that my Governess, who was a very sweet woman but rather stupid, could not teach me any more than she had already. So I went to see the Vicar who sometimes makes a little extra money by coaching young men before they go up to University.”
The Marquis was becoming more and more incredulous.
“Of course I could not pay him without Papa or Mama finding out what I was doing,” Elmina said, “and I was quite sure that they would not approve, so I persuaded him to let me sit quietly in a corner of his study when he was instructing his pupils and he corrected my homework as he corrected theirs. He often said that if it was a competition, I would be the winner!”
Her voice softened and there was a sparkle in her green eyes as she continued in a different tone of voice,
“I loved learning Greek and Latin and, as the Vicar was a Classical scholar himself, he always took the pupils who wanted to specialise in Classical subjects.”
“And your father and mother had no idea that this was going on?” the Marquis asked.
“I had to let my Governess into the secret and, because she was fond of me and agreed that there was little more she could teach me, she let Papa and Mama think I was having lessons with her when actually I was at the Vicarage.”
“This is the most extraordinary thing I have ever heard!” the Marquis exclaimed.
“It was wonderful for me, except when Papa eventually sent my Governess away and it became difficult for me to go to the Vicarage regularly. But the Vicar said that he was absolutely certain that, if I could have gone to Oxford or Cambridge, I could easily take a degree!”
“You said that I was somehow concerned in all this,” the Marquis observed.
“You were concerned,” Elmina explained, “because seeing you and admiring you, I thought perhaps one day I would find a man who was – like you and who would want to – marry me.”
She gave him a shy little smile as she added,
“I never dreamt for one moment that I would – marry you – of course I did not! I was quite certain, as everybody else around here was, that you would choose a wife, when you wanted one, from the young ladies you met in London.”
She said no more, but waited for his comments.
“And then you learnt Karate,” the Marquis remarked. “But the really important question is, what are you going to do about me?”
“I have thought about that – and that is what I want to tell you.”
“Now I have no option but to listen to you.”
He smiled as he spoke and, as Elmina smiled back at him, she said,
“I can only say once again that I am – sorry.”
“There is no need to apologise, but I do want to hear your suggestions for the future.”
Elmina put her head a little to one side as she asked,
“What do you most enjoy doing in your life? What gives you the greatest pleasure?”
The Marquis thought an appropriate reply to the question could be ‘making love’, but he felt in the circumstances it would be somewhat embarrassing.
Therefore thinking quickly he replied,
“It is difficult to answer, but perhaps winning a race in a close finish.”
“Exactly!” Elmina cried. “In other words – you have had to strive and use your intelligence as well as your expertise.”
She did not wait for him to answer, but went on,
“It is the same with hunting. I know that to every sportsman it is not catching and killing the fox that counts. The real enjoyment is having a good run – in fact the excitement of the chase!”
“Are you somehow applying these two exercises to us?” the Marquis asked.
“Yes, of course I am,” Elmina replied. “I think, because you are you, it would be very unsatisfactory for you to have a wife you have not wooed and pursued with considerable effort, even with anxiety in case she said ‘no’ instead of ‘yes’.”
The Marquis was silent after she had finished speaking.
Then unexpectedly he la
ughed.
“Did you really think all this out for yourself?”
“I have given it a great deal of thought,” Elmina replied, “and, as you so often look bored and what Mirabel calls ‘supercilious’, I am quite certain that it is because everything in your life has come to you too easily. In fact what Chang says the Chinese call, ‘the peach falling into open hand’.”
“I realise exactly what you are saying to me,” the Marquis remarked.
He knew as he spoke that it was extremely perceptive of any woman, especially one as young as Elmina, to realise that often women melted into his arms before he had even held them out to them and that the invitation he saw in every beautiful woman’s eyes made even the most ardent love affair seem somewhat unadventurous.
But it was astounding that Elmina could have thought all this out for herself.
Because he felt that he must question her further, he asked,
“Are you really saying to me that I have to chase you as if you are a fox or win a race in which you are the prize, before you will consent to be my wife in anything but name?”
“You are making it sound rather different from the way I thought of it,” Elmina answered. “What I was really thinking was that if we became friends – perhaps ‘companions’ is the better word – and you could get to know me, perhaps you would begin to like me as a person, and – ”
She paused and there was a faint flush on her cheeks as if she was afraid to go any further.
“I would eventually fall in love with you,” the Marquis finished. “Is that what you are really thinking, Elmina?”
She nodded, then clasped her hands together tightly and said,
“Please – I don’t want to be difficult – and I am very very sorry that instinctively I – protected myself against you – but I do want more from you than you are – offering me at the – moment.”
She thought that the Marquis did not understand and so went on,
“You will think it very – ignorant of me – but I am not at all – sure what ‘making love’ between a man and a woman really – means. I think Mama and my sisters thought that I was – too young to talk about it – then, as we were married in such a – hurry, there was no time – ”
What she was saying to the Marquis was really incredible.
A Very Unusual Wife Page 9