He picked it up as he spoke, staring down at it as if he had never seen it before.
“Tell me, Syringa,” he said after a moment, “do you remember why my mother gave this brooch to me?”
“Yes, of course,” Syringa replied, “she gave it to you – for your wife.”
“And that is why,” the Earl said very quietly, “I am asking you now, Syringa, to accept it as – a gift.”
It seemed to Syringa that her heart stood still.
Then in a small frightened voice she said,
“I don’t think I – understand what you are – saying.”
“I will try to make it clearer,” the Earl answered. “I love you, my darling, and I want, more than I have ever wanted anything in my life, that you should marry me.”
Syringa looked up at him.
She was trembling and her grey eyes searched his face as if she thought that she could not have heard him correctly.
Very gently he put his arms round her.
“I love you,” he said, “and I think, although I may be mistaken, that you love me.”
“Did I – tell you – so?” Syringa whispered.
“You told someone called Jupiter that you loved him,” the Earl answered, “and I believed that I was linked in your poor tortured unhappy little mind with the God after whom you had so flatteringly nicknamed me.”
His arms tightened about her.
“God or no God – do you love me enough to marry me, Syringa?”
“You are so – important – of such – consequence,” Syringa said. “I should be overwhelmingly happy just to be with you – and to know that you – cared for me – a little,”
The Earl’s arms tightened about her so that she could hardly breathe.
“Do you think my love for you is little?” he asked. “Do you think I would ever risk losing you again? My foolish darling, although I did not realise it, I have been searching for you all my life. You will always be with me, safe and in my arms now and for ever, because you are my love, the woman I worship and my wife.”
He pulled her closer as he spoke and slowly and very gently his lips sought hers.
He kissed her as he had done the first time in the wood as if she was a child and he was afraid that he might hurt her.
Then, as he felt her lips cling to his and a quiver of excitement run through her, so that she trembled but not with fear, his mouth became more insistent, more possessive.
To Syringa it was as if the whole world was golden and the wonder of it was too intense to be borne.
She felt an ecstasy such as she had never known before and she knew that this was what she too had been seeking and they were one, a man and woman who had found each other and were complete.
The Earl raised his head and looked down at her eyes shining as if they were stars.
“I love you – Oh, Lord Jupiter – I love – you,” she whispered brokenly and hid her face against his shoulder.
He kissed her hair.
“Come, darling.”
She felt him take his arms from her and looked up in surprise.
“Where are we going?”
“It’s a secret, I want you to trust me.”
“You know – I do.”
“You are so lovely, so perfect,” he murmured and his voice was hoarse.
Then, with an obvious effort, he took her hand and, drawing her along beside him, he turned towards the door.
The Great Hall was still empty and, although Syringa wondered at the lack of attentive footmen, she had not time to mention it.
The Earl led her through the sunlit door.
Standing below the steps was a familiar figure.
It was Mercury tossing his head and whisking his tail to keep away the flies.
To Syringa’s astonishment he was harnessed to a small curricle, which was gaily decorated with flowers and ribbons.
She ran down the steps.
“Mercury! Mercury!” she cried. “How I have missed you!”
The great horse whinnied and nuzzled his nose against her.
“You have taught him to pull a curricle!” Syringa said to the Earl, her face alight as she patted Mercury’s neck.
“I have taught him to obey me as he obeys you. Now he has somewhere to take us.”
He helped Syringa into the curricle, arranging her full skirts and then seated himself beside her.
As he picked up the reins, Syringa laid her face against his arm.
“I am so – happy,” she whispered.
“If you look at me like that,” the Earl warned her, “I shall have the greatest difficulty in driving.”
Syringa gave a little laugh of sheer joy.
As Mercury took them down the drive at a steady trot, she wondered where they were going.
They soon left the avenue of oak trees and set off across the Park on a grass track that led towards the woods.
Syringa’s eyes widened, but she asked no questions.
When they reached Monk’s Wood, she saw that there was a new track just wide enough to take the curricle, winding between the pine trees and going deep into the heart of the wood.
It was not hard now to guess where they were going and, when finally Mercury came to a halt beside the thick thorn hedge, Syringa looked up at the Earl.
He put down the reins and she thought that he would take her in his arms, but instead he alighted and came round to her side of the curricle to help her out.
He went ahead of her and she followed him, realising that he moved without faltering through the thorn hedge as she had done the first time that she had led him there.
When they stepped together into the Secret Place, the Earl took her hand and held it very tightly while she looked round.
The grass was a carpet of white daisies, golden buttercups and blue periwinkles and beside the fallen masonry were great clumps of crimson poppies.
The thorn hedge was verdant green and the wall of shrubs that surrounded the Chapel and made a screen for the altar had burst into flower.
There were pink dog roses, yellow honeysuckle, mauve and white convolvulus growing over the grey stones and a dozen other flowers all adding their colour and beauty to the Sanctuary.
Against the altar standing waiting for them was a man in white.
He was standing so still that Syringa thought for a moment that he must be an illusion.
Then, as she looked enquiringly at the Earl, he said softly,
“Where else could we be married, my darling, but here?”
Her fingers tightened on his and they moved towards the Priest.
The song of the birds was like some angelic choir.
Everywhere in the shrubs and the trees, beneath the fallen stonework, Syringa felt that the little eyes of the forest creatures were watching them.
When they reached the altar, she and the Earl knelt down on the moss-covered steps and the Priest started the Marriage Service.
Syringa heard the Earl’s voice, firm and steady, make the marriage vows and she repeated hers softly but with a sincerity that came from the very depths of her heart.
Her fingers trembled a little as the Earl put the ring on her finger and then she closed her eyes to receive the Blessing.
The Priest made the sign of the cross and then he laid one hand on Syringa’s head and the other on the head of the Earl as he finished.
“ – and the blessing of God Almighty, the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, be with you both now and for ever more.”
It seemed to Syringa that as he spoke everything was very quiet.
Then, as his voice ceased, the birds filled the wood with song.
There were the notes of the blackbirds, the chaffinch and the wrens, the coo of the wood pigeon, the hoot of an owl, the caw of the rooks.
It was like a paean of praise going up to Heaven.
As she prayed that her love would never fail the Earl and that they would belong to each other for all Eternity, she felt him very gently draw her to her fe
et.
They were alone.
The Priest had vanished, almost as if their marriage had been a Divine visitation and not a human ceremony.
“My wife!”
The Earl said the words very softly.
Then he kissed her as he had kissed her once before on her forehead.
There was something so spiritual and dedicated in the gesture that Syringa felt the tears come to her eyes – tears of happiness and of love.
Without speaking again the Earl led her back over the grass and through the thorn hedge to where Mercury was waiting for them.
In silence they climbed into the curricle and drove back through the trees of Monk’s Wood and out into the Park again.
The sun was sinking low, the sky was crimson and gold and King’s Keep was exquisitely beautiful, a jewel in a green velvet setting.
To Syringa’s surprise they did not drive straight to the house. Mercury went along the narrow track leading behind it towards one of the hills.
Only as they started the climb so that the house lay beneath them, did Syringa realise that ahead, silhouetted against the setting sun was the great Observatory that had been built by the Earl’s grandfather.
She wondered why they were going there, but she asked no questions. She was content to lay her cheek against his arm as she had done when they left King’s Keep.
She was vividly conscious of the narrow gold band encircling the third finger on her left hand.
She thought that only the Earl could have planned that they should be married in their Secret Place.
A place she knew now where she must first have fallen in love with him.
Higher and higher Mercury climbed until finally he drew up outside the pillared front of the Observatory.
Syringa looked it in surprise.
“I thought it was derelict and unsafe,” she said. “The Colonel would never allow me to come here.”
“Your Italian friends have been working here all the time you were ill,” the Earl explained with a smile. “Come and see what they have done.”
He knotted Mercury’s reins together as he spoke and attached them to the box of the curricle.
Then, having assisted Syringa to alight, he said to Mercury,
“Go home, Mercury, go home!”
To Syringa’s amazement the horse that formerly had obeyed only her turned round slowly and carefully and obediently started back down the hill.
“Will he really go home for you?” Syringa asked.
“We have rehearsed this many times,” the Earl answered, “and he has never failed yet to turn up at the stables where the grooms are waiting for him.”
“And how shall we get home?” Syringa enquired.
“Are you in such a hurry to leave?” he asked.
She thought that she had never seen him look so happy or so young.
He led her through the newly painted door and, when she was inside, she gave a gasp.
The Observatory had been built originally in the shape of a Roman Temple. There were high pillars, alcoves containing marble statues and the floor was of exquisite tiles. The windows, and there were many of them, were open to the light of the setting sun.
On the walls, which had now been restored, were painted murals. Pictures of Venice, the cypress trees of Florence and the ruins on the Appian Way.
The whole room was decorated with shrubs. There were green plants of every sort and description.
Plants, ferns and ivy, and yet the eyes seemed inevitably drawn to the windows with their breath-taking view.
The Earl led her to one and Syringa realised that they were looking for miles over the countryside, as they had done that first day when they had met, when she had taken him to the ‘look out’.
“I understand,” she said slowly. “I understand – now what you have been telling me ever – since I left my – bedroom. This is ‘the empty world’ – yours and mine – that is why we have seen no one and just been – alone.”
“Our empty world,” the Earl repeated, “a world through which you and I can tread our path together. Together, darling, towards the horizon.”
“No one else but you could say – anything like that – or think of anything that could make me so happy,” Syringa cried.
“It is you who have taught me to understand such things,” he said.
He took her in his arms and his lips found hers.
He kissed her until her breath came quickly between her lips and then, while she still longed for him to hold her even closer, he said ,
“I don’t wish to tire you. Come and sit down and have something to eat and drink. It is your first day out and I must be very considerate.”
“I am not tired,” Syringa protested.
“The evening is not yet over,” he replied. “There are still some surprises left.”
She let him lead her to a table, which she had not noticed before, set on the other side of the room.
On the white tablecloth on the sideboard there was every sort of delicacy and bottles of wine resting in a huge crested silver ice-cooler.
The Earl poured the golden wine into two crystal glasses and then raised his towards Syringa.
“To my wife,” he said.
“To my – husband,” Syringa replied softly.
“And to our love,” the Earl added.
They drank and then, laughing almost like children, they enjoyed their dinner together.
The Earl waited on Syringa and kissed her between every course so she found it hard to realise what she was eating and felt that everything tasted like ambrosia.
When they had finished, the Earl sat back in his chair, a glass of brandy in his hand and his eyes on Syringa.
Her little face was flushed and radiant in the light of the candles.
“Were the Italians pleased to be able to work here again?” she asked.
“They laboured day and night to get it finished,” the Earl answered, “and they achieved the impossible in so short a time. They even restored the mosaic bath that was brought here from Rome.”
“How could they do so much so quickly?” Syringa asked.
“I told them it was for you,” the Earl replied. “I have often wondered if the workmen ever slept at all! They are very grateful to you, Syringa.”
“And to you,” Syringa added quickly.
“You will have to teach me to understand my people,” the Earl said.
“I don’t think that you really need any teaching,” she answered. “I have never met anyone who can understand me – as you do.”
“That is because I love you,” he said. “I love you as I never thought it possible to love any woman.”
She felt herself quiver at his words and, because she was still shy of him, she blushed and her eyes fell before his.
“When did you first know that you – loved me?” she asked.
It was the question every woman has asked the man she loves since the beginning of time.
“I loved you from the moment we met in Monk’s Wood,” he replied. “You were so different from anyone I had ever known before. It was not only your beauty, my sweet, which beguiled me, but the things you said.”
“You mean when we talked at the ‘look out’?” Syringa asked.
“And when you revealed to me the secret of the ruined Chapel and spoke of Judith as you did, I knew then that I could never forget you.”
“But you – tried?”
“Yes, I tried,” he acknowledged. “I told myself that there was no room in my life for a young unsophisticated girl. I had sworn not to be married. I disliked the idea of being tied down.”
There was a pause.
Then Syringa said very slowly,
‘That night – when you came to my bedroom – you meant to – make love to me.”
“Yes, that is true,” the Earl admitted. “Circumstances had forced you into my life. I was already bewitched by you, but I was still hanging on desperately to what I believed was my freedom,”
> Syringa looked down at the table, her fingers playing absent-mindedly with a silver spoon.
“I am very – ignorant about these – things,” she said hardly above a whisper, “but why – did you not – stay with me?”
“Because, my darling,” the Earl replied, “I could not besmirch anything so pure and so perfect. When I went back to my own room, I knew that I not only desired you but loved you as a man can love only once and for Eternity. Because of that love, I had to give you a chance.”
“A – chance?” Syringa questioned.
“A chance to be sure that you really loved me. I knew how narrow and restricted your life had been. You had met so few men. How could you be sure, as I was, that we were meant for one another?”
“Supposing I had wished to marry – someone else like – the Marquis?”
“Then I should have lost you,” the Earl said simply. “But it was a gamble I had to take for my own peace of mind.”
“And – now?”
“I will take no more risks with my happiness or yours, my beloved.”
He saw the glory in Syringa’s eyes and then she said hesitatingly,
“I don’t – want you to be – disappointed in me because I am so – ignorant. Will you – explain to me – about making love?”
There was a small silence.
“In a little while you shall learn about love,” the Earl replied in a deep voice. “But, my dearest heart, I would not frighten or shock you.”
“You, could – never do – that,” she answered.
She saw a sudden glint of fire in his eyes.
Then he rose from the table and started to snuff out the candles.
While they had been eating and drinking, the sun had sunk below the horizon and now the sky was dark with the soft purple and blue of a summer’s night.
“Where are we going?” Syringa asked.
“Upstairs,” the Earl replied.
“To see the dome?” she exclaimed. “I would like that!”
He led her across the tiled floor by the light of one candle that he held in his hand.
When they reached the bottom of a carved marble staircase, he blew it out and she went ahead of him up the stairs.
She did not know what she expected, but, as she stepped through the doorway into the upper part of the building, Syringa gave a cry of astonishment.
The Ruthless Rake Page 20