She turned her head to one side so that he could see to fasten the clasp underneath the heavy coil of her hair. Then, as he removed his hands, she put up her own to hold the cross and look down at it.
“It is lovely! The most beautiful piece of jewellery I have ever seen!” she cried. “Thank you more than I can possibly say! I know I shall feel safe now. Thank you!”
She lifted her face like a child as she spoke and the Marquis realised she intended to kiss his cheek in a spontaneous act of gratitude.
He did not move and he felt her lips soft and warm against his skin. It gave him a strange feeling that he could not put a name to.
Then, as the door opened and the footmen came into the room, bringing the first dishes for dinner, he rose to his feet.
The table was placed in front of the chaise longue and Newman had seen that it was exactly the right height.
There was a comfortable high-backed chair for the Marquis and beside the table there was the large, crested silver bucket filled with ice in which rested several bottles of wine.
There were gold candelabra to hold the lighted candles and there were small white orchids as a decoration.
“I like orchids,” Idylla murmured, “but they have no smell.”
“I noticed when I put the cross round your neck,” the Marquis said, “that your hair held the fragrance of lilies of the valley.”
“My favourite flower,” Idylla told him. “So Nanny distilled some of their perfume for me.”
She smiled as she added shyly, “I am so glad you – like it – but I felt it was – cruel to have to spoil so many lovely blooms.”
“I think they would be willing to die for you!” the Marquis said quietly and she blushed.
The dinner was delicious. Idylla took only tiny portions of each course and sipped the wine a little tentatively, but the Marquis knew that she was enjoying herself.
“Even though my memory has gone,” she said, “I am sure this is the first time I have ever had such a delicious dinner or dined with anyone so distinguished!”
“Can you be sure of that?” the Marquis enquired.
“I am quite, quite sure that I have never met anyone like you,” she replied.
She had spoken with an unaffected ease, but now her blue eyes met the Marquis’s and quite unexpectedly there was a constraint between them.
It was something neither of them could have explained, but it was as if it was hard to go on talking and difficult to take their eyes from each other.
They had both been laughing and discussing a number of subjects, but suddenly there was no need for words.
The footmen took away the last of the dishes and then removed the table.
Newman brought up an armchair and set it beside Idylla’s chaise longue. He placed a cut-glass decanter of brandy beside it on a small side table, then withdrew from the room.
They were alone and Idylla’s eyes dropped as if she was shy and she put up her fingers to touch the cross to make sure that it was still there.
The Marquis watched her for a few moments and then he said, “You are very beautiful, Idylla!”
Her eyes were raised to his in astonishment.
“Beautiful?” she queried. “No one has ever told me that before!”
“How do you know?” the Marquis enquired.
“If they had, I am sure I would have – remembered.”
“Is it so important?”
“Very important! I-I – I want you to think me – beautiful.”
“Why?” the Marquis asked.
The question seemed to confuse her a little.
“You have been so – kind,” she murmured. “You have given me – lovely gowns and lent me this – diamond cross to wear.”
She paused and, as if she thought this was inadequate, she added, “You also saved me from – dying and brought me to your – house.”
“And so for these reasons and these reasons alone you want me to think you beautiful?” the Marquis asked.
There was silence. Then after a moment Idylla said hesitatingly, “Nanny has told me of the smart and important people whom you know in London and the many – lovely ladies you – entertain. I did not want you to be – disappointed in me.”
“Shall I tell you,” the Marquis asked, “that not only am I not disappointed, but I have never entertained anyone as lovely as you, Idylla, and that is the truth!”
Her eyes seemed to be full of stars.
“Do you – mean that?”
“I mean it very sincerely.”
The Marquis set down his glass of brandy on the table beside him and rose from the armchair to sit, as he had done earlier in the evening, on the side of Idylla’s chaise longue.
It was quite wide and she was so slight and slim that there was plenty of room for him.
At the same time they were very close to each other and he knew that a little tremor ran through her although he was sure it was not from fear.
“Before dinner,” he said in his deep voice, “when I gave you the diamond cross you kissed my cheek when you thanked me. I want to thank you, Idylla, for one of the most enchanting evenings I have ever spent. May I do that?”
He drew a little nearer to her as he spoke. As she did not answer, he put his arm behind her and drew her towards him.
Just for a moment he looked down into her blue eyes, then slowly his mouth sought hers.
It was a very gentle kiss, as if the Marquis was afraid to frighten her. Her lips were sweet and soft as the petals of a flower and as pure and untouched.
There was something inexpressibly lovely in her innocence that the Marquis had never found before. Then he raised his head and laid her back gently against the cushions.
She looked at him with her blue eyes that were no longer shining like stars but seemed to him to be filled with the softness and mystery of the moonlight.
“I thought a – kiss would be – like that,” she murmured almost beneath her breath.
“Like what?” the Marquis asked.
“So perfect – like flying into the – sky – and like a – prayer.”
“A prayer?” the Marquis asked, puzzled.
“Sometimes when I am praying,” Idylla explained, “I feel as if I am with the angels – I can hear them singing and share their – exaltation. That is what I felt – just now when you – kissed me.”
The Marquis drew in his breath.
Lifting her hand, he kissed first the back of it, then, turning it over, his lips lingered for a moment on the softness of her palm.
“There are so many things we have to say to each other, Idylla,” he said. “But not tonight. I don’t want to tire you. I want you to go to sleep thinking of the kiss we have just given each other and the cross round your neck which will keep you safe.”
He kissed her hand again and then rose to his feet. “Goodnight, Idylla,” he said softly. “You are correctly named. You are perfection!”
There was a note in his voice that made Idylla vibrate to it as if it was the music of angels. Then he was gone from the room and Nanny came bustling in like a strong wind from the sea.
“It’s half after nine o’clock,” she said, “and time you were in bed an hour ago. I told his Lordship not to keep you up late. If you are tired tomorrow, don’t blame me!”
Idylla did not answer. She only knew, as Nanny undressed her, chattering all the time, that her happiness could only have come from Heaven itself.
*
The Marquis awoke and realised that he had been asleep after lying awake for a long time.
He had gone to bed just before midnight not because he was tired, but because he knew his valet was waiting up for him.
Surprisingly, although he was not usually concerned with his servants’ feelings, he thought that Harris might be tired.
It was a warm night and the windows of his room were wide open. He had lain, feeling the breeze blowing through the curtains and thought the softness of it was like the touch of Idylla’s lips
.
He knew that what he felt when he had kissed her was quite different from anything he had known before.
It was difficult to count how many women he had kissed in his life, but it was somehow an indictment against himself to realise that the majority of kisses he had given and received had meant absolutely nothing. He could not now even remember them.
Looking back, he found, somewhat to his consternation, that few women, once he had parted from them, had left a lasting impression upon his mind They had been beautiful, captivating, and they had entertained him at the time with an expertise, which had made him believe that each in her turn was unique and meant more to him than any woman had meant before.
But always such ideas had proved to be illusory.
Sooner or later he had acknowledged to himself that they no longer interested him and that their allurements had worn thin or vanished altogether.
‘What do I feel for Idylla?’ he asked and told himself it was impossible that she could really mean more and seem so utterly different from anyone he had known in the past.
After all, she was very much younger than he was and much younger also than the women who had attracted him over the years.
He had thought that he only liked sophistication.
It had certainly been easier to have a love affair with a woman who was versed in not only the tricks and allurements of love but also in the etiquette that the Marquis had always believed turned love-making into an art.
Idylla was innocent of all these things and he had known when he kissed her that she responded to his kiss not only with her lips but with some spirituality that he had not expected.
She had tried to explain it to him, but he had recognised it even before she put it into words.
Strangely enough, what she had felt had been what he had felt himself.
“Damnit!” he said in the darkness of his room. “This is magic!”
He spoke aloud and as he did so he knew that he was trying to sweep away the enchantment simply because he could not explain it and was almost afraid of it.
It was a nonsensical idea and he tried to tell himself that, because this was a district of sorcery and unenlightenment, he had merely been caught in the toils of witchcraft to the point where he had begun to believe in it.
And yet, however much the cynical part of his mind tried to refute it, when he had kissed Idylla it had been different!
He knew that nothing he could think or say could change the fact that she had aroused in him a strange emotion such as he had never known before.
He had fallen asleep to dream of her and yet now for no apparent reason he was awake.
The wind was still moving the curtains but it was noiseless. He wondered why he felt so alert when he was sure it was not yet dawn.
He had a strange feeling that Idylla had called him. But even if she had done so, he could not have heard her in his room, which, although it was on the same floor, was two large State Rooms away.
Again he had the feeling that she was calling out to him.
‘This place is making me imagine things!’ he said to himself. ‘The sooner I go back to civilisation, the better!’
Nevertheless, he climbed out of bed and put on his robe and slippers before he walked to the window to look out at the night.
As he had expected, the sky was filled with stars and the moon was overhead.
It was a young moon, little more than a crescent and it made him think of the shimmer of Idylla’s gown as he had looked at her across the table at dinner.
At the thought of her, he glanced along the side of the house in the direction of her room and then froze into immobility.
He could see the balcony that had been built for his grandmother standing out sharply against the Adam facade and, standing on it, quite distinct in the light from the stars, there was a man!
The Marquis stared in astonishment, then saw that there was another man in the garden below and suspended between the balcony and the ground there was a figure in white.
For a moment he could not imagine what was happening or what the men could be doing. Then in a flash he realised that they were conveying a body – and it must be Idylla!
For an instant the Marquis felt as if he could not move with the surprise of it. Then, running across the room and pulling open the door, he turned not towards Idylla’s room but towards the stairs.
Some part of his brain which had been trained for immediate action in the Army told him clearly, almost as if it was an order, that to prevent effectively what was happening he must attack from the ground.
He had never realised before how high the staircase was or what a long way it was across the hall and down the passage that led to the sitting room which lay beneath Idylla’s bedroom.
As he went, running quicker than he had run since he was a boy, the Marquis calculated that he would have to open the window and climb out onto the terrace.
He could approach from another angle, but he thought to himself that the man who was waiting to take hold of Idylla as she was lowered down to him would be looking upwards.
The Marquis opened the door of the room quietly and made no attempt to draw the curtains back but slipped behind them.
Through the glass in the window he could see the man quite clearly and his head was tipped back.
Now the Marquis could see that there was a ladder up which the first man must have climbed and down which they were sliding Idylla to the ground.
The windows of The Castle were kept well oiled and the Marquis was able to turn the latch and open the casement without making a sound.
Then he turned back into the room and picked up a candlestick from a side table near the window.
It was made of heavy silver and the square base with its pointed corners made it a formidable weapon.
Clasping it firmly in his right hand, he slipped over the sill and out onto the terrace, only slightly incommoded by his long silk robe.
Now the Marquis saw that Idylla was only a foot from the ground and that her body made it quite impossible for the man who was holding on to her to see his approach.
The Marquis also imagined that the other man who had let Idylla down from the balcony would now be climbing down himself.
Swiftly and silently he moved, nearer and nearer and, before the man could even turn towards him, he raised the candlestick and hit him hard on the side of the head.
The man gave a little cry and fell to the ground. As he did so, the man on the ladder jumped at the Marquis.
He was a large man and had he landed as he had intended on the Marquis’s back, he would have felled him.
As it was, the Marquis stepped aside at exactly the right moment and the man sprawled forward, his arms outstretched to save himself. As he did so, the Marquis brought the silver candlestick down hard on the back of his head.
He fell forward as if pole-axed.
The Marquis threw the candlestick down beside him and turned to Idylla.
She was standing propped against the ladder and he saw that she had been gagged and bound with a rope which encircled her, so that from her shoulders to her ankles she was unable to move.
He took off the gag and she gave a little cry of fear and hid her face against his shoulder.
“It is all right, my darling! You are safe! They have not hurt you?”
She was unable to answer him, but he could feel her trembling as with his free hand he endeavoured to undo the rope that had been wound tightly round her body.
Finally the rope dropped to the ground and without even looking at the men he had felled, the Marquis picked Idylla up in his arms and carried her to the window he had climbed out of.
“This is going to be rather difficult,” he said gently, “but it will take far longer to go round to the front door and try to arouse the staff.”
She raised her head from his shoulder at his words and he lifted her very gently through the window and onto the floor inside.
“Hold on to a chai
r or anything that will prevent you from falling while I climb in beside you,” he said.
The calm unhurried way in which he spoke made her obey him even while he was aware that she was still trembling violently.
He had released her only for a very few seconds before he too was in the room. He picked her up and held her close against him.
“You are safe and I am taking you up to bed,” he muttered.
She was wearing only a thin diaphanous nightgown, which he had ordered for her from London and he could feel that her body was very cold and shaking with fear as he carried her up the stairs and back to her bedroom.
He set her down on the bed and saw that the sheets had been pulled back and tumbled by the men who had tried to abduct her.
As he laid her down against the pillows, he saw in the dim light coming through the window the glitter of the cross which she wore round her neck and thought that it must have protected her.
Her hands were clinging to him and he said gently, “Listen, my darling, I am going to leave you for just a few minutes while I rouse the nightwatchmen and have these scoundrels who were trying to kidnap you tied up and put into a safe place. Would you like me to call Nanny? Or will you wait for me to return to you?” He saw she could not speak and went on, “I will be as quick as I can. I want to hear what happened. I want to reassure you that it will not happen again and in case you are apprehensive I am going to shut the window onto the balcony and lock it.”
He moved across the room as he spoke. When he had locked the window, he lit the candlebrum holding three candles which stood by her bed and looked down at her.
He thought in the golden glow of the candlelight she did not look as fearful as he might have expected. “You will be all right?” he asked.
“I prayed you would – save me,” she whispered.
“I heard your prayer,” the Marquis answered simply.
Idylla gave a sudden cry.
“I – remember! Now – I remember – and I know – who – I am!”
Chapter Six
The Blue Eyed Witch Page 11