The Ghost Who Fell in Love

by Barbara Cartland

  “You are very confident of doing that?” Demelza teased. “How could I think otherwise when he is your horse and mine?” the Earl answered.

  “I am glad that your journey was so – fruitful,” she said. “I was afraid you might have gone all that way only to be – disappointed.”

  “I knew Cardew had some good horses,” the Earl replied, “but these are exceptional.”

  “I also have some – news for – you,” Demelza said.

  The Earl waited, his eyes on her face, one hand absentmindedly caressing the ear of one of the spaniels who was trying to gain his attention.

  “The jumps were finished today.”

  It was obviously an announcement of some significance. “Finished?” the Earl exclaimed. “Did Hewson tell you that?”

  “He wanted to surprise you,” Demelza said, “and so did I. They are exactly the same as those that are erected on the Grand National course.”

  She paused to add,

  “You now have a chance of winning both the Grand National and the Derby.”

  “It is certainly a challenge,” the Earl said, “but I am new to steeplechasing and it may prove more difficult than training Crusader for the flat.”

  “It will give you another interest.”

  He glanced at her sharply before he asked,

  ”Are you suggesting I need one?”

  She looked at him in a way that expressed more clearly than words her inner feelings.

  “I am always – afraid,” she said softly, “that you will begin to be bored without parties – without all the amusing witty people who have always – surrounded you.”

  The Earl smiled as if something secretly amused him and then he replied,

  “Do you really think I would miss them when I have something here with you that I have never before had in my whole life?”

  He saw the question in Demelza’s eyes, but before she could ask it, he said,

  “A home! That is what all my money has never been able to buy. The home I did not have as a child, but which I have found here.”

  “Oh, Valient, is that – true? It is what I have prayed I might give you.”

  The Earl put down his glass of champagne and rose to his feet to stand at the window looking out at the exquisite view which ended in a distant horizon.

  “London seems very far away,” he said after a moment’s silence.

  “People will soon be – returning – there for the winter – Season.”

  “Are you tempting me?” the Earl asked and there was a hint of amusement in his voice.

  “It is something I have no wish – to do,” Demelza answered. “You know that for me being here with you is just like – being in Heaven. I have never been so happy.”

  He walked towards her and sat down on the edge of the chaise-longue facing her.

  “Have I really made you happy?” he asked.

  He knew the answer before she said with a depth of intensity in her voice that was very moving,

  “Every day I think it is impossible to be happier or to love you more. Then every – night I find I was mistaken and you give me an – ecstatic new love that I did not know – existed.”

  The Earl did not reply, but just sat looking at her and after a moment she asked a little anxiously,

  “What are you – thinking?”

  “I am wondering what it is about you that holds me spellbound every time I see you. I think really you are not a ghost, but a witch!”

  Demelza laughed.

  “I am certainly no longer a ghost,” she said. “I am the one who is – haunted, as I have been ever since the first – moment I saw you.”

  “Do you suppose I am not haunted too?” the Earl asked in a deep voice. “Haunted, not only by your eyes, your lips and your exquisite body, my darling, but by your heart and most of all by your love. That is something from which I wish never to escape.”

  “Would you – want to?” Demelza asked.

  “Do you expect me to answer such a foolish question?” he enquired. “If you are happy, how do you suppose I feel knowing you are mine, knowing we have everything in the world that really matters.”

  “Oh, Valient!”

  Demelza put out her arms towards him, but he still sat looking down at her, searching her face as if it was so precious, so perfect that he must commit every line of it to his memory.

  “I have something else to tell you,” she said. “I received a letter today from Gerard.”

  “I expected you would hear from him soon.”

  “He is so thrilled that you have allowed him to keep his new racehorses in your special stables at Newmarket. That was very – kind.”

  “There was plenty of room,” the Earl replied carelessly, “now that we have so many of those that matter here.”

  “And Gerard feels so well off now that he has obtained so much money from the sale of the pictures, which only you recognised as being valuable.”

  She looked at the Earl from under her eyelashes as she said,

  “I think, if you are truthful, you forced – the art dealer into paying more money for them than he would – otherwise have – done.”

  “I certainly made him pay what I considered was their true value and refused to allow him to treat Gerard as a greenhorn as regards art, which actually he is.”

  “It has made him very happy,” Demelza smiled.

  “I am more concerned with the feelings of his sister,” the Earl replied.

  “Do you want me to tell you how – grateful I am?”

  “I like it when you are grateful,” the Earl said, “but my interest in your brother was really entirely selfish. I did not wish you to worry about him, but only about me.”

  Demelza laughed.

  “You are very – possessive.”

  “Not only possessive,” the Earl replied, “but fanatically jealous. I cannot bear, and this is the truth, Demelza, that you should think of anyone or anything except myself. I want to possess every particle of you.”

  His voice deepened as he went on passionately,

  “I want to possess you as a woman. I want you to be mine from the top of your head to the soles of your tiny feet, but I want too, your mind, your heart and your soul.”

  His lips touched her cheek.

  “I warn you, my darling, as I have warned you before, that I am jealous even of the air you breathe!”

  “Oh, Valient, you know already that I – belong to you in every – possible way. I am part of you and I know that if you – died or grew – tired of me I should really become the ghost you once – thought me to be.”

  “That I should grow tired of you is a possibility we need not even contemplate,” the Earl said, “and I intend, God willing, that we should both live until we are very old.”

  “It can never be long enough for me,” Demelza murmured, “but you must try, my darling husband, not to be too – jealous.”

  “Why should I try to be anything but what I am?” the Earl asked. “Jealousy is a new emotion where I am concerned and, although I find it painful, there are compensations in knowing that I must fight and strive to possess you as completely as I wish to do.”

  “Fight?” she questioned.

  “Sometimes I feel that there is something elusive about you,” the Earl answered, “some secret within you that is not wholly mine.”

  “Why – should you – think that?”

  Now her eyes were veiled and her lashes were dark against the translucence of her white skin.

  “There is something,” the Earl said almost as if he spoke to himself. “At night when you are lying in my arms after we have touched the wings of ecstasy, I feel that we are so close, so completely one that our hearts beat in unison and we have no life apart from each other. Then, when the day comes – ”

  “What – happens – then?”

  “I feel you have escaped me,” the Earl replied, “just as I feel now there is something – but what it can be I have no idea – that you are hiding.�
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  He reached out suddenly and put his hands on her shoulders.

  “What is it?” he questioned. “What are you withholding from someone who would possess you utterly, the man who worships you, but at the same time is your conqueror?”

  Demelza was very soft and yielding beneath the grip of his hands and the almost violent note in his voice.

  “Perhaps it is because we are so – close, my darling,” she said after a moment, “that we know not only every – inflection in the other’s voice, but also every secret – every stirring of our – souls which are so linked that we think with a single thought.”

  “You have not answered my question,” the Earl said. “You have a secret! I know it! I know it instinctively! I felt last night that there was something and when I came into this room today I was sure of it!”

  The grip of his hands tightened.

  “You will not keep me in ignorance!” he stormed. “Tell me what I do not know – for I will not allow you to play with me.”

  “I am not – playing with you, my beloved husband,” Demelza answered. “It is only that I am – afraid.” “Of me?”

  She shook her head.

  “I could never be – afraid of you – but perhaps a little of your – jealousy.”

  There was a frown between the Earl’s eyes.

  “What could you do that would make me jealous?” Demelza did not answer and after a pause he said,

  “What are you trying to tell me?”

  Demelza glanced at him, then looked away again and he saw the faint colour rising up her face.

  “Only,” she said in a whisper, “that perhaps I will not be – able to – watch you – win the Grand National.”

  For a moment the Earl did not understand, then as he took his hands from her shoulders he asked,

  “Are you saying, my darling one – is it possible – so soon?”

  “It is – soon,” Demelza whispered, “but like you I am – sure it is a – certainty !”

  The Earl put his arms around her and held her close. “Why did you not tell me?”

  “I wanted to be – sure.”

  “And you were also afraid that I might be jealous?”

  “After – what you have – just said – very afraid!”

  “I shall be jealous if you love our children more than you love me,” he said. “But I know one thing – they will never suffer as I did from neglect and indifference or lack of love.”

  “They will never do that,” Demelza agreed. “And, my wonderful – marvellous husband – we must both give them love, but you will always be first, a very easy first – you know that.”

  There was a throb of passion in her voice which brought the fire back into the Earl’s eyes, but, as if to hold his desires within bounds, he said jokingly,

  “Is it possible for a ghost to have a baby?”

  “I am not a ghost,” Demelza protested. “You have made me a woman – a woman who loves you so – much and so – overwhelmingly that she can imagine nothing more perfect than to have a tiny replica of – you.”

  “If I am going to give you a son,” the Earl said, “I must insist on a daughter as well, who will look like you, my darling, and whom I too can love.”

  “The house is big enough for any number of – children,” Demelza answered, “and the garden is so lovely and the sea is so near – but perhaps – ”

  She stopped suddenly and the Earl, who was touching the softness of her cheek with his lips, raised his head to ask,

  “Perhaps what?”

  “Perhaps by the time they are – old enough to enjoy such – things, you will want to leave Cornwall for one of your other houses.”

  He smiled at her.

  “I know exactly what you are doing, my precious. You are trying to safeguard yourself against being hurt by thinking you must not count too much on my constancy.”

  He saw by the flicker in Demelza’s eyes that he had guessed the truth and after a moment he said,

  “Do you want me to swear that we will stay here for the rest of our lives?”

  “No, of course not!” she cried. “You know from the moment you asked me to be your – wife that I have tried to leave you free. I do not want to constrain and confine you as other – women have wished to do. I want you always to do – exactly what you wish.”

  The Earl did not speak and after a moment she said a little shyly,

  “This is what I believe real love is. To give, not to demand, to ask not for promises or reassurance except for those which – come spontaneously from the heart.”

  She looked at him before she added,

  “Wherever you go as long as you – take me with you I shall be happy and content. I do not wish you to feel tied to any – place that might become a – burden or an encumbrance. All I want is your – happiness.”

  The Earl’s expression was very tender.

  Even after being married to Demelza for three months she could still surprise him by the depth of her feelings, by an intuition that was so attuned to his that she always said the right thing.

  Was there any other woman in the world, he wondered, who would not seek to hold onto him and bind him? To make him in some way her prisoner?

  He knew that, because Demelza left him free, he was utterly and completely her captive. Everything she said and everything she did made him want her all the more.

  She was what he had sought in his imagination and never found – she was in fact what he had believed to be impossible, mother, wife and child in one small ethereal person.

  Only occasionally did he protest at the way she cosseted him and cared for him, for he knew it was what he had always missed in his own mother.

  As a wife she gave him everything that a woman deeply in love could give and so much more besides.

  He found her innocence to be so exciting, so fascinating, that when he taught her about love she aroused him spiritually as well as physically, as no woman had ever been able to do.

  He thought that, although he would be a little jealous of his children because they would command much of her attention, he would be proud of them in the same way that he was proud of his horses and his other possessions.

  But they would mean so much more and be more absorbing because they were an actual part of himself and of her.

  In loving Demelza so wholeheartedly and in fighting to own her completely, as he had said himself, in body, mind and soul, he had not until now given any thought to the fact that their union would result in children.

  Now he knew it would complete her as a woman, a woman he would love in an even deeper and perhaps more passionate manner than he had loved the innocent and elusive girl.

  Demelza was watching him with just a touch of anxiety in her eyes.

  “You are – pleased? You are – really pleased, Valient, that we are to have – a baby?”

  “I am pleased, my precious one,” the Earl answered, “but you must take great care of yourself. I will not have anyone, not even my own child, upsetting or forcing you to take any risks.”

  “You must not – mollycoddle me!”

  “That is what I say to you, but you never listen.”

  “All I want is for – you to love – me,” Demelza said, “even when I am not as – pretty as you think me – now.”

  “You will always be the most beautiful girl I have ever seen,” the Earl said positively.

  He thought as he spoke that there was nothing more beautiful than a rose in full bloom.

  But Demelza did not smell of roses but of honeysuckle and he knew that, because the fragrance was always with him, it was impossible for him not to think of her every moment even when they were apart as they had been today.

  She knew he was waiting to say more and now he rose to pull off his coat. He threw it on the floor and sat beside Demelza on the chaise-longue putting up his legs in his shining hessian boots and pulling her against him.

  She laid her head on his shoulder and put her arm round him to f
eel with her long sensitive fingers the muscles in his back as she had done before.

  “Have you any more surprises for me?” he asked, his mouth on her hair.

  “I think it is – enough for one day,” she answered, “except that I want to tell you that I – love you!”

  “That is strange,” the Earl remarked, “because it is exactly what I was going to say to you!”

  He felt her lips kiss him through the soft lawn shirt and the little quiver that went through her.

  The fire within flamed as he asked,

  “What are you feeling, my darling?”

  “Very – thrilled – excited – because I am so close to you.”

  He put his hand under her chin and turned her face up to his.

  The love in her eyes and the invitation on her lips made him turn round until, as her head sank against the soft cushions, he was looking down at her while their bodies were very close.

  “There has not been a moment today when I have not been thinking of you,” he said, “and yet, in some strange way, you were with me.”

  “I feel – that too,” Demelza said, “but I – wanted you! I wanted you – desperately – as you are now.”

  His hand moved over the curved line of her hip, then rose towards the softness of her breast.

  “You tell me I am free, my lovely one,” he said, “but I could never be free, even if I wished to be.”

  With the little gesture he loved, she raised her mouth. Just for a moment he hesitated as if he had more to say, then words were unnecessary.

  His lips came down on hers and he knew beneath the softness of them there was a leaping flame which echoed the burning sensation within himself.

  His heart was frantically beating against Demelza’s as he drew her close and still closer.

  Then there was the fragrance of honeysuckle and the haunting mystery and inescapable wonder of love, which was as free as the wind, as deep as the ocean and as high as the sky.

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