The Marquis Who Hated Women (Bantam Series No. 62)

by Barbara Cartland

  Proceeding from one burial chamber to another, Mariette showed them the sarcophagi in which the Bulls had been buried.

  They were made of black and red granite, each one having been quarried in one piece, weighing about seventy-two tons and measuring nine feet in height.

  “Had a great deal of plundering been done?” the Marquis enquired as they climbed away from the darkness towards the sunlight.

  “I have found two tombs intact,” Monsieur Mariette replied, “but of course the plunderers had done inestimable damage, not only by stealing the funereal statuettes but also by knocking down walls and rendering the roofs unsafe in many places.”

  “Were they modern plunderers or ancient ones?” the Marquis enquired.

  Monsieur Mariette shrugged his shoulders.

  “Plunderers have existed all through the ages,” he answered, “and I find myself hating them more every time I realise what records of history they have destroyed and how much knowledge has been lost.”

  “I can understand that,” the Marquis agreed.

  When they reached the carriage, Monsieur Mariette kept them waiting while he repaired to a small tent standing near his excavations and in which apparently he kept a change of clothing.

  He came to them after a short delay, looking very much more presentable, and Shikara realised that he was in fact an attractive young man.

  She reckoned from what her father had told her that he was only thirty-one, and it was amazing how much he had achieved in the teeth of opposition from the authorities and especially the agents of the Khedive, the Ruler of Egypt, who had tried at one time to shut down the dig and confiscate what had been found.

  “Of course,” Monsieur Mariette said with engaging frankness as he related what had happened, ‘I have been digging here without the appropriate permission, and had expected such intervention for some time.”

  “But you are now legally entitled to excavate?” the Marquis asked.

  “Thankfully, yes,” Monsieur Mariette replied, “but I always run the risk of unwelcome visitors and the dealers in Cairo, who have an easy sale for burial bronzes and of course for anything that is gold.”

  Looking at some of his workmen, he added in a worried voice:

  “I can trust no-one! The men who are digging for me try to conceal any small objects they unearth, knowing they have a ready and ever-widening market for them.”

  “That must make things very difficult for you,” Shikara sympathised.

  “Your father thought we had worse petty pilfering in Egypt than anywhere else in the world,” Monsieur Mariette informed her.

  They managed to obtain a rather unappetising meal at a small guest-house near the Pyramids.

  Shikara was not interested in what she ate, but she thought the Marquis looked somewhat disdainfully at the food which he was served, while Monsieur Mariette ate everything that was put in front of him.

  Now that they were away from the catacombs, he became less of an Archaeologist and more of an ardent young Frenchman.

  Shikara realised that he found her attractive and there was that look in his eyes which she had seen before and had always disliked.

  But because she admired Monsieur Mariette and because he had been a friend of her father she found herself enjoying his company and even the compliments he paid her.

  “Your father spoke of you so often, Mademoiselle,” he said. “He told me how beautiful you were, and now I see that he was not exaggerating!”

  Shikara smiled.

  “I cannot believe that you and Papa talked about anything but your discoveries.”

  “Sometimes in the evenings we would become very sentimental about the people we had left behind,” Monsieur Mariette said.

  “Papa was used to being on his own, but you, after living in Paris, Monsieur, must find it very strange.”

  “I love the desert, I love it passionately!” Monsieur Mariette replied. “But sometimes, Mademoiselle, I long for a woman like yourself to be with me—someone who would understand what I was doing, to encourage and inspire me.”

  The Marquis pushed back his chair, which made a scraping noise along the wooden floor.

  “I think we should discuss the main object of our visit, Shikara,” he said abruptly, “and that is to discover what steps have been taken to find your father.”

  “What can we do?” Shikara asked Monsieur Mariette.

  ‘I honestly do not know,” he replied. “You can go to the authorities but they will not be very interested, and, as I have said, they may be annoyed because your father was an Englishman and as such not responsible to the French Government for anything that is discovered here.”

  “Papa would not want to take away anything from Egypt,” Shikara said.

  “You know that and I know that, Mademoiselle,” Monsieur Mariette replied, “but it would be very difficult to convince anyone in authority that it was the truth.”

  “It certainly appears to make our task very difficult,” the Marquis said dryly.

  He called for the bill, then said:

  “I suggest, Monsieur, that as it is getting towards the hottest part of the day Miss Bartlett and I should return to Cairo. Perhaps we could call on you again tomorrow, and if you have any other thoughts as to what can be done we shall be interested to hear them.”

  Monsieur Mariette bowed.

  “I am sure Miss Bartlett would also like her father’s belongings to be packed up and given into her keeping,” the Marquis added.

  “There is not very much, I think,” Monsieur Mariette said vaguely. “And I left them where he was lodging.”

  “In which case they may have also disappeared,” the Marquis remarked.

  Shikara looked at him in perplexity.

  She had the feeling that the Marquis was deliberately making it uncomfortable for Monsieur Mariette, but there was nothing she could say except to thank the Frenchman very warmly for all he had shown them.

  “It has been a very great pleasure,” Monsieur Mariette said. There was no doubt from the tone of his voice that he spoke with all sincerity.

  “I want to see you tomorrow,” he added in a low voice. ‘I am sure by that time I shall have thought of something that may be of help.”

  He held her hand in his, then as he had done before raised it to his lips, although Shikara knew it was unconventional to lass the hand of an unmarried girl.

  Then he left them and hurried away in a manner which made her sure he was anxious to get back to his excavations.

  “I am very sorry about your father,” the Marquis said as they drove back to Cairo.

  “I suppose it is not worse than I expected,” Shikara answered. “I really had very little hope that he was alive.”

  “You are now convinced that he is dead?” the Marquis asked.

  “I feel there can be no other explanation. But how did he die? And why? And where? That is what I would like to know.”

  She sighed, then went on:

  “I knew as soon as I saw the vaults that Papa would never have left so suddenly when there was so much left to excavate, so much more to discover. It was just the sort of place he adored, and he would have worked until the last possible stone was uncovered and catalogued.”

  “I am sorry,” the Marquis said quietly.

  Shikara did not reply.

  A cloud of depression seemed to encompass her.

  She was thinking not so much of her father’s death but the fact that now that he had gone she was alone, completely alone in the world.

  The future seemed very dark and empty.

  CHAPTER SIX

  As it had grown very hot Shikara rested after luncheon, but she knew that the Marquis had gone ashore and she wondered where he had gone.

  She had not been alone with him except in the open carriage since they had left the excavations and Monsieur Mariette.

  She had a feeling that he was in a strange mood, which she did not understand, and it upset her because she was certain that it was somehow
connected with the fact that he had kissed her last night.

  She could not imagine why that should trouble him.

  She herself had only to think of it to recapture that wonder and rapture she had felt when his lips held hers and she seemed to melt into him and they became no longer two people but one.

  “That is what I felt,” Shikara told herself, “but obviously it was very different for him—just a moment’s interest in pie due to the magic of the night, and now he has gone back to hating me again.”

  She felt as if she could hardly bear to contemplate his hatred of her as a woman, while in other ways he had been everything that was kindness and consideration.

  “Perhaps,” she told herself dismally, “he has gone to arrange for my journey back to England.”

  She was sure he would never allow her to stay alone in Egypt, and now that she had seen both Cairo and Alexandria she knew her original idea of staying and finding work here was quite impossible.

  The place was too big, too foreign, too alien in every way to the life she had lived at home.

  She had travelled, but that was with her father and mother and was very different from being a young girl unchaperoned in an alien city.

  She thought perhaps she might ask Monsieur Mariette if she could work with him, but she knew how much the Archaeologists she had known in the past had fought against the intrusion of women on any site in which they were interested.

  Shikara had thought that they resented it even when her mother and she were shown round the places her father was investigating.

  She was therefore quite certain that although Monsieur Mariette had looked at her with admiration, he would want to confine their acquaintance to the times when he was not actively employed in excavations.

  Although he had taken Shikara and the Marquis through the burial chambers, he had moved quickly and Shikara felt she had not had a chance by the flickering candlelight to see the sarcophagi clearly or to get a real impression of what she knew was a long-lost cult.

  Always when she had been to excavations with her father in the past he had said to her:

  “Do not just look, but think and feel. Let your perception visualise what these people were like all those centuries ago. Try to get in touch with their vibrations. It will teach you more than a thousand books.”

  Shikara had tried to follow his instructions but there had been no chance of doing anything but listening when Monsieur Mariette was pointing out the places that had been plundered and the work he and her father had completed.

  There had also been the Arab workmen tapping away at the unexposed tombs and carrying away the baskets filled with sand along the long burial chamber.

  There had been an unending file of them passing all the time, and Shikara found herself continually moving out of their way and being aware of their dark eyes staring at her with curiosity.

  “I must have looked very strange to them in my white gown,” she thought to herself.

  But she realised that they intruded on her thoughts and her feelings, and she felt a sudden longing to use the perception that her father had taught her.

  Perhaps, who knows, she might have some idea of what had happened to him, if she could be alone in the quietness of the tomb.

  She did not sleep during her rest, but lay planning what she would say to the Marquis. When she heard him come on board she rose and went to find him.

  He was not in the Saloon as she had hoped, but was standing up on deck looking across the Nile.

  It was a very colourful picture and the great river seemed to be a hive of activity.

  There were also boats continually coming to the side of the yacht, offering to sell fruit, necklaces, rugs, and every other kind of merchandise.

  The Marquis tried to ignore them, but the Egyptian salesmen were very persistent and refused to go away.

  It was therefore impossible for Shikara to speak to him privately in such circumstances.

  So they discussed the scene and the Marquis pointed out some of the buildings of interest on the opposite bank until it was time to change for dinner.

  Shikara went below and after a cool bath which Hignet had prepared for her she put on one of her pretty new gowns and looked in the mirror, hoping the Marquis would think her attractive.

  "Last night he kissed me,” she told herself, and felt a thrill run through her at the memory.

  Could anything have been more wonderful or more perfect?

  And yet he had apparently forgotten it, or now in the daylight she no longer had any attraction for him.

  She longed when they were on deck to ask him why he had gone into the town, but she had been too shy and at the same time afraid.

  Suppose he had arranged for her to return to England?

  There seemed no doubt now that her father was dead and that her Uncle was now her undisputed Guardian.

  She thought of Lord Stroud waiting for her, and she knew that once she returned she would no longer be able to escape him but would have to obey her Uncle’s wishes.

  “I would rather die!” she said as she said before, but this time she meant it.

  She might be afraid to be alone in Egypt; but that was nothing compared to the fear she would experience if she had to marry a man who repulsed her, a man who would legally be entitled to touch and embrace her.

  She knew that she would shrink in horror and disgust from any man other than the Marquis.

  "Death is not the most terrifying thing in the world,” she told herself.

  Yet there had been something eerie in the darkness of the burial chamber which had made her long to live.

  She thought that not only in the Egyptian mind but in everyone else’s death was the dark and life was the sunshine. As far as she was concerned, being in the sunshine meant being with the Marquis.

  Without him there was only darkness and a loneliness that she could hardly bear to contemplate.

  Then with a pride that had always been very much a part of her character Shikara told herself that if the Marquis did not want her she must leave him, as she had promised, without making a scene.

  She knew that he would be contemptuous and despise her if she broke her word.

  She thought she could bear anything rather than that he should leave her in disgust because she had become an intolerable nuisance.

  She went up to the Saloon for dinner with her head held high, conscious that if she could not measure up to the allurements of the Senhora, at least she looked her best.

  Now that the heat of the day was abating, there was a breeze blowing down the river and it made the whole yacht seem cool and pleasant.

  There was the soft lap of the water against the sides and from the shore came the scent of the flowering shrubs which grew wild along the river bank.

  It had an enchantment which Shikara would have enjoyed if her thoughts could have been centred on anything except the Marquis.

  He had changed for dinner and she thought that no man could look more magnificent or more attractive as he rose to his feet when she entered the Saloon.

  “You are rested?” he asked.

  She smiled at him and he went on without waiting for her reply:

  “I realise what you learnt today has been a shock for you. It was also very hot and I thought it would be pleasant if we had dinner tonight on deck.”

  ‘I would like that,” Shikara said.

  She found that the stewards had erected an awning and the place where they were to dine was screened on one side from the curious gaze of the passers-by.

  The table was decorated with flowers and there was a long cool drink which tasted of limes, which Shikara found delicious.

  After the very indifferent luncheon they had eaten, the Chefs dishes would have enticed a far more fastidious appetite than hers.

  The Marquis talked of Egyptian history while they were being served, and only when Shikara had finished a cup of sweet Turkish coffee did she look across the table at him to say:

  “I hav
e ... something to ... ask you.”

  “What is it?” he enquired.

  She had a feeling he was slightly apprehensive. She was aware that while he talked most interestingly during dinner there had been something impersonal about every subject on which they had touched.

  It was as if he was deliberately avoiding anything that could possibly become intimate or be construed as anything but casual conversation between two people who were little more than acquaintances.

  Shikara had only to look at the Marquis to feel her whole being reaching out to him.

  But because she felt he did not want her, she tried desperately hard with what was an admirable self-control to behave as he appeared to wish her to do.

  Yet all the time she knew that her whole being ached for him and she wanted beyond her hope of Heaven to feel his lips on hers again.

  Now when they were alone she knew it was her opportunity to tell him what she wanted and after a moment’s pause she said tentatively:

  “You will think it very ... strange of me, but I feel I must go back to Monsieur Mariette’s excavations at Memphis.”

  “Tonight?” the Marquis enquired.

  “Yes, tonight when the workmen will have gone and Monsieur Mariette will have left for the day.”

  “Why do you want to do that?” the Marquis enquired.

  Shikara hesitated a moment, then she said:

  “I want to get the real ... feeling of the place. I have an idea, it may be quite ... absurd, that it will make me feel ... closer to Papa, that I might even be ... aware of what ... happened to him.”

  “Do you mean that you will know clairvoyantly?” the Marquis asked.

  “I suppose you might call it that,” Shikara answered. “It is what Papa called using one’s sixth sense.’ It was what he always used himself when he wanted to know if an excavation was worth undertaking. He was always right even though there was nothing to see except rocks and sand.”

  “And you wish to go on this expedition alone?” the Marquis asked.

  Shikara did not speak but she looked at him, her eyes very wide and pleading in her small face.

  There was no need to put into words what she asked; she felt almost as if she said aloud how much she wanted him with her—how much she always wanted him.