“He will ... take his ... revenge,” she sobbed. “He will ... tell the Countess about ... me, and I shall ... have to go ... away. He will ... never let me ... go.”
Her words were almost incoherent, but the Marquis heard them. Very gently, as if he was afraid he would frighten her, he put his arms round her and drew her close to him.
She was so distressed she hardly realised what he was doing, and went on crying against his shoulder.
“I told you it was all right,” he said quietly. Mundesley will do none of those things. I will not let him.”
“How ... can you ... stop him? He had ... detectives looking for me. Everywhere I ... hide, they will ... find me.”
There was a note of despair in her voice, and as she spoke Davita had pictures of herself running ... running with Lord Mundesley pursuing her as if she were a fox.
“Stop crying,” the Marquis said. “I want to talk to you.”
It struck Davita that perhaps this was the last time she would ever be able to talk to him.
With what was almost a superhuman effort, she attempted to control her tears, and groped in her waistband for her handkerchief.
The Marquis took one from the breast-pocket of his coat and placed it in her hands.
Because it smelt of eau-de-Cologne, and because it was his, it made her want to cry again.
She wiped the tears from her cheeks and though they were still swimming in her eyes and her eye-lashes were wet, she looked at him, feeling she should move from the shelter of his arms, but making no effort to do so. He looked down at her and said gently:
“You look as if you are very much in need of someone to look after you.”
Davita shuddered, and he knew she was thinking it might be Lord Mundesley.
“How could I have anticipated that this would happen to you?” the Marquis asked. “And yet I came home early because I had an idea I was needed.”
“I needed you desperately,” Davita whispered, “and somehow I ... thought you might be ... earlier than was ... expected.”
“Was that why you were walking on the drive?” the Marquis asked.
Because he might think it forward of her, she looked down shyly, and could not answer him.
“I came in time,” the Marquis said, as if he was following his own train of thought. “And now, as I have said, Lord Mundesley will not trouble you again.”
His words brought the fear back, and Davita cried: “But he will ... and how can you ... prevent him when you have ... gone away?”
“By taking you with me,” the Marquis said very quietly.
She thought she could not have heard him aright.
As her eyes looked up at him enquiringly, he said:
“It is too soon—I did not mean to tell you about it yet, Davita, but ever since I first saw you I have been unable to forget you, and I think perhaps you know already that we mean something very special to each other.”
For the moment Davita thought she must be dreaming, but then as the Marquis seemed to be enveloped with a dazzling light, she thought that perhaps he was making her the same proposal as Lord Mundesley had.
With an inarticulate little sound she turned her face away from him.
As if he knew without words what she was thinking, he said:
“I am suggesting that the only way you can be completely safe for the rest of your life is to marry me.”
For a moment Davita could only hold her breath. Then she said in a voice that did not sound like her own:
“Did you ... ask me to ... marry you?”
“I will keep you safe,” the Marquis replied, “not only from Mundesley but from anyone like him, and I promise, my darling, one thing I will never allow you to do is to go behind the stage at the Gaiety or have supper at Romano’s.”
He was smiling at her as he spoke, with a look in his eyes which made him appear no longer cynical or contemptuous but very different.
“It can ... not be ... true!”
Davita was trembling, and her eyes were shining as if the same light she had seen envelop the Marquis was radiating from her.
“I will have to make you believe it,” he said, “but first I want to know what you feel about me.”
“You cannot ... marry me,” she murmured. “You are so ... magnificent, as I thought the first time I ... saw you, and when I thought more about you I knew you were ... everything a ... man should ... be.”
“You thought about me?” the Marquis asked.
“How could I ... help it? And after that ... terrible party, I thought you would ... hate me.”
“I suspected you could have had nothing to do with such a despicable plot,” the Marquis said, “and when you disappeared I was certain of it.”
“I wanted to ... ask you to ... forgive me long before you came ... here.”
“I will forgive you,” the Marquis said, “if you tell me what you feel about me now.”
Davita leant forward, and hiding her face against his shoulder she whispered:
“I love ... you. I did not ... realise it was ... love ... but I kept thinking about you, and when you ... talked to me last night I knew to be with you was the most ... wonderful thing that had ... ever ... happened to me.”
“You will always be with me in the future.”
As the Marquis spoke he put his fingers under her chin and gently turned her face up to his. As he did so, he felt her tremble, but he knew it was not with fear.
He looked down at her face for a long moment, as if he wished to engrave it on his memory forever, then as his arms tightened his lips sought hers.
It was as if the Heavens opened, and she knew an inexpressible ecstasy that was beyond all thought or imagination.
The touch of the Marquis’s lips seemed to give her all the beauty she had sought in her dreams, all the wonder that she had known could only be found in love, and thought it would never be hers.
He kissed her gently at first, as if she was something infinitely precious, then the softness of her mouth aroused him in a way he had never known before.
His kiss became more possessive, more insistent, and yet Davita was not afraid.
She knew that she belonged to him, and she surrendered herself to his strength and the vibrations which came from him to link with the vibrations from herself.
She felt as if he took not only her body into his keeping, but her heart and her soul. They were his and she knew that her love for him, and his for her, was not only very human but also part of the Divine.
When finally the Marquis raised his head, she said a little incoherently, but with a note of indescribable rapture in her voice:
“I love you ... I love you!”
“And I love you, my sweet darling,” the Marquis replied.
“How can you love me when there are so many really ... beautiful women in your ... life?”
She was thinking of the Gaiety Girls as she spoke. Of Rosie and Violet, of Lottie Collins, and also the social beauties that the Countess had said pursued him.
The Marquis held her very closely against him.
“When I first saw you sitting in the Box,” he said, “I knew you were different from anyone I had ever seen before.”
“In the Box?” Davita asked in a puzzled voice.
“I was looking round the Theatre with my Opera-glasses,” he explained. “And I saw you watching the Show, with the excitement of a child at her first Pantomime.”
“I had no ... idea you were ... there.”
The Marquis smiled.
“I found you more entrancing than any Show I have ever seen, and when later I saw you in Romano’s, I found you were even lovelier than you had appeared at a distance.”
“You ... told me to go ... back to ... Scotland!”
“I could not bear you to be spoilt, and to think of you losing that young, untouched look, which is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen in my life.”
As if he could not help himself, he bent his head and kissed her again, an
d as he felt Davita’s instinctive response, he said a long time later, and his voice was unsteady:
“I have so much to teach you, my darling, and you have so much to learn about love. Thank God you ran away when you did.”
“I ... thought I would ... never see you ... again.”
“I thought the same thing—you haunted me. If Mundesley was looking for you, so was I.”
He gave a little laugh.
“Fate played into my hands—I found you where I least expected to—in the Library of Sherburn House.”
“I thought you would ... send me ... away.”
“I was overjoyed at finding you. At the same time, I had to make sure that you were not implicated in any way in Mundesley’s disgraceful act of vengeance.”
“I was so ... ashamed.”
“I told you to forget it! At the same time, my precious little love, we must be thankful that however reprehensible it was to be mixed up with such people, it brought us together.”
“You are ... quite certain that I can ... marry you?” Davita asked. “Perhaps the Countess and your other relatives will ... disapprove.”
“I think my Great-Aunt will be delighted,” the Marquis replied, “even though she will regret losing you, and the rest of my relatives do not matter, although they will be pleased I am doing what they have urged me to do for a long time.”
“They ... wanted you to be ... married?”
“They wanted me to have a wife and an heir.”
Davita blushed and hid her face against him.
“Do I make you shy?” the Marquis enquired.
“Yes ... but I am also very ... very proud ... I still cannot believe that what you are saying is ... true.”
“I will make you believe it,” the Marquis said.
Once again he would have kissed her, but Davita put up her hands to stop him.
“There is something I want to ... say to you.”
“What is it?” he asked.
“You have asked me to ... marry you. It is the most glorious ... perfect thing which can ever happen, but are you certain ... absolutely certain that I will not ... bore you?”
For a moment the Marquis did not answer and she went on:
“It would be an unbearable agony if I lost you now, but it would be worse ... very much worse ... if I lost you after I became your ... wife. In fact, I think then I would ... really want to ... die.”
As she spoke, she felt she was saying almost the same thing as Rosie had said, and yet it was a cry that came from her heart.
The Marquis gave her such a sense of security that she knew that when she was in his arms she would never feel afraid again. At the same time, he already filled her whole world, and she knew that once they were married he would fill the sky as well.
Without him there would only be darkness!
As if what she was thinking was reflected in her eyes, and the Marquis could read her thoughts, he said:
“It is difficult to explain to you, my sweet, but although I was not really aware of it, I have been looking for you all my life. I thought it was impossible to find a woman who was intelligent enough to stimulate my mind and at the same time be pure, innocent, and untouched, and very different in every way from the women with whom I amused myself.”
He drew Davita closer as he said:
“When I saw you at first sitting in the Box, and the next time at Romano’s, it was almost as if you were enveloped with light. I knew you were what I had always wanted.”
Davita gave a little start when he said the word “light.” As if she knew he wanted her to explain, she said:
“Just now when you said you ... wished to ... marry me, there was light blazing all round you, and I knew it was the ... light that came from ... God.”
“My darling—my sweet,” the Marquis said in his deep voice. “We think alike. We are perhaps fey about each other, and because of it we know that we belong.”
He kissed her again before she could answer, and then as his kiss finished he looked down at her eyes shining up at his, a faint flush on her cheeks, and her lips soft and trembling from his kisses.
“I adore you and I want you,” he said. “The sooner we get married, the sooner you will be sure that you are safe, and no-one will ever hurt or frighten you again. Let us go back and tell Aunt Louise that she has to find another Companion.”
“I am afraid she will be ... upset,” Davita said.
“She will be compensated in knowing she now has a great-Niece,” the Marquis smiled.
He picked up the reins. The horses, who had been quietly grazing the grass, began to move.
He turned the chaise round skilfully. Then as they started the drive back alongside the lake, putting one arm round Davita, he pulled her closer to him.
“I love you, my adorable little Scot,” he said, “and I know that just as you will never lose me, I will never lose you. We have so many exciting things to do together.”
Davita put her head against his arm.
“I am so happy,” she whispered, “so wildly, unbelievably happy ... but it is like walking into a dream ... and I want ... you to ... feel the same.”
“I am so happy that I feel I am dreaming,” the Marquis said. “At the same time, when I kiss you I know you are real—very real, and this is only the beginning of our love, which will grow and intensify all the years we are together.”
Davita gave a little cry of happiness.
“How can you say such wonderful things to me?”
“It is you who make me say them,” the Marquis replied. “In fact I am rather surprised at them myself.” There was just the touch of a mocking note in his voice, but it was very different from the way he had spoken when he was cynical and contemptuous.
Looking up at him, Davita thought the lines had almost vanished on his face, and he looked much younger. Then when his eyes met hers she knew he was very much in love.
They reached the end of the lake, and as the Marquis took his arm from her so that he could drive his horses over the bridge, Davita said:
“When I arrived and saw the house, I felt I could hide here in safety ... but now I know there is only one safe place ... and that is with ... you.”
The Marquis took his eyes from the horses to look at her, and as he smiled he said:
“My love will keep you safe, my beautiful one, now and forever.”
Then as Davita put out her hand to touch him, she knew they were both enveloped with the light of love, which comes from God and sweeps away the darkness of evil.
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A Night of Gaiety Page 14