“And – I love – you!”
As she spoke, she saw an expression of pain in the Earl’s eyes that was so poignant, so agonising that she gave a little gasp.
“What is – wrong? Tell me – please – what is – wrong?” she pleaded.
“That is what I am trying to do and God knows it is the most difficult thing I have ever done in my whole life, but you deserve to know the truth.”
Mariota clenched her fingers together in her lap and, looking away from her, he said, almost as if he was pronouncing his own death sentence,
“When I fell against that stone we have just been looking at and was carried on a gate to Queen’s Ford, I was on my way to stay with the Duke of Madresfield because my engagement was to be announced to his daughter Elizabeth!”
Mariota drew in her breath and then felt that it was impossible for her ever to breathe again.
Then she knew she had in fact been very stupid.
She should have guessed when she saw Lady Elizabeth when she came to Queen’s Ford, and the Earl was too ill to see her, that there was something between them.
Because he was sitting silent, staring ahead over the Park, although she was certain that he could not see the trees or the houses in the distance, Mariota said,
“You – you are – going to – marry her? Why, after what you have just told me?”
“That is what I have arranged to do. It seemed a sensible idea, until I met you.”
Mariota gave a little quiver as he went on,
“How could I have known, how could I have guessed that there was somebody like you in the world? But I have found you too late. I always swore I would never marry until I was much older, but I broke my own resolution and agreed to marry Elizabeth.”
“Did you – do you – love her?”
Mariota could not help asking the question. It seemed to be the only thing of importance.
“I love you!” the Earl exclaimed. “I love you with all my heart! You are everything that I long for and want in a woman, everything I thought was quite unobtainable and no more than the foolish dreams of the boy I was many, many years ago, before I became bored and cynical.”
“But – you do – love me?”
“I love everything about you,” the Earl replied. “I love your voice, your face, your big worried eyes and your character which is quite different from that of any other woman I have ever known.”
He made a little sound that was half a groan before he asked,
“How can you be so beautiful and at the same time so unconscious of your beauty and so utterly and completely selfless? You never think of yourself, Mariota, and that is why I want to think of you.”
“Do you – think of – me?”
“I think of you all the time, all day and all night,” the Earl said harshly. “I cannot get you out of my mind or my thoughts. You haunt me, Mariota, with your voice and with the vibrations we both know we have for each other so that our instinct is something we cannot control.”
“That is – what I feel about – you!”
“We were made for each other and like a fool I have thrown away my one hope of Heaven.”
The way he spoke was so bitter that Mariota, without thinking, put out her hand and laid it on his arm.
“I cannot – bear you to – suffer so,” she whispered.
“I am suffering,” he answered angrily. “I am suffering because, although I love you with my heart, my mind and what you would doubtless call my soul, although I do not think I have one, I have to do the honourable thing and marry the woman I have given my word to as a gentleman.”
Without meaning to, Mariota’s fingers tightened on his arm and he held the reins with one hand and covered hers with the other.
Because they were not wearing gloves, she felt herself tremble at his touch and knew that when he looked at her he felt the same.
“No other woman could make me feel like this,” he said, “I know too, my precious darling, that no other man has meant anything in your life.”
“There has been no – other man.”
“That is what makes you so perfect, so unique and mine!”
He took her hand in his and said,
“I must tell you what happened, although it is difficult to talk to you of anything but my love.”
“That is – what I want to – hear,” Mariota said, “but I cannot – bear to see you – unhappy.”
“Unhappy? Of course I am unhappy! There will never be any happiness for me in the future without you.”
He suddenly put his hand up to his eyes as he went on,
“Oh God, why did this have to happen at this particular moment? And yet, would I have it otherwise? In some way I cannot explain even to myself it is a wonder beyond words to know that you are in the same world as I am and that love is what long ago I believed it to be and not just an illusion.”
“Of course it is not that,” Mariota said. “You told me that I should – wish for – love – and perhaps – our wishes have come – true.”
“So that we have both found love and lost it?” the Earl asked.
There was no answer to that and Mariota was silent as he said,
“I was absolutely convinced that I would never fall in love in the way you think of love and which the poets have eulogised since the beginning of time. But I had planned that, perhaps in five or ten years time, I would marry for the sake of my family and produce an heir to carry on the title and inherit the vast estates my father left me.”
He paused for a moment before he added,
“Then not Eve, but a Duke tempted me.”
“He – wanted you to – marry Lady Elizabeth,” Mariota said beneath her breath.
“I expect you have heard how rich she is and, because her father was understandably afraid of fortune-hunters, he suggested to me that, as our two families are well matched as regards blue blood and fortunes and we are both great landowners, it would be a suitable alliance and one to which he would give his wholehearted approval.”
“So you – agreed!”
“I thought that Elizabeth was a pretty and attractive girl,” the Earl said, “and, as she seemed so eminently suitable, as the Duke had pointed out, to be my wife, there really seemed no justifiable reason for me to refuse the suggestion.”
“I can – understand,” Mariota whispered.
“I suppose some part of me that I tried to forget told me this was not what I really wanted, that I had other ideas and ideals which I was throwing aside and selling myself short.”
The sarcastic note was back in the Earl’s voice and Mariota said quickly,
“No – please – it must not make you – bitter. I want you to be – happy. You are so kind – so magnificent and I know in my – heart you are – everything that is – good and noble.”
“How can you say such things?” the Earl asked, “when, unless I break every unwritten law as to how a gentleman should behave, I must marry Elizabeth while my heart is yours for the rest of my life.”
“You will – forget me.”
He turned his head and his fingers tightened over hers as he demanded,
“Look at me, Mariota!”
She raised her eyes to his and he looked at her for a long moment before he said,
“You love me! I can see it in your eyes and feel it as your fingers tremble beneath mine. Will you forget?”
“That – is – different.”
“There is no difference in love,” the Earl said. “I shall never forget you, just as you will never forget me. Yet can you imagine what I will go through wondering what is happening to you, wondering what you are feeling and if you are as unhappy as I shall be.”
“As I have said – I don’t want you to be unhappy.”
“How can I be happy without you?” the Earl asked. “How do you think I shall feel when, waited on by servants, I shall think of you slaving away, trying to keep your house habitable for your father, your brother and sister? Somehow I must try to
make life better for you, but it will not be easy.”
“No, no – of course not – I could not take – anything from – you, you are not mine to take from,” Mariota murmured.
His fingers tightened on hers until they hurt.
“Do you really imagine,” he asked, “that I can eat caviar and think of you dining off rabbit or drink champagne while you drink water? Be sensible, my sweet, and realise I shall suffer all the horrors of hell every time I eat, sleep or ride one of my horses.”
“Those – things are not really – important.”
Because the Earl was touching her, it was hard even to listen to what he was saying, when she could feel the strength of his fingers making her thrill to him as if he drew her by invisible cords.
She wanted to be near him, to be close to him, but she understood why he was telling her this when they were in a position that made it impossible for him to hold her closer to him.
All she could think of was that he loved her and in spite of what he was saying the sunshine was still there within her breast.
“I want to wrap you in sables and ermine,” the Earl went on. “I want to cover you with jewels, but most of all, my darling, I want you with me by day and by night as my wife, as the woman I will worship for ever and who would one day be the mother of my children.”
His words seemed to come slowly, each one like an axe cutting down a young tree in its prime and for the first time since he had been talking Mariota looked into the future and saw that for her it was dark and without him filled with despair.
“Are you surprised that I had headaches when I should have been getting better, when I have lain awake night after night wondering how I can extricate myself from the trap I have fallen into?”
He paused before he added,
“If I asked you to come away with me and go abroad until the fuss about Elizabeth was over, would you do it?”
Mariota knew he was waiting for her answer and after a moment she said,
“I want to do anything you – ask of me, but not if it would – hurt or – defame you. I am aware that if you are – engaged to Lady Elizabeth and you jilt her, her father might call you out and you would have to fight a duel. It would be like – cheating at cards and could spoil forever your – image as a – sportsman and a gentleman.”
The Earl gave a sigh that seemed to come from the very depths of his being.
“You understand! Oh, my precious, you understand! Could anyone be more wonderful?”
He lifted her hand and just for a moment his mouth lingered on her skin and she felt it was more passionate and demanding than if he had kissed her lips.
Then he released her and started the horses off along the path through the Park.
She knew as he did so that there was nothing more they could say to each other, nothing but a repetition of their love, which, because they now acknowledged it, it seemed to Mariota to burn with a fire that consumed her and which she knew was burning in him.
Only as the house drew nearer, did she say in a voice that trembled,
1 love you – with all of me – and I will go on – loving you for the – rest of my life!”
“You are not to say that, my darling, one day you will find a man to look after you and you will marry him. But I cannot bear to think of it at the moment.”
“I will never – marry because I could never find a man who – looked like you, and whom I could – love as I – love you,” Mariota said. “So I shall be an old maid, looking after Papa and the house – and dreaming of you.”
“And will that be enough for you or for me?” the Earl asked savagely.
Then, because there was no answer, they drove on in silence until they reached the front door.
CHAPTER SIX
All night Mariota was alternatively lifted into the clouds with elation to think that the Earl loved her and then cast into the depths of despair because she knew that she must never see him again.
When they returned to the house, she was well aware that he was so emotionally moved by what they had said to each other that, on climbing down from the phaeton, he had walked straight in through the front door and up the stairs to his bedroom.
She deliberately lingered because she knew that for the moment she must not talk to him, must not make things worse than they were already.
She patted the horses, telling the groom how splendid they looked and how well they had behaved and then slowly, feeling as if a chapter of her life was now closed, she walked into the house.
Because she thought she should see if Lynne and Jeremy were there, she went first into the drawing room.
There was no sign of them and she was just about to go upstairs and take off her bonnet when Jeremy put his head round the door.
“Where have you been – ?” she began, but he interrupted her by saying,
“That is the most magnificent phaeton I have ever seen!”
“I know.”
“Why has the Earl brought it here?” Jeremy asked, coming further into the room.
“He took me – driving,” Mariota replied in a voice that did not sound like her own, “and I think – tomorrow he will be – leaving us.”
“Leaving?” Jeremy exclaimed. “Then I must certainly go and look at it now.”
“You are not to try and drive it,” Mariota warned, but he had already left the room and she had the feeling he had not heard her.
She thought as she went upstairs that Jeremy would also be upset at knowing that when the Earl left his stallion would go too.
She was aware, although he had said nothing to her, that he had been riding it morning and afternoon and she was therefore not surprised when a little later she looked out of the window to see Jeremy disappearing through the trees in the Park on the Earl’s black stallion.
‘Perhaps it’s the last time he will ever ride such a magnificent horse,’ she thought, making allowances yet again for his behaviour.
She knew that when the Earl left tomorrow there would be so many ‘last times’ that she could not bear to think of them.
And yet they were there in her mind and, almost unconsciously, she began to count them,
The last time she would see him, the last time she would talk to him, the last time he would tell her that he loved her –
Finally there would be the last time they ate such delicious food and drank such fine wine, the last time Jeremy would ride a horse like the Earl’s stallion and the last time that Lynne would be mounted on a well bred, perfectly trained horse, as Mariota suspected she was riding at this moment.
What it all added up to for her personally was that it was the last time she would ever love anybody as she loved the Earl.
She sat down on the stool in front of her dressing table and put her hands up to her eyes.
Even as she felt the darkness of despair creeping over her, she tried to think of how grateful she was for having known him and how, whatever happened in the future, she would keep her memories!
But it was very poor comfort.
As she had expected, the Earl did not come down to dinner and she thought that apart from the fact that he was physically tired, it would be too emotional for both of them to face each other across the dining room table with the family watching them.
Actually when dinner was served there was only her father and Lynne and no sign of Jeremy.
When Lord Fordcombe came into the dining room, he had seemed to be more absent-minded than usual and did not notice that his son was not there.
But Lynne asked somewhat aggressively,
“Where is Jeremy? If he is riding, I think it very mean of him not to have asked me to go with him.”
“I think you have been riding quite long enough for one day,” Mariota said, “I went to Church alone.”
“If I had come with you,” Lynne answered sulkily, “all I would have prayed for would have been a horse and I doubt if the angels would drop me one down from Heaven.”
There was silence.
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Then her eyes lit up.
“Do you think the Earl would let me keep Daffodil while he is staying at Madresfield? The grooms told me he was ridden there by one of the outriders, and cast a shoe on the way, so he only arrived the day after the Earl was injured.”
Mariota did not say anything, but thought how fortunate it had been that when Jeremy held up the carriage which contained Lady Coddington it had been the Earl alone who had come from the wood and been prepared to kill him.
Had there been another man with him they might easily both have been dead by now.
‘Jeremy must – never take such – risks again,’ she told herself.
At the same time she knew that the money he had obtained would not last forever.
Although he had promised that he would never risk her life for his own another time, she could not help feeling that he would be thinking out something else that would seem like a prank, but might easily have disastrous consequences.
‘I must talk to him,’ she told herself.
Again she had the feeling that the Earl’s horses and the way everything had changed since he came to Queen’s Ford would have results, which would ripple out into infinity, as when a stone is thrown into water.
Although the food was delicious, Mariota realised at the end of dinner that she had not tasted it and might just as well have eaten sawdust.
Lynne had been quiet because she was thinking over how she could best approach the Earl about Daffodil and, as Mariota left the table, she piped up,
“Can I not see the Earl now and say goodbye to him?”
“I think, as he was really very tired after his first day out and has retired to bed,” Mariota replied, “it would be selfish and unkind to bother him at the moment.”
“I expect you will see him,” her sister sniffed petulantly.
“No, I am not seeing him!” Mariota replied firmly. “And it will be too early in the morning for you to say goodbye before you leave for The Grange.”
She saw the disappointment in Lynne’s eyes and added,
“What I suggest you do is write to him a letter, thanking him for allowing you to ride his horse and sending a groom with it. Say that you hope to see him again to thank him personally before he leaves Madresfield.”
Wish for Love Page 11