“Also a number of Italians who visit England every year know I do not have a sister,” the Marquis continued.
“But, as it happens, I have a cousin who is a Brooke although she is somewhat younger than you.”
“How old is she?”
“She is seventeen, but I think it unlikely that any Italian has ever heard of her. Her parents live in Yorkshire and seldom come to London.”
“So you have attached her name to your passport?”
“I might have made it difficult for you by using my cousin’s Christian name, but fortunately when I was having luncheon that first day with my friends who were shooting with me, I heard Bob call you ‘Miss Shana’.”
Shana drew in her breath. She had no idea that the Marquis had heard Bob speaking to her at the Rose and Crown. He might have said something else to make the Marquis suspicious that she was not who she pretended to be.
“I thought it a rather unusual, but charming name, so when I asked the Ambassador if I could have your name added to my passport, I put you down as ‘Miss Shana Brooke’. By a happy coincidence my cousin’s name is Sarah, so the two names have a likeness to each other.”
“Yes, indeed,” Shana replied. “I think it was clever of you to make me your cousin.”
“It will save your reputation and mine,” the Marquis smiled. “And may I say my cousin is a very attractive young woman, but not as beautiful as you.”
“Thank you, my Lord, I will do my best to play the part convincingly.”
“I am sure you will and let me say I can imagine no one who could do it better.”
She thought he was being complimentary because he had been afraid she would resent being added to his passport under another name, but she had to admit it was very astute of him as she had completely forgotten about her passport in the hurry and flurry of setting off on the journey.
When luncheon was over the Marquis went on the bridge to watch the yacht moving into the open sea.
Shana descended to her own cabin.
She found the Marquis’s valet, Curtis, had unpacked her clothes and had taken away her trunk and hatbox.
He was a dapper little man and she thanked him.
“I’ll do my best to look after you, miss,” he said, “and I only hopes you’re not going to be seasick.”
“You need not worry about me,” Shana told him. “I am a good sailor and the last time I was at sea we ran into a very bad storm and I was the only woman who was not prostrate in her cabin.”
“That’s just what I likes to hear and if there’s anything you may want, miss, you asks me and I’ll get it for you.”
“I think this yacht is the smartest and certainly the most beautiful I have ever seen,” Shana sighed.
“Have you seen the library?” Curtis asked.
“Library?”
He pointed to a cabin across the corridor.
“This be his Lordship’s special introduction,” he said as he opened the door. “He can’t stand a long voyage without having something to read.”
Shana followed him and gasped.
The Marquis had turned a large cabin into a sitting room with a desk rather like the one she had seen in his study at the Hall.
The walls of the cabin were covered with books from the floor to the ceiling and there were two portholes, but otherwise there were just books and more books.
Shana clapped her hands.
“I have never seen anything so wonderful,” she cried. “I am sure no other yacht can boast a cabin like this. I hope I may borrow one or two of these fabulous volumes.”
“I’ll fetch you anything you wants,” Curtis told her.
“You’ll find, as his Lordship does, them books be often more interesting than them as talks their heads off in the Saloon!”
Shana laughed.
“I can understand that and please may I take two books now into my cabin so that I will have something to read when I retire to bed?”
“Help yourself, miss. There’s enough for you and his Lordship without leaving no gaps on the shelves.”
He left the cabin and Shana looked through the books with interest.
Some of them she had already read and there were others she immediately wanted to read and thought they would have interested her father as a great number were in different European languages.
She found a book on Rome which she thought he would find interesting.
Then as if drawn automatically, she found a great number of books on Greece and many in Greek. She took three of these, hoping that Curtis would not think she was being greedy and carried them to her cabin.
This library was something she had not expected to find at sea.
She had put two or three books of her own in her luggage as she too hated to be without something to read.
She went up on deck and was standing looking at the coast of England as the yacht moved further out to sea.
The Marquis joined her.
“I am sorry if I seem to be neglecting you,” he began, “but I always enjoy the moment when the Seashell is out on the waves. I do not know whether you have noticed, but we are going at what the Captain claims is a record speed for a yacht of this size.”
“I thought it was moving very fast,” Shana admitted, “and of course it is important for us to reach Italy as soon as possible. We can then be back before anyone begins to wonder what has happened to us.”
“Will there be many people worrying about you with the exception of Bob?” the Marquis enquired. “I think you said your father is abroad.”
“He is and I am hoping I will be back before he returns.”
“Then we must do our best not to worry him.”
There was a little pause before the Marquis asked,
“What does your father do?”
Shana thought quickly how she should reply.
“I have always been told that if you are playing a part and in disguise it is important not only what you say but what you think. I am trying to think myself into the part of being your cousin.”
“In other words you do not want to talk about yourself. I have never met a woman who does not want to tell me the story of her life.”
“Mine is not at all exciting and I therefore have no wish to talk about it,” Shana said firmly.
The Marquis did not speak and she continued,
“What I would really enjoy would be an extensive tour of the Seashell. Could I please see the engines and of course the whole layout of the yacht itself?”
The Marquis looked at her in surprise.
“Do you really mean that?”
“You asked me what I would like to do.”
“Very well, but you must tell me if you find it bores you. I find it absorbing, but that is because I have planned so much of it myself.”
As they walked round the yacht the Marquis found that Shana asked extremely intelligent questions and she was also charming to the seamen.
Finally they finished up in the galley with the Chef. Having enjoyed an excellent luncheon, she was not surprised to find that he was a Frenchman.
She spoke to him in French and he was delighted to tell her about some new recipes which he had yet not prepared for his Lordship. He told her he would be cooking two of them for dinner tonight.
“They sound delightful,” Shana enthused. “It is something I shall look forward to.”
The Marquis was aware that she spoke perfect Parisian French and it only added to the curiosity he felt about her.
When they went below to change for dinner, she told him his valet had shown her the library.
“I am thrilled with your books,” she said fervently.
The Marquis thought with a feeling of relief she was so unlike Lady Irene or other women he had brought on the yacht and she would not expect him to be continually at her side, talking to her about herself.
When they sat down to dinner he asked her which books she had chosen and she told him the title of the one on Rome and mentioned the
three Greek books.
“Why are you so interested in Greece?” he asked.
“It is a place I want to visit more than anywhere else in the world and I was thrilled to find some books of yours on Greece which I have not read.”
“I suppose you realise that two of them are in Greek.”
“Yes, I know.”
“Are you telling me,” the Marquis quizzed her incredulously, “that you speak Greek?”
“Of course I do. Why not?”
“There is no ‘of course’ about it. Greek is one of the most important languages in Europe, as I have found myself. How is it possible, looking as young as you do, that you can speak so many languages?”
“I have spoken them ever since I was a child,” Shana answered. “And I had a very good teacher.”
“I thought that was what you were.”
“It is what I would like to be, but when I think about Greece, I am always conscious of how fortunate we were in having such brilliant and intelligent people to guide us.”
She thought the Marquis looked slightly disdainful as she continued,
“After all we owe to the Greeks the beginning of sciences and indeed the beginning of thought.”
“Now why should you say that?”
“If you have read the history of Greece and the books written by the Greeks, you should not ask that question.”
Because the Marquis enjoyed an argument he replied,
“Plato said that the Egyptians looked upon the Greeks as children. Too young and too innocent to be the creators of anything.”
“The Egyptians,” Shana said scornfully, “worshipped Gods who were so old they were crumbling away. The Greeks with the freshness of youth sought out new Gods which they shaped in their own image.”
She paused and as the Marquis did not say anything she went on,
“Who could be more wonderful than Apollo, the God of Light, and Athene, the Patron Goddess of Athens, the centre of Greek civilisation?”
She spoke passionately and quite unexpectedly the Marquis laughed.
“I do not believe it,” he exclaimed. “Who are you and where have you come from, unless it is Mount Olympus?”
Because she could not help it, Shana laughed too and then they started arguing again.
By the time the yacht had passed through the Bay of Biscay, Shana thought they had argued about almost everything she could ever imagine.
They discussed the countries of Europe one by one and she always attacked anything the Marquis stated as fact as it was more amusing than agreeing with everything he said.
She queried his conclusions, whatever they might be.
He enjoyed their sparring with words as much as she did and he conceded, although it annoyed him to do so, that she was sometimes better informed on a particular subject than he was.
‘She is not real,’ he told himself again when they retired to bed.
They were later than they had meant to be simply because they were absorbed in duelling with each other.
He had expected Shana to be bright, enthusiastic and of course submissive to anything he suggested, but he found that he had to polish up his brain to compete with her.
Although it seemed impossible, she often knew more than he did about a country they were discussing, but he had no idea that it was because her father had spent so much time in Europe, who as Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, was conversant with national problems which were not known to very many people.
Shana was a walking encyclopaedia of almost everything about the places they talked about, so that when they reached the Mediterranean the Marquis had to admit he had never enjoyed a voyage more.
He had not expected, however, to have to exert himself so strongly to prevent being mentally overpowered. Not by a philosopher but a beautiful and exceptionally clever young woman.
When they put in to Gibraltar to refuel, the Marquis said to Shana,
“Now we will go ashore and you must allow me to buy you a present. The shops in Gibraltar are famous and I am sure we shall find something you will really like.”
“That would be wonderful!” Shana replied.
“What I would love is a book on Gibraltar because, believe it or not, there isn’t one in your library.”
“There must be.”
“Then you find it,” Shana retorted. “I looked last night because I thought it would be interesting for us to talk about its strange history, but I could not find one.”
“Then we will certainly buy one. But I am sure you would really like something more personal.”
“Nothing could be more personal than a book which will go into my brain and stay there forever. I am sure you know that everything we put into our brain remains there and however hard we try we cannot remove it.”
The Marquis had not thought about this before.
“I wonder if that is a psychological fact,” he quizzed, “or just part of your imagination?”
“It is a psychological fact. I was reading a book the other day by an extremely well-known scientist who said how important it was that we appreciate this point when we are dealing with children.”
She paused and then added slowly,
“And of course feeding our own minds with what makes us happy and not with what can distress or trouble us.”
The Marquis tried to query her statement, but he knew at the end it was another battle that Shana had won.
What astonished him when they reached Gibraltar was that she was not interested in the kind of present he was anxious to give her. He had never been there before without the woman who was accompanying him demanding jewellery.
The coral in Gibraltar was famous and they would beg him to give it to them combined if possible with diamonds.
Also they would not have thought of leaving the port without several of the exquisitely embroidered Chinese shawls which hung from the ceiling in almost every shop.
He had difficulty in persuading Shana to accept one of these which he thought would enhance her beauty and she refused to even enter the jewellery shops, saying positively that she did not want anything they sold.
Then the Marquis asked why and to his surprise she blushed.
“Tell me,” he said. “I want to give you something which will make you remember this trip.”
“I can remember it without a present, although thank you very much for thinking of it.”
The Marquis was silent for a moment and then he remarked,
“I have the feeling, or shall I say I am reading your thoughts, that you consider it incorrect to accept anything expensive from a man.”
She looked away and he realised that what he had said was true.
“I know exactly what your mother said to you, that you may accept gloves, scent or flowers but nothing else.”
“I can accept books.”
“Which I have already bought for you and while I understand your reasons for refusing, I would like to give you, as my cousin, a coral necklace and perhaps ear-rings to go with it.”
He spoke so persuasively that Shana eventually capitulated.
“Very well,” she said. “But it must not be expensive – just pretty.”
The Marquis was not only bemused but bewildered.
‘Why does this young woman behave as if she was a debutante of some important social Dowager’ he asked himself.
She was a lady. He had known it from the first time he had spoken to her, but her parents must be poor if she was forced to earn her own living, so in which case it seemed absurd for her to keep to the social rules intended for those who thought of themselves as upper class.
‘I do not understand,’ the Marquis muttered to himself.
When they sat down to dinner that night, Shana was wearing the coral necklace and matching ear-rings, which she had finally been persuaded to accept as his gift.
She looked very lovely, sitting opposite him at the dinner table wearing a white evening gown and as if to celebrate the occasion she had faste
ned one pink rose in her hair.
It passed through the Marquis’s mind that if the Prince of Wales could see her now he would pursue her relentlessly.
It was therefore important that they never met.
The Marquis could think of quite a number of men who would also be dangerous if he introduced them to Shana, and he considered it would be not only a pity but wrong for him to do so.
‘She is unspoilt and very innocent,’ he told himself.
‘She has no idea how dangerous the outside world could be to her.’
He wondered what would happen to her in the future when they returned to England and supposed it was doubtful he would ever see her again.
Perhaps she would marry some young man in the country and they would have a large family.
‘Yet,’ he meditated, ‘where would there be a man who was clever and intelligent enough to keep her interested? And to understand her strange and almost bewildering brain that makes her different in every way from any other woman, especially Lady Irene.’
He continued to argue with himself.
‘Even if she has been trained to be a teacher, how is it possible she can be so original and so extraordinarily well- read at her age?’
His mind continued to ponder.
‘The very most she can be is twenty-two or twenty- three and she looks very much younger – why?’
Finally he admitted he could not make any sense of her at all and yet he intended to unravel the mystery of Shana from the Rose and Crown before their mission came to an end.
*
Shana had enjoyed exploring Gibraltar and had expected they would leave the next morning.
However the Captain of the Seashell was concerned with the ship’s oil tanks overheating and the Chef was having difficulty finding the right ingredients he required for his new recipes.
The Marquis therefore agreed somewhat reluctantly that they would stay for another day.
To Shana’s delight he hired a carriage and they drove across the frontier into Spain, but there was not a great deal to see.
The Marquis noted her interest in everything wherever they went, as they discussed recent elements of history of Spain and the new Spanish artists and musicians who had become famous throughout Europe.
“I have enjoyed myself so much,” Shana enthused when they returned to the yacht. “Thank you a thousand times for taking me. You are so kind.”
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