“I think we have talked enough about La Belle France,” the Marquis said as they neared the Rue du Faubourg St. Honoré. “This evening I intend to talk about you and of course about myself.”
“Supposing Aimée has arranged a party for me?” Yola suggested.
“I have already told her that we are dining together.”
“Before you asked me?”
“I told you that I would not allow you to refuse me.”
“You are being very dictatorial.”
Yola spoke lightly. At the same time she felt almost as if she was struggling against him, that he was encroaching upon her, overwhelming her before she was really ready for it.
“I think I have a right to be dictatorial,” the Marquis replied to her accusation, “and a great many other things as well, but I will tell you about that this evening. Be ready for me at seven-thirty.”
As he spoke, he drove into the gravel sweep of Aimée’s front door.
“Will you come in?” Yola asked politely.
He shook his head.
“I have some matters to attend to before we meet this evening,” he said, “so please make my apologies to Aimée for me.”
“I will do so and thank you again.”
Yola smiled at him a little shyly and, without relinquishing the reins, he kissed her gloved hand.
“Think of me until then,” he said very softly so that he could not be heard by the flunkey waiting to help Yola alight.
His fingers tightened on hers and despite herself Yola felt a little thrill run through her.
He must have been aware of it, for she saw a sudden glint in his eyes. Then hastily she stepped out of the chaise and went into the house.
Aimée was out and Yola went up to her bedroom. Taking off the very elegant yellow gown she had worn to tour the Exhibition and the tiny flower-trimmed hat that went with it, she undressed and climbed into bed.
She told herself that it would be wise to sleep, but instead she found her mind going round and round in circles as she thought of the Marquis.
Last night had been a moment of such exquisite ecstasy that she had to keep telling herself that it might not have meant the same to him.
It was her first kiss, while he had kissed so many women that it could have meant very little to him despite everything he had said.
As he had raised his head and his lips had left hers, she had, because she was shy, hidden her face against his shoulder.
After a moment, as if the silence was more eloquent than words, he had said very quietly,
“You are not disappointed in your first kiss, my darling?”
“I-I did not know – a kiss could be – so wonderful!” Yola whispered.
“I told you that you were like quicksilver in my hands,” he said, “and yet for one enchanted moment you have been unable to escape me.”
She had given a little laugh of sheer happiness.
Then he put his fingers under her chin and turned her face up to his.
“You are lovely,” he said, “unbelievably lovely! And I was right in thinking that this was the perfect setting for you.”
The moonlight was on her face and her head was silhouetted against the silver water cascading behind her into the pool at their feet.
For a long moment he looked at her, then he was kissing her again with slow, possessive, demanding kisses that made Yola feel as if he made her his and it was impossible to escape from him.
Then, as if he knew that anything else they said or did would be mere bathos after they had touched the heights of rapture, he drew her back down the little path that wound between the trees to where the carriage was waiting.
He held her hand tightly as they drove back in silence and only when they reached Aimée’s house and the Marquis stepped out to help her alight did he say,
“I will call for you tomorrow morning at ten-thirty and take you again to the International Exhibition.”
Yola was so bemused with her own feelings that it was almost hard to understand what he was saying. In fact she felt as if her voice had died in her throat.
Their eyes met and for one moment they were both very still. Then the Marquis turned away and stepped back into his carriage.
Yola went up the stairs to her bedroom feeling that her heart had turned several somersaults and the whole world was upside down.
Now she told herself she had to be sensible.
Perhaps the ecstasy the Marquis had evoked in her was only because she was so young and so inexperienced.
He had been perceptive enough to realise that she had never been kissed before, but that was not to say that such ignorance was particularly attractive to him or perhaps it was attractive only as a new experience.
Every moment until she met him again Yola was trying to play down what had happened, to prevent it from having any great significance or to keep herself from admitting that her previous feelings about the Marquis had completely changed.
And yet the moment she had seen him in Aimée’s salon, she had felt as if her whole body became pulsatingly alive and that it was impossible to think of anything except how attractive he looked.
Now, as she turned from side to side on the soft pillows, she fought against admitting that she was wildly and crazily in love.
This is what she had always wanted to feel about a man, this is what she knew love would be like, but for the Marquis – ?
He was the man she had come to Paris to hate, the man she was certain she despised as a pleasure-seeker, a man whom she suspected of living off money given to him by women, a man whom she had expected to find empty-headed and without any serious side to his nature.
Was she wrong? Or was she merely a stupid unsophisticated girl who had been swept off her feet by a very experienced and professionally fascinating man?
It was all very difficult to sort out in her brain and she felt almost as if her own mind had ceased to function, while her body, vibrating with new sensations, had taken over.
It was impossible to consider anything logically or objectively as she had been taught to do.
Instead she could only feel an irrepressible longing for time to pass quickly before she could see the Marquis again and be with him.
He had said he wanted to talk to her. What did he want to say? What was he going to tell her?
She knew what she wanted to hear, but she told herself that it was asking too much to expect this to be a Fairy tale with an inevitable happy ending.
‘I am being very foolish,’ she told herself a dozen times.
Yet, when it was time to dress for dinner, she sprang out of bed with an irrepressible eagerness and knew as she saw her reflection in the mirror that she had never looked so lovely.
She had deliberately chosen a gown that she had bought from Pierre Floret because it was so pretty and not because it made her look sophisticated as her other gowns did.
Of white crepe, it was trimmed with real lace, frill upon frill of it forming the fullness of the train behind the swathed front.
Yola thought that in a way it made her appear like a statue of some Greek Goddess, and, when the Marquis saw her as she entered the salon, he exclaimed,
“You look like Aphrodite rising from the foam!”
She had deliberately not asked Aimée if she could borrow any jewellery and her only ornamentation was two white roses in her hair and one at her neck, held in place by a narrow ribbon of the same material as her gown.
With her black hair arranged by Felix in a new style, her eyes shining almost blindingly with excitement and happiness and her lips parted, it would have been impossible for any man not to be moved by her beauty.
The Marquis looked at her and then without touching her he said,
“I love you! I did not mean to tell you so until later this evening, but it is impossible to find any other words to tell you how beautiful you are!”
She moved nearer to him and she wanted him to kiss her as she had never before wanted anything so much.
Instead he kissed each finger of her hand, then her palm and finally her wrist. The feeling of his mouth on her skin made her quiver and he looked into her eyes to say softly,
“I think the ‘Sleeping Beauty’ is coming awake.”
Yola blushed and the Marquis said,
“Let’s go out to dinner. I am taking you to the Café Anglais, but we will not sit in the Grand Seize where everyone would admire you. I want you to myself.”
There was a possessive note in his voice that thrilled her and she let him lead her across the hall and help her into the carriage.
Then, when they drove off, she asked, conscious that her voice had deepened a little because she was speaking to him,
“Why do you say I will not be – seen in the Café Anglais?”
“Because we are dining in a private room,” he answered. “I have ordered our dinner and I thought we deserved a good one after that very unpleasant luncheon.”
“But it was such fun!” Yola exclaimed.
“I am beginning to find that everything we do together is fun,” the Marquis answered, “except when it means a million other things, things I have never known or felt before.”
She understood what he was saying and after a moment she replied,
“Everything is very – wonderful for me – but then that is – different because as I have already told you I am only a – country mouse and have done nothing like this before.”
“I am not talking about Exhibitions or sight-seeing,” the Marquis said. “I am talking about feelings, Yola, and what you have made me feel is something I have never felt for anyone else.”
“Are you – sure of that?”
“Quite, quite sure!” he said positively.
They reached the Café Anglais and he took her up a steep staircase to one of the rooms, which was called the Marivaux.
It was also known, although the Marquis did not inform Yola of it, as le cabinet des femmes du monde, because Society women used it when they were frightened of being recognised with their lovers.
It was attractively furnished and Yola, looking at the elaborately laid table for two, which was decorated with flowers, felt thrilled and flattered because the Marquis wanted to be alone with her.
The waiter opened a bottle of champagne which was already waiting for them in an ice bucket and the Marquis took Yola’s wrap from her shoulders, put it on a chair and said,
“I have not seen you in white before.”
“Do you – like it?”
“I like everything you wear,” he answered, “and I am sure the rainbow does not hold a colour that would not become you.”
He paused.
“Tonight you look very young, a girl on the threshold of life who has no idea of what lies before her and is thrilled by the sheer excitement of living.”
He spoke not in the mocking voice Yola knew so well, but instead in one that was so serious and deep that she looked at him in surprise.
“What are you thinking?” he asked.
“I am asking myself whether you are merely – repeating what you have said many times before to many – other women or if your compliments are – sincere.”
“They are not compliments, Yola,” the Marquis said almost angrily, “I am speaking from my heart.”
He walked away from her across the room and stood for a moment looking into a long mirror that was fixed to one wall.
Yola realised that he was not staring at his own reflection but looking at her where in her white gown she stood framed against a dark red curtain.
“What have you done to me?” he asked. “I told myself a thousand times today that I am far too old to feel like this.”
“How old are you?”
“I am twenty-seven,” the Marquis answered, “nearly twenty-eight.”
It must be fifteen years, Yola calculated, since he had been at The Castle, unless he had gone to her father’s funeral.
‘Did it mean something important in his life,’ she wondered.
She had an impulse to confess to him who she was before they became more deeply involved in this strange relationship, but then she told herself that it would be a great mistake to do so.
She had set herself a part to play and she must play it to the end, but she was not certain when the end would come.
They sat down to dinner and she knew that the Marquis was putting himself out to amuse and entertain her.
He told her stories of Paris which made her laugh, described evenings at the Tuileries Palace, which could be at times incredibly boring and spoke of evenings on the boulevards and at the dancehalls that were a delight.
“There is so much to see and do in Paris,” she said, “that I feel that if I lived here for twenty years I would only touch the fringe.”
“Is that what you want to do?” the Marquis asked. “To live in Paris?”
Yola shook her head.
“It is fascinating for a holiday,” she answered, “but I would never really wish to live anywhere but in the country.”
She almost held her breath as she waited for his answer.
It came in the shape of a question.
“You do not find it dull?”
Yola shook her head.
“There are horses, gardens, so many things to do. I would find it impossible to be bored.”
She raised her eyes to his and added,
“Perhaps for a – man it could be dull.”
“Not if he has money.”
It was not the answer Yola had expected and she was tense as the Marquis went on,
“For those who own a big estate, there are always things to do, but I have no estate. It was taken from my family in the Revolution.”
“And you have not been able to acquire another one?”
“Good land in France is expensive,” he replied, “and the sort of house I would like to live in would be more expensive still.”
Yola felt some of the happiness she had been feeling ebb away from her as the stream last night had run away from the pool.
She was sure that he was thinking of The Castle and the great Beauharnais estate stretching for miles over the Loire valley.
He was right, of course. That was the sort of background he should have.
But to obtain it he had to marry a girl he had not seen since she was three – a girl who for all he knew might be hideous or, worse still, as cold and austere as her mother had been.
Yola found herself gripping her fingers together in her lap.
They had finished dinner, a delicious superlative meal which the Marquis had told her was peculiar to the Café Anglais.
“It is impossible to have better food in the whole of France,” the Marquis had said, “and Duglere, the Maitre d’Hôtel, tells me that the Czar of Russia, the King of Prussia and Bismarck are to give a banquet here next week, which he is certain will go down in history as the greatest gastronomic feast of the Exhibition year.”
Yola had appreciated every dish, but now that the dinner was finished, she felt as if it had celebrated not the beginning but the end of the dream that had come and gone before it had reached fulfilment.
Quite suddenly she asked herself what she was doing here alone in a private room with a man who was known to be a ‘ladykiller, a breaker of hearts.
She had heard about him before she came to Paris, and the fact that he was more fascinating and charming than she had anticipated should not have surprised her.
She had merely been foolish to think that he should be anything else.
She had embarked upon what Madame Renazé had called ‘a mad escapade’ and it had now boomeranged in a manner that she might have guessed it would.
She had fallen in love with the professional heartbreaker and all she would have to show for her adventure was her broken heart.
The table had been cleared except for the flowers, candles and coffee cups.
The Marquis put his hand palm-upwards towards Yola.
“What is troubling you?�
� he asked quietly.
Because she could not resist touching him, she put her hand into his.
“Why do you – think I am – troubled?”
“I told you before, I know everything about you. You are asking yourself why you are here alone with me and I think too you are a little afraid.”
“Afraid?” Yola repeated.
“Yes, afraid,” he replied. “You were afraid the first night when you came into the Winter Garden and looked down at the assembled guests and you were afraid when your eyes met mine.”
His fingers tightened on hers as he added,
“Suppose we now dispense with all those secrets and you tell me what you are thinking and feeling and why you keep that absurd and very unnecessary barrier between us.”
“That is not – true,” Yola tried to say, but she met the Marquis’s eyes and the words died away on her lips.
“You are so lovely, my darling,” the Marquis said. “So perfect, so unspoilt! If I was wise, I would pick you up in my arms and carry you away to the country, where we would be alone and you would never see anyone but me.”
The passion in his voice made Yola instinctively hold his hand a little tighter.
“I would be very kind to you,” the Marquis said softly, “and we would be happy, very very happy together.”
“What are you saying?” Yola enquired.
“I am telling you that I love you,” the Marquis replied, “and I think you love me a little.”
He smiled as her eyes dropped before his.
“This is the first time you have been in love, my sweet, but let me tell you that you cannot fight against it. It is overwhelming, overpowering and there is no escape.”
“Is – is – that what you – feel?” Yola asked hesitatingly.
“I can tell you truthfully that I am deeply and overwhelmingly in love,” the Marquis answered. “And this is also the truth, Yola, it is different from anything I have ever felt in the past.”
He paused before he went on,
“I have thought myself to be in love a dozen times. I have told myself that it was the real thing, what I had always sought. But some critical part of my mind has always told me that in fact it was not the idealistic love that all men believe waits for them somewhere.”
The Marquis’s voice was very solemn as he continued,
64 The Castle Made for Love Page 11