202. Love in the Dark

by Barbara Cartland

  For a moment she thought that she ought to struggle against him and make him listen to her, to tell him that she should have refused to marry him, but had been unable to do so.

  Then it was too late.

  He was kissing her and there was nothing in the world but him –

  It seemed to Susanna that they had only been together for a few seconds although it must have been very much longer, before Clint came to tell them that dinner would be ready in half an hour.

  “Is it so late?” she exclaimed.

  “Time for the Master to go to bed, ma’am,” Clint replied.

  “To bed?” Susanna echoed in surprise, “but I thought – ”

  “He’s still tired, ma’am,” Clint said, before Fyfe could speak, “and all this excitement, as you well know, is bad for him.”

  He saw the disappointment in Susanna’s face and added,

  “There’s tomorrow, if you’ll excuse my sayin’ so, ma’am, and many years ahead for you to talk it over, but I’m not havin’ the Master gettin’ over-tired or over-excited and that’s what he is at this moment.”

  “Give us five minutes to say ‘goodnight’,” Fyfe ordered, “and then I will let you put me to bed as you want to, Clint.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  Clint went from the room and Fyfe pulled Susanna into his arms.

  “I love you!” he beamed, “and, as Clint says, we have many years when I can tell you so and make you believe it.”

  “Has it – really been – too much for you?” she asked anxiously. “How could I have guessed you were – planning anything so – extraordinary when you sent me into Florence?”

  “I never thought I could keep such a monumental secret from you,” Fyfe said. “I have a feeling that your Third Eye has broken down and needs repairing!”

  “If I had a thousand eyes, I should never have thought that you would do anything so wonderful and yet so – outrageous as marrying me without even – asking me if I would be your – wife.”

  “Are you sorry?”

  “No, no. I could – never be sorry,” Susanna answered, “not as long as you – love me and will go on – loving me.”

  She thought as she spoke that was unlikely, but for the moment the nearness of him and the fact that his lips were seeking hers made it impossible to say or think of anything but that it was a wonder beyond wonders to be his wife.

  He kissed her until Clint knocked on the door.

  And then he said,

  “When you go to bed, my precious darling, dream of me as I shall dream of you and tomorrow we will plan our honeymoon.”

  It was impossible for the moment to answer him, for her voice was lost in the rapture that his kisses had aroused in her.

  They moved apart and Fyfe called out, ‘come in’ and, as Clint entered the room, Susanna left.

  She wanted to be alone, she wanted to think, but Francesca was waiting for her and automatically she changed again into an evening gown to dine with Mr. Chambers.

  She noticed when she went into the dining room where they ate their evening meal that the table was decorated with white flowers.

  With a little throb of her heart she thought that it should be Fyfe sitting at the head of the table and Fyfe she should be dining with on her Wedding night.

  Because she was very fond of Mr. Chambers and she did not wish him to know what she was thinking, they talked about Falcon Motors and Fyfe’s mother, who had died when he had been quite young.

  Then he told her of how Fyfe had never really had a home although he owned houses in many parts of the world.

  “That is what I feel you will give him,” Mr. Chambers said. “A home where he will have roots and where he will settle down.”

  Susanna knew without his saying so that Fyfe would want a family and that was what he himself had always lacked in being an only child.

  They talked until Susanna thought that perhaps Mr. Chambers was becoming tired and she suggested that they should leave the dining room.

  He seemed quite ready to say ‘goodnight’ to her and she went to her room where Francesca undressed her as she had always done and brushed her hair while she read.

  When she finally climbed into bed, she went on reading for a little while and then put down her book to think about Fyfe.

  For the first time she noticed that her trunks, which had been packed and which stood in an alcove in her room, had been taken away.

  ‘The servants would not expect me to leave now,’ she told herself, ‘but that is what I ought to do.’

  Yet how was it possible to leave now that she was married to Fyfe?

  For him to lose a wife would be very different from losing a reader.

  ‘What shall I do? What shall I do?’ she asked the night air.

  The question turned into a prayer, but it seemed as if there was no answer.

  Automatically, because she had done so every night, she rose when everything was quiet to go to the swimming pool.

  When she pulled back the curtains, which Francesca had drawn over the windows, she found that it was a moonlit night, as it had been on the first time that she had found her way through the garden.

  Everything was illuminated with a radiance that was so lovely, so ethereal and mystic that it seemed appropriate for her Wedding night – except that she was alone.

  Susanna walked out through the window in her bare feet, wearing only the thin nightgown that she had gone to bed in.

  Before she left her room she did what she had always done and piled her hair on top of her head, pinning it securely so that it would not get wet.

  Then she moved over the grass feeling that it still warm from the heat of the sun.

  There was the fragrance of the flowers, especially the lilies, and Susanna felt that they enveloped her tonight more than they had ever done before, simply because every nerve in her body was throbbing with the awareness of her love.

  There seemed to be more stars in the sky than ever and more fireflies in the air and they flew before her until she reached the swimming pool.

  She thought as they flashed above the water that they were like the golden sparkle of champagne.

  ‘If only Fyfe was with me,’ she mused with a little sigh.

  Then she told herself that if he was, he would not look at her with love, but perhaps with horror.

  She took off her nightgown and threw it on the ground, and walked slowly down into the pool, pretending, as she always did, to be the Venus whose pictured face she had looked at only a few hours ago.

  Yet tonight, instead she knew that she was only herself. Susanna, immortalised not by the brush of a Master painter but by the love that filled her heart to the exclusion of all else.

  She walked deeper and deeper and then struck out, swimming amongst the fireflies as she had done before.

  Tonight her eyes were almost blinded by the reflection of the moonlight on the water and after a while she closed them and swam in a haze of happiness still feeling Fyfe’s kisses on her lips.

  She must have gone up and down the pool nearly a dozen times before she stopped at the shallow end and stood up with the water just below her waist.

  As she did so, she looked up at the moon and remembered how on the first night she had prayed to the Heavens to give her love.

  ‘I am grateful, so very very grateful,’ she told the stars.

  She raised her arms as she had done before not in supplication but in gratitude.

  Then as she did so with her head thrown back, quite suddenly, she was not alone!

  Someone was standing in the water beside her and, as she gave a little gasp, she saw by the light of the moon that it was Fyfe!

  For a moment she thought that she must be imagining him for there was no bandage round his head and he was looking straight at her.

  Then, as she turned as it seemed to stone, his arms came towards her and she knew that he was real, very real, as he pulled her close to him.

  “My sweet, my darling,” h
e said. “My own Venus whom I have longed to see like this.”

  She gave a cry of horror and hid her face against his shoulder.

  “Don’t – look at me! Please – don’t look at me!”

  “Why not, when I have been looking at you for some time. And you are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.”

  “You – can see? You can – really – see?”

  “I can see, but I shall have to wear dark glasses during the day. That is why, my darling, I wanted to see you tonight in the light of the moon.”

  “B-but you – cannot see me – clearly?” Susanna insisted.

  “I can see very clearly,” Fyfe answered, “and I cannot allow you to hide from me as now at least I have eyes to see as well as ears to hear.”

  He put his fingers under her chin as he spoke and turned her face up to his.

  ‘Now he will – see what I am really like,’ she thought in an agony and closed her eyes so that she would not see the expression on his face change.

  She felt that he looked at her for a long time, but it must have been only for a few seconds before he said,

  “You are just as your voice told me you would look!”

  “I-I think you must – still be – blind,” she faltered.

  “Open your eyes and look at me, my precious.”

  Trembling against him she obeyed him and saw his eyes just as she had imagined, gazing deep into hers as if they searched her very soul.

  “I – am – sorry – very sorry,” she whispered, “I did not – mean to lie to you – but I wanted to pretend I was – beautiful – because you thought I was.”

  “You are beautiful!” he stated positively.

  Then, as if he could not help himself, he drew her closer still and his lips found hers.

  His kiss swept away for the moment every thought but love and Susanna could feel the sensations he aroused in her moving like a flame through her breasts and into her lips.

  Still holding her captive with his mouth, Fyfe reached up and pulled away the hairpins so that her hair fell over her shoulders.

  Then he raised his head and, with his arm round Susanna, he drew her out of the water.

  They walked up the steps side by side, but she could not even feel shy that they were both naked, but only bewildered because he had looked at her and not found her ugly.

  He drew her across the grass and then pulled her down onto what she realised was a heap of large, comfortable silk cushions which were screened on three sides by cypress trees.

  Susanna looked up and saw Fyfe’s head silhouetted against the stars.

  The moonlight illuminated them both and below them the fireflies still danced over the silver pool.

  Then Fyfe lay beside her and drew her into his arms.

  “I have a great deal of explaining to do, my precious one,” he said. “First you must forgive me for sending you away when the doctors came this afternoon to remove my bandages.”

  “Th-this – afternoon!”

  “I not only wanted to learn the truth about myself, but I was terrified, yes, terrified that you intended to run away and leave me.”

  She turned her face against his shoulder.

  “How – did you – know that?”

  “First of all I used my Third Eye and I knew that there was something wrong, although you would not tell me what it was. Then, I admit, I was rather helped by the fact that Francesca told Clint that you had asked for your trunks to be packed.”

  “I – did not – want you to – see me,” Susanna whispered.

  “I already sensed that there was some mystery about your appearance. You see, my darling one, your voice is very expressive and because it means so much to me I now know every inflection in it and every secret you try to keep from me.”

  He gave a little laugh as he pulled her even closer.

  “Let me assure you it will be very difficult for you ever to deceive me in the future, in fact I am quite certain that you would be unable to do so.”

  “I would not – wish to – deceive you,” Susanna murmured “but you – ought to have married somebody – beautiful like all the – beautiful women you have around you.”

  “I have married somebody beautiful!”

  He knew without her answering that she did not believe him and after a moment he asked,

  “When did you last look in your mirror?”

  “I never look in one if I can possibly – avoid it,” Susanna answered violently. “I know only – too well what I will – see.”

  “That is where I think you are mistaken because from what everyone has told me you have altered a great deal since you have been here with me.”

  “How can you – know that – and what do you – mean?”

  “I gather from what I have been told that when you came to Florence you were rather fat.”

  “Very fat!” Susanna muttered.

  “It’s a pity you did not weigh yourself, my darling, when you arrived, so that I could make you do so now and see the difference.”

  Susanna raised her head from his shoulder to look down at her body. It had never struck her to look before, because when she had swum on all the other nights she had been thinking that she was not herself but Venus.

  Now she could see that certainly her breasts were very much smaller than they had been, her waist seemed to be very slim, and her stomach was completely flat.

  “Have I – really altered?” she asked incredulously.

  “Francesca, who has had to take in your dresses almost every day, told me that your hair has a buoyancy about it that it never had before and there are golden lights in it from the sun.”

  Susanna drew in her breath before she whispered,

  “And – my – face?”

  Fyfe raised himself on his elbow so that he could look down at her.

  “Shall I tell you about it, my sweet? It is rather thin, pointing down to a small chin, but let me start at the top.”

  He kissed her forehead.

  “Your forehead is as you wanted it to be, like the Madonna in the Lippi picture, but your eyes are very much larger than Simonetta’s. They seem to fill your little face and I adore the winged eyebrows above them.”

  He outlined them with his finger as he spoke. Then he ran it down her small straight nose.

  “Perhaps that was somewhat lost when you were fat,” he commented, “but now it is perfectly proportioned and your mouth is exactly as it should be, an invitation for my kisses.”

  He bent his head, but Susanna put up her hands to hold him back.

  “Are you – are you telling me the – truth – the real truth?”

  “I swear before God that you are beautiful, very beautiful, my darling one, and because you have made me intelligent about other things besides motor cars I think I know exactly what has happened.”

  “Tell – me! Tell me!”

  “Well, first of all from the moment you arrived here you went on the same diet as Chambers, no sugar at all, so your fat must have melted away day by day.”

  He smiled as he added,

  “Sugar is poison to some people.”

  As he spoke, Susanna thought guiltily of all the chocolates and sweets she had consumed in the past whenever her mother had made her feel inferior and unloved.

  Of course she had stuffed herself with sweets that made her fat and she remembered too the enormous meals that she had eaten at home.

  Three or four different dishes for breakfast and she had gobbled up the huge stodgy puddings that had been served in the schoolroom at luncheontime.

  Roly-poly puddings full of sultanas and treacle sauce and endless sponges covered with strawberry jam.

  It was not surprising that she had been fat, because with her stomach full, she had not felt so miserable nor so insignificant.

  “And not only did you lose weight that way,” Fyfe was saying, “but every night when you swam up and down the swimming pool you were exercising all the right muscles to make your body as perfec
t as it is now.”

  His hand touched her breast as he spoke and outlined her hip and she felt herself quiver at the thrill of it, but she could not help asking,

  “Did you – know I swam – every night?”

  “Of course I knew,” he answered. “Nothing is ever hidden or secret when you live in Italy. The man who looks after the swimming pool knew that it had been used and Clint, who sleeps with one eye open, was aware that you crept through the garden when you thought that everybody was asleep. I used to listen to you passing my window and longed to join you.”

  He smiled as he added very tenderly,

  “That is why I knew this was where I should find you tonight to tell you my secrets, so that we should no longer hide anything from each other.”

  He moved his lips against the softness of her cheek as he went on,

  “You were a voice in the dark, my sweet darling, a sweet golden voice but now I can see you and I love what I see!”

  “You mean – you really mean that I am not – ugly – and you are not – disgusted by me?”

  “I can answer the last part of that question very easily,” Fyfe replied with a deep note in his voice. “But I promise you, my precious heart, that I am telling you the truth when I say that you are very lovely and I am only afraid that a great number of other men will want to tell you the same. You are beautiful because love is beautiful and as our love grows you will be more beautiful still.”

  “Do you think I would ever want to listen to – anybody but you?” Susanna asked. “Oh, Fyfe, if you really think me pretty – enough for you – then I need not leave you.”

  “I have no intention of letting you leave me,” he replied. “I am very angry with you for even thinking of doing so. How do you think I could live without you? And how could you be so cruel and so wicked as to want to leave me in darkness again?”

  “Oh my darling, I have no wish to – do so,” Susanna cried. “I love and adore you! You are wonderful – magnificent – and you fill my whole – world. I just cannot believe I am – worthy of you.”

  “You are everything I ever wanted in a woman and thought never to find,” Fyfe said. “Our whole life together, my precious one, will be one of such beauty that never again will you see ugliness anywhere, especially in your adorable, perfect little face.”