“And what do you think they will do about you?”
Rocana gave a little shrug of her shoulders.
“The Duchess will be delighted to be rid of me, but she will undoubtedly think it strange that I should run away without any money and without even one of the horses!”
“Do you really mean that she hates you? But why should she?”
“I can answer that quite easily. My father died in debt and my mother was French!”
“French?” he repeated. “I suppose that accounts for your eyes.”
Rocana gave a little laugh.
“I was afraid they would give me away sooner or later!”
“If Caroline is your cousin,” the Marquis said, as if he was working it out for himself, “then you are Lord Leo’s daughter!”
“You knew my father?”
“I admired him very much!” the Marquis replied. “He rode magnificently and now I understand how you inherited your gift of managing horses.”
“Papa was wonderful with any horse, however wild.”
“As I know you are.”
Rocana smiled.
“I thought perhaps we – would have one thing in –common – at any rate!”
The Marquis stared at her.
“Are you then intending to continue with your impersonation of my wife?”
“It is not an impersonation,” Rocana replied. “We are married and, although it may make you very angry – as it is entirely legal – I don’t think there is much you can do – about it!”
The Marquis put his glass down on the mantelpiece and turned away from her to look down at the empty fireplace that had been filled with flowers.
“I am not only angry,” he said, “but I am also bewildered. I see that you and Caroline have made a complete fool of me and that is hardly something I enjoy.”
“I should have thought, my Lord, the only possible way that you can avoid looking a fool is to make everybody think that you knew exactly what you were doing – and that you married me – deliberately.”
“Why should I do that?”
“Because you want to save your face.”
It was a point Rocana had only thought of at that moment, but it seemed to her very logical.
When the Marquis turned to look at her in surprise, she knew he was quick-witted enough to understand exactly what she was saying.
“You could say,” she went on before he could speak, “that Caroline told you when you proposed to her that she was wildly in love with Patrick Fairley and she begged you to pretend that she had accepted your offer in order to prevent her father and mother from forbidding her ever to see Patrick again.”
Rocana spoke reflectively as the fiction of what happened seemed to unfold almost magically in front of her eyes.
“What nobody knew except ourselves,” she continued, “was that you and I had met by chance before the Steeplechase and had fallen head-over-heels in love at first sight!”
She looked at the Marquis, then away again before he could say anything.
“It was therefore your clever idea that I should take Caroline’s place in Church and that was why you were so insistent that the wedding must take place in such a rush, so that no one should recognise me at the reception!”
The Marquis stared at her, then quite unexpectedly he put his head back and laughed.
“I don’t believe it!” he exclaimed. “This cannot be happening! I am dreaming!”
“I have thought I was dreaming,” Rocana said, “ever since I agreed to take part in what I was quite certain would be a disastrous charade.”
“And you really think anybody will believe such a fantastic tale that might have come straight out of The Arabian Nights?”
“I cannot see that it is any more fantastic than your insisting on marrying a girl you had only spoken to three times and breaking every record in travelling from England to Paris on what is supposed to be a romantic honeymoon!”
The Marquis laughed again.
Then he said,
“I suppose I should tell you why I was in such a hurry!”
“I admit to being very curious,” Rocana answered, “and also why your engagement had to be so short and you had to be married in such a rush.”
She saw the Marquis’s expression change as if this was something he had no wish to tell her.
But at that moment dinner was announced and, as she rose, he offered her his arm and they walked slowly down the passage that led them to an attractive dining room with the walls covered with priceless tapestry.
There was a huge gold candelabra in the centre of the table with eight candles in it.
There were also a number of gold ornaments and gold goblets, the bases of which were decorated with a profusion of green orchids.
“How pretty!” Rocana exclaimed as she sat down.
“I regret they are not the traditional colour for a bride,” the Marquis said, “but I was told they had just come into bloom in my greenhouses and I felt you would appreciate them more than rather mundane white carnations.”
“Perhaps this colour is more appropriate.”
“If you are suggesting that it is unlucky for me, you are wrong,” the Marquis answered. “Green is one of my racing colours, the other is black.”
“And you certainly have been lucky where your horses are concerned.”
“I cannot complain,” the Marquis said complacently, “although I did not beat that young man who challenged me at the last moment in the Steeplechase. I think you said his name was Patrick Fairley.”
“I was praying he would beat you,” Rocana admitted, “because it would have been an omen of good luck.”
“Now I understand why he was so anxious to do so,” the Marquis remarked.
Rocana gave a little sigh.
“It was a very exciting race and I never thought Patrick would have a chance. But now he has won in a different way and I hope you are sporting enough to wish him luck.”
“I should have thought the same applied to me!” the Marquis said mockingly.
Rocana did not protest, but raised her glass and said,
“To Patrick, who has won a very special trophy, despite all the odds against him.”
The Marquis raised his glass and drank.
Then he said,
“I think really you should toast me as well, but to spare your blushes I will ask you to do that later.”
It took Rocana a moment to realise that he was insinuating that he had won her and was being extremely cynical about it.
Instead she said,
“The servants will be coming in soon with the next course and I had hoped you were going to tell me why you were in such a rush to reach Paris.”
“Of course,” the Marquis agreed, “and the explanation is really quite simple, the Prince Regent asked me to buy privately on his behalf five extremely fine pictures and I was obliged to do so today because tomorrow they were to be put on public sale.”
“Pictures!” Rocana exclaimed. “That is something I did not expect!”
“What, as a matter of interest, did you think was the reason for such haste?”
Rocana thought perhaps she should not answer him.
Then she stated defiantly,
“If it was not a horse and I thought you had enough of those, it could only be a – woman!”
The Marquis looked at her as if he could not believe anything so small could be so impertinent.
Then he said,
“I can see, Rocana, that you are not in the least what I expected a young, inexperienced and unsophisticated debutante to be like.”
“I am sorry if I disappoint you,” Rocana replied, “but I have not been allowed to be a debutante, and actually I am nineteen, a year older than Caroline.”
“And you have, I gather, accumulated quite a lot of knowledge in that extra year!”
The Marquis was again mocking her and she declared,
“Any knowledge I have, I can assure you comes entirely from
books, for just as you did not meet me at The Castle, I have not been allowed to meet anybody else.”
Her voice dropped as she went on very quietly,
“Ever since my father and mother died, I have been kept in the background, snubbed, abused and punished. So if I am now behaving somewhat over-exuberantly, you must excuse me for feeling like a bottle of champagne that has just been uncorked.”
The words seeming to tumble from her lips made the Marquis chuckle.
“I have seen your imagination at work, Rocana, and I cannot help thinking this is another example of it.”
“You must believe what you want to believe,” Rocana replied, “but I invariably, whenever possible, tell the truth.”
“Except when you are disguising yourself as somebody else!”
“There are of course exceptions to every rule.”
“You are either very clever or very stupid,” the Marquis said, “and I am anxious to separate the wheat from the chaff or rather the truth from the lies!”
Rocana realised as they dined and she thought it was something new that the Marquis had introduced, that having served them, the servants left the room.
When he was ready for them to change the plates and bring on the next course, he rang a small gold bell that stood in front of him.
Now they were alone and Rocana confided,
“What I can tell you and I really am speaking the complete truth is that Caroline was terrified of you and hated you! I too am – scared of you and, although I don’t hate you, I think you are a very unusual and difficult man.”
As the Marquis did not reply, she added,
“Now I think of it, that is what my uncle said to me on the way to the Church, that you are difficult and that I just had to do what you told me to do.”
“Do you mean to do that?”
“It depends on what orders you give me,” Rocana answered. “I have seen in the last few days how efficient you are, how everything you do is planned down to the last detail and that is why I would prefer to know what to expect rather than speculate and be afraid.”
The Marquis was silent for a moment.
Then he said,
“You keep telling me how frightening I am. Is that really true?”
Rocana stared at him wide-eyed before she said,
“Surely you must be aware that everybody is frightened of you, except perhaps for the beautiful women who try to entice you, although I suspect really they are frightened of you too! Your grooms when they were at The Castle told me you scared them.”
The Marquis looked at her and said,
“I suppose one can never see one’s self through other people’s eyes. I know I am efficient. I like things around me to be perfect, but I did not think I controlled people by fear rather than by respect.”
“I think what you are really saying, my Lord, is that you want them to admire you, and they do, even when they disapprove of your behaviour.”
“What do you know about me?” the Marquis asked. “You tell me you have been incarcerated in The Castle. Had you ever heard of me before I met Caroline?”
“Of course I had heard of you!” Rocana replied. “I had heard of your successes on the Racecourse and as a pugilist and of the duels you have fought and won – and of course of your many, many love affairs!”
She spoke quite lightly, for the moment carried away by the novelty of talking freely to a man as she had talked to her father and mother, which was something she had not been able to do since they had died.
Then the Marquis suddenly brought his clenched fist down on the table, making the plates rattle and the glasses jump.
“How dare you!” he exclaimed. “How dare you speak to me like that! What do you know of my life? Who could have talked to you about me when it could not have concerned you?”
He almost shouted the words at her and for a moment Rocana could only stare at him, her eyes seeming to fill her whole face before, as he waited for her reply, she managed to say,
“I-I am – sorry – I spoke – without thinking – and I know now – it was very rude of me.”
Because she was humble and apologetic, the anger went from the Marquis’s eyes and he said in a different tone,
“Now I have frightened you and that is a mistake. You have been frank with me, Rocana, which is something I should have expected from you, although I don’t often receive it from anybody else.”
Rocana looked blindly at the orchids on the table.
“It was – rude of me,” she said, “but – I have never been – alone with – anyone like – you before.”
Unexpectedly the Marquis put out his hand palm upwards towards her.
“Forgive me,” he said. “You took me by surprise and I forgot how young you are.”
Reluctantly, because he had upset her, Rocana slowly put her hand in his.
His fingers closed over hers and once again she was aware of his strength and the vibrations she had felt in the Church.
“I think, Rocana, we must make a pact,” the Marquis sauggested quietly.
“A – pact?”
“That we will always speak frankly without either of us taking offence. We must try to make this strange and what for the moment seems quite ridiculous marriage of ours work.”
CHAPTER SIX
Because the servants were now continually in the room Rocana had no further chance of talking intimately to the Marquis until dinner was finished.
Then they moved to the salon and, as he seated himself comfortably in an armchair, Rocana without thinking sat down on the hearth rug in front of the fireplace.
It was something she was so used to doing at The Castle when she was talking to Caroline, and previously when she was at home with her parents that she did not realise it might seem unconventional in her new position.
The Marquis, however, did not say anything. He merely looked at her with her elegant gown billowing round her, its diamante making her appear like a flower after the rain.
Then he said,
“Now let’s talk sensibly about ourselves.”
“I thought that was what we had been doing,” Rocana replied.
“There are a great many things to decide,” he said. “The first is when do you wish me to communicate with your uncle and aunt?”
Rocana gave a little cry.
“Not yet! Please – not yet – I want to be absolutely sure that Caroline is safe and also – ”
She paused.
“And also?” the Marquis prompted.
Rocana hesitated for words.
“I-I was wondering if you were – quite certain you would – keep me as your – wife.”
“And if I do not?” the Marquis asked. “What would you do?”
“It sounds rather – grasping,” Rocana said in a small voice, “but, as I have no – money, I would have to ask you to give me – enough so that I could go away and hide – somewhere where Aunt Sophie could not – find me.”
She paused before she said in a voice that was very revealing,
“I could not bear to go – back to The Castle, knowing how she would – punish me for deceiving her and you.”
“Then that is certainly something you must avoid,” the Marquis said. “I did suggest at dinner we should try to see if it is possible for our marriage to work.”
“Do you – really mean – that?”
“I seldom say something I do not mean,” the Marquis replied. “I admit that at first I wondered how I could extricate myself from the position you have put me in, but I see there really is no way out of it without a scandal.”
“I knew you would – hate that!” Rocana said in a low voice.
“I would dislike it very much indeed,” the Marquis answered, “and I will therefore agree to your plan and say I married you because I wished to do so.”
Rocana’s eyes lit up.
“That would be – wonderful for Caroline and it would save her – I am sure, from her father and mother trying to – get their ma
rriage annulled.”
“Then her future is settled. Now what about ours?”
There was silence.
Then Rocana replied,
“As you have been so kind, I will try to be as – unobtrusive as – possible.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean,” she said hesitatingly, “that as I know you are – in love with – somebody else – you will obviously want to – spend as much time as – possible with her.”
“Who said I was in love with somebody else?” the Marquis asked angrily.
Rocana looked at him a little apprehensively, as she replied,
“Caroline was told in London by quite a number of people that you were marrying in such haste because you had become involved with a very beautiful lady – with red hair and green eyes.”
She was silent before she added,
“They said your – association with her might cause a – diplomatic incident – and so you decided to be married.”
As she spoke, she was aware that the Marquis had stiffened and she was sure that his temper was rising.
At the same time she knew it would be better if they were frank from the very beginning and she went on quickly,
“I-I therefore – as obviously I would not be upset by anything you do – would not intrude when you wish to be – alone with any lady in whom you are – interested and perhaps we can become – friends.”
There was silence.
Then the Marquis said,
“That is not the sort of marriage I was thinking of.”
Rocana looked at him quickly.
“You – you cannot mean that we should – really be – man and wife?”
“Why not?”
Rocana’s eyes widened as if she could not believe what she had heard.
Then she answered,
“I don’t know what – two people do when they – make love – but I know that for Caroline – who adores Patrick – it would be – wonderful!”
She paused before she went on,
“But, as you do not – love me – and I do not – love you, – it would be – wrong, very wrong.”
“But we are married, Rocana!” the Marquis said quietly.
“Only by mistake from your point of view and, although I am – thrilled by your horses – and your pictures, that is – different from being – attracted to you as – a man!”
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