“I cannot commend either suggestion to you. You must think of an alternative.”
“I have thought and thought,” Ola replied, “but what can I do if Step-Mama will give me no money and will not permit me to live anywhere except with her?”
“I see there is some difficulty about that.”
“Of course there are difficulties!” she retorted. “I assure you I don’t intend to do anything stupid, but just to stay with the nuns and discuss my future with the Mother Superior who has always been so kind to me.”
She paused before she added,
“Perhaps I should take the veil. It would certainly prevent me from being bullied and persecuted as I have been these last years.”
“I am surprised at your being so faint-hearted.”
As if the Marquis had stung her, not only with his words but also with what she perceived as contempt in his voice, Ola sat upright.
“It is all very well for you to talk,” she replied. “You have no idea what it is like to be slapped and pinched and even occasionally beaten when Step-Mama has a whip in her hand.”
She drew in her breath before she went on,
“The servants are not allowed to obey my orders or to bring me food if she says I am not to have it. When visitors come to the house, I am sent to my bedroom and if they are friends of Mama’s I am locked in, so that I cannot talk to them.”
She gave a deep sigh.
“I have tried to defy her, I have tried to assert myself for two years and now the only way I can remain sane is to run away.”
“So you have decided to go to France,” the Marquis said. “Where does your escort come in to all this?”
He saw Ola’s lips tighten and she replied in a very different voice,
“He has behaved despicably, utterly and completely despicably! I did not believe that any man could be so treacherous!”
“What did he do?”
“He is my cousin, but I always thought that, although he is old, he was kind. When he came to stay, because I thought Step-Mama fancied him, I left a note in his bedroom begging him to see me alone and he agreed.”
She glanced at the Marquis to see if he was listening and continued,
“He gave me a perceptible nod when he came down to dinner and after I had been sent to bed early so that Step-Mama could talk to him, I managed to jump from the balcony to his room next door. It was a dangerous thing to do, but I managed it.”
“Was he surprised?”
“I think he thought I would come to him, but he did not know that I was locked in my room at night.”
The Marquis looked surprised and Ola said scathingly,
“That was to prevent me from finding out what my stepmother was up to when she had her friends to stay. She need not have worried. I was not interested. I only – hate her!”
“I expect with hair that colour you are overemotional anyway!” the Marquis said playfully.
“Any more references to my hair either from you or from anybody else,” Ola snapped, “and I shall either cut it all off or dye it!”
She sounded like a small tiger cat spitting at him and, almost despite himself, the Marquis laughed.
“I apologise, Miss Milford. Go on with what you were telling me.”
“I told Giles – that is my cousin’s name – of my predicament – and to my delight he told me that he would take me to Paris and leave me at the Convent where I wanted to go.”
“And you believed him?”
“I made him swear on everything he held sacred that he would not betray me to Step-Mama. After that he was really obliging about the arrangements.”
“So what happened?” the Marquis asked.
“He left yesterday, but instead of going to London, as he told Step-Mama he intended to do, he stayed near our house at a Posting inn.”
Ola gave a little sigh.
“I had to trust him. There was nobody else who I felt would make an effort to help me.”
“What happened?”
“I crept out of the house soon after dawn and I bribed one of the gardeners, who had always been attached to Papa, to come into the house before the rest of the staff had risen to collect the trunk I had packed and put ready in my bedroom.”
There was a brief smile on her lips as she said,
“It was easier than I expected, because when I went downstairs to let him in, there was nobody about as I had been half-afraid there might be.”
“No nightwatchmen, no night footmen in the hall?” the Marquis enquired.
“They were all at the other end of the house.”
“So you ran away with your luggage?” the Marquis said. “What woman would not think of her appearance, even in the most desperate situation?”
“I have already told you,” Ola replied, “that I had no money. It would be very silly to spend on clothes what I could obtain by selling my mother’s jewellery.”
“You have some jewels?”
“I suppose it was rather indiscreet of me to mention them, when I intend to travel alone,” Ola answered, “but they are all I have between me and starvation!”
“I promise you I will not steal them!”
“I know that,” Ola said scornfully. “But I was foolish enough to trust Giles and now I will never trust a man again – never – never – not even you!”
The Marquis found himself smiling at the anger in her voice. Her eyes, which he now saw in the light from the fire were green, seemed to have a glint of steel in them.
“I am interested,” he said aloud, “to hear what your cousin Giles did that was so reprehensible.”
“He helped me to run away. Then half way to Dover he – informed me that he – intended to – marry me!”
The Marquis laughed.
“That was something you might have anticipated as you are wealthy.”
“But Giles is old! He has turned forty and as he has always been a bachelor, how could I have – imagined he would want to – marry me?”
She thought the Marquis was once again going to refer to her money, so she went on,
“Giles said to me, ‘I shall be delighted, when we are married, to administer your fortune, but as I find you unexpectedly attractive, Ola, I shall also enjoy being your husband’.”
“What was your reply to that?” the Marquis asked.
“I told him that I would rather die than marry him and I thought to even suggest such an idea showed that he was a treacherous swine, a Judas whom I should never have trusted in the first place.”
“Strong words!” the Marquis laughed.
“You may think it funny,” Ola cried, “but I knew at that moment that I had not only to escape from my stepmother, but – also from – Giles!”
She drew in her breath before she added,
“There was something about him which – frightened me – it was not only because he was determined to have my fortune – it was the way he looked at me when we stopped for luncheon.”
She glanced across the hearthrug at the Marquis and continued,
“I expect you think if I had been clever that I would have escaped then? But it was only a small Posting inn and there were no other visitors having luncheon except us. If I had tried to run away, Giles could easily have caught me and it would be difficult to run carrying my jewel case.”
She glanced down as she spoke to where it stood beside her chair.
“I am not criticising,” the Marquis pointed out mildly.
“I had originally intended when I reached here to take the ordinary cross-Channel ship to France,” Ola went on. “But to escape him, I must now hire a vessel of some sort.”
“Why did he not marry you in England?”
“He had thought of that,” Ola answered, “but he was afraid there might be difficulties as he had not my Guardian’s permission. He told me that he intended to say he was my Guardian and he thought, if he could pay them enough, the French would be more accommodating about performing the Marriage Ceremony than an Engli
sh Parson was likely to be.”
“Your cousin had certainly thought things out carefully,” the Marquis remarked.
“Only to his own advantage and I hate him! It’s a pity the accident did not – kill him!”
As Ola spoke, the door of the inn opened and Joe appeared.
He must have left by another door, because now he returned to say,
“I’m sorry, lady, but I finds the doctor at The Crown and Anchor and he bain’t in no state to come here tonight. I’ve left a message with his mates to tell him to be here first thing in the morn when he be sobered up.”
“Thank you, Joe,” Ola replied. “I am very grateful to you.”
As she spoke, she realised that Joe was waiting for the tip he had been told she had promised him.
She quickly drew a small purse from the inside pocket of her cape, which was still lying behind her on the chair.
Before she could open it, however, the Marquis flicked a gold coin from his side of the fireplace towards Joe, who caught it deftly.
“Thank you, sir!” he said with a grin. “I’ll go upstairs now and see how the patient be. The Guv’nor said as how he’d stay with him till I comes back with the doctor.”
He disappeared and Ola looked at the Marquis.
“Can we go now – at once?” she asked.
“I have not yet said that I will take you with me.”
“But you will – please – say you will! You can leave me at Calais and I will find my own way from there to Paris.”
“Alone?”
“There is nobody else to travel with me unless – Giles recovers.”
The mere idea made her look up again at the ceiling as if she thought to hear the sound of him speaking.
“He must not do that – he is determined – absolutely determined – to m-marry me!”
“You could, of course, tell your story to the Magistrates and ask them to return you to your stepmother.”
“How can you suggest such a thing when I have told you she hates me?” Ola asked. “No – I am going to Paris even if I have to buy a boat and row myself across the Channel!”
She gave an exasperated little sigh and added,
“Oh, why does England have to be an island?”
The Marquis smiled.
“It is something that stood us in good stead when Napoleon was trying to invade us!”
“That was a long time ago and, if there was not the sea between us and France, I could ride to Paris or drive there in a diligence, although I believe they are very uncomfortable. I saw them often enough when I was at the Convent.”
“I cannot imagine either mode of travel would be particularly enjoyable,” the Marquis remarked dryly.
“I am not out to enjoy myself,” Ola retorted. “You will not understand that I am trying to escape from a life of such misery that you must be very insensitive not to appreciate how much I have suffered.”
“I am, as it happens, concerned with my own suffering at the moment,” the Marquis commented.
“What can that be? Have you lost a fortune at the gaming tables? Or been crossed in love? That is not compatible with your reputation, my Lord Marquis!”
She spoke sarcastically and was surprised by the expression of anger that contorted the Marquis’s face.
“You will keep a civil tongue in your head,” he said sharply. “Or I will leave you here to cope with your problems alone, which in fact I am certain would be the most sensible thing for me to do!”
Ola clasped her hands together.
“I am sorry – please forgive me – it was I know very rude – and I should not have spoken as I did. Please – please – help me! If you refuse to do so – I think I shall throw myself into the harbour. I doubt if anyone would notice and I should just be discovered floating out to sea in the morning!”
She spoke dramatically and, although he was angry, the Marquis was forced to laugh.
Then he said,
“I accept your apology, but in future, as you are at my mercy, I suggest that you curb your tongue and your imagination or I shall certainly abandon you to your fate!”
“Please – don’t do that!”
“If I was wise, that is exactly what I should do. It is no affair of mine whom you marry or do not marry and I have an uneasy suspicion that, if I was behaving with a vestige of common sense, I should send you back to your stepmother!”
“But you will not do so,” Ola said softly.
“I hate to think of what is the alternative.”
“I can tell you that,” Ola said in a small voice. “It is that you take me to Calais in your – yacht. Surely this fog will lift soon?”
As she spoke, she rose as if to go towards the door and look out.
At that moment there were heavy footsteps coming down the stairs and a moment later the landlord came into the room.
“I don’t know if you wish to say here the night, ma’am,” he said to Ola, “but I has a small bedroom empty and could accommodate you, though ’tis not so comfortable as the one the poor gentleman be in.”
Ola looked towards the Marquis.
“I am taking this lady with me,” he said and saw, as he spoke, the expression of delight that transformed Ola’s face.
On the other hand the landlord was obviously disappointed.
“What about the gentleman upstairs then?”
“He can look after himself when he gets better,” the Marquis replied. “But I understand this lady had a trunk with her in the carriage she was travelling in. What has happened to it?”
“The servant, who seemed unharmed,” the landlord replied, “is a-takin’ the horses to a stable at the top of the road.”
“Then send your man Joe to collect the trunk,” the Marquis ordered, “and he can follow this lady and me to where my yacht is tied up at the quay. It is not more than fifty yards from here.”
“I’ll get him down, sir,” the landlord answered.
He went to the bottom of the stairs and started shouting for Joe.
Ola turned towards the Marquis.
“You won’t regret this! How can I thank you?” she asked. “Thank you – thank you! I think you must be an angel sent to save me!”
“I think if the truth was told,” the Marquis replied, “I am slightly touched in the head or else the brandy I have imbibed was stronger than I anticipated”
“No, you are a Good Samaritan,” Ola enthused, “for, as I told you, I really have fallen amongst – thieves!”
Again, as she thought of her cousin upstairs, her eyes went towards the ceiling and the Marquis, seeing the lines of her long neck and the movement of light in her hair, told himself that he really was behaving like a fool.
He had sworn when he left home that never again would he have anything to do with women, except those who simply sold their favours to the highest bidder.
Never again – and this was a vow he intended to keep for all time – would he be fool enough to imagine himself in love.
Even to think of Sarah made him want to clench his hands and hit something, anything, anybody, to relieve the fury of his feelings.
And yet, despite this lesson, which should have made any man hesitate before even looking or speaking to a woman who called herself a lady, he had become quite inadvertently involved with this girl.
It was simply because it was impossible for him not to feel sorry for her in the predicament she found herself in.
On the other hand, how did he know whether what she had told him was the truth? It might be a lie like all the lies Sarah had told him.
He felt a sudden impulse to change his mind and tell her that after all she must find her own way out of her difficulties.
Or easier still, he had only to say that he was going outside to see what the weather was like, then to disappear in the fog and never come back.
That would be prudent and sensible perhaps, but it would also, he thought, be a caddish trick, such as he had never lowered himself to play in the past.
But nobleness, chivalry or sheer decency, call it what you will, had only succeeded in making him the cynic he knew he now was and would be for the rest of his life.
‘Never trust a woman – they always betray you!’
It sounded like a quotation he must have heard somewhere, unless it was a conviction that came from the depths of his heart.
The mere thought of Sarah had made him feel as if his body was on fire, while his anger swept over him and there was a red film in front of his eyes.
He wanted to curse her aloud and he wished now he had given himself the satisfaction of telling her plainly what he thought of her before he had walked away determined never to see her again.
‘Dammit all – I am running away!’ he had thought as he drove towards Dover.
But something sensitive and vulnerable within him shrank from the scene which would have followed had he told Sarah what he had discovered and seen with his own eyes.
She could have lied, she would have pleaded with him and, if she had finally suffered defeat and found that she could not again cajole him into wishing to marry her, she might have laughed at him!
That was something he knew he could not endure simply because he deserved it.
For the first time in his life, in his very successful career as both a sportsman and a lover, the Marquis, the most acclaimed and envied man in Society, had been hoist with his own petard.
Even now, a whole day after it had happened, he found it hard to believe that it was true.
He had become used to being a conqueror, he had grown used to knowing, although he told himself he was not conceited about it, that any woman he fancied was only too ready to fall into his arms.
Most of all there was no woman in the length and breadth of the Kingdom who would not jump at the chance of becoming his wife.
As soon as he looked at them, he would see the excitement in their eyes and it told him exactly what they longed for and undoubtedly prayed for.
“We will be married, my darling,” he could hear himself say to Sarah, “as soon as you are out of mourning. I cannot wait a day longer than I have to.”
“Oh, Boydon!” Sarah had cried, “I love you and I swear I will make you happy, just as you have already made me the happiest woman in the world!”
63 Ola and the Sea Wolf Page 2