“Certainly not,” she answered at once. “Besides, you don’t owe me anything.”
“But Mr. Gardner seems to think I’ve ruined you.”
“Mr. Gardner knows nothing about the matter. I intend to make my name as an author, starting with a book about my recent experiences.”
“Would it feature me, by any chance?” the Marquis asked nervously.
“Naturally, but so heavily disguised that no one will know that it’s you. So you see, there is no need for you to marry me. In fact you would be much wiser not to.”
“There you are,” the Marquis told John Gardner. “The matter is settled.”
“It most certainly is not,” seethed Gardner. “Are you going to listen to a silly girl who knows nothing of the world? I demand that you do the honourable thing and marry her!”
The Marquis looked nonplussed.
“Do you?”
“I insist upon it.”
The Marquis scratched his head.
“I see. Well then, I seem to have no choice.”
“What?” Selina stared at him. “You cannot mean it. Don’t just give in to him. Can’t you see what he’s up to? He thinks he’ll get his claws into you now. He has it all worked out that you’ll save him from ruin.”
“Well, I suppose I will have to do something.”
“Don’t let him batten on you,” she begged.
“But you heard him. He insists on our marriage.”
“But you don’t have to listen to him,” she urged.
“Well – don’t you think I should? I suppose, in the circumstances – ”
“You mean to make an honest woman of me?” she demanded, incensed. “Well, perhaps I have some thoughts about that myself.”
The flicker of a smile crossed his face.
“It would greatly surprise me if you didn’t. But I do hope you won’t refuse me out of prejudice.”
“Prejudice?” roared John Gardner. “You think any female is going to turn down such a chance? You thank your lucky stars, my girl, that I’ve whipped him into line for you. You could have been abandoned if I hadn’t taken a strong stand.”
“Yes,” murmured the Marquis. “It’s so lucky I’m such a milksop, isn’t it?”
Looking in his eyes Selina understood everything, including why he had played this scene the way he had.
And yet something stubbornly independent in her could not leave matters there.
“I will not marry you, my Lord.”
“My dear, I think you’ll have to,” he sighed. “Your stepfather is so determined that I am shaking in my shoes. You must say yes – for my sake!”
Selina now spoke through gritted teeth,
“Will you come into the next room with me? I do need to speak to you privately?”
He recoiled.
“Do I dare? If you are as fearsome as he is, I am afraid my nerves are not up to it.”
“Then you would not want to marry a woman who would certainly bully you,” she parried, her eyes glinting.
He smiled at her.
Selina tried to be serious, but it was hard when that teasing smile could make her heart turn over.
“Kindly oblige me by coming into the next room,” she repeated.
He groaned.
“If I must, I must. I see I am condemned to live under the cat’s paw.”
“Will you stop talking nonsense?” she demanded wrathfully, opening the door and pulling him through it.
When she had shut the door firmly behind them, she began to speak urgently.
“Ian, I understand what you are doing and it’s very chivalrous of you, but truly there is no need. You must not marry me for such a reason and if you – ”
She could say no more.
His arms went swiftly around her and the last words were cut off by a ruthless kiss. There was nothing of the milksop about his Lordship at this moment.
She gave a faint murmur, which might have been a protest at the ungentle way he was handling her, but his arms quickly tightened and his mouth crushed hers more determinedly, silencing her.
It was not their first kiss, but it was different from the other time in the storm. Then he had been fighting himself, desiring her but trying not to desire her.
Now it was the opposite.
Not only did he not want to deny his feelings, he was letting her know about them in the most unmistakable manner.
There was promise and intent in the way his lips caressed hers.
“Now,” he murmured at last, “do you understand why I want to marry you?”
“I’m – not quite sure.”
“Then I will have to explain it again.”
This time it took longer and was as much her kiss as his.
Selina’s head was spinning.
There were so many things she wanted to say, so many explanations needed to be made before she could really make a decision about marrying him.
But somehow all the words were not important and the decision seemed to have already been made although she could not imagine when.
When he finally released her, she clung onto him, feeling giddy.
“You made it happen, didn’t you?” she whispered.
“My darling, I can be a most determined milksop when I set my mind to it. I’ve wanted to marry you almost since the first moment, but I didn’t know how to persuade you.”
“Persuade me?”
“I’ve been so conscious that I am older than you – ”
“Not that much older,” she answered loyally.
“No, but I’ve always felt older than my years. You are so young and full of life and I am so dull and serious. And you plainly weren’t interested in me.”
“I wasn’t – ?”
“I did attempt to ask you to marry me earlier, but it misfired.”
“When?”
“After Simpkins’s accident, when we were trying to decide how to go on together and you had the idea of being a boy. Do you remember that I had another idea?”
“You were trying to propose to me, then?”
“Yes, for a wild moment I thought I could get you to marry me to save your reputation, but you never even heard what I was trying to say.
“Then, I thought, perhaps you did hear me and had pretended not to, just to put me off. Either way, it was clear you didn’t see me as a husband and afterwards I was glad it didn’t happen like that.
“I would always have wondered why you had said yes, and if you cared about me as much as I loved you.”
“If I –? Oh Ian, I was falling in love with you, but I thought that you were just doing what you felt to be your duty. You always promised that you would behave like a perfect gentleman.”
“Of course. I owed it to you not to take advantage of your vulnerability.”
He looked at her more closely.
“What are you saying? That you didn’t want me to keep that promise?”
“There were times when I wouldn’t have minded if you had broken it just a little,” she admitted.
“My darling!”
“But you seemed to manage it so easily – ”
“Easily? If you only knew, Selina, I have wanted so much to tell you of my feelings, but I was afraid to. I thought that you would see me as a burden and were trying not to compromise me so you could escape.
“Well, I compromised you very thoroughly in there, didn’t I? You have to marry me now. I am afraid I’ve left you no escape route. Forgive me. I’ll spend the rest of my life making sure that you never regret our marriage.
“My darling, my darling, come here! I am about to forget that I am a gentleman again!”
For the next few minutes he forgot it thoroughly.
Selina gladly gave herself up to his many wild and passionate kisses, meeting his desire with hers whilst her heart sang.
“Now I want your answer, Selina. Will you marry me?”
“With all my heart. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. But, oh, my love, how my stepfa
ther will gloat over you.”
“Let him, just as long as he grants me what I really need, which is you?”
“I think I understand why you did it that way,” she said uncertainly. “But I was puzzled sometimes.”
“I knew from what you had already told me that, in John Gardner, I was dealing with a bully. And the most certain method of defeating a bully is to let him think he is forcing you to do what you actually want to do.
“If I’d asked for your hand, he would have opposed me to the last breath in his body out of spite for spoiling his plans with Turner. He is quite stupid enough to do that without thinking, even against his own interests.
“Now he’s surely congratulating himself on getting the better of me, so I don’t think we will have any further trouble with him.
“Just the same, I think we will marry quickly, right here. If we wait to return to England, he might start being difficult and I am not going to risk it.”
“Nor am I. But darling – ” a thought struck her, “About England, I thought Felicity and Pierre are sailing on to the Mediterranean?”
“They are.”
“But you told the Duke they’re going to England.”
“Did I? Are you sure that is what I said?”
Her lips twitched.
“Positive.”
“Oh, dear, how very remiss of me. My memory is becoming shocking these days.”
“You could hardly have forgotten that.”
“I can forget anything at all if I set my mind to it,” he declared firmly. “Never mind, the Duke will discover my mistake eventually – ”
“When he’s chased them to England and discovered that they’re not there!” she supplied.
“I daresay. Let’s forget them. I’ll apologise for my ‘mistake’ another time.”
“The Duke will gloat over you too, having to accept my Mr. Gardner as a father-in-law.”
The Marquis shrugged.
“If I have you, I can cope with any number of John Gardner’s!”
He put his ear to the door and Selina joined him.
From the other side came the sound of altercation.
“They’re at it hammer and tongs. It’s worse than Martha and Simpkins and I feel rather disinclined to rejoin them.”
“But what else can we do?”
The Marquis grinned.
“This.”
He began pulling his papers and money out of the drawer where he kept his valuables. Then he threw a few overnight things into a bag.
“We’ll send for the rest later.”
“Ian, you don’t mean – ?”
He placed a finger over his lips, took her hand and led her to the door. They slipped into the corridor and then moved quietly past the main door to his suite from behind which they could still hear angry voices.
The Duke and John Gardner were both deep in the business of blaming each other
“Now, your things, Selina.”
In her suite she packed her bag speedily and then they were off, moving down the grand staircase.
In the lobby the Marquis approached the major domo.
“Which is the next best hotel in Le Havre?”
“The second best hotel, my Lord, is our sister hotel, The Majestic, just a mile away.”
“Then that is just where we are going. This money should more than cover the bill here. Keep the change, please have our luggage sent on to The Majestic, but on no account reveal to anyone – anyone at all – where we are.”
He took Selina’s hand and they ran into the street, hailing a passing cab.
“But surely we cannot do this,” she protested when they were inside and the cab was moving.
“We’ve just done it.”
“But – just to leave them like that – waiting for us to return – ”
“Eventually they’ll realise that we aren’t going to. But it’ll probably take them some time, the way they were going at it.”
She began to laugh and he joined in.
They clasped each other and sang out their joy in peal after peal, until the Marquis pulled her closer and the laughter stopped.
The cab rumbled away down the street, taking them to their new life of unbridled happiness.
Selina could think of nothing but the Marquis – his lips, his arms and the fire of love rising like burning flames within them both.
Their hearts beat to the music of love, the stars fell down from the sky to cover them with stardust and angels carried them to a special Heaven where there was only real love that would envelop them for all Eternity.
Meanwhile in the hotel two selfish and thwarted men continued to argue and fight, not knowing that they had been left behind.
They are probably arguing still.
The Triumph of Love Page 14