There was what seemed to be a long silence, while, aware that Lara was trembling, the Marquis realised that she was speaking the truth.
He then said quietly and calmly,
“Wait outside the door, I will not be a minute.”
Feeling almost as if her legs would not carry her, Lara turned towards the door and walked unsteadily into the small hall.
She stood with her back to the Marquis’s room and, because the door was ajar, she could hear him moving about and saw he had lit a candle.
She waited, feeling as if she was sinking lower and lower into the ground and that when she reached the bottom of some unfathomable pit, she would die.
It was what she wanted to do, knowing that in killing Lord Magor she had hurt the Marquis irretrievably, for his friend’s murder – it was nothing else – would have serious repercussions that would be known to everyone in the country.
‘How could I have been so foolish?’ she asked herself again and again.
She wished that she had been brave enough to tell the Marquis what Lord Magor was like and how he had terrified Jane and then transferred his desires to herself.
But even if he was wicked, that was no excuse for her creating a scandal when the Prince of Wales was staying in the house.
It seemed to Lara at that moment as if she was the guilty one and that if anyone should be punished it was she.
She could only have stood in the small, dimly lit hall for perhaps two or three minutes, but it seemed to her, as if to a drowning man, that all the past flashed before her eyes and accused her of being a criminal.
Then the Marquis joined her.
She saw that he was fully dressed, except that instead of a collar and tie there was a scarf round his neck, which gave him a somewhat raffish look.
Without speaking, he opened the outer door and they started to walk down the corridor side by side.
The only light was from the candles spluttering low in the sconces.
Although some parts of The Priory had the new much-vaunted electricity and some gas lighting, in the principal rooms and in the main corridors the Marquis kept to the traditional candles.
These stood in the sconces which, Lara had been told, had been made for the house in the reign of Charles II by one of the great silversmiths of the time.
All she was aware of now was that the corridor seemed dim and she felt as if she was walking in a fog of her own making and she would never know the light of happiness again.
They passed the door where she had hidden earlier in the evening and where the Marquis had kissed her, thinking her to be Lady Brooke.
For one moment Lara felt a little surge of remembrance creep into her breast as she recalled the wonder and glory of his lips, the way he had carried her into the sky and they seemed to touch the Divine.
But she told herself bitterly that she had betrayed her love and was now unworthy of the rapture that she had known for one brief moment but which could never be hers again.
Only as they passed the main staircase and reached the passage that led to the West wing, did the Marquis say,
“Where is Lord Magor?”
“In the – schoolroom,” Lara managed to stutter.
“Why was he there?”
There was a pause before Lara answered,
“He – came to – see me.”
“You were waiting for him?”
The question was sharp and she thought that the Marquis’s voice was contemptuous.
She was looking ahead, but she thought that he glanced at her and was aware she was wearing evening dress.
It was an added horror to what she was feeling to know that he was suspecting her of deliberately inviting Lord Magor’s attentions. Because she could not bear him to think such a thing, she answered quickly,
“I was – waiting because he had – removed the key from the door of the – schoolroom and from my – bedroom.”
The Marquis stopped and turned to look at her searchingly.
“Is this true?”
“He tried to get in – last night,” Lara replied, “but I had locked the door. He – had to go – away.”
She saw the Marquis’s lips tighten before he said,
“So tonight you waited with the intention to shoot him?”
“Yes!”
There was a little pause before he asked,
“With one of my guns?”
It was difficult for Lara to reply and she realised that it would have to lead to other explanations. There was nothing she could do but answer,
“No – I had a – duelling pistol, which – belonged to my father.”
“You brought it here with you when you arrived to teach Georgina? Why?”
She felt that he was being clever in extracting from her the whole story so quickly and she wanted to say that instead of talking they should go upstairs and find Lord Magor.
Yet, as if he held her prisoner and she was in the dock, she could only give him the answer he was waiting for.
In a low voice so that he could hardly hear, she said,
“I brought the pistol with me – because I knew what – Lord Magor was – like.”
“How did you know that?” the Marquis asked.
Then before she could reply, he added,
“I presume you must have heard of him from Miss Cooper.”
“Yes – and she was – terrified of him. That was why I – took her place, so that she could have a – holiday.”
“You mean she was not really ill?”
“No – only frightened to the point where I – thought she might have a – nervous breakdown.”
The Marquis drew in his breath and she knew that he was angry, very angry.
He did not say anything, but merely walked on and there was nothing she could do but walk after him until they reached the staircase that led up to the next floor.
He climbed it ahead of her and, as he reached first the landing and then the door that led into the schoolroom, Lara found herself praying that somehow by some miracle Lord Magor would have disappeared.
But when she looked into the room, she could see his body lying where she had left it and knew that her prayers had failed and her last hope had gone.
It was then that she heard a cry from Georgina’s room.
Without waiting and, as the Marquis stopped to bend over the body of the dead man, she ran towards Georgina’s bedroom door and opened it.
“Miss Wade! Miss Wade!” Georgina was calling as she entered.
She saw the child was sitting up in bed. Quickly Lara closed the door behind her and groped her way to the bedside, feeling for the matches saying as she did so,
“It’s all right, darling, I am here!”
“I heard a big bang,” Georgina said. “I thought perhaps they were shooting the poor baby foxes.”
With difficulty because her fingers were trembling so much, Lara lit a candle and then she sat down on the side of the mattress facing Georgina.
“I think you must have been dreaming,” she said. “It’s far too dark outside for the keepers to shoot anything at this time of night.”
“I called and called, but you did not come,” Georgina reproached her.
“I am sorry, dearest, I am sorry!” Lara answered. “But I did – not hear you.”
“I was frightened!”
“There is nothing to frighten you now I am here.”
“No, not now,” Georgina said. “But it’s really horrid being frightened in the dark.”
“Yes, I know,” Lara answered. “So I am going to teach you a prayer my mother taught me when I was younger than you and which I want you to say if ever again you are frightened in the night.”
“Is it a magic prayer?”
“I have always found it – very magic,” Lara answered her.
The child cuddled down against the pillow and Lara pulled the sheet up to her chin.
Then she said very softly the prayer that was so much a part of her childhood that she felt almost as if she could hear her mother’s voice saying it to her,
“Lighten our darkness we beseech Thee, O Lord, and by Thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night. For the love of Thy only Son, our Saviour, Jesus Christ. Amen.”
By the time she had finished Georgina’s eyes were closing and then, as Lara waited, she said drowsily,
“That is – magic and I shall – always say it – ”
There was silence and after a few seconds Lara saw that she was asleep.
She waited until she was quite certain that if she moved she would not disturb the child, then she blew out the candle and walked on tiptoe towards the door guided by the light that came from beneath it.
She went into the schoolroom to find it empty.
There was no sign of the Marquis and Lord Magor was no longer lying on the floor.
The Marquis, she supposed, must have carried him away and the only evidence left of the crime was that her father’s duelling pistol was where she had left it on the table.
She picked it up, carried it into her bedroom and hid it in the bottom of her trunk.
As she did so, she wondered if perhaps until the trial the Police would allow her to go home or whether she would be taken to prison immediately.
The idea was so terrifying that she wanted to scream, but instead she could only stand with her hands on her breast as if to stop the beating of her heart.
Her father would have to know what she had done and, although he would support and sustain her, she knew that he would be deeply distressed.
Jane, poor frightened Jane, would undoubtedly have to give evidence that she had told her about Lord Magor, which was why she had brought a duelling pistol with her to The Priory.
‘How could I have ever thought of doing anything so crazy – so idiotic?’ Lara asked herself desperately. ‘Oh Mama – help me! Help me!’
She cried out to her mother as a child might have done and indeed at that moment she felt that she was no older than Georgina.
She wanted to cry in her mother’s arms.
Then insidiously, so that she could not prevent it, the thought came creeping into her mind that, since her mother was dead, there was only one other place where she could feel safe and that was if the Marquis held her as he had done when he kissed her.
She wanted to cry because she was well aware of what he must think of her now.
Because she could not bear to see the condemnation in his eyes or hear him say how much he despised her. She wanted to run away immediately, so that she would never need see him again.
But she knew that wherever she ran she would be brought back and brought to justice.
She gave a little murmur of pain, mingled with contrition and horror, and put her hands up to her eyes.
As she did so, she heard a sound in the schoolroom and knew that the Marquis had come back.
There was nothing that she could do but go to him and face what was coming to her.
It flashed through her mind that she must not whine or complain, but should behave with the same dignity that he would show in any circumstances however cataclysmic.
Slowly, because it demanded an almost superhuman effort, she turned and walked into the next room.
The Marquis was waiting for her, standing with his back to the fireplace.
She could not look at him, but went to the table and stood with her hands resting on it because she was desperately in need of support.
Once again she was trembling. She knew that her face must be very pale because she felt all the blood had left it.
Yet she managed to hold her head high, although her eyes were downcast.
There was a little pause before the Marquis said in a low voice, as if he was afraid of disturbing Georgina,
“I have taken Lord Magor to his room. He is not dead.”
For a moment what he had said did not percolate her mind and then she thought that she could not have heard him aright.
She stiffened and her eyes were on his.
“Did you – say he is – not – dead?” she whispered.
The Marquis nodded.
“Yes! He is alive and actually your bullet did not touch him.”
“It cannot be – true,” Lara faltered. “When I fired he – collapsed and his – hands went to his – chest.”
Her words were almost incoherent, but her eyes were still on the Marquis’ face, looking at his searchingly as if she thought for some reason she could not understand that he was lying to her.
“He collapsed with a heart attack,” the Marquis said quietly. “He had suffered from his heart for some time and I have given him the medicine he always carries with him. He is now conscious and I have sent a groom for the doctor.”
“Is this – true? Is it – really – true?” Lara asked.
“I think you know it is.”
She sat down suddenly on the chair, as if her legs could no longer carry her.
“I was so – sure he was – dead,” she said almost as if she spoke to herself. “I believed that I would – have to – face a trial for – murder.”
“No one is to have any idea of what has happened here tonight,” the Marquis said sharply. “You must keep everything to yourself and not speak of it, do you understand?”
She thought that his voice was hard and unsympathetic.
At the same time she felt as if life was coming back into her body and into her mind and it was she rather than Lord Magor who had come back from the dead.
In a kinder tone, as if he understood, the Marquis went on,
“Go to bed! Everything will seem better in the morning. I will deal with everything.”
As he finished speaking, he looked at her for a long moment, almost as if he thought that she might faint.
Then reassured, he walked across the room and left the schoolroom, closing the door behind him.
It was only when she could no longer hear his footsteps going down the stairs that Lara stretched out her arms on the table and put her head down on them.
She had been saved by a miracle and perhaps by her mother’s prayers, but she knew only too well what the Marquis was thinking of her.
She sat for a long time at the table before she rose and, going into her bedroom, began to pack her trunk.
*
“I don’t say that Miss Cooper couldn’t have done with another week to put the roses in her cheeks,” Nanny said. “The rest has certainly done her good, which is more than I can say for you, Miss Lara.”
“I am just tired after the journey,” Lara said quickly “I had to leave very early in the morning.”
“Well, you might have let the Master know you were comin’,” Nanny said, “and he’d have met you at the station.”
“Farmer Jackson was there and he gave me a lift home,” Lara answered.
Nanny knew this already, but Lara wanted to keep talking to prevent her asking too many questions as to why she had returned home so unexpectedly.
She told Jane the reason when they were alone.
“You can go back to the Priory now, Jane. Lord Magor has had a heart attack and I expect he will be ill for some time.”
“That is good news,” Jane said. “You did not have any trouble with him?”
“He was not interested in me,” Lara replied, hoping that she would be forgiven for telling a lie.
“I was worried, very worried.”
“Before you go back,” Lara said, “I want to tell you what I have discovered about Georgina.”
She told her how musical the child was and how the Marquis intended to find the best teachers for her.
“In which case they will not want me,” Jane said at once. “I cannot play the piano and I have never liked music.”
“You can teach Georgina all her other lessons. But actually, Jane, I think you would be happier with younger children.”
“Perhaps I would,” Jane agreed, “and I don’t think anyone would mind if I left The Priory. Perhaps I could put my name down with one of the Domestic Bureaux that cater for Governesses.”
She did not sound very enthusiastic about it and Lara said,
“I think you would be wiser to ask Lady Ludlow if she knows any of her friends with young children who would need someone like you. Or, if you would like, I will ask Papa to write to her, since she is a relation.”
“That would be very very kind of you,” Jane replied.
Then she added,
“I think perhaps I ought to go back this afternoon. I could stay the night at Keyston House in London. I am sure they will make arrangements to send me in a carriage to the Priory first thing tomorrow morning.”
“That’s a good idea,” Lara said. “I left a note for Georgina, telling her that you would be coming back. I feel sure that she will be looking forward to seeing you.”
This, again, was another lie. She was quite certain that Georgina would miss her, especially as there would be no one to ride with her except a groom.
She had written a note to the child, saying that she had to go home because her father needed her urgently and told her to be very kind to Miss Cooper after she had been ill.
She had also asked her to explain to her uncle that she had not been able to say goodbye because she had had to leave so early.
She ended,
“You must go on working hard at your music, dearest, because I know that you are going to be very very good at it and I will be thinking of you and praying for you. When you have time please write to me and tell me about all the things you are doing. You know I shall want to hear from you.
My love and God bless you,
Lara Wade.”
When she had finished writing the note, she had left it outside Georgina’s bedroom door, knowing that Nanny would take it in when she called her in the morning.
Lara had then dressed herself in her travelling clothes and waited until she had heard the stable yard bell ring at six o’clock.
She had gone downstairs and asked the first footman she saw, looking sleepy and in his shirtsleeves, to go to the stables to say that she requested a carriage to take her to the station.
When he returned, she had asked him to bring down her trunk.
There was no sign of any of the older servants when she left The Priory twenty minutes later. The young ones merely obeyed her orders and were not curious enough to ask why she was leaving.
It was all much easier than she had expected. She had caught a train that steamed into the station only ten minutes after she had arrived there.
She had, however, a long wait in London before there was a train to take her, stopping at every station, to the halt for Little Fladbury.
But she was home.
In contrast to The Priory, the Vicarage looked even smaller, more shabby and threadbare than it had before.
She tried not to think of anything except making Jane believe that, since now she was safe from Lord Magor, her job was waiting for her and her place was with Georgina.
Lara had driven Jane to the station, because her father had returned with Rollo and the trap was available.
But, after the train had gone, Lara felt so exhausted that when she reached home she lay down on her bed and instantly fell asleep.
When she woke it was dinner time.
But she looked so white-faced and limp that Nanny would not let her get up, but insisted on bringing her a dish of scrambled eggs and a glass of milk.
After she had finished them, Lara undressed, climbed back into bed and went to sleep again.
*
It was only in the morning, when Lara woke as the sun came streaming in through the thin curtains that covered the windows, that she could think of her love for the Marquis and realise that she had lost him for ever.
It was an agony that tore her to pieces.
‘How can I bear it?’ she asked. ‘To live here for the rest of my life, thinking of him, longing for him and knowing that I was right when I thought he was as out of reach as the moon.’
And yet for one moment she had been close to him and, although he might deny it and it meant nothing to him, she had become a part of him.
It had changed and transformed her so that she could never be the same again.
“I love him! I love him!” she whispered as she lay in the narrow bed she had slept in ever since she had been too big to use a cot.
She could see his face in front of her eyes, almost as if he stood in the room beside her.
She wondered what he would think when he learnt that she had gone, but she knew that he would be relieved now there would be no awkwardness to encounter when Lord Magor was better.
She had the feeling that perhaps the Marquis might have made him apologise for his behaviour and that would have been an embarrassment she could not contemplate, or worse still, if the Marquis had apologised for his friend.
She would also have to confess more fully her contrition in having been so foolish as to take the law into her own hands and shoot at a man who, however he behaved, was still a guest of her employer and under the same roof as the Prince of Wales.
‘It was all crazy,’ she thought, ‘and part of a world that only exists in my imagination and has nothing to do with reality.’
When she packed her trunk she found her manuscript books, but suddenly she had no wish to go on writing the novel that had absorbed her up to now.
What was the point of trying to tell a tale about people who, even though she had seen them and heard about them, were so far removed from her own thinking and feeling that she could never make them seem real and human to the reader?
‘I will write a book,’ she told herself, ‘which will be about country people, of whom I know a great deal, not about Society with its strange code of behaviour and which would be better left unknown to people outside their own special
*
“It’s nice to have you back, dear child,” her father said the next day, as they had breakfast together.
When he said the same at luncheon, Lara realised that he had genuinely missed her.
“I love being with you, Papa.” she answered. “I have no wish to go away again.”
“I was glad for you to have a change all the same,” Lord Hurlingham said, “for I am well aware, darling, how dull it must be for you here. I wish I had the chance of moving, but I think, if the truth were known, the Bishop has forgotten I even exist.”
“We are very happy in Little Fladbury,” Lara said loyally, “and everyone here loves you, Papa, as you well know.”
At the same time it passed through her mind that the Marquis must have many livings on his vast estates.
It would be so easy, if he was willing, to appoint her father to a much bigger Parish with a far larger stipend. But she thought bitterly that that was something that would never happen!
Although she tried to busy herself about the house, she could not help wondering what was happening at The Priory and if the Marquis even gave her so much as a passing thought.
She lay awake thinking of him all that night and, when Monday came, she knew that the Prince of Wales and Lady Brooke and all the rest of the guests would be leaving in a flurry of goodbyes.
A mountain of trunks would be carried downstairs and placed on the brakes, which would take them with the ladies’ maids, valets and other servants to the station.
The Prince, Lady Brooke and some of their more intimate friends would travel on the Royal train.
She wondered if the Marquis would go with them or perhaps because he might want to ride Black Knight or one of his other superlative horses, he would stay until later in the day.
She imagined that he and Georgina would go to the Racecourse and wondered if they would miss her and if Georgina would say, as she had done before, that it was more fun with three horses.
‘I have to forget – I cannot go on thinking about it like this,’ Lara told herself severely.
She put on her bonnet, the old one, which was all she possessed, Jane having taken the one with blue ribbons back with her to The Priory and set off down to the village.
There was an elderly woman whom she often called on when she had the time and who was growing blind and could only sit in her small cottage waiting for a kind neighbour to tell her what was happening in the world outside.
Lara had picked her a few sprigs of fragrant white lilac in the garden, which was now coming into bloom.
This, of course, made her think of the shrubs at The Priory, which she had walked through when she had heard Lady Louise saying how much she loved the Marquis.
If Lady Louise had joined the list of women who had loved and lost him, so had she. Only he would never know about it and would certainly not have her complaining or arriving, as Lady Louise had, as an unwanted guest.
‘The Marquis is lucky on that count,’ she told herself bitterly.
She spent an hour with the blind woman and because it was difficult to talk about anything else she told her about The Priory and Georgina. Although she tried not to mention the Marquis, somehow his name crept into the story.
When she rose to say goodbye, the old woman held her hand in both of hers and said,
“You’ve been hurt, dearie, I can hear it in your voice. I pray things’ll come right for you. God often listens to my prayers.”
“I am sure He does,” Lara answered.
“And you’ll find happiness, that I know in my heart. You’re a good girl and like your mother. There was never a finer or kinder lady than her.”
“That is true,” Lara said, “and thank you for saying I am like her.”
“She was happy, very happy with your father, and you’ll be happy too and don’t forget I told you so.”
“I will not forget.”
Lara thought that she was speaking of the happiness she so wanted, but which would never come to her.
She walked back along the dusty road that twisted between the small thatched cottages and passed the village green before there was the first sight of the grey stone Church.
But she was seeing the velvet lawns slipping down to the stream, where once the monks had fished and the rose-pink of The Priory walls and the Great Hall with its beamed ceiling, where she had first met the Marquis.
Try as she would she could not escape him and she knew that he filled her mind and her heart.
It was no use to fight against love and even if she could not reach the moon, she could look at it and know that it was there in the sky.
She opened the Vicarage door and left it open to let in the sunshine. She knew her father was out visiting a farm, where the wife of the farmer was very ill.
Nanny was shopping in the village and, although Lara had seen her in the distance, she had not stopped but walked on.
She preferred her own thoughts to Nanny’s endless questions as to why she looked so pale and would eat practically nothing since she had returned home.
She went into the sitting room and realised that what she should do now was to go into the garden and try to pick enough flowers to make the house look more spring-like.
She pulled off her bonnet and put it down on a chair, and then went to the window to look out over the untidy garden.
As she did so, she was thinking once again of The Priory and its beauty, which had moved her as the music did which she had played to Georgina.
Strangely she thought that she missed the child almost as much as she missed the Marquis.
She had never had much to do with children, but now she knew that she would love above all things to have a child of her own.
Yet motherhood was something she would never know because it was impossible to marry a man she did not love.
‘The Marquis has ruined my life,’ she thought with a little twist of her lips. ‘He has even taken my dreams from me.’
Behind her she heard footsteps in the hall and then the door opened.
She turned expectantly, thinking that Nanny must have returned from the village.
Then she was suddenly still.
It was not Nanny in her shawl and bonnet who stood in the doorway, but the Marquis, looking very smart and very large.
He seemed somehow to fill the whole of the small sitting room until his head touched the ceiling.
Lara gave a little gasp.
Then, suddenly afraid, she asked, the words seeming to pour out of her lips,
“What has – happened? Why are you – here? Is – something – wrong?”
It flashed through her mind that perhaps Lord Magor had died after all and that she was responsible for it.
The Marquis closed the door behind him and walked towards her.
“Nothing is wrong,” he said. “Except I could not believe that you would leave without telling me that you were doing so.”
Just because he was there, or perhaps because there was a note in his voice that she did not understand, Lara felt her heart begin to thump in her breast.
The Marquis reached her side and stood looking down at her. The sun coming through the window brought out the red in her hair.
“Why did you leave?” he asked.
“I thought you would not – want me to stay, after what I had – done.”
“You might at least have asked me what I wished you to do,” he said quietly.
As he was standing so close to her, Lara was afraid, since she could feel the vibrations coming from him, that he would feel hers reaching out towards him and be aware of how much she loved him.
She felt as if her whole body was singing because she could see him, but she told herself that he would be shocked and perhaps horrified if he knew how glad she was.
He gave her the feeling that her whole being was tingling with the life force, which was also love.
“Georgina was deeply distressed when she found that you had left,” the Marquis said.
“I am sorry, I did not – mean to – upset her,” Lara replied quickly. “I sent Miss Cooper back.”
“Miss Cooper does not ride as you do, nor is she in the least musical.”
“You promised to find music teachers for Georgina.”
“I shall do that, but Georgina asked me to beg you to come back.”
He was speaking in a quiet deep voice and it seemed as if there was something very intimate about it. Lara felt almost as if he spoke to music.
She was trying to think what she should say and somehow the truth came to her lips,
“I am not – really a – Governess.”
“I know that,” the Marquis replied. “I forced Miss Cooper to tell me exactly who you are.”
“You were not unkind to her?” Lara asked without thinking.
“I hope not,” the Marquis replied, “but I cannot help it if she is terrified of me, can I?”
There was a hint of amusement in his voice as he added,
“ – as you never were!”
“I was frightened that you would be – angry after I had – shot Lord Magor.”
“Not very effectively,” the Marquis replied. “Perhaps your effectiveness as a marksman needs a great deal more practice!”
Now he was undoubtedly amused.
Lara glanced up at him to ask,
“You are not – angry with – me?”
“Not in the least,” the Marquis replied. “He thoroughly deserved it. But if you had told me what he was doing, I could have punished him far more effectively than you were able to do.”
“How could you do that?” Lara asked in surprise.
“By making sure that he is never again invited to The Priory or any of the other houses I own,” the Marquis answered.
“Do you mean that? Do you really mean that?” she asked. “I am glad – so very glad. It has worried me to think that Governesses – who are so vulnerable and so helpless can be persecuted by men like that.”
She spoke without thinking and wondered if she had said too much.
But there was a smile on the Marquis’s lips and she thought that it was not the cynical mocking one, but for some strange reason that she could not understand he looked happy.
There was silence and then he said,
“Now, Lord Magor having been disposed of, what do you intend to do about Georgina and of course – me?”
Lara’s eyes widened and she asked a little helplessly,
“What – can I do?”
“We want you to come back to The Priory.”
She was about to ask how she could do that, when he said quietly,
“Not as a Governess, but in a much more permanent position.”
Lara drew in her breath and the expression in her eyes was still questioning.
The Marquis put out his arms and drew her close to him.
“Shall we find out,” he asked in a voice that sounded somewhat strange, “if our second kiss is as wonderful as the first?”
He did not wait for an answer.
His lips came down on hers.
As she felt the wonder of it shoot through her like a shaft of sunlight, she thought that this could not be true and that she was dreaming.
Yet the ecstasy she had felt before was already rising within her, moving from her throat to her lips and her whole body vibrated with the glory of it.
As if the Marquis felt the same, he held her closer still and his kiss became more demanding, more passionate and possessive.
Once again he was carrying her into the sky, the Heavens opened for them and they were one, not with the moon but with the burning power of the sun.
It enveloped them with a light that was blinding and which came not only from the sun itself but from within them both.
The Marquis kissed her until she was breathless and as thrill after thrill pulsated through her, she felt that it was impossible to feel such rapture and not die from it.
Only when he raised his head, could she say incoherently,
“I love – you! I love – you! I know I must be – dreaming – please – kiss me again – in case I wake up.”
He gave a little laugh, which was curiously unsteady and then he kissed her until Lara felt that he possessed her completely.
*
A long time later the Marquis drew Lara to the sofa and they sat down side by side, his arms around her.
“Shall we make plans, my lovely one?” he asked.
“It is – hard for me to think of – anything except that you – love me. I love you so desperately,” Lara answered, “I cannot – believe it possible for you to – love me – why should you?”
“I can give you an answer to that,” the Marquis replied. “When I first saw you standing in the Great Hall, I thought that you were the most beautiful woman I had ever seen in my life. The red of your hair challenged me like a little flag of defiance and I knew that I wanted you.”
Lara made a murmur of happiness and he went on,
“But my very critical, very fastidious brain put to me the same question as you have just asked and I told myself that Governesses were not my concern and I must have drunk too much wine the night before.”
“Yet you – kissed me,” Lara whispered.
“How could I help it?” he replied. “I saw you disappearing into the room where I knew that no one was sleeping and I was well aware that you were hiding from me.”
His arms tightened round her as he continued,
“I intended to ask you what you were doing in that particular corridor when you should have been in the school room, but, when I realised that you were hiding in the darkness, I could no longer control my need for you.”
“It was wonderful – more – wonderful than I ever – believed a kiss – could be, but you thought I was – Lady Brooke.”
“I only said that to protect myself from my own feelings.”
“You – knew it was – me?”
“Do you think that I could kiss you and it could be utterly and completely marvellous besides being different to any kiss I have ever known and I would not be aware of who I was kissing?”
“It – it – was – marvellous for – me.”
“You had never been kissed before?”
“No!”
“I was sure of it,” the Marquis said, “so sure, my darling, I was counting the hours until my guests left and I could kiss you again.”
Lara leant her head against his shoulder.
“I thought you would be – shocked because I had been – looking at the – beautiful gowns owned by Lady Brooke.”
She felt as she spoke that she was confessing something reprehensible. At the same time she had to be truthful.
“You shall have far more beautiful ones,” the Marquis smiled, “and yet you are so lovely, my precious, that I adore you just as you look now.”
“I felt so ashamed of my clothes and my riding habit,” Lara whispered.
The Marquis laughed.
“You are really a woman at heart. Sometimes when you argued with me and defied me, I was afraid that you were not feminine, but one of those modern women who want to dominate men.”
“I would never attempt to – dominate you,” Lara answered. “Equally I love arguing with you. It is stimulating in a way I cannot explain.”
“It stimulates me too,” the Marquis said. “Ever since I met you, my darling, I have known why other women have bored me. It is because I have always been aware of what they were about to say before they actually said it!”
He kissed her forehead before he finished,
“Instead of inspiring me or, as you say, stimulating me, they have merely acted mentally as a sedative.”
Lara gave a little laugh and then she said,
“Supposing after a – little while you are – bored with me? You do realise that because I am very – ignorant of your world and have never done any of the Social things that you do – you will have thrown away your – freedom and gained nothing.”
“I shall have gained you,” the Marquis said, “and that is all I want. While I realise as Miss Cooper has told me that you are very poor and you have lived here all your life, yet you have thought and you have felt so much that I shall find it impossible to be bored with you. And what is more, I have a great deal to teach you.”
“You – want to do – that?”
“I want more than anything else to teach you about love. Apart from that we have a great deal in common, our horses, and please God, in time our children.”
He watched the blush that coloured Lara’s cheeks and then he added,
“When I watched you listening to Georgina playing the piano and willing me to appreciate her talent, I knew that was what I wanted you to feel about our own daughters and sons.”
Lara drew in her breath and again she hid her face against him, as she said,
“I love Georgina. I know now I would adore to have – children of – my own.”
“Your own?” the Marquis questioned. “I think, my precious one, that I shall have a part in them.”
Lara blushed again, but she went on,
“I was thinking today, before you came, that I could – never have – any since I could never – marry anyone whom I did not – love, as I love you.”
The Marquis did not answer her, but turned her face up to his and kissed her.
Because she realised that she had excited him by what she had said, there was a fire on his lips that had not been there before and a passion that was very demanding.
It told her, without words, that he wanted her to surrender herself to him completely.
She knew, as he kissed her and went on kissing her, that it was what she wanted too. She wanted to give him not only her heart and her soul but also her body.
“I want you,” the Marquis said, and his voice was deep and hoarse. “How soon will you marry me?”
“I want to be – your wife,” Lara answered. “I want it more than – anything else in the whole world. But I am still – afraid.”
“Of me?” the Marquis asked.
She smiled.
“Not really, although you are frightening at times, but of being your wife – in case I – fail you.”
“You will never do that,” the Marquis replied. “I have a feeling, my darling, that the future is going to be an exciting adventure for both of us. We have to discover a great deal about each other and for me it will be one of the most thrilling adventures that I have ever undertaken.”
“Do you really mean that?” Lara questioned. “For if I felt that you would become cynical, bored or contemptuous of me – after we had been married for a little while, it would be – better for me to say ‘no’ now rather than to – suffer the – agonies of Hell later.”
The Marquis’s arms were like steel and it was hard for her to breathe as he said,
“I am not allowing you to say ‘no’. You are going to marry me just as soon as your father will perform the ceremony and then I will have no time to be cynical when you will doubtlessly argue with me and nag me into doing a million things that I have never done before!”
Lara laughed, but he took the laughter from her lips with another kiss.
Then, as he held her captive, she knew that, while they would certainly argue and perhaps sometimes fight each other, their love was so great that it was, although he had not said so, different from any love that the Marquis had known before.
This was not only the burning heat of the sun that made them desire each other as a man and a woman but also the spiritual white light of the moon that elevated their souls.
Together they would seek all that was highest and best and which like a prayer would carry them up to the sky.
Lara knew that they had found together the love that she had been trying to express in her book, which she had seen in the beauty of The Priory and heard in the music she had played to Georgina.
It was the love that all men and women had sought down the ages.
It could never be complete in a man and woman separately, but must belong to both when, joined by the Sacrament of Marriage, they become one.
“I love – you,” Lara murmured against the Marquis’s lips.
“I adore and worship you,” he answered.
Then there was only the light of God to inspire, guide and protect them, all through their lives together.