When he had been angry at having to rescue her from being made into ‘a boarder’, he was concerned with her appearance as one of the family and not as a beautiful woman.
Now, as every gown Nelda put on seemed more becoming and a better frame for her beauty than the last, Lord Harleston found it enthralling to see her look even lovelier than she had ever looked before.
When she was wearing a silk gown as blue as the sky, he thought that only an artist like Fragonard could paint her portrait and express not only her beauty and grace but something else that he had never found in any other woman.
The more he was with Nelda, the more he realised that she had a spiritual aura that came not from her perfect features and not from the colour of her hair, but from some inner light within her.
It shone through her and made him more and more aware every day that she had an exceptional personality besides being utterly and completely desirable as a woman.
He found himself enchanted by her brain, which was quick, retentive and amazingly original.
As he had complained to Robert, the women he made love to seldom said anything that he did not expect them to say and he had added cynically the epithet that ‘all cats in the dark are grey’.
But Nelda was quite different.
He found that he could never anticipate in advance what would be her attitude on any particular subject and he could not remember her saying anything banal or making a remark that would have been better left unsaid.
He found his love for her increasing day-by-day and hour-by-hour and sometimes it was an agony to pretend an indifference that he did not feel and to conceal the emotions that seemed to consume him.
For the first time in his life he was thinking of somebody else rather than of himself. He knew that it was because he was the only person now in her life, one unwary or hasty word could destroy her trust and sense of security and she would be alone and perhaps desperately unhappy.
Because he loved her so deeply, this was a risk he could not take.
He therefore schooled himself to talk to Nelda naturally and without sounding too personal and to ensure that every moment they were together she grew to rely on him more and more and he prayed to love him as he loved her.
Letters and flowers arrived from Waldo every day.
If he asked if he could see Nelda, she did not say so and Lord Harleston deliberately did not ask enquire into what she read in his letters.
They went to the theatre where she sat entranced like a child at its first pantomime, to the Ballet and to the New Metropolitan Opera House where they had a box to themselves, which she found delightful.
As they were staying in the apartment of the Prairie Cattle Company, the Press were not aware that Lord Harleston had returned to New York, as they would have done had he been staying in a hotel or with a prestigious family.
He was careful not to appear in restaurants or places where he was likely to meet somebody he knew or just be recognised.
To be with Nelda was a joy in itself and at the same time an agony because he loved her so much that he found it hard to sleep when she was only the width of the passage away from him.
‘How can I go on like this?’ he asked himself dozens of times.
Yet he was still too nervous to take the plunge and ask Nelda what she felt about him.
He knew now as her eyes lit up when she came into the room where he was sitting after dinner, and she left him reluctantly because she wished to go on talking to him.
He had the uncomfortable feeling that she still thought of him as an elderly Guardian who had taken the place of her father.
‘What can I do? How can I make her aware of me as a man?’ he asked the sky and then he laughed mockingly at himself.
In the past there had never been a woman who he had been alone with for a few minutes without her making it obvious that she thought him an attractive man and a very desirable one at that.
But, when Nelda slipped her hand into his when they were walking along the corridor, he knew that it was the touch of a confiding child.
“I love her! I love her!” Lord Harleston repeated over and over again.
When she came into the room to show him a new evening gown before they went out to dinner, he would feel the blood throbbing in his temples and he felt that one day his will would snap and he would take her in his arms and kiss her as his lips burned to do.
“Goodnight, it has been a wonderful, wonderful evening, just like – all the rest we have spent together,” Nelda would say.
“I have enjoyed it too,” Lord Harleston would answer.
“You are quite sure that you have not been bored?”
“Not for a moment.”
“I am very very glad. I am frightened of boring you because I am so ignorant and sometimes you must find me very – foolish.”
“I have never found you foolish.”
“And I pray you never – will. Thank you again – and goodnight, my Lord.”
“Goodnight, Nelda.”
She would leave him, but he wanted to hold on to her to keep her with him.
She would give him an entrancing little smile as she reached the door. Yet he knew that there was not the look in her eyes that he so wanted to see.
Then she had gone and he would think despairingly that he would have another wakeful night yearning for her.
They had been nearly a week in New York when one very hot day they were sitting in the lounge of their apartment talking and a servant opened the door to announce,
“Mr. Waldo Altman Junior, my Lord!”
Lord Harleston, who was lying back in his chair, then sat up rapidly and Nelda gave a little exclamation.
Waldo, holding a huge bunch of orchids, came across the room.
“I had to come and see you,” he said to Nelda, “as you don’t answer my letters.”
Nelda rose slowly to her feet and, as Waldo held out the orchids, she took them from him automatically and then put them down on a side table.
“How can you be so cruel, Nelda, when I told you how much I wanted to see you?” he asked. “I’ve been waiting every day for a reply.”
As Nelda obviously found it difficult to find words to answer him with, Lord Harleston said,
“We have been very busy, Waldo.”
“How are you, my Lord?” Waldo asked as if he suddenly realised that he was in the room.
“I thought perhaps you would come to New York,” Lord Harleston remarked.
“I have written to Nelda every day to tell her so,” Waldo said with a reproachful look at her.
“As I have just said, we have been very busy,” Lord Harleston repeated, “and we are extremely grateful to your father for allowing us to stay here. It has been most convenient as well as comfortable.”
He spoke meaningfully, thinking it only right that Nelda should be aware that she was, one might almost say, a guest of Mr. Altman.
“I’m glad you are comfortable here,” Waldo replied.
He was not looking at Lord Harleston but at Nelda.
“I have to see you,” he said urgently as if they were alone. “I have to talk to you.”
Nelda gave a little cry.
“No! There is – nothing to say – nothing at all!”
She looked appealingly at Lord Harleston as she spoke and he interposed,
“I think perhaps you should have a word alone with Waldo. After all he has come all this way to see you.”
“I have – nothing to say to him – nothing!” Nelda asserted. “Please – please – send him away – and I don’t want any more – letters from him.”
She ran as she spoke towards Lord Harleston to hold onto his arm with both hands.
“Please – send him – away,” she pleaded.
As if he felt somewhat embarrassed, Lord Harleston turned to say,
“I am sorry, Waldo, but as I have told you before, it is up to Nelda.”
As he spoke, he had the feeling that Waldo was not listening
.
Instead he was looking at Nelda, his eyes taking in the expression on her face as she appealed to Lord Harleston for help and the way she was holding onto his arm with both hands.
Waldo looked at her for a long moment and then he said,
“So that’s how it is! I guess it’s what I might have expected. All right, go ahead and marry him! But I warn you, his reputation’s worse than your father’s and he’ll make you unhappy. You’ll be a hell of a lot worse off with him than you would be with me!”
As he finished speaking, his voice had risen to a shout.
Then he turned on his heel, stalked out of the room and slammed the door behind him.
For a moment Nelda stood as if turned to stone.
Then, as if the full impact of what Waldo had said swept over her, she made a convulsive little sound and turned to hide her head against Lord Harleston’s shoulder.
His arms went round her and he held her against him.
She was crying and in a voice he could hardly hear she stammered hesitantly,
“I-I am sorry – I did not – want you to – know – !”
His arms tightened and he asked in a tone that he could hardly recognise as his own,
“Are you saying, Nelda, that you love me?”
He was aware that she took a deep breath before she replied,
“I-I cannot – help it – please don’t – send me away!”
There was a frantic note in her voice as she lifted her face to look up at him pleadingly and her eyes wet with tears were held by Lord Harleston’s so that it was impossible to look away.
“You love me!” he said slowly as if he could hardly believe that it was the truth. “Oh, my darling, you have crucified me because I thought I would never be able to tell you how much I love you!”
She stared at him.
Then the light that came into her face was dazzling.
“You – you – love me?” she questioned beneath her breath.
“I adore and worship you!” Lord Harleston answered. “I have loved you for so long I feel as if it has been a century of time, but I did not dare to ask what you felt about me.”
“I love you – so much that I have been – terrified you would – send me to England and I have been – praying and – praying that I could – stay with you.”
“Your prayers have been heard,” Lord Harleston said. “You will stay with me, my darling, for the rest of our lives and now I can teach you about love, which is something I have been yearning to do.”
As he spoke, he drew her closer still and his lips found hers.
He kissed her very gently because he was afraid of frightening her, then, as he felt almost as if she melted into him, his lips became more demanding, more insistent and even more possessive.
As he felt the softness of her lips, he felt an ecstasy that he had never known before in the whole of his life flood through him and knew as it did so that she was feeling the same.
It was so wonderful, so rapturous and so different from the fiery desire that a kiss had meant to him in the past that for a moment he could hardly believe that what he was feeling was true and he was not dreaming.
Then, as he felt Nelda’s mouth quiver and he knew her body was trembling, not from fear but with the rapture of his kisses, he became more passionate and demanding.
He knew then that this was what he had longed for, searched for and thought he would never find.
To Nelda it was as if the Heavens opened and Lord Harleston swept her into the celestial light and she was blinded by the glory of it.
She knew that this was the love that her father and mother had known and which she swore long ago in her dreams that she would seek and, if she did not find it, then she would never love anybody or let any man touch her.
Waldo Altman had been so certain that she would do what he wanted and she knew that, unless Lord Harleston protected her, she would have nowhere to hide from him.
At first she had felt that he was a tower of strength, someone who had taken her father’s place, until the more she was with him the more she felt as if he was not only there to look after her but she had become a part of him.
When she went to bed at night, she dreamt of him and, when she woke in the morning, her first thought was that she would see him and be with him.
Still for a long time she had not understood until her instinct had told her that as far as she was concerned he was the only man in the world and, if she could not be with him, she would rather die.
Even then she did not realise completely that she loved him as a man and it was rather that he was larger than life and an integral part of her prayers, her thoughts and her dreams.
It was only when Waldo wanted to marry her that she knew that there was only one man she wanted to marry, although she was sure that he would never want to marry her.
And that was Lord Harleston.
‘How could he – want me when he thinks I am just a – child and a very tiresome – encumbrance?’ she often asked herself despairingly.
She was terrified that he might guess her feelings for him and it would not only disgust him but persuade him to send her to England even sooner than he intended.
Because her mother had always taught her to be controlled and not to show her feelings and her father had said that nothing annoyed him more than a woman who cried and whined to get her own way, Nelda was able to hide her love.
But sometimes she felt Lord Harleston must guess that she wanted to be near him, wanted to touch him and to be quite certain that he was really there.
‘I love him! I love him!’ she had said to herself on the train when they had talked together.
It was an agony for her to leave him at night and go to her own room knowing that she wanted to stay with him and to lie beside him as they had in the farmhouse.
‘Why did I not know then that I loved him?’ she asked herself.
She knew, however, that, if her mind had not accepted that it was love, her instinct had done so when she had slipped her hand into his and felt safe and at peace because he was beside her.
Now at the touch of his lips she knew what she had thought was true, she belonged to him and was a part of him that was indivisible.
Only when they touched the very zenith of ecstasy and it seemed that only human frailty prevented it from being prolonged for ever, did Lord Harleston raise his head and they came back to earth.
“I love you!” he sighed in his deep voice. “How could I have known that you would make me feel like this?”
“Like – what?” Nelda asked, her eyes shining, her lips parted with the feelings of wonder that he had aroused in her.
“I am no longer a man, my darling,” he said. “Because you love me I am a God! Just now we touched Heaven together and our lives will never be the same again.”
Nelda gave a cry of happiness.
“I feel it too! We feel the same way, think the same and now you love me I want to go down on my knees and thank God as this is what I have prayed and prayed for.”
“I have prayed as well,” Lord Harleston said. “Oh, my precious, my adorable one, how can I have been so fortunate and so incredibly lucky as to have found you?”
“If you are lucky – I am lucky too.”
She hesitated for a moment before she added wistfully,
“You – did say you – wanted to – marry me?”
“I am going to marry you immediately,” Lord Harleston answered. “You will be my wife, my precious one, and nothing and nobody shall ever frighten or upset you again.”
“I could never be – frightened with – you and I want to go on saying – over and over again – I love you!”
It was, however, impossible to do so because Lord Harleston kissed her again, holding her lips captive once more until they both felt as if they were floating above the world and were no longer human.
He kissed her until they could no longer stand and sank down onto the sofa with their arms entwined and Nel
da’s head on his shoulder.
He kissed her forehead, her eyes, her little straight nose and lastly her mouth.
“What I want to do now,” he said when he could speak, “is to find out how we can be married and how quickly I can make you my wife.”
“I want to be your – wife today!”
“That is what I want too, but it may take a little longer, my lovely one.”
She rose to her feet to go and stand at the window.
They were many floors up and they looked out at the high buildings, the roofs and trees of New York.
“Because you love me, this is Paradise,” Lord Harleston said, “but I really want to take you home, my darling, home to England where we both belong.”
“It does not matter – where I am – so long as I am with you,” Nelda sighed, “and I feel that even your – relatives will not be – unkind about Papa – if you are with me.”
“You may be certain of that,” he said, “and not ‘my relatives’, my darling but ‘our relatives’.”
“I like being a Harle, it makes me closer to you,” Nelda murmured simply.
He kissed her because she was just so adorable and then, as the door opened, they moved reluctantly apart.
It was a servant bringing in a cable.
As Lord Harleston took it from him, he felt that he knew already what it contained, but told himself that he was being over-optimistic.
He opened it and for a moment the words seemed to dance in front of his eyes.
Then he forced himself to read it carefully so that there would be no mistake.
He read,
“Dolly announcing her engagement tomorrow to Elmsdale.
Come home. Missing you.
Robert.”
Lord Harleston knew that the Earl of Elmsdale was a very wealthy Peer who had been in love with Dolly for some time.
He gave a deep sigh as if a burden had fallen from his shoulders.
“What – is it? What has – happened?” Nelda asked him.
“I have just turned up another ace,” he replied, “and, because it is so amazingly lucky, my precious, I think perhaps your father’s mantle has fallen on me and, if that is true, I am very grateful.”
Lucky in Love Page 15
