The Magnificent Marquis

by Barbara Cartland

The Marquis did not want to stay long in Gibraltar.

  But the yacht had to take on extra stores and fuel at Malta and Valetta was another opportunity for Delia to go ashore.

  They visited various shops, buying some items the Marquis wanted including books.

  When they returned to The Scimitar, it was to find a man seated cross-legged on the deck – he had on show a large amount of jewellery in antique settings that Delia had never seen before.

  She stood still gazing at them and the man said to the Marquis,

  “I come to offer you an amazing opportunity, my Lord. See these beautiful and expensive jewels? A lady who is now dead left them to me. I have to sell them, because my wife is ill and my children are hungry.”

  The Marquis thought he had heard that story before.

  But the jewellery was certainly very attractive.

  He picked up a brooch set in a style that had been fashionable a hundred years earlier.

  “That is one of my very best pieces, my Lord,” the man blustered, “and I’ll let you have it for – ”

  He paused a moment, then named an amount in the local Maltese currency that the Marquis calculated at five hundred pounds.

  He hesitated, thinking it was quite a lot of money to pay when at the moment he had no one to give the brooch to.

  Then he could see that Delia was looking straight at him with a strange expression in her eyes.

  She did not speak and she did not move and yet he knew instinctively that she was telling him not to buy the brooch.

  He thought it strange, as he had been sure that it was genuine. If so, the asking price of five hundred pounds was definitely cheap.

  Once again he looked at Delia.

  He realised that she was telling him without words that it was not what he thought it to be, but a fake.

  “I tell you what I’ll do,” he said aloud. “I will buy this brooch from you, but I would like to take it first to a jeweller’s shop in Valetta where I have bought jewellery before and where the owner is most obliging – ”

  He paused, but the man did not speak.

  “He is the most respected jeweller in Malta and he will tell me if I am getting the bargain from you that you tell me I am.”

  He hesitated and looked round before he added,

  “You can, of course, come with me and wait outside while I speak to him.”

  He put the brooch back with the other jewels that were spread out on a cloth on the deck.

  Then he turned to Delia,

  “Come and help me to find my chequebook, which I think I have left on the writing table in my cabin. As the sun is shining and it’s very hot, you had better bring a hat if you are accompanying me.”

  He walked across the deck as he spoke and Delia followed him through the door that led to the Saloon.

  Once they were alone, the Marquis asked her,

  “Why did you tell me that the brooch is not what he says it is?”

  Delia smiled.

  “So you understood I was willing you to realise it’s a fake?”

  “How can you know that, Delia? It looks genuine enough to me and, if it is, I would be buying a bargain.”

  “So you would, my Lord, but whilst the setting is genuine – the diamonds are not.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  He was thinking that Delia was rather showing off and pretending to be knowledgeable about diamonds, which she really could not be and without even closely inspecting them.

  “I suppose that you will think it stupid of me to say I was using my Third Eye.”

  “I do not believe a Third Eye or any other eye could possibly say if that diamond brooch is genuine or not, and anyway we will very soon know if our plausible salesman allows me to show it to an expert.”

  As he spoke, he left the Saloon and opened the door onto the deck and then he laughed.

  “All right, Delia,” he called out, “you win!”

  She joined the Marquis and then looked towards the place on the deck where the salesman had been sitting with his wares.

  The space was empty and he had gone.

  “I can see that you are extremely valuable,” said the Marquis, “in more ways than one. I must be grateful and say thank you for saving me from wasting my money.”

  “You will have to be careful of men like him, my Lord. They are to be found all over the place in Paris and I suppose in other big Cities.”

  The Marquis thought, as he had thought before, that was the sort of warning he should be giving her!

  He realised that she had not needed to be an expert on diamonds. It was her Third Eye that had told her that the man was a rogue.

  Hers was undoubtedly a very special gift that most people would appreciate and find very useful.

  They went ashore again, but there was no sign of the dishonest jewellery-seller.

  There were, however, very many beggars and other people trying to sell souvenirs.

  “I must give you a present,” the Marquis suggested, as they walked into a street filled with expensive shops.

  “No, of course not, my Lord,” Delia responded.

  The Marquis looked at her in surprise.

  “Why ever not?”

  “Because you have given me so much already and, as I have no money with me, there is nothing I can give you in return.”

  “If you want money, Delia, you know only too well I will give you all that you want.”

  “But if I buy you a gift and you are really paying for it, it would not be the sort of gift I should want to give you. One day, although it may take a long time, I will give you something I know you will appreciate and which in a small way will tell you how grateful I am to you.”

  The Marquis smiled.

  “Very well, I will wait and I am quite certain I will be most delighted with any present you might give me, but I have every intention of giving you one now, so you had better tell me what you would like.”

  They were passing a shop with a number of pretty dresses in the window.

  One particular evening dress was of soft lace and it was particularly attractive as the pattern of the lace was a flower design and in the middle of each flower was a small diamante.

  The Marquis, gazing at it, had to admit that it was one of the prettiest gowns he had ever seen.

  He sensed that Delia loved the dress.

  “It is too expensive, I know it is too expensive,” she murmured, “but I would like to look pretty for you when we dine together. If the dress is not that outrageously dear, perhaps you could afford it – ”

  The Marquis became pensive.

  When he considered the many expensive gifts he had given to the women with whom he had had affaires-de-coeur, he knew the cost of this particular gown would seem insignificant.

  They entered the shop.

  And when Delia put on the gown the Marquis knew it did not need her Third Eye to tell her it might have been designed especially for her.

  It not only fitted her perfectly, but also revealed the soft curves of her body. At the same time it shone when the diamante caught the light, making her look as if she was dressed in stars rather than in lace.

  The Marquis bought it for her.

  In addition he insisted on buying her a very smart and up-to-date afternoon gown.

  She told him there was no need to buy it, as he had already bought her sufficient clothes in the shop they had patronised in the suburbs of London.

  “I have every intention of calling on acquaintances in Cairo, who would expect you, as my niece, to be smartly dressed. I just cannot allow you to let the family down!”

  Delia giggled.

  “You are only saying that to put me at my ease. Of course, I would love the beautiful dress, but I don’t wish to impose on you.”

  “You can easily repay me when I make you work exceedingly hard a little later on – ”

  She knew he was referring to her understanding of Arabic and so she therefore remained silent as he added a rather cheek
y hat that the vendeuse informed them went with the dress.

  He also provided her with a velvet cape in case they went out in the evening

  The vendeuse promised faithfully to deliver all their purchases directly to the yacht as soon as possible.

  The Marquis and Delia explored the City of Valetta a little longer, taking coffee seated outside a coffee shop on the pavement.

  Delia was thrilled at watching the people pass by.

  “I used to long, when I was at my school, to stop at a place like this,” she enthused, “and watch the people, but naturally we were not allowed to.”

  “Why did you want to watch them, Delia?”

  “Because the people of each nationality are so very different – in the way they walk, the way they carry their heads and the way they think.”

  “Are you now telling me,” the Marquis quizzed her, “that you can tell what they are thinking as they pass by?”

  “I expect it is only my imagination, but just look at that man walking across the road now and frowning as he does so. He is not worrying at all about the traffic, he is worrying about something that is dramatically affecting his life.”

  He glanced at the man she was talking about.

  “Perhaps he is thinking of taking on an entirely new job,” she continued, “which is different from anything he has done before. Or he is upset because the alterations to his house have cost more than he expected.”

  The Marquis laughed.

  “You are making it all up. At the same time it is an excellent way of learning or thinking you are learning more about the people you come into contact with.”

  Delia was still watching the people passing by.

  “Look at that beggar,” she cried. “He has just made a nuisance of himself to the man walking down the other side of the street. I think simply because he was a nuisance the man has given him some money.”

  The Marquis followed the direction of her eyes and saw who she was watching.

  The man who had tipped the beggar was moving on quickly, obviously extremely glad to be rid of the beggar who had pestered him.

  Then as he disappeared, they saw the beggar hold up the money he had been given. He looked at it and then with a shrug of his shoulders slipped it into his pocket.

  Next he looked round for another victim and found a well-dressed middle-aged woman coming out of a shop.

  “I think by the end of the day,” Delia commented wisely, “he will have more in his pocket than you have.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised. Those beggars are always a nuisance and very persistent. The only way to be rid of them is to pay them off quickly.”

  “That is just what I was thinking,” said Delia, “and perhaps we miss many things in our lives just because we accept far too quickly that it’s impossible to obtain what we really want.”

  The Marquis sipped his coffee.

  Then, as he searched for a rejoinder to her comment, he realised that he enjoyed these conversations with Delia more than any other discussion he could recall having with anyone else.

  He always had to think hard of how to answer her.

  She brought to mind situations when he himself had to find rapid answers to the same sort of question.

  When they returned to The Scimitar, the dresses the Marquis had bought for Delia had already arrived.

  Hutton had taken them down to her cabin.

  “I am thrilled with all you have given me, my Lord, but I am still upset that I could not buy something for you. I only hope that one day, although it may be very far away, I will find a gift you really want and then I will no longer feel guilty.”

  “There is no need for you to feel guilty now,” the Marquis insisted. “And just remember you saved me from throwing away five hundred pounds this morning!”

  “Yes, that is satisfactory at any rate, but actually it would have been very silly of you to spend so much money with a man who did not do enough business to rent a shop and was thus unlikely to have anything worth buying.”

  “You are quite right, Delia, and I see I will have to take you with me wherever I go so as to be certain I am not deceived by rogues or make a fool of myself.”

  “I am sure, even if I had not been there, that you would have applied exactly the same test as you did and no one could have moved faster than that man did!”

  “Well, I have proved one thing to my satisfaction,” sighed the Marquis, “and that is that you are protecting me rather more than I am protecting you!”

  “I really think,” Delia remarked as if she definitely intended to have the last word, “I should try to protect you from myself. You are giving me too much and I cannot see how I can ever pay you back.”

  The Marquis thought with a twist to his lips that he had never yet been paid back by a woman on whom he had spent a great deal of money.

  They had always taken it as their right.

  He had reckoned that even before he made love to them they were already asking themselves how generous he would be.

  Invariably they would always accept more than he really wished to spend.

  ‘It’s not that I am mean,’ he had often thought to himself, ‘it’s just that I dislike the idea of women thinking that, because I am rich, they are therefore entitled to every pound they can squeeze out of me.’

  He found it touching that Delia was so different.

  She was worrying because she could not give him anything in return.

  ‘I just don’t believe that when she grows older,’ he thought, ‘she will be like the rest, grabbing everything she can lay her hands on and being interested in a man because of his possessions rather than who he is.’

  *

  As they left Malta, Delia asked where they would be stopping next.

  “There is no need for us to stop anywhere before Alexandria,” the Marquis replied. “But I suppose you will be disappointed if you don’t see Naples or even Greece?”

  “You know I would love to see both of them, but if you are in a hurry to reach Egypt and the Suez Canal, we could perhaps stop there on our way back.”

  It flashed through his mind that she would be in no rush to return home to England, because then would come the dreadful decision as to where she should go and what she should do.

  “I think,” he said, “that perhaps we could make just one stop on the way. So we will toss for it and let the fates decide for us rather than ourselves.”

  He could guess without being told which of the two places would appeal most to Delia.

  As he flung the coin up into the air, he had the idea that she was praying.

  ‘Heads it is Greece – and tails it is Naples.’

  The coin fell to the ground between them.

  Delia gave a cry of delight.

  “It is Greece!” she cried. “I want to go there more than I have ever wanted to go anywhere. I was so afraid you would think it much too far out of our way.”

  “Your wish has come true, Delia, and I only hope you will not be disappointed.”

  “How could I be? I have read so many books about Greece and what I would love to see more than anything else is Delphi.”

  The Marquis considered this for a moment and then he remarked,

  “We shall have to sail to Athens first and then have quite a long journey overland to Delphi.”

  “Can we really do that?”

  Her eyes were shining and she looked so lovely that the Marquis thought it would be a very hard-hearted man who would be able to refuse her anything.

  “Very well, Delia, you have successfully bullied me into spending more time on reaching my objective than I intended, but as it is so excellent for your education, I can claim it’s in a good cause.”

  “It is the most perfect and wonderful present I have ever had. I know it will be something to think about and dream about for the rest of my life.”

  “How do you know you will not come here again?”

  Delia did not answer.

  After a moment th
e Marquis commented,

  “You know as well as I do, Delia, you will have to marry someone sooner or later and let me suggest that you are not too difficult about it.”

  “What do you mean ‘too difficult’?”

  “I would admit that the man your father chose for you sounds totally ghastly and I can quite understand your refusing to marry him, but the perfect man you have seen in your dreams or read about in novels very likely does not exist. Therefore you will have to accept whomever God sends you and not be too fussy.”

  “And what then are you doing about your life?” she asked him unexpectedly. “You said you have no wish to marry anyone, but I am certain that your family has told you frequently that you must marry and produce an heir to carry on your title and estates.”

  The Marquis looked at her in surprise.

  Somehow he had not expected Delia to realise that this was indeed his situation – that it was his duty to have an heir, as his relatives had insisted over and over again.

  “There is plenty of time for that,” he said sharply. “And as I have already told you, I have no intention at all of marrying someone who I will become bored with and who will make my life a misery.”

  “But there so many charming women in the world and although you are putting up a barrier between yourself and them, one day someone will be able to sneak through it and you will be really happy.”

  “Are you saying I am not really happy at present?”

  “Only you can answer that question, my Lord, but if you are a really happy man, I don’t think you would have planned to set out on this journey alone.”

  “The trouble with you,” the Marquis protested, “is that you are far too occupied using that peculiarity you call your Third Eye. I am living my life as I wish to live it and not looking too far forward and certainly not looking back! Does that satisfy you?”

  Delia sighed.

  “It is satisfying to me that you are so kind and so understanding. It’s just that, as you make other people happy, I want you to be happy too and, of course, to enjoy all the best things that can never be bought with money.”

  The Marquis ruminated that once again this strange child was talking sense.

  It was indeed an issue he had known himself.

  He had lain awake at night wondering what he was doing and where he was going.