The Island of Love (Camfield Series No. 15)

by Barbara Cartland

  Lydia laughed.

  “I thought we would get back to the horses sooner or later!”

  “Exactly!” the Earl agreed. “And the King is also anxious for me to see the Hula dancers which I think you will enjoy too.”

  “It sounds very exciting,” Lydia murmured.

  “I have also promised,” the Earl answered, “that we will attend another Ball, which is one of the reasons why, my lovely wife, I stole one of your sister’s trunks, knowing that you would want to dazzle everybody and I shall not have time to buy you all the clothes and jewels I intend to give you later.”

  “Are you ... really saying ... all this to me? I ... I cannot believe what ... I am ... hearing!”

  As she spoke she felt the tears come into her eyes and begin to run down her cheeks.

  After years of being pushed on one side first by her father because she was not a boy, then by Heloise who wanted everything for herself, it seemed impossible that was now all changed as if a fairy had waved a magical wand to make all her dreams come true.

  The Earl knew what she was thinking and gently held her close to him as she hid her face against his shoulder.

  “I will not allow you to cry, my precious love,” he said. “You are going to be happy, as we were happy last night, or rather, this morning, on our Island of Love.”

  “How can you be so wonderful ... so understanding and ... do so much for me?” Lydia asked incoherently.

  “You told me I am a pirate,” the Earl replied. “Therefore having captured you I am prepared to steal or plunder everything and everybody to give you what you deserve, the perfect woman who I believed did not exist, and whom it would be impossible for me to find.”

  “Oh, darling ... suppose I ... fail you?”

  “You will not do that,” the Earl said. “Ever since I have known you we have been so closely attuned that it would be impossible for you to do anything that I did not know about and understand, or to deceive me in any way.”

  He drew in his breath before he said:

  “It is like finding a perfect pearl and knowing without even touching it that it is flawless. That is what you are!”

  The way he spoke made Lydia’s tears run even faster down her cheeks, her heart was beating in the same way.

  She turned her face up to his and with his handkerchief he gently wiped away her tears.

  Then his lips held hers captive and he kissed her until the whole world seemed to revolve around them dizzily.

  “I want you, my darling,” he said. “I have sent the servants away to their own hut which is somewhere behind us, so we are alone, which is what I have longed for and thought was impossible.”

  “I told you there was ... always ... hope,” Lydia said in a quavering little voice.

  “And you were right, Heart of my Heart.”

  She thought he was about to kiss her, but instead he drew her to her feet and they walked into the house.

  The Earl passed through the Sitting-Room and opened a door which led into a bedroom of about the same size.

  When she saw it Lydia could not help gasping. ‘Only a King could imagine being Royal in a Beach-House!’ she thought.

  The huge double bed which almost filled the room was draped with embroidered curtains and on top of the canopy was a replica of a crown.

  She pointed to it and gave a little laugh, and the Earl laughed too.

  “It is certainly something I did not anticipate,” he said.

  “At least it looks ... comfortable.”

  He pulled her close against him. Then he said: “Tomorrow, or perhaps some other day while we are still here, I am going to take you back to the island on which we found ourselves last night.”

  She looked at him in surprise and he said:

  “I wanted when I was there, more than anything I have ever wanted in my whole life, to make love to you amongst the blossoms and under the pine trees.”

  Lydia hid her face against his neck before she said in a whisper:

  “I ... I thought the same thing ... and how wonderful ... it would be!”

  The Earl held her so close she could hardly breathe. “We think the same, and we feel the same. How could our marriage be anything but perfect when we are one person—or very nearly one!”

  As he spoke she felt his fingers undoing the back of her gown and when a moment later he lifted her onto the bed she did not feel shy, but only a wild excitement that had also something spiritual about it.

  She knew too a rapture which made her feel as if she was reaching for the peaks of the mountains.

  Then when the Earl joined her she knew that this was the happiness she had never thought she would find, but which had come to her so unexpectedly and so suddenly that she was half-afraid it would vanish as quickly as it had come.

  But as the Earl pulled her gently against him she knew he was deliberately keeping himself strictly under control, so as not to frighten her.

  Because he was so gentle it made her want to cry again simply because she was so happy.

  The curtains over the window were drawn back and outside she could see the sea silver in the moonlight and the stars twinkling like diamonds in the sky.

  The Earl had blown out the candles by the bed and now the moon flooded into the room with a strange silver radiance that seemed to make everything mysterious and at the same time exquisitely beautiful.

  “I love you!”

  Lydia instinctively moved a little closer to him, feeling how strong and athletic his body was compared to the softness of hers.

  “I feel as if I have fought a dozen battles,” he said, “dived deep into the depths of the ocean, and stormed Heaven itself to win you!”

  His lips moved over her forehead before he went on:

  “When we said goodbye to each other I was desperately afraid of the future, knowing if I could not have you I would feel crippled for the rest of my life.”

  “My darling ... how can you ... say such ... things?”

  “It is true,” he replied, “but now suddenly you are mine, and I do not have to be afraid that time is passing and I shall no longer see you and shall lose you all together.”

  The way he spoke was very moving and Lydia said:

  “We have been so lucky, so unbelievably lucky! Are you quite certain though, that people will not be ... shocked because you have ... married me?”

  “I think the majority will merely imagine that they got the name wrong in the first place, and the rest, once they know you will realise I am the most fortunate man in the world and that nobody could make me a more beautiful or perfect wife.”

  Lydia gave a little murmur.

  “I know what you are thinking, my sweet,” the Earl said. “But to me you have a beauty which far exceeds that of your sister in every way, and it is the beauty for which I was always looking.”

  “I felt you were ... looking for something,” Lydia murmured.

  “First unconsciously, then consciously,” he said. “I was trying to look beneath the surface to find what was inside a person and what they were really like behind their outward appearance.”

  Lydia knew that was what she had suspected about him.

  “When I saw you,” the Earl went on, “and felt you first vibrate towards me, I then began to know the beauty of your character and personality and what I suppose one might call your ‘soul’!”

  He kissed her cheek and said:

  “You charmed me so overwhelmingly that I knew it was impossible for me to see beauty in any other woman’s face.”

  “I ... I hope you will ... always think so, and I promise you I will ... try to do what you ... want and ... be what you ... want.”

  She looked at him before she said:

  “But because nobody has ever ... loved me and I have ... always been kept so much in the background, I felt like a ... ghost instead of a person ... a shadow of those I was with and not really myself.”

  The Earl’s lips moved over her skin, but he did not interrupt as s
he went on:

  “Because you are so magnificent and so vibrant you can ... understand why I love you ... but it is impossible for me to understand why you love me ... only I do not want to fail you ... I want you to be ... proud of me ... so please ... darling ... help me ... teach me and guide me ... otherwise I shall be a ... failure.”

  The Earl moved so that she was lying back against the pillows and he was looking down at her. Then he said:

  “When I put that blanket round you on the island and told you you looked like a Saint, I meant it. I wanted then to kneel at your feet and that is what I want to do now.”

  Lydia found it was impossible to breathe as he continued:

  “You are good, pure and perfect, my lovely wife, and because I know all these things are instinctive to you, not only will you inspire and stimulate me as you have done already, but together we will be able to help other people, and you will show me how to be worthy of those who follow my lead, either in public life or in the sporting world.”

  “If I could ... do that I would be ... very ... very happy.”

  “That is what I intend you to be.”

  He looked at her for a long moment in the moonlight before he said:

  “Oh, my darling, have you any idea how beautiful you are?”

  Then his lips were on hers, his hand was touching her, his heart was beating against her heart, and the moonlight enveloped them with a dazzling light.

  A long time later when the moon was high in the sky and there was only the sound of the waves lapping on the shore, Lydia stirred against the Earl’s shoulder. “Are you awake, my beloved?” he asked.

  “I thought you must be asleep.”

  “I am too happy to sleep.”

  “I am so happy I feel we really are in ... Paradise.”

  He smiled and said:

  “And that is where we will stay because I feel, my lovely one, that our love will grow, and this is only the beginning of what we will feel for each other.”

  “I ... love you so much,” Lydia said, “I feel it is impossible to love any more ... and yet I am sure you are right. There is so much more for us to find out about each other, and I am only afraid that once you ... know all about me, which is not very much, you will become bored!”

  The Earl laughed.

  “That is very unlikely. I am in love as I have never been in love before. In fact, I have never known what love was like, until I met you.”

  “Then you are not ... disappointed in me ... already?”

  “My precious, how can you ask such a thing!”

  “I was ... so afraid of doing ... something ... wrong.”

  “You were perfect in every way! Everything a man could ask for in a woman, and I swear to you that I have never before felt like this in my whole life!”

  Lydia pressed her lips against his shoulder. Then she said:

  “When you ... made love to me ... it was the most ... wonderful thing I could ... ever imagine ... I did not know ... love was ... like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “A tingling excitement ... and at the same time ... so intense and vivid that the rapture of it was ... almost a pain.”

  “That is what I wanted you to feel,” he said. “Our love, Lydia, is not something soft and gentle. It is strong and resilient, the Power which you spoke of, and irresistible.”

  “I am sure Love is Life,” Lydia whispered, “and that is why everybody ... seeks it, knowing that it is ... part of God and therefore ... part of ... creation.”

  He pulled her against him.

  “I adore you,” he said. “You always say the things I want to hear, the things I am striving to put into words for myself. My adorable wife, it is wonderful being married to you, because we not only have so much loving to do together, but also so much thinking.”

  Lydia laughed.

  “I am sure no newly marrieds have ever said that to each other before!”

  “Well, I have said it now,” the Earl remarked, “and it is true. I have never before known a woman I could think with!”

  “Then please go on thinking with me,” Lydia pleaded, “because it is very exciting ... although not quite as wonderful as your kisses!”

  She lifted her mouth to him as she spoke and he looked down at her for a long moment before he said: “We said last night that we have found the Island of Love. I think, my darling, that wherever we go our Island will go with us because it is in our hearts, in our minds and it is part of us as we are part of it.”

  “That is what I will pray for ... for ever and ... ever!” She pulled the Earl’s head down to hers as she spoke, and as he kissed her she could feel the strange rapturous flames of love moving within her, and knew they were moving in him too.

  He kissed her neck and as he felt her whole body quiver he asked:

  “Does that excite you, my sweet?”

  “It makes me ... feel ... very strange.”

  “How?”

  “Like flames ... running through my ... breasts.” His lips moved to the little valley between them. Now the breath was coming fitfully through her lips and she whispered:

  “Is it wrong of ...me to feel so ...excited and ... wild?”

  “Not wrong, my precious, but right! It is how I want you to feel.”

  “Oh, my darling husband ... it is so wonderful ... but I ... want to ... ask you something...”

  “What is it?”

  Lydia’s voice was very low as she said:

  “Do you think ... because you have ... loved me ... we will have ... a baby?”

  “Is that what you want?”

  “It would be so, so ... marvellous if I could give you ... a son!”

  It was as if what she had said made the flames within the Earl burst into a raging fire.

  He was kissing her wildly, passionately, demandingly. She now gave the complete surrender of herself, not only with her body, but with her mind and soul.

  The fire grew in intensity as they drew closer and even closer and his heart was beating on hers.

  They were being moved by a Power that had watched over them, guided and inspired them, and which now joined them together in an Island of Love which was theirs for all eternity.

  Barbara Cartland, the world’s most famous romantic novelist, who is also an historian, playwright, lecturer, political speaker and television personality, has now written over 370 books and sold over 370 million books the world over.

  She has also had many historical works published and has written four autobiographies as well as the biographies of her mother and that of her brother, Ronald Cartland, who was the first Member of Parliament to be killed in the last war. This book has a preface by Sir Winston Churchill and has just been republished with an introduction by Sir Arthur Bryant.

  Love at the Helm, a novel written with the help and inspiration of the late Admiral of the Fleet, the Earl Mountbatten of Burma, is being sold for the Mountbatten Memorial Trust.

  Miss Cartland in 1978 sang an Album of Love Songs with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

  In 1976 by writing twenty-one books, she broke the world record and has continued for the following seven years with twenty-four, twenty, twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-four, twenty-five, and twenty-three. She is in the Guinness of Records as the best-selling author in the world.

  She is unique in that she was one and two in the Dalton List of Best Sellers, and one week had four books in the top twenty.

  In private life Barbara Cartland, who is a Dame of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, Chairman of the St. John Council in Hertfordshire and Deputy President of the St. John Ambulance Brigade, has also fought for better conditions and salaries for Midwives and Nurses.

  Barbara Cartland is deeply interested in Vitamin Therapy and is President of the British National Association for Health. Her book The Magic of Honey has sold throughout the world and is translated into many languages. Her designs “Decorating with Love” are being sold all over the U.S.A., and the National Home Fashions
League made her in 1981, “Woman of Achievement.”

  Barbara Cartland’s Romances (a book of cartoons) has recently been published in Great Britain and the U.S.A., as well as a cookery book, The Romance of Food, and Getting Older, Growing Younger.