It was a somewhat sobering thought!
He almost wanted to reassure himself by being in the company of the beauties, who he was sure were pining for him in London.
Then he knew that tomorrow Valessa would come eagerly into the Saloon for breakfast.
Her eyes would be shining with excitement.
She might have seen a porpoise or had her first sight of the Pyrénées.
Whatever it was, she would bring the sunshine with her.
‘She is certainly very unusual,’ the Marquis said to himself.
Then unaccountably, he wished that the night would pass quickly so that he could be with her again.
Chapter Seven
“Tomorrow,” the Marquis said to Valessa, “we go ashore at Marseilles.”
He did not say anything more.
The Steward was offering them a dish of more of the delicious food that they enjoyed every night.
Valessa felt as if she had stopped breathing.
She had been so happy for the last week as they had sailed round the end of Spain and into the Mediterranean.
The weather had been unprecedentedly warm for November and the sunshine made everything glitter with a golden aura.
The sea was calm and very blue, the colour of the Madonna’s robe.
To Valessa it was all so entrancing.
She found too that it was an excitement she had never anticipated to talk to the Marquis and to listen to him.
He could tell her so much that she wanted to know and she thought that it was like having an encyclopaedia all to herself.
He was so understanding that she almost forgot why she was on the yacht with him.
He said that they would not speak or think of Lady Barton again and he had kept his word.
He never referred to what had happened at Ridgeley Towers or to any of the people who had been there.
Valessa was desperately afraid that any mention of it would bring back his anger and she therefore really tried to put it from her mind.
Only at night did she ask herself how long she could continue to be so happy.
It was obvious that the Marquis could not go sailing around the world for ever.
He had great responsibilities in England and she was sure that he missed his horses.
At the back of her mind there had always been a dark threatening idea that he might, as she had suggested, leave her in some foreign country.
She thought now that he would give her a little money for when the two hundred pounds that was sitting in her dressing table drawer ran out.
Perhaps he could send it to her on a monthly basis.
But it was not money she wanted, it was the security of being with him.
It was terrifying to think of being alone in a country where she knew nobody.
Everything had been very different when she travelled with her father and mother. That was so many years ago and she had been so young that she could hardly remember it.
Since then she had just lived in the peace and quiet of her home and, after her father’s death, she had seen no one.
That was why she knew everything that had happened had been a surprise.
In fact, so surprising that she had not realised what was actually happening, when the ‘pretend marriage’ turned into a real one.
‘I am the Marquis’s wife,’ she told herself, ‘but he will never acknowledge me!’
When she thought of leaving him, there was a strange pain in her heart.
On board he would rise early in the morning and she would hurry to get ready to have breakfast with him.
Then they would go out on deck and he would explain to her where they were.
He had shown her the new gadgets that he had equipped TheUlysses with and she thought that they were amazingly clever.
Her father had been a clever man, but she knew that he was not as erudite as the Marquis.
It had been her mother who had taught her about literature and it was fascinating to find how much it interested him.
She had been lulled into believing that her feelings of security and happiness would go on forever.
Now it would end tomorrow.
‘Where shall I go?’
‘What shall I do?’
The questions repeated themselves over and over in her mind.
She thought frantically that she must savour every moment of the last hours that she was with him.
She knew that when he left her it would be all that she would have to remember.
She stood on deck gazing at the coast of France.
She wanted to order the yacht to sail slower so that it would take months or even years before they reached Marseilles.
They had taken longer on the voyage than was really necessary and, when they were into the Mediterranean, the Marquis had ordered the Captain to drop anchor every night.
This meant that they moved nearer to the land, found a small bay or a fishing port and stayed there until morning.
They usually anchored too late at night for Valessa to go ashore.
The Marquis also thought it too cold for her and he would leave the yacht and walk for an hour or more so as to exercise himself.
Valessa found it impossible to sleep until she heard him return.
She would listen to his footsteps in the passage and hear him coming to his cabin. Then he would talk to Bowers while he undressed.
Only when the valet had left him and there was silence did she fall asleep feeling secure because she was near him.
But in the future she would be alone.
She felt her whole being cry out at the idea and the fear was back in her eyes, but the Marquis did not notice.
They went below to change for dinner and Valessa hurried so that she would not miss even a second of being with him.
Usually he was quicker than she was, but tonight she had put on the first gown that she took down from her wardrobe.
Only when she glanced at herself in the mirror did she realise that it was a very pretty one of blue silk, the colour of the sea.
Its puffed sleeves, Valessa thought, looked like the waves.
It was very simple to have been Sarah’s taste. Yet it looked exactly right on Valessa.
It made her skin seem dazzlingly white and reflected the colour of her eyes.
Because she had been feeling happy and, because the food aboard the yacht was so superb, she had put on a little weight.
The lines had gone from her face and her cheeks were rounder. She no longer looked weary or on the edge of exhaustion.
She was not aware that Bowers had said to the Marquis,
“If you asks me, my Lord, her Ladyship’s on the point of havin’ a nervous breakdown and, if we’re not careful, we’ll have her sufferin’ from brain fever!”
This had made the Marquis even more determined not to upset her and he remembered how desperate she had seemed when she had tried to throw herself into the sea.
He found sometimes that the fear he had seen in her eyes when she had first come into the Saloon was haunting.
He blamed himself for what had happened afterwards.
Valessa was so very different from the blackmailing houri he had expected her to be.
When dinner was over and a Steward had removed the table, they anchored unexpectedly early.
There was a bay with cliffs rising above a sandy beach.
Valessa heard the anchor go down and, as she turned her head, the Marquis asked,
“Would you like to go out on deck? It’s much warmer tonight and we shall be sheltered by the cliffs.”
“I would love it!” Valessa exclaimed.
She picked up the stole that went with her gown.
Bowers had made her carry it with her, but she had not needed it at dinner. It was of blue velvet in the same colour as her gown and it was bordered with, to her astonishment, ermine.
It seemed incredible that Sarah Barton should have given away anything so expensive.
But Valessa re
cognised that it was of no consequence to her since she was so rich.
She put the robe round her shoulders and looked expectantly at the Marquis.
They went up on deck.
Valessa saw that in the star-studded sky there was a full moon, which was reflected in the calm sea.
It was so beautiful that she could only stare in wonder, thinking that it was a Fairyland she had only seen in her dreams.
Then, as she stood gazing up at the moon she remembered her conversation the first night at Ridgeley Towers.
It had been with the man sitting next to her, although she had never learnt his name.
“My advice to you, Miss Chester,” he had said, “is not to fall in love with Stafford Wyndonbury.”
Valessa remembered thinking that it was a strange thing for him to say.
“I was not thinking of falling in love,” she had answered, “but, of course, you are right, it would be a tragedy for anyone to love ‘the Man in the Moon’!”
It was a phrase that she had used to herself to describe people who were out of reach and, as the memory of it came back to her, she thought what an apt description it was.
The Marquis, although he was kind and understanding, was always, she thought, a being apart from the ordinary world.
He was out of reach and not really human.
She threw back her head to look up at the moon and had no idea that the Marquis, seeing the long line of her neck and the perfection of her features, thought how very beautiful she was.
In the daytime her hair, which had almost a magnetic buoyancy about it, seemed to have captured the sunlight.
Now it was silver and even more becoming.
Without really thinking about it, he moved a little nearer to her, leaning against the railing.
She had placed both her hands lightly on it, as she stared upwards.
“What are you thinking about?” he asked.
“The Man in the Moon!” she replied.
“Why should you hanker after him when there is another man beside you?” the Marquis asked.
As he spoke, he put his arms around her and, before Valessa could realise what was happening, his lips took hers captive.
For one moment she was still with astonishment.
Then her Fairytale had come true.
The Man in the Moon was kissing her and it was even more wonderful than it had been in her dreams!
The Marquis was at first very gentle because he was afraid of frightening her.
He felt the softness and innocence of her lips and, without her being aware of it, her whole body seemed to melt into his.
His kiss became more demanding, more possessive.
It was what he had wanted for a long time, but would not admit it.
Now, because Valessa had looked so beautiful, so desirable, he was unable to control himself.
As he kissed her, he knew that what he was feeling was different from anything that he had ever felt before with any other woman.
He wanted to make love to her and the blood was throbbing in his temples.
At the same time he wanted to protect her and he was thinking of her rather than himself.
It had been impossible to be alone with her all this time without realising that she was very intelligent.
She, however, knew nothing about a man’s desire for a woman or a woman’s for a man.
What was real to her was the ideal love eulogised by poets and expressed by musicians.
It was something that had excited her mind, but had never touched her heart.
The Marquis held her closer still.
He knew that what he wanted more than anything else in the world was for Valessa to respond to him.
To think of him and love him as a man.
To Valessa it was as if Apollo himself had come down from the skies.
Or, as she had been thinking, the Man in the Moon, who was also a God.
To her the Marquis was not a man but a supernatural being so wonderful that she wanted to worship him.
Then, as he went on kissing her, she felt sensations that she had never imagined in her wildest dreams.
They rose through her body and were an ecstasy beyond words.
It was like the shafts of light pouring from the moon and was rapture that her whole body vibrated to.
Then the moonlight seemed to burn its way from her breasts to her throat and from her throat to her lips.
It was so unutterably marvellous that she thought she must have died and was in a Heaven that she never knew existed.
Only when the Marquis raised his head did she realise incredibly that this was love.
She had never thought that love could be like this.
But she loved him and there was no world, no sky, nothing except him.
The Marquis saw her eyes gazing up at him with an unmistakable expression of admiration.
Very gently he released her.
As he did so, he was desperately afraid that she might be frightened of him.
He knew that her first kiss had been a wonderful emotional experience.
Yet because he was able to read her thoughts, she was still in Fairyland and not yet aware that she was human.
They stood looking at each other for what seemed a long time, but was really only a few seconds.
Then the Marquis in a voice that seemed strange even to himself said,
“Goodnight, Valessa.”
He walked away.
She watched him go, but he did not look back.
Then, with a murmur that was a sound of sheer joy, she left the deck.
She lay in bed feeling that the Marquis’s arms were still around her, his lips still on hers.
Never had she believed that anything could be so wonderful.
“I love – him! I – love him!” she murmured beneath her breath and she thought that her father and mother were listening.
This was real love, the love that she had longed for and thought she would never know.
She was in love with the Man in the Moon and he had kissed her.
The rapture of it made her feel that she was flying up into the sky to touch the moon. And the stars enveloped her.
‘I love him!’ she told herself and thought that no one could be more blessed than she had been.
She heard the Marquis go into his cabin and prayed that he was thinking about her.
She knew it would be impossible for him to feel as she did.
Yet he had given her something so priceless that she felt it was a gift from God.
It never entered her mind that she might go to him and ask him to kiss her again.
Nor did she think that, because they were married, there would be nothing wrong in her doing so.
The Marquis was still the Man in the Moon and out of reach.
Yet he had kissed her.
To Valessa his kiss was like the moonlight, it was not of this earth but from the sky above.
`
*
In his cabin the Marquis was fighting against going into Valessa’s cabin and kissing her again.
He wanted her so violently that only his iron self-control prevented him from doing so.
He admitted to himself that he was in love.
He had had a long experience with women.
Valessa was so innocent and so idealistic that he knew he would have to treat her in a different way from any other woman he had ever met.
He wanted her to love him.
He wanted not only her body but her heart and her soul.
Yet he was aware, because she was unawakened, that this would not happen overnight.
With a faint smile he told himself that he had to woo her and it was something he had never had to do before.
Always he had been the one who had been wooed, pursued and finally seduced.
Now his role was very different.
To Valessa he was a God and he knew perceptively that she would never make any advances to him.
It was, he
thought with a faint touch of amusement, a reversal of everything he had ever known.
When he had walked away from Valessa and left her alone on the deck, it had been an agony for him to do so.
But he was aware that it would make her think of him.
Perhaps she would want him to go on kissing her and would begin to think of him as a man.
He tossed and turned in his bed, finding it impossible to sleep.
He told himself that, of all the experiences of his life, this was the strangest.
He, the most sought after man in London, who was talked about behind his back as ‘a Don Juan’ and ‘a Casanova’, was now in a very different situation.
He was using his instinct as well as his brain to make a young girl love him.
He thought that his friends would find it amusing.
He had been with her for nearly two weeks and not by a flicker of her eyelashes had she shown that she wanted him to touch her.
The Marquis was aware that she had not the slightest idea what happened when a man and a woman made love.
After all the sophisticated, overwhelmingly passionate women he had known, it would be a new experience that he had never even thought about.
To teach a completely innocent girl about love.
‘I want her love,’ he said to himself in the darkness. ‘I want it, and God knows, I will try to win it.’
He thought of how many things he had won.
Not only women, but horses, steeplechases and a hundred other prizes with his expertise.
Now, at this moment, he was uncertain of himself, afraid that if he frightened Valessa she would run away from him.
She might even drown herself as she had tried to do before.
If that happened, how could he bear it?
“Oh, God, help me!” the Marquis murmured.
It was the first prayer that he had said for a very long time.
*
When Valessa woke she felt as if the sun was shining not only outside but also within her body.
She would not have been surprised if, when she looked in the mirror, she had seen it radiating from her in golden rays, which the Greeks believed came from the solar plexus.
When she went into the Saloon for breakfast, her eyes seemed to fill her face.
She looked at the Marquis, who was already sitting at the table and she wanted to go down on her knees.
Revenge Is Sweet Page 12
