He kissed her lips and then he asked,
“What would you like to do on your wedding night, ma belle? Would you like to visit St. Pierre to dance or to listen to music?”
Melita looked at him in consternation, then she realised that he was teasing her.
“No – I only want to be with – you.”
“That is what I wanted you to say,” he answered, “and I have ordered a dinner which will be ready very shortly. I want a long night ahead of us, a night that will seem far too short and pass far too swiftly because I shall be making love to you.”
Melita blushed and hid her face against his.
“You make me – shy – ” she murmured.
He put his fingers under her chin and turned her face up to his.
“You are like a flower opening to the sunshine. The sunshine that is part of my love.”
She moved a little closer to him and then she asked,
“What are we going to do?”
“We are going to have dinner here,” he said. “Not downstairs in the formality of the dining room but in the boudoir next door. I hope what you find there will please you.”
He kissed her again before he said,
“You will find something special to wear in the wardrobe. I bought it at the same time as I bought your wedding gown. I want to see you in it.”
“It is here – in this – room?” Melita asked.
“It is your room now, my beloved,” the Comte replied. “This is the most important room in the house and who else should it belong to but Madame la Comtesse!”
“That does not – sound like – me,” Melita protested.
“But it is you,” he answered. “My Comtesse, my wife, my woman – and my love!”
The deep note in his voice made her quiver as he continued,
“I knew when I saw you standing beneath the Pomme d’amour that if I could not possess you I had no wish to go on living. Now that I have, my life is fulfilled. You are everything that I dreamt of, longed for, and all my ambitions for the future in one small person.”
Melita looked up at him.
“When I left England,” she said, “I did not know that I was sailing to happiness – to a Paradise that few people are – privileged to find in this world.”
“That is what I want you to feel, my darling, that we are in a special secret Paradise together because we love each other.”
“It is – true,” Melita said, “and nothing could be more – beautiful or more like Paradise on – earth than – Vesonne.”
Even as she spoke, she thought that Madame Boisset was like a serpent in the Garden of Eden! Then she told herself that she would not think of that evil woman at this moment when she was so happy.
But the Comte was already aware of where her thoughts had taken her.
“Forget her,” he said gently. “When we were being married in the Cathedral, I thanked God not only for you and that I have been so fortunate in my life but also because ultimately, as He directs us, good will always triumph over evil.”
“I want to be – sure of that,” Melita murmured. “I want us – both to do what is right and – good and make – everyone around us happy.”
“We will do that,” the Comte said and it was a vow.
He left Melita to go into another room and when she had washed she looked in the wardrobe.
She found there the most exquisite negligee of shaded chiffon she had ever seen and she knew that he had bought it because the colours were the same as the blossom on the trees of the Pomme d’amour.
The trimmings on the sleeves and round the hem of the gown were of white feathers, so soft and delicate that they might have been the feathery petals of the blossom.
It was almost transparent and, although there was a nightgown to go beneath it, Melita felt as though she was very inadequately clad as she moved across the room towards the door that led into the boudoir.
She knew that the Comte was waiting for her, she had heard his deep voice speaking to the servants, and now when she opened the door she saw him and it was impossible for a few seconds to see anything but him.
“You look like love itself!” he exclaimed.
Then, as she moved towards him, Melita realised that the room was decorated with flowers and the whole boudoir had become a bower of fragrance and beauty.
There were many flowers that she did not know the names of and there were some white orchids, which she had carried in her bouquet. The vases held great bunches of blossom from the Pomme d’amour trees.
And behind them there was the green of the ferns she had admired in the rain forest.
She was holding onto the Comte’s hands because she wanted to touch him, but she managed to say as she looked at the flowers,
“You have done all this for – me!”
“It is a background for your beauty,” he answered. “As I told you before, you yourself are like a flower.”
She looked at him with shining eyes and would have lifted her lips to his, but at that moment the servants came in with the food.
It was a dinner she would always remember, Melita thought, a meal at which their happiness seemed to sparkle like the wine they drank.
When they had finished, they sat talking a long while until the stars came out and the moonlight touched the restless waves as they came rolling into the shore.
It was then that Melita felt as though they were isolated on a little island of their own, ‘an island of flowers’, as Martinique had once been called.
Now it was an island, which she knew was secret for them both and where the world could not encroach.
It was their special place, the place where they were together and where whatever happened outside, nothing could harm the essential oneness that they had become with marriage.
Finally the Comte rose from the table and drew Melita to the window.
They stood looking out at the moonlight and after a moment he said,
“Today we have started a new life together, a life which I believe will bring us great happiness, my darling. There will be ups and downs, difficulties and problems, that is inevitable, but I believe that the love I have for you and you for me will deepen and grow stronger and more intense as the years pass.”
“I am – sure of that,” Melita whispered.
“Today in Church I dedicated myself to making you happy,” the Comte said. “In the past I have failed in making people as happy as I wished them to be, but you are different.”
He kissed her hair and said solemnly,
“For you and your happiness I would storm the gates of Heaven or go down into the depths of Hell. There is nothing I would not do for you!”
“I love – you!” Melita said. “They are three such – inadequate words to describe what I feel. You have opened up a new world to me and – you have shown me new horizons that I did not even know existed.”
She turned her face against his shoulder and begged,
“Help me not to fail you, help me to give you – everything you want from a – woman.”
“Not only from a woman but also myself – I want to give you pleasure too,” the Comte replied. “We are one, Melita, and if your success is mine, then my failure will also be yours.”
He smiled as he pulled her close.
“There will be no failure! There will only be love between us, love and understanding from now until eternity.”
Chapter Seven
“It’s like a miracle!” Melita exclaimed.
She was sitting at the breakfast table looking across the garden to the sea.
“What is?” the Comte enquired, dropping the newspaper he had been glancing through after he had finished eating.
What, Melita thought, could be more beautiful than the garden with its brilliant flowers and the sunshine glinting on the leaves of the shady trees that were silhouetted against the vivid blue of the sky?
The fragrance of freshly ground coffee and the aroma of newly baked croissants mingled with
the scent of the flowers and her happiness was part of the beauty and the light around her.
She turned at the Comte’s question to smile at him.
“When the ship which carried me from England came into harbour,” she replied, “I was afraid – afraid of arriving in a country I knew nothing about – and most of all – afraid of what my new employer would be like.”
“And now you know him – ?” the Comte asked, smiling to show he was teasing her.
“ – I find he is the most wonderful man in the whole world,” Melita replied seriously.
She put out her hand as she spoke.
He took it and kissed her fingers.
“It is a miracle for me too,” he answered, “such an amazing, unbelievable miracle that I can hardly believe it is true!”
Melita felt herself thrill at the deep note in his voice and, as she leant instinctively towards him, the sunshine flashed on the ring she wore on her third finger.
She felt as if it dazzled her in the same way that her happiness did.
It was when she was drying herself after having a bath and regretting that she had nothing more attractive to wear than the riding habit she had ridden from Vesonne to St. Pierre in that the maid had come into the room with her arms full of dress boxes.
“These have just arrived for you, madame!”
“For me?” Melita queried.
When she opened the boxes, she understood that once again the Comte had thought of her.
He had known without her having to express it in words that she would want to look beautiful for him on the first day of their marriage and when they drove back to Vesonne-des-Arbres as man and wife.
The gown he had chosen was of turquoise blue, which she knew made her skin look staggeringly white and accentuated the deeper blue of her eyes.
There was not only a gown in a soft material that she knew would seem cool as the day grew hotter, but there was also a fashionable satin mantle made with cape sleeves and a bonnet trimmed with the same colour.
The soft shadowy lace inside it would frame her face.
Melita let the maid help her into the gown, then, hardly pausing to look at her reflection in the mirror, she ran impulsively into the Comte’s room.
He was standing at his high dressing table as she entered, a pair of ivory-backed hairbrushes in his hands. He was dressed only in a soft white linen shirt and tight, hosepipe trousers.
They made him look very broad-shouldered above his narrow hips and very masculine.
Melita stood for a moment in the doorway thinking, as she had thought so often before, that he was the most attractive man she had ever seen.
As he put down the brushes and turned towards her, she ran to his side.
“I came to show you my new gown,” she said. “Thank you, Étienne – thank you for – thinking of it.”
She raised her face to his, his arms went round her and he pulled her against him.
“You are pleased?”
“I am thrilled!” she answered. “You seem to know exactly what will suit me and I want you to think I look – pretty.”
“Could I think anything else?” he asked.
His lips found hers and he kissed her passionately, pulling her closer until it was hard to breathe.
“I adore you!” he said at length in a deep voice. “Shall I take you back to bed?”
“Étienne!”
Melita pretended to be shocked and, as the colour rose in her cheeks, she said almost reprovingly,
“I merely came to – show you my new – gown.”
“It becomes you,” he said, “but I am more interested in what is inside it.”
She laughed shyly, extricated herself from his arms and moved towards the door.
“Breakfast is ready.”
“I see I have for a wife a very prim and proper little Comtesse,” he remarked.
She made a grimace at him and would have left the room, but he stopped her.
“Come here!” he ordered.
She hesitated, looking at him warily, at the same time knowing that, when he kissed her, she found it impossible to refuse him anything.
“Come here, Melita!” he insisted.
She moved towards him slowly, her eyes questioning his.
“I have a present for you,” he said when she reached his side.
“Another present? But you have given me so much already.”
“This is something special. I should have liked to give it to you yesterday, but it had to be altered.”
He took a velvet jewel box from the table near him and, when he opened it, Melita saw that it contained a ring.
It was a very large sapphire, the colour of the sea and surrounded by diamonds.
“Oh, Étienne!”
It was difficult to say more as it was the most beautiful ring she had ever seen.
The Comte drew it from the case, then, taking her hand in his, he kissed her third finger, already encircled with his wedding ring and slipped the sapphire onto it.
“For my wife!” he said softly.
“It is beautiful!”
Melita flung her arms around the Comte’s neck.
“Thank you – oh, thank you,” she cried. “Everything you do is so – wonderful, so – perfect in every way. I love you! Oh, Étienne, how much I love you!”
He kissed her until she was breathless.
Then they had gone downstairs hand in hand to where breakfast was waiting for them on the veranda.
Now, as the Comte kissed her fingers, Melita said with a little catch in her voice,
“I wish we could – stay here. I am – afraid of leaving a place where I have been so – happy.”
“We will come back and very soon,” the Comte said consolingly. “We will not only need to buy your trousseau in St. Pierre but I have ordered a necklace to match your ring.”
“You must not give me so much,” Melita protested. “I feel that I have nothing to give you in return.”
The Comte smiled.
“You have given me not only a fortune and my peace of mind,” he answered. “You have also given me something which is much more important – yourself, my precious one.”
Her fingers tightened on his.
“I feel it is not – enough,” she answered. “There is so much – more I want to – give you.”
“That is one of the reasons why we will come back here,” he said, “where we can be alone without distractions and I can teach you, my beloved little wife, about the delights of love.”
He released her hand and stood up.
“Come,” he said. “We have to face our problems and the sooner the better. Let me make you quite sure of one thing, Melita, I don’t intend to be defrauded of a honeymoon! A honeymoon, my dearest heart, where we will be completely alone as we were last night.”
Again Melita felt her colour deepen as she recalled the wonder and ecstasy they had experienced together and the rapture she felt at his kisses and the touch of his hands.
The Comte drew her to her feet.
“What we have to do is not going to be easy,” he said quietly, “but you have given me a courage I have never had before.”
They set off from the château in the Comte’s chaise and, although the sun was bright, there was a cool breeze blowing from the sea.
Melita could not help feeling depressed at leaving behind the attractive town with its red roofs.
They passed the Cathedral, which she knew would always be a precious memory, because of the vows they had made together in the Lady Chapel, and the Town Hall, as imposing as the Mayor himself, where they had been legally married according to the laws of France.
The fruit trees were bright with blossom and were moving in the wind as they drove along the seafront and they stopped for a few moments at a toyshop.
Then they left the town behind and were climbing the shaded road leading towards the forests.
Every mile that took them nearer and still nearer to Vesonne made Melita feel,
despite the Comte’s presence, a little more afraid.
It was not, she told herself, that Madame Boisset could hurt either of them now. They were married and Cécile’s will, they had been assured, was legal.
It was just that she shrank from the thought of a scene and of enduring Madame’s rudeness and her inevitable anger.
Besides which Melita knew only too well that the effect on Rose-Marie would be harmful.
She told herself that however many children she gave the Comte and she hoped that there would be many, she would always love the little girl who had lost her mother and who, until now, had lived a lonely companionless life.
‘For Rose-Marie and everyone else who lives at Vesonne there will be happiness in the future,’ Melita promised herself.
The chaise drove through the gorges of the rainforest and now they were on the higher land with its crops of sugar cane on either side of the road.
“Next year we will cultivate more land,” the Comte said aloud. “There are many experiments I want to make, but which I did not have a chance to put into operation in the past.”
“That will be exciting!” Melita said, but her voice was flat because they were getting nearer to Vesonne.
The Comte took one hand from the reins to put it over hers.
“I will look after you, my precious,” he said, “and after this we will create an entirely different atmosphere at Vesonne. It will be what it was like when I was a boy. I thought it the most perfect place that could possibly exist this side of Heaven.”
“Anywhere would be Heaven with – you,” Melita replied, “but especially Vesonne because it is so beautiful.”
The Comte turned to smile at her and she knew, as his eyes rested on her face, that he thought her beautiful too.
‘I am so happy, so blessed,’ Melita thought. ‘Please, God, do not let Madame Boisset say or do anything to spoil our happiness!’
It was a prayer she repeated as the horses drove over the bridge and proceeded up the drive of Vesonne until they were within sight of the storehouses and the waterwheel.
As they neared them, as if at a signal, the slaves came pouring out of the sugar distillery and running from their huts towards them.
68 The Magic of Love Page 14
