She preferred her own thoughts to Nanny’s endless questions as to why she looked so pale and would eat practically nothing since she had returned home.
She went into the sitting room and realised that what she should do now was to go into the garden and try to pick enough flowers to make the house look more spring-like.
She pulled off her bonnet and put it down on a chair, and then went to the window to look out over the untidy garden.
As she did so, she was thinking once again of The Priory and its beauty, which had moved her as the music did which she had played to Georgina.
Strangely she thought that she missed the child almost as much as she missed the Marquis.
She had never had much to do with children, but now she knew that she would love above all things to have a child of her own.
Yet motherhood was something she would never know because it was impossible to marry a man she did not love.
‘The Marquis has ruined my life,’ she thought with a little twist of her lips. ‘He has even taken my dreams from me.’
Behind her she heard footsteps in the hall and then the door opened.
She turned expectantly, thinking that Nanny must have returned from the village.
Then she was suddenly still.
It was not Nanny in her shawl and bonnet who stood in the doorway, but the Marquis, looking very smart and very large.
He seemed somehow to fill the whole of the small sitting room until his head touched the ceiling.
Lara gave a little gasp.
Then, suddenly afraid, she asked, the words seeming to pour out of her lips,
“What has – happened? Why are you – here? Is – something – wrong?”
It flashed through her mind that perhaps Lord Magor had died after all and that she was responsible for it.
The Marquis closed the door behind him and walked towards her.
“Nothing is wrong,” he said. “Except I could not believe that you would leave without telling me that you were doing so.”
Just because he was there, or perhaps because there was a note in his voice that she did not understand, Lara felt her heart begin to thump in her breast.
The Marquis reached her side and stood looking down at her. The sun coming through the window brought out the red in her hair.
“Why did you leave?” he asked.
“I thought you would not – want me to stay, after what I had – done.”
“You might at least have asked me what I wished you to do,” he said quietly.
As he was standing so close to her, Lara was afraid, since she could feel the vibrations coming from him, that he would feel hers reaching out towards him and be aware of how much she loved him.
She felt as if her whole body was singing because she could see him, but she told herself that he would be shocked and perhaps horrified if he knew how glad she was.
He gave her the feeling that her whole being was tingling with the life force, which was also love.
“Georgina was deeply distressed when she found that you had left,” the Marquis said.
“I am sorry, I did not – mean to – upset her,” Lara replied quickly. “I sent Miss Cooper back.”
“Miss Cooper does not ride as you do, nor is she in the least musical.”
“You promised to find music teachers for Georgina.”
“I shall do that, but Georgina asked me to beg you to come back.”
He was speaking in a quiet deep voice and it seemed as if there was something very intimate about it. Lara felt almost as if he spoke to music.
She was trying to think what she should say and somehow the truth came to her lips,
“I am not – really a – Governess.”
“I know that,” the Marquis replied. “I forced Miss Cooper to tell me exactly who you are.”
“You were not unkind to her?” Lara asked without thinking.
“I hope not,” the Marquis replied, “but I cannot help it if she is terrified of me, can I?”
There was a hint of amusement in his voice as he added,
“ – as you never were!”
“I was frightened that you would be – angry after I had – shot Lord Magor.”
“Not very effectively,” the Marquis replied. “Perhaps your effectiveness as a marksman needs a great deal more practice!”
Now he was undoubtedly amused.
Lara glanced up at him to ask,
“You are not – angry with – me?”
“Not in the least,” the Marquis replied. “He thoroughly deserved it. But if you had told me what he was doing, I could have punished him far more effectively than you were able to do.”
“How could you do that?” Lara asked in surprise.
“By making sure that he is never again invited to The Priory or any of the other houses I own,” the Marquis answered.
“Do you mean that? Do you really mean that?” she asked. “I am glad – so very glad. It has worried me to think that Governesses – who are so vulnerable and so helpless can be persecuted by men like that.”
She spoke without thinking and wondered if she had said too much.
But there was a smile on the Marquis’s lips and she thought that it was not the cynical mocking one, but for some strange reason that she could not understand he looked happy.
There was silence and then he said,
“Now, Lord Magor having been disposed of, what do you intend to do about Georgina and of course – me?”
Lara’s eyes widened and she asked a little helplessly,
“What – can I do?”
“We want you to come back to The Priory.”
She was about to ask how she could do that, when he said quietly,
“Not as a Governess, but in a much more permanent position.”
Lara drew in her breath and the expression in her eyes was still questioning.
The Marquis put out his arms and drew her close to him.
“Shall we find out,” he asked in a voice that sounded somewhat strange, “if our second kiss is as wonderful as the first?”
He did not wait for an answer.
His lips came down on hers.
As she felt the wonder of it shoot through her like a shaft of sunlight, she thought that this could not be true and that she was dreaming.
Yet the ecstasy she had felt before was already rising within her, moving from her throat to her lips and her whole body vibrated with the glory of it.
As if the Marquis felt the same, he held her closer still and his kiss became more demanding, more passionate and possessive.
Once again he was carrying her into the sky, the Heavens opened for them and they were one, not with the moon but with the burning power of the sun.
It enveloped them with a light that was blinding and which came not only from the sun itself but from within them both.
The Marquis kissed her until she was breathless and as thrill after thrill pulsated through her, she felt that it was impossible to feel such rapture and not die from it.
Only when he raised his head, could she say incoherently,
“I love – you! I love – you! I know I must be – dreaming – please – kiss me again – in case I wake up.”
He gave a little laugh, which was curiously unsteady and then he kissed her until Lara felt that he possessed her completely.
*
A long time later the Marquis drew Lara to the sofa and they sat down side by side, his arms around her.
“Shall we make plans, my lovely one?” he asked.
“It is – hard for me to think of – anything except that you – love me. I love you so desperately,” Lara answered, “I cannot – believe it possible for you to – love me – why should you?”
“I can give you an answer to that,” the Marquis replied. “When I first saw you standing in the Great Hall, I thought that you were the most beautiful woman I had ever seen in my life. The red of your hair challenged me like a little flag of defiance and I knew
that I wanted you.”
Lara made a murmur of happiness and he went on,
“But my very critical, very fastidious brain put to me the same question as you have just asked and I told myself that Governesses were not my concern and I must have drunk too much wine the night before.”
“Yet you – kissed me,” Lara whispered.
“How could I help it?” he replied. “I saw you disappearing into the room where I knew that no one was sleeping and I was well aware that you were hiding from me.”
His arms tightened round her as he continued,
“I intended to ask you what you were doing in that particular corridor when you should have been in the school room, but, when I realised that you were hiding in the darkness, I could no longer control my need for you.”
“It was wonderful – more – wonderful than I ever – believed a kiss – could be, but you thought I was – Lady Brooke.”
“I only said that to protect myself from my own feelings.”
“You – knew it was – me?”
“Do you think that I could kiss you and it could be utterly and completely marvellous besides being different to any kiss I have ever known and I would not be aware of who I was kissing?”
“It – it – was – marvellous for – me.”
“You had never been kissed before?”
“No!”
“I was sure of it,” the Marquis said, “so sure, my darling, I was counting the hours until my guests left and I could kiss you again.”
Lara leant her head against his shoulder.
“I thought you would be – shocked because I had been – looking at the – beautiful gowns owned by Lady Brooke.”
She felt as she spoke that she was confessing something reprehensible. At the same time she had to be truthful.
“You shall have far more beautiful ones,” the Marquis smiled, “and yet you are so lovely, my precious, that I adore you just as you look now.”
“I felt so ashamed of my clothes and my riding habit,” Lara whispered.
The Marquis laughed.
“You are really a woman at heart. Sometimes when you argued with me and defied me, I was afraid that you were not feminine, but one of those modern women who want to dominate men.”
“I would never attempt to – dominate you,” Lara answered. “Equally I love arguing with you. It is stimulating in a way I cannot explain.”
“It stimulates me too,” the Marquis said. “Ever since I met you, my darling, I have known why other women have bored me. It is because I have always been aware of what they were about to say before they actually said it!”
He kissed her forehead before he finished,
“Instead of inspiring me or, as you say, stimulating me, they have merely acted mentally as a sedative.”
Lara gave a little laugh and then she said,
“Supposing after a – little while you are – bored with me? You do realise that because I am very – ignorant of your world and have never done any of the Social things that you do – you will have thrown away your – freedom and gained nothing.”
“I shall have gained you,” the Marquis said, “and that is all I want. While I realise as Miss Cooper has told me that you are very poor and you have lived here all your life, yet you have thought and you have felt so much that I shall find it impossible to be bored with you. And what is more, I have a great deal to teach you.”
“You – want to do – that?”
“I want more than anything else to teach you about love. Apart from that we have a great deal in common, our horses, and please God, in time our children.”
He watched the blush that coloured Lara’s cheeks and then he added,
“When I watched you listening to Georgina playing the piano and willing me to appreciate her talent, I knew that was what I wanted you to feel about our own daughters and sons.”
Lara drew in her breath and again she hid her face against him, as she said,
“I love Georgina. I know now I would adore to have – children of – my own.”
“Your own?” the Marquis questioned. “I think, my precious one, that I shall have a part in them.”
Lara blushed again, but she went on,
“I was thinking today, before you came, that I could – never have – any since I could never – marry anyone whom I did not – love, as I love you.”
The Marquis did not answer her, but turned her face up to his and kissed her.
Because she realised that she had excited him by what she had said, there was a fire on his lips that had not been there before and a passion that was very demanding.
It told her, without words, that he wanted her to surrender herself to him completely.
She knew, as he kissed her and went on kissing her, that it was what she wanted too. She wanted to give him not only her heart and her soul but also her body.
“I want you,” the Marquis said, and his voice was deep and hoarse. “How soon will you marry me?”
“I want to be – your wife,” Lara answered. “I want it more than – anything else in the whole world. But I am still – afraid.”
“Of me?” the Marquis asked.
She smiled.
“Not really, although you are frightening at times, but of being your wife – in case I – fail you.”
“You will never do that,” the Marquis replied. “I have a feeling, my darling, that the future is going to be an exciting adventure for both of us. We have to discover a great deal about each other and for me it will be one of the most thrilling adventures that I have ever undertaken.”
“Do you really mean that?” Lara questioned. “For if I felt that you would become cynical, bored or contemptuous of me – after we had been married for a little while, it would be – better for me to say ‘no’ now rather than to – suffer the – agonies of Hell later.”
The Marquis’s arms were like steel and it was hard for her to breathe as he said,
“I am not allowing you to say ‘no’. You are going to marry me just as soon as your father will perform the ceremony and then I will have no time to be cynical when you will doubtlessly argue with me and nag me into doing a million things that I have never done before!”
Lara laughed, but he took the laughter from her lips with another kiss.
Then, as he held her captive, she knew that, while they would certainly argue and perhaps sometimes fight each other, their love was so great that it was, although he had not said so, different from any love that the Marquis had known before.
This was not only the burning heat of the sun that made them desire each other as a man and a woman but also the spiritual white light of the moon that elevated their souls.
Together they would seek all that was highest and best and which like a prayer would carry them up to the sky.
Lara knew that they had found together the love that she had been trying to express in her book, which she had seen in the beauty of The Priory and heard in the music she had played to Georgina.
It was the love that all men and women had sought down the ages.
It could never be complete in a man and woman separately, but must belong to both when, joined by the Sacrament of Marriage, they become one.
“I love – you,” Lara murmured against the Marquis’s lips.
“I adore and worship you,” he answered.
Then there was only the light of God to inspire, guide and protect them, all through their lives together.
OTHER BOOKS IN THIS SERIES
The Barbara Cartland Eternal Collection is the unique opportunity to collect as ebooks all five hundred of the timeless beautiful romantic novels written by the world’s most celebrated and enduring romantic author.
Named the Eternal Collection because Barbara’s inspiring stories of pure love, just the same as love itself, the books will be published on the internet at the rate of four titles per month until all five hundred are available.
The Eternal Collection, classic pure romance ava
ilable worldwide for all time .
Elizabethan Lover
The Little Pretender
A Ghost in Monte Carlo
A Duel of Hearts
The Saint and the Sinner
The Penniless Peer
The Proud Princess
The Dare-Devil Duke
Diona and a Dalmatian
A Shaft of Sunlight
Lies for Love
Love and Lucia
Love and the Loathsome Leopard
Beauty or Brains
The Temptation of Torilla
The Goddess and the Gaiety Girl
Fragrant Flower
Look Listen and Love
The Duke and the Preacher’s Daughter
A Kiss for the King
The Mysterious Maid-servant
Lucky Logan Finds Love
The Wings of Ecstacy
Mission to Monte Carlo
Revenge of the Heart
The Unbreakable Spell
Never Laugh at Love
Bride to a Brigand
Lucifer and the Angel
Journey to a Star
Solita and the Spies
The Chieftain Without a Heart
No Escape from Love
Dollars for the duke
Pure and Untouched
Secrets
Fire in the Blood
Love, Lies and Marriage
The Ghost who Fell in Love
Hungry for Love
The Wild Cry of Love
The Blue-eyed Witch
The Punishment of a Vixen
The Secret of the Glen
Bride to the King
For All Eternity
King in Love
A Marriage made in Heaven
Who can deny Love?
Riding to the Moon
Wish for Love
Dancing on a Rainbow
Gypsy Magic
Love in the Clouds
Count the Stars
White Lilac
Too Precious to Lose
The Devil Defeated
An Angel Runs Away
The Duchess Disappeared
The Pretty Horse-breakers
The Prisoner of Love
Ola and the Sea Wolf
The Castle made for Love
A Heart is Stolen
The Love Pirate
As Eagles Fly
The Magic of Love
The Poor Governess Page 15
