The Marquis Who Hated Women (Bantam Series No. 62)

by Barbara Cartland

  He would be able to congratulate himself that he had swept away her antagonism towards his sex and made her as maudlinly foolish about him as all the other women he had known in the past.

  “He hates me because I am a woman, and yet because he is a kind, considerate person he has to put up with me,” Shikara told herself.

  She then remembered that the yacht would now not take long to reach Gibraltar!

  She wished that she had never come aboard the Sea Horse but had found a steam-ship, as she had intended, to carry her to Cairo.

  Then she would never have felt as she did now, and she would have gone on hating men perhaps for the rest of her life.

  But regrets did not assuage her feelings toward the Marquis or the fact that when they met at luncheon-time her heart turned over in her breast.

  She wondered, as she looked at him, how she had not realised the first moment they had met that he was the most handsome, attractive man that any woman could imagine.

  “You slept well?” he asked.

  “Very well, thank you,” Shikara lied.

  ‘I hope all your purchases came aboard before we sailed,” he went on casually. “That is certainly a very becoming gown you are wearing at the moment.”

  “Thank you,” Shikara answered.

  But to herself she thought frantically:

  ‘He says that quite automatically and I should be glad that he even notices I am here when his thoughts must be with the Senhora.’

  Because she could not help her curiosity she asked tentatively:

  “Why did you not stay longer in Lisbon? After all, there was really no hurry for you to leave.”

  The Marquis smiled.

  “My old nurse always used to say: ‘Enough is as good as a feast!’ I have no desire to be caught up in the gaieties with which that city abounds.”

  Shikara longed to ask him why he did not wish to be with the Senhora again, but she was too shy to speak the words that rose to her lips and the Marquis changed the subject

  She felt that he would not wish to discuss anything or any woman who concerned him intimately.

  They spoke of other things, but after a while she could not resist asking:

  “Is the Senhora Madalena really an outstanding ballerina?”

  “She is indeed exceptional,” the Marquis replied, “and has made a great name for herself in most of the capitals of Europe.”

  Shikara longed to ask when they had been in Rome together, but she felt with sensitive perception that the Marquis, although he said nothing, was putting a barrier round himself as if as a protection against her curiosity.

  After a moment he said reflectively:

  “I suppose really you should not meet actresses or ballerinas, however famous, but it would have been impossible for me not to offer my hospitality to an old friend.”

  “As your uninvited guest,” Shikara answered, “I am hardly in a position to criticise whoever you ask me to meet.”

  “That is true,” the Marquis replied. “At the same time, I suppose I should have remembered that you are only eighteen and a lady.”

  “And of course ladies, even if they are women, can have no fun!” Shikara flashed.

  He laughed and they were back into one of their old arguments.

  “Women of your class should be kept immune from everything that is coarse or ugly in life,” the Marquis said.

  In other words, wrapped in cotton-wool and kept in a cage,” Shikara said fiercely. “I suppose all men, if they had the choice, would keep their wives in purdah!”

  “It is an excellent idea and one for which I have always envied the East!” the Marquis replied. “You can send for a woman when you want her, but otherwise she is locked away so that she can get into no trouble and certainly not be a disturbing influence.”

  “That is an autocratic and selfishly masculine attitude which will one day be swept away from the world by women who will not stand such treatment any longer,” Shikara forecast.

  “If you imagine they will become an army of Amazons, strong enough to fight men and reduce them to the position of slaves,” the Marquis sneered, “they would soon find that extremely boring.”

  “It is better than being a slave oneself!” Shikara retorted. “When we reach the Pyramids I am sure I shall be convinced that they were built by slave labour and that the slaves were women!”

  There was silence for a moment after she had finished speaking. Then the Marquis said slowly and questioningly:

  “When we reach the Pyramids?”

  Shikara flushed.

  “Had you forgotten that I am not coming with you?” he asked. “Or are you scheming as to how you can get me finally to capitulate to your wishes and carry you up the Nile?”

  Shikara drew in her breath.

  “You know I want it above all things,” she said in a low voice. “You know I shall be apprehensive if you leave me at Gibraltar or anywhere else. But I have no right to ask you to do anything you do not wish to do. You have been ... so kind ... so overwhelmingly kind already.”

  There was a note of sincerity in her voice and a throb of emotion behind the words which the Marquis had not heard before.

  He looked at her in surprise. Then because Shikara thought she might have betrayed herself she rose from the table.

  “I am sure you wish to be alone, My Lord,” she said hastily.

  “I certainly need time to think over what you have just said,” the Marquis retorted.

  “I am ... sorry,” Shikara said, her eyes on his. “I did not wish to be a nuisance or importunate in any way. I gave you my promise and I will ... keep it, whatever ... happens.”

  Then she went from the Saloon and the door closed behind her.

  “Blast it!” the Marquis ejaculated to himself. “Is any man more bedevilled by women than I am?”

  At the same time, he knew it was going to be hard to put Shikara ashore as he had first intended at either Gibraltar or Algiers.

  Even if he found her a ship and put her on board and saw that she had enough money for the voyage, he knew that she would arrive in Cairo without being sure that her father would be there, and having, he was sure, no other friends.

  She was so young and so innocent that he told himself again that he had been wrong to introduce her to Madalena.

  He had not missed the fact that Shikara had been shocked and astonished when the Portuguese woman kissed him good-night on deck.

  He had had a brief but passionate affair with Madalena Monteiro in Rome two years previously.

  He had been in the city with nothing to do and had met her at a party on the first night of his arrival.

  They had gravitated towards each other almost instinctively, and the Marquis had known as he touched her hand that a fire leapt within them both which if encouraged could become a blaze

  Because it amused him, he had deliberately gone to the theatre the following evening to sweep aside an admirer with whom she had promised to have supper and carry her off in triumph.

  In the following four weeks Madalena had broken engagements and promises and seen almost nobody but himself.

  It had been spring, with Rome looking particularly lovely, and their romance, if that was the right name for it, had been a physical delight that exceeded anything the Marquis had found before.

  Madalena had had many lovers, and when she desired a man she gave herself as wholeheartedly to the art of love as she applied herself on the stage to the art of ballet.

  It was the Marquis, well versed in the rules of never becoming satiated to the point of boredom, who finally brought their union to an end and left Rome.

  He had not expected to see Madalena again, and in fact when they had put into Port Tejo he had had no intention of even enquiring if she was in the city.

  It would have been easy for him to see her when she was last in Paris, but he never wished to revive the past, or to spoil what had been a charming and delightful interlude in his life by trying to resurrect dying embers
.

  It had been impossible to resist Madalena last night when he went ashore, although he had had no intention of making love to her unless the moment seemed right and the fire that lay between them showed itself undiminished.

  It had in fact proved to be almost completely satisfactory, and yet he knew he had no desire to be embroiled again in the tempestuous, erotic atmosphere of Madalena’s life.

  He had done it once and it had been an enjoyable experience; but like most women of her type she was too demanding and expected a man’s wholehearted attention, which included the surrendering of his mind as well as his body.

  It was not in the Marquis’s character to be anything but the autocrat, the leader, the commander not only of himself but of those round him.

  He knew even while Madalena captivated him and aroused his desires, it was of her he had said: “Enough is as good as a feast!”

  Now his thoughts were not of Madalena, but of Shikara.

  He might have realised, he thought, that underneath that fragile appearance there was a will of iron.

  She was determined, just as she had been determined to escape from her Uncle, to stay with him and if possible to inveigle him into taking her to Cairo.

  “I will do nothing of the sort!’ the Marquis said aloud.

  But there was somehow a lack of conviction behind his assertion and he knew already that his defences were falling and he was finding it hard to abandon her to her fate.

  The yacht encountered surprisingly good weather in the Mediterranean.

  It was cold at night but the sun shone during the day and as they sailed eastward from Gibraltar it became warmer still, so that Shikara wore the thin gowns she had bought to wear in Egypt with only a shawl round her shoulders to protect her from the chill of the sea breezes.

  The Marquis, who was on deck every daylight hour, was becoming sun-burnt and she thought it became him and that he looked if possible even more handsome than he had before.

  He had not said anything about her leaving him when they reached Algiers, and yet apprehensively every day as they drew nearer to that port of call she prayed fervently that she would not be forced to go on alone.

  “I love him! Oh, God, I love him!” she confessed to herself.

  Yet because she was so afraid that he might guess her feelings, she forced herself to be even more argumentative and aggressive than usual and often even left him alone when she might in fact have found an excuse for staying.

  Every day as they talked at mealtimes, she learnt more and more about him to make her realise how different he was from any other man she had known.

  She realised of course that she could not have expected any of the young men whom she had met to be as knowledgeable and worldly-wise as the Marquis. The elderly ones, like Lord Stroud, had neither the Marquis’s physical attractions nor his presence and personality, which made him outstanding in any company and in any country.

  He was extremely interested in her father and his work and she told him many things that her father had discovered in different lands. Then she explained why he had gone to Egypt.

  “Who is this man your father was meeting?” the Marquis enquired.

  “He is a Frenchman, Auguste Mariette. Papa met him when he was in the Egyptian Department in the Louvre. He and Papa had many long conversations together.”

  Shikara paused to say:

  “He is much younger than Papa, so that in a way the friendship was rather surprising. I believe, however, that Monsieur Mariette is a very intelligent young man, while Papa often said that most of the men who work in Museums become as dull and fusty as the antiques they handle!”

  The Marquis laughed.

  “Go on with your story.”

  “Over a year ago Monsieur Mariette wrote to Papa. Papa did not know until then that he had left France, having been commissioned by the Louvre to go to Cairo to buy Coptic manuscripts.

  “He said that in Egypt he saw how its ancient treasures were being plundered and he was much more interested in doing something to remedy this abuse than in haggling with antique-dealers.”

  “What did your father say to that?”

  “Papa had said for a long time that it was absolutely disgraceful how few countries realise the value of what they possess, especially Egypt.”

  “I have heard that before,” the Marquis remarked.

  “Papa used to rage about Archaeologists, tourists, and excavators who seem to be carried away by the passion of collecting. In fact they rob old monuments, tombs, and Temples, and make off with the treasures themselves.”

  “I admit it seems to be thieving on a large scale,” the Marquis said.

  “That is exactly what it is, and Monsieur Mariette explained that without some way of conserving the treasures he had found in Egypt, the future of Archaeologists in the country would be seriously jeopardised.”

  “What had he discovered?” the Marquis enquired.

  “He told Papa he had not been in Egypt long before he noticed a most remarkable thing. Stone Sphinxes of identical appearance were displayed in private gardens by wealthy Egyptian officials, and in front of the newer Temples in Alexandria, Cairo, and Giza.”

  “If they were all the same they must have come from the same source.”

  “That is exactly what Monsieur Mariette thought. Then one day walking through the ruins of Saggara, a town near Cairo, he came upon a Sphinx buried all but the head in the sand near the great Step Pyramid of Zoser.”

  “He recognised the similarity between this Sphinx and those he had seen in Cairo and Alexandria,” the Marquis remarked.

  “Yes,” Shikara replied, “so he dug it up and found on it an inscription recording a pronouncement relating to Apis, the Sacred Bull of Memphis. Then he knew he had found something very exciting!”

  There was such a note of triumph in the way Shikara spoke that the Marquis too felt excited as he asked:

  “What was that?”

  “Monsieur Mariette realised he had found the lost Alley of the Sphinxes, which was known to have existed but up to that time had never been found.”

  “What happened?”

  “He hired a gang of Arabs, equipped them with shovels, and set them digging. They brought one hundred forty Sphinxes to light!”

  “I can realise that that was very thrilling for him,” the Marquis said.

  “It was then that he sat down and wrote to Papa. He was doing everything on his own and I think he felt he needed a world-famous Archaeologist and Professor to come and support him. After all, as he said in his letter, he had been sent to Cairo to buy manuscripts.”

  “And so your father set off?”

  “He could not wait to go,” Shikara replied, “especially as Monsieur Mariette thought he would find as well as the Alley of the Sphinxes the burial places of the Sacred Bulls.”

  The Marquis did not speak and after a moment Shikara said:

  “I expect you know that it was not until late in Egyptian history that the likenesses of gods were given human form. Originally they were represented in animal form. There was the cow, the ram, the falcon, the ibis, the crocodile, the cat, and the serpent.”

  “Yes, I knew that,” the Marquis answered, “and the most famous, if I am not mistaken, was the Sacred Bull of Memphis.”

  “That is right,” Shikara said. “The Sacred Bull was worshipped in the form of a living animal. It was housed in the Temple and attended by the Priests. Papa has often told me how when it died it was embalmed and buried with great ceremony.”

  “And you really think that Monsieur Mariette has found the burial place of the Bulls?” the Marquis asked. “There is I believe a graveyard for sacred cats, one for crocodiles, and another one for ibises, but as far as I know they have never up to now found the burial chambers or the Bulls.”

  “That is true,” Shikara said. “Of course he may be wrong, but when Papa left he told me he was certain that the Tombs of the Sacred Bulls would be somewhere near the Alley of the Sphinxes.”r />
  “That is something I would really like to see!” the Marquis exclaimed.

  His eyes met Shikara’s and he saw the question in them.

  “All right—you win!” he said ruefully. “I admit that you have made me curious. I will take you to Cairo!”

  Shikara gave a little cry of sheer happiness.

  “Do you mean that? Do you really mean it?”

  ‘I suppose so,” the Marquis replied. “I cannot help feeling it is showing great weakness on my part to allow a mere woman to make me alter my plans. I suppose you will be cock-a-hoop because you think you have defeated me!”

  “I am cock-a-hoop only because I am so grateful!” Shikara said quickly. “I was thinking how frightened I would be when I found myself alone and that I might not find Papa at once when I reach Cairo. But now that you are taking me there, it makes everything seem wonderful ... really wonderful!”

  There was so much elation in her voice that the Marquis felt as if he had given a child a present from the very top of a Christmas-tree.

  But when Shikara had left him and he was alone, he found himself half-regretting the impulse that had made him say he would take her all the way to her destination.

  ‘At least I shall not have her safety on my conscience,’ he thought, ‘and besides, I really am interested in seeing the Tombs of the Sacred Bulls.’

  ***

  In her cabin Shikara offered up a prayer of thanksgiving that not only would the Marquis take her to Cairo but also that she would not have to leave him.

  At the same time, she was not prepared to tell him how nervous she was that when they reached Cairo they would find that her father had gone elsewhere and perhaps Monsieur Mariette had returned to Paris.

  She knew only too well how vague Archaeologists and Professors were, how time meant nothing to them, and how they seldom considered anyone else’s convenience but their own.

  It was quite likely, she thought, that both her father and the Frenchman had disappeared into the desert to excavate some site they had been told about.