“And so you would, but what happened?”
“I pushed him into the fountain.”
“You did what?” the Earl exclaimed. “Good God, girl, do you always have to do something outrageous!”
“He should not have touched me. I had no wish for him to kiss me.”
“Well, if he speaks to you again after being treated in such a manner, I shall be very much surprised,” the Earl snapped.
“I did not actually mean to do it,” Marcia confessed. “I was just protecting – myself against him and his feet – slipped.”
“I know exactly what happened,” the Earl retorted. “You were using that damned Japanese ju-jitsu, which you insisted on learning. I knew it would end in trouble.”
“But no one is likely to know about it except you,” Marcia protested. “It would be most undignified for poor George to have to confess that a woman had thrown him with a mere flick of her fingers. But I immediately disappeared and if anyone saw him they would merely have thought that he had had too much to drink.”
The Earl threw up his arms.
“You are hopeless, incorrigible! Heaven knows what I can do about you!”
Marcia moved a little nearer to him.
“Just accept me as I am, Papa.”
“That is something I am not going to do,” the Earl asserted. “In fact now I think about it, I have a different solution to the whole problem.”
“I doubt it,” Marcia sighed. “And must I listen to it tonight? I want to go to bed.”
“So do I,” the Earl replied. “At the same time you force my hand and now you have to make the best of it.”
“What do you mean by that?” Marcia enquired.
The Earl sat down in an armchair.
“I had a letter today from France, which I found very interesting,” he began. “In fact there were two letters, but I did not really think of them in connection with you until just now when you told me that you had insulted a young man of great standing and had refused to marry him. You have also made him a laughing stock, which is something he will never forgive.”
Marcia shrugged her shoulders.
“I have told you that I am sorry. I did not actually make him fall into the fountain. But I had to protect myself.”
The Earl drew in his breath as if he was trying to control his temper.
Then he said,
“Well, the damage is done and cannot be undone. What we have to do is to make excuses for your disappearance from the Social scene and that will be quite easy because of the two letters I have had from France.”
“Who were they from?” Marcia asked.
“The first,” the Earl replied, “was from the Duc de Roux, inviting me to come over as soon as possible and see some horses that he thinks will interest me considerably.”
Marcia realised now who her father was talking about.
The Duc de Roux was known to have the best racing stud in France.
She knew that her father had corresponded with the Duc for some time about their methods of breeding.
The two owners were due to discuss whether they should interchange stallions and they were confident of producing horseflesh that would be victorious both in France and England.
The Duc was, she remembered, vaguely related to her father in that his great-grandfather had married a member of the Roux family.
She had never met the Duc, but she had heard her father often talk about him.
The Earl had been a friend of the Duc’s father, who had stayed for shooting parties at Woode Hall when she was a child.
She wondered how this concerned herself, but she accepted that a visit to France under the circumstances would be a wise move.
“The other letter I received,” the Earl was saying, “was from the Duc’s aunt, Comtesse de Soissons, who I think I remember telling you was a friend of your mother’s when they were girls together and whom I saw last year when she came to England.”
“Yes, of course, Papa,” Marcia answered. “I remember your talking about the Comtesse and saying how charming she was.”
“She tells me in her letter,” the Earl said, “that she is very worried about her nephew, the Duc in respect of certain matters that she does not wish to put on paper, but will tell me when we meet. She is longing for him to settle down and get married.”
Marcia gave a little exclamation of amazement, but did not interrupt.
“Unfortunately,” her father went on, “that is something he refuses to do and consequently the Roux family are in despair that he may not leave a son to inherit his title, which would then die out altogether.”
Listening, Marcia felt herself stiffen.
She had a perceptive feeling of what she was about to hear next.
“I have therefore decided,” the Earl said firmly, “although it may seem rather sudden, that, as the English aristocracy is apparently not good enough for you, you will marry the Duc de Roux.”
Marcia stared at him.
“But you just said, Papa, that he vowed to marry no one.”
“That is more or less what you also have decided,” the Earl replied, “so we shall have to make both of you tiresome obstinate creatures change your minds.”
Marcia stared at him and then suddenly she laughed.
“Oh, Papa, I have never heard anything so ridiculous. How can you possibly concoct a plot that could only come out of a magazine and expect it to be fulfilled in real life?”
“All I am prepared to answer,” the Earl said heavily, “is that you have gone far enough in having your own way. I shall take you to France and force you to marry the Duc whether you like it or not.”
“And supposing the Duc does not like it either?” Marcia asked almost jeeringly.
“I have a feeling, although I may be wrong,” her father replied, “that we can leave the Duc to his aunt, the Comtesse. She is a very beautiful and clever woman and I suspect that between us we shall organise the most successful arranged marriage there has ever been.”
Marcia rose to her feet.
“I have never heard such nonsense in the whole of my life! I am sorry, Papa, I love you and I admire you, but you cannot force me up the aisle with a revolver pressed into my back.”
She paused, but her father was silent and she continued,
“I am quite certain that the Duc, if he is anything like the Frenchmen I have heard and read about, will have a dozen mistresses whom he will find far more alluring, far more exotic and certainly far more sophisticated than I am.”
The Earl spread out his hands.
“You know perfectly well that is not the way a properly brought up young lady should talk.”
“It is your fault,” Marcia retorted, “that I am not a properly brought up young lady! I have done all the things that you have done and enjoyed every minute of it. The truth is, Papa, that if I cannot find a man to love it is entirely your fault, because no one seems as attractive, as interesting or as intelligent as you.”
For a moment the Earl’s eyes softened and then he laughed.
“You little devil! You are trying to twist me as you have always done into getting your own way. But this time, my naughty daughter, you have gone too far! You know quite well that you cannot insult a man like the Duke of Buckstead without there being a tremendous scandal about it. You think nobody knows and nobody saw, but you may be certain that either he will talk or some nosey parker was looking out of one of the windows.”
Marcia had to admit to herself that this was very likely true.
“So what we have to do,” the Earl proposed, “is to beat a quick retreat. There would be no better excuse than that I am going to France to see the Duc’s horses. If you are riding in Hyde Park tomorrow morning, which I expect you will be, you will tell your admirers that you are leaving them for a while.”
“Do you think they will believe that I want to see the horses as much as you do?”
“You must make them believe it,” the Earl insisted. “Tell them too that you are invited t
o a ball, there is certain to be one while we are in France, and we will also be attending several Race Meetings. We will make sure we do all those things before we come home.”
He paused to add,
“With, of course, the news that you are to marry the Duke.”
“I think you are crazy, Papa,” Marcia murmured. “Yet at the same time perhaps it would be wise for me to avoid the approaches of George, if he does speak to me again. It will undoubtedly cause a great deal of gossip if he does not.”
“That is the only sensible thing you have said tonight,” the Earl growled.
“I will think of a few more on our way to France, but let me make it quite clear, Papa, I have no intention of being married off to some French Duke who will be more interested in my Family Tree than in me as an individual.”
The Earl would have argued, but she went on,
“He would prefer to spend his time enjoying himself with the courtesans of Paris while I sit in the country amongst the turnips.”
The Earl laughed as if he could not help himself.
“I cannot imagine you doing anything of the sort. At the same time a Duc is always a Duc and, if Buckstead is not good enough for you, I can only hope that de Roux does not propose to you near a fountain!”
Marcia walked to the Earl’s chair and bending down kissed him on the cheek.
“I love you, Papa,” she sighed. “However angry you may be with me, you never lose your sense of humour.”
“I need it. The Lord knows how I need it!”
“Just think how bored you would be,” Marcia said, “if I had married the Viscount or any of the other chinless young men who proposed to me in my first Season. You would have spent this year alone with a lot of old women clacking that you had to marry again.”
“They can clack until they die!” the Earl declared. “But I have no intention of listening to them.”
“And yet you expect me to listen to you,” Marcia replied softly.
The Earl reached out and took her hand in his.
“You are very lovely, my darling daughter,” he said, “and you know I love you and want your happiness. But quite frankly you cannot go on as you are now. I have to play the heavy father and find you some man you will be as happy with as it is possible for us poor mortals to be.”
“And that is not betting on a certainty,” Marcia added.
She moved away from her father to stand once again gazing into the mirror over the fireplace.
“I suppose,” she said almost as if talking to herself, “that, if I had been born plain with a red nose and drab mousy hair, I would be grateful to any man who would marry me because I am your daughter.”
The Earl did not reply, although he was listening.
“Instead,” Marcia went on, “because God has given me what people think is a beautiful face and you, Papa, have given me an active and astute brain, I want more, so very very much more than just a man who will give me his name.”
“Many men have offered you their hearts,” the Earl pointed out.
There was a pause and then Marcia answered,
“I know that. But what they have offered has not been good enough – not nearly – good enough.”
There was a note almost of despair in her voice as she turned and walked towards the door.
“Goodnight, dearest Papa,” she said. “Make plans for us to go to France, but remember that I do not promise to behave myself or to marry anyone unless he is the winner of the Grand Prix at Longchamps.”
She opened the door as she spoke.
“After all,” she added, “one of the Roman Emperors tried to marry his horse, so why not me?”
She closed the door before the Earl could reply and he heard her footsteps echoing down the passage.
He sighed and then despite himself, he laughed.
“She is incorrigible,” he said to the empty room.
Upstairs in her bedroom Marcia did not ring for her maid.
She had noticed before she went out that the woman had a cold and had told her to go to bed.
“I’ll be all right, my Lady,” the maid said.
“Go to bed and take a warm drink,” Marcia had ordered. “If you are feeling rotten tomorrow, tell the housekeeper that I said that you were to stay there.”
She was glad now that she was alone.
She deftly managed to unbutton her gown at the back and threw it over a chair.
Then she walked to the window and drew back the curtains.
The stars seemed to fill the sky and the moon turned the roofs beneath her to silver.
She looked up at the sky.
She was thinking that because her name was a derivative of Mars she was part of the firmament just as the planet Mars was.
At night she felt as if she could fly up into the sky and leave the world and all its petty difficulties behind.
‘What is wrong with me?’ she asked herself. ‘Why do I not fall in love?’
She thought of the girls who she had made her debut the previous year.
They had all giggled among themselves about the different men they fancied and who fancied them.
Marcia had never wanted to giggle.
She would certainly never have betrayed a man by laughing at him behind his back.
She was not consciously aware of it, but her father had taught her a gentleman’s code of behaviour.
She would never have discussed with another woman anything so intimate as a proposal of marriage. Nor, as some girls did, read the letters of love she had received aloud.
Some had naturally been very intimate.
And she was sorry that she had to hurt the writer by saying that she could not in any way reciprocate his feelings.
She was well aware that she had received more proposals of marriage than anyone else of her age.
Many were, as her father had said, from men of consequence and, like the Duke of Buckstead, the owners of a respected and ancient title.
But what she felt for them was, she knew, a friendship, an interest and at times some affection.
But it was not love, not the love that she sought.
She knew from the books she had read that men and women had fought for love since the beginning of time.
Sometimes they were lucky enough to find it.
‘What is love?’ she asked the stars as she looked at them twinkling above her.
‘How can I fall in love?’ she enquired of the moon.
There was no answer.
Yet she could feel in the soft warmth of the air coming through the open window what she told herself were the vibrations of love from the sky.
The love that lifted the heart and the soul.
It was love that could transform what was ordinary and drab into something exquisite and beautiful.
Yet she had never found it.
She had, she admitted to herself, tried to believe herself in love, only to know that it was just a pretence.
Not the sacred treasure that she was seeking.
She knew that her father was doing what he thought was his best for her.
She was not in the least angry that he intended to take her away with him.
And he would try what she knew would be a fruitless task to make her marry the Duc de Roux.
The only thing that made it amusing was to hear that the Duc himself was as reluctant as she was to be tied by the bonds of matrimony!
For him a wife would be someone he would undoubtedly be bored with in a few weeks.
For herself she could not contemplate being touched and kissed by a man she had no feeling for except perhaps one of contempt.
‘It will be a fruitless journey, but at least an interesting one,’ she thought. ‘I shall see France, which until now I have only read about in books, and I shall meet an important Frenchman who I am quite sure is as frivolous and pleasure-seeking as any Casanova.’
She could remember all too vividly the stories that she had been told when she was young about the
wild extravagance of the French Second Empire.
Even her mother had talked sometimes of the absurd behaviour of the rich men who spent fortunes on the grand courtesans of Paris.
They bedecked them with jewels and provided them with houses, horses and carriages and they proclaimed themselves to be the most expensive and exotic women who had ever beguiled and bewitched the opposite sex.
‘If that sort of thing,’ Marcia thought, ‘is still happening in Paris, then the Duc de Roux is not likely to notice me.’
She took one last look at the stars and pulled the curtains to.
As she climbed into bed, she was not thinking of love nor of the Duc de Roux.
She was wondering if his horses would be as exceptional as those belonging to her father, which so far she had never found an equal to!
CHAPTER TWO
The Duc de Roux, riding back towards his château, looked with satisfaction at his vines.
It was obvious that there was going to be a good harvest.
He knew that not only he but also the people who had worked so hard on them would be delighted.
He was riding one of his superlative horses, which he had bred himself and for which he was already a byword in France.
But still he was not satisfied.
He wanted more and better racehorses and he was quite certain that in that particular the Earl of Grateswoode could help him.
It was his dream that one day his horses would win not only in France but also in England and in any country as thrilled by horseflesh as he was.
On his last visit to Hungary he had learned a great deal he had not known before.
He thought that it would certainly be an interesting subject to discuss with the Earl.
He looked ahead and he could see his château silhouetted against the dark trees that grew at the base of the huge rocks rising high against the sky.
Nowhere else in the world had he seen such a magnificent contrast between height and depth as in the Dordogne.
In other valleys, as in his, the vines had been planted that were to make for France one of the outstanding wines of Europe.
But the huge rocky gorges rising against the sky seemed aloof from anything human.
The Duc found himself almost believing that the peasants were right when they said that the gorges were inhabited by strange spirits.
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