Hermia lay back amongst the pillows with a little sigh of relief.
In spite of what the Marquis had said, she had been afraid that Roxford de Ville might be injured and not dead and would live to try to kill again.
Now the Marquis was safe and it suddenly came into her mind that there would now be no pressure on him to marry and he could continue to enjoy his freedom as he had before.
She thought Marilyn would be disappointed, but she knew that, while the Marquis need not marry Marilyn, he would also not think of marrying her.
He had kissed her, but that was a kiss of gratitude and she was quite certain that, if he had loved her, he would have said so.
Instead he had sent her to bed and told her never to think or speak of what had happened again.
‘I will never speak about it,’ Hermia said to herself, ‘but I will never – forget that he – kissed me – and how could I ever feel the same for – another man?’
Then with a little feeling of apprehension she remembered that Lord Wilchester was coming today to propose to her.
She thought in the circumstances that it would be reasonable to say that no visitors should be admitted to the house.
Then a frightening thought struck her.
However disreputable he might be, Roxford de Ville was a member of the Marquis’s family and he and his sister would now be in mourning.
This meant that it would be impossible for Lady Langdon to take her to any more balls or parties, at least until after the funeral.
‘I shall have to go home!’ Hermia thought and felt her spirits drop.
It was as if the sun was eclipsed and there was only darkness outside.
She would say goodbye to the Marquis and go home and that would be the end.
‘I cannot bear it! How can I – leave him?’ she asked, but knew she had no alternative.
When she came downstairs just before luncheon it was to find, as she had expected, that Lady Langdon had cancelled the luncheon party they were to have had and she and Hermia ate alone.
There was no sign of the Marquis and as she and Lady Langdon sat in the big dining room and for the first time since her arrival there was nobody else with them, Hermia felt as if she was already on her way back to the Vicarage.
Lady Langdon could talk of nothing but the strange behaviour of Roxford de Ville, which had made him climb over the roof at night.
It never seemed to strike her that he might have had a sinister motive for doing so.
“He has always been unpredictable,” she chatted in her usual manner, “but who but Roxford would wish to associate with trapeze artists and the gypsies of whom most people are afraid?”
“It certainly seems strange,” Hermia murmured.
“When I saw Favian this morning, he said it was obvious that Roxford had had too much to drink and was therefore unsteady on his feet and, considering the way he has behaved recently, he might easily have died in far more disreputable circumstances! We can only be thankful that it was no worse than it was.”
“Yes – of course,” Hermia agreed.
“It has certainly upset our plans for today,” Lady Langdon said. “But we must find out what Favian thinks we can do tonight. I have no intention of cancelling more parties than is absolutely necessary for propriety’s sake. No one will mourn Roxford, least of all his relatives.”
Lady Langdon rose to leave the dining room as she spoke and, when they reached the hall, she said to the butler,
“When his Lordship returns, tell him that Miss Brooke and I will be in the library.”
“Very good, my Lady,” the butler replied.
They went to the library and another time Hermia would have been happy to browse amongst the books and find a new one to read.
But she could only wonder what the Marquis would have to say when he returned and hoped that he would not be long.
She desperately wanted to see him, but at the same time she felt shy.
Then she told herself that, while his kiss had taken her into the sky and she had touched the Divine, to him it had been just an expression of gratitude.
‘I must not behave towards him,’ she told herself, ‘in any way that would make him feel embarrassed.’
She went on reasoning it all out,
‘If I cling to him, if I show that I love him, I will just be like all those other women who fawn on him and with whom he is quickly bored.’
But she knew it was going to be very difficult.
Lady Langdon put down the magazine she had been reading.
“As I have nothing particular to do,” she said, “and because as we went to bed so late I am rather tired, I think I will go and lie down. Tell Favian when he comes that if he has anything important to tell me he can wake me up. If not I will be down in time for tea.”
“I will tell him,” Hermia assured her.
She opened the door for her hostess and Lady Langdon said,
“You have not forgotten that Lord Wilchester will be calling on you? I don’t expect he will arrive before three o’clock, which is the correct time for such visits.”
She walked away before Hermia could ask her to tell the servants she was not at home.
Quite suddenly she was frightened.
‘I cannot see him,’ she thought. ‘If he asks me to marry him and I refuse, it will be very embarrassing and it would be much better to prevent him from speaking to me.’
She waited until she thought that Lady Langdon would have reached her bedroom, then rang the bell.
The butler answered it and she said to him,
“I am expecting Lord Wilchester to call at about three o’clock. If he does, will you tell him that in the circumstances I am not at home to any visitors?”
“Yes, I’ll tell him, miss,” the butler replied.
As he spoke, through the open door behind him, came the Marquis.
He was looking very elegant and Hermia thought more exquisitely dressed than usual.
But it might have been because just to look at him made her heart turn several somersaults in her breast and she felt as if the room was suddenly lit by a thousand lights.
“What is this?” he asked. “Who are you refusing to see?”
It was somehow impossible for Hermia to answer him and the butler replied for her,
“Miss Brooke understood Lord Wilchester was calling, my Lord, but I’ll inform his Lordship that she’s not receiving.”
“Yes, do that,” the Marquis agreed.
The butler closed the door and the Marquis walked towards Hermia. She watched him, her eyes filling her face.
Then, as he reached her, he said,
“You are all right?”
“Y-yes – of course.”
“But you have no wish to see Wilchester! Why?”
She felt his eyes looking at her in the penetrating manner that always made her feel shy and she looked away from him.
Then, as she realised that the Marquis was waiting for an answer to his question, she said,
“I-I thought it was – correct.”
“Is that the only reason?”
As if he compelled her to reply, she said,
“I-I did not – wish to – see him alone.”
“Why not?”
It was difficult to find an answer. Then, as she was silent after a moment, the Marquis said,
“Last night when I returned after you had gone to bed, my sister left me a note to say that Wilchester had asked to see you alone today and she was sure that he intended to propose marriage. Is that what you expect?”
“Y-yes.”
The monosyllable seemed to be drawn through lips that trembled, but still Hermia dared not look at the Marquis.
“He is very important in the Social world and a man whom other men admire. I doubt if you will have a much better offer.”
The way the Marquis spoke made Hermia feel as if every word was a blow that hurt her most unbearably.
She also realised that he was drawling
his words and speaking in the same dry cynical manner as he had done when they first met.
When she did not speak, the Marquis said,
“Well? Are you going to accept him? I am interested to know.”
“It is what your sister thinks I should do,” Hermia answered, “ – but it’s – impossible.”
“Why impossible?”
Hermia drew in her breath.
“Because – I don’t – love him.”
“And you think that is more important than all he can give you? Security, money, a position which most women would fight frantically to attain?”
Hermia clenched her fingers together until her knuckles dug into the palms of her hands.
“I know you will – think me – very foolish,” she said, “but – I could not marry anyone – unless I – loved him.”
“What do you know about love?” the Marquis asked. “When I was in the country, I was sure it was something you were very ignorant about. I am equally certain that I am the only man who has ever kissed you!”
His words made the colour flood into Hermia’s cheeks and she wanted to run away before she could be questioned any further.
At the same time she wanted to stay simply because she was with him.
“Now, strangely,” the Marquis went on, “you know that you don’t love one of the most charming young gentlemen in the whole of the Beau Monde! How can you be so sure?”
There was a very easy answer to that, Hermia thought, but it was something she could not say.
She could only feel herself tremble and hope that the Marquis was not aware of it.
Then, in a voice that she had not heard him use before, he said,
“Last night, Hermia, when I kissed you I thought it was very different from the first time, even though to me that was an unexpected enchantment which I have found impossible to forget.”
Because she was so surprised, Hermia looked up at him for the first time.
As her eyes met his, it was impossible to look away and she felt as though he was looking deep down into her soul and knew how much she loved him.
“After last night,” the Marquis went on, “I might have been mistaken, Hermia, but I was sure you loved somebody, even though you are afraid to admit it.”
She could only stare at him, her lips slightly parted, her heart pounding in a manner that made it impossible to speak or even to breathe.
The Marquis stepped nearer to her as he said,
“Then we were both carried away by the drama of what had just occurred, so shall we see today if what we feel is any different or perhaps even more wonderful?”
As he finished speaking, his arms went round her and his lips were on hers.
He held her against him, then he was kissing her not gently or tenderly but demandingly, as if he wanted to be sure of her, as if he wanted to conquer her and possess her completely.
It was like being swept from the despair of thinking that she must leave him into an unbelievably glorious Heaven and Hermia could only give him her heart and soul as she had given them to him last night.
He kissed her until they were both breathless, until Hermia felt that she was no longer herself but part of him and they were one person.
Then, as the Marquis raised his head, he said in a voice that sounded strange and a little unsteady,
“You are mine! How could you dare to let another man think you might marry him when you belong to me and have done ever since the first moment I saw you?”
“I-I love you.” Hermia murmured. “I love you – until there is no other man in the world but you.”
The Marquis kissed her again.
Now she knew that he wanted to conquer her and dominate her and make her his, so that as she had said there was no other man in the world except him.
Because the sensations he aroused in her were so overwhelming and fantastic, when his lips released her, she hid her face against him and he could feel her quivering.
But it was with happiness not fear.
“What have you done to me, my darling?” he asked.
He laughed.
“I know the answer to that. You have bewitched me and I am in your spell from which I can never escape. I believe now in all the magic you have enveloped me with from the moment you removed the shoe from my horse’s hoof, when I was unable to do so myself.”
Hermia gave a little laugh that was almost like a sob.
“It was not magic – it was only that being so rich you never have to do such menial tasks for yourself.”
“It was magic!” the Marquis averred. “And, when I looked at you, I thought you had stepped out of a dream.”
“You thought I was a milkmaid!”
“I was trying to pretend that you were,” he replied, “but I should have realised that you had bewitched me and I could never escape.”
Hermia put her head on his shoulder.
“If I am a witch, I only became one when you kissed me and I want you to go on kissing me for ever and ever.”
The Marquis did not answer.
He merely kissed her and she thought that nothing could be more rapturous, more wonderful than the feelings he evoked in her or which she realised she was arousing in him.
Only when she could speak did she say,
“I don’t believe this is – true. I never thought for a moment that you could – love me as I – love you.”
“When you came riding into the wood to perform very badly that piece of play-acting to impress me,” the Marquis said, “I knew that you were what I had been looking for all my life and I would never lose you.”
Hermia flushed.
“You guessed I was – lying?”
“There was no doubt in my mind,” the Marquis replied, “even if I had not already been aware that your cousin would no more sit at a dying villager’s bedside than carry a wounded man back from a devil-infested wood!”
“She – she is very anxious to – marry you.”
“I would never have married her!” the Marquis replied. “In fact I had determined never to marry anybody!”
“That is what your sister has told me.”
“But, of course, I have no defence against magic!”
“You are not to say that,” Hermia said quickly. “I could not bear you to think that I tried to catch you or forced you into doing something you did not really wish to do.”
The Marquis pulled her against him.
“I am marrying you because I want you,” he said, “and I will kill any man who tries to take you away from me.”
Hermia thought for a moment and then she said,
“But – you brought me to London to – meet other men.”
The Marquis’s arms tightened around her.
“I knew I loved you,” he said, “I knew you belonged to me, but I was giving you a sporting chance in case you should prefer somebody else not for your sake but for mine.”
He realised Hermia looked puzzled.
“You see, my darling, having been so disillusioned I thought that all women were the same, ready to sell themselves to the highest bidder, wanting only the position in life I could give them and not me as a man.”
“I want you – as you!” Hermia said quickly. “I only wish you were not a Marquis, but just an ordinary man – then I could show you how I would look after you and love you.”
She moved a little closer to him as she added,
“You would know then that my love is the same that Mama has for Papa and nothing else is of any consequence.”
The Marquis smiled.
“I realised that when I stayed at the Vicarage,” he said. “I have never seen two people as happy as your father and mother and, when I saw how poor you were and how few luxuries you enjoyed, I was almost certain that you would feel the same, but I had to be sure.”
“But supposing – just supposing I had promised to marry Lord Wilchester – or somebody – like him?”
“Then I should have lost you,” the Marquis
replied, “because I would have known that to you, thinking I would not marry you, money and position meant more than love.”
“And you – knew already that I – loved you?” Hermia whispered.
“My precious, your eyes are very expressive and I saw when I came into a room how they seemed to light up and you looked at me in a different way from how you looked at anybody else.”
“I-I did not realise at first that I – loved you,” Hermia said honestly, “but then I knew it was – love that enabled me to find you in the witch’s cottage and – love that made it possible for me to bring you back to safety.”
“And it was love again that made you save me last night,” the Marquis added.
“I was so terribly afraid that he would – kill you.”
“I am alive and now there are no more dangers to threaten us and only the elves, the fairies and the water nymphs you believe in to give us their blessing and to show us how to live happily ever afterwards,”
The way he spoke told Hermia that he was not laughing at her and she raised her lips to his with a gesture of delight that brought the fire into the Marquis’s eyes.
He looked down at her for a long moment before he asserted,
“I adore you! I love everything about you, your kind compassionate little heart, the way you think of everybody except yourself and most of all because you love me! You do love me?”
“I love you until you fill the whole world – the sky, the moon and the stars and there is – nothing else but you – and you – and you – ”
Now there was a note of passion in Hermia’s voice that had not been there before and the Marquis’s lips sought hers.
He kissed her until she felt as if instead of moonlight there were little flames of fire flickering within her breasts and he was drawing them up into her lips until they burned against the fire on his.
*
Sometime later Hermia found herself sitting on the sofa, the Marquis’s arms around her and her head on his shoulder.
“Now what we have to decide, my precious one,” he said, “is how soon we can be married with the least possible fuss.”
Hermia gave a little sigh of relief before she replied,
“Do you – really mean that?”
“I suppose you want a grand wedding with all the paraphernalia of bridesmaids and an indefinite number of so-called ‘friends’.”
70 A Witch's Spell Page 14
