Only a Dream

by Barbara Cartland

  Suddenly he became aware that his horses were slowing down.

  He thought it must be some rural reason, like a straying cow or sheep that had escaped from a field onto the road.

  The carriage came to a standstill.

  He could hear the voices of the coachmen, then the door was opened and his footman said,

  “Excuse me, my Lord, but there’s a young woman who insists on speaking to your Lordship.”

  “What does she – ” the Marquis began.

  Before the footman could reply, somebody had slipped by him and a very young and frightened voice begged,

  “Please, please – take me away – anywhere, just away from here as – quickly as – you can!”

  The Marquis stared at the newcomer in amazement.

  By the light of the candle-lantern fixed to the front of the carriage he could see two very large and frightened eyes and a small white face framed with fair hair.

  He was aware that the young woman was wearing an evening gown, which was unusual on the High Road at this hour of the night.

  Then, as he was about to speak, she looked over her shoulder, gave a little scream and climbed into the carriage.

  “Hide me – I beg of you!” she pleaded. “They will – take me back to him – and he is – wicked and – evil!”

  As she spoke, the Marquis realised that a footman in livery had appeared from between the wrought-iron gates a little way down the other side of the road.

  It was then he was aware that they belonged to Lord Polegate.

  The girl flung herself down on the floor at his feet and, making up his mind characteristically quickly, the Marquis ordered the footman,

  “Drive on!”

  The door was shut and the footman climbed back up onto the box.

  As the wheels started moving, the girl on the floor of the carriage bent forward to hide her face as if she was afraid that she might be seen.

  As they drove past Lord Polegate’s entrance, the Marquis was aware that the first footman he had seen had been joined by another.

  They were looking up and down the road as if in search of someone.

  When the horses were a little farther on, the Marquis said gently,

  “It is safe now. I suggest that you sit beside me and tell me what all this is about.”

  The girl raised her head and now that he could see her more clearly, he was aware that she was very lovely.

  In fact she was so beautiful and so obviously a lady that it seemed extraordinary that she should be running into the middle of the road pursued by Lord Polegate’s footmen.

  The Marquis put out his hand to help her onto the seat beside him and realised as he touched her that she was very cold and trembling.

  He had a feeling that she was so frightened that her teeth were almost chattering and he said in a calm rather dry voice,

  “I hope you will tell me what has happened to you.”

  “I-I managed – to run away!”

  “From Lord Polegate?”

  She gave a little shudder and said in a voice that was slightly inarticulate,

  “H-he was – horrible – and I am frightened – very frightened of h-him!”

  “But you are staying with him at his house!”

  “I thought – I was only – driving down from London – for luncheon – and returning afterwards.”

  The Marquis did not speak, and Isla went on,

  “How could I have guessed – how could I have imagined that he would behave in such a – wicked – shocking manner?”

  “You must have had some idea what he was like,” the Marquis said. “You have only to look at him to see that he is a roué.”

  “I only – saw him for the – first time this – morning – when I was worrying about my Papa.”

  As she spoke, Isla made a little sound that was almost a cry as she went on,

  “What – shall I – do? Papa is lying ill in his – house and if I go back – I will meet him again – I cannot bear it – I cannot!”

  She sounded so terrified that the Marquis felt not only bewildered but also intrigued.

  “Suppose you start at the beginning,” he suggested quietly. “First of all, tell me who you are.”

  “My name is Isla Kenway.”

  He made no comment and after a moment she said,

  “My father is Keegan Kenway – you may have – heard of him.”

  “Of course I have!” the Marquis answered. “But I had no idea that he had a daughter! Are you also on the stage?”

  “No – of course not! Mama would have been – very shocked at the idea! But I felt that – there was nothing – else I could do – last night.”

  “What did you do?”

  Slowly and with some difficulty because Isla was so frightened that she was almost incoherent, the Marquis managed to extract from her the whole tale of what had occurred.

  He found it all incredible.

  He had always thought that Keegan Kenway must be the sort of raffish character he depicted so brilliantly on the stage.

  That he should have hidden away a daughter who had never until last night seen him on the stage was hard to believe.

  Yet the Marquis, who was always prepared to be cynical and certainly critical, found it difficult not to think that every word Isla told him was the truth.

  She was so obviously genuinely disturbed and horrified at Lord Polegate’s behaviour, he was sure that she was as innocent as she appeared to be.

  He realised as she told him exactly what had happened that she had not even now fully realised what Lord Polegate had intended.

  She only had an idea that the clothes she was wearing had something to do with it and that he intended to kiss her and keep her with him during the night.

  Isla certainly had answered the Marquis’s questions as clearly and, he thought, as truthfully as she could.

  But she was shocked and bewildered and, when she told him how she had managed to escape, she said,

  “But – Papa is in his – house in London. How can I go there – if Lord Polegate is – waiting for me?”

  Her fear made her tremble and the Marquis answered,

  “I suggest that you come back to my house and we will plan what you must do.”

  As he said the word ‘house’, he saw Isla look at him quickly and he thought questioningly and so he added,

  “In case it sounds a little unconventional, let me assure you that my grandmother is staying with me at the moment. She is very old and therefore will have gone to bed before dinner.”

  He knew that Isla was listening, so he continued,

  “But she still constitutes a chaperone, which you tell me you were expecting to find when you drove down with Lord Polegate.”

  “I know that Mama would not have – expected me even to – have luncheon alone with a man,” Isla said, “but he insisted that – we should go driving – and I thought as he was so old – it would not matter.”

  The Marquis smiled to himself, knowing that Lord Polegate would not find this very complimentary, but he merely said,

  “I see no alternative for tonight, but for you to stay as my guest at Longridge Park.”

  “It is – very kind of you,” Isla murmured, “and I am very – grateful. But tomorrow – if you can arrange it – I must go back to London.”

  There was silence.

  Then she said in the frightened voice she had used in the first place,

  “You do – not suppose – that Lord Polegate will come to my – house looking for me?”

  “I should imagine,” the Marquis replied, “if his servants have been unable to find you lying in a ditch, that is the first place he will look.”

  “Then – what can I do?” Isla asked. “What – can I do?”

  “I will think of something,” the Marquis said. “In the meantime I think you must be brave and, unless you want a great deal of talk, it would be best to say as little as possible in front of the servants.”

  She d
rew in her breath and he thought that she braced her shoulders before she replied,

  “Yes – of course – and I am very sorry if I – sounded hysterical.”

  The Marquis thought that she had every excuse for being hysterical after what she had just been through.

  He had heard before of Polegate’s penchant for very young girls and there had been whispers amongst the servants in the village that he dressed them up.

  No one, of course, was supposed to know of their existence and yet, as the Marquis knew, everything that happened in the country was carried on the wind from cottage to cottage, from door to door.

  If Polegate thought that his behaviour in his wife’s absence went unnoticed, he was very much mistaken.

  As they drove on, the Marquis from his comer of the carriage was unobtrusively watching Isla.

  He thought that actually, considering what she had been through, she showed an exceptional self-control.

  Most women, he was quite sure, would have been screaming and crying buckets of tears at their plight.

  Once he had reminded her to be brave in front of the servants, she had gripped her fingers together and raised her chin in what he could only consider an admirable manner.

  He knew that she was worrying as to how she could reach her father without encountering his host.

  The problem, the Marquis thought, was certainly a difficult one, and he could not for the moment think of a solution.

  He knew he had to try, not only in order to save a frightened unhappy girl but also because he so actively disliked Lord Polegate.

  Ever since he had inherited his title and estate from his father, who had been too good-humoured to quarrel with anybody, he had found that Polegate, whose boundaries marched with his, was objectionable.

  He was very rich and pushed himself forward in the County, where they accepted his donations and his charity simply because they needed the money.

  At the same time most people kept Lord Polegate at a distance and laughed behind his back at his ambitions to be more important than he really was.

  Where the Marquis was concerned, it was a question of Lord Polegate’s gamekeepers quarrelling with his and arguing over the accepted boundary lines between their two estates.

  There was also the jealousy of an older man for one who was younger and of greater social consequence.

  The Marquis had, in fact, for a long time tried to dismiss Lord Polegate from his mind.

  It was only when the question of the Lord Lieutenancy came up that he promised himself that Polegate would attain it only over his dead body.

  He thought now, with Isla trembling beside him, that here, if necessary, was a story by which he could destroy Polegate’s attempt to shine in the County.

  One whisper from him and what had occurred tonight would make every decent woman sweep her skirts aside and refuse every invitation that came from Polegate Hall.

  The Marquis therefore was prepared to welcome Isla as his guest with open arms.

  They arrived at his very impressive ancestral home, which had been added to and refronted by the Adam brothers in the middle of the eighteenth century.

  When Isla stepped out of the carriage, he was startled when he heard her give a little gasp.

  He thought perhaps that she was feeling pain and then he realised that she was staring up at the pillared entrance with its long stretch of stone steps with an almost incredulous expression on her face.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “Your house – it is so – magnificent! Exactly what I had always – hoped to see.”

  He was surprised at her reaction, not because it was unusual, but that she should feel like that at a moment when she had so much else to occupy her mind.

  He realised when she entered the hall that she was looking round her with an expression of admiration.

  The Marquis walked into the very attractive drawing room, which opened out of the hall. The candles were alight in the chandeliers, and again he saw Isla look round her appreciatively.

  “What would you like to drink?” he asked. “I think it would do you good to have a glass of champagne.”

  “No, no – please – not champagne!”

  He had a feeling, although she did not tell him so, that she was thinking of the champagne she had drunk with Lord Polegate.

  “A cup of coffee or perhaps some chocolate?” he said to the butler, “and I will have a brandy.”

  “Very good, my Lord!”

  The Marquis turned from giving the order to look at Isla clearly for the first time.

  He realised as she stood almost in the middle of the drawing room under one of the great chandeliers that she was so lovely that he thought he must be dreaming.

  How was it possible that he could pick up in the road anything so exquisite?

  Then he was aware that her eyes were still frightened and when she sat down on the edge of the sofa as if her legs would no longer support her, her hands were trembling.

  Until that moment her thoughts had been diverted by the size and beauty of his house and now the problem of what she should do was again in the forefront of her mind.

  As the Marquis looked at her, he felt that he could read her thoughts.

  “Don’t worry,” he said soothingly. “You are quite safe and tomorrow we will decide what we can do about your father.”

  “I have just – remembered that I have – no clothes,” Isla said, “except what I am wearing – and they belong to Lord Polegate.”

  “Then what I will do,” the Marquis said, making up his mind, “is to send a groom first thing in the morning to Polegate Hall to ask for your own gown. At the same time the groom can return what you are wearing now.”

  Isla considered this for a moment.

  Then she said,

  “You – you don’t think – Lord Polegate will – make you – send me back?”

  “That, I assure you, is something I would not do in any circumstances,” the Marquis said definitely. “He has behaved disgracefully, as I am sure your father will tell you when he is well enough, and the best thing you can do is not to worry about him any further.”

  “But – I cannot – help it!” Isla sighed.

  There was silence and then she said in a rather different tone of voice,

  “I must tell you – I have – no money with me – for my fare to London.”

  The Marquis smiled.

  “I was not thinking of sending you in a stagecoach, nor do I expect you to pay me for your accommodation tonight!”

  There was a note of laughter in his voice and Isla smiled at him as if she had been very stupid.

  Then she said,

  “I was not meaning exactly that. It is just that I feel so – helpless. I realise now it was very very foolish of me to have allowed Lord Polegate to take me driving, but it seemed rude to refuse.”

  “It is something you will have to learn to do in the future,” the Marquis said a little dryly.

  He was thinking of Isla’s beauty and her way of looking so helpless and pathetic that every man she met would want to help her.

  He knew as well that sooner or later they would frighten her.

  “I tell you what I will do,” he said little later when Isla was sipping the hot chocolate that had been prepared for her by his chef.

  She looked up at him expectantly, and he said,

  “First thing tomorrow morning, as soon as it is light, I will send my secretary to London to find out how your father is. He will get there before Lord Polegate returns and, if he is better, perhaps we could move him to your own house without there being any trouble about it.”

  “Oh, could we do that?” Isla asked. “It is what I wanted to do all along – to look after Papa myself.”

  “Then that is what we will do,” the Marquis said, “and when you have finished your chocolate, I want you to go to sleep and try not to worry about anything.”

  “I will – try,” Isla said, “and, thank you so very much for b
eing so kind.”

  She paused before she added,

  “Suppose you had – not come along the road – just then and they had – caught me?”

  “But I did,” the Marquis answered, “and I promise you on my honour that I will protect you from Lord Polegate.”

  Her eyes lit up for a moment and he thought that he had never known a woman in his whole life whose face was so expressive.

  Equally she was so lovely, he thought when he looked at her, that he must be dreaming.

  He escorted her across the hall and up the magnificent staircase to where a maid was waiting to show her to a bedroom.

  He thought that she might have been a nymph, who had slipped into the house from the lake or an inhabitant from one of the stars who had come down to earth by mistake.

  The housemaid was an elderly woman who had been at Longridge Park since the Marquis was a small boy.

  “I want you to look after Miss Kenway, Mrs. Lancaster,” the Marquis said. “Her clothes have been lost, unfortunately, but I am sure that you can find her something to wear.”

  “Leave it to me, Master Wel – I mean – your Lordship!” Mrs. Lancaster replied.

  The Marquis held out his hand to Isla.

  “Mrs. Lancaster will look after you,” he said, “and try to sleep. Everything will seem better in the morning.”

  “That is what Mama used to say,” Isla answered, “and thank you again more than I can – possibly say in – words.”

  She made a little curtsey and he stood watching her move along the passage beside Mrs. Lancaster.

  She moved so gracefully that her feet hardly seemed to touch the floor and she floated as she walked.

  Then he told himself that this was a very unexpected ending to the evening.

  He would certainly ensure that swine Polegate did not get his hands on the wretched girl again.

  At the same time, as he went to his own room, he was wondering how it could be possible to remove Keegan Kenway from the house in Park Lane without there being a scene.

  ‘I have to help her somehow,’ he told himself before he fell asleep.

  *

  To Isla’s surprise, she slept far longer than she had ever slept in her life before.

  It had taken her a long time to fall asleep.