Galatea put the wreath on over the veil, but she did not cover her face, only let it fall over her shoulders and down her back.
As she went downstairs, she hoped that she looked beautiful, but if she doubted it she had only to see the expression in Just’s eyes as he waited for her.
He took her hand in his and looked down into her face.
But he did not kiss her and it seemed to her that there was no need for words because their thoughts were the same and their hearts were beating as if they were already one person.
He led her through the house down long corridors until they came to a door, which was open, and she could see that there was a Chapel ahead.
It was very old and the last rays of the sun cast strange patterns through the ancient stained-glass windows.
As they entered, Galatea saw the Chapel was decorated with lilies and the fragrance of them filled the air.
She knew they gave her a special message, just as the lilies had that Just had sent to her all the months she had been alone in London.
She held tightly onto his hand and she realised that he had not given her a bouquet to hold.
But, as they stood before the altar, the lilies were all round them.
She prayed that he would always think of her as he had when he first saw her as pure as a lily.
The Vicar who married them made the age-old words of the Marriage Service seem very real and sincere and, when they knelt before him, she was very conscious of the spiritual power behind his blessing.
As they rose to their feet, Just drew her to him and kissed her forehead.
“My wife,” he breathed very softly.
Then, holding her by the hand, he led her back into the house.
They went not into the sitting room but into a large dining hall that Galatea had not seen before.
Now the solemnity and seriousness vanished as the Vicar joined them in a glass of champagne, as did all the servants, most of whom Galatea learnt had been at The Priory for many years.
Each one in turn was introduced to her and they told her how fond they were of ‘Master Just’, as they called him and how happy they were that he had found himself a wife.
“He’s been ever so lonely at times, my Lady, there’s no gainsayin’ that, but now everything’ll be different and it’s happy we are to have him and your Ladyship with us.”
Galatea found herself laughing as if the burden she had carried for so long had vanished and it was spring not only outside The Priory but inside and in her heart.
After the Vicar had left, Galatea took off her veil and wreath and the servants busied themselves providing them with a meal, which they ate in a small room overlooking the lake.
It was a very beautiful octagonal room decorated not with pictures but with little alcoves where there were ancient statues of the Saints, which had once stood in The Priory.
There was silver on the table that had belonged to the Trevenas for generations and round them were garlands of small lilies like those Galatea that had worn in her wreath.
They toasted each other in champagne and remembered that the last time they had drunk champagne together was when she had dined with him in the wood.
Then they moved into the sitting room to stand for a moment gazing at the last rays of the sun sinking behind the great trees in the Park.
There was a glimmer of crimson on the lake and the daffodils were still golden, although the shadows were lengthening and growing purple.
It was all so beautiful that Galatea drew in her breath and then she said very quietly,
“I have – something to – tell you.”
“I am waiting,” Just said, as he had said to her before.
As if he knew what she wanted, he moved a little away from her so that she stood alone, her little Grecian head silhouetted against the window.
After a moment she began to speak slowly in a very low voice, telling him as she had never told anyone else about her marriage.
“My father was always a gambler,” she began. “It was the only thing that amused him and, after my mother died, he spent the whole of his time at the gaming tables.
“Sometimes he won, when he would be wildly extravagant and give me a dozen presents, most of them quite unsuitable and not in the least what I wanted, but which he bought simply because they were expensive!
“At other times the cards would be wrong and he would sack the servants, dispose of the horses, the silver would go to the pawnbrokers and I was told that I could not even have a book for my lessons, let alone a new gown.”
She paused for a moment.
Then she said in a voice that Just could hardly hear,
“One day he came home and brought with him – Lord Roysdon.”
As she spoke, she could remember peeping over the banisters at her father walking across the hall and wondering who was with him.
Her father had promised to buy her a horse of her own for her seventeenth birthday, which was in three weeks’ time, and she had heard of one, it had not only been broken in, but was extremely well bred and not expensive.
The man who was selling him had brought him to the house to show her father, but she had learnt that he could not stay long but must go to his home.
She waited for a little while and then she ran downstairs.
As she opened the door of the sitting room, she heard her father say in a harsh tone,
“It is no use, my Lord. You cannot get blood from a stone. I have been perfectly honest with you – that is all I have!”
She walked in to see her father standing on the hearthrug facing what seemed to her to be an elderly gentleman. But, because she was afraid of losing her horse, she interrupted them, saying,
“Papa, I must apologise for bothering you, but you said you would look at the horse you promised me for my birthday and it is here for your inspection.”
Her father did not answer, but the gentleman with him asked,
“Who is this?”
Uncomfortably, it seemed to Galatea, her father said quickly,
“This is my daughter Galatea, my Lord.”
“I thought you said that you have given me a list of everything you possessed.”
Galatea had not understood what he was talking about, but later she was not surprised to learn that her father had lost thousands of pounds to Lord Roysdon at the gaming tables and could not meet his debts.
Having seen Galatea, Lord Roysdon made his own terms and she learnt that she had no choice in the matter – she was to marry him!
Because he wanted her and was prepared to pay handsomely for what he desired, he not only waived the debt owed him by her father but put quite a considerable amount of money into a Marriage Settlement.
“You are an extremely lucky girl, Galatea!” her father said over and over again.
“But he is old, Papa! He may be kind, he may be generous, but he is old!”
“What does that matter?” her father asked her. “Do you suppose some beardless young buck could give you all that Roysdon can? You will be rich, my child. You will have an important position in Society.”
He paused to say,
“I had always thought that with your looks you would make a good marriage, but I never aspired as high as Roysdon. He is a friend of the Prince Regent and constantly at Carlton House.”
“But Papa – ”
It was no use, he was not prepared to listen to her.
Because everyone told her how fortunate she was and Lord Roysdon was prepared to buy her trousseau, she began to think that it was after all rather exciting to be married.
What did it matter that he had been married before? His wife was dead and he had no children.
The wedding presents, the jewels Lord Roysdon gave her, the congratulations of her friends, the splendid wedding, all prevented her from considering what marriage meant or what would happen when she was finally alone with her husband.
She was in fact never alone with Lord Roysdon in the few weeks that
led up to the marriage.
There was no point in having a long engagement and he was impatient for her to become his wife.
It was planned that they should be married from the country and spend their honeymoon at Brighton where the Prince Regent was in residence.
There Galatea would be introduced to the fashionable, somewhat raffish Socialites whom the Prince counted as his most intimate friends.
They were actually married not from Galatea’s home but from Roysdon House in Huntingdonshire, because Lord Roysdon had such a large number of friends to invite and it was impossible for a smaller place to accommodate them all.
It had not mattered to Galatea or to her father, who was only too thankful that he would not have to foot the bill, and they stayed the night before the wedding at Roysdon House.
She was taken to the Church in an open carriage with the tenants cheering her all the way and there were enormous marquees erected on the lawns for the entertainment of tenants and employees on the estate.
There was a Wedding Breakfast in the house for the members of Lord Roysdon’s family and three hundred of his friends. There were speeches and an astronomical amount of champagne was consumed.
It was only when finally Galatea drove away with her bridegroom for the first part of their journey to Brighton that she felt suddenly afraid of the unknown.
Lord Roysdon had drunk a great deal and was in an extremely jovial mood.
He put his arms around his young wife and pulled her close to him. His words were slurred as he told her how pretty she was.
“You will make me a very attractive wife, my dear – you will grace the Roysdon diamonds and make all those young bucks jealous of the lucky man who calls himself your husband, that is me, and I will thank you not to forget it!”
He chucked her under the chin and kissed her cheek because she turned her lips away from him.
She felt suddenly nauseated that this fat man who had eaten and drunk too much should be so familiar with her.
Fortunately he slept most of the way to the house that had been lent to them by another Peer where they were to stay their first night.
They arrived in time for dinner and, while Galatea was changing, she heard her husband moving about in the next room and realised that there was a communicating door through which he could visit her.
She felt herself shiver and had gone down to dinner to eye him warily, finding it difficult to laugh at his jokes and even more difficult to understand the innuendos in many of the things he said to her.
He drank a great deal and, although she sipped a glass of wine and tried to do justice to the many dishes that had been prepared for them, she felt cold and when she went to her bedroom she was shivering.
As she undressed, she knew she was afraid as she had never been afraid in her whole life.
She was very innocent and, because her mother had died when she was only fifteen, nobody had told her what to expect of marriage.
But, when Lord Roysdon came into her bedroom, she knew that he intended to kiss and caress her and to sleep in her bed and every instinct in her body cried out against it.
She had not got into bed, but was standing by the fireplace wearing only her nightgown, her eyes very wide and dark as she watched him coming towards her.
He looked different in his nightshirt and over it a silk robe, which was open so that she could see the protuberance of his stomach.
His face was very red and there was a swimmy look in his eyes that made her feel as if her heart had stopped beating.
He came towards her putting out his hands to touch her and she backed away from him crying,
“No! No!”
“So you are shy,” he chuckled. “Well, that is to be expected! But I will soon teach you about love, my dear, and you will find it enjoyable, as all women do after they have jumped the first hurdle!”
Still she backed away from him. He came after her and she knew that, because he had to do so, it excited him.
“So you want me to chase you, eh?” he asked. “Well, I am still young enough to enjoy a good run for my money, but I will be in at the kill, make no mistake about that, my dear. I will be in at the kill!”
Now he had almost caught her because she had reached a corner of the room, but, as his hands touched her arms, she gave a little scream and fought herself free of him.
He ran after her and she pulled open the door of her bedroom without fully realising what she was doing.
Out on the landing she started to run up the staircase from the first floor to the second. The staircase rose round a square well under a dome over the centre of the hall.
As she ran, she could hear him coming behind her, chuckling and laughing. Once he cried out “Tallyho!” as if he was on the hunting field and she was a fox he was intent on killing.
She ran up the last stairs to find that there was only a narrow gallery round the dome itself and she could go no further.
Despairingly she turned to face him, but saw that she had outrun him and he was a little way below.
He looked up and seeing her predicament laughed again.
“Now I have you!” he cried. “Dammit, you have given me a good run, but now I have caught you!”
Even as he spoke the last words, he made a strange sound in his throat and his hands went to his heart.
He gave a groan, swayed and fell backwards, rolling down half a flight of stairs to the landing below.
She had screamed and gone on screaming until the servants came!
There was a silence after Galatea had finished speaking.
Then she said,
“They carried him back to his room and a week later they took him to London, but he never regained consciousness.”
Just did not speak and after a moment she said,
“I have told you this because I thought that you might consider it inappropriate that I wore a white gown in which to marry you. But because I thought what happened to him was my – fault, I have never let a man – touch me – ”
She still looked out of the window into the dusk of the night as she spoke, but suddenly she found Just was standing close to her.
She looked at him and saw that he was smiling that strange secret smile she loved, before he said very quietly,
“Do you suppose I did not know that?”
“How could you have – known?”
“I knew when I kissed you that I was the first man who had ever done so.”
She looked at him with wide eyes and then with a little murmur she turned and hid her face against his shoulder.
He touched her hair.
“It is all over, my darling, but I was right in thinking when I first saw you that you were like a lily, untouched and pure, the woman I wanted as my wife.”
“How could you have thought that in the – place where you first – saw me – hearing all those stories – about me?”
“What I heard was very different from what I saw and what I felt,” he answered. “My heart told me that you were all I wanted you to be and, when I kissed you, my darling, if there had been any doubts your lips swept them away.”
“Was I so – obviously inexperienced?” Galatea asked.
“Your lips were very sweet, very young and very innocent,” he replied, “and that is what I hoped to find in the woman I worshipped and the woman who would live here with me as my wife.”
“Oh – Just!”
The words were more of a sigh than an exclamation.
He held her very close.
“We have everything, you and me, everything that matters! Our love, a home that is a worthy setting for you and, please God, a place of happiness for our children.”
He put his fingers under her chin and turned her face up to his.
“Forget the past, think of it only as a bad dream that is easily forgotten in the morning.”
“And the – outrageous Lady Roysdon?”
“She has vanished into the mists and will perhaps become a legend among
the bucks and rakes of St. James’s. But she will certainly not trouble you or me now or in the future.”
“Are you quite certain you will not be – bored with what is – left?”
“What I have and hold is a very young, very beautiful girl to whom I have to teach many things,” Just replied, “but first of all a great deal about love.”
He saw the light in Galatea’s eyes.
Then she put out her arms to pull his head down to hers.
“Teach me,” she whispered. “Oh, darling, teach me! I want to learn – I want to know how to please you and make you – happy.”
“That is easy,” he answered, “because already you belong to me with your mind and we think the same thoughts, my precious heart”
He kissed her forehead and went on,
“You also belong to me with your heart because we love each other and with your soul because we are both eternally grateful to the God who has brought us together and made us one.”
He smiled and his lips were very near to hers as he said,
“That leaves only one thing, my beloved, your entrancing, exciting and very lovely body. I am a highwayman and I demand everything you possess. Are you prepared to give me that as well as everything else?”
“It is yours!” Galatea cried passionately. “Yours and, my wonderful highwayman, I love you so desperately that I know I have never lived until this moment. Now I am alive because you are touching me and because I want so much to be yours completely – your wife – your woman.”
The last word was smothered as Just’s mouth came down on hers, holding her captive.
He kissed her until the world vanished and there was no longer the dusk outside or the warmth and fragrance of the room around them.
There was only the light of spring, of a new birth, as they both came alive in the radiant joy and ecstasy of everlasting love.
OTHER BOOKS IN THIS SERIES
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