63 Ola and the Sea Wolf (13 page)

It made him think of the torches flaring in the brigands’ cave and he wondered if any of the men who had fled in terror when the seamen had killed their comrades would ever go back.

He had the feeling that as their leader was dead this particular gang of ruffians would be disbanded and at least a few wretched travellers would escape persecution at their hands in the future.

In addition the Marquis told himself it was a salutary lesson that he should have learned long ago, not to take chances in foreign countries.

There were so many parts of Europe that were wild and uncivilised and he was aware that, even if Ola had travelled on the main highway to Paris, she would have been in danger.

She might have been molested, not perhaps by brigands, but certainly by thieves who would relieve her of the jewellery she carried and by the men who would find her looks irresistible and would be equally prepared to use violence to get what they wanted.

‘How can any woman take such risks with herself?’ the Marquis asked angrily.

Then he realised that he had forgotten how young, innocent and inexperienced Ola was.

Since they had been talking to each other on equal terms, he had found it hard to remember her age or that she was, in some ways, little more than a child.

He found himself remembering how she had puzzled over the word ‘
cocotte
’ and supposing it referred to some kind of actress.

‘Some man will take it upon himself to enlighten her about such things, one of these days,’ the Marquis thought cynically. ‘Then she will be like every other woman – pursuing men and, having caught one, be prepared to manipulate him to suit her own ends.”

Once again he was thinking of Sarah.

Then he recalled how Ola had told him that she had no wish to marry and submit to being ordered about by a husband.

‘He will be an exceptional man to get his own way,’ the Marquis thought with a smile.

A sudden movement caught his attention.

She was moving her head from side to side and now she said in an indistinct murmur,

“I – must – escape – I must! Help – me – oh – help me!”

The Marquis rose and put his hand on her forehead. It was very hot and he knew that her temperature was rising.

She moved again restlessly and, although Gibson had bound her arm tightly to her side, he was afraid she might break open the wound.

He went to the basin where Gibson had left a clean linen handkerchief and beside it a bottle of
eau de cologne
.

The Marquis soaked the handkerchief in the cologne and some water, squeezed it out and then, when it was moist and cool, put it on Ola’s forehead as she mumbled,

“It is – foggy – do – be careful! Look out!”

He knew she was back in the post chaise reliving the difficulties and drama of her escape from her stepmother.

“It’s all right, Ola,” he said gently, “you are safe and you must go to sleep.”

She was still for some minutes as if the handkerchief on her forehead was soothing.

Then with a little cry she said agitatedly,

“I – cannot go back – I have to – escape again – I hate him! I – hate him! How – can I – save – myself – ?”

There was something pathetic in the last words and the Marquis whispered softly,

“You have saved yourself. Listen to me, Ola, you are safe and you don’t have to go back to your stepmother. Do you understand?”

He was not certain whether his words reached her or not, but he thought, although he was not sure, that some of the tension seemed to go from her body.

Then once again she appeared to fall asleep.

‘I suppose I have committed myself now,’ the Marquis told himself ruefully. ‘Whether she heard me or not, I have told her she will not return to her stepmother and that is a promise I have to keep!’

“I congratulate you, young lady, on having been lucky enough to have your wound treated so expertly,” the doctor said.

He was a hearty man who had been summoned on board at Gibraltar to examine Ola’s wound and could in fact find nothing wrong with it.

“I expect you’re feeling exhausted after your fever,” he went on, “but with rest and good food you’ll soon be on your feet again.”

“What about a tonic?” the Marquis suggested, who had come into the cabin after the doctor had finished examining Ola.

The doctor glanced round the luxurious surroundings and said with a twinkle in his eye,

“The best tonic I can prescribe comes from France.”

The Marquis smiled.

“I presume you mean champagne?”

“It’s what I always prescribe for my richer patients,” the doctor laughed, “but the poorer ones expect a bottle from me which is usually little more than coloured water!”

The Marquis laughed.

“At least you are frank.”

“I believe it’s a patient’s willpower that counts. If they want to get well, they get well, if they want to die, they die!”

The Marquis noted that Ola, weak though she was, was smiling at this exchange of words and now she gave a little chuckle.

“I come into the first category,” she said. “I want to live.”

“Then as I’ve already said, we shall soon have you up and dancing,” the doctor answered.

He glanced at Ola’s hair before he left the cabin and she heard him say outside the door,

“It’s seldom I’ve had the privilege of attending so beautiful a young lady!”

Ola listened for the Marquis’s reply, but they had moved too far away and she wondered if he had qualified the doctor’s compliment by complaining that she was also a nuisance, a positive encumbrance.

When she regained consciousness, she had learnt how much trouble she had been.

It was Gibson who told her that the Marquis had sat with her every day when she was delirious and running too high a fever to be left alone.

‘He must have been terribly bored,’ she mused.

Then she told herself she had upset him in so many different ways that one more would make little difference.

But when she was on the way to recovery, she realised that the Marquis was sitting with her when there was really no need for him to do so.

He read to her and was not offended when she fell asleep and, as soon as she could sit up in bed, they played chess and piquet and, what she enjoyed more than anything else, they talked.

It was after they had left Gibraltar and were moving over the blue sea of the Mediterranean that Ola began to feel more like her former self.

Gibson was sure that it was not due to the champagne but to the fresh oranges and lemons he had been able to buy in Gibraltar.

“I’ve seen too many sailors, miss, suffer from lack of fruit when they were a long time at sea,” he said, “not to realise how important it is, especially when there’s a wound that needs healin’.”

Because Ola was prepared to believe that he was right, she drank glass after glass of the juices he prepared for her and had to admit that they seemed to speed the healing of her wound.

“Will I have a scar?” she asked Gibson when he was dressing it.

“I’ll tell you no lie, miss,” he replied. “You’ll carry a mark there to your dyin’ day, but fortunately it’s not in a place where it’ll show unless your evenin’ gowns be cut over-low.”

Ola laughed.

“I must remember to make them discreetly modest!”

When she told the Marquis what Gibson had said, he laughed too.

“You will certainly not be expected when you go to Court to have a very low décolletage,” he said, “not with Queen Adelaide’s eye upon you.”

He spoke without thinking and only as he saw Ola flush did he remember that, if her behaviour at this moment were known in Society, she would receive no invitation to Buckingham Palace and would be ostracised by all the grand hostesses of the Social world.

He thought with a frown that this must not happen and decided that before they reached Nice he must find some solution to Ola’s problems. Above all she must have a chaperone.

As if she knew what he was thinking but felt too tired to argue about it at the moment, Ola shut her eyes.

He thought she was asleep and after some minutes he very quietly left her cabin.

Then she lay staring at the ceiling and wondering once again despairingly what would happen to her in the future.

*

After four days sailing in the Mediterranean, Ola was well enough to be carried up on deck.

“What you wants, miss, is some good fresh air, to put the colour back in your cheeks,” Gibson told her.

Ola thought that he sounded exactly like her old nanny, who had always believed that fresh air was a cure for everything, including a bad temper.

When she was on deck, she realised why the Marquis looked so well and did not seem to mind that they were sailing more slowly towards Nice than they would have done if she had not been on board.

Although the sunshine was warm, the sea was cold, but he bathed in it twice a day, once in the morning and again in the afternoon.

She liked to watch him swimming until his head was only a little spot in the distance, but she could not help feeling anxious in case anything should happen to prevent him returning to the yacht in safety.

She found herself remembering the stories of men who had cramp in the sea and sank before anyone could rescue them.

When she enquired about sharks, she was told there were none in this area and the only thing the Marquis had to be afraid of was catching a chill.

“He’s unlikely to do that,” Gibson said and added with pride in his voice, “there’s few men as strong as his Lordship and whether he’s ridin’ or huntin’ it’s always the horse as tires before his Lordship.”

When he was not swimming, Ola found that the Marquis liked to take the helm of the yacht and sail
The
Sea Wolf
himself.

She realised how expert he was and that he could sail closer to the wind than anyone else aboard without letting the sails flap.

She thought it must give him the same thrill as driving his phaeton to break a record or riding his own horse past the winning post in a steeplechase.

Lying comfortably on the soft couch Gibson had constructed for her on deck and propped against silk cushions, Ola found the activities going on all around her far more fascinating than being alone in her cabin.

She was taken down below when the sun began to sink and, as often happened, a chill wind blew up and the Marquis would come with her.

Then they would talk and to Ola’s delight they would discuss subjects as diverse as Oriental religions and the abolition of the slave trade.

The Marquis was astounded, not only at the subjects which interested her but because she knew so much about them.

“How can you have read so much at your age?” he asked one evening after they had had a long and animated discussion on conditions in the coalmines.

“I have not only read a lot,” Ola replied, “My Papa was an extremely clever man. The only trouble was that he wished to expound his own theories and not listen to anybody else’s.”

The Marquis smiled.

“So that is why you are so verbose on these subjects.”

“That is a rather unkind way of putting it,” Ola objected, “but the answer is ‘yes’. I have been bottling up my own ideas for so long that now, because you are obliging enough to listen to me, they burst out like a volcano.”

The Marquis laughed and thought that while he was the first man Ola had ever been able to talk to, she was the first woman who had ever been interested in every subject in the world except himself.

He had never before in his life, the Marquis thought, talked for hours with a woman, and an attractive one at that, when there had been nothing personal in what they said to each other.

With Ola there were no flirtatious glances, no fishing for compliments and most of all none of the sharp witty
double entendres
which the sophisticated women in London used as a weapon of attraction.

Thinking back, he could never remember having a conversation with Sarah that had not involved her feelings or his or which had not ended in his making her passionate expressions of love.

He realised now how clearly she had led him on, how she had aroused, then tantalised him by refusing to ‘risk her reputation’ by surrendering herself as he wished her to.

Yet all the time she was amusing herself with another man.

To his surprise he found that his hurt pride as well as his anger had now subsided to the point where he could wonder quite calmly what Sarah must have thought when he did not arrive the following night as she expected.

He imagined that she would have waited for him and then decided that he could not have received her letter.

She would therefore have expected him the next day and perhaps the day after that, until finally she would either have made enquiries or somebody would have told her that he had stayed one night at Elvin and then left at dawn the following morning.

It was then, he thought, unless she was more stupid than he gave her credit for, she would be bound to realise what had happened and would be aware that she had lost him irretrievably.

‘I hope she is upset,’ he told himself, and found that he was not even feeling very vindictive about it.

She had gambled and lost, as many men and women had done in the past and would do in the future.

For the first time the Marquis said to himself,

‘Thank God I was lucky enough to find out the truth before it was too late!’

He had had a lucky escape and he knew he should be grateful for that, just as he was grateful that Ola had saved his life when, if she had not been there, he would undoubtedly have died at the hands of the brigands.

Several days before they reached Nice, Ola was able to go up on deck without being carried and she was well enough not only to have luncheon with the Marquis in the Saloon but also to stay up for dinner.

“I have been given strict instructions by Gibson that I am to go to bed before you drink your first glass of port,” she said, “so please, don’t be in a hurry to do so.”

“You know Gibson has to be obeyed when it is a question of your health,” the Marquis said with mock seriousness.