Lovers in London (17 page)

The clerk bowed and left, whilst the Head Waiter arrived with the menu.

The Marquis was ordering the dishes he considered Lanthia would enjoy most when his coachman came into the sitting room.

The Marquis gave him instructions and he hurried away to carry them out.

In her bedroom Lanthia washed her face and hands, feeling that she was washing away the horror of the tight gag over her mouth and the pressure of the ropes round her wrists.

Then, although she felt it would be rude to keep the Marquis waiting, she took off her plain muslin dress.

In the wardrobe were hanging the two pretty gowns she had bought that morning just in case the Marquis asked her out to dinner.

‘I would like to look pretty for him,' she decided.

It was difficult for her to think straight because she was still reeling from the wonder of his kisses.

They had taken her into a veritable dreamland from which she was frightened she might suddenly awake.

‘It is something really wonderful and I shall always remember that magical moment,' she thought.

She looked in the mirror to see if her face had changed from feeling such ecstasy.

She thought that, despite the tears, if she tidied her hair she would be happy for the Marquis to see her.

The gown she had chosen was a very soft pink, a colour he had not seen her in before.

When she was ready, she stood in front of the long mirror with her heart beating so violently she was afraid he might be hear it!

‘He has kissed me because he was sorry for what I had just suffered and wanted me to stop crying,' she told herself. ‘I must not behave like all those other women who try to attract him.'

However she realised that it would be very difficult to walk into the next room and not let her eyes betray her inner feelings.

She knew now that she loved the Marquis and she longed for him to kiss her again.

But, she told herself, everything had returned to normal, and she should behave as her mother would expect her to do.

She opened the door and as soon as she appeared the Marquis held out a glass of champagne.

“I have waited for you,” he said, “so that we can drink to our success together. And what could be more successful than outwitting Satan himself?”

Lanthia laughed as he had meant her to do.

He clinked his glass with hers and as she sipped the champagne, she exclaimed,

“I cannot believe that all this has happened.”

“That is just what you must think, Lanthia. It was only a nightmare you have now woken up from. We are going to enjoy a delicious dinner together this evening and forget that it is unavoidably a little late!”

As he spoke, two waiters arrived with their first course and they sat down at the table that had already been laid for them.

Four candles had been lit and in the centre of the table Lanthia saw a very pretty basket of pink roses.

“What lovely flowers!” she exclaimed, “and they match my gown.”

“They are what brought me to
The Langham
on my way out to dinner. As I handed them in I learned that you had been told I had suffered an accident.”

“So that is how you saved me,” exclaimed Lanthia.

She thought it a strange coincidence that she should have chosen to wear a gown of the same colour as the first flowers the Marquis had given her.

But then everything that was happening to her was strange.

Nothing could be more exciting than having dinner with him alone.

Deliberately and in order to take her mind off her ordeal, the Marquis told her what he knew she wanted to hear.

All about his visit to Tibet and how he had visited several old monasteries, where he had been allowed by an Abbott to see some of the special treasures that had been collected by the monks over the centuries.

The Marquis knew as he spoke that Lanthia was visualising every detail he told her about his journey.

He described a long trek he had undertaken in the North African desert to search for a particular tribe, which had not been discovered by any other explorer.

“And you found them?” she asked him in an awed voice.

“I found them, but there were very few tribesmen left and the carvings they created had deteriorated over the years. At the same time my discovery was of considerable interest to the Royal Geographical Society.”

“Oh, do tell me more!” begged Lanthia.

They talked on until dinner was finished.

It was then that Lanthia remembered that the Marquis would be leaving her soon and she would be left alone.

She tried not to think that the Conté was still on the same corridor, but yet the thought kept recurring to her.

Perhaps he would learn somehow that his yacht had been apprehended and that she was free.

She would, of course, lock her door and yet because he was so frightening, she felt that a locked door would not prevent him from attacking her if that was what he was still determined to do.

The Marquis could now understand her thoughts and fears.

He waited until the waiters had cleared the table and they were alone in the sitting room.

“You are not to worry, Lanthia, about being here alone tonight. I am going to stay here and protect you from anything that might happen, although I am almost certain that nothing will.”

He saw Lanthia's eyes light up.

“I don't want to put you to any trouble,” she said, suddenly shy.

“It is no trouble at all! I intended to sleep on the sofa, but while you were in your bedroom the manager sent up to say that the room next door has been vacated and Mrs. Blossom can move in whenever she wishes.”

“I think perhaps I should go home tomorrow,” sighed Lanthia, a little wistfully.

“I thought that was what you would wish to do, but the bedroom next door will be more comfortable for me tonight than the sofa!”

Lanthia gave a little cry.

“Of course I would not have allowed you to sleep on the sofa. You could have had my bed, because as I am much smaller I could curl up on the sofa quite easily.”

The Marquis smiled.

He knew it had never crossed her mind, as it would any other woman's, that they might share a bed.

She was, he pondered, exactly as she should be – innocent, pure and so totally unlike anyone else he had ever known.

Aloud he said,

“I have already sent for my valet to bring me what I shall require for tonight and my clothes for the morning.”

He had been standing and he now sat down beside her on the sofa.

“There is one question I want to ask you, Lanthia.”

“What is it?” she enquired.

“Do you think,” he began slowly, “that I in any way at all resemble the invisible man who rides with you in the woods and who listens carefully as you do to the goblins digging under the trees and the nymphs and fairies hiding behind them?”

Lanthia stared at him in astonishment.

“How can you say that to me?”

The Marquis put his arms round her.

“I know what you are thinking and I know that is what you have always felt, because it is
exactly
what I felt myself when I was young. I have never told anyone about it, as I thought they would laugh at me.”

It was at that moment Lanthia knew that he
was
the man who had ridden beside her and who had been in all her dreams.

Because she was too shy to say so, she merely hid her face against his shoulder.

“What I am really asking you, my dearest darling,” the Marquis said, “is if you will marry me? I want you and I know we shall be very happy if we can explore the world together.”

Lanthia stared up at him and he thought no woman could have looked more radiant and ethereal.

At the same time her eyes searched his as if she was unable to believe what she had just heard.

“Are you really asking me,” she whispered, “to be your wife? But you said you would
never
marry?”

“I said I would never marry, because I had not met you. I love you as I have never loved anyone in my life, and I can tell you quite truthfully I shall never love anyone else. You are all I have ever dreamt about and thought I would never find. That was why I was determined to be a bachelor.”

He paused to kiss her gently on the cheek before he continued,

“I think that the more we are together the more we will find that we think the same, feel the same and
are
the same.”

“It cannot be true,” cried Lanthia. “I love you, of course, I love you. When you kissed me, I knew it was everything I ever thought a kiss would be like only much more wonderful.”

“I will teach you all about love, my precious, and it will be the most exciting and thrilling adventure I have ever undertaken.”

Then he pulled her against him and kissed her until her whole body quivered.

Her heart was beating as violently as his.

“I love you,
I love you
,” Lanthia whispered.

“That is all I ever want to hear you say,” the Marquis answered, “but I am still afraid in case what you spoke of as
missing
is still missing.”

Lanthia hid her face again.

“I know now what was missing,” she murmured.

“Tell me, my darling,” he smiled at her encouragingly.

“It was love. I realised that after you kissed me, I knew that what I was feeling for you was
love
, but I never believed you would feel love for me.”

“Now you know I do?” queried the Marquis.

“It is so wonderful that I am afraid I may lose it,” answered Lanthia dreamily.

“You will never do that,” he promised.

She moved a little closer to him and said,

“My Papa told me once that Russians love not only with their hearts but with their souls. That I know is the way I love you.”

“It is such a good description of what I too feel. Never before has my soul been touched by anything I have felt for a woman. I have found them attractive, exciting, and in some ways I have been infatuated for a short while. But that, my darling, is not what I feel for you. This is all so very very different.”

He was speaking as if he was working it all out for himself.

Then as if he could find no more words to describe what he meant, he kissed her again.

He kissed her tenderly until they were breathless.

Then he said,

“I must send you to bed, my lovely one. You have been through a terrible experience and I don't want you to be tired tomorrow.”

Lanthia looked at him questioningly and he said,

“Tomorrow I am going to drive you to the country to tell your father and mother that we love each other and I want to be married at once!”

“
At once
!” exclaimed Lanthia.

“We will be going on a very long honeymoon, my darling and it will be a honeymoon of exploration!”

Lanthia looked excited.

“Where are we going?” she asked, thrilled.

“We are going to explore ourselves first. There is a great deal that I wish to learn about you, and I hope there are things you want to know about me. I thought we might start in Greece, where I am certain you will discover much about the Goddesses that you have inherited from them.”

“How can you possibly think of anything just so wonderful?” she asked.

“After that, we might go on to Egypt and see if we can solve the many secrets of the Sphinx and if we are still looking for more excitement, I am already intrigued by the mountains of Turkey.”

Lanthia put her arms round his neck.

“How can you suggest anything so marvellous and so perfect, because we can do all these travels together?”

“It will be a new experience for you and also for me, because you will be with me all the time. I have a feeling, my darling, you will find out many things I have failed to see in the past, because you live partly in another world which is not visible on the surface, but, as you have just said, is deep down within our souls.”

He was speaking with great sincerity.

Because it was so different from what she thought she would ever hear, tears came into Lanthia's eyes as she said,

“I love you, I adore you, I love you, until it is impossible to put into words what I feel. You are exactly the man I have
always
wanted to find! I never thought he could appear in human form, only as the invisible man I talked to when I was in the woods!”

“And I thought there could never be a human being who was like you,” the Marquis told her. “So, my dearest, we have a great deal of exploring to do and, of course, we must one day write a book about everything we have both discovered to help other people who are not so fortunate as we are to have found each other.”

“That would be
wonderful
, absolutely wonderful.”

Lanthia gave a little cry before she added,

“This cannot be true! Can it really be happening to me? How could I have guessed when I came to London to buy clothes that all this could happen in just two days?”

“No, not just two days. We have been travelling towards each other for many hundreds, perhaps thousands of years, hoping in each life we should find the one person we were both seeking, only to be disappointed.”

He kissed her gently and continued,

“Now that it has all really happened, we must not waste any more time! I want you as my wife and with me every moment of the day and night for the rest of our lives.”

“That is what I want too,” sighed Lanthia. “Oh, how marvellous everything is. I am too happy to put it into words.”

The Marquis felt the same, so he just kissed her.

Then, a little later as she was lying in his arms on the sofa, she whispered,

“You do realise, darling, that if we are married and you really love me as you say you do, it will no longer be appropriate for me to call you ‘Rake'.”

“That is just what I have been, but that life is now all over. I would like you to call me ‘Victor', which is my favourite of the names I was christened with.”