Barbara Cartland - Love has his way

He opened the bedroom door and found to his surprise that he was on the second floor.

This would mean that someone, presumably Lord Kirkhampton and his accomplices, had carried him up the stairs when he was unconscious.

He gritted his teeth in fury to think he had been so helpless in their hands and wondered if Lord Kirkhampton had really intended to drown him.

He thought it was not an impossibility for his Lordship was the type of headstrong fool who would do anything to assert himself.

Holding onto the banisters because he still felt that his head was thick with the drug, the Marquis began to walk slowly down the stairs.

On the first floor the door to the sitting room he had dined in last night was open.

He could see the table where he had sat, but it was now bare.

The door of the room next door was also open and the Marquis could see it was prettily decorated just as he had imagined Nicole would have it with the bed draped in pale pink and a flounced dressing table to match.

The wallpaper and the furniture was all very feminine and in good taste.

It was there that he had expected to enjoy himself last night and once again the Marquis felt like groaning aloud that he had been made to look such a fool.

He went down the stairs and only as he came down the last flight did he see that there was a woman in the hall.

He wondered if she was a servant and, as he reached the last step of the stairs, she rose nervously to her feet.

The Marquis glanced at her, then with a little difficulty tried to pick up his tall hat, which he saw lying on a chair opposite her.

He would have walked on towards the door, but the woman said in a small frightened voice,

“I-I was told to – wait for you.”

“Wait for me?” the Marquis expostulated.

“Y-yes.”

He turned to look at her.

She wore a dark travelling cape with a plain bonnet of chip-straw which made it difficult to see her face.

“Why are you waiting for me?”

Even as he asked the question he had the horrifying feeling that he knew the answer already.

“I-I am – your – wife!”

It was obviously difficult for her to say the words, but the Marquis heard them.

There was a moment’s silence.

Then in a surprisingly strong voice considering the way he was feeling, the Marquis said,

“If you are part of this dastardly plot of drugging and doubtless robbing me, you can tell Kirkhampton to go to the Devil where I shall doubtless find him!”

His voice seemed to echo and re-echo around the small hall.

Then, as the Marquis turned again to the door, the woman blurted out,

“P-please – Lord Kirkhampton has – left.”

“Doubtless you know where to find him,” the Marquis retorted, “and don’t forget to give him my message.”

He had the door open by now and with a sense of relief he could see that his carriage was standing outside.

He had told his coachman last night to wait for two hours and then, if he did not have a message from him, to come back first thing in the morning.

It was an inexpressible relief for him to know that his horses were there.

Seeing him in the doorway the footman jumped down from the box and, as the Marquis took another step forward, the voice behind him came,

“Please – my Lord – please – I don’t know – what to do.”

The Marquis paid no attention, but moved on towards his carriage.

He had moved onto the pavement when from behind him she asked,

“If you – could – just give me – some m-money I could – go home.”

“I have no intention of giving you a penny!” he replied and stepped into his carriage.

The footman closed the door and jumped up onto the box.

The carriage drove off and only when they reached the end of the road did the Marquis realise that it was a cul de sac and there was only a crescent of houses at the end with a small garden in the centre round which the carriage could turn.

He therefore was driven back the way he had come and, as if he just could not help being curious as to what the woman who had spoken to him had done, he looked out of the window.

He saw to his surprise a man, doubtless a servant, as he was wearing an apron, pulling a trunk out through the door while she stood and watched him.

The man threw the trunk, which was a small one, down the steps and, just as the carriage drew even, he went inside and slammed the door of the house.

As they passed by, the Marquis saw the woman sit down on the trunk and put her hands up to her face.

‘So she is no more use to them,’ he thought with satisfaction. ‘That should teach her a lesson that she will not forget in a hurry.’

The carriage was then held up at the end of the road by the traffic.

As the Marquis leaned back and shut his eyes, it suddenly struck him that if the woman he had just left crying on the doorstep was really his wife she could, if she told anybody who she was, cause a very unpleasant scandal.

He sighed.

It was not possible! He could not credit it.

He would not even acknowledge that she had any right to his name.

But he knew the paper in his pocket had an unpleasant look of authenticity about it and the Marquis was afraid in a way that he had never been afraid of anything before.

This was a situation he would get out of some way or another, but it might take time and money and the most important thing as far as he was concerned was that nobody should know that the whole episode had ever occurred.

The Marquis had a quick brain and so he realised as they turned into the main street that it would be extremely foolish to leave this woman who could make endless trouble for him alone in London without any money.

If she was telling the truth, it would only be a question of time before she was picked up by some charlatan who could use her to blackmail him in an excessively unpleasant fashion.

The Marquis made up his mind.

He bent forward to stop the carriage and, when the footman then jumped down to hear his commands, they drove back to the house that they had just left.

He half-suspected that the woman who had just been thrown into the street had only been another bait to trap him as Nicole had done with her invitation to supper.

She was still sitting there with her hands over her eyes and she only looked up when the carriage came to a standstill beside her.

Once again the footman came to the carriage door.

“Ask that young woman to join me,” the Marquis ordered sharply, “and put her trunk up behind.”

“Very good, my Lord.”

The footman was too well trained to show any surprise in his voice or his expression.

The Marquis heard him saying,

“His Lordship asks if you’ll join him in his carriage, ma’am.”

The woman obviously hesitated and for a moment the Marquis felt that she was going to refuse and then she came to the carriage door.

“Get in,” he called out.

Because he was just so angry he could not help speaking in a sharper tone than he would have used to a dog.

She obeyed him, sitting not beside him but opposite him on the small seat with her back to the horses.

The Marquis heard the footman strapping her trunk onto the back of the carriage, but he did not speak.

The horses had started off again to drive to the end of the road and turn as they had done before.

Then the woman said pleadingly,

“Please – may – I – ”

“I have no wish to listen to your lies,” the Marquis interrupted her harshly. “You will be silent until we arrive where I am taking you.”

She bowed her head and he supposed that she was crying again.