Barbara Cartland: Love has his way

Sophocles (495-406 B.C.) was one of the three great Greek tragic poets.

He lived until he was ninety and wrote over a hundred plays for the Athenian theatre.

He was a Master of dramatic technique and was the first author to write poetry spoken in character.

Sophoclean drama is always of living persons choosing their own paths to happiness or disillusion, to success, failure or extinction. In fact their problems were the same as our own.

The Odes of Pindar were written in honour of the victors in the events of the four huge national athletic meetings of Ancient Greece. He was the greatest lyric poet of the period and was born in 518 B.C.

The Marquis of Sarne groaned, moved slightly and then thought that the pain in his head could not be real because it was such an agony.

It seemed a long time later that he opened his eyes, saw an unfamiliar room around him and closed them again.

His head continued to throb. Now slowly and intermittently, snatches of memory came back to him while there were moments in between when he was oblivious of everything,

He was aware that his mouth was dry, his lips felt as if they were cracked and he needed a drink of water so desperately that he next forced himself to open his eyes and focus them on the wall opposite him.

There was a fireplace and above it a picture that he had never seen in his life before.

There was light coming from an uncurtained window, by which he could see furniture of a quality that he would never have had in one of his houses.

He closed his eyes for a moment and then opened them determinedly.

Where was he? And why the devil did he feel so ill?

He moved slowly and, as he did so, he saw that there was a piece of paper lying on his chest.

He tried to look down at it without moving his head unduly and saw that he was wearing his evening clothes.

What had happened and why should a piece of paper have been thrust on him?

It seemed incomprehensible until suddenly it flashed through his mind that he had been in evening dress when he had taken Nicole de Prêt out to supper.

Of course he could remember it now, calling for her at the stage door at Covent Garden in his carriage and thinking when he collected her from her dressing room that she looked so alluring that she would relish the applause of a crowd.

“Are you very sure that you would like to have supper at home?” he had asked her as he raised her small hand with its long thin fingers to his lips.

It was perhaps her hands that had attracted him at first, for she used them with so much more grace than the rest of the Corps de Ballet .

“Anywhere your Lordship weesh,” she replied in her fascinating broken English. “But it will be ready chez moi .”

It was fashionable for the bucks of St. James’s to pursue the French women who filled many parts on the stage and were on the whole better dancers than the English.

The Marquis had had under his protection a Spanish dancer who had greatly pleased him for over a year and he had thought that Nicole de Prêt could fill her place admirably, which suggestion he intended to discuss with her over supper this evening.

He placed her wrap consisting of a fur he did not recognise and did not consider a proper frame for her beauty over her shoulders and then they climbed slowly down the iron staircase that would lead them to the stage door.

The Marquis was sure that Nicole would admire his carriage for no one in London had one that was smarter or drawn by better bred horses.

The coachman wearing his distinctive Livery and the footmen who had opened the door, were receiving admiring glances from the crowd that waited at the stage door to see not only the principals of the show leaving but also to gaze at the gentlemen who escorted them and who had occupied the stage boxes during the performance.

Nicole de Prêt lay back against the comfortably cushioned inside of the carriage.

“You leeve in great style, my Lord,” she remarked.

“Which is something I hope you will share with me,” the Marquis replied.

By the light of the silver candle lantern in the carriage he saw her glancing at him in an intriguing way from under her long dark mascaraed eyelashes.

“Ees that an invitation?”

“I will explain it more formally after we have had supper,” the Marquis said.

She smiled at him and he was not certain whether she intended to accept his protection immediately or whether she would prevaricate a little and make herself ‘hard-to-get’.

Either way, the Marquis thought, the end was inevitable.

There was no woman in London who was not ready to throw herself into his arms if he so much as glanced in her direction.

Where the Beau Monde was concerned, the many Society beauties, who were toasted and acclaimed by his friends, made it very obvious that he was the man in whom they were really interested.

He had only to enter a room to know that every woman’s eyes looked at him invitingly and every pair of red lips was waiting for him to kiss them.

Where the theatrical world was concerned it was easier.

The Marquis had only, as one wag had once said, ‘to pick the choicest fruit from off the barrow.’

Nicole de Prêt did not speak and he liked the way she made no effort to entice him, but merely sat waiting for him to talk to her.

He had the feeling that she was a better class than most of the Corps de Ballet , although it was always difficult to estimate the breeding of a foreigner.

“Have you been in England long?” he asked her.

“Ever since I was a child.”

The Marquis raised his eyebrows and she said,

“My parents came over at the time of ze Revolution. They lose everytheeng they possess. Eet ees why I ’ave to earn my own living.”

This was such a familiar story among the French women in London that the Marquis did not believe it for a moment.

But because she would obviously expect it, he made a sympathetic sound before he said,

“I can see that the fur of your wrap is not worthy of your beauty. You must allow me to replace it with sable or perhaps would you prefer ermine?”

“Eet ees something I must consider, my Lord,” she said, “but you are veree generous.”

“Which is what I wish to be to you,” the Marquis replied.

The horses drew up outside a house in Chelsea and he looked at the place speculatively as he followed Nicole de Prêt from the carriage.

To his surprise when she had accepted his invitation earlier in the day, he had received a note from her making the suggestion that they should dine at her house rather than in one of the fashionable restaurants where the Marquis usually engaged a private room.

He had, however, accepted her hospitality and at the same time suggesting that he should provide the wine that they would drink.

He knew from past experience that women of Nicole’s class were no judge of wine and he had no intention of ruining his digestion with anything that was inferior or cheap.

He therefore sent a carriage during the afternoon to Nicole’s house with a case of claret, another of champagne and several bottles of his best brandy as well.

“What about food, my Lord?” his secretary, Mr. Barnham, had asked.

He was used to dealing with these things and knew that, if the food and wine were not up to the Marquis’s high standards, he would not enjoy the subsequent attractions that he would be offered during the evening.

“You had better send a pâté and a round of cold beef in case everything she produces is inedible,” the Marquis said.

“If she is French, my Lord, she should surely know something about food,”