The Marquis Is Trapped (12 page)

The Countess sniggered and it was an unpleasant sound.

“Do you really expect me to believe that?”

“Whether you believe it or not, it’s the truth.”

“But I am sure that your family,” she persisted, “are really longing for you to marry and produce an heir.  How can you do anything else when you have so much to be responsible for?”

“My family, like all other families, always concern themselves with matters that are not their business.”

She laughed and again it was a discordant sound.

“To put it very simply, you are not married and you intend not to be – ”

The Marquis so wanted to tell her to mind her own business, but knew it would be rude.

Instead he parried,

“I would presume that is obvious.”

“I find it hard to believe.  Even here in the North of Scotland we know all about your success with some of the most beautiful women in London.  Someone was telling me the other day about one of your conquests.  Now what was her name?  I am almost sure she was called Isobel!”

The Marquis so wished that he could tell her to shut up, but he merely smiled.

“If you want a list of the most beautiful women in London, I will gladly supply it.  Without any photographs, which unfortunately I have not brought with me, it would be difficult for you to realise how gorgeous some of them really are.”

The way he spoke and the look in his eyes told the Countess he had drawn swords with her.

He had, in fact, declared war.

She gave a little laugh and rose to her feet.

“You must tell me more another time.  Now I must obey my husband and find some Scottish beauties.  It will not be easy, but I would hate you to be disappointed – ”

She walked from the room as she finished speaking.

As the door closed behind her, the Earl remarked,

“I had no idea you had met my wife before, Oliver, but I was, of course, very fond of your father and when she suggested I should invite you to stay here, it made me feel it was something I should have done long ago.”

“I am so grateful, my Lord, for the invitation and I am looking forward to your salmon fishing.”

“Let’s hope they don’t elude you and Celina will be able to show you the best pools on the river.  She is more experienced than any of the ghillies.”

When the Marquis went upstairs to dress for dinner, he was thinking hard.

If he had known he would meet Lady Benson under another name, he would not have come and he was quite certain she despised him for the way he had spurned her all those years ago.

It seemed strange therefore that she had encouraged her husband to invite him to Darendell for the fishing.

It was unfortunate that she should be here to spoil the peace and quiet that he was looking for after his escape from Isobel.

From what she had just said, he suspected that one of her London friends had talked about him and she knew far more than he wanted her to know.

There was, however, nothing he could do about it now and it was of little use to worry much over something that had happened so long ago.

After all he had been very young and inexperienced at the time and it would have been far easier to accept her advances than to refuse them.

Yet at that age and because she was married to an elderly man, he had thought of her as a much older woman.

That was until the moment in the conservatory.

Looking back now he remembered vaguely hearing that Sir Gerald Benson had died after an accident on his Racecourse – apparently his horse had fallen at a fence and rolled on its rider.

By the time this had happened he had ceased to see anything of Peter and therefore he had not been particularly concerned.

Sir Gerald’s death, however, had left his wife free to marry someone else.

The Marquis could well understand, as she was still fairly attractive, the Earl of Darendell being captivated by her, while she had undoubtedly desired his title.

The Marquis was thinking out the whole sequence of events, almost as if he was putting a puzzle together and he wondered if she really hated him for having refused her advances so long ago.

It was, as far as he was concerned, an event he had almost forgotten and he supposed that now he would laugh at the idea of avoiding her.

He would just have to accept whatever fate or the Gods brought him.

‘I was young, innocent and somewhat foolish.’

Equally he was still rather shocked that a so-called respectable lady should offer herself to any man.

In his
affaires-de-coeur
the Marquis liked to think that
he
made the advances and that he enticed the beauty concerned into his arms, not that
she
enticed him.

It was not entirely the truth, in fact very far from it, but it was what he wanted to believe.

“This be a fine Castle, my Lord,” Gilbert broke in on the Marquis’s thoughts.

“I am impressed by it,” he answered, “and I hope the staff here are looking after you properly.”

“They seem friendly enough, my Lord, and that be usual where the Scots are concerned.”

“Have you been to Scotland before, Gilbert?”

“My first position before I came to your Lordship’s father were in Scotland.  The gentleman that employed me lived near to Edinburgh and I was sorry when he went on a tour round the world and I then had to find myself another position.”

“Is that why you came to my father?”

Gilbert nodded.

“He gives me a really excellent reference and, when your father took me on, it were exactly what I was wanting, especially when I could look after your Lordship.”

The Marquis thought he would find it very difficult to do without Gilbert and, as he trusted him, he suggested,

“Find out a little more about the family, Gilbert.  I know I can trust you to do it tactfully.  I don’t understand why Lady Celina, who can only be seventeen or eighteen, looks so frightened.  And why the Earl, at his age, married such a young wife for the second time.”

“It certainly seems a bit of a puzzle, my Lord, but leave it to me.  There’s nothing I enjoys more than finding out the reason for things what seems strange.”

The Marquis gave a little laugh.

“There is plenty of it about, Gilbert, where we are concerned!”

“Yes, I knows that and there’s no reason for us to feel down about anything at all.  As I’ve said often enough, whatever might happen, your Lordship always comes out on top!”

“I only hope you are right, Gilbert.”

CHAPTER FIVE

The Marquis caught four salmon on his first day on the river and Celina, who was with him, caught three.

He hoped, when they were going to the river that he would have a chance of talking to her.

He wanted to ask her what made her so frightened, but they each had a ghillie beside them all the time.

At luncheon time the Earl came down to the river to join them and they ate in a small wooden hut that had been built beside one of the best pools.

He insisted on watching them fish for a while after eating and then drove back to the Castle with them.

The Marquis noticed that Celina was completely at ease with her father.  She laughed and talked with him and was apparently enjoying every moment.

She seldom looked at the Marquis directly and he was quite certain that when she did so, the fear was back in her eyes.

‘Whatever can I have done,’ he asked himself, ‘to be such a
menace
?’

There was no obvious answer to that question.
Later Gilbert was a little more enlightening.

He informed the Marquis that the Castle household disliked their new Mistress and they thought that she was unnecessarily unkind to her stepdaughter.

“What do you mean, ‘unkind’?” the Marquis asked, as he was brushing his hair.

“They just wouldn’t go into any details in front of me, my Lord, but I thinks there’s something strange going on, although I can’t guess yet what it is.”

“Well, keep on trying – and why do the staff really not like the Countess?”

“From what they said, and they didn’t confide in me much seeing as I’m a foreigner coming here from England, they thinks that she caught the old man, so to speak, and, as your Lordship’s rightly said, there’s a big difference in their ages.”

The Marquis suspected that Moira Benson had been anxious to obtain a more significant title than Sir Gerald had given her.

There were guests for dinner the first night and the Marquis again did not get a chance to talk to Celina.

*

He had learnt, and it was a relief, that the Countess did not like fishing, so therefore the next morning he and Celina set off alone again.

They were in an open conveyance and there was no possibility of having a private conversation with her as the two ghillies could hear everything they said.

The Marquis was not so successful with his rod that morning, catching only one salmon and losing two, whilst Celina once again landed three fish.

The Earl teased him over luncheon.

“You will just have to pull up your socks, Oliver, or otherwise Celina will have better marks than you and I am certain that you don’t like being beaten by a woman!”

“It all depends on who she is – ”

The Marquis tried to smile at Celina as he spoke.

But Celina had turned her head away and was not looking at him.

‘What can be worrying her?’ he asked himself.

It could scarcely be his appearance, as he had often been told ever since he was a boy that he was handsome.

The women he had made love to had always been extremely complimentary.  He had been compared dozens of times to a Greek God.

There was not a single woman of his acquaintance who had not made it very obvious that she was proud to be with him.

Whether it was on the dance floor or in the park, he was smarter and better looking than any of the other men in sight.

*

The next night the guests for dinner consisted of the Earl’s neighbours.

One gentleman guest was clearly a talker and had a great deal to say.

Dinner was coming to an end when the man sitting on the left of the Countess asked,

“Whatever has happened to Hambleton?  I have not seen him for some time and I thought he used to be a friend of yours.”

“I have not seen him either,” replied the Countess.

As she was speaking, the Marquis, who happened to be looking at Celina, saw her start visibly.

He could almost swear that her face had suddenly gone very pale.

“I never did care for him myself,” the man on the other side of the Countess was saying.  “I always suspected him of being cruel to his horses.  At the same time he spent a great deal of money in the neighbourhood and we miss him for that if nothing else.”

“I would expect he will turn up sooner or later,” the Countess remarked in a comforting voice.

“Like a bad penny,” the man opposite remarked and then added, “or rather a golden sovereign!”

The Countess gave a little laugh and then changed the subject.

Watching Celina, the Marquis noticed that she took some time to relax and return to her normal self.

He always enjoyed a puzzle and a riddle, and found himself thinking that Mr. Hambleton, whoever he may be, must have upset her in some mysterious way.

But that was no reason why she should be so afraid of him.

‘I must get an opportunity to talk to her,’ he mused.

He then determined that he would most likely have a chance the following day, which was Sunday.

This meant they could not go out fishing.

*

The Earl informed him at breakfast time that they were invited to luncheon at another Castle about ten miles away.

The Marquis felt interested in seeing this Castle and he wondered if it would be as attractive as Darendell.

They drove there in an open carriage with the Earl and Countess sitting on the seat facing the horses.

The Marquis and Celina were opposite them and he would have been very stupid if he had not realised that she sat as far away from him as possible.

She almost squeezed herself against the other side of the carriage and thus there was no chance of speaking to her before they arrived for luncheon.

The Castle was not that impressive, but it was very old and, situated on a lake, it had a charm all of its own.

There was a fairly large party for luncheon and they talked incessantly of sport and they were interested to hear how the Marquis was faring on the River Daren.  There was also a lengthy discussion about which flies were the most successful in attracting the salmon.