Lovers in London (14 page)

Lanthia had therefore brought two books from her father's library, both written by famous explorers. She wished now she had brought one of Richard Burton's.

Then she remembered that the Marquis had travelled a great deal and that he had not told her about all his adventures yet.

She said a little prayer that she would indeed have a chance to hear about them before she left.

She wondered why she had not asked him that afternoon which countries he had visited, as she could have easily done as they were driving away from Marlborough House.

But he had been talking about her and asking who she wanted to marry.

‘I suppose,' she told herself, ‘it was very rude of me to say that if he did ask me I would say ‘no.' But I had to tell him the truth!'

Lanthia was thinking again about her dream man who always rode beside her in the woods. Instinctively the thought made her yearn for fresh air so she ran to the window.

She looked out onto Portland Place, at the same time still feeling as if she was riding beneath the trees in the woods at home.

In her thoughts the sun was percolating through the broad leaves of the green canopy overhead and someone was riding beside her.

Someone who was so in tune with her that he understood that she was listening to the goblins working deep in the ground.

Someone who could see in the same way she could the nymphs hiding behind the trunks of the trees.

How could she explain to the Marquis, or anyone else, the strange feelings she harboured within her?

She was sure that no one would ever understand that she was talking to an invisible man beside her, who felt the same as she did about everything.

‘How can I marry
anyone
,' she asked herself, ‘if I am always thinking about someone else, even though he is invisible?'

It was difficult to things put into words, because, as she knew herself, it was not only what she was thinking but what she felt too.

However she did not want the Marquis to think that she did not admire him.

Then she laughed out loud.

Was it likely to worry him one way or another what she thought?

He had so many beautiful women like the Contessa looking at him with such longing in their eyes.

He is most fortunate that he has a great number of friends such as the Duchess of Sutherland and Princess Alexandra, she mused.

‘They are all very fond of him, and I know that if Papa and Mama met him, they would like him too.'

Then she was wondering once again how she could tell her parents about all the extraordinary things that had happened to her since coming to London.

‘If I read about it in a book, I should not believe it,' she thought. ‘And yet I suppose the Marquis and Richard Burton have adventures like this every day when they are on their travels.'

She was trying to think what it would be like if she set out on an expedition with the Marquis.

It would be more than a wonderful experience for her, but he would undoubtedly be bored to have to take a woman with him.

Women could not travel as fast or so far as men, and Lanthia knew they that would certainly prefer to sleep in a comfortable bed rather than in a cave or on the side of a mountain.

Lanthia remembered that her mother had often gone abroad with her father, but they had not been to such wild and uninhabited places as he had visited when he was on his own.

She turned away from the window.

‘I shall just have to content myself with reading all about what the men have done,' she told herself.

Unexpectedly there was a knock on the door and she wondered who it could be.

Then, with the irresistible hope that it might be the Marquis, she opened the door.

Outside were two young boys, one was a pageboy wearing the livery of
The Langham
.

She was about to ask them what they wanted, when the taller and older boy piped up,

“There's been an accident, miss, to the Marquis of Rakecliffe and he asks you to come to 'im.”

“
An accident
!” Lanthia exclaimed in horror to the boys. “Where is he?”

“He be downstairs, miss, in a carriage a-waitin' for you.”

“I will come
at once
.”

She ran out into the corridor and as the two boys moved quickly in front of her, she closed and locked the door before following them.

They took her down in the lift and then the older of the boys hurried ahead with Lanthia behind him.

She was running as they passed by the porter in the hall without speaking.

She followed the boys through the front door and down the steps and she could see a closed carriage drawn up at the entrance.

As he pulled open the door, Lanthia knew this must be where the Marquis was waiting for her.

By this time it was dusk, but the hotel's electric lights had not yet been switched on at the entrance.

The inside of the carriage was dark, but she could see a man on the back seat.

“What has happened to you?” she asked, her voice quavering.

As the Marquis did not answer, she climbed into the carriage and moved towards him and as she did so the door slammed behind her and the horses started off.

When they drove away from the portico, it became lighter and Lanthia saw to her terror it was not the Marquis who was on the seat beside her, but the
Conté!

As he reached out to her, she screamed.

She would have screamed again, but he held a thick silk handkerchief in his hands and pulled it harshly over her mouth.

Even as she tried to fend him off, he tied it tightly behind her head.

‘
Stop
! Stop!' she wanted to cry, but he had gagged her very effectively and it was impossible to make a sound.

She tried to push him away, but he produced a thin rope, which he pulled round her so that her arms were fastened to her side.

He was sitting well back on the carriage seat and she was only balanced on the front of it, making it difficult to move and impossible to prevent him from tying the rope round her.

Then he pushed her roughly back into the corner of the carriage and tied her ankles together.

He did everything so quickly that it was difficult to believe it had actually happened and there was nothing she could do to prevent herself from being rendered helpless.

The carriage, driven by only one horse, was moving quickly through the traffic.

Lanthia thought that the Conté was not only sinister but wild too and it flashed though her mind that perhaps he was mad.

If he intended to kill her, it would not be the work of a man in his right senses.

Now he had made her completely immobile, he sat back in the corner of the carriage.

She could see his face occasionally in the light of the street lamps and there was a grim smile of satisfaction on his thick lips.

She wondered frantically what he was going to do with her and how she could save herself.

It seemed as if escape was impossible.

No one at
The Langham
would know where she had gone and Mrs. Blossom would not discover that she was missing until the morning.

The Marquis would be going out to dinner with his friends at White's and not give her a second thought until tomorrow.

It was then that Lanthia felt a wave of utter despair sweep over her.

She was frightened, desperately frightened.

No one would even discover she was missing until she was dead.

‘I don't want to die, I want to live,' she repeated in her head again and again.

She wanted to be as happy as she had been today when the Marquis had taken her to Marlborough House.

In her mind's eye she could see him smiling at her as he had just before they had arrived. It was as if he was comforting her without words, telling her that there was no need to be nervous and that he would look after her.

‘Why can I not tell him now what has happened to me?' thought Lanthia. ‘If only he was a Knight fighting a ferocious dragon, he would save me!'

Then she remembered something her brother had once told her.

It was when they were talking about India and how the Indians could often communicate with each other by the power of thought alone.

“It is absolutely extraordinary,” David had told her, “how an Indian two or three hundred miles from his home will know exactly what is happening to his family.”

He had related to Lanthia a long story of how one of his men had asked if he could go on leave because his father had died.

“We were up by the North-West Frontier,” said David, “and it was quite impossible for him to have received any communication from any other part of India. I thought at first he was just making an excuse to slip off and have fun. Then because he was obviously distressed about his father and speaking with an honesty I could not doubt, I let him go.”

“And had his father died?” asked Lanthia.

“Yes, at exactly the time he had told me, over two hundred miles away.”

“You must have been astonished.”

“It was the first time this had happened to me, but I found that many strange things occur in India which we would call miracles. To the Indians it is just a part of their knowledge of what the Chinese call the
World beyond the World
.”

Lanthia had not forgotten this conversation.

And now it occurred to her that the only thing she could do was to send out her thoughts to the Marquis.

‘Help me!
Help me
!' she cried in her heart.

Because it was such a fervent prayer she continued to repeat it over and over again.

They travelled for what seemed like a long distance.

When at last the carriage came to a standstill it was almost dark and the gaslights were being lit in the streets.

Yet from the inside of the carriage there appeared to be very few lights where they had stopped.

The Conté had not said one word since he had tied Lanthia up.

His head was turned away from her, so she could not see his face, looking out of the window. Lanthia felt he had been in a hurry to reach their destination.

Now the boy, who had fetched her from her sitting room, climbed down from the box and opened the door.

The Conté climbed down the steps of the carriage and, as Lanthia was wondering what he would do, she heard him say curtly to the boy,

“Shut this door and do not let anyone open it until I return.”

“Very good, sir,” replied the boy.

It struck Lanthia as somewhat strange that he did not say ‘my Lord,' as he would have done to the Marquis.

She started to speculate frantically how she could free herself.

Perhaps she could jump out of the carriage on the other side? If she did so she might be able to run away and hide before the Conté could find her.

She had already tried to move her arms and found it was impossible. She could only kick out her legs and as they were tied together that was no help in setting her free either.

‘Help me,
help me
!' she cried over and over silently to the Marquis.

She thought that perhaps he was with a beautiful woman and would certainly not be thinking of her.

At the same time she carried on praying, ‘help me,
help me'
, because there was nothing else she could do.

Then the Conté came back and she heard his voice, harsh and unpleasant, giving someone orders.

Next the carriage door opened and a man looked in.

She had expected it to be the Conté, but this was a stranger.

He put out his arms towards her and she wanted to shrink away from him, but it was impossible to move.

He pulled her off the back seat and picking her up started to walk across the pavement.

It was then that Lanthia could see that they were now on the Embankment and there was the River Thames. There were lights reflected onto the river from boats and ships.

Now the man carrying her began to descend down some steps and Lanthia realised that she was being taken onto a boat.

She calculated with horror that the Conté must be spiriting her away from England, perhaps to Spain, and she would never be able to escape.

She tried to scream in case there was a passer-by on the Embankment who would hear her, but it was still just impossible to make any sound through the thick scarf she was gagged with.

As she was so very light, the man carrying her was having no difficulty in walking down the steps.

When she looked at his dark hair and dark skin, she reckoned that he was another Spaniard and she thought too that he was dressed as a seaman.

In a short time he had descended the steps, crossed a gangplank and then she was on the deck of the ship.

It was not a large ship and she guessed it might be a yacht, doubtless belonging to the Conté.

Quickly, as if he was frightened of being seen, the man carried her below deck and Lanthia was aware, although she could not see him, that there was another man following behind.

They were now in a narrow passage with doors opening off it, which she guessed must be cabins.

Then the man carrying her stopped.

She realised with a gasp that the man walking behind them was the Conté and he stepped forward to open one of the doors.

She was taken into a small cabin and the man pushed her down rather roughly onto a bunk on one side of it.

As the mystery man stood back, the Conté came to her side.

He was staring at her intently and although the light coming through the open door was dim, she could see an expression of triumph on his face.

He was obviously pleased to have succeeded in what he had set out to achieve.

The man who had been carrying her left the cabin and as she heard his footsteps receding, the Conté sneered,

“I don't suppose your fiancé, as he calls himself, will mourn very deeply for you. There are plenty of other women whom he will attempt to make unfaithful to their husbands and who will be most grateful to me for having disposed of
you
!”