The Earl, however, had not questioned her about what had happened and she knew that sooner or later they must talk together about it. She would have to try to offer an explanation for running away from him when he had found her at the Serpentine and why she had been so foolish as to be carried away by the balloon.

  Even to think of that terrifying experience made Calista tremble.

  It had at first been so fascinating as they ascended quickly into the sky to see the world below growing smaller and smaller and the people including the Earl vanishing from sight.

  Then, as they climbed higher, she became acutely conscious that she was wearing only a thin muslin dress and had not even a bonnet to cover her hair.

  Charles Green, of course, had scolded her for clinging to the side of the car.

  “How could you do anything quite so foolish and so ridiculous as to be swept away in such a manner?” he stormed.

  “I remember some years ago there was a boy who did just the same thing,” one of the aeronauts remarked.

  “That was different,” Charles Green snapped. “He was caught in the mooring ropes and had to be hauled aboard because there was nothing else they could do about him,”

  “And so there is nothing else we can do about this stowaway,” the man remarked with a smile.

  That was true, Calista realised. They could hardly drop her overboard and when her teeth began to chatter and she was shivering, Charles Green’s anger evaporated and he provided her with all the wraps there were available.

  Nevertheless she grew colder and colder in the darkness of the night.

  Later, when the balloon was deflated in order to descend, it was more frightening than anything she had imagined. She thought that she must fall into a tree or be dropped in a lake.

  She was utterly terrified.

  She knew that she had no one to blame but herself, but to see the Earl standing just above her on the bank of the Serpentine at the very moment that she had decided to plunge into the water beneath the bridge had been such a shock that she had had no time to think.

  Her only thought was that she must escape from him, that he must not realise the plight she was in or the reason why she had run away from him in the first place.

  She knew very well what he felt about their intended marriage. He was putting a good face on it, but he had no wish to be married.

  He wanted to be free and she could not face the sort of marriage he had suggested.

  Loving him as she did, how could she endure his idea that they could build a marriage on ‘interests in common’ and what he had called an ‘intelligent determination’ to make each other happy?

  ‘I love him! I love him!’ she told herself and knew that it would be impossible to live if he was kind to her merely out of pity or out of necessity.

  “I want his love,” she whispered and thought that there could be no agony so intense as loving a man who did not reciprocate.

  The Nun came back into the bedroom wearing her black cloak in which she would return to the Convent.

  “Au revoir, ma petite. It has been a great pleasure to know you and may God bring you much happiness in the future.”

  “Thank you,” Calista replied, thinking that it was unlikely, “and thank you, dear Sister Teresa, for looking after me and for making me well again.”

  She would have liked to kiss the Nun, but she felt that that might be inappropriate. So instead they shook hands and there was a suspicion of tears in Calista’s eyes as Sister Teresa left the bedroom.

  ‘Now I shall be alone with the Earl,’ Calista thought and wondered what his plans were now that she was well enough to leave the hostelry.

  She heard his footsteps coming up the stairs and nervously twisted her fingers together.

  Sister Teresa had already tidied her hair before dinner and she was now wearing one of the beautifully embroidered silk nightgowns that the Earl had bought for her in Paris and a soft silk shawl trimmed with white lace.

  As well as the lilies, the room was full of other flowers.

  Every day the Earl had brought her roses and carnations of every colour, which he had bought in the flower market in Paris or from the flower women who proffered their wares on the steps of the Madeleine.

  The room, Calista thought, looked more like a bower than a bedroom and she hoped as she waited for the Earl that he would think she looked attractive.

  There was now more colour in her face and she was not as thin as she had been when she had first felt well enough to look at herself in the mirror.

  The door opened and the Earl came in.

  She was immediately aware how elegant he looked in his evening clothes and how tall and broad-shouldered he appeared in the low room.

  Then with a surprise she realised he was not alone as following behind him was another man.

  The Earl advanced to the bed and Calista saw that he had a bouquet of flowers in his hands, all white. There were white carnations, roses and lilies-of-the-valley.

  She looked at them and then at the man who had entered behind the Earl and saw that he was wearing a surplice.

  Her eyes were frightened as she looked up at the Earl standing beside her bed.

  “Canon Barlow of the British Embassy Chapel in Paris, Calista,” he said quietly, “has kindly come here to marry us.”

  As Calista gave a little gasp, the Earl put the bouquet down in front of her and took her hand in his.

  He knew at once that she was trembling and he said gently,

  “It will not be a long Service.”

  Calista wanted to speak, but somehow her voice had died in her throat.

  She could only look at the Earl with wide frightened eyes and then, as he smiled at her reassuringly, the Canon opened his Prayer Book and began the Service of Marriage.

  The Earl made his responses in a firm strong voice while Calista’s, in contrast, was very low and hardly above a whisper.

  Yet the beautiful words were said and, when the ring was on her finger and their hands were joined together, the Canon blessed them.

  There was a silence as his voice died away.

  Then closing the Prayer Book he said in an ordinary tone,

  “May I be the first to congratulate you, my Lord? And, Countess Helstone, may I wish you every happiness now and for ever?”

  “Thank ‒ you,” Calista managed to murmur.

  “I know you are in a hurry to return to Paris, Canon,” the Earl remarked. “My carriage is waiting outside for you.”

  “Thank you,” the Canon replied. “I have a rather important appointment at nine o’clock.”

  “You will be in time for it.”

  “I am sure I shall. Your horses, my Lord, are outstanding.”

  “I am glad you think so,” the Earl smiled politely.

  The two men left the room and Calista could hear their footsteps receding down the uncarpeted wooden staircase.

  She sat still, but her head was in a whirl.

  How could this have happened?

  Why had the Earl married her with such haste and without warning her of his intention?

  She had been considering a number of new arguments to persuade him that he need not commit himself into becoming her husband unwillingly, but she had felt that there was plenty of time for them to talk things over and argue it out.

  Yet now this had happened!

  She wondered why she had not immediately protested when he brought the Clergyman into the room, but she knew that she had been too surprised, in fact utterly bewildered, to do anything except obey his directions.

  She was now his wife!

  And even as an irrepressible thrill arose in her at the thought, she heard him coming back up the stairs.

  He came into the room and, closing the door behind him, he stood looking at her and at her fair hair with the touches of red framing the frightened little white face with a question in her grey-green eyes.

  He smiled and she thought that he looked happy.

  “It is hot tonight,” he said in an ordinary tone of voice. “Will you forgive me if I take off my coat?”

  Without waiting for her reply, he pulled off his smart close-fitting coat and threw it down on a chair.

  In his thin muslin shirt and with his exquisitely tied cravat, he looked at ease and very masculine.

  Calista was unable to meet his eyes and the colour rose in her cheeks as he crossed the room and sat down on the bed to face her.

  He did not speak and after a moment she said in a whisper,

  “Why – did you – marry me like – that?”

  “There are three good reasons,” he answered. “First, because I felt it only fair to Centaur that we should legalise his position. He told me he was fed up with being pushed from pillar to post.”

  Calista gave a faint smile as if she could not help it.

  “Secondly,” the Earl continued, “I am really far too old to be continually beaten up in circuses and forced to swim the English Channel to catch up with a balloon!”

  Calista gave a little choke of laughter and the Earl went on,

  “And lastly, although this is far the most important, I love you, my darling.”

  She was very still.

  Then, as her eyes sought his, he said gently,

  “It is true! I love you. I cannot live without you and nor do I intend to risk losing you again.”

  “Are – you – sure?”

  He could hardly hear the question.

  “I am very sure,” he replied. “I did not know it was possible to suffer such agony as you have inflicted on me since you disappeared from the inn. Just how could you do anything so cruel?”

  Her eyes fell before his and, as he put his hand over hers, he saw that she was trembling.

  “I thought you wanted to be – free and I could not bear to be married to someone who did not want – me.”

  “Even though it was someone you loved?” the Earl asked.

  She looked up at him quickly and the colour rose in her face.

  “How did you know – that?”

  “You told me so.”

  “Do you mean – when I was unconscious?”

  “You told me all the things that I wanted to hear,” he answered. “That you loved me and that you were prepared to die because of that love.”

  Calista gave a little murmur of embarrassment and instinctively she moved towards him so that she could hide her face against his shoulder.

  He held her very close.

  “I was such a fool,” he said. “I did not realise that you were what I have been looking for all my life – a woman who would love me for myself and who would care for me so much that her love was utterly and completely selfless.”

  His arms tightened even more as he went on,

  “At the same time, my precious one, how dare you try to destroy yourself when you are mine and you belong to me?”

  “I could not bear you to be – kind to me only because you – pitied me,” Calista said.

  “I should have told you that I loved you when we were at the inn together. But I was such a blockhead I did not realise that the emotions you awoke in me and that I had never felt before were what I had always been seeking.”

  He gave a little laugh as he added,

  “I was so crazily, wildly jealous of the clown who had laid his heart at your feet! I was jealous of the horses who had absorbed so much of your attention! But even then I did not understand it was love, not until I had lost you and thought I should never find you.”

  “You really – minded?” Calista whispered.

  “You will never leave me again,” the Earl said firmly. “I could not bear it, I could not live again through all the pain and anxiety of these last few weeks.”

  He pulled her a little closer as he said,

  “You have so very much to answer for, my sweet, but I have grown wiser through bitter experience. That is why I have married you tonight. I had no intention of letting you leave this bedroom until you were actually my wife.”

  “You love me? You really – love me?” Calista asked as if she could not believe that it was true.

  “I shall have to prove it,” the Earl answered, “so that you will no longer be in any doubt. There is plenty of time ahead of us for me to do so.”

  He bent his head as he spoke and at the same time put his fingers under Calista’s chin and turned her face up to his.

  Then his mouth was on hers.

  She felt a sensation such as she had never known before seep through her body and rise like a warm wave up to her throat and into her lips.

  It was so glorious and so perfect that she knew that this was love. This was what she had wanted to find in the man she married and for him to find in her.

  It was a wonder, a glory, a rapture such as she had never dreamt existed in the world.

  Then, as the Earl felt her lips respond to him and the softness of her body seemed to melt against him, his kiss grew more demanding, more passionate and more insistent.

  Calista felt the room whirl round and disappear so that she and the Earl were alone in the sunlight and there was nothing else but their love.

  The Earl raised his head.

  “I love you, my elusive darling, I love you. I did not know that any woman could be so beautiful, so perfect and so sweet.”

  “I love – you,” Calista whispered. “This is just how I – always knew – love would be if I could only – find it.”

  “We have found it together,” the Earl said and he kissed her eyes, her cheeks, her small nose and then again her lips –

  *

  A long time passed before Calista said hesitatingly,

  “Shall we have to go back at – once to tell Mama and the others that we are – married?”

  “We are not going back until we have had a really long honeymoon.”

  The Earl saw the light that lit Calista’s eyes.

  “We can be – alone?”

  “Quite alone,” he replied with a smile, “unless you count the horses that I have bought for you.”

  “Horses?” Calista questioned.

  “I think they will meet with your approval. They have the Arab strain in them.”

  “Oh, how wonderful!” Calista cried. “I have so often dreamt about riding with you. It is what I have wanted to do above all else.”

  The Earl kissed her gently and then he told her,

  “I have made a lot of plans. First we will go to Paris because, although I have bought you a few dresses, my precious, I have a feeling that you will require quite an extensive trousseau and who could provide that better than the couturiers of Paris?”

  “All I want is a riding habit!” Calista said impulsively. “No, that is not true. I want to look pretty for – you.”

  “You will look lovely in anything you wear,” the Earl said, “even in those disreputable pantaloons and that jockey’s jacket in which you appeared the night we walked in the garden together.”

  “I shocked you?” Calista smiled.

  “I am still shocked!” he replied. “I promise you I shall not allow you to wear them again except when we are absolutely alone together.”

  Calista laughed.

  “In which case,” she said, “I might just as well wear what I am wearing now – which is practically – nothing!”

  The Earl smiled, but there was a hint of fire in his eyes.

  “I said then that you were a provocative little devil! Are you trying to provoke me, my darling?”

  She blushed at the passion in his voice and hid her face against his shoulder.

  “When we are bored with Paris,” the Earl said more gently, “I think we might go on to Vienna. I know that it would make you happy to see the Lipizzaner stallions in the Spanish Riding School.”

  She gave a little cry of sheer delight.

  “How could you think of anything quite so marvellous? It is something I would love to do more than anything else in the world.”

  Then shyly she added,

  “But it will only be – wonderful because – you are with me.”

  “You will be able to learn some new tricks to teach Centaur and when we get home we can start trying to breed a new Eclipse.”

  The Earl paused and then carried on very softly,

  “And perhaps we can try together to produce an exceptional progeny of our own.”

  “I do know that any son of – yours,” Calista whispered, “would be as – magnificent as ‒ Godolphin Arabian.”

  “And any daughter of yours, my lovely one,” the Earl replied, “would be as beautiful as Rozana.”

  She clung to him and the Earl felt her quiver as she trembled at his touch.

  “I have a present for you,” he said as he kissed her hair.

  He bent forward to pull his discarded coat to him and take from the pocket a thin paper-covered book.

  When Calista saw it she exclaimed with delight,

  “It is the book that Coco had! The book that contains all the stories about Scham and Agba!”

  “I found it in an old bookshop,” the Earl told her. “Now you will be able to read me the rest of the tales.”

  “Oh, thank you.”

  “I have another present, but I doubt if it is so exciting.”

  As he spoke he took from his other pocket a ring. It was a large circular diamond that was surrounded by smaller ones and, taking her left hand, he put it on her third finger above the Wedding ring that already encircled it.

  “It is lovely – quite lovely,” Calista exclaimed and added anxiously, “it must have been very expensive.”

  “You could have had at least three horses for the price of it,” the Earl teased her.

  “Thank you! Thank you so much,” Calista said and lifted her lips to his.

  He pulled her almost roughly against him. His kiss was so passionate and there was a fire about it that awoke a flame within Calista.

  She clung onto him, feeling as if her whole body responded to what he demanded of her. She did not understand what that was, she only knew that she wanted to be closer to him.

  She wanted him to carry on kissing her. She wanted the fire in his lips to consume her utterly until there was nothing of herself left and she was a part of him.

  Then, as abruptly as the Earl had embraced her, he suddenly released her.

  “You must not get over-tired,” he said in a voice that was unsteady. “I must let you go to sleep, Calista, so that you will be rested for tomorrow when you come downstairs for the first time.”

 

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