An Introduction To The Eternal Collection Jubilee Edition (125 page)

The Library did not open off the Great Hall, but was reached by a passage being slightly apart from the salons on the ground floor. Caroline had learned from Maria that it was Lord Brecon’s own sanctum and was not used by visitors so she opened the door without hesitation and, as she had anticipated, the room was empty. The fire glowed in the big fireplace and the tapers in the sconces on either side of the mantel-shelf had been lit, but this was not enough to illuminate the entire room. In the far corners it was dark and shadowy, and Caroline felt it was all rather eerie as she moved towards the bird-cage which stood beside the shrouded windows.

The birds were asleep on their perches. She found they had no seed left and very little water. They twittered a little at her approach and were not afraid. She looked at their pretty little blue bodies and wondered if they felt lonely and neglected down here after the warmth and brightness of Lady Brecon’s bedroom

“Poor little things,” she said aloud. “You are exiled from home, aren’t you?”

She filled their china dish, then put the packet of seed on the table where nobody could fail to see it in the morning, and decided that she herself would give them fresh water and make sure they were not forgotten in future. She was stroking the tiny birds with the tip of her finger when she heard the door open.

It was closed again decisively, and turning slowly, she saw Lord Brecon walk across to the fireplace. His-head was bent and she had the instantaneous impression that he was despondent and depressed. He walked to the hearth to stand looking down into the fire, the candle-light turning his hair to gold.

For a moment or two Caroline watched him. His face was hidden but she felt she knew that his eyes would be heavy, his thoughts concerned with the dark secret which seemed to overshadow him. Suddenly she had an insane desire to walk across to him, to put her arms around him, to draw his head to her breast and comfort him.

He was unhappy, and as surely as if he had told her so, she knew that his mysterious secret was weighing-down upon him, crushing his youth from him, destroying what should have been a heritage of happiness. She ached for him, her whole heart went out to him in that moment as if he had been her son - a little boy in trouble.

She must have made a slight sound or perhaps a sixth, sense told Lord Brecon he was not alone, for he turned sharply. For a moment he looked at Caroline in astonishment and then, as she walked slowly towards him her eyes on his, an expression of gentle tenderness on her face, he took two quick strides towards her.

“Caroline!” he said and his voice was hoarse. “Caroline, I was thinking of you.”

His words seemed to shatter the last barrier which had stood between them. Caroline forgot everything save the fact that Lord Brecon was looking at her, needing her as much as she needed him. There was no time to think, no time to remember anything save that intense and overwhelming need one for the other.

They were past words, past explanations. There was only one possible expression for the tempest of their feelings. Before Caroline knew how it happened, before she was aware of any movement on her part, Lord Brecon’s arms were round her. She felt herself crushed against him, felt a sudden flame of ecstasy and joy consume her, and then his lips were on hers and they were clinging together, the world forgotten.

7

How long they stood there Caroline had no idea for she was lost in a rapture beyond anything she had ever known or imagined. The wonder of knowing that Lord Brecon’s arms were round her and the ecstasy of feeling his mouth on hers swept her away in a flood-tide of joy so that she was conscious only of him and the magnetic closeness of him.

After a time the insistent pressure of his lips awoke an answering fire within her so that she no longer lay passive beneath his passion. In a rising crescendo of emotion it seemed to her then that humanity could not know such a thrilling of the senses and not break beneath the strain. At last Lord Brecon raised his head and looked down at her.

“Caroline! Caroline!” he murmured, his voice caught in his throat.

For a long, long moment he looked at the perfect beauty of her face raised to his, at the half shy, half exultant softness of her eyes awakened for the first time to a knowledge of passion, and at the sweet trebling of her parted lips. The flush on her cheeks deepened beneath his scrutiny.

“You are so lovely,” he said at length, “so perfect. I never believed it was possible to find such beauty in any woman.”

With a little inarticulate murmur Caroline hid her face against his shoulder.

“Are you shy, my love?” he asked. “I thought that night when I first kissed you and saw the startled surprise in your eyes that I was perhaps the first man who had dared to touch your lips. Is that so?”

Caroline raised her face and looked at him.

“You know the answer.”

“Yes, I do,” he replied, “for you are adorably innocent and transparently pure. Oh, Caroline, I love you so.”

“And I – love you, Vane.”

Her voice was low, hardly above a whisper, yet there was somehow a ring in it as if her love rose triumphant over her shyness. Lord Brecon took her chin between his hands and turned her face once more upwards towards his.

“My darling, my little love,” he said, and then his lips were on hers once again and they forgot all else.

It seemed as if a century passed before at length Caroline, trembling from the violence of her feelings, tried to draw herself away.

“You must – return to your guests – my lord,” she said, but her voice broke on the words and her eyes were held by his so that she caught her breath and quivered again in a sudden wave of ecstasy.

Lord Brecon drew her fiercely to him.

“I love you,” he said defiantly. “Do you hear me? I love you.”

“Must you look angry when you say it?” Caroline asked, daring to tease him because of the sheer, exultant happiness which seemed to envelop her in a golden haze, and sing within her heart a paean of thankfulness.

“Do I look angry?”

He asked the question indifferently then suddenly he gave a groan, and taking his arms from Caroline so unexpectedly that she almost fell, he turned and walked away towards the hearth. He stood with his back to her, looking down into the fire, and as she stared at his back in astonished perplexity, he said roughly,

“This is madness!”

“Vane, what ails you?” Caroline asked.

Lord Brecon turned and, she saw that his face was very pale.

“Caroline,” he said, “you must believe me when I tell you that I did not mean this to happen. It is true that I have loved you from the first moment when I saw your face fully in the light of a lantern in Adam Grimbaldi’s caravan, but I thought that you had gone from my life for ever. I knew that I should never forget you. As you drove away in the moonlight, I told myself “there goes the only woman I shall ever love”.”

“I am glad,” Caroline said a little breathlessly, “that you knew then.”

She moved towards him, but with a gesture of his hand he stopped her.

“Don’t come any nearer,” he said. “What I have to say must be said. If you are close, it will be impossible, for if my arms are round you I shall again forget everything but you, Caroline.”

“And why not?” Caroline asked, her lips smiling at him, even though she was half afraid because of the seriousness of his tone and the unexpected darkness of his eyes.

“That is what I have to tell you, God help me,” Lord Brecon said. “I should have sent you away, Caroline, the moment you came here. Mrs. Miller was right, though she did not know it when she asked me to dismiss you. I should have bid you go with all speed, have refused to look on your lovely, enticing face, have shut my ears to the sound of your voice, have quelled the unceasing ache within me to touch you, to feel your lips again.”

Resolutely Caroline moved nearer to him, put out her hand and laid it on his arm.

“Vane,” she said quietly. “What are you trying to say to me?”

“Must I put it clearer?” he asked, almost angrily. “I am telling you to go, Caroline, to leave me, to forget my very existence.”

“But why?” Caroline asked. “Why?”

“That is what I cannot tell you,” he replied. “Don’t ask me that question, Caroline, for I cannot give you the answer.”

“But I do not understand,” Caroline cried. “We love each other.”

“Yes, we love each other.”

He put his hand over hers as it lay on his arm and she felt the hard strength of his fingers. She looked up to find his eyes blazing with a passion which seemed almost to scorch her.

“We love each other,” he repeated. “I love you, Caroline, love you with all my heart and strength but I cannot marry you.”

Caroline went very pale. She felt the warm blood drain away from her, felt for one agonising moment as if she would faint. Desperately her eyes searched Lord Brecon’s face and then at last in a very small voice which quivered she asked,

“Is it because of the difference of our stations, my lord?”

Lord Brecon made a convulsive movement. For a moment Caroline was afraid that he would strike her. But instead his hands reached out and gripped her shoulders, holding her so fiercely and with such violence that she gave an involuntary cry of pain.

“How dare you say such a thing to me. How dare you ask me such a question. What has your position do with a love such as we have for each other? Would you insult me by expecting such trivialities to matter when it concerns a passion such as mine? No, Caroline,” he added more quietly, “no, of course not.”

“Then, if that is not the reason, why may we not be wed?”

Her voice softened on the word and even as she spoke it she knew that for her it held the heaven of her dreams to be Vane’s wife, to surrender herself utterly to him, to be his completely and absolutely in the fullest sense of the word.

Lord Brecon took his hands from her shoulders and put them up to his eyes.

“I cannot tell you,” he said, and his voice was raw. “Don’t torture me, Caroline. Go away and leave me. Forget me if you can, but go quickly while I am strong enough to let you go.”

Caroline was still for a moment then she drew herself up to her full height.

“And if I will not?” she asked clearly. Lord Brecon stared at her.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“I asked you a question,” Caroline said, and now all the strength and pride of the Fighting Fayes was present in her upturned chin. “I asked you what would happen if I refuse to leave you and indeed why should I go? I love you. I believe that you are in danger. I came here for the set purpose of warning you of that danger and now that I know that you love me even as I love you, why should I go?”

Lord Brecon looked at her and his face softened.

“Oh, Caroline, my beloved,” he said. “Was there any woman like you? But, my darling, it is useless. Our love is doomed. There is nothing we can do about it.”

“Please tell me why,” Caroline begged, “only tell me how indeed can I fight for you if I do not know what enemy I am fighting?”

“Alas, that I cannot tell you,” Lord Brecon said. “It is not my secret. If it were mine alone, then I could speak, yet what good would it do for you to know, save that I should have the agony of seeing you turn from me in loathing and disgust?”

“If that were true,” Caroline said, “then my love would indeed be a weak thing and unworthy of the word. I would love you, Vane, whatever you had done, whatever crime you might have committed, whatever secret, however sinister and fearful, lay hidden in your past. It is you I love, not your secret, and it matters naught to me what it may be.

“My beautiful Caroline,” Lord Brecon answered unsteadily. “If I should kneel to kiss the very ground on which you have trodden, it could not express the very smallest part of my reverence for you. No one could be as fine and as wonderful as you. But, my darling, it is hopeless. You have got to go, to leave this house, for I swear I cannot bear to see you day after day and not make you mine.”

Caroline took a deep breath.

“Answer me one question, my lord,” she said, “answer it truthfully and as if upon your oath. Would it be possible for you, in the eyes of the Law and in the eyes of the Church, to make me your wife?”

“It would be possible,” Lord Brecon replied hesitatingly. “There is no impediment of that sort, but...”

“That is all I wish to know,” Caroline interrupted, and added triumphantly. “Then I shall stay here in this Castle until you ask me to marry you.”

“Caroline, would you see me crazed?” Lord Brecon asked. “I would give my right arm if I could beg you to be my wife, but it is not possible, for as I have told you, our love is doomed. Go, Caroline, go away while you are yet young enough to forget that we have ever met. Your life lies before you. You have youth and beauty, and if you need money I will give you all that you need and more, but go, in God’s name, go!”

There was so much suffering and pain in Lord Brecon’s voice that instinctively Caroline moved a little closer to him as if to comfort him.

“Let me help you,” she said pleadingly. “Trust me, please trust me, for between us we will find a way out of this sorry tangle.

“There is no way out,” Lord Brecon said dully, “no possible escape, Caroline. If there had been, it would have found it long ago.”

He looked at her then straightened himself.

“I know what you are thinking,” he said accusingly, “you are thinking that I am a coward such as you called me once before but for once, Caroline, you are wrong. I am doing the bravest thing I have ever done in my life in sending you away. I am doing the decent thing, too, though it is hard for you to believe it.”

Caroline suddenly felt as if she could argue, no more with him. There was something so positive in his assurance, so frightening in his determination that unexpectedly she felt the tears coming to her eyes and a closing in her throat so that she was prevented from speaking.

She turned towards the door. For a moment her own fighting qualities were extinguished. She was only a woman who had offered herself to a man and been refused. She walked very slowly across the soft carpet, her head a little bent, her fingers knitted together in a fierce effort to prevent her tears. She did not look back she had only one idea - to find some privacy where she might gain control over herself and her own weakness. Even as a child Caroline had been ashamed when she must cry, and now she wanted to hide both her tears and her humility from the man who had caused them.