63 Ola and the Sea Wolf by Barbara Cartland Read Free Book Online

she genuinely meant the sentimental promises that all lovers make to each other, she had been laughing at him.
    Doubtless, too, she held him up to ridicule with the man she really loved, penniless Anthony, who had been her lover those nights when alone at Elvin, he had felt frustrated and solitary because Sarah was worrying about her ‘reputation’.
    “Her reputation !”
    The Marquis laughed bitterly.
    These were the words he had repeated when he drove his superb horses from Elvin to where the road joined the main highway to Dover.
    At the first coaching inn he changed his horses for those that were kept for him month after month, just in case he should need them.
    There was another change later on and these horses should have brought him easily to Dover before dusk.
    But then they had run into the fog and it was only by superb driving and because the Marquis knew the way so well that he had managed to board his yacht and inform the Captain that he wished to put to sea immediately.
    “I regret, my Lord, that’s completely impossible!” the Captain had replied gravely.
    “You mean because of the fog?”
    “No ship could move in this weather, my Lord. There’s not enough wind to fill a pocket handkerchief!”
    “Then we will leave as soon as it is possible.”
    “Where to, my Lord?”
    This was something the Marquis had not considered and he replied after a moment,
    “I will tell you later.”
    “Very good, my Lord. I hope we have everything your Lordship’ll need aboard. We took on fresh water supplies yesterday.”
    The Marquis nodded, but he was not interested in the details of his yacht’s equipment. It was just a vehicle – almost a Magic Carpet – to carry him away, not only from England but from Sarah.
    When he dined, he could not bear to be alone with his thoughts and he walked through the fog to where he saw the lights of The Three Bells .
    Now he wished he had made use of the fog to escape from yet another woman.
    He had the uncomfortable feeling that he had made a fundamental mistake in agreeing to carry that redhead – what was her name? – Ola, to France.
    If her stepmother caught up with them and learned that the Marquis of Elvington had assisted her, all sorts of misconstructions might be put on what had been a simple act of charity.
    ‘I have been a fool once again!’ the Marquis told himself. ‘What the hell is the matter with me? Of course I should have left her at the inn.’
    Instead of being, as she had said, a ‘Good Samaritan’, he could easily find himself accused of being interested in the girl personally and, if her Guardian was anything like as ambitious as Sarah, he might be expected to make reparation by offering her marriage.
    “I am damned if I will do that!” the Marquis exploded angrily.
    Then he told himself he was being needlessly apprehensive.
    He would do what the girl asked, drop her at Calais and then forget about her.
    By the time she had got herself into trouble he could easily be on the other side of the world, but where he intended to go he had not yet decided.
    ‘I suppose the Mediterranean would be best – at any rate as a start,’ he thought.
    He remembered Smollet had eulogised over Nice and knew that the climate would be spring-like at the moment and there would be sunshine and a blue sea.
    ‘It might as well be Nice as anywhere else,’ he told himself.
    The sea would be blue, which immediately made him think of Sarah’s eyes.
    “She is haunting me, that is what she’s doing!” he exclaimed.
    Then he thought of how she had put her arms around Anthony’s neck and lifted her face in a way that was very familiar and which he had confidently believed was the way she only greeted him.
    Had she not said again and again that she loved him as she had never loved anybody else?
    There was a red blaze of anger before his eyes and once again he found himself clenching his fists.
    “Damn her! Damn her! Damn her to hell and back!” he said aloud and the