Bewitched (Bantam Series No. 16) by Barbara Cartland Read Free Book Online

you quite certain this is not just a joke?” he asked. “You are serious, Eurydice?”
    “I have never been more serious in my life,” she answered. “Silas and I are to be married quietly tomorrow morning and then we are taking a ship to America from Plymouth and Heaven knows if I shall ever return to this country.”
    “Do you know what you are letting yourself in for, or the sort of place where you are going to live?” the Marquis asked.
    “I have seen sketches of Silas’s house and it is delightful. Very like a large English manor, for that matter. But it would not matter to me if he lived in a shack. I love him, Fabius, and he loves me! That is more important than anything else ... but I have only just realised it!”
    It was an hour later that the Marquis, still feeling bemused and astonished by what he had heard, drove his horses to his own house.
    He could hardly credit that anyone, least of all Eurydice, would throw up everything which before had seemed important in life to set off across the ocean with a man of whom she knew little, though in her eyes he seemed endowed with all the virtues.
    The Marquis had in fact argued with her, and asked her at least to delay her marriage and her departure until her friends had a chance to meet Silas Wingdale.
    “It would not matter what you said about him so why should I delay my marriage?” Eurydice asked, with a touch of her old aggressiveness. “I am not asking you to marry him, Fabius, so whatever your opinion might be, it is of no consequence.”
    Then she had reached up her hand to touch the Marquis’s cheek.
    “When you fall in love, as you undoubtedly will one day,” she said softly, “you will understand why there are no arguments that could change my mind, and nothing that anyone could say would influence me. It is Silas I want and Silas I intend to have.”
    Eurydice had spoken with such warmth that the Marquis realised she was a very different person from the hard, scheming young woman she had become after her husband’s death.
    He had thought she was out only for social advancement and for making herself the most notorious and the most talked about figure in the Beau Monde.
    It was astonishing that she could have changed so quickly from a determined schemer into a gentle, feminine creature whose eyes shone and who seemed to glow at the mere mention of the name of the man with whom she was in love.
    ‘Dammit,’ the Marquis thought, as he drove down the drive towards Ruckley House, ‘why cannot I feel like that?’
    Then he laughed at himself for imagining that such a thing was possible.
    The servants were surprised to see him.
    “This is a pleasure, M’Lord,” the Butler said, hurrying into the Hall.
    “Where is Hobley?” the Marquis enquired.
    “I’ll send for him, M’Lord. The Reverend’s in the Library.”
    “Then I will go and talk to him.”
    The Marquis opened the door of the Library and saw that his Tutor was not, as he had expected, sitting at the big desk in the centre of the room, but that standing at a bookcase was a slim figure he had seen once before.
    She turned round to face him, and his first impression was that her eyes were far too big for her face.
    Fringed by the dark lashes he had noticed before, they were very unusual eyes but only as he drew nearer did he realise that while the pupils seemed unnaturally large, the colour of the Gypsy’s eyes was not black, as he might have expected, but a very dark green.
    She did not speak, but waited as the Marquis advanced towards her. When he reached her he held out his hand.
    “I am the Marquis of Ruckley and I owe you an apology.”
    Almost reluctantly it seemed to him she laid her fingers in his. They were cool and as he held them for a moment he had the unaccountable feeling that some strange vibration passed between them.
    “You are better?” he asked.
    “I have recovered, thank you.”
    The voice was low and musical with a faint foreign accent.
    The Marquis glanced