Kirkland Revels by Victoria Holt Read Free Book Online Page B

to be married!
    How strange that this should happen to me before you. It is the man I wrote to you about—the man who helped with the 35 dog. He lives in Yorkshire in a wonderful old house near an abbey, and it has all happened so quickly that I don’t quite understand how it has come about. I don’t know whether I’m in love with him. I only know that I couldn’t bear it if he went away and I never saw him again. Oh, Dilys, it’s so exciting, because before it happened I was so wretched here.
    You’ve no idea what my home is like. I myself had forgotten during all those years I was away. It’s a dark house … and I don’t mean that there’s just an absence of sunshine…. I mean the people in it live dark lives….” I tore that up. Was I crazy, trying to make Dilys under stand what I did not myself? How could I explain to Dilys that I was going to marry Gabriel because, for some reason which I could not fully understand, I was sorry for him and I knew he needed my help; because I wanted desperately to love someone who belonged to me; because my father had repulsed me when I had tried to show affection and had mutely asked for a little in return; because I wanted to escape from the house which was now my home.

    Instead of that letter I sent a conventional little note inviting Dilys to my wedding.

    Fanny was still sceptical. She thought it was a queer way to go about getting married. There were references to proverbs such as ” Marry in haste, repent at leisure ” ; and she talked about ” supping sorrow with a long spoon.” Still, the thought of future disaster seemed to cheer her considerably and she was determined that my grand in-laws, if they came to the wedding, should have no complaints about the wedding feast.

    Gabriel wrote regularly and his letters were ardent, but they spoke only of his devotion to me and his desire for our union; he did not let me know anything about his family’s reactions.

    I heard from Dilys that I had not given her enough notice of my wedding. She was so full of engagements that she could not possibly leave London. I realised then that our lives had taken such entirely different turnings that the intimacy which had once been ours was over.

    Three days before our marriage was to take place, Gabriel came back and put up at the King’s Head less than half a mile from Glen House.

    When Mary came to my room to tell me that he was in the first-floor sitting-room waiting to see me, eagerly I went 36 down. He was standing with his back to the fireplace watching the door, and as soon as I opened it he strode towards me and we embraced.

    He looked excited, younger than he had when tie had left, because some of the strain had gone from him.

    I took his face in my hands and kissed it.

    ” Like a mother with a precious child,” he murmured.

    He had summed up my feelings. I wanted to look after him; I wanted to make what life was left to him completely happy ; I was not passionately in love with him, but I did not attach great importance to this because passion was something I knew nothing about at that time.
    Yet I loved him nonetheless ; and when he held me tightly against him, I knew that the kind of love I had for him was what he wanted.

    I withdrew myself from his arms and made him sit down on the horsehair couch. I wanted to hear what his family’s reactions were to the news of our engagement and how many were coming to the wedding.

    ” Well, you see,” he said slowly, ” my father is too infirm to make the journey. As for the others …” He shrugged his shoulders.

    “Gabriel!” I cried aghast.

    “Do you mean that none of them is coming?”

    ” Well, you see, there’s my Aunt Sarah. Like my father, she’s too old to travel. And …”

    ” But there’s your sister and her son.”

    He looked uneasy and I saw the frown between his eyes. ” Oh, darling,” he said, ” what does it matter? It’s not their wedding is it?”

    ” But not to come! Does