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“That goes without saying. But you—tormentor that you are! Do you know what you have done to me? You have turned my life upside-down, and you have made it impossible for me to live without you.”
Maidie had been upon the point of retorting in kind, but this last utterance wiped the response from her lips. She gazed up at him, mute.
He read the shock in her eyes, and remembered the suspicion she had shown him. “Why do you look at me so? Don’t you believe me?”
“I don’t know. You might make me believe anything—try to.”
Delagarde released her, swept with instant hurt. “Why? Why should I do so?”
Maidie’s heart sank at his tone, and she had all to do not to fling herself back into his arms. She must know the truth. She forced herself to say it. “To gain my trust. If you had always meant to—to marry me. For convenience only.”
“Whose convenience? Yours, or mine?”
“Both? You know I meant to marry only to be spared further importunities. Why should you not make use of it?” Suddenly the pent-up emotions of the last few days broke free, and it all tumbled out. “It is not as if you could wish me to be with you, to be a companion to you. I am not a fit wife for a fashionable peer, I know well enough. But you need an heir. My portion must be useful, though I acquit you of outright fortune-hunting—”
“I thank you!”
“—but it would be convenient, would it not—” hardly hearing his ironic interruption “—to have a wife who wished only to be let alone to spend her time star-gazing? Who would not importune you in any way, but leave you free to continue in your present way of life, and—”
“Let me tell you,” Delagarde broke in, his voice tight with suppressed violence, “I am far more likely to interfere with your star-gazing than to let you alone at it. Nothing arouses me more than the way you look in starlight.”
Maidie’s lip trembled, and her heart hammered in her chest. “I know—and you could so easily seduce me in those circumstances. If you had not spoken as you did last night… It is what made me half believe what Eustace and Adela said.”
Delagarde’s face changed. “Theysaid it? And you believed them?”
“It is of no use to look at me so hatefully, Laurie,” Maidie said, making free with his name without restriction. “I tried not to believe it, but even before last night, everything you said to me—everything you did—”
“Made you suspect me all the more?”
“Yes. I felt you wanted me—”
“Desperately, God help me!”
“—but you gave no sign you felt—there was anything more.”
“Because I did not know it myself!” He took hold of her again. “Maidie, I did not want to love you! It has happened entirely against my will—which is why I have refused to recognise it. You drive me demented!” He laughed suddenly, and drew her closer. “And I know very well I have much the same effect on you. As for this—”
With which, his lips came down on hers in a kiss intense enough to make Maidie half-swoon in his embrace. But as he came away and loosened his hold, she threw her own arms up around his neck and kissed him back. Delagarde dragged her hungrily against him, exchanging with her a deep caress.
Maidie’s skin was flaming, her pulse rioting wildly. She almost sagged when Delagarde put her a little away from him.
“Will you marry me, wretch?”
“For love alone?”
“Devil take it, do you doubt me still?”
“But, Laurie, I am so very much not the wife for you.”
“Which is all the proof you need,” he said, as he drew her close again. “You cannot suppose there is any inducement other than love which could persuade me to make such a sacrifice.”
Maidie dissolved into giggles. “Nor I, indeed, for I had no mind to give myself to so temperamental a creature as you. As well marry a bear!”
Delagarde laughed, and kissed her again, deeply. “God!” he groaned, with difficulty withdrawing his mouth from hers. “You need not imagine I will wait for all the paraphernalia of preparation before we are wed—so I warn you now.”
“Is it eccentric in me to say I do not wish you to wait?”
“Delightfully eccentric. And I will take that for a yes.” He brushed her lips in a way which left her weak, adding, “Not that it matters, for you are going to marry me, if I have to drag you to the altar.”
