She remembered nothing more until she had come round still shivering, as she was being put to bed on her divan in the harem. Malderini had been standing over her, his terrible eyes lit with excited triumph; and he had said to her:
'I have no more use for you, and release you now for the little time you have to live. You have served my purpose. I am confident that the sacrifice was accepted and that I shall become Doge of Venice.'
Utterly exhausted, she had fallen asleep. On waking on the Sunday morning, her mind was clear and, for the first time, she was fully conscious of all that had happened to her since she had been abducted. But her chest pained her she had begun to cough and, by the afternoon, she was in a fever.
Roger alternately shuddered and cursed silently as he gradually built up this terrible picture. If he could have got at Malderini during those days and nights, he would have torn him limb from limb with his bare hands. Yet, above all, he was tortured by the thought that he might lose Clarissa, and even went to the length of making a vow that he would forgo his vengeance if only the God he had long neglected would permit her to recover.
Surgeon Pomfrett and the Begum did everything they could but, by Friday, fever and the awful racking cough had worn Clarissa to a shadow of her former self. Early on Saturday morning she seemed to rally a little, and began to talk with greater ease than she had at any time during her illness. Roger tried to stop her but, with a weak gesture, she waved his remonstrance aside, and said:
'I must now. darling. It's my last chance. I'm going to die."
'No no!' his was agonised. 'You're not. Another day or two and you'll be round the corner.'
She shook her head… I am and you must grieve for me.
Oh, Roger, I've been so fortunate.'
'Fortunate!' he moaned. 'How can you say…'
'I have,' her words came low, but clear. 'I've had a wonderful life. Most women have to marry someone they don't like either for position, or just to get a home. Only later if they're lucky do they meet a man they really love. I've never had to let myself be loved by anyone but you. From the time I could think of love, you were my heart's desire and-and you became mine.'
After a little pause she went on. 'No woman ever knew greater happiness. The Isle of Spices. It was paradise on earth. Then our long voyage to Calcutta… and there… the joy of living as your wife. Five… five months, darling. Five months of heaven.'
She closed her blue eyes and fell silent for several minutes. Then she spoke again. "But it couldn't have lasted. Such things never do. I always knew it couldn't. I made up my mind that… that sooner or later I'd have to… to lose you to some other woman.'
'No, no, Clarissa!' he protested, miserably. 'You're wrong in that. Since we set out from England, I've never given a thought to any woman but yourself.'
'I know,' she murmured. 'That's what's so lovely. You've been all mine. Now I'll never have to face the agony of watching you change. You were my paladin from the beginning. You are my paladin still. You faced death twice to come here for me. What other woman in the world has had her lover take a city for her with… with the aid of only a few score men?'
Again she paused then suddenly she half sat up and cried: 'I die happy! Oh, Roger, be happy for me, and happy too. Bless you… bless you for your love.'
She choked, fell back, twisted violently, then went still.
He bowed his head on her shoulder and wept.
Chapter 21
The Wrong Side of the Fence
Roger was twenty-eight. During the past thirteen years he had loved half-a-dozen women. Had their lovely faces been represented in an arch, Georgina’s would have formed its keystone. With her, he shared an affinity that went to the depths of both their beings; in her single person, she combined for him the roles of sister, mistress, mother and friend, filling each part according to his need, as he, in turn, played that of brother, lover, father and friend to her. It was she who had made a man of him while still a boy and he had no doubt that his last thought would be of her when his time came to die.
Then all through his later 'teens, he had suffered the agonies that only the young can feel when stricken with a hopeless passion; for it had never seemed remotely possible that Athenais de Rochambeau could be his. Yet, years later, after she had married, had children, and was in peril of the guillotine, they had, for a few brief months, known great happiness. To his wife, Natalia Andreovna, he had been attracted by a brief violent passion. She had made no secret of her habitual immorality, and had delighted to gratify her desires with all the abandon of her fierce Russian nature. But he had soon learnt that she was vicious, treacherous and incapable of any decent emotion. The cynical old Empress Catherine had forced him to marry her as the alternative to losing his life; and at her death he had felt only relief.
His affaire with the dark-browed Isabella d'Aranda had begun only as a flirtation and grown with propinquity, during their long journey together through France and Italy. Her education and intelligence had been much superior to those of most women, so added greatly to the attraction, of her typically Spanish beauty. But she was by nature a prude, and it was cumulative frustration, more than anything else, which had led to his becoming obsessed with desire for her. In the end, as in the case of Athenais, it was after she was married that she had given him, as a wife, what she had refused him as a maid.
For his second wife, Amanda, he had never been subject to any desperate craving. It had amused him to take her away from George Gunston and, after a while, he had become slightly bewitched by her delightful vagueness, happy, generous disposition and merry laughter. It was Georgina who had insisted that the time had come for him to settle down and that Amanda would make the perfect wife for him. He had allowed himself to be persuaded, and never regretted it. They had, at times, had tiffs, and one serious breach, but their marriage had been a much happier one than most. There had grown up between them that serene companionship, and very deep affection, which are the better parts of love, and it had taken him a long time to get over her loss.
But Clarissa had given him something that none of the others could. He had first met her at his marriage to Amanda. She had then been an awkward, gawky, schoolroom miss. He had watched her grow up into a slim-limbed young goddess; then, under the magic of his own caresses, she had flowered into a divinely beautiful woman. She had thought with love of no man before she met him; cared for no other, even for a brief period, of the many who had pursued her while he was still married to Amanda; faced the hardships of a stowaway in the hope of becoming his mistress, been undaunted by his refusals and even entered on a distasteful mockery of a marriage that she might bind him to his promise to become her lover afterwards. She had given her whole life to her love for him.
She had kept secret her forebodings that, in time, she was certain to lose him to another woman, and such a thought had never crossed his mind. On the contrary, it had been full of plans for their future. He had been waiting only for the Court case with Winters over the marriage settlement to be decided before taking her back to England. The money from that, with which she had insisted on dowering him, together with his own now comfortable fortune, would have made them richer than many people who had quite large estates. He had travelled enough to last him a lifetime, so had meant to settle down in earnest. Instead of appearing to little Susan as an occasional visitor, who always brought presents, he could have become a real father to her. And Clarissa had been determined to give him a son. He would have liked a son. A son of theirs could not have been other than strong-limbed, handsome, blue-eyed, gay and courageous. He had already begun to make half-formed mental pictures of the boy. But now, although barely twenty, the warm loveliness that was to have formed the beating heart round which this new life of contentment was to centre lay cold, rigid, dead.