63 Ola and the Sea Wolf (8 page)

Even before he had finished speaking Ola gave a cry of horror that seemed to echo round the cabin.

“How can you suggest anything so abominable, so cruel, so treacherous?” she cried. “You
know
I cannot go back to my stepmother and you have no authority to send me.”

She paused to catch her breath.

“I called you a Good Samaritan, but you are a wolf in sheep’s clothing and your yacht is aptly named – you are a sea wolf and I hate you!”

He rose from his chair as she spoke and, without looking at her, moved towards the door. It would have been a dignified exit except that a sudden movement of the yacht made him stagger and it was only with the greatest difficulty that he prevented himself from falling.

When he had gone, Ola stared despairingly at the door as if she could not believe that she had heard him aright.

He had seemed so kind, so helpful and she had thought at luncheon, apart from anything else, how interesting it would be to talk to him.

Now, suddenly for no reason, he had turned against her and was behaving as badly in his way as Giles had behaved in his.

“How dare he! How dare he treat me as if I was a child to be taken here or there without even being consulted!” she cried aloud.

She wanted to scream in defiance at the Marquis and yet at the same time her instinct told her that, sea wolf or not, it would be best for her to plead with him.

Then she knew by the tone of his voice and the squareness of his chin that he meant what he said and she would find it hard to dissuade him from doing what he intended.

‘If he sends me home,’ she thought, ‘I shall have to run away all over again and it will be more difficult another time.’

She had the feeling too that the Marquis would make sure she did not escape while she was with him and she wished now that she had not entrusted her jewellery to him.

She thought she now hated the Marquis as much as she had hated Giles.

‘Men are all the same,’ she muse. ‘They do not play fair unless it suits their own ends.’

She wondered why the girls at school were always talking of men as if they were something marvellous and more desirable than anything else on earth.

‘I hate men!’ Ola told herself. ‘I hate them as I hate my stepmother! All I want to do is to live by myself and be allowed to have friends and do everything I want to do without being ordered about by anybody!’

It had occurred to her a long time ago that when she was married she would always be at the beck and call of some man who believed he had authority over her.

Perhaps that would be endurable if she was in love, but otherwise it would be intolerable. She thought because she was that rich she need be in no hurry to get married, but could wait until she found somebody whom she would like to live with, simply because he was kind and understanding and she would be able to talk to him.

She had often thought in the past that it was difficult to find people she could talk to when she was at the Convent.

The nuns gave orders and, when she was with her father, he talked to her but he did not converse. In fact neither he nor anybody else was interested in her opinions or her ideas.

‘When I talked to the Marquis at luncheon,’ she reflected, “he listened to me when I was describing the different ships I have sailed in in the past and he explained the things I wanted to know about his own yacht.”

From the amount of books in his bookcase it struck her that he was interested in a great number of subjects she wished to know more about.

‘We will talk about them tonight at dinner,’ she had thought excitedly, but now he had made it very clear what he thought of her.

She was an unwanted piece of merchandise which he would dispose of as he saw fit without even asking her opinion on the matter.

‘I hate him!’ she fumed. ‘I hate him because he has deceived me when I thought he was kind and honest.’

She did not want to cry when she thought of her future, because it only made her angry.

Somehow, in some way, she would get even with the Marquis because he had disappointed her when she had least expected it.

“I am glad he is upset about something and I hope a woman has really hurt him and made him unhappy!” she cried aloud. “It will serve him right! If he ever told me about it, I would laugh because I am pleased he has been made to suffer!”

This was all very well, but it did not solve her own problem and she told herself that now she had to escape somehow.

There seemed no possibility of her doing anything of the sort unless she was prepared to throw herself into the sea.

‘Perhaps if I do so,’ she mused, ‘I should be drowned and it would be on his conscience for the rest of his life.’

Then she told herself sensibly that he would merely attribute it to an unbalanced mind and forget all about it long before he reached the Mediterranean.

But Ola was not going to be defeated.

She sat back against the cushions and began to plan how she could elude the Marquis and his ideas in one way or another.

‘Perhaps if I stow away in the hold,’ she thought, ‘he will think I have gone ashore and I shall only be discovered when he is out at sea again.’

It seemed quite a possible idea, except that she had the feeling he would make very sure that the Courier he engaged acted as a jailer too and there would be no escape at least until he was too far away even to know about it.

‘What am I to do? What
am
I to do?’ Ola asked herself.

Then, as there was a sudden rasp of the wind in the rigging, which told her that there was still a gale outside, it occurred to her that perhaps the Marquis’s intentions would be circumvented not by her but by nature and they would not be able to dock in Plymouth as he intended.

Ola was sitting on her bed, an expression of despair on her face.

She had learnt from the Steward that
The
Sea Wolf
would dock in Plymouth either tonight very late or first thing in the morning, depending on the wind and the tides.

In the last twelve hours she had thought of nothing except how she could escape from the Marquis and prevent him from sending her ignominiously back to her stepmother.

She had been sensible enough not to rage at him when they had luncheon together, but instead to talk about the races and the horses that took part in them.

She realised he was surprised that she was not referring to what lay ahead, but, after a little stiffness at the beginning of the meal, he gradually relaxed and talked to her as if she was as knowledgeable as he was on the subject.

Every hour that passed brought her nearer to her fate and she thought now that even her optimism was fading and there would be nothing she could do but leave the Marquis and set off with the jailer he would provide for her on her homeward journey.

There was a knock on the door and Ola started.

“Come in!” she said and the Steward who looked after her stood there.

“Excuse me, miss,” he said, “but do you happen to have any laudanum with you? The Captain’s got such an achin’ tooth he can’t stay on deck.”

“Oh! I am sorry!” Ola exclaimed. “I wish I could help, but laudanum is something I never take myself.”

The Steward smiled.

“You’re too young if I may say so, miss, for such fads and fancies, but there was just a chance and the Captain’s groanin’ in his bunk like a lost soul.”

Ola could not help smiling.

Then she said,

“Tell him to soak a little wool or a rag in spirit – brandy is best, although I daresay rum would do – and pack it round it, if possible into the tooth that is hurting. I remember my father doing that once.”

“I’ll tell the Captain what you said, miss,” the Steward replied. “I know he’ll be very grateful.”

He closed the cabin door and as he did so, Ola gave a little exclamation.

She suddenly remembered that she might have some laudanum with her after all.

When she left the Convent, many of the girls of her age had given her presents and among them had been a beautiful chinoiserie enamel scent-holder made in the reign of Louis XIV.

It was very attractive and when she opened it, she found it contained three little bottles shaped like triangles so that they fitted together to make a whole. They each had enamelled stoppers and their glass was engraved with flowers.

Yvonne, the girl who had given them to her, said,

“I have put the most exotic perfume I could find in one, an
eau de toilette
in the second and you will have to fill the third yourself.”

Ola had never actually used the bottles, but, because it was so attractive, the case had stood on her dressing table and when she was packing, thinking she might see her friend when she was in France, she had put it at the bottom of her trunk.

She had not thought of it until now, but actually the third bottle contained laudanum.

Soon after she returned from Paris she had suffered from the most acute toothache, which turned out to be an abscess.

The doctor had been called to see her and he had promised to arrange for a dentist to visit her the following day.

“Because I know what pain you’re in, Miss Milford,” he said, “I’m going to give you a little laudanum to take tonight so that you will sleep. Be careful not to take too much.”

He had handed her a small bottle as he spoke and instructed her to take a few drops only.

It had certainly helped her to bear the pain and, when her tooth no longer hurt, Ola, thinking the medicine bottle looked untidy, had tipped what remained of the laudanum into the empty bottle in her chinoiserie case.

“How stupid of me!” she said aloud. “Of course I can help the Captain!”

She opened her trunk, which she had already filled with her clothes, feeling that if she did not do so, the Marquis would be informed and would think it was a deliberate act of defiance.

In the bottom corner she found, as she expected, the enamel case carefully wrapped in cotton wool to protect it.

She drew it out and rose to her feet to call the Steward so that he could take it to the Captain.

Even as her hand went out towards the door, she paused.

An idea had come to her, an idea that was so fantastic that she told herself it was just impossible and would be quite unworkable.

And yet fascinated by it, she sat down on the bed to consider it carefully, step by step.

*

Wearing a very attractive gown and, because it was cold, a fur wrap around her shoulders, Ola was waiting in the Saloon when the Marquis came in to dinner.

Each night, despite the roughness of the weather, he changed into his evening clothes and he looked to Ola as elegant and impressive as if he was going to a dinner party in London rather than dining alone with her.

“Good evening, Ola,” he began, “I think the wind is dropping a little and certainly
The Sea Wolf
is travelling more smoothly than she was yesterday.”

“I have found that,” Ola smiled. “But my elbows are black and blue from having to support me as I was thrown against the cabin walls.”

“You should have stayed in bed!” the Marquis said automatically.

“That would be an admission of defeat, which I most dislike acknowledging at any time!”

He gave her a sharp glance as if he thought she was referring to other things than the movement of the sea.

She quickly turned the conversation to the subject she wished to discuss with him, but had not yet had the opportunity,

“I found in your bookcase a volume of Hansard,” she said, “and I see that you made a speech in the House of Lords regarding the employment of young children in factories and coalmines.”

“You read it?” the Marquis asked in surprise.

“I only wish I could have heard it. It is a subject I feel very strongly about, as every woman should.”

It struck the Marquis that no woman he had known in the past had been the slightest degree interested either in his speeches or in the children as young as four and five who were made to work, sometimes as much as twelve hours a day and beaten if they fell asleep.

For a moment he thought that Ola was only toadying up to him and would soon start pleading with him not to send her back to her stepmother.

To his surprise she not only talked with unmistakable sincerity on the subject, but also had obviously read quite a number of the reports, which had been published in the newspapers besides being discussed in Parliament.

They argued over the rights and wrongs of employing child labour and also as to what compensation could be given to the employers if it was forbidden.

The Marquis found himself waxing very eloquent about the measures he intended to bring before the House of Lords in the future and he discovered that Ola was interested in the Reform Bill as well.

“Is it true,” she asked, “that the King scrawled on a piece of paper, ‘
I consider dissolution tantamount to Revolution
’?”

“Who told you that?” the Marquis enquired.

“I must have read it somewhere, but I cannot believe, old though he is, that the King does not realise that reforms are really necessary.”

“The trouble is,” the Marquis replied, “he has a deep rooted dislike of elections and only with difficulty made up his mind to dissolve Parliament. I think, too, as he is only a simple sailor, he finds the Bill in all its complexity very difficult to understand.”

“I have always been sure,” Ola said, “that he has not the brilliant brain of his brother, the late King George IV.”

“That is true,” the Marquis agreed, “and, although I am fond of His Majesty, I cannot help sometimes remembering that Greville wrote, ‘
He is but a plain, vulgar, hospitable gentleman, opening his doors to all the world with a frightful Queen and a posse of bastards
’.”

As he spoke, he realised who he was speaking to and said quickly,

“I apologise.”

“No, please don’t do that,” Ola said. “I like to be talked to as if I was your equal rather than a foolish unfledged girl without a brain in her head.”

“I would certainly never say that about you,” the Marquis replied.