Free Love and the Loathsome Leopard by Barbara Cartland Page B

interfere with whom I entertain or do not entertain. Please leave! I did not invite you here this evening!”
    For a moment there was no mistaking the fact that her words and her courage both surprised and in fact astounded Jeffrey Farlow.
    He stared as if he could not have heard aright, then he threw back his head and laughed.
    “Dutch courage!” he sneered. “Well, well! This is something you have been singularly lacking in before. I wonder what could have inspired it?”
    He looked at Lord Cheriton menacingly.
    Then he said,
    “We will talk about our marriage, Wivina, when your soldier friend has left. As you are well aware, I don’t take no for an answer. You’ll marry me – make no mistake – you’ll marry me!”
    He laughed again.
    Then, as if to emphasize his dramatic behaviour, he turned and walked from the salon, and they heard him laughing again as he crossed the hall.
    For a moment there was silence, then with a little cry that seemed to come from the very depths of her heart, Wivina cried,
    “Help me – please help me!” and turned towards Lord Cheriton.
    Without thought, almost as if it was inevitable, her face was hidden against his shoulder and his arms went round her.
    He could feel her trembling and realised how small, slight and fragile she was.
    “What can I do – what can I do?” she asked after a moment. “He will kill you unless you leave – so go – go tonight.”
    “And leave you alone?” Lord Cheriton asked in his deep voice.
    “You cannot help me – nobody can!” Wivina said. “I have known for a long time that he would force me by some means or another to – marry him, but I will not – do so – and–”
    She shuddered in a way which told Lord Cheriton exactly what she was thinking.
    “How long has this been going on?” he asked her.
    “A long time – and when we came here after Papa – died, he began to build a house, which he said was for me.”
    She gave a little sigh.
    “He wants to show off – for everyone to know how rich and important he is.”
    “And he thinks socially it will be to his advantage to have a wife like you.”
    “It is not only – that,” Wivina replied in a low voice, her face still hidden against his shoulder.
    ‘No, it is not only that,’ Lord Cheriton thought.
    He had seen the expression in Jeffrey Farlow’s dark eyes as he looked at Wivina and he realised that the man desired her not only as a man desires a woman but because she was everything that he was not. Her goodness was like a light which he would extinguish by his evil possession.
    “You must go away,” Lord Cheriton said aloud. “I will take you and Richard to London. You will be safe there.”
    For a moment he felt her body soften against him as if the idea thrilled her.
    Then she said,
    “Do you imagine that he would let us leave? He has spies everywhere! They are all too frightened of him in the village not to tell him every single thing that goes on.”
    She was tense as she continued,
    “The moment we walk out through the front door someone would inform him and we would be apprehended before we reached the main highway. You would be killed and I would be taken to Farlow House – and there would be – no escape.”
    Lord Cheriton, listening, knew that, if he told such a story to the Prime Minister or even to the Surveyor General of Customs, they would find it hard to believe.
    But, having met Jeffrey Farlow, having studied the reports of the gangs’ terrorism on the local people, he knew that Wivina spoke the truth.
    “We will think of something,” he said quietly. “In the meantime we must play for time and I must pretend to do what he says and leave here tomorrow morning.”
    “You will – leave?”
    It was a cry that seemed to come from Wivina’s heart.
    “I shall only pretend to do so,” Lord Cheriton replied, “but I promise you I will find a way of taking you to safety.”
    She looked up at him as if she could not believe what she had heard.
    He