Free The Love Child by Victoria Holt Page A

said.
    “I’ll go.”
    “No. If they are looking for you they wouldn’t take much notice of me. They’d be looking for a man.”
    I went out into the open. I could see two men with the dogs walking along the beach.
    One of them picked up a pebble and threw it from him. The dogs chased after it to retrieve it.
    The scare was over, but something had happened.
    Jocelyn took my hand and kissed it.
    “Now you understand,” he said.
    I had turned away to look at the sea, grey with white frills on the edge of the waves and the wind carrying the spray far up onto the beach.
    I said: “I understand how dangerous it is here. Leigh will come back soon.”
    “I shall have to go away then.”
    “It may be to Aunt Harriet’s.”
    “You visit her often?”
    “Oh, yes. I am a favourite of hers.”
    “I shouldn’t want to go if it meant not seeing you.”
    “You must go where you will be safe.”
    He kissed me suddenly. “It has been a great adventure,” he said.
    “It is not over yet,” I warned.
    “Let’s sit down close and talk.”
    We sat on the shingle and he said: “I wish you were older.”
    “What if I were?”
    “We could marry.”
    “They would say I am too young.”
    “People marry young. When all this is over I shall ask your parents for your hand.
    May I?”
    “Could I stop you?”
    “No, I don’t suppose you could. But I should want your consent, shouldn’t I?”
    “I know some people who have been married without their consent.”
    “You never would be. You would find some way out of an undesirable alliance, I am sure. Oh, Priscilla, I believe you have some feeling for me.”
    “Yes, I have.”
    “And it doesn’t displease you that I talk like this. You seem content to listen.”
    “At the moment I can’t think of much else but your lucky escape.”

I
    55
    “Those people with the dogs …” He shivered.
    “I was terribly frightened, Jocelyn, weren’t you?”
    He was silent for a while, then he said: “I thought they had come to take me, yes.
    I thought it was the end. When they took my father and in a short time had murdered him-they called it execution, I call it murder-something happened to me. It was almost as though I felt there was no sense in working against fate. As I lay there with you in my arms, I thought: This is the end. But before I die I shall have known Priscilla and it was all this which brought me to her. You see, it is a sort of acceptance of fate.”
    “You are philosophical.”
    “Perhaps. If I am to die then die I must, but if fate is kind to me and preserves me from this, then I can think of my future and I want you to share it with me, Priscilla.”
    “You scarcely know me.”
    “In circumstances like this acquaintance ripens very quickly into friendship and friendship into love. You have risked a great deal for me.”
    “So have the others.”
    “But I prize what you have done most. Whatever happens I have had those moments with you in the cave when you lay close to me and your heart beat with fear … for me. I shall remember that moment forever and I should not have had it but for the fear which went with it. Most things that are worth having have to be paid for.”
    “You are indeed a philosopher.”
    “Events make us what we are. I know that I shall love you until I die. Priscilla, when this is over…”
    I felt in an exalted mood. Too much had happened in such a short time. That fearful experience and then a proposal of marriage. And I was fourteen years old! I was regarded as a child in my home-Edwin’s little sister. And that was how Leigh thought of me, too. Little sister! That had rankled coming from him.
    “Priscilla …” Jocelyn was saying, “will you remember this … forever? Shall we plight our troth here on this desolate beach?”
    I smiled at him. He was so handsome and melancholy in a way-a young man to whom brutal life had been revealed and it had made him accept it instead of rebelling against it. I admired him, and when he