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.Every moment until she met him again Yola was trying to play down what had happened, to prevent it from having any great significance or to keep herself from admitting that her previous feelings about the Marquis had completely changed.And yet the moment she had seen him in Aimée’s salon, she had felt as if her whole body became pulsatingly alive and that it was impossible to think of anything except how attractive he looked.Now, as she turned from side to side on the soft pillows, she fought against admitting that she was wildly and crazily in love.This is what she had always wanted to feel about a man, this is what she knew love would be like, but for the Marquis – ?He was the man she had come to Paris to hate, the man she was certain she despised as a pleasure-seeker, a man whom she suspected of living off money given to him by women, a man whom she had expected to find empty-headed and without any serious side to his nature.Was she wrong? Or was she merely a stupid unsophisticated girl who had been swept off her feet by a very experienced and professionally fascinating man?It was all very difficult to sort out in her brain and she felt almost as if her own mind had ceased to function, while her body, vibrating with new sensations, had taken over.It was impossible to consider anything logically or objectively as she had been taught to do.Instead she could only feel an irrepressible longing for time to pass quickly before she could see the Marquis again and be with him.He had said he wanted to talk to her.What did he want to say? What was he going to tell her?She knew what she wanted to hear, but she told herself that it was asking too much to expect this to be a Fairy tale with an inevitable happy ending.‘I am being very foolish,’ she told herself a dozen times.Yet, when it was time to dress for dinner, she sprang out of bed with an irrepressible eagerness and knew as she saw her reflection in the mirror that she had never looked so lovely.She had deliberately chosen a gown that she had bought from Pierre Floret because it was so pretty and not because it made her look sophisticated as her other gowns did.Of white crepe, it was trimmed with real lace, frill upon frill of it forming the fullness of the train behind the swathed front.Yola thought that in a way it made her appear like a statue of some Greek Goddess, and, when the Marquis saw her as she entered the salon, he exclaimed,“You look like Aphrodite rising from the foam!”She had deliberately not asked Aimée if she could borrow any jewellery and her only ornamentation was two white roses in her hair and one at her neck, held in place by a narrow ribbon of the same material as her gown.With her black hair arranged by Felix in a new style, her eyes shining almost blindingly with excitement and happiness and her lips parted, it would have been impossible for any man not to be moved by her beauty.The Marquis looked at her and then without touching her he said,“I love you! I did not mean to tell you so until later this evening, but it is impossible to find any other words to tell you how beautiful you are!”She moved nearer to him and she wanted him to kiss her as she had never before wanted anything so much.Instead he kissed each finger of her hand, then her palm and finally her wrist.The feeling of his mouth on her skin made her quiver and he looked into her eyes to say softly,“I think the ‘Sleeping Beauty’ is coming awake.”Yola blushed and the Marquis said,“Let’s go out to dinner.I am taking you to the Café Anglais, but we will not sit in the Grand Seize where everyone would admire you.I want you to myself.”There was a possessive note in his voice that thrilled her and she let him lead her across the hall and help her into the carriage.Then, when they drove off, she asked, conscious that her voice had deepened a little because she was speaking to him,“Why do you say I will not be – seen in the Café Anglais?”“Because we are dining in a private room,” he answered.“I have ordered our dinner and I thought we deserved a good one after that very unpleasant luncheon.”“But it was such fun!” Yola exclaimed.“I am beginning to find that everything we do together is fun,” the Marquis answered, “except when it means a million other things, things I have never known or felt before.”She understood what he was saying and after a moment she replied,“Everything is very – wonderful for me – but then that is – different because as I have already told you I am only a – country mouse and have done nothing like this before.”“I am not talking about Exhibitions or sight-seeing,” the Marquis said.“I am talking about feelings, Yola, and what you have made me feel is something I have never felt for anyone else.”“Are you – sure of that?”“Quite, quite sure!” he said positively.They reached the Café Anglais and he took her up a steep staircase to one of the rooms, which was called the Marivaux.It was also known, although the Marquis did not inform Yola of it, as le cabinet des femmes du monde, because Society women used it when they were frightened of being recognised with their lovers.It was attractively furnished and Yola, looking at the elaborately laid table for two, which was decorated with flowers, felt thrilled and flattered because the Marquis wanted to be alone with her.The waiter opened a bottle of champagne which was already waiting for them in an ice bucket and the Marquis took Yola’s wrap from her shoulders, put it on a chair and said,“I have not seen you in white before [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]