Love and the Loathsome Leopard by Barbara Cartland Page B

Think of the future when we can be together.”
    “I am – afraid for you”
    “I understand that and love you for it, but, my precious, I am an old soldier and therefore there is no need for you to be afraid for me.”
    “I will try to do as you ask.”
    There was something so sweet in the way she spoke the words that Lord Cheriton was kissing her again, kissing her until the room seemed to swim round and everything disappeared but the wonder of their love, which was like a blazing light shining in the darkness.
    Lord Cheriton was conscious that his heart was beating violently and so was hers.
    When finally he took his arms from around her, they looked at each other, the breath coming quickly from between their lips, and they could see nothing but the glory of their love and their need for each other.
    “Go to bed, my perfect little love,” Lord Cheriton said. “Dream of me as I shall be thinking of you every moment, every second, we are not together.”
    “I want to – stay with you,” Wivina said in a low voice.
    “Very soon we shall be together,” Lord Cheriton promised, “all day and all night, but for the moment, my darling, we are in the middle of a battle.”
    He smiled as he spoke, but Wivina shivered.
    Then, as if she wished to obey him, to do what he wanted, she went round the room blowing out all the candles except for one that she carried in her hand as she led the way towards the door.
    Lord Cheriton escorted her up the staircase.
    When he reached the door of the room which had been his mother’s, he looked down at her in the candlelight and saw the love and trust in her eyes.
    “I worship you!” he said very quietly.
    Then he kissed her gently as a man might kiss a child, and opening the door of her room, he put her inside and closed it behind her.
    As he walked towards his own room, he could hardly believe that this had happened to him.
    It was the first time in his life that he had fallen in love and he knew that the wonder he had found was what all men sought and that he was privileged to know such happiness.
    There was no question of his asking if Wivina was the right person for him, for he knew he had spoken the truth when he said they had been part of each other all through the centuries.
    He thought now that of all the women he had ever known, and there had been quite a number of them, none had ever been anything but a passing fancy, a passion that had been extinguished almost as soon as it had arisen.
    They had appealed only to his body, never to his mind and imagination.
    He knew that Wivina, because she was the other half of himself, was everything that the woman he loved should be.
    Together they would be complete – one person – as man and woman were meant to be and as had been immortalised in literature and in the masterpieces of art which existed all through the centuries.
    ‘I love her! God, how I love her!’ he thought as he entered his bed-room.
    Then having lit a candle he stood thinking of what he must do.
    Because he had always had an iron control over himself and because he could concentrate on what he was doing to the exclusion of all else, for a moment he put Wivina into a shrine within his soul and closed the door.
    Now he had to think of the position they were both in, and he knew, without Wivina telling him, that it was perilously dangerous.

Chapter Four
    In her own room Wivina sat for a moment waiting to hear Lord Cheriton walk along the passage.
    Then she put her hands to her breast as if to quell the tumult there.
    She could hardly believe that what had happened downstairs had not been a figment of her imagination, but her whole body pulsated and throbbed with the wonder of it.
    She knew that this was love as she had always thought it would be, as she had dreamt since she was a girl that it would come to her.
    Once her mother had said to her,
    “When you are grown up, Wivina, I am praying that you will find a man who will be like Papa and with whom you will be