And Be Thy Love (17 page)

Caroline felt almost startled.

“How—how soon?”

“Oh, in a day or so.” He gazed at her almost speculatively. “I don’t know whether Aunt Pen has said anything to you, but she’s going to ask you to return to Paris with us when we leave, and stay as her guest for a while. She’s taken an enormous fancy to you,” smiling, “and I can’t say I’m surprised.”

“You mean—she’s going to ask me to stay with her in Paris?” Caroline asked, a little jerkily.

“That’s it.” He tried to press her to have a cigarette, although she had already refused. “If you don’t know Paris you’ll probably enjoy it, and if you do accept Aunt Pen’s invitation—and I don’t mind admitting I’m banking on you doing just that!—you will let me show you all there is to be seen, won’t you?” He bent towards her a little eagerly. “Aunt Pen says you’re exactly like your grandmother, and if she was anything like you, Caroline, she must have been a beauty... ! Not the sort of beauty one acknowledges, perhaps, at first, but the kind that grows on one. The kind it would be next door to impossible ever to forget altogether! So you will return with us to Paris, won’t you?”

“I—I-----“ Caroline was beginning; and he was so

nice, and natural, and English—not the sort she could ever fall in love with for a single instant, but certainly not the kind of man she would ever want to hurt, or remind that until he had been certain of the attitude of Mademoiselle Montauban he had been very ready indeed to fall a victim to her charms—that she hardly knew how to respond to such a piece of determined flattery. For her grandmother had been an acknowledged beauty, and she knew she would never be that. Armand had discovered that she had something—something that had appealed to him while they were alone together—but apparently it wasn’t enough to keep him in thrall.

Which shouldn’t really surprise her now that she had seen Diane Montauban.

But she felt surprised and disturbed by this news that within a few days they were all likely to be scattered. And whether or not she should accept Lady Pen’s invitation she couldn’t make up her mind just then. For only that morning she had been thinking of spending the rest of her life with Armand...!

Helen Mansfield joined them after breakfast—she broke her fast on fruit juice only, in order to preserve a figure that had more than once threatened to get out of hand—and Caroline was glad that Christopher said nothing more about going off together for the day. Lady Pen sat and sunned herself on the terrace, rested in the afternoon in her room as she always did, and in the evening spoke to Caroline about accompanying them to Paris.

“I do want you to agree, my dear,” she said. I don’t want you to return to that lonely life of yours in London until you look much fitter than you do now—you strike me as being rather naturally fragile, and therefore someone ought to take care of you—and you can’t very well stay on here at the chateau after we have all gone. It would be too lonely for you, for one thing, and apparently Marthe Giraud is likely to be in hospital for some time. So why not say at once that you’ll come with us to Paris, and afterwards—who knows?—I might persuade you to come and stay with me in England, or Christopher might persuade you to return with him to Africa... “

“Oh, no!” Caroline said, so sharply that the old lady looked at her quizzically.

“Why not? Don’t you feel in the very slightest degree attracted?” Caroline felt certain that Lady Pen knew too well who attracted her much more than in a “slight degree”, and possibly that was one reason why she was so eager to get her to join up with them. Lady Pen was shrewd, had seen more than one young woman lose her heart to a man who didn’t want it, and having known her grandmother she very likely felt a certain responsibility where she was concerned. But the very thought of accompanying Christopher to Africa made her want to run away back to her own little London room, for there, at least, she would have her dreams, and her memories. Christopher...! After she had known Armand’s kisses...! “Don’t look so upset, my dear child,” Lady Pen said, gently, touching her. “I know how you feel about Armand —it was shining out of your eyes when we arrived here, although I believe the arrival of Miss Montauban just ahead of us gave you something in the nature of a shock! But men like Armand are like that, you know—much loved by their godmothers, and female relations, but not really very much use to other women.” She spoke regretfully, as if she had been trying for some time to accustom herself to this aspect of Armand. “I’ll admit I’ve always had hopes that he might change. I thought that perhaps when he met someone who didn’t actively chase him he might become interested. I’m quite prepared to believe you didn’t chase him, but that chic countrywoman of his is doing enough chasing for both of you.... And he seems to be rather under her influence, at least. Otherwise, why go off all day with her?”

Why, indeed. . . ? Caroline had asked herself that question repeatedly since morning. And the only answer she could supply herself with was that both were French —which meant that they would have no language problems, and therefore no incoherent moments—and Diane’s family was almost as old as that of the

Comte. She was as gay and vivacious as he was, had led his kind of life for years, and whether or not he was in love with her, she was almost certainly in love with him!

Sitting on the terrace with the evening sunshine falling goldenly all about her, the moat encompassing the chateau like a glistening girdle touched with fire, Caroline recalled the kiss they had exchanged in the tower room—the kiss she had witnessed— and she wondered why she had awakened that morning with the determination actually to plead with Armand if it was necessary.

She began to think she must have been slightly mad.

She was glad when Lady Pen suggested a stroll in the grounds before dinner, and they lingered for a long time in a small, tucked-away herb garden where Lady Pen said she had once assisted the Comte’s mother to pick and dry enough lavender for lavender sachets for a bazaar that was to raise funds for a local family in distress.

“It was she who imported practically every one of the herbs that are growing here now,” Lady Pen said, as she plucked a leaf of bergamot. “She was a keen horticulturist, and very full of good works.” She sighed. “I’m afraid she would be a little disappointed in Armand.”

Caroline stood inhaling the combined fragrance of many conflicting scents around her, and her thoughts went again to the tower room, and this time to the portrait above the fireplace.

“But Armand is—like his father?” she suggested, a little diffidently.

Lady Pen looked as if she was giving the matter thought.

“In some ways,” she admitted. “Only in some ways Armand is more human—his potentialities are greater! Only I’m afraid they’re going to be wasted,” she added, with a sigh. “He’ll go down to history as a successful French dramatist, and nothing more.”

“Perhaps there is nothing more he wishes from life to go down to history as,” Caroline suggested.

“I wonder?” Lady Pen said.

And then they both heard Monique exerting all her strength on the enormous beaten silver gong in the hall.

The evening seemed years long to Carol, who played chess with Lady Pen on the terrace in a flood of wonderful, silvery moonlight that turned the chateau into a positive dream of beauty brooding on its past, and at ten o’clock they all went to bed.

“I shall be glad when we get to Paris,” Christopher had said, sounding bored, and Caroline thought he had looked at her reproachfully. “In Paris we may find something to do.”

In Paris she wouldn’t be allowed to play chess was what his eyes had told her. He would see to it that the many distractions the French capital offered should claim at least some of her attention, and as the one to show them to her a little of her attention would also, perforce, be concentrated on himself.

Caroline, however, forgot Christopher, forgot the invitation that she ought to be grateful for—as she realised— forgot everything, as she lay in her bed and listened for the first, faint sound of Armand’s returning car. Monique had said they might be late, but when Caroline looked at her watch, after switching on her bedside light, it was very nearly one o’clock.

One o’clock...! And when she looked at her watch again after tossing and turning as if the bed was actively torturing her, it was two o’clock. And the last time she switched on the bedside light before falling into an uneasy sleep it was a quarter to three.

And no sound of any returning car...!

The night seemed peculiarly still, and the moon was slipping behind some trees, and the world beyond her windows was given up to darkness and a soft, unusual warmth.

When she awakened in the morning it was to find Monique standing beside her bed with a tray of tea.

“Monsieur le Comte and Mademoiselle Montauban got back all right last night?” she asked, as she struggled up onto her pillows.

“Non, Mademoiselle, they did not return,” Monique answered, but she was busying herself with setting out the flowered china as she did so, and it seemed to Caroline that she deliberately avoided meeting her eyes. “Mademoiselle will take sugar and cream, as usual?” she asked, lifting the cream-jug, and preparing to manipulate the sugar-tongs.

“Thank you, Monique.” Caroline was feeling utterly weary after her all-too-short night, but she was also experiencing the sharp knife-like thrust of anxiety. “You don’t think—you don’t

think the car broke down, or something like that?”

Monique went to the window and pulled back the curtains, letting in a flood of bright sunlight. But it was one of those mornings when there were clouds in the sky, and the brilliance of the day might not last long.

“If anything of the sort occurred, mademoiselle, we shall be hearing,” she said. “We are not on the telephone, but someone would bring a message from the village. But I do not somehow feel that there has been any very serious accident”, and there was something almost pitying in her look—unless it was purely Caroline’s imagination— as she went out and closed the door quietly.

At breakfast—in the small card-room this morning, because a cool wind was blowing—Christopher looked amused as he took the lid off the preserve jar.

“In England,” he said, “the host would come sneaking back after this sort of thing with a slightly shamefaced look on his face, but I’ll bet Armand won’t look in the least ashamed.” He looked across at Caroline as if he wondered what exactly she was thinking, and how— which was more important—she was feeling, since she looked a little pale and withdrawn. But Caroline said nothing, and revealed nothing by so much as a flicker of an eyelash. “He’s a bit of a boy is our Armand,” he remarked. “But I should have thought he would have waited until he got back to Paris for this sort of indiscreetness.”

Caroline still said nothing, and she was glad when Helen Mansfield joined them, and she made no mention of the Comte, only complained that the bath water had been merely tepid.

Just before lunch Armand and Diane returned, and Diane looked almost complacent. Armand had a queer, tight-lipped expression that was unusual with him, and he had little or nothing to say to anyone, save that the car had broken down while they were on their way home the night before, and they had been forced to put up at an hotel. Helen Mansfield’s eyebrows ascended quite noticeably when this admission was made, and when the brief information was added that the car had taken quite a long time to repair she looked as much as to say she was not surprised. And then Diane yawned and looked at everyone with a kind of studied disdain, and announced that she

was going to her room. Armand refused lunch and vanished, and the next time Caroline saw him was when she was once again inhaling the scents of his mother’s little herb garden about an hour after tea, and he came striding quickly along the paths, as if he had seen her and followed her.

They looked at one another with blank, guarded expressions. Then she stooped and picked a sprig of rosemary and played with it.

“I saw you from my window,” he confessed, at last. “And I came after you because I have something to say to you.”

One of her feathery brown eyebrows went up, but her expression remained almost chillingly aloof.

“I can’t imagine what you can have to say to me!”

“No?” He moved slowly nearer to her along the path, and she saw that his brown eyes were watching her all the time, an intent, no longer guarded, openly searching expression in them that was at variance with the wariness of his tightly-set lips. He was beautifully shaved and beautifully fresh after a change of clothes and possibly a leisurely bath, and the faint scent of his shaving-cream reached her on the wind, as well as the vaguely exciting scent of his mixed Virginian and Turkish cigarettes. As he stood beside her he took out his expensive gold cigarette-case on which she now knew a crest was engraved, and slowly selected a cigarette, tapping it on the lid of the case as he continued to watch her. “Two nights ago you had something to say to me.” he reminded her.

“Ah, but that was—two nights ago!”

For an instant she was sure that a quality of surprise entered his look, and then she heard him draw in his breath rather quickly. He said in English, with a very noticeable accent:

“I—see! Or, rather, I begin to see, but it is not that I am clever enough to have understood immediately! That is to say I am perhaps a little too simple to have understood at once—too trusting!”

Her whole body was beginning to tremble a little at his nearness, and she was fighting a desire to forget everything but the fact that he was close enough for her to put out a hand and touch him if she couldn’t resist the impulse. She wanted to forget that there had been two intervening nights since last they talked to one another, and knowing that she mustn’t forget she actually turned a little white with conflicting emotions.

“It is Diane you should have followed out here into the garden,” she said, with a brittle, shrew-like note in her voice. “And if she isn’t sufficiently rested to emerge from her room and talk to you you should wait, because I don’t expect she would approve of your watching me from your window!”