And Be Thy Love (9 page)

“Is your flat really at the top of one of the tallest buildings in Paris?” she asked, with mild curiosity, just before he put her into the car.

But he looked down at her with an oddly stem look about the corners of his mouth and answered:

“No more of that to-night! We have talked enough about prosaic things. For the rest of this evening just let it be our two selves!”

And her soft, upturned eyes agreed at once.

He put his hands on her shoulders and gripped them so that she felt his fingers biting into the soft flesh, and his voice shook a little, and he looked rather pale, as he said: “But I am not a patient man, Cherie, and I cannot wait for you! I want you desperately, and there can be no waiting!”

And then he shut the car door upon her, and she felt as if she was stirred right down to the very roots of her being. She was horrified as the thought passed through her mind that she did not want to have to wait for him, either. She was so much in love that the very thought of waiting was like a penance....

• When they came to the chateau it reminded her of t
  
• “I—I “ Caroline was beginning; and he was so
  

When they came to the chateau it reminded her of the evening when she had seen it for the first time, its towers reflected in the moat, the trees behind it moving gently in the evening breeze. Nothing could have been more peaceful, more gracious, more capable of arousing a feeling of regret because of the beauty that was going to waste. Caroline, who had fallen in love with it on sight—although what anyone would do with such a huge place nowadays she couldn’t think—let forth a sigh that escaped her almost without her knowledge as she stepped from the car and looked up at the lovely stonework. Robert, who had hastened round to assist her alight, caught the sound of the sigh, and saw the rapt look, and looked at her a little curiously.

“What is it, my sweet one?” he asked.

“Nothing,” she answered, “except that—when I look up at this, and realise what a perfect home it must once have made, I wish -------- ”

“What is it you wish?”

She was silent for a moment, and then she shook her head.

“Oh, nothing,” she said again, and smiled at him.

His eyes were a little quizzical as he smiled back at her.

“If wishes were horses,” he murmured----------“But you’re

not suggesting poor Armand should live here, are you?” “No, but it seems such a waste. Surely something could be done with it?”

He said nothing, but he guided her up the steps into the great-hall, and it was there that a figure sitting patiently on a chair in the dimness, and impatiently smoking a cigarette, rose up and confronted them. Even in such an imperfect light it could be seen at once that she was very slender and elegant, with a little Paris hat sitting at just the right angle on her sleek, coiled hair. Her features were small and patrician, her eyes huge and shadowy and bored.

“Really, Armand,” she said, “your mouldering mansion is not the most cheerful spot in which to wait for your return! But the woman who works for you said you were enjoying the simple delights and wandering somewhere in the forest, so I decided you would not be able to enjoy them once the light failed.”

“And you waited!” he said.

His voice was still and quiet, just as if a stone had been flung into a pool, and it was a question of waiting for the ripples.

“Of course I waited!” She was looking at his companion with interest. “You told me you would be away a few days, and that was nearly a fortnight ago! There were two dinner parties to which we were both invited, to say nothing of the week-end you promised me. The quiet week-end when we were to get away from everything... Don’t you remember, Armand, mon cherie?”

He said nothing.

The woman smiled rather brilliantly.

“So I came to find out what was keeping you.”

CHAPTER VII

“And now you have found out?” Armand de Marsac enquired, in a smooth, emotionless voice. He walked to an electric light switch, and some of the shadows in the hall fled away. “You should not have sat there in the dark, Diane. You would have had a better view of us when we came in if the light had been on,” with concentrated dryness.

“Yes, that is true,” she replied imperturbably, “but I couldn’t find a switch, and your woman vanished. She appears to have her work cut out running this place, and it is also cluttered up with children! A most extraordinary situation!” She was staring at Caroline with increasing interest. “Too young, Armand,” she observed, at last— “much, much too young! And inexperienced, I would say! Not in the least your type!”

He appeared not to have heard this expressed opinion, and made a formal introduction.

“Mademoiselle Caroline Darcy, Mademoiselle Diane Montauban!”

Caroline stood as if turned to stone, but Diane Montauban held out a white-gloved hand.

“You look English,” she said. “Monique said there was an English young woman staying here, recovering from some sort of an indisposition. I hope you have enjoyed your visit, mademoiselle, and that you find yourself in better health? Armand doesn’t do much entertaining here normally, but possibly he has qualities as a physician that some of us have never guessed at! Also I understand now why he was anxious to get away for a break from Paris! You have probably met before?”

“We had never met before,” Armand struck in, with a curious whitening of the lips, and Caroline strove to force her own lips to

frame some sort of utterance, but no words would come. She stood there beneath the glaring chandelier looking young, pale and bewildered, the skirt of her summery dress stained with woodland moss, her small white sandals stained also. Armand sent her a look that should have meant something to her, but it didn’t, because in addition to looking bewildered she felt numb and unreceptive.

“Do you think I could have a drink?” Diane asked, removing the enchanting little hat and shaking out her seal-brown hair, that had a curious tinge of red in it. “I arrived about an hour ago, and I seem to have been sitting here ever since. Monique offered me coffee, but I didn’t want any coffee. I know, however, that you won’t be without something more stimulating somewhere on the premises now that you are actually staying here, and I do badly feel the need of a little stimulant.”

Armand led the way to the small room he and Caroline had been using as a combined sitting-room-dining-room, and Diane looked about it with a flickering of interest. She noted the white panelling and the faded gold cornices, the carpet that was not too faded to still have an appearance of beauty, and realised that this had been a little card-room at one time—a cosy, retiring room.

She also noted the roses on the table, the freshly plumped-up cushions, the decanters on a side table.

“You look as if you have made yourselves thoroughly at home here,” she remarked, smiling obliquely at Caroline. “But, then, I can hardly blame you! Armand is so sought after in Paris that it is almost impossible to get him alone, and being a sort of lion, and a magnet for mamas with marriageable daughters—and others not quite so desirable!—he has to be constantly protected from designing females! That is one reason why I had to come and look for him—in his own best interests, you understand? But you seem to have stolen a march on me, and have had him to yourself for nearly a fortnight! That is quite something, I assure you!”

“What will you drink?” Armand asked harshly, and it was such a grating, rasping harshness that her delicate eyebrows ascended a little.

“Darling, you know very well what it is that I drink! A little gin and a little vermouth, a dash of ------------ ”

“There is only sherry,” Armand told her. “Medium or dry. We don’t maintain a cellar here.”

“You surprise me,” she murmured, looked at him with a mixture of quizzicalness and something more provocative in her regard as he handed her her drink, and then watched him perform the same function for Caroline.

But as he put a glass of sherry into her hand Caroline felt as if her fingers were too cold and stiff to hold it. His eyes pleaded with her, but the pleading passed her by, for although surprise and shock were diminishing a little, cold truth remained. Inescapable truth...! He was Armand de Marsac, and Robert de Bergerac was probably only a figment of his imagination! A cover for a masquerade that had no doubt struck him as likely to be pleasing— amusing!—at the time when he adopted it!

She looked at him with an agonised coming to life in her eyes, but part of her still felt as if it was a little stunned. He had asked her to marry him—but it was Robert de Bergerac he had asked her to marry, and apparently there was no such person! He had had ample opportunity to explain—to tell her the truth about himself; and even if he had been afraid that she might not like the truth, at least, when you asked a woman to marry you, it was important that she should know the truth! And even when they arrived home that evening she had talked about the chateau—he had mentioned Armand! But he had not said, “I am Armand, and therefore you can safely tell me what you feel about the chateau. When we are married it will be yours as well as mine!”

No; he had not said the obvious! And, in addition, there was this exquisite young woman, Diane Montauban, who had the air of belonging to as good a family as his own!

The exquisite young woman started to talk, while Armand’s eyes implored Caroline to believe that he could put things right as soon as he had the opportunity. And as if she sensed that she had caused a kind of minor crisis Diane said with a note of humour in her voice:

“I have a feeling that I have interrupted something— perhaps rather ruined something! But these little interruptions will occur in the most romantic idyll, and I have never known you to go in for romantic idylls before, Armand! It is the very last thing I would have expected of you, so perhaps before very long you will be glad I arrived. For life is real and life is earnest...! And that reminds me, where am I going to sleep to-night? I feel like a little change, and I’ve brought a couple of suit-cases with me, and with so many rooms you are bound to have one you can put me in! I don’t mind a little old-fashioned comfort, so long as there is electric light!”

“You are quite sure you wouldn’t prefer the inn?” he said stiffly to her.

She laughed softly, with what sounded like genuine amusement.

“Did you suggest to Miss Darcy that she should try the inn when she first came here?”

The Comte bit his lip.

“Miss Darcy was not in a condition to stay in an inn when she first came here,” he replied, with that rather pale look round his mouth that Caroline had noticed before.

“But she is better now...! Is there any reason why she should not try the inn now?” Diane suggested, softly, and then a car flashed past the windows and illumined a whole corner of the terrace outside. Armand uttered an exclamation.

“This is really too much...! This is more than I will endure...!”

He strode to the door and flung it wide, and voices in the hall warned him that already the occupants of the car were entering his house, and one of the voices was loud and a trifle shrill and obviously feminine, while another feminine voice had a strong American accent, and a third male voice had the meticulous preciseness of the Englishman in a foreign country, and feeling very strongly that he was out of his element.

“What about the cases?” said the male voice, “Shall I bring them in, Aunt Pen, or do you prefer to wait until we discover whether there is a host to receive us?”

“No, bring them in, Christopher,” the loud, penetrating voice commanded. “Armand is here. Unless the place is being burgled, and I should think that’s hardly likely!”

Then she stood blinking in the open doorway of the little cardroom, the light streaming out and enveloping her so that she looked like a surprisingly diminutive, tweed-clad witch rapidly twitching her eyes. They were brilliantly blue eyes, rather heavily made up for a woman who must have been well into her sixties, and the rest of her face was saddled with paint, which was emphasised by the absurd little eye-veil that decorated the brim of a hat entirely unsuited to wear with Harris tweeds. While the fact that she seemed to be literally weighted down with jewellery—earrings, a double rope of pearls, brooches pinned to the lapel of her suit, a pendant that blazed in the deep hollow in her throat—rendered her appearance even more incongruous.

“Lady Pen!” Armand exclaimed, and then submitted to having her arms wound tightly round his neck, while she saluted him with a smacking kiss.

“Armand, you naughty, naughty boy!” she exclaimed. “First we look for you in Biarritz, where we understood you were to spend several weeks, and then when you are not there, and no one seems to have seen you, we try your Paris flat! In Paris nobody knows where you are, and so I decided that the sensible thing to do was to come here! Christopher’s interested in architecture—Christopher’s my nephew,” waving a vague hand to indicate the extremely tall young man who was struggling with suitcases in the great hall behind them, “and so is Helen— Helen Mansfield,” she added. “Helen, my dear, come and let me introduce you to my godson!”

“How do you do, Comte?” said the strong American accent, but looking up dully to catch her first glimpse of its owner Caroline was conscious of yet another sensation of shock. For this was a decidedly pleasing young woman, with magnificent teeth that flashed whitely as her soft pink lips parted over them, a faultless complexion obviously well taken care of, and gleaming fair hair worn in a chignon low on her neck. She was dressed, as most American travellers are, smartly and well, and although, compared with the older Lady Pen she wore little or no jewellery, the few pieces she did wear were obviously good. Very good indeed, Caroline decided less vaguely, noticing how one large pearl attached to a shapely ear glistened as if it had only just been

extracted from its oyster shell.

“How do you do?” Armand returned, and was surprised when his hand was gripped by the young woman with the fair chignon as if she was genuinely delighted to have an opportunity of shaking hands with him at last.