Looking back upon the dinner that night with Sir Laurence in the quiet of her room afterwards, Rose decided it was one of the pleasantest evenings that had ever happened to her in the whole of her lifetime.
There was nothing formal about the evening, nothing strained, or embarrassing either. Sir Laurence took her to a rather small but very exclusive restaurant where they dined quietly and extremely well without an orchestra to entertain them, or a dance floor to tempt them, and for the first time since he abruptly made up his mind to marry Heather Willoughby, and Rose received her first intimation of his intentions, they talked together naturally as in the old days, and on the topics that had been wont to appeal to them both.
Enderby and the various improvements that could still be made to it, Thatcher and his determination never to depart from the formality of the perfect manservant. They also talked about Sir Laurence’s own plans for his immediate future— that is to say, his business plans and the new architectural designs he was working on and becoming engrossed in. He was particularly interested in designs for a new modern cathedral he had been invited to submit, and deriving a good deal of inspiration from his visits to Roman churches, both Renaissance and the more austere styles of the Counter-Reformation period. The Baroque churches with the lively facades did not appeal to him so much.
Then he had plans for a new ultra-modern hospital, and a block of flats. As she looked across the table at him and saw the genuine enthusiasm that was written in his face, and how magically it seemed almost to banish the haggard lines she had so particularly noticed a few days ago, Rose knew a sensation of sudden happiness for his sake, because there were things that could still interest him acutely.
“You’re a wonderful listener, Rose,” he told her when he saw how her eyes watched him, and realized that she was really listening attentively and not with anything forced about her marked air of interest, even absorption in what he was saying. “You always were. You were one of the few schoolgirls who never chattered.”
Rose smiled faintly.
“I expect I did all my chattering at school.”
“I decline to believe it.” He smiled back at her, thinking how well her little black cocktail dress suited her—in fact almost anything suited her. “You’re one of the people who like to take things in, and that makes you restful. Reposeful is perhaps a better word. You’re gentle and feminine, too—very feminine.” His eyes continued to rest on her. “I don’t think you realize how lovely you are, Rose. No wonder Heather didn’t like you!”
And then he abruptly changed the subject, and shortly after that they decided to walk part of the way home because it was such a perfect night. Their footsteps echoed as they strolled along, although there were plenty of people strolling on all sides of them, and in the quieter thoroughfares they sometimes caught a snatch of dance music or an accordion being played somewhere behind discreetly veiled windows.
And above them huge stars hung in the velvety sable sky, and a moon at its full climbed above the sluggishly flowing Tiber and the misty Alban hills. Sleek cars rolled past, and feminine perfumes floated on the wind—feminine and fresh flower perfumes from the night-enshrouded gardens of Rome.
Rose felt Sir Laurence’s hand lightly grasping her elbow, and as he guided and directed her steps she thought:
The Eternal City! . . . The city to which one would return if one dropped a coin in the Fountain de Trevi! And she had dropped a coin in the fountain, and she had wished, too, and part of her wish had come true.
She had wished that Sir Laurence, who had disappeared out of her life, might reappear again, even if it was only for a short time. And here he was beside her, sharing with her the magic of the Roman night!
CHAPTER X
THE night of the dance arrived at last. Rose’s dress had been safely delivered from Signor Camillo, and there was no doubt about it, it was a dream of a dress.
Mrs. Wilson-Plunkett looked so satisfied when Rose put it on that the girl would not have been surprised to hear her start purring like a contented cat. She looked like a contented cat with her head on one side, making vague noises which signified approval, and it was only when she went to her jewel-case and extracted the recently re-set emerald bracelet and matching ear-rings that Rose ceased to feel amused.
But Mrs. Wilson-Plunkett was nothing if not obstinate, and she fastened the bracelet on Rose’s wrist, and then held up one of the ear-rings against a creamy pale ear. But the effect was too sophisticated, and she removed it at once, deciding that the bracelet was sufficient adornment.
“Sir Laurence will not approve,” she remarked as she made certain that the safety-catch of the bracelet was secured. “But it doesn’t matter whether he approves or not. He has his plans for you, and I have mine!”
And then she stepped back in order to admire Rose afresh, but the girl was looking vaguely concerned by her remarks. She had no intention of allowing anyone to make plans for her future, but until she knew what those plans were she could do or say nothing about them.
The old lady clucked afresh, as if she was entirely responsible for the way the girl looked. And certainly the touch of silver on the tiny close-fitting bodice of the ice-green taffeta seemed to put stars into Rose’s eyes. The lines of the dress were flowing and graceful, enhancing Rose’s youthful dignity, and although it left her camellia-pale shoulders completely bare there was a stole that went with it that was also delicately touched with silver embroidery.
Her hair had never looked better, but she was a little pale for a gala occasion, Mrs. Wilson-Plunkett thought. And yet she approved the pallor. It made her look like an ice-maiden—ice and fire with that hair!
Yes, Signor Camillo had done very well, the rich widow thought, watching the fire that also streaked from the bracelet on the girl’s slender wrist.
When Camillo arrived for Rose he looked almost taken aback by her appearance. Mrs. Wilson-Plunkett studied his reaction with sensations of mounting satisfaction. He had wanted to send flowers for Rose to wear, but the older woman had said no. No flowers for Rose with that dress. She was perfect as she was. And Camillo, escorting her out to the ivory and black car, was in complete agreement.
When they arrived at the Princess de Boccacello’s Palazzo, where every one of the vast rooms seemed to be filled with guests, almost the first person Rose received a whole-hearted compliment from on her appearance was Prince Paul de Lippi. Looking so distinguished in full evening dress that for an instant Rose found it difficult to conceal from him her admiration for the way he looked, he bent over her hand and kissed it, as his nephew had once done on another occasion. His eyes, deeper and darker than Camillo’s, gentler but just as filled with admiration, looked into hers.
“You are so lovely that you quite take my breath away!” he said. “Although I can’t compete with Camillo as a dancing partner, may I dance with you later on?”
“Of course,” Rose answered shyly, and she thought that Camillo drew her away rather quickly, and had the impression that the Prince stood looking after them as they disappeared into the press.
Camillo presented her to her hostess, but Francesca, for whom the dance was being given, was too surrounded by admirers and special friends for anyone who had arrived late, as they had, to get near to her. But about half-way through the evening Rose had a chance to observe her very closely, and she was a little surprised by what she saw. Someone rather small and fragile and obviously young—perhaps barely seventeen—with enormous dark eyes and a faint, rather hectic colour in her cheeks, dressed all in white, who, when she first caught sight of Camillo, seemed actually to look at him a little reproachfully. And Camillo, Rose felt somehow certain, was not entirely at his ease as he gave vent to a string of rather fulsome flatteries and bent over her hand, in the same way that his uncle had recently bent over Rose’s, and introduced the English girl.
Rose felt the strange, luminous and penetrating eyes of Francesca remained glued to her face for several seconds, and at the end of her ins
pection the small scarlet mouth seemed to become pursed a little, and once again Camillo received a very long and deliberate look. Rose even felt a little embarrassed as she stood there, and she was glad when a young man swooped upon Francesca, the orchestra that was ensconced behind a solid bank of white roses started to play after a brief pause an old-fashioned Viennese waltz, and Camillo swept her, too, back on to the dance floor.
As she looked up at him she thought that his face looked frowning and disturbed, but he smiled at her suddenly as he felt her eyes upon him— recognizing that frown and that look of disturbance—and drew her suddenly closely to him.
“You are lovelier far than anyone else here tonight,” he told her. “We will forget everything but
that, shall we?”
But this time it was Rose who frowned, and when later she caught him looking at the emerald bracelet on her wrist and heard him express admiration for it, a definite twinge of uneasiness stabbed at her. She remembered what Sir Laurence had said about handsome young Romans attached to noble families.
She knew nothing about the Boccacello family, but from the magnificence of this dance tonight they were wealthy enough. But one could never be sure about a thing like that, and it was always unwise to judge from appearances. The Princess de Boccacello was a widow, and she had more than one daughter to marry off.
Later Rose found she was called upon to keep her promise to Prince Paul, and in spite of the fact that he had denied being a very good dancer, she discovered that he actually was a very good dancer indeed. She had been looking everywhere for some sign of Sir Laurence and the Signora Bardoli, but although she had understood that they were putting in an appearance, having, as she knew, both received invitations, she saw nothing at all of them for an hour and more after her own arrival. Camillo had been forced temporarily to abandon her, and dance with someone else, and she was standing for the first time that evening alone when the Prince came up behind her.
“I think I can manage this,” he said, smiling, and guided her through the movements of a rumba. As she had not so far observed him dancing with anyone else that evening—although he had talked to quite a few of the dowagers who formed the usual groups—she was not altogether surprised to find that eyes followed their progress with a certain amount of barely-concealed interest, and when, as soon as the dance was over, Prince Paul took her arm and suggested that they seek a breath of fresh air outside she had the feeling that the interest quickened a little.
It was a breathlessly beautiful Roman night, and the gardens of the Palazzo were a paradise to wander in after the heat and the close pressure of humanity inside. Rose recalled the night when she had dined at the de Lippi villa, and her host had shown her his garden himself, and on that occasion she had thought him delightful. Tonight, with one of his slender patrician hands under her elbow, he guided her along the paths, and when they came to a little pavilion, like a toy pavilion of marble, he suggested that they sat down for a while in a couple of comfortable chairs placed inside.
“That is if you are warm enough,” he said, and gently touched her bare shoulder where the stole had slipped.
If Camillo had touched her shoulder in the same way she would have been inclined to shrink away and resent his touch a little, in spite of the fact that she found him generally charming; but with the Prince she felt perfectly able to relax, and accepted a cigarette, and even allowed him to pull the stole up about her shoulders a little when a flower-laden breeze reached them inside the pavilion.
But when the breeze died away it was very still, and very pleasant, with the flower perfume delicate and yet penetrating, hanging in the atmosphere like a silken caress. And in front of them was the star-pricked panorama of Rome, too vague to be anything but a blur, but with a flash of moonlight catching the twists of the Tiber, and the sudden thrust of a triumphal arch.
The Prince enabled her after a time to distinguish the huge masses of the walls of the Palatine and the Forum, and finally the Colosseum. But she liked to think that side by side with these indestructible giants and the grimness they exuded, there were the more gracious buildings of Rome and a warm and attractive way of life.
“I wonder how you like it here?” the Prince asked her softly at last. “Have you thrown a coin into the Fountain de Trevi?”
“Oh, yes,” she answered, smiling at him.
“So you will come back!” he exclaimed. “And you
wish to come back?”
“Of course. As a matter of fact,” she confessed, clasping her hands about her slim knees and leaning a little forward to peer out across that terra-cotta bowl which held Rome like a giant hand, “I can think of nothing more pleasant than to spend the whole of one’s life here.”
“But you would miss your own country,” he assured her. “You would wish to go back.”
“I don’t know.” Suddenly her voice sounded flat and a little wistful. For where was there in England, unless she went on accepting the benevolent charity of Mrs. Wilson-Plunkett and made her London flat her home, that which she could call her rightful place of residence? Certainly not Enderby, where so much of her so often longed to be! Enderby, where she had always felt curiously safe and secure, but where all her happy memories had been smirched by that final night. “I don’t know,” she repeated, and sighed.
The Prince leaned forward also to peer at her gently.
“You and Mrs. Wilson-Plunkett are not related?” he asked.
Rose shook her head.
“No. I suppose you could say that she is my employer, but she is far too generous to be an ordinary employer.”
“She appears to be very fond of you,” he said. His eyes dropped to the emerald bracelet sparkling on her wrist. “Perhaps she thinks of you in the light of a daughter.”
Rose looked worried. Her eyes, too, dropped to the emerald bracelet, and she realized how it helped to camouflage the truth about her. That she was an impecunious nobody, and had no right at all to be dressed up like this, in spite of her expensive education, and the advantages it had equipped her with. And suddenly she decided to tell him the truth, not mentioning Sir Laurence by name, but giving him plainly to understand that, such as she was, she was the product of acts of generosity on the part first of a guardian who had had no need to be her guardian, and then Mrs. Wilson-Plunkett, who was more or less actuated by a whim.
“This dress,” she said, touching the expensive, specially designed ice-blue gown, “cost more than I could reasonably expect to earn in a good many weeks. And the rest of my wardrobe cost a great deal more. Sometimes it worries me.”
“Poor little Rose!” he exclaimed softly, and she turned towards him as if she was suddenly startled, for the only man who had ever called her “Poor little Rose” in quite that tone was Sir Laurence, and somehow the utterance disturbed her. “Poor little Rose,” the Prince repeated. Why have you told me all this?”
Rose looked down at the bracelet again and resented its sparkling green fire.
“Because I thought you ought to know. Because I—because I was afraid I might be creating the wrong kind of impression.”
“So far as I am concerned,” he told her, and his voice was more gentle even than a caress, “the impression you have already created is not likely to be affected by any revelations you care to make to me about yourself. It is—an ineradicable impression!” He paused for a moment, looking at her in the dim light. “But if you’re thinking of my nephew Camillo—well, I do not think that your very private affairs are any concern of his, and it is possible that your Mrs. Wilson-Plunkett would prefer that the world should draw its own conclusions about the two of you, and the relationship in which you stand to one another. Don’t you agree with me?”
“You mean,” Rose said a little falteringly, “that I really hadn’t any right to tell—even you . . .?”
“Not at all,” he returned in that gentle voice of his. “And as a matter of fact there was no need to tell me. Mrs. Wilson-Plunkett has already told me quite a lot ab
out you,” smiling at her and lightly
patting one of her hands.
Rose’s delicate brows crinkled.
“But why should she bother to talk to you about—me?”
“Why should she not talk about you?” His eyes appraised her, twinkling a little as if something about her amused him. “You are too modest, Rose, and not nearly as shrewd as your Mrs. Wilson-Plunkett. And, of course, she wouldn’t have discussed you with me if she hadn’t gathered that I was—interested!”
Rose’s eyes grew large and a trifle wondering as she gazed at him, but his expression did not alter, and suddenly he suggested that they ought to return to the others.
“I mustn’t be selfish and keep you here,” he said. “But”—and again his hand touched hers— “whatever your present background, Rose, there is a great deal of security waiting for you if—and whenever!—you feel inclined to seize hold of it! Perhaps you will think about that sometimes!”
And Rose returned to the house full of lights and music with the bewildered conviction taking root in her mind that what he intended to convey was not what her slightly stunned feminine intuition was more or less certain he intended to convey.
When they returned to the house almost the first two people she saw dancing together were Signora Bardoli and Sir Laurence Melville. Sir Laurence, looking at his best in white tie and tails, would have been easily recognizable to her at a far greater distance than that which separated them, and Signora Bardoli was wearing a brilliant scarlet confection that would have made it impossible for her to be passed over by anyone.
The music was just ending when they entered, and Sir Laurence and his partner moved towards Rose as the Prince bent almost tenderly over her hand and told her that he was just about to take his departure.
“But I shall see you again—soon, I hope,” he said, and looked for a moment with definite meaning into her eyes. Then he disappeared as Sir Laurence reached the side of his erstwhile ward.
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