The question shook her a little, because a certain coolness had crept into his voice; a hint of displeasure, a return to formality. He had already guessed that last night, when she should have been sitting at his dining-table, she had been enjoying one of the most romantic joys Venice could offer.
‘Yes,’ she admitted. ‘I—I thought it a charming experience.’
‘For Lonza it must have been even more charming,’ drawled Maxim. ‘Did he take advantage of the occasion to quote Musset?’
‘Why should he do so?’ Maxim’s change of mood from charming host to sardonic inquisitor was disquieting; it made Lauri wonder if he had meant all along to chasten her for not putting herself on show last night for his friend the Contessa.
According to Musset, a man and a woman have not explored all the mysteries of love until they have been alone together in a gondola.’ Maxim made a steeple of his fingers, and the falcon-crest on his ring caught the lamplight and shimmered ... as though with the lightning that the falcon held.
‘Do you imagine that I’m exploring the mysteries of love with Michael?’ Lauri exclaimed. ‘Do you think that’s all a girl thinks about when she goes out with a man?’
‘No,’ he shook his head very’ deliberately, ‘I don’t imagine it is all you think about, Miss Garner, but as I have pointed out to you before, Lonza is probably one of the most attractive dancers of this day and age. He has personality—and persistence, and you are a very young English girl whom I am responsible for.’
‘I’m almost eighteen, signor,’ she said with dignity, ‘and I can assure you that I know how to take care of myself. I don’t need a guardian—’
‘All the same you have got one.’ He leant forward and she was caught by his gaze like a pin drawn to steel. He studied her with a kind of ruthless deliberation. ‘Innocence has little to do with age, child. It is a state of heart and spirit, a quality to be guarded by a detached friend until he feels you are ready for a deeper, more important relationship.’
‘You mean I must await your permission to fall in love?’ She was all eyes and indignation in that moment. ‘It really is true, isn’t it? You really do expect a dancer to be your bondmaid. To bow to your commands, to dance at your direction only, to let you mould her as Pygmalion moulded his perfect woman. Only you want a perfect dancer—another Travilla!’
He didn’t confirm or deny what she said. He merely rose from the sofa and went over to the sideboard, where he plugged in an electric coffee-percolator. The force of his silence weighed on Lauri, and she shrank down among the cushions of the sofa as though she wanted to hide herself from the wrath which she felt sure was brewing with the coffee.
‘You flatter yourself, Miss Garner,’ a spoon tinkled in a saucer, ‘if you imagine that I see you as another Travilla. Is it possible that you imagine such a thing?’
‘You know I don’t.’ She caught at a cushion and cuddled it against her like a shield. ‘I even doubt my ability to perform on a stage as a member of your corps de ballet.’
‘I share your doubts,’ he said with cruel frankness. ‘Will you take black or white coffee?’
‘Black—please.’
The aroma of the coffee filled the room as he poured it out, and he was beside her with the little filigree cups before she could set aside the cushion she was holding. He looked down at her with glints of speculation in his eyes. ‘I wonder what you would do if I suggested that you understudy Andreya in the role of Giselle,’ he murmured.
‘You’re joking, of course, signor.’ But was he? Her eyes searched his face, and she didn’t know how pleading her eyes were. You have just said that you doubt my abilities.’
‘Not your abilities—and do take your coffee before I spill some of it over that attractive dress.’
She took the cup and saucer, and eyed him warily. He didn’t sit down beside her, as before, but went and settled himself in a big wing-backed chair facing her. He stirred his coffee, and Lauri was conscious of his lean and powerful grace of body, his air of being in command of every situation.
‘There is much to be learned from a role like Giselle, and you need not fear that you will be called upon to dance it.’ His eyes mocked her across the rim of his black and gold coffee cup. ‘Andreya is rarely ill, but it may help you to gain confidence to learn so varied a role.’
‘What will Andreya say?’ The words broke from Lauri. ‘She doesn’t like me very much—’
‘Which will make it all the more unlikely of her to fall victim to a mishap that would mean putting you in her place.’ His smile had a diablerie about it. ‘Andreya is your assurance, child, that you will not be called upon to dance Giselle at a moment’s notice.
The very idea sent a cold shiver through Lauri, which she assuaged with the dark Italian coffee. ‘I should let you down, and you would be furious,’ she said tensely. ‘Your aim is perfection, and the only dancers who give it are those who love nothing else, or those who are inspired by a man they love.’
‘And you fall into neither category, is that it, Miss Garner?’ He took a cigar from his case and clipped the end deliberately and evenly. He lit up and the aromatic smoke drifted over towards Lauri. ‘Must I assume that I waste my time and knowledge on a girl who would sooner be a secretary, let us say, than a dancer?’
‘A need for security is no joke.’ Her voice shook a little for when he narrowed his eyes and held that cigar clamped between his teeth he looked rather dangerous. ‘I—I have no sense of security when I dance, signor. I try to overcome the shadow that always seems to dance at my heels, but sometimes it’s more than a shadow. It grabs at my ankles and I go stiff, or I stumble. You’ve seen it happen!’
‘Yes,’ his eyes pierced her through the smoke of his cigar, ‘and I think it is self-induced, a possible means of escape from dancing into the more ordinary life which you feel will give you security.’
‘I don’t make it happen,’ her nostrils flared with shock at the idea. ‘How can you say that?’
‘Our deeper emotions have more control over our actions that we realize, signorina. Our pains, and our pleasures, have long memories. No matter how far we run from pain, it pursues us. No matter how we long for what would please us, it eludes. It is only when we stand firm and face our furies that we conquer them.’ He smiled, with that quick charm that conquered. JI promised to show you some things of Travilla’s which I keep from love, and for luck. Would you like to see them?’
‘Very much, signor.’
‘I will fetch them. Please excuse me for one moment.’ He strode from the room, and Lauri sank back against the cushions of the sofa with closed eyes. Maxim Falcone di Corte was a formidable man to argue with; he left one defenceless, and curiously weak. She let the momentary peace of the room seep into her, and wondered if he was as merciless when it came to love.
He returned, cigar in mouth, carrying a small carved chest with painted panels. He set it down on the sofa and Lauri saw how delightful the panels were. Zeus being bound by the Olympians. Clotho spinning the threads of life. Poseidon, the sea-god, racing over the waves in his chariot, Greca with her unicorn.
Maxim touched the little twisted horn of the unicorn and the lid of the chest sprang open. Lauri caught her breath, her legs curled beneath her as he showed her his treasured mementos. A black lace domino that Travilla had worn at a masked ball, which he held for a moment against Lauri’s face. A scarlet fan that had fluttered in a small hand. Amber beads with a little cross attached. A pair of satin dancing slippers with little scarlet heels.
‘Try them on,’ Maxim said, and the next moment he knelt down on the carpet, took Lauri’s right foot in his hand and replaced her shoe with one of Travilla’s. ‘Now the other,’ he coaxed.
She let him have his way, feeling the light brush of his fingers and their firmer grip as he drew her to her feet. ‘Do they fit?’ he asked. ‘Try a few steps in them.’
As though under his spell she took a few steps in the shoes, then she turned to face him, her dr
ess of rowan red throwing into relief her slender neck, her wing of dark hair, the fine unpowdered texture of her skin, and the dusky gold of her eyes.
‘You look as though Dante created you for his poem.’ Maxim studied her with a remote kind of interest. ‘How does it feel to stand in Travilla’s shoes?’
Lauri felt the quick beat of her pulse at his words. ‘A little alarming, she said, and escaped from his eyes by bending to remove the shoes. She brought them to him and was glad when he put them away without any further comment.
‘You must see this, signorina.’ He unveiled carefully a jewelled goblet with a silver lid. This is a marriage goblet of the sixteenth century, that it is lidded makes it a symbol of the human heart. Do you wish to hold it?’ She nodded and took it gently into her hands. It was very lovely and she saw at once the Latin inscription carved upon the lid. ‘What do the words mean, signor?’ she asked.
He bent his dark head and she breathed the smoke of his cigar as he traced the lettering with his fingertip.
‘ “Flee what is sweet, if it can turn to bitterness”,’ he translated. ‘It no doubt implies that two people should take care that what they feel is true love; the other kind can turn bitter, and marriage in Italy is for life.’
For life, she thought. How sweet, how secure, if indeed the sweetness grew out of true love.
Maxim shrouded the marriage goblet in its veil once more, to lie in hiding until the time came for him and his bride to drink from it their pledge to love each other ... for life.
He closed the lid of the chest and the action had a finality about it. Lauri slipped her feet into her shoes, and then gave a little shiver as she felt his fingers close over her shoulder. She glanced up at him and he was closer than she realized, her red velvet clinging against his grey suiting. She would have drawn away, but he took her squarely by the shoulders and held her in front of him.
‘Tomorrow we begin work together on Giselle,’ he said. ‘We will be working alone, so there will be no need to tell anyone that I am teaching you the role.’
By ‘anyone’ he meant Andreya. For Andreya’s sake he wished to be secretive, and for her own sake Lauri was glad to fall in with the suggestion.
‘Chi lace consents?’ he murmured.
‘Of course I consent, signor.’
‘Buono.’ His smile etched lines beside his dark eyes. ‘You begin to understand a little Italian. Soon you must begin to speak it. It is convenient for a dancer to have several languages at her command, for the world is wide and the di Corte Company travels far.’
‘You expect me to stay with the di Corte Company, signor? What if I stumble on the stage of the Fenice when we begin the new season?’
‘I forbid you to even think about it.’ His fingers tightened warningly, sending little currents through the bones of her shoulders. There was a smouldering way back in his eyes, like the shadow of flame in the depths of a forge. ‘Tonight you stood in Travilla’s shoes ... remember it and don’t let her down.’
He let her go, and added crisply that he would escort—her to the foot of the tower steps. ‘But first,’ he bent to their supper table and took from the edge of the silver plate the little wishbone from the chicken they had shared, ‘we must break this and see who will get the wish.’
They each hooked a little finger about the jointed bone, and though Lauri did not feel him pull on it, he held the wishing end when the bone broke in two.
She smiled, and wondered what sort of wish a man like Maxim di Corte made. Success for the new season that commenced in six weeks’ time?
Six weeks ... they would pass all too soon, and for the first time Lauri would dance in front of a theatre audience. Perhaps when the night drew near for that debut at the Fenice, the lovely old Venetian theatre on the water, Aunt Pat might manage to come to Venice to lend her support to the occasion.
‘You wear a little smile as though you also have made a wish.’ Maxim glanced at her as they arrived at the foot of the tower steps, where a lamp in a wall niche cast subtle shadows over his face and intensified his look of another century.
‘Girls are always wishing for things.’ Lauri met his eyes that could be kind but were more often keen; deep-set eyes that concealed far more than they revealed. ‘Thank you for giving me supper in your tower, signor. I enjoyed the experience.’
‘It was pleasant for me to have your company, signorina,’ he said formally. ‘Now hurry indoors to your bed. Buona notte.’
‘Buona notte, signor.’
She entered the palazzo by a door leading from the tower, and as she crossed to the stairs the hall clock began to strike. She counted the strokes made by the bronze figure on top of the clock, and was halfway to the gallery when she experienced again that chilly feeling that she was being watched.’ It made her quicken her footsteps, and once inside her room she stood with her back to the door in a defensive attitude. Her fingers felt for the key and turned it quickly ... but she couldn’t lock out of her mind the uneasy conviction that someone had stood in the half-dark of the hall, watching her enter the palazzo through Maxim di Corte’s private door.
CHAPTER SEVEN
MAXIM walked behind her, holding her arms, curving them and directing her. ‘Move from the hips.’ he commanded. ‘It is from the hips that a woman conveys her awareness of her femininity, and at this point in the ballet, remember, you are a carefree young girl in love. A peasant girl who knows that love is not coy but joyful. Bene. Good, now I will watch while you dance your thoughts of your young man—whom you think of as a peasant. You do not yet know that he is a prince in disguise.’
He went and seated himself in the big window recess of their practice room, which was at the rear of the palazzo. It overlooked the walled garden, and was secluded and spacious, with an angle at the far end.
Now that Lauri was under his direct observation she grew nervous and a quiver spoiled the line of her port de bras the all-important supple line from shoulders to fingertips.
‘You are nervous,’ he thundered. ‘Of course you are, for nerves are part of a dancer’s equipment. Accept them, child, as you accept your hair, your eyes and the little mole on your temple ... and then forget them.’
‘It’s easy enough for you to talk’, she retorted, her head bent as she rubbed her dancing slippers in the rosin box. ‘You have no nerves.’
‘Which is just as well when I am dealing with you.’ His smile was narrow and dangerous. ‘You might really do better to take up typing, though I believe your hands would be just as clumsy as your feet.’
‘Thank you,’ she said, and fired by his sarcasm she performed a twinkling chain of petite batterie.
‘Must I always be angry with you to make you dance?’ He laughed mockingly. ‘Now go to the far end of the room, which we will regard as the wings of a stage, and begin to dance for me—I am still in a rage, remember—your love for Loys, whom you think of as your peasant sweetheart.’
Lauri stood there in that angle of the room that hid her from him, and let herself think swiftly of Giselle, the girl who was ready to die for love if she couldn’t live for it. She had always loved the ballet, but she couldn’t have told anyone how much it was taking hold of her since Maxim had started to take her, morning by morning, through its many movements and moods.
She closed her eyes, then ran forward as though out of the door of Giselle’s tiny cottage. She gave a soft high spring and curved her arms as though to embrace the thought of her sweetheart, then she retreated backwards on the very points of her toes, alarmed in the face of love as girls are.
At the end of her solo, Maxim held out a hand to her and she went to him and gave him her hand. ‘Do you see how easy and natural it is when you forget yourself?’ he murmured. ‘
She nodded, and felt the fascination of his smile to the marrow of her bones.
‘You like Giselle, eh? You feel the poetry and power of the story? That must mean that you are a romantic, Miss Garner.’
‘I suppose I am,’ she adm
itted, ‘Aren’t most women?’
‘Yes, most women dream, but have to put reality first.’ He brushed a teasing kiss across her wrist, and even as she stood tingling from the shock, added crisply: ‘Tomorrow I take you to hear the choir of San Marco, one of the most glorious in Italy. A dancer should have an affinity with great music, and I am curious to see your reaction to the choir. You have not yet been to hear it?’
She shook her head. ‘I had heard about it, of course.’
‘I think that romantic heart of yours will be moved by it.’ He rose lazily to his feet and turned his gaze upon the walled garden, where a bird was perched on the head of a broken-nosed statue, ‘After our visit to San Marco, I am taking you to lunch at the Villa Nora with the Contessa Riffini. She was a great friend of Travilla’s and will tell you all about the Italian ballets of some years ago. They were colourful pageants rather than the consecutive stories we tell today.’
It was all arranged, Lauri realized. If she had made a previous arrangement, then it would have to be set on one side.
He turned abruptly to face her, as though he sensed what was going through her mind. ‘I am sure you realize that you are here in Venice not on vacation but to work,’ he said crisply. ‘No doubt you have made plans for tomorrow, but Lonza will have to be let down as I was let down the other evening.’
‘Of course, signor.’ She winced from the cutting edge to his voice. ‘I do realize that work comes before—pleasure.’
He took that one with a thin, dangerous smile, and Lauri was relieved when he glanced at his wristwatch and said it was time she joined the others for the coffee break.
She was at the door when it opened with a suddenness that made her leap backwards. Hands caught at her arms and she was held against the hardness of Maxim’s chest as Andreya came sweeping into the practice room.
Tension leapt like a flame as the ballerina stared at Lauri who couldn’t move a muscle of her body in her black leotard. Her heart thudded. She took like a shield the arrows that leapt from Andreya’s eyes.
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