“Your brother is interested in pictures?”
Aria remembered that this was on dangerous ground.
“Yes,” she said briefly. “But I came to tell you – ”
“That can wait for the moment,” Dart Huron said. “Come and look at this picture.”
He led the way across the room to where another picture hung between two windows. It was the portrait of a girl by an unknown artist and had obviously been painted at some time in the eighteenth century. It was not such a finished picture as the one over the mantelpiece, but it had a charm of its own.
“I like that, too,” Dart Huron said.
“So do I,” Aria agreed. “But she looks frightened.”
“Perhaps that is why I like it.”
Aria looked at him in surprise.
“Does that sound brutal?” he enquired. “If people are frightened of one, they are not likely to become too possessive or familiar.”
Aria did not know what to say to this, so she was silent.
Then, in an entirely different tone, as if his mood had changed in an instant, Dart Huron said,
“You were looking for me?”
“Yes. Miss Carlo wants to speak to you.”
“Where is she?”
“In her bedroom,” Aria answered.
“I am busy right now,” Dart Huron said. “Tell Miss Carlo I shall see her at luncheon or before if she comes down.”
“I-I think it’s urgent,” Aria answered.
She knew by the sudden tightening of his lips, the squareness of his jaw, that her remark did not please him. He did not answer it, but after a moment said,
“Are you comfortable, Miss Milbank? Have you found everything you want? I have instructed the servants to take all their orders from you.”
“I hope that I shall be able to manage the household to your satisfaction,” Aria replied formally.
“I hope so too,” he answered gravely. “You are younger than I thought. Younger than you appeared when we met at Claridges. Do you think that it will be too much for you?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Aria answered. “It is a little difficult to get into things right away.”
“Good!”
He picked up a letter from his writing desk.
“Will you translate this for me?”
It was a business letter written in Spanish and with only two very short hesitations Aria read it through. Only as she finished did she realise that it was a test to see if she was capable of understanding it.
“Where did you learn to speak so well?” he asked, as she handed him back the letter.
“I have been to Spain and South America,” Aria replied. “I was not very old when I visited Buenos Aires, but I had a Spanish Nanny that winter and that, of course, helped my language a great deal.”
“Yes, of course it would,” Dart Huron said. “But most girls do not have such advantages – at least that’s what I have always understood, although I don’t know much about English girls. Tell me about your family.”
That was the last thing that Aria wanted to do and her voice was as cold as it could be as she replied,
“I have a lot to do, Mr. Huron. There are several piles of letters upstairs for you to see when you have the time.”
“So you think I am being curious or impertinent,” he said. “Well, perhaps you are right. It’s your own business.”
Aria inclined her head.
“Shall I fetch the letters, Mr. Huron?”
“Yes, yes! Fetch them if you must. I hope when you have been here a short time, Miss Milbank, you will be able to answer them yourself.”
Aria turned towards the door. She had the feeling that he was watching her go. Because she wished to appear dignified, she walked a little slower than she would have done had she followed her own inclination.
Outside in the hall she lightly ran across the marble floor and up the wide staircase.
At the top of the landing she hesitated, remembering that she must first give a message to Lulu Carlo before she went to her own room to fetch Dart Huron’s correspondence.
She knocked at the door.
A voice that was all honey and sweetness answered,
“Come in.”
Aria did as she was told. Lulu Carlo was lying back against her pillows, her fair hair freshly combed and floating over her shoulders. She was looking very lovely.
“I found Mr. Huron – ” Aria began, only to be interrupted by a voice that was sharp and angry.
“Well, why hasn’t he come? Did you tell him I want to see him?”
“I gave him your message. He replied that he would see you at luncheon or before if you were down.”
“He is showing off in front of all these damned snobs he has staying here!” Lulu Carlo exclaimed. “Afraid of what they will think if they see him coming into my bedroom. Well, I could tell them a thing or two if I wished to.”
Aria looked at her and wondered if Dart Huron had ever seen or heard her talking like this. If he had, surely the vulgarity and commonness must have disgusted him, despite the loveliness of her face, which remained unchanged despite the harsh stridency of her voice.
“Will that be all, Miss Carlo?” she asked.
“Oh, I suppose so,” Lulu Carlo answered petulantly and then, as Aria turned to go, she added, “You know that I am going to marry Mr. Huron, don’t you, Miss Milbank?”
“No, I did not know it,” Aria replied. “May I offer my congratulations to you both?”
“It’s a secret, of course,” Lulu Carlo said lightly. “We are not telling anyone yet. It naturally doesn’t matter you knowing. A confidential secretary should always know everything, shouldn’t she?”
“I don’t know about that,” Aria replied. “But it is nice of you to tell me.”
She spoke with deliberate politeness, determined that this unpleasant woman should not be able to accuse her of bad manners.
“Mr. Huron’s a difficult man,” Lulu Carlo went on. “Very difficult! As his friends will tell you and as you will soon find out. But I love him. I love him very much indeed and we are going to be very happy together.”
There was a ring in her voice when she spoke of her love that told Aria that she was, indeed, telling the truth. And there was a look on her face that confirmed this.
Quite suddenly Aria was sorry for her. This spoiled and pampered film star, who was the envy of half the cinema-going world, was in love and, unless she was mistaken, Aria thought, Dart Huron was not very much in love with her.
“Did you see my last film?” Lulu Carlo asked suddenly.
Aria shook her head.
“I have seen only one of your pictures. I haven’t been able to go to London very often or even to the cinema in Hertford, which is near my home.”
“I wish you had seen it,” Lulu said. “I wore a really lovely wedding dress in it, all tulle and diamante. I thought of having something very much the same for my own wedding.”
She was longing to talk, Aria could see that. She was wanting to confide in someone her dreams and her fantasies about her wedding, which might never come off.
“I wish I had seen it,” Aria agreed. “But I have to go now. Mr. Huron is waiting for me. I have loads of letters to ask him about.”
“So he has time for you, has he?” Lulu said, her voice sharpening again. “Oh, well, I had better get up. Tell him if Mohammed won’t come to the mountain, the mountain must come to him.”
She threw back the bedclothes as Aria went from the room, hurrying along the passage to her sitting room to collect the pile of letters she had left on her desk.
There was no time to think about Lulu Carlo now, with her curious mixture of intense rudeness and almost pathetic confidences. At the same time Aria realised that she did not dislike her as much as she had done the night before.
Dart Huron was waiting in the study, seated at a big leather-topped desk, when Aria re-entered the room.
“Two replies have just come to the cables
you sent last night,” he began. “They are both unsatisfactory, you will have to cable them again.”
“Very well,” Aria said. “What shall I say?”
He dictated the cables rapidly and then turned over the pile of letters she had set down beside him. He told her to accept one or two of the invitations and to refuse the others. Then he looked at the amount of requests from charities, whose Chairmen, mostly distinguished people with titles, wrote asking for a donation.
“You can refuse all those,” he said.
“You are not going to send any of them anything?” Aria asked. “Some of the requests are from personal friends.”
“I have my own charities in America,” he answered. “Do you suppose these people would worry about me if I wasn’t rich? All they want of me is money and in my opinion the money I spend on those less fortunate than myself should be spent in the country it comes from.”
“I-I think you are right there,” Aria said. “I will answer them as kindly as I can.”
He pushed the letters on one side.
“No! Don’t do that,” he said. “Send them each twenty pounds.”
“All of them?”
“Yes! All of them,” he answered. “It won’t hurt me and it will please them.”
“That is very generous of you,” Aria smiled.
“Generous!”
He gave a bitter laugh.
“Well, I suppose I get something out of it. The adulation of people who are always trying to extract something out of me and a niche in the social life of England. Money can buy all those things, you know. It can even buy friendship – and love.”
“It depends what sort of love,” Aria said quietly.
“Any sort of love,” he said firmly. “Shall I tell you something it cannot buy?”
He rose to his feet as he spoke and walked across to the mantelpiece to stand looking up at the Lawrence picture.
“That’s what it cannot buy!” he said.
“But – I don’t understand,” Aria said, wrinkling her brow. “Do you mean that particular picture is not for sale?”
Dart Huron shook his head.
“No! I mean ancestors – family portraits handed down from generation to generation. This picture is of a former Duke of Melchester, and until Nognossos came here, spreading his money all over the place and ruining the atmosphere of centuries, the Duke’s great-great-grandson sat in this room and looked at the portrait, even as I am doing.
“That is something that money cannot buy. Treasures handed down the centuries, treasures that belong to you, personally and not just to any collector who has the money.”
There was so much intensity in his voice that Aria listened surprised.
Then suddenly, as if he thought he had said too much, Dart Huron said sharply,
“That will be all. Miss Milbank! Please get those cables off immediately.”
Aria picked up her notebook and the pile of letters. She wanted to say something and yet she could not think what. And so in silence, conscious that Dart Huron’s eyes were watching her, she went from the room.
She had so much to think about that she wanted to be alone, but when she reached her own sitting room it was to find McDougall was waiting for her with a list of household requirements and no sooner was he gone than the telephone started to ring.
Nearly half an hour later Aria turned with a sigh to the letters, and then, before she could even begin them, Lord Buckleigh was once more in the room.
He came in, threw his riding crop and gloves down on the sofa, and said accusingly,
“You have spoiled my ride for me. I kept seeing your green eyes looking at me. Have you missed me?”
“Not in the least,” Aria replied severely. “You must go away at once. I have too much to do to talk to you.”
“You are being unkind, you know. I thought about you all the time I was riding. And I am in love with you! There’s no mistaking the symptoms.”
“Then you will just have to get over it,” Aria said.
“You are heartless and unkind. I shouldn’t have thought it of you.”
Despite her resolution to be severe, Aria could not help smiling.
“You are being ridiculous,” she asserted. “Do go and find someone else to talk to – Miss Carlo for instance.”
“You know I can’t help feeling that it was Fate that brought you here,” Lord Buckleigh said, paying no attention to Aria’s suggestion. “I was only thinking two days ago how most people bore me and I was rather dreading the house party this weekend and then suddenly you appeared.”
“Like a new cabaret turn,” Aria suggested. “You will soon be bored with me too and I am certainly going to be bored with you if you don’t let me get on with my work.”
“I love you!” Lord Buckleigh sighed. “Remind me to tell you about it some time.”
“I’ll make a note of it,” Aria answered. “But one thing is quite certain, I shall get the sack very shortly if you don’t let me do any work.”
Lord Buckleigh moved to her side and before she could realise what he was about had put his hand under her chin, tipped back her head and kissed her gently.
“You are adorable!” he whispered against her lips.
“How – dare you?” Aria managed to stammer.
She wanted to say more, to berate him for daring to touch her, for insulting her by that easy lightly given kiss. It was too late. He had gone from the room as swiftly as he came into it, leaving behind an impression of ephemeral charm and of a grey elusive personality that it was almost impossible to take to task.
He had left as well the feeling of his lips on hers and Aria found herself touching her mouth with her fingertips as if something had happened which must have left an imprint there.
And then with a little smile and shrug of her shoulders she told herself that she must not take this seriously. Lord Buckleigh meant nothing by his philandering.
It was just a passing flirtation, the sort that her father had indulged in so often and which had meant nothing more momentous than that the woman had attracted his ever-changing fancy and that he had an urge to pay tribute to beauty wherever he found it.
“I had forgotten such a world existed,” Aria said aloud, thinking of how at Queen’s Folly she would have been, at this moment, preparing the lunch or perhaps sweeping and dusting the picture gallery in readiness for the afternoon visitors.
She tried to concentrate on the letters, but Lord Buckleigh’s gay impudent face kept coming between her and the neatly typed pages. It was with almost a sense of relief that Aria heard the gong booming out from the hall and hurried down the stairs.
Someone was following her and she looked back to see the stiff, rather formal countenance of an Ambassador’s wife who had arrived late the night before.
“What a nice day, Miss Milbank,” she said politely.
“Yes, isn’t it, Your Excellency,” Aria answered.
She waited for the Ambassadress to catch her up and then, as they descended the stairs together, the older woman said in a low voice,
“I have just had some newspapers from America in my mail. They seem to think that our host will be announcing his engagement at any moment.”
“To Miss Carlo?” Aria asked.
“That’s right!” the Ambassadress said and then added, “Mr. Huron’s a charming man. As I said to my husband last night, it’s a pity if we lose him to the Hollywood set.”
“I don’t think you will do that,” Aria said reassuringly.
“Oh, I hope you are right,” the Ambassadress replied. “But somehow the fact of her being here makes me think that all this rumour and gossip must have some foundation in it.”
“They have to talk about something,” Aria suggested consolingly.
As she spoke, they entered the drawing room. At the far end of it Dart Huron and Lulu Carlo were standing together. Her hand was on his arm, her lovely face was turned up to his, her head thrown back to show the arch of her white throat and the e
xquisite curves of her small breasts.
He was looking down at her and they were not speaking, they were just standing staring into each other’s eyes. Aria thought that, after all, Lord Buckleigh had been wrong – Dart Huron intended to marry Lulu.
There was no disguising the look of triumph on her face as they moved apart and Dart Huron came forward to greet the Ambassadress. Other people came into the drawing room from the terrace and soon the party of twelve was collected and they moved towards the dining room.
It was then, under cover of the noise and the chatter, that Lulu Carlo caught hold of Aria’s arm and drew her a little away from the others.
“Listen,” she said in a low voice. “I want you to do something for me. I want the names and telephone numbers of all the main newspapers. Don’t say anything about it to anyone, but bring me the list to my bedroom after lunch. Do you understand?”
“Yes, I understand,” Aria nodded.
“And keep quiet about it!”
Lulu slipped into the throng towards the dining room and a moment later her voice, loud and gay, was answering some quip of Lord Buckleigh’s. But Aria, coming along behind, silent and preoccupied with her thoughts, was wondering what this meant.
Why did Lulu want the names and numbers of the newspapers? For what purpose?
Chapter 6
There was a Royal Princess at luncheon and half-a-dozen extra visitors, all distinguished either for their social attributes or because they were gay and witty enough to adorn any gathering.
Aria found, with a sense of relief, that she was not expected to contribute much to the conversation. The two young men on either side of her vied with each other in capping each other’s epigrams and inciting argument by making the most exaggerated and sometimes outrageous statements about their friends.
The tempo rose after the first course until, by the time they reached the cheese and coffee, everyone was talking vivaciously and Aria had little to do except listen.
She had had an exhausting morning. There not only had been an unusual amount of mail from overseas, but the Head Housemaid had had a row with one of her underlings and both had come to Aria to give in their notice and it had taken all her tact and charm to smooth them down and to persuade them to be friends again.
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