“I have told you already. There is no point in listening to her,” Lulu cried. “She hates me and, if you ask my opinion, she has done this merely to spite me. She wanted you to see what my grandmother was like, to pretend that she was neglected, to try and persuade you that I hadn’t beggared myself all these years to send her money that I could often ill afford.”
There was almost a sob in Lulu’s voice now and she held out her hand towards Dart Huron as if seeking strength as well as sympathy from him. He took her hand almost automatically in his, but he turned to Aria.
“You were not satisfied, I gather, with the conditions in which you found Mrs. Hawkins,” he said.
“They were deplorable,” Aria replied quietly. “She had no comforts of any sort – she was on the third floor and she could not go downstairs because she had grown too old to climb them again. She was dependent entirely on the kindness of other residents in the building and with my own ears I heard the landlady inform her that she would no longer carry up her food. She was being bullied and shouted at. Old people cannot stand that sort of thing.”
“I don’t believe one word of it,” Lulu exclaimed loudly.
“I see no reason to doubt Miss Milbank,” Dart Huron retorted.
Lulu snatched her hand from his.
“That’s exactly what I expected,” she said. “You prefer to believe her rather than me. She’s trying to show me up in a bad light and to come between us. Why should I let her behave like this?”
“I don’t think Miss Milbank is doing any of the things you suggest,” Dart Huron said patiently. “She thought your grandmother was uncomfortable and unhappy and she took, perhaps we might say, rather a lot upon herself in bringing her here. But in a way it was understandable.
“At least we can be sure that your grandmother died happy and for the purpose of the inquest, at any rate, I suggest that you forget anything but your feeling of relief that you were able to see her before she died.”
“An inquest!” Lulu’s voice almost rose to a shriek.
“I am afraid one will be necessary,” Dart Huron said. “The doctor will give a death certificate, I imagine, of heart failure. But, nevertheless, your grandmother died alone and without medical attention and an inquest is, I am afraid, inevitable.”
“I won’t have it!” Lulu Carlo cried. “I won’t! Do you understand? Think of my publicity – my career! Everybody believes that my grandmother was Scandinavian.”
“I am afraid there is nothing we can do but tell the truth,” Dart Huron said.
Lulu looked at him with her eyes ablaze and then turned towards Aria.
“This is your doing, damn you!” she cried and, raising her hand, slapped Aria hard across her face.
The sound seemed to re-echo round the room like a pistol shot and immediately after it the three people standing there seemed turned to stone.
Then, very slowly, Aria raised her hand to where the red imprint of Lulu’s fingers had begun to burn their way across her cheek.
She was about to speak and Dart Huron had ejaculated one word, “Lulu!”, when the suave voice of McDougall from the doorway announced,
“The gentlemen from the Press to see you, sir!”
Dart Huron looked up in surprise. Aria, stunned as she was by the blow from Lulu’s hand and angry with a kind of almost smouldering fury which seemed to be seeping like a crimson tide through her blood, could not help but notice the strangeness of the expression on Lulu’s face.
Six men were ushered into the room. Three of them carried cameras, the others were quite obviously reporters. They came forward until they reached the group of three people standing in front of the fireplace and then the eldest amongst them appeared to take the initiative.
“Good morning, Mr. Huron!”
“I am surprised to see you, gentlemen,” Dart Huron replied. “You certainly wasted no time in getting here, although I cannot quite understand how the information could have reached you even before the arrival of the doctor.”
“The doctor!”
The press men looked puzzled and two of them looked at each other obviously in bewilderment. One of the photographers was smiling at Lulu Carlo, his fingers already busy with his camera, whilst, almost instinctively it seemed to Aria, Lulu was standing in an extremely photogenic position.
The press man’s question, however, seemed to check Dart Huron in what he was about to say.
“One moment,” he said. “Perhaps we have this wrong. Would you like to tell me why you have come here? I’ve met some of you before, of course. You, I think, are from The Daily Express?” he said, speaking to the elderly man.
“That’s right,” was the reply. “And my colleagues are from The Daily Mail and The Sketch. I daresay another bunch will soon be waiting for you outside. We rather hoped that we should be first in the field.”
“What field and for what reason?” Dart Huron asked.
“Now come, Mr. Huron. You know the answer to that,” the man from The Daily Express said. “We have been expecting this for some time, of course but, when we were told the announcement was to be made some time this week, we had to come and see you in person.”
“I’m glad you did,” Dart Huron smiled. “But I shall be interested to know what announcement you’re talking about.”
He turned his head a little after he had asked the question and glanced down at Lulu. There was something almost too innocent and too blank in the expression of her face, the wide wonderment in her eyes was an expression that her fans knew only too well. It was what her less admiring critics called her ‘Orphan Annie look’.
“A mixture of idiocy and dumb-wittedness which sometimes passes for innocence,” someone had once said scathingly.
Dart Huron’s lips tightened, even as the reporter from The Daily Mail answered the question.
“The announcement of your engagement, Mr. Huron.”
Lulu gave a little cry.
“Oh, Dart! They know about it and we did so hope to keep it a secret.”
She laid her hand, as she spoke, on his arm and at that moment there was a blinding flash of the cameraman’s bulb.
“Hold it, Miss Carlo!” called out one of the other photographers who had not been quite so quick off the mark, but Dart Huron had moved abruptly, spoiling the picture.
“I am afraid you are under a misapprehension if you think that an announcement of my engagement is to be made this week.”
“Oh, but, Dart,” Lulu interposed. “Surely you’re making a mistake? It’s really no use pretending any longer.”
Her voice was hardly a whisper, but it was, as she well knew, perfectly audible to everyone in the room.
It was then that Aria realised who was the instigator of all this. She knew now why Lulu wanted that list of newspapers with their telephone numbers that she had left in her bedroom yesterday morning.
It was Lulu who had engineered that the Press should come here and take Dart Huron by surprise and who was forcing him into accepting publicly what all the world supposed privately, that eventually he intended to marry her.
“Miss Carlo is right, Mr. Huron,” the man from The Sketch said. “We’ll get the truth sooner or later, so you might as well tell it us now and give us a break. Secret marriages are not only out of date, they are out of the question, at least as far as you’re concerned.”
He laughed at his own bon mot and the other Press men smiled good-humouredly.
“Very well,” Dart Huron said. “You shall have the truth, gentlemen, since you have asked for it. I am to be married, though I have no idea when the ceremony will take place. But I am going to marry, not, as you seem to imagine, Miss Lulu Carlo, who is only a very old and valued friend, but Miss Aria Milbank, whom I don’t think you gentlemen have met and to whom I shall now have the pleasure of introducing you.”
There was a startled gasp from Lulu, which sounded rather like the hissing of a snake.
There was an even more audible gasp from the reporters, who all tur
ned quickly towards Aria as if at the command of a Sergeant-Major.
For the moment she thought she must be dreaming, that she could not have heard Dart Huron’s words right. And then, as she saw the rage in his face and realised what he had done, the fury that had been smouldering within herself burst into flame.
“It is not – ” she began to say, only to find herself, suddenly and to her utter astonishment, caught up in Dart Huron’s arms.
“I’m sorry, gentlemen,” he said over her head, “but Miss Milbank is feeling faint. You must forgive me if I take her into another room for a breath of fresh air.”
Before Aria could say what trembled on her lips, before she could recover from her utter surprise at being lifted into his arms, he had walked away, kicked open the door of the breakfast room and left an astounded and, for the moment, speechless company behind him.
He pushed the door to with his back and then put Aria down on her feet.
“What do you think you are doing?” she began, only to find herself dragged by the arm across the room, through another door which led to a small panelled boudoir which was seldom, if ever, used.
Dart Huron closed the door behind him.
“Now you can talk,” he said. “We don’t want to be overheard.”
“Overheard!” Aria ejaculated. “I am going straight back – to tell those reporters it is not true. How dare you say you are engaged to me? If you imagine I am going to stand by – and let you tell them lies of that sort and say nothing in my own defence, you are much mistaken.”
She was so angry that it was difficult to articulate her words. Her eyes were flashing and her face was very pale with the exception of the burning mark where Lulu had struck her.
Dart Huron stood leaning against the mantelpiece watching her in what seemed to her an insolent fashion.
“You’re intolerable!” Aria stormed. “You think you can do what you like with people – but not with me! I know exactly why you’ve done this. To get out of an uncomfortable situation in which you find yourself, entirely through your own fault. Well, I’m not acting as your scapegoat. I am going back now and I shall tell the reporters the truth – and both you and Miss Carlo can do what you like about it!”
She walked towards the door and had almost reached it before Dart Huron spoke.
“Two thousand pounds!” he said.
It was such an unexpected remark that Aria could not but be arrested by it.
“What does – that mean?” she asked.
“That’s what I am prepared to give you,” he said.
“Do – do you think I want money for – this sort of – thing?” Aria enquired, stammering with rage.
“If you didn’t want money, you wouldn’t be working,” he replied. “Presumably, like everyone else, you work because you are in need of money. Two thousand pounds is quite a useful sum to be given free of tax.”
“I don’t want – to be bribed,” Aria retorted.
She had turned the handle of the door this time when Dart Huron spoke again.
“Three thousand pounds!” he said. “Even if you don’t want it, I imagine you have relatives who would be grateful of a little help.”
Almost despite herself Aria paused. Three thousand pounds! What a difference it would make to Charles and Queen’s Folly.
The roof could be mended, the beautiful painted ceiling in the Banqueting Hall, which had been damaged by a broken pipe, could be repaired, the window on the North front, which had been boarded up ever since the landmine had fallen in the Park, could have the glass put back into it.
And what would three thousand pounds mean to Charles where the farm was concerned. The new Fordson tractor that he had wanted for so long, the bullpen which was so dangerous that more than one herdsman had complained about it, fertiliser for the fields, new stock, the best seed.
She could see the lists now, which Charles was drawing up and then throwing into the wastepaper basket because he knew it was quite hopeless even to make a note of what was required.
Three thousand pounds! Almost despite herself, she took her hand quietly from the door handle.
“I thought you would see sense,” Dart Huron said. “Shall we talk this out in a reasonable manner?”
“I don’t – feel reasonable,” Aria replied. “I hate you for what you are doing and for what you are making me do. It is typical of you and your sort of people to believe that anyone has their price. But you are right – mine is three thousand pounds!”
She could not help the tears of humiliation coming into her eyes. Then, as she spoke, she felt the room go misty and begin to swim round her and suddenly Dart Huron’s hand was on her arm and she felt him help her to a chair.
“The whole morning so far has been unpleasantly emotional,” he said in a dry tone that made her feel that secretly he was laughing at her. “Sit down and I am going to fetch something to eat from the next room. I don’t suppose you’ve had any breakfast.”
“I don’t want any,” she murmured weakly.
“Oh yes, you do,” he contradicted. “Don’t forget you have already admitted that I know better than you do what you want.”
She felt another surge of anger that he should refer so lightly to what seemed to her something almost too shaming to be spoken of at all.
“I hate you!” she asserted.
But it sounded weak and ineffectual even to herself.
“You are merely hungry,” he smiled and, as he spoke, he disappeared into the next room.
Chapter 9
‘I must be mad to do this,’ Aria told herself a little while later, as Dart Huron, with an easily assumed solitude, led her out onto the terrace where the photographers were waiting to photograph them.
He had been interviewing them alone for some time and, having stuck to his story that she was not feeling well, had insisted, so he had told her, that she should only pose for one photograph and not be subjected to any questioning.
“I was very firm that we were not ready to answer questions,” he said. “I have told them that the engagement will be announced in due course and they will learn all they wish to know.”
When she had eaten the breakfast he brought her from the morning room and was sitting alone after he had left her to talk to the reporters, Aria wished over and over again that she had had the strength of mind to refuse to have anything to do with this ridiculous engagement and all it entailed.
And yet, dazzling her the whole time as if she saw the money actually lying in front of her, was the thought of three thousand pounds.
It was no use, she thought wearily, pretending one was above mercenary thoughts or financial considerations. It was all very well for people to talk of character being more important than cash when they had plenty of money and everything that was absolutely essential to normal living.
It was when one was struggling against debts and mortgages and the wear and tear of everyday economics that money seemed to absorb an almost gigantic proportion of one’s thoughts and yearnings.
If Charles failed to farm Queen’s Folly competently and had to give up the place, as the Solicitors advised him to do, she knew that it would not only break his heart but perhaps drive him off his mental balance. After his nervous breakdown the doctors had been very firm in saying that he was not to worry.
How little they understood, Aria thought bitterly. Charles worried incessantly at the thought of losing Queen’s Folly. The house and estate might have been a beloved woman to whom he had dedicated not only his heart and soul but his whole life.
Three thousand pounds would enable him to avoid those black patches of depression when everything seemed dark and he was overcome with despair and the hopelessness of ever achieving anything except bankruptcy.
Three thousand pounds would mean too that she could go home! That in itself was enough to make her feel that any lie, however much she might deprecate an untruth, was worthwhile.
She was smiling when Dart Huron came back into the room.
“I promised them one photograph,” he said. “Nothing more and no questions. Come along.”
Aria realised that she was to have no choice in the matter, so without comment she rose to her feet and followed him to where the reporters had congregated on the beautiful flagged terrace with its magnificent view overlooking the flat valley beneath the hill on which Summerhill was built.
“Would you like to take Mr. Huron’s arm, please, Miss Milbank?” one of the photographers asked. “And smile at each other.”
There was the click of half-a-dozen cameras. The number of reporters had grown since Aria last saw them. Then, as those with notebooks surged forward, Dart Huron took her arm and drew her back through the French window.
“That will be all for today, thank you, gentlemen,” he said. “I hope you will have a drink before you start your return journey to London.”
“We’ll drink your health,” someone said, as Dart Huron closed the window behind him and turned to look at Aria.
“That wasn’t too bad, was it?” he said. “I staved off the worst of the questions, but I’m afraid you will be headlined in the evening papers as a ‘mystery bride.’ It was only when I started to talk that I realised how little I know about you. I got over that, however, by saying we had not yet informed your family that we were engaged and that I could say nothing until the usual formalities had been effected.”
“My family!” Aria stared at him with wide eyes. “You mean they must – come into this?”
“But of course,” he answered, walking across to a table and taking a cigarette out of an onyx cigarette box. “And I must ask you not to tell them the truth. If even one person suspects that this engagement of ours is a blind, then rumour, whispering and gossip will start up immediately. Let it run for two weeks until I go back to America and then we can announce that it is broken off by mutual consent.”
He lit a cigarette, then, without looking at Aria, went on talking.
“I am afraid there will be a great deal of unwelcome publicity. We can’t help that. It is certain to appeal to the type of public who likes the ‘she married her boss’ sort of story. But never mind, our backs are broad enough I hope and, when it is all over, you will be a good deal richer and have, at the same time, a certain glamour about you, which I can’t but feel will be helpful when you are looking for another job.”
Love Forbidden Page 14
