“I should never have made a success of sitting in an office,” he remarked.
“I am not blaming you,” Aria answered. “You have the right to do what you like with your life. But you must also allow me to do what I wish with mine.”
“Damn it! That’s not the same thing – ” Lord Buckleigh began hotly, but the sound of the gong booming through the house checked whatever else he had to say.
“We had better go down,” Aria suggested.
Lord Buckleigh hesitated as if he contemplated for a moment trying to take her into his arms. And then, as she left the room, he followed her and they walked towards the stairs in silence.
Aria had forgotten that by this time the house party would have been informed of the engagement. She was quite unprepared for the congratulations and the effusiveness of the other guests staying in the house.
“Dart has told us the good news,” the Ambassadress was the first to speak up.
While several of the girls, who had practically ignored her until now, kissed her with an admirable show of affection.
“I thought – it was – to be a – secret,” Aria stammered.
“You can’t keep a thing like that secret,” someone replied and then turned. “What are your plans, old boy? When’s the happy day to be?”
“Aria and I have not decided yet,” Dart Huron replied.
He looked at Aria as he spoke and, although she had started at his use of her Christian name, she managed to smile a little tumultuously at him.
“In fact the whole thing has been rather sprung on us,” Dart Huron went on. “Aria has told me that she wants as little fuss made of it as possible, at least until she has had time to inform her family.”
“But, of course, we understand,” said the Ambassadress.
“Where do your parents live?”
“My father and mother are dead,” Aria answered, “But my brother is alive and he lives in Hertfordshire.”
“Whereabouts?” asked a pretty girl. “I live in Hertfordshire.”
Aria cast a quick glance at Dart Huron and he rose to the occasion.
“You are not to ask her any questions now,” he said. “We have had quite enough with the press bombarding us. Aria will get into terrible trouble with her family. They will be simply furious with her. For goodness’ sake let’s have something to eat and behave as if it hasn’t happened.”
“As if we could!” someone remarked and a gay voice from the doorway piped up,
“Could do what?”
Lulu Carlo was strolling towards them, smiling and poised. She was, Aria thought, giving a very creditable performance.
“Haven’t you heard?” someone asked a little breathlessly and a hush fell on the rest of the party.
It was obvious that the idea of the tenseness of the situation was uppermost in all their minds.
“About Dart? But of course I have!” Lulu replied. “I have given him my congratulations and my blessing, haven’t I, darling?”
She linked her arm through Dart’s as she reached him and looked up towards his eyes. Her head was thrown back and she looked very appealing and very feminine.
“Everyone has been very kind,” Dart said, looking round the assembled throng.
“And what we have to decide is what I am going to give you as a wedding present,” Lulu said.
There was a sort of double entendre in her voice, which made everyone feel uncomfortable.
“Shall I lead the way into luncheon?” the Ambassadress asked hastily. “I do hate my food to get cold.”
“So do I,” another lady agreed.
A pretty American girl took Aria by the arm.
“I’ve never had such a surprise in my life as when Dart told us the news,” she said. “You’ve been awfully subtle about not letting anyone suspect that you were keen on each other.”
“We wanted to keep it a secret,” Aria smiled.
“Secrets are dangerous things all the same,” a voice said behind her and she knew without turning her head that it was Lulu who spoke.
It was difficult to know what Lulu’s intentions were. She was so charming and so sweet at luncheon that it was hard to believe that she was the same virago, Aria thought, who had slapped her in the face that morning and had flung an ornament after her as she had left her bedroom but a short time before.
Although she looked at Dart with big wistful eyes that seemed to have a hint of tears in them, she nevertheless spoke gaily and brightly of his engagement and even addressed a sentence or two to Aria both politely and pleasantly.
It was a change of heart that was difficult to understand. But Aria could see that everyone present was very impressed and were telling themselves, almost audibly, that Lulu Carlo was a far better sport than they had thought.
The telephone started ringing halfway through luncheon and after McDougall had come in four times to report that certain newspapers were on the line and had been told each time to say that there was no comment, Dart Huron told him to leave the receiver off.
“We shall all be driven mad by the end of the day if this goes on,” he said a little irritably.
“You can’t expect anything else,” Lord Buckleigh came in. “If you really wanted to announce your engagement and have a little peace, you should have asked me how to manage it.”
“And how would you manage it, Tom?” someone enquired.
“Well, if I had been Dart and I had wanted a secret marriage, I should have gone away to an island in the Caribbean or somewhere equally remote. And if I had wanted to announce an engagement and then say nothing more about it, I should have told the Press just the very moment that I stepped on an aeroplane for Timbuktu. My motto has always been to run away from trouble!”
Everyone laughed at that, but Dart looked serious.
“It’s not bad advice, Tom,” he said. “I wish now I had asked you.”
“I think it’s a ridiculous idea,” Lulu said lightly. “Running away from the Press only makes them all the keener.”
“Have you found that?” Lord Buckleigh enquired, but she was not to be drawn.
“You’re only being horrid to me,” she pouted, looking exceedingly attractive as she did so. “You know in my profession we always have to be nice to the Press and give them the right hand-outs. We were talking about Dart, not about me. His life will be a misery now until they get all the details they want.”
“I should think they have enough about Dart already,” someone suggested. “It’s Miss Milbank who will come in for the worst of the questioning.”
“There are going to be no questions and no interviews,” Dart Huron insisted. “Let’s make that clear from the beginning.”
“That’s what you think,” Lulu answered. “Oh, Dart, dear! You are so naïve where the Press is concerned. You’ll find a reporter under your bed and behind your bath and they will be listening at the window and up the chimney. And somehow, by hook or by crook, they will find out what they want to know. Does that make you nervous, Aria, dear?”
There was no sting in the sweetness of her voice, but Aria knew what lay behind the question.
“Not in the slightest,” she said quietly. “I don’t like the Press and I don’t know how to deal with them. But – Dart has promised he will do all that.”
She could not help a little hesitation in her voice before she said his name and yet it made her seem all the more feminine, all the more appealing.
There was a little murmur of approval around the table especially from the men.
Lulu’s face darkened.
“The champion of fair women!” she said and now there was no disguising the underlying sarcasm. Then, before anyone could speak, Lulu laid her hand over Dart Huron’s and said softly,
“Darling Dart, you’re very very naughty and at times very unkind. But I forgive you. I can’t help it, although I ought to be angry with you.”
Aria could feel the almost physical reaction amongst those present to her speech.
‘
Dear Lulu,’ they were thinking. ‘We never imagined that she would take it so well. Dart is really a fool not to marry her. She is much more his type than this quiet little girl with red hair.’
It seemed for a moment as if Dart Huron also was hypnotised by Lulu. Her fingers had tightened on his and now he raised her hand to his lips with a courteousness that was somehow very un-English in its ease and grace.
“You are a very sweet person, Lulu,” he said quietly.
“No, Dart,” she replied softly and yet her words were quite audible. “I am only a very loving once.”
Chapter 10
Aria, walking upstairs, met Lady Grania Henley, who had arrived the night before for the weekend.
She was a pretty girl, exquisitely dressed, with rather indecisive features which had, however, been transformed by the clever use of make-up into something of an approaching beauty.
She smiled a little shyly at Aria now and said,
“I’m so looking forward to the dance tonight, Miss Milbank, aren’t you?”
Aria gave a guilty start. In the excitement of all that had been happening she had completely forgotten that Dart Huron had told her he had invited a large dinner party with dancing afterwards, to follow the game of polo which was taking place that afternoon.
Fortunately Aria had given instructions to the chef, had ordered the band and had told the staff to prepare for dancing in the big many-windowed room that overlooked the garden. It was ostensibly used almost entirely as a ballroom, but it rejoiced in the lovely Regency name of the Silver Salon.
She hoped that the gardeners had remembered the decorations, that the platform had been erected for the band, the piano was in tune and the hundred and one little details, which were all her responsibility, had not been omitted.
“Yes – of course, I am – looking forward to it,” she managed to stammer, hoping that Lady Grania had not guessed from her hesitation that the whole matter had slipped her mind.
“Dances here are always such fun,” the other girl enthused. “Last time Dart had the most wonderful Spanish cabaret. It was the best I’ve ever seen.”
Aria murmured something to the effect that she did not think that there would be a cabaret tonight, but Lady Grania was not disconcerted by the news.
“I expect it will be fun anyway,” she enthused. “I brought my best dress because Dart’s parties are always so smart. What are you going to wear?”
Aria felt almost angry at the question. What was there for her to wear except the same black dress that she had worn every night? The only choice that lay with her was whether she should wear pink roses at the waist or drape the blue scarf round her shoulders.
She had a sudden vision of how dowdy she would look. She could almost hear Dart Huron’s friends saying, “what on earth does he see in that dull, mousy little thing?”
And she was feminine enough to resent the fact.
All the gayest and most beautiful young women in London were coming and all the young men who graced the Society columns as Royal escorts, as taking part in charity performances, as being everywhere and anywhere, and who represented what was left of the aristocracy and Nobility of England.
‘I can’t go,’ she thought suddenly. ‘I can’t appear looking so insignificant, so poverty-stricken, when everybody’s attention will be directed on me – everybody will be asking the same question, “what does he see in her?”’
Because she was feeling upset, she spoke abruptly and with an almost sharp edge to her voice to Lady Grania.
“I have nothing to wear but the dress I had on last night,” she said. “If people don’t like my appearance, it just can’t be helped.”
As she spoke, she started to pass Lady Grania and climb the stairs again, but the girl put out her hand and touched her arm.
“Would you think me really awfully rude if I suggested something to you, Miss Milbank?” she said a little timidly.
“What is it?” Aria asked, ashamed at having spoken as she had. At the same time finding herself envying this pretty girl with her beautifully cut dress of flowered linen with a fringed scarf to match and shoes that were made of the same material.
“It sounds impudent to say it,” Lady Grania said, “but may I lend you a dress to wear tonight?”
She saw the refusal in Aria’s eyes and went on quickly,
“Please, it isn’t mine. It belongs to Paul Peron whose firm I work for. It’s a new dress, a very lovely one, which I brought down here just in case I could tempt Miss Carlo with it. You needn’t buy it.
“Please don’t think I’m trying to sell you something. But in the circumstances I know Paul would be delighted for you to wear it tonight. It’s one of his latest models. Nobody has seen it yet and if people talk about it that’s all he would want.”
“I don’t quite understand,” Aria said, arrested in spite of herself. “What advantage can your – your firm possibly get from my borrowing a dress for the evening?”
Lady Grania smiled at her.
“Don’t you see, you will be the most important person at the dance tonight? Everybody will want to meet you and if you are wearing a lovely dress, somebody is sure to ask you where it came from. Anyway, I shall be there to tell them and then they might go to Paul and order one for themselves.”
“Is business really done like that?” Aria enquired.
“It is indeed!” Lady Grania replied. “You don’t suppose I could afford to buy the clothes that I am wearing. Paul Peron dresses me as an advertisement. He has just started up in London and he is very clever and very ambitious.”
“I think I have read of him somewhere,” Aria muttered.
“Come and see the dress I brought down for Miss Carlo,” Lady Grania pleaded.
Aria, by this time, was far too fascinated to refuse and, although she mentally felt that she was getting something under false pretences, she could not help an exclamation of delight and admiration when Lady Grania took from the wardrobe in her room one of the most beautiful dresses she had ever seen.
It was of the very palest green tulle with the bodice embroidered all over with diamonds and tiny green seashells and a skirt that swept out in frill after frill over a stiffened crinoline and glistened with a million crystal dewdrops so that the whole dress sparkled with every movement she made.
“You are model size, do you know that?” Lady Grania asked as Aria tried the dress on.
“It’s so long since I bought a dress of any sort,” Aria replied, “that I have no idea what size I am.”
“Look at yourself!” Lady Grania exclaimed, as she finished hooking Aria into the dress and then stood back to admire her handiwork. “It might have been made for you.”
It might indeed and Aria, looking at her reflection in the mirror, could hardly believe her eyes.
“Can I really borrow it?” she asked a little breathlessly as she knew that now she had seen herself transformed it would be impossible for her to go to the party in her old black dress.
“But of course!” Lady Grania said, “If it makes you any happier, I will ring up Paul and ask his permission. But I know he will be delighted.”
“But supposing, after he has been kind enough to lend me this, I can’t afford ever to buy anything from him.
Lady Grania gave a gurgle of laughter.
“Not afford!” she exclaimed. “When you are marrying Dart! Why, you can have the most fabulous clothes in the world. Apart from the fact that you can pay anything you like for a dress, half the famous couturiers will want to dress you at a special price. Think of the publicity you will have as Dart’s wife.”
Aria had stiffened and her voice was cold as she replied,
“I don’t like publicity and I don’t think, after all, that I will wear this dress.”
“Oh, but you must,” Lady Grania said. “Why have you changed your mind? Have I said something to upset you? Please forgive me. I didn’t mean to say anything that you wouldn’t like.”
She was so sincere in her a
pology that Aria could only soften and find it impossible to continue her attitude of aloof dignity. Besides, what could she say? How could she possibly explain to Lady Grania that in a fortnight’s time she would disappear into the obscurity from which she had emerged?
She would go back to Queen’s Folly – a little richer it was true, but certainly not rich enough to buy new clothes or to waste that precious three thousand pounds on anything but what was urgently needed on the farm.
And yet, wrong though she felt it was intrinsically to borrow the dress, she could not face the evening in her old black one.
“I should like you to ask Mr. Peron’s permission,” she said. “And then, if you are quite sure that he will not be annoyed with you or with me if he receives no order in the future, then I will borrow it for this one occasion.”
“He will be thrilled, I know he will,” Lady Grania said. “And thank you for helping me too.”
She bent forward impulsively and kissed Aria on the cheek.
“We have all been thinking that you were lucky,” she said. “But I think Dart’s lucky too. I always hoped that he would marry somebody really sweet and not that horrible Lulu or Beatrice, the girl he was engaged to in America. I never liked either of them. He’s terribly nice underneath all the frou-frou of being so rich, but he has become spoilt. Women make a fool of him, only he doesn’t realise it.”
“You don’t sound as if you are in love with him at any rate,” Aria commented.
Lady Grania smiled.
“No,” she answered. “I am in love with a young man who is earning, at the moment, precisely nothing. He is working to become a Chartered Accountant and, when he has passed his exams and if he lands a good job, well, then we might be able to be engaged.
“Even then it will be years before we shall be able to get married. I know most of my friends think I am mad, but I would rather be poor as a church mouse with the man I love than rich with someone I don’t.”
“You are right! Of course you are right!” Aria said. “Money doesn’t bring happiness. I have seen that here. I have seen it in the past. I often think that poor people have a far better chance of finding love and the real things that matter in life than the rich.”
Love Forbidden Page 16
