“Poor Charles,” Aria whispered with a sigh.
This would be almost the last straw and she could not blame him for being angry at it.
At last she had enough control of herself to walk along the passage to Dart’s bedroom and knock on the adjoining door where the nurse who was in attendance waited when he was asleep.
Nurse Walters, an efficient, middle-aged woman, beckoned Aria into the room.
“I am hoping he is asleep,” she said in a low voice. “The doctor has just given him a sedative. He stood it well, but the journey home was rather much for him.”
“He should have stayed in London,” Aria said.
“You know he wouldn’t do that,” Nurse Walters replied. “He seems to hate the place. Somehow, before I came here, I always thought that the only thing he enjoyed was nightclubs.”
Aria tried to smile.
“I suppose that is the popular idea of him.”
Nurse Walters looked at her in what Aria thought was a slightly embarrassed manner.
“I suppose you have heard the result of the case?” she asked a little primly.
“Lord Buckleigh told me,” Aria replied. “I am very sorry for Miss Carlo.”
Nurse Walters gave a little sniff.
“If you will forgive me for saying so, Miss Milborne, I think she was given exactly what she deserves. She was lucky, in many ways, to have got off with only a year.”
“All the same, I am sorry for her,” Aria answered. “Think what it will mean to her being in prison after the luxurious, wonderful life she has led.”
“I expect she will turn it to good account when she comes out,” Nurse Walters said. “I remember another film star I was with always used to say to me, ‘any publicity is good publicity, Nurse’. I couldn’t help thinking of that when I saw Miss Carlo smiling at the reporters as she left the witness box. It didn’t seem to me that she was as upset as poor Mr. Huron.”
“Perhaps Miss Carlo was better at hiding it,” Aria suggested.
She felt somehow that she must stick up for Lulu, even though she had never liked her. There was something terrifying in thinking of her being shut away from the world she loved, from the adulation and adoration of her fans, of having her beautiful clothes taken from her, of having to work so that her hands were coarsened.
It was no use trying to get sympathy from Nurse Walters – that was obvious. She wondered how many more people thought, as the nurse did, almost with pleasure over the downfall of a lovely alluring woman. It seemed ridiculous to mind so much, but she could not help feeling that if she had been in Lulu’s shoes she would rather die than undergo a term of imprisonment.
Nurse Walters looked at her watch.
“It’s nearly four o’clock,” she said. “I expect Mr. Huron will sleep for two or three hours. Then the doctor has suggested that he has a light meal. I will come and tell you if he wants to see you later this evening, which I am sure he will.”
“No,” Aria said almost involuntarily.
“Oh, I don’t think you need worry about it being too much for him,” Nurse Walters went on. “He was better this morning than I have seen him for days. The wound is healing nicely. The doctor is delighted with it.
“I expect he will want a little chat before he goes to sleep. I shan’t be as strict as I have been in the past and you mustn’t hold it against me that I tried to keep you out of the sick room. It was doctor’s orders and in my profession we have to do as we are told.”
Nurse Walters was being almost coy, and Aria, with a muttered excuse, fled away from her. She knew only too well what the arch look and innuendoes meant. Nurse Walters was another person who believed Lulu and Dart and were convinced that she was at the bottom of the whole trouble.
‘Why? Why?’ she asked herself. ‘Why has he done this to me?’
It wasn’t fair. It was something that she could not fight, could not battle against all by herself.
She went to her room and had a wild impulse to pack her boxes and go away again. Dart was better, the household was running smoothly, the case was over.
What was there to stay for? Just to be thanked once more for doing her duty.
Why she should not go back to Charles and make her peace at home? Queen’s Folly was waiting for her. There she would find rest and peace, all the things she had never been able to discover at Summerhill.
And then, as she stood irresolute within her bedroom, she knew that she could not go. She loved him and so, betrayed by her own heart, she must stay until he had no further use of her.
She knew it was quite useless to talk of finding peace at Queen’s Folly or anywhere else. She could never know peace again so long as Dart Huron remained in the world and she could not be beside him.
She thought, with a little smile that was infinitely pathetic, that every woman imagined that her love was deeper and greater than any love had ever been before. And yet she could think of nothing else.
She had never realised that love could turn one’s whole body into a battlefield of conflicting emotions – that one could know agony and ecstasy at one and the same moment, that joy and utter misery could go hand in hand.
She loved him and so it was both Heaven and Hell to be near him. She yearned and longed to see him, and yet, when she did so, it was pain almost beyond endurance because she must control her feelings, her words and even the expression in her eyes.
She dressed slowly for dinner and smiled to herself because she was taking infinitely more pains than usual. Was it likely that he even noticed?
She knew only too well what he would say to her – almost the same as he had said every day since he had been ill and she had slipped in to see him for a moment or two.
“Are there any cables from South America?”
“Yes, and I have answered them.”
“Good girl. And keep the others quiet until I am well enough to cope with them, won’t you.”
“You know I will.”
“Thank you.”
That had been almost the sum total of their conversation. Occasionally she would read him a cable or a message that was more difficult to understand than the others and on which she felt she must have some guidance as to how to answer it.
Otherwise, because the doctor had said he was not to be worried, she told him that everything was all right and left it at that.
She put on her old black dress, realising as she did so that because she was worried her skin seemed even whiter and more transparent than usual. There were little lines beneath her eyes, but somehow they enhanced rather than detracted from her prettiness.
The curls on her head seemed to leap into life as she combed them and then, because the severity of her dress seemed to demand it, she took two large white roses from the flowers arranged on her dressing table and pinned them between her breasts.
She could smell the sweetness of their perfume as she walked downstairs for dinner.
They had the usual dinner party for four – Aria and Lord Buckleigh, and the two nurses – and because the events in Court today hung over them all like a cloud, the conversation was unduly stilted and there were little pauses after which someone began to talk hurriedly on some inconsequential subject. It was after Nurse Walters had withdrawn ‘to see my patient’, as she put it, that the summons came.
“Mr. Huron would like to see you, Miss Milborne.”
Aria started quickly to her feet and then, as she went up the stairs, she knew that her heart was beating almost suffocatingly within her breast.
As she reached the door of his bedroom, she felt it was almost impossible for her to go in.
She put out her hand towards the door knob and realised that it was trembling.
For a moment she stood there striving to gain control of herself, ashamed that her breath was coming quickly and that every nerve in her body seemed to quiver.
At length, when she felt that waiting made things worse instead of better, she resolutely opened the door and went in.
/> To her surprise the curtains had not been drawn. Outside the sun was sinking, crimson and gold, suffusing the sky and casting a strange rather lovely light over the whole room.
Dart was not, as Aria had expected, in bed, but sitting in a chair by the window, a rug over his knees, a pillow behind his head.
She had expected Nurse Walters to be there, but he was alone and, as she walked across the big room towards him, she was conscious that he was watching her, She drew near, her feet growing slower and slower and yet still carrying her further, until eventually she came to his side.
He looked up at her eyes and she saw that there was a smile on his lips and a twinkle in his eyes.
“Have they told you?” he asked.
“T-told me – what?”
“That I have publicly announced my feelings for you.”
It was the last thing she had thought he would say.
Because she was so utterly nonplussed, she could only stare at him, the last glimmering of the sinking sun shining on her red hair, the light on her face and on the pain in her eyes.
“Did you have to tell – such lies?” she asked at last.
He put out his uninjured hand and took her cold trembling fingers in his.
“What have they been doing to you?” he asked.
There was a tenderness in his voice that she had never heard before. Because she was so frightened, so uncertain and apprehensive, she felt, to her horror, the tears prick at her eyes.
“Darling, I am a brute to tease you,” he said. “I couldn’t help what happened today. Lulu, to save her own skin, told the truth and so, to help her, I had to admit that I love you.”
“But, you – don’t – you – can’t,” Aria stammered.
His hand was extraordinarily strong for a man who had been so ill. He drew her forward until somehow, unexpectedly, she found herself kneeling beside the chair, her face turned up to his, his arm around her.
“Are you really so dense?” he asked. “Dear, stupid, disapproving little Aria, who won’t listen to anything but the dictates of her own proud heart.”
“But you can’t really – love me. I mean, you don’t – ”
“I must have been very ill to disguise my feelings so effectively,” he smiled. “I didn’t want to say anything to you until after this horrible and unpleasant business was all settled. And, anyway, Nurse Walters has been behaving like a dragon, as you well know.”
Aria felt herself giggle a little weakly.
“That’s better,” he said gently. “I want to see you smile. You smile far too seldom, do you realise that? And when you do it’s the loveliest thing on earth.”
“But, I don’t – understand.”
“How foolish you are, my sweet,” he said. “Despite the fact that you speak three languages and can run a house far more efficiently than anyone I have ever met before.”
“Is that – why you think you – love me?” Aria stuttered.
“No, that isn’t the reason,” he answered. “I love you because you have red hair and the sweetest face I have ever seen on any woman. I love you because I think my heart leapt out of its body and went to you the very first moment of our meeting. I love you just because I cannot help myself, because it is something bigger than me and something I have been looking for all my life.”
“But – are you sure? Really – sure?”
In her agitation Aria put her hands against his chest and threw back her head.
“How can I prove it?” he asked. “Unless you will marry me at once, so that we can go away together. I was sure before I kissed you on that night you drove me almost to madness. I was jealous of Tom because he was obviously so infatuated with you.
“I was furious with you because you seemed shocked and disdainful of everything I did and said. And then, when I saw you together in the arbour, something seemed to snap in my brain.”
His arm tightened round her before he continued,
“I am not going to be an easy husband, Aria. I am not going to pretend for a moment that I shall be. I have a savage temper when it is roused. I can be brutal and difficult and altogether exasperating.
“But I always knew that when I loved somebody as I love you, she would have the power to throw the devils out of me. Are you willing to try it?”
He looked down into her eyes and, after a moment, because of the wild joy that was leaping within her heart, she could bear his scrutiny no more and with an inarticulate murmur hid her face against his shoulder.
“Darling, I want to kiss you,” he said softly. “I have wanted it so much these past weeks that I thought sometimes lying here in this room that I should go mad for the need of you. But I had to wait until I was well enough, until I could say, ‘Now we will go away together where there are no newspapers and no curious prying people and nobody cares what happened in the past – there will only be our present to think about.’
“I talked to the doctor tonight, my precious. He has told me that in ten days I shall be fit to travel. Will you marry me before we start our journey?”
Still Aria hid her face and now he put his fingers beneath her chin and turned her face up to his.
“Oh, my darling, I love you so,” he said. “I can imagine nothing more wonderful than to be alone with you, alone where we shall not be disturbed.”
“Is it true?” Aria asked almost beneath her breath. “Is it true that you are saying this to me?”
“It’s quite true,” he answered. “And I will tell you something else, just one more thing before I kiss you. And that is that you needn’t be afraid that we shall have to come back to England and face scandal and more talk. We are going abroad for a long time and when we do come back we shan’t be coming to London or to Summerhill, but to Queen’s Folly.
“I had a long talk on the telephone with Charles this morning. I told him that, when the case was over this afternoon, I intended to ask you to become my wife. I told him too that the only ambition I have left in England was to see Queen’s Folly restored to its former glory.
“I have been reading about it in all the books on great English houses. Charles has agreed, on your behalf, to buy back all the furniture and pictures that he can. He told me that he will never marry and that when he dies he wants to leave Queen’s Folly, restored in all its beauty, to your children and mine.”
“Oh – how wonderful!”
Aria could hardly believe his words. It seemed to her that her heart was bursting with happiness and this was the one extra to make her joy complete.
“And now that’s settled,” Dart said with a little smile. “That leaves only us, you and me, Aria. Could we want anything else?”
“No – nothing,” she answered.
Her eyes were bright as the stars that were just appearing over the high tree behind the house.
“There is one thing I want,” he said softly. “I want to hear you say that you love me. You have said so many other things to me in the past, so many unkind and cruel things, but you have never told me that you love me.”
“But you know it,” Aria protested.
“Yes, I know it,” he said. “I have seen it in your eyes and on your lips. I knew it when you came back here, braving the talk, the reporters and the scandal. That was very courageous of you, Aria, and I shall never forget it. But still I want to hear you say it.”
“I-I love you!”
The words came trembling from between her lips, but she felt as if she said them with her whole heart.
“And I adore you, my sweet.”
His arms drew her still closer. He bent towards her and now her own hands went up towards his neck.
Then his lips were on hers and she knew, as a sudden ecstasy of joy shot through her, that she would never be afraid of him again.
Once she had shrunk from his kisses, but now she yearned for them, they were all that her body ached for and desired.
She felt his mouth possess her and, as she surrendered herself to a happiness that was beyond anythi
ng that she had ever experienced in her life before, she felt a sudden flame come to life and quicken within herself.
There was the same fire in his eyes that she had seen there once before and she had shrunk away from it in terror.
Now she pressed herself even closer to him.
It was the final and utter surrender of herself and she knew that he understood and she saw the light in his eyes and heard the sudden note of triumph in his voice as he said,
“When I take you away alone, my foolish darling, I will teach you not to be afraid of love – or me.”
OTHER BOOKS IN THIS SERIES
The Barbara Cartland Eternal Collection is the unique opportunity to collect as ebooks all five hundred of the timeless beautiful romantic novels written by the world’s most celebrated and enduring romantic author.
Named the Eternal Collection because Barbara’s inspiring stories of pure love, just the same as love itself, the books will be published on the internet at the rate of four titles per month until all five hundred are available.
The Eternal Collection, classic pure romance available worldwide for all time .
Elizabethan Lover
The Little Pretender
A Ghost in Monte Carlo
A Duel of Hearts
The Saint and the Sinner
The Penniless Peer
The Proud Princess
The Dare-Devil Duke
Diona and a Dalmatian
A Shaft of Sunlight
Lies for Love
Love and Lucia
Love and the Loathsome Leopard
Beauty or Brains
The Temptation of Torilla
The Goddess and the Gaiety Girl
Fragrant Flower
Look Listen and Love
The Duke and the Preacher’s Daughter
A Kiss for the King
The Mysterious Maid-servant
Lucky Logan Finds Love
The Wings of Ecstacy
Mission to Monte Carlo
Revenge of the Heart
The Unbreakable Spell
Never Laugh at Love
Bride to a Brigand
Lucifer and the Angel
Journey to a Star
Solita and the Spies
The Chieftain Without a Heart
Love Forbidden Page 24
