by Margaret Way
'Love to!' Brooke took the rings off her hand and replaced them in the display case. 'Mamma and Lou have gone over to the Watlings.'
'Why doesn't Louise marry Nigel?' Maggie suggested.
'Don't laugh, this is serious.' Brooke made a little grimace at herself in the pier mirror. 'Nigel couldn't help us hold on to the house, and that's what it's all about―Wintersweet. It was built for an Ashton and Mamma wants it to remain in the family.'
'Can't say I blame her!' Maggie gave an odd little smile. 'Few people could afford it these days and it would cost a fortune to build.' Maggie turned her head and the sheen of silver caught in her short dark hair. 'But it's a little cold-blooded, surely, to sell Louise to the highest bidder?'
'Mother loves her !' Brooke looked back at her friend with troubled eyes. 'The funny part is Lou would be prepared to go through such a marriage, even with Corelli. There's a delicious little tingle of fear, but I really think she sees herself as just another precious object ! '
'Yes, I don't know what Germaine Greer' would think of her. Women's Lib really passed her by, and Lillian has never even heard of it. In fact, she has a positive genius for evading anything she doesn't want to know about. I've done my very best to help and the Ashton secrets are safe with me, but unless by a miracle one of you marries a very wealthy man Wintersweet has to go. It isn't possible to live in an empty house and frankly I don't Want to see you lose any more. You could retain some of your beautiful pieces and move into a much smaller home. Others have done it. My mother did after Father died and death duties crippled us. I sympathise with your mother's feelings, but she's really so much better off than most people one can't lean too much her way. Everything is comparative. A lot of my friends would like to be as poor as your mother! '
'Yes,' Brooke said slowly. 'But I don't want to see her punished because she lives in a dream world. Granddad didn't prepare her for an ordinary way of life and Mamma has done nothing to prepare Louise. She's very beautiful and she's very charming, but I'm not at all sure Carelli wants her. All the money that's being spent on this party and he mightn't even come! '
'He'll come!' said Maggie, almost definitely. 'At least we can agree on one thing. He's a man who takes what he wants ! '
CHAPTER TWO
BROOKE looked down at the exquisite burnished gold gown she was wearing. She had never worn anything remotely like it before and despite its remarkable flattery she was uncertain of the amount of bare back and creamy bosom she was displaying. Her jewellery was oriental, finds of Maggie's and gratefully borrowed; tasselled gold and jade pendants, with the lowest pendant of the necklace clinging to the cleft of her breast and the jade pendants of the eardrops swinging against her colour-blushed cheeks, intensifying the green of her eyes. She had taken Maggie's advice and used more make-up than usual, so that it seemed to her shocked and dazzled eyes that she had been transformed into a vaguely erotic beauty.
Clothes and make-up certainly made a difference, and she had never really noticed before that her body was perfect for draping clothes on. Nothing she had ever worn had suited her so well or made her look so flowerlike―an exotic, long-stemmed flower, it was true, but a flower all the same. Louise had-always outclassed her in that department, but perhaps not tonight. Maggie had wonderful taste and she was wonderfully generous, but Brooke still felt a bit concerned about her new image. Nothing could possibly vulgarise such a beautiful dress, but she was completely unused to displaying her own beautiful body outside a swimsuit, and that seemed different somehow. That her body was beautiful, she had never really seen before, accepting her tall, willowy slenderness pretty much as she did her red hair, a colour her mother particularly disliked despite the fact it ran in the Howell family. Tonight it was a mass of bright copper curls, burnished like her dress and haloing her vivid face like liquid fire. If it wasn't beauty that looked back at her from the mirrored door of her dressing room, she didn't know what it was. Perhaps Maggie was right after all and there were different ways of being arresting.
There was a tap at her door and it opened and closed gently. Brooke turned at once to smile at her sister. 'You look beautiful! '
Louise didn't even answer, her eyes fixed on Brooke as though she scarcely recognised her. Finally she shook her golden head. 'Where on earth did you get that?'
'An admirer ! ' said Brooke, making a game of it.
'I hope Mamma will let you wear it ! '
'What's that supposed to mean?' Brooke felt a dull sense of unease.
'Well!' Louise tilted her head to one side, her Dresden blue eyes very wide. 'It's not by any means the sort of thing you usually wear.' As she spoke she moved around her sister, examining her from head to toe. 'You're showing all your back and your chest.'
'So?' Better to keep up a maddening little show of defiance than crumple, Brooke thought wryly.
'So it's not in the best of taste ! '
'Rubbish! I've decided I've no reason to be ashamed of my body, and I'm not showing all that much, after all.'
'Don't say I didn't warn you.' Louise said placidly. She came to stand beside her sister, staring at their mirrored reflections. 'How different we are !' she said sweetly.
'You'll have to watch your weight later on,' Brooke felt driven into saying.
Louise's thin skin flushed pink. 'Patrick calls me a pocket Venus!'
'So you are ! Sorry, darling, I didn't mean to be bitchy!'
'That's all right.' Louise said simply. 'When you're finished dressing Mamma wants to see you. I don't think she's going to like your dress or the way you've had your hair done. You look quite different!'
'Do you think so, really?' Brooke blew a kiss to herself. Someone had to.
'Yes, it's funny, but you do. I suppose red hair is bound to make you look colourful.'
'Perhaps I want something colourful to happen to me,' Brooke protested. 'Nobody sees me anyway beside you!'
A glimmering smile broke the seriousness of Louise's expression, though she didn't condescend to reply. In her blue chiffon dress she looked like a piece of gossamer, insubstantial as a dream and amazingly pretty. Not for the first time, Brooke thought it was no contest at all, but she stoutly determined she wasn't going to withdraw to her room and change her dress for the coffee-coloured silk chiffon her mother had suggested and actually picked out. It did nothing for her, though it was pretty and soft falling. Maggie had excellent judgment and Brooke reasoned that she had better believe in it.
Twenty minutes later, the first guests were arriving and there was no time for Brooke to change her dress, as her mother had requested with every appearance of shock. It was a little sickening to be hauled over the coals and told one looked artificial, but Brooke had walked away in the same. instant and continued walking right down the staircase and back through the stair hall to the kitchen at the rear of the house. She had done all the liaison work with the caterers in any case. Let Louise be at her mother's side to greet the first guests; Brooke didn't want to cause any discordant notes.
The faces in the kitchen looked up alertly as she walked in and from their expressions it was fairly obvious that not everyone was going to share her mother's opinion. She relaxed and made a final inspection, admiring all the things she had admired before she had gone upstairs. Lillian had determined on a party to end all parties, and the most fashionable and expensive caterers had been hired. The whole works and be done with it! as Lillian had said. Brooke couldn't even bear to think of the cost. The flowers alone had cost hundreds of dollars and the tall, striking arrangements took care of the empty marble pedestals and gave a fresh, softening beauty to the large handsome rooms. All the main rooms, the two' big reception rooms and the formal dining room appeared to be intact even though a good deal was missing, arid besides, there were very few people familiar with everything that had belonged to the house in its heyday.
Brooke came suddenly out of her trance to see the head caterer, an attractive, very efficient-looking woman in her late fifties, smiling at her.
'Excuse me, Miss Howell, but may I say how stunning you look.'
'You may! ' Brooke gave her a quick smile and moved to the door, the bright kitchen lights accentuating the lovely red-gold of her hair. 'I didn't intend to look quite so …' she looked down at her dress and searched for a word.
'Why ever not?' The other woman raised her eyebrows disbelievingly. 'Stunning is the word. That dress is perfect on you! ' She hadn't been inside the house an hour before she had become familiar with the terrain. Surely Mrs Lillian Howell would give anyone a terrible complex.
'Thank you! ' Brooke said quietly. 'I can hear voices. I suppose we'd better start serving drinks.'
'Of course! George?' the woman turned around and spoke to a dark, rather handsome young man and he came forward with a smile already fixed on his face.
Brooke left them to it, resisting the cowardly notion to duck the party altogether. It was for Louise, after all, and she was really encircled by the kind of people her mother and Louise seemed to need to feel comfortable. People whose origins were well known and precisely what they were claimed to be.' the established elite, except for Paul Corelli, and the possibility that he would turn up tonight was like bringing an alien from a larger world into their tight little circle. Looking as delighted as she could, Brooke walked out into the
entrance hall to greet whoever might be about.
By nine-thirty, Corelli still hadn't arrived and Louise's soft radiance was beginning to flatten out like the bubbles in a glass of champagne. With big, blond Patrick constantly at her side she still kept looking towards the great cedar double doors as though Corelli was about to leap through them like the tiger Brooke often called him. Even Lillian kept turning her beautifully groomed head as though to mark the arrival of. the night's 'star'. Corelli had an ability to generate excitement and his extraordinary success made it a whole lot easier for him to become one of them, but Corelli didn't arrive.
Brooke took his absence in her stride, determined not to become violently affected. The house was ideal for a big party and there were groups of people everywhere, laughing and chattering and keeping an eye on the drink waiters, exchanging all the gossip, their confident faces making it instantly known they were sophisticated, prosperous and very well informed. It was an open secret that Louise was going to be auctioned off to the highest bidder and they made much of it among themselves. The present owners of Wintersweet were living on borrowed time and a few discerning eyes detected the absence of one or other precious objet d'art.
Brooke, to her astonishment, found herself almost monopolised by Nigel Watling, one of Louise's longstanding admirers. He drew her out on to the terrace frequently to dance and Brooke had to admit she enjoyed it. The terrace looked magical by night, lit by a series of great tulip-shaped lamps and decorated with huge flowering pots of camellias and azaleas and cymbidium orchids. The chaste white' pillars that supported the roof were almost covered by the foliage of the beautiful climbing redwing philodendron and .the gardens beyond were illuminated by hidden lights in the trees.
'I'm not kidding!' Nigel breathed almost into Brooke's ear. He wasn't tall and their eyes were almost level. 'You look terrific tonight, just like a photo in a glossy magazine. You've been shopping and had your hair done.'
'I'm glad it wasn't all wasted! ' Brooke smiled.
'Hell!' Nigel pulled her to him almost roughly. 'Why don't we just cut out of here?'
'Funny!' She stared at him, 'It's stuck in my head that you're Lou's friend.'
'I like it right here with you. I've said all along you've got the sex appeal. You light up in a way Lou never could. Incidentally, this party is an awful waste, isn't it? I don't suppose for one moment Corelli will show up.'
'So?' Brooke tried to speak blandly.
'So we all know what's in your mother's mind! ' Nigel offered in a drawl.
Brooke felt herself stiffening and she pulled away from him. 'Now you listen to me, Nigel! '
'Hush, not now!' He looked over her shoulder and smiled at the couple attracted by Brooke's raised voice. 'I'm sorry, pet.' No one can blame her for her strategy. It's just that I don't think he's all that interested in Lou. You can't blame him, she's a very pretty girl and she's thoroughly sweet and unspoiled considering, but she hasn't got a whole lot of character! '
'She's smart enough for you! 'Brooke said heatedly.
'Gee, doll, I'm not in Corelli's league. Simmer down. I've noticed your hot temper before. Does it go with your blood?'
Brooke shrugged her creamy sloping shoulders, her voice curt with irritation. 'I think Lou's too darned nice for the likes of Mr. Corelli.'
'So do I.' Nigel said reasonably. 'But that's what this evening's gathering 'is all about. I mean, it's a wonderful party and the house looks great, a showplace, but is Corelli going to admire it sufficiently to want it?' The half mocking quality left Nigel's smooth, round face. 'You do get my point? It seems to me you make all the sacrifices in this family. Mother thinks it's a shame.'
'Big houses are always a lot of trouble! ' said Brooke, sidestepping the issue.
'Then why don't you sell?'
Brooke gave a little sigh. 'It's almost unthinkable to associate Wintersweet with anyone else but our family.'
'Exactly!' Even Nigel sighed. 'There's no use Lou pinning any vague hopes on me. The old law firm is doing fine, but I could never rise to a forty-roomed mansion. They don't build houses like this any more, and who wants them anyway?'
'I have to say I do! ' Brooke's golden-green eyes were touched with melancholy. 'Or at least I'd like to see it remain in the family.' Nigel was holding her too closely and she became aware of it. 'Surely you're not thinking of switching your affections to me?' she asked dryly, and eased her slender body away.
'I've always been aware of you, Brooke,' he said seriously, 'but you couldn't seem to notice. Lou is much easier to pay compliments to. She loves them and she listens. You've always got something else on your mind.'
'Why, Nigel!' she exclaimed, almost bewildered.
'It would take only a few minutes to convince you.' He was talking softly, close to her ear, imposing his feelings upon her, and Brooke had the decided impulse to draw back. Previously she had almost ignored Nigel, thinking him her sister's friend, but now it was obvious his interest was in her. He put out a hand to caress her cheek and she flung her head back almost wildly.
'No!'
'You know, you're really wild!' There was excitement in his voice and surprising strength in his hands.
'Let's go inside,' she said swiftly, aware he was trying to guide her into a shadowy corner.
'Don't you trust me?'
'No.' She looked him directly in the eye and he smiled.
'But I'm only good old Nigel, remember? Not the big-cat man, Corelli. Haven't you noticed the way he moves, all that dark sinuous grace? Now he really turns you on, doesn't he?'
Brooke jerked to a halt in honest astonishment. 'I don't think I'm hearing right!'
Nigel lifted his hands and held them in the air as though desparing of her answer. 'Doesn't he?' His slate-coloured eyes looked suddenly hard.
She was startled and looked it, ready to fly into an inexplicable rage. 'I've never heard anything so ridiculous in my life. What little I've seen of Signor Corelli I dislike intensely! '
In the passion of her denial, she failed to notice Nigel's vaguely convulsive expression. His eyes went beyond her, a faint flush coming to his cheeks.'
Brooke swung about imperiously, her lovely long skirt fluid about her slender body. Paul Corelli stood almost directly behind her, his expression one of sharp amusement though the flame of the lamplight was reflected in his black, heavy-lidded eyes.
'Please do go on!' he invited, in his compelling, attractively accented voice. 'Such a respected opinion! '
Louise was there beside him, her delicate little face almost frostbound. 'Oh, Brooke, how could you?'
Brooke's heart was racing, but she gave Corelli her hand and after an instant he rai
sed it to his mouth, without actually touching it. 'I'm sure Mr. Corelli is thick-skinned enough to take it!' she said sweetly.
'Insensitive to insults, signorina! '
There was a toughness and arrogance about him that would always make him standout. With anyone else Brooke would have been on fire with embarrassment, but with Corelli she felt an upsurge of defiance, a mutual veiled hostility that made her long to put him in his place. It was quite true he moved with the grace of a big cat of the jungle and with almost as much menace.
Louise's pretty colour had faded and she looked as if she was about to faint. 'I suggest you apologise to Paul! ' she said urgently to her sister. 'Mamma won't be pleased.'
'I can't possibly do it!' Brooke protested with an unconscious look of challenge and defiance that Paul Corelli neatly caught. 'Mr. Corelli can't have his own way in everything.'
