She paused, swallowed, and von Felden said quietly: “Go on!”
“One or two of them would have been helpful—patient—but my father had lived beyond his means for too long, and he couldn’t face the thought of a cheeseparing existence. Once the wells ran dry even his will to live ran out, and on the night before our London house ceased to be ours any longer he—committed suicide! Nothing horrible or spectacular ... Just an overdose of sleeping tablets!”
“And then you were left alone?” von Felden said, as she put two shaking hands up to her face and kept them there.
“Yes.” For an instant the hands were lowered, and the travesty of a smile showed in her eyes. “I hadn’t even an aunt ... And most people have an aunt, haven’t they? Or an uncle. Sometimes masses of other relatives besides. But my father was an only child, and so was my mother. I was an only child.”
“I’m an only child, too,” the Baron said softly.
Valentine lowered her hands to her lap, and clasped them tightly together. She gazed at him with a fresh kind of curiosity.
“But you have a grandmother,” she reminded him. “Haven’t you?”
He smiled.
“Yes. A wonderful old woman who is determined to cling on to life for as long as she can, and I don’t blame her. I hope she’ll live for years yet, although financially I’d be much better off if she died next week.” He leaned forward and took both her hands, gripping them strongly and retaining them in a comforting clasp. “Listen to me, Valentine ... Poor little Valentine!” he said suddenly, a disturbing note of tenderness—and it was nothing less than tenderness—in his voice.
Her eyes wavered away from his.
“I’ve got over it now all,” she said. “It’s all part of the past!”
“But you can’t get away from the memories ... the bitter disillusionment because your father destroyed your childish image of him! But you will one day, Valentine, and then you will feel less tempted to judge him, as perhaps you do now. It’s not easy to live a life that is unfamiliar to you, a life from which every sensitive nerve you possess shrinks! When you’ve been brought up to believe that only the best is good enough for you, the sun must shine for you...” He sighed, and she saw a glimmering of a wry smile in his eyes, but it vanished almost immediately. “It’s not easy, little one!”
“I’m afraid I believe nowadays that none of us has a right to expect complete security ... always,” she told him quickly. “I’m not even sure it’s good for us. Life in a gilded cage ... It’s not life as it should be lived!”
He sighed again, but there was a dry note of humour in his voice as he said:
“I was afraid you might feel like that. You’ve accepted a challenge yourself, and you appear to have risen above every form of weakness and self-pity. How did you meet Lou?”
“I got a job as an air stewardess ... Once I realised I had to earn my own living I had several jobs, one after the other, but as I hadn’t been trained for anything special I wasn’t very good at any of them. And then an airline took me on, but although my languages were good I wasn’t as satisfactory in other respects, and I was always a bit nervous when I was off the ground.” She felt the quick squeeze of his fingers ... “And it wasn’t very good for the passengers. So, in New York, when I was offered a job in a beauty salon, I took it, and it was there that I met Lou. She came to my rescue when I was about to be sacked!” her lips curving at the remembrance.
“And offered you your present job?”
“Yes.”
“And you like it? You don’t mind being ordered about by Lou? Made to feel inferior? Not even allowed to dine in the dining-room, save on special occasions? Hidden away upstairs in a suite of rooms, made to wear this uniform-like dress!” touching it gently. “Which, incidentally, becomes you very much indeed!”
“I don’t mind very much,” she confessed truthfully.
“And I get a good salary.”
His eyes grew dark, stormy, resentful. “And that night when I met you for the first time Lou told us all that you were wearing a dress which had once been hers! It was unpardonable! It was beyond all things crude!”
She tried to withdraw her fingers, but he held on to them tightly. In almost a bemused fashion she looked down, and saw the glitter of the crested gold ring on one of his fingers.
“Do you think it is quite right to discuss—my employer—like this in her absence?” she demanded, on a rising note of agitation. She nearly said: “The woman who hopes you will marry her one day! Quite soon!” But he ignored the question, and looking into his eyes it seemed to her that they were darker, and deeper, and stormier than ever. And more resentful.
“Let me make an admission to you,” he said quickly, “before someone comes upon us here. I never fell in love with a woman in my life ... until the other night! I haven’t ever wanted to fall in love, but when you stood there looking at me, with your eyes like golden flowers, and your small, pale face...”
This time she tugged her fingers away from him. “Herr Baron,” she gasped, “you can’t know what you’re talking about! ...”
“On the contrary,” he assured her, with a strange sort of angry sadness, “I do! And that is why I had to see you alone to-day! ...”
She stood up, her own eyes growing cold.
“Herr Baron,” she began.
He waved an impatient hand, the signet ring glinting. “It must always be Alex!”
“Aren’t you rather assuming something?” she inquired, in a tone that she strove to make cool and remote. “That I would be interested in an admission of that sort? Even if you meant it! Even if you could possibly mean it!”
“I do mean it,” he assured her. “And why should you not be interested? You have a very truthful pair of eyes! From the moment we looked at one another they told me things you might have preferred to have kept from me for a time ... And last night, in the lift, it was as if we were suddenly alone together not merely in a lift, but in a world that had no other interests! Can you deny it?” he demanded, almost fiercely, moving close to her. And then with abrupt, icy coldness: “Or do you prefer someone like our friend Haversham, a dull English writer, who will make duller love to you if you give him permission?”
“How dare you?” she gasped, amazed that he should suddenly introduce such a personal note. (Although afterwards she wondered what right she had to be amazed, when she had felt his hands holding hers with such a warmth and strength, and those wonderful eyes of his had never really looked at her in any other way.) “Mr. Haversham is my friend, and a fellow countryman!”
“And I desire neither to be your friend, nor to share the apology for good red blood that flows in his veins! I am content that we don’t even speak the same language, although I must admit you talk German very prettily in a schoolgirl fashion. Something—by the way—your employer doesn’t do!”
“Yet,” Valentine reminded him, resentful colour flaming in her cheeks, “you have singled her out for so much attention that everyone in the hotel thinks you’re going to marry her! Are you?” she insisted, in her turn.
His face went grave and quiet immediately. He made a strange little gesture—like capitulation—with his hands and shoulders.
“Yes,” he answered, without hesitating even for a moment. “I must marry Lou. It is something I have faced up to, and I recognise that I have to do it!”
She gasped afresh.
“Yet you ... You talk to me about—”
“Love?” he repeated. His eyes went deep and softly brilliant again. If something that actually vibrated with tenderness and warmth dwelt in them she could not have been more aware of it reaching out and touching her. “But that is because you are you, and I have been searching for you for such a long time! Someone to respond to every feeling I have, every moment of need, every craving for an enchanted oneness! Oh, you little fool!” he exclaimed, moving nearer still to her, so that she shrank back. “Cannot you understand that this—this thing between us!—has nothing to do wit
h my marrying Lou?”
“I ... don’t understand you!” she told him, and looked somewhat wildly round for the door. “But I do despise you for planning to marry one woman and talking such a lot of nonsense to another! And, as for there being anything between us ... I can only repeat that I despise you, and I feel that I ought to warn Lou against thinking seriously—even for a moment—of marrying you! I—”
But his lean fingers were encircling her wrist, and he was between her and the door.
“Don’t be foolish,” he said quietly. “Lou wouldn’t listen to you, and even I have my codes! I didn’t want my future peace and happiness destroyed by a girl who looks like you! ...”
“Then all I can say is, you deserve to have it destroyed!” she flashed at him, freed her wrist and was thankful to see the door pushed open and one of the elderly visitors to the hotel stand peering at them.
“I do hope I’m not interrupting anything?” Lady Frobisher said, blinking short-sightedly behind her spectacles. “I merely wanted to write a letter.”
“Of course,” Valentine said, and rushed swiftly past her.
CHAPTER FIVE
For the next few days Valentine kept well out of the way of the Baron Alex von Felden. Fortunately, the weather was so fine again, and the snow had hardened so splendidly, that everyone was out of doors for practically every moment of every day, and Lou and her constant escort were not content to remain long on the easy slopes. They wandered far afield, and although Valentine had her duties to perform, when she was out of doors she remained fairly close to the hotel, and Giles Haversham remained near it with her.
Lou had looked a little suspicious when Valentine returned to the suite after her conversation with von Felden in the writing-room, but as it would never have occurred to her that he could be more interested in an employee than he was in herself, it was curiosity rather than anything else that caused her to regard Valentine rather oddly.
Valentine was having an affair—she was quite certain of it—with Haversham, and it amused her because the English girl was so secretive about it. She wouldn’t admit it.
“I don’t in the least mind you using up a little of my time to have a few words with your favourite Englishman,” she said, “because I think he’s just right for you. I think the two of you are absolutely right for one another! But don’t go marrying him in a hurry, will you? Not until my own plans are more or less concrete, and I can get someone to replace you over here!”
Valentine felt the colour sting her cheeks, and a dreadful and unfamiliar sensation of guilt took possession of her. But she replied stiffly, and even a little coldly:
“I have no intention of marrying anyone yet awhile. So far as I know there is no one who has any intention of marrying me, and I’m certainly not interested in the thought of marriage.”
“No need to be coy,” Lou returned, smiling at her. “I don’t keep much back from you, do I? You know all about my secret aspirations, fears, hopes ... loves! Or you know all about the only important love affair I’ve ever indulged in!” She laughed to cover a sudden touch of embarrassment. “I suppose I’m pretty transparent, aren’t I? Half the women in this hotel must be hating me because I caught Alex so neatly on my own line before they had a chance to attach a hook to theirs!”
Valentine was conscious of something like repulsion—she even had a moment of feeling pity for Alex—and then the urge to warn Lou rose up in her. After all, Lou had been good to her. She had to say something before, perhaps, it was too late.
“You—you are sure about—wanting to marry the Baron, aren’t you, Lou?” she asked.
Lou glanced at her pityingly.
“Would I have written home and told them all about him if I wasn’t? Why, Pop’s so thrilled he’s planning to give us the most wonderful wedding present he can think of ... A trip round the world for both of us, plus any repairs to Alex’s tumbledown castle that are necessary, and extensive alterations if we decide on them! That’s why I’m so keen to see the place!”
Valentine smiled as if she thought it wonderful, too.
“The Baron is certainly a fortunate man. Or will be, if he gets you and such a generous father-in-law!”
“But we’re not officially engaged yet, honey,” Lou said quickly. “Don’t get that idea into your head, for Alex hasn’t actually popped the question, but I know he thinks our meeting was one of those things that are ordained. He’s even said that it was ... fortuitous.” She brought out the word slowly, and then a tinge of wryness invaded her eyes and her voice. “Translated, that means that he’s about as hard up as he can be at the moment, but I was never one to pull wool over my eyes, and I don’t expect everything from life! After all, I’ve already got money—and that can buy a lot, can’t it? You should know that, when you suddenly had to try and make do without it!—and Alex makes love beautifully, even if it’s the result of experience.”
The wry look grew, and twisted her beautifully made-up mouth.
“By fortuitous he means that he’s got something, and I’ve got something ... and together we’ll make a sort of whole! The French would understand, because that’s the way they plan their marriages, and they work out well.” She looked at Valentine as if she were defying her to deny such a statement. “And in addition we attract one another, and get on wonderfully well.”
“You mean you’re in love with one another?”
Lou sighed.
“What is love? I mean, what is it really, and how long does it last? I’m not jealous of Alex’s past experience—I’ve been in and out of love a few times myself—but once we’re married I’ll give him so much that he’ll be content with me for the rest of his life. That’s something I’ve promised myself. The past is dead, but the future ... that will be mine! I’d be frantically jealous of any woman who attempted to come between us—once he’d belonged to me!—that I ... I don’t know what I would do if it happened!”
“But if you’re so sure he’s in love with you it won’t happen.”
Lou ground out a cigarette in an ash-tray with a slightly shaking hand.
“I don’t know that I like being in love with anyone quite as attractive as Alex,” she remarked evasively. “It’s not fair to expect the other women to keep off, but you can’t share a husband ... or a fiancé, if it comes to that! And Alex is so courteous, and has such charming manners. He makes a woman feel that she’s important just by talking to her.”
Valentine felt her heart labour slowly and heavily. He had talked to her in such a way that she might have imagined herself important—to him, at least—but fortunately she was not as gullible as Lou. She had a pretty shrewd idea what kind of man Alex von Felden was, and it was Lou who was heading for bitter disillusionment if she married him.
But it was Valentine who lay awake at night thinking of the things he had said to her, and the way he had looked when he said them ... And, even in the daytime, she had to keep herself fairly well occupied in order to prevent her thoughts constantly drifting back to him. She could feel his lean, strong fingers encircling her wrist—gripping it a little cruelly—as he told her that even he had his codes, and he hadn’t wanted her to destroy his future peace and happiness, while she sat altering a hemline for Lou. And more than once she literally turned and fled when she all but came face to face with him in the vestibule, or had the breathless sensation that he was catching her up on the way to the lift.
She was determined that she wouldn’t even catch his eye if it could be avoided. But she couldn’t say anything to Lou ... She couldn’t warn her as she felt she ought. And even now, when the opportunity arose, she couldn’t put Lou on her guard ... render her less vulnerable.
And because she had so much money she was terribly, terribly vulnerable!
The next day Lou and the Baron went for their long trek up the Eisenhorn, and when they returned, just before darkness descended, they looked so thoroughly well content with life, so bronzed and fit and in tune, that even Valentine wondered whether perhap
s there was no need to warn Lou. They were quite obviously two people of a kind, preoccupied with themselves and their own lives, accustomed to the same way of life—the luxury way that had nothing to do with responsibility—and on Lou’s money, backed by Martin C. Morgan, they could have a wonderful time.
As Lou said: If you had money, at least you had something. In point of fact, you had a great deal! It was lack of money, lack of ease, lack of the time to stand and stare and enjoy the world around you, that broke up so many marriages, and prevented so many taking place.
But instead of feeling relieved by these reflections Valentine felt strangely heavy-hearted as she dressed Lou for another gala evening that night. Lou, in thick white satin and pearls that were worth a small fortune, preparing to enjoy every minute until bedtime, had never looked so flushed and lovely before. And she really was lovely ... She had looks as well as money.
Even if Alex wasn’t desperately in love with her now, he couldn’t fail to have moments of admiring her tremendously. And admiration often led to something stronger ... especially after marriage.
Handing Lou the mirror, in order that she could survey the upswept masses of her golden hair—a regal style to-night, to match the clinging satin—Valentine’s depression grew stronger. And behind it was a strange sort of resentment that she didn’t understand.
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