Her imagination worked overtime, and she tried to get a picture of life as it could be lived under such conditions. A touch of the spartan in the day-to-day routine (or could there be such a thing as central heating, and hot and cold running water?) storing colossal supplies of wood for the winter, a baronial hall with a great fire burning at one end, servants with thick woolly stockings who played the zither in the evenings. And if there were bathrooms they would be huge and draughty, corridors would be grim and wind all over the place, storms would hurl themselves against the windows in spring and autumn, summer would bring the scent of new-mown hay and alpine roses into all the rooms...
And one would be monarch of all one surveyed! Lord of the castle, lord of the valley, Baron von Felden! ... Excellency to the villagers! A wonderful, feudal existence indeed!
But where would Lou fit in in such an existence? Or, if it came to that, how would Alex von Felden fit in? How did he fit in? ... The comforts of a modern hotel, a flat in Vienna, a trip round the world paid for by someone like Martin C. Morgan, luxury liners, air liners, mountains of pigskin suitcases... Those were the things one associated him with. But not a lonely mountain schloss! Not even if Lou got to work on it, and turned it into a luxurious mountain retreat.
For a few weeks, yes... But the business of life was movement, variety, constant and endless change, and no danger of becoming involved in anything serious ... Not even a love affair!
Love had to be accompanied by a sugary pill ... Wealth!
At this stage Valentine must have closed her eyes, for in spite of her determination she fell asleep, her head resting against the straight support behind her. The figures in the valley no longer existed for her, and therefore she did not know that one of them climbed steadily to her chosen retreat. He was much better at scaling the almost vertical side of a steep hillside than she was, and he didn’t require so many rests, so she hadn’t been asleep for many minutes when he was standing beneath the trees and looking down at her.
Valentine’s eyes flew open as if they had been automatically pulled open by wires. They were still clouded by sleep, and the dreams she had been having, and for a moment she couldn’t even move.
She said stupidly:
“But I was dreaming of you! I thought we were all on a visit to your schloss! ...”
“Did you?” He sank down beside her on the tree trunk and gazed at her reproachfully. “What right had you to fall asleep in the open at an altitude like this? Don’t you know that if you’d gone on sleeping you might have eventually frozen to death? At best you’d have caught a chill!”
“But I was so hot after I’d climbed, and it was lovely sitting here. So peaceful.” She sat up awkwardly, and shivered. “I do feel a bit cold now...”
He zipped up her windcheater for her, and removed the thick woollen scarf from his own neck and wrapped it round hers. He even removed his gloves and made her put them on over her own, for they were large enough to accommodate both her small fists and her inadequate mitts, and of much better quality than anything she possessed.
“Better?” He sounded so anxious that she was a trifle amazed, and in her slightly bemused state after dropping off into that brief doze she didn’t quite know how to cope with it or his solicitude. “Is there any coffee left in that flask of yours? If not, there’s some in my own.” And he started to unstrap his canvas knapsack.
“No, no, I’m beautifully warm now, and I don’t need any coffee. I had a whole flask full!” She laid a hand on his arm to stop him, and suddenly the realisation that it was actually him, and that he was here with her in the pine wood—and there appeared to be no one else for miles!—affected her like an electric shock. She released his arm as impulsively as she had clutched it at. “But I—I don’t understand how you—why you’re here? ...”
“I went back to the hotel to fetch you, and Willi said you had come up here. He thought you’d be having your lunch here, so I came straight on up!”
“You went back to the hotel? ...”
“I didn’t know Lou was going to give you the day off, otherwise I’d have insisted you came with us. But as soon as I learned I determined you shouldn’t spend it all alone, and I started back to get you.”
“And what did Lou think of that?”
Her golden eyes peered at him inquiringly.
He looked suddenly disdainful, and the cold curl of his lip was as unfeeling as the frozen wastes around them.
“Does it matter?” he asked. “I’m not here to discuss what Lou thought or said, but to make sure you don’t catch a chill. You obviously aren’t capable of looking after yourself, and if I’d had the faintest idea what you intended to do ... this morning...” He looked down at her, every suggestion of unfeelingness banished from his eyes, and in its place there was something that could have melted her bones, even in the bleak confines of the little wood, with a thin wind beginning to whine eerily through it, and the sun falling less goldenly on the open hillside.
Valentine knew that, as far as she was concerned, the situation was unfair, and she was still so far from being in possession of all her normal cautious faculties that that glance from his eyes set her trembling deep down inside her. Trembling and feeling as if she had been caught in a net.
“What would you have done—this morning—if you had known what I intended to do?” she counterquestioned faintly, keeping her eyelids lowered.
“I’ve told you ... Insist that you come along with us! The last I saw of you, you were standing on your balcony, and although I was still angry with you I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving you behind!” He captured the hands that wore his gloves. “Oh, Valentine,” he told her oddly—unsteadily, “I’ve been angry with you for days, and you’ve avoided me for days, but last night I was unspeakably detestable to you! I meant to be detestable!”
“You called me Cinderella,” she recalled in a voice so small it was utterly unlike any voice she had ever used before. “That wasn’t very detestable.”
“It was because you were alone, and you’ll never be a Cinderella. You could be the belle of the ball every time if you wanted to be, but you’re stupid and obstinate and so conscious of your present position that you prefer to hold yourself aloof ... and behave like Cinderella!”
“I have a job to do,” she told him, staring so hard at the pocket of his windcheater that it seemed to acquire for her an irresistible magnetism, and she yearned to lean forward and just touch it with her cheek. And then the thought of what she was contemplating startled her so much that she drew back sharply and averted her face. “I have no time to aspire to be the belle of any occasion, even if I wanted to be anything of the sort. And I can assure you I don’t! And I’m not a holidaymaker ... Or whatever you people who drift about Europe call yourselves!”
“Lotus-eaters,” he replied, with a wry twist to his mouth. “That’s what you think I am, don’t you?”
“I don’t think about you at all! ... I don’t think...” And then, with her heart beating thickly, heavily, she had to look round at him again, and her breath caught. He was gazing at her as if he knew this was utterly untrue, and she knew it, too.
“Not even last night?” he said. “After you saw me kiss Lou in the veranda, and rushed away up to your room as if you were trying to escape from something that pursued you? Weren’t you thinking about me at the very moment that I knocked on the door?”
She swallowed and looked down at his gloves. She removed them deliberately and handed them back to him.
“I don’t want these. I...”
He caught hold of her chin and tilted her face so that he could look into her eyes.
“How badly were you hating me, Valentine, when you heard that knock on the door?”
Truth came to her rescue, and prevented her saying something foolish and undignified. Instead, with her golden eyes gazing into his appealingly, she admitted:
“I wasn’t hating you! ... Myself, perhaps!”
“Oh, Liebling!” he said, very
gently, and touched each of the eyes with a reverent fingertip. “And there was no need to do that, for it was another part of the punishment. I knew you were there, and I was consumed with a desire to make you feel something at least. If I could have been absolutely certain that it would hurt you ... As I think it did!”
She made no response, but her eyes spoke for her.
“I would have spared you. But you have walked past me so many times in the past few days, ignored me ... And Haversham you encouraged, sat out with him in the veranda, let him follow like a favoured dog at your heels when you were free.” His hands cupped her face, the glowing coldness of her cheeks, and in spite of the steady lowering of the temperature they were warm and vital, and trembling a little. “But if I’d thought that he’d ever done this to you...”
His hard, firm masculine mouth closed over hers, and she gasped as she sank against his windcheater and knew that this was what she had been craving for for weeks ... Or was it merely a couple of weeks since he arrived at the hotel in a horse-drawn sleigh?
She had watched him arrive, and watched him ever since ... secretly. She had envied Lou without realising it because he was likely to become her property, and last night, when she saw him kiss Lou, she had suffered a mixture of jealousy and anguish that had both amazed and disturbed her.
But now Lou was somewhere on the far side of the valley, and it didn’t greatly matter where ... It didn’t matter that she existed at all! All that mattered was the demanding sweetness of the mouth that devoured her own, the hard thudding of the heart against her own, the determined desperation of the arms that held her. Desperation that set alight the same feeling in herself!
And, aware of—and perhaps astounded—by the completeness of her response, Alex’s bounding pulses raced faster than ever, and his eyes were full of triumph as he lifted his head at last and looked down at her. She was clinging to him dazedly, her golden eyes bewildered.
“Little redhead,” he whispered, “my lovely little redhead! Oh, Valentine, I adore you, and now I know you love me, too! Nothing else matters, my sweet, but our knowledge that we love one another, and it was why I came up here to-day ... to find you! I had to find you, and be alone with you, and Willi guessed as much. He’s a romantic—an incurable romantic...”
“Willi?” she repeated stupidly.
“He was the one who saw you go.” His white teeth dazzled her with their brilliance as he betrayed amusement in a smile. “He lives always in the past these days, but if he were twenty years younger he’d be chasing after you, too.”
“W-would he?” But she put up a hand and held him a little away from her. “You mean the Count?”
“That’s right, my heart. One of my oldest friends, and therefore the one most capable of reading my mind.”
“I see,” she said, the floods receding, the storm abating, the cold light of reality breaking all over her. She was so appalled by the strength of her own weakness that it made her voice shake. “And does he also know about Lou? Does he perfectly understand what your plans are for her?”
“Of course, darling.” But he tried to draw her close to him again, and kiss her with anguished sympathy. “Valentine, if you really were Cinderella, and I were a prince with a kingdom to offer you, it would be yours at this very minute, and all our problems would be solved. But I’m a man who lives largely by his wits—oh, not entirely, for I have a certain amount of money!—and you have suffered more than most young women of your age. It’s not your fault that you have to work for someone like Lou, but if only the circumstances were different ... If only I could offer you a future that would be a secure future for both of us! ... ”
“If only I were Lou, and not Valentine, there would be no complications, is that what you mean?” she asked, and struggled to get out of his arms.
“There is only one Valentine,” he told her sharply. “There will always be only one Valentine!”
But having remembered in time the woman who paid her her salary Valentine fought to get away from him. She had never been so ashamed in her life—or so sickened because she had been weak—and the memory of her weakness lent strength to her struggles. If she didn’t get away she might be weak again, and already she could see the flush rising up in his face, and the glitter of annoyance in his dark eyes because these stolen moments were to be ruined by her attack of conscience. His fingers hurt her as he gripped her strongly, and his arms were brutal as he crushed her once more up against him.
“Valentine,” he ordered, “don’t be ridiculous! I love you, and you love me, and that’s all that matters! Valentine! ...”
But she twisted all ways to avoid him, and he knew he was hurting her soft flesh. Nevertheless, his mouth clamped down on hers again, and this time he forced her lips apart and kissed her until the pine tops swayed above her, and the whole world rocked round her. She was forced once more to cling to him, and they stood swaying dizzily on the edge of a drop that was like a plunge into infinity, and the fire of a desperation that was coursing through his veins lighted such a responsive one in hers that when at last they had to tear their lips apart in order to draw breath her golden eyes were as black and strained as his own, and they neither of them had any noticeable tan at all.
He was rather white around the mouth.
“Oh, Valentine,” he breathed, “how could you be so stupid? How could you think we could ignore this?”
But, to his utter stupefaction, she raced away from him through the pine wood, through the denseness of the little twilit place, and—heedless of the drifts beside the track, and the unseen rocks and tree-roots—went sprawling full-length in the very middle of the path as he recovered himself sufficiently to race after her. In a panic, as she lifted herself and saw him standing above her, she made an unwary movement and rolled down a slope and into a little hollow, and she was lying very still when he threw himself down on his knees beside her.
“Are you hurt? Liebling, you’re not hurt, are you?” he implored. His voice was shaking, his face white and stricken, and he lifted her gently into his arms.
She shook her head. Her cap had fallen off, her curls were brilliant against the snow, but her face was paler and more bewildered than ever.
“No. No, I’m perfectly all right.”
He cradled her tenderly as if she were a baby, stroking the tousled hair, and bringing colour back to her cheeks, with the warmth of his fingers. And then she put back her head and looked upwards into his eyes. They had the same strange, intense darkness of a few minutes ago—an all-enveloping darkness—and behind it were several flickering fires. For although she had shocked him by running away—shocked him still more when she fell—his need of her was still paramount.
It was frustrated passion that was flickering at the back of his eyes.
“Help me up,” she pleaded. “Please, Alex!”
He kissed the hand she raised to him, and then he kissed her violently. Shaken though she was, he wrung every sort of response he could from her lips, and from the arms that crept up gradually round his neck and held him close. So close that their bodies were fused into oneness, and as he lay beside her in the snow a warning bell started to ring inside her head, and panic started to rise in her like the rising of a spring.
“Let me go,” she begged. “You must let me go!” But he was temporarily deaf.
“I’m cold,” she pleaded, a minute later, and he looked down at her as if he were slowly coming to his senses out of a fog of passion. He rose and helped her to her feet.
“Do you want to go straight back to the hotel?” he asked, and she nodded her head.
“But there’s no need for you to come with me. I shall be all right by myself.”
“I’m coming with you.” It was noticeable that they avoided meeting one another’s eyes, and in his case he tried to avoid looking at her altogether. “Of course I’m coming with you!”
“What about Lou? Isn’t she expecting you to rejoin her?”
He shrugged.
&nb
sp; “If she is, I don’t propose to do anything of the kind.”
“But—”
“You may think I’m completely insensitive—you may think I have very few virtues,” he said slowly, meeting her look for the first time since he had stood her on her feet, and meeting it with a strange sort of directness. “But even I have moments when I’d rather be entirely the opposite, and when I don’t feel like being taken to task about it. I shall take you straight back to the hotel now, and if we run into Lou it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters ... very much!”
She looked as if she would have liked to say something, but changed her mind. Instead she bit her lip, and handed him back his gloves and scarf.
“You’d better take these.”
“But you’ll be cold,” he protested, instantly, “and I honestly don’t need them!”
“I don’t need them, either,” she answered, “and Lou might think it odd if ... if she saw me wearing them!” He accepted them silently, was silent for perhaps half a minute, and then uttered a sound that was very Austrian and full of furious protest. Then he knelt down and fastened her ski straps for her—making doubly certain that they couldn’t come adrift—and led the way out of the little wood.
They skied back to the hotel together, and although it was the first time they had done so there was no pleasure in the experience for either of them. There was a heavy silence between them.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Lou was in the hotel when they got back. She was in a very resentful mood.
“Why in the world did Alex have to spoil our day by going off to look for you?” she demanded of Valentine. “I wouldn’t have given you the day off if I’d known he was going to behave so extraordinarily when he heard of it.”
Love in High Places Page 7
