She put her hand into his, and her eyes glowed as if they were two golden flowers opening and expanding beneath the influence of the sun. She breathed softly: “All right, Alex. If ... that’s what you want!”
They climbed steadily for half an hour, and then they rested, and already, by that time, the schloss was far below them, and it was easy to see how harmoniously it fitted into the lonely world of austere white peaks and pine-clad slopes, and the thought that it had been there for so many years—centuries—was a stirring thought to Valentine. The second thought she had that one day it would disintegrate entirely was much more depressing. She mentioned it to Alex, but he shook his head.
“Oh, no.” He looked down at his schloss, and quite a contented smile touched his lips. “Felden will be there for years yet ... many years! You do not need to make yourself unhappy thinking about the time when it will not be there, my Valentine.”
“But money—money spent on it wisely—would give it a far longer life?” she said, leaning against him for support and looking up wistfully into his eyes. “That is true, isn’t it, Alex?”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“Perhaps. But if money is not forthcoming then it will still survive on its own!”
“But money will be forthcoming...”
“Oh, please,” he said, and looked down at her reproachfully. “Not to-day, Valentine ... Not now! If you can think about money when the morning is so beautiful around us, the sun is shining for us, and you—you are the most beautiful thing in the whole wide world!” he said, with a touch of reverence, as he gently laid a finger on her cheek, and then tilted her chin so that he could look into her eyes. “Oh, Valentine,” he whispered, “you are so much more than beautiful! You have everything! You are everything to me!” He kissed her softly on the mouth. “Let us go on, Liebling!”
The clouds that Valentine had observed earlier had passed onwards, but there were others that occasionally scudded across the face of the sun and hid it from them. Then the mountainside grew bleak and cold, and Valentine shivered. She looked down, and it seemed to her that the schloss was far, far away. She listened to the noise of the occasional avalanche—always very far away, and usually on the far side of the valley, but sometimes sounding very close—that shattered the otherwise complete stillness, and that, too, made her shiver, especially when she thought of tons of snow moving like a white and menacing wall down into the valley.
But whenever she glanced up into Alex’s eyes, and met their warmth, and their encouragement, her heart lifted, and even if the sun was not shining she was temporarily happy and free again. She had no doubts, no uneasiness, and no desire at all to go back and take her place once more with the little collection of people they had left behind.
As people they had ceased to exist, and she was as intent as Alex on reaching the hut that was their goal.
Just before they reached it she made an unwary movement, one of her skis buckled under her, and she went down in the snow before Alex could prevent her. Instantly he was on his knees beside her, lifting her, the keenest concern in his face, and although she tried to assure him that she was not in the least hurt he could tell by the sudden whitening of her lips that it was not entirely true. When he tried to lift her to her feet she gave a little cry of pain, and he knew at once that it was her ankle that was injured.
In order to ascertain the extent of the damage he unlaced her boot and removed it, and already the ankle was swelling so noticeably that he realised it would be impossible to get her boot on again until it had gone down. Her eyes grew dark with concern as she herself saw the swelling, and she clutched at him appealingly.
“But, Alex, if I can’t get my boot on, how—how will I get back to the schloss? We ought to get back soon! We shouldn’t have come so far! ...”
“It’s all right, darling,” he said soothingly. “Somehow or other you will be got back to the schloss, and there’s no reason at all to panic. The hut is within a few yards, and I can easily carry you there, and once there you can rest while I start a fire and make you some coffee. There’s always a supply of dry wood kept in the hut...”
“But we haven’t time to wait for coffee, or—or for me to rest! In any case, I can manage if you’ll try and get my boot on again. Have you forgotten that we’re going back to the hotel after lunch?”
“Are we?” He gazed at her white, tragic face, and his own face grew a trifle set. “Don’t be absurd, dear one! And if you think that getting back to the hotel is important when you are in pain, and something has to be done about it, then you are a more stupid little Valentine than I imagined!”
“But what about Lou—?”
“I am not going to say forget about Lou,” he said, as he stooped and lifted her with one easy, powerful movement into his arms, and stood with her on the steep mountain path, “because that shouldn’t be necessary ... not now! And I have eyes and ears and thoughts for only one human being in the world ... and that is you!” He looked deep into her eyes, clouded with pain. “Valentine,” he said sharply, “I love you, I love you! Stop disbelieving me!”
She felt as if her ankle were a throbbing, angry mass, but just then it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. She hid her face against him and she whispered:
“I do believe you!”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Later she watched him moving about a small room that had wooden walls, and was utterly primitive.
There was a stove in a corner that smoked badly when it was first filled with wood and lighted, but later it glowed strongly and gave off a fierce heat that made the small, confined space seem extraordinarily cosy. There were also cooking utensils and some blankets, a pile of tinned foods on a shelf, and a small canister of coffee. But for water it was necessary to go out into the snow and scoop some of it into the ancient iron kettle that heated quickly on the stove.
Valentine lay on a kind of crude wooden divan and watched the man she loved with a quiet glow of contentment in her eyes. She knew she had no right at all to feel contented—that she ought to be torn apart with anxiety because in a short while he would be confronted by the wrath of an indignant Lou (and no one would be able to deny that Lou had the right to feel indignant!) and she herself might even be dismissed on the spot once they got back. Easy-going though she was—up to a point!—Lou would scarcely be likely to condone deception, especially when it involved the man she intended to marry, and the fact that all her plans had to be cancelled would be another reason why her temper would almost certainly be at boiling point when they did eventually arrive back.
When they eventually arrived back! ...
Valentine glanced towards the window, and she saw that the soft flurry of flakes that had started to descend within a matter of minutes of their reaching the hut was now a violent snowstorm. She felt as if her contentment received a nasty jar, and when Alex brought her one of the thick cups filled with very hot, and very strong, coffee, she looked up at him with a new alarm in her eyes.
“But, Alex ... we can’t possibly—stay here all night!” she got out in a concerned whisper of sound. “What will happen if—if this snow continues, and my ankle—?”
“One thing at a time, my sweet,” he said, as he sat down beside her on the couch and bent to touch very gently the bandage he had improvised about her ankle. His long, sensitive fingers had, in fact, a surgeon’s deftness, as she had discovered when he applied the bandage. “The swelling has gone down considerably, and it no longer hurts quite so much?” he asked, the concern in his eyes making her heart expand and grow warm again.
“Not nearly so much,” she admitted. “In fact, it hardly hurts now at all. Those hot water compresses you applied seem to have worked wonders.”
“That is good,” he said softly, caressingly. “I couldn’t bear it when I knew you were suffering, and you are such a little thing to be hurt.” He captured one of her hands and kissed it lingeringly. “You do things to me, Valentine, that no other woman has ever done to me before!” he c
onfessed, with a noticeable unsteadiness about his voice.
Because she felt strongly that she dared not encourage him too much she looked down into her coffee and spoke quickly.
“I’m not really little, you know,” she said, although it was quite unimportant. “I’m as tall as Lou ... Or almost!”
“The subject of Lou is streng verboten,” he reminded her, almost sternly. “But I will correct you about her height. A tall man, such as myself, can only just look down on the top of her head, whereas your head reaches precisely to my heart!”
“D-does it?” she said, and knew that her sheet anchor would be swept away if she so much as looked at him. “Anyway, I’ve never really wanted to be tall...” Then, changing the subject: “Do you think I can get my boot on now? ... Or as soon as the snow stops, I mean?” She glanced again, anxiously, at the window. “It seems to be getting worse!”
“You foolish child,” he said, covering her nervous fingers with both his own warm hands. “Do you think that, even if you could get your boot on, and the weather cleared, your ankle would be strong enough to support a ski? I’m not even convinced that it will be strong enough to do that in the morning! And as for the weather clearing...” He, too, glanced at the window. “I agree with you that it is unlikely to do that in the next few hours, and probably not to-night!”
“But ... what will we do?” Her words were a thin whisper that barely reached him. “We can’t stay here all night... We can’t, Alex!” And then, more accusingly: “When you saw the clouds this morning didn’t you suspect—?” She remembered he was weather-wise, and he knew this district well. He must have suspected!
“Perhaps I did.” He shrugged his shoulders slightly, and regarded her with a faintly whimsical gleam of amusement in his eyes. “And perhaps I, also, didn’t care! All that mattered was that I had to be alone with you, and if by chance the Fates were kind and shut us up here in a snowstorm! ...”
“Alex!” she exclaimed, in a shocked voice. “Oh, Alex, you didn’t ... plan it?”
“I certainly didn’t plan that you should hurt your ankle, my little one,” he said, and bent and lightly brushed the bandage with his lips.
Then he went across to the stove and piled wood in the aperture, listened to it roaring up the chimney, and went back and slid to his knees beside the couch.
“Darling,” he said, his eyes pleading with her, “is it such a dreadful thing to be shut up here with me in a snowstorm?”
Her eyes told him that he had startled her badly, but at the same time she was unwilling to believe that he really had planned their present segregation.
“I don’t believe it! I won’t believe it!” she said. “That you were uncertain about the weather! That you thought it might change!”
“My little sweet,” he answered her tenderly, cupping her face in his hands, “I might have suspected that the weather would change later to-day, but I thought we would be back long before it did so! That is the truth, although there is no one but myself to vouch for it. And what I planned when we arrived here was that I would leave you when I had got the stove going, and you could be warm and comfortable, and go back to the schloss and get help to take you down. I would carry you myself, but we would never make it that way—not even if the snow stopped—and now that it’s developing into a blizzard it’s impossible. But I could go back alone quite easily through this—”
She caught at his arm.
“You couldn’t! You’d miss the path and go over the edge, and you couldn’t ski back!”
“I could. But I don’t intend to do so, because it would mean leaving you alone here all night, and that I would never do! Never, do you understand, Valentine?” he repeated quietly.
She looked at him helplessly.
“Then what—?”
He rose to his feet and started pacing up and down the restricted floor space.
“We remain here together! You and I! Almost certainly until the morning!” He glanced at her almost casually over his shoulder. “And that will mean I shall have to ask you to marry me, won’t it?”
She flushed, so vividly, so painfully, that it was as if every drop of blood in her body rushed to her face with the brutal intention of scorching the fair skin. Then her eyes widened and the pupils dilated as if he had struck her, and she had the greatest difficulty in preventing her bottom lip from trembling.
“Was that ... really necessary?” she asked, her voice strangely husky.
“What do you mean?” He was so plainly surprised that for an instant her lip stopped trembling, and then he had crossed the floor in two strides, was once more kneeling beside her, his arms reaching out to draw her close.
“Valentine,” he said, in utter amazement, “you didn’t think ...? Oh, darling, you couldn't think I wouldn’t rather have you for my wife than any other woman in the whole wide world? Marriage to you is something I’ve dreamed about ever since I first saw you,” determinedly defeating her frenzied efforts to resist him. “That first time we were alone together in the writing-room at the Imperial I wanted to tell you that there would never be anyone else but you; and ever since that day in the wood, when I was such a swine to you—and you ran away from me! ...” She saw his eyes grow dark at the memory, and the muscles of his lean brown throat contract. “But how could I offer you marriage? ... When I’d so little besides myself to offer as well!”
“Don’t you think that any woman who—loved you—would think that was more than enough?” she asked, burrowing her face into his neck, and speaking in a muffled voice.
He looked down almost broodingly at the brightness of her hair.
“And you do love me, don’t you, Valentine?” he said quietly. “There isn’t any doubt about that?”
She shook her head without glancing up.
“I’ve so often wished there was!”
“Poor sweetheart,” he said, stroking the silken curls that strayed all over the front of his sweater. Then he tightened his clasp about her and admitted as solemnly as if he were making a vow: “And I love you so much that it’s a part of me, and without you the other part will wither and die eventually. Or it will if I let you go ... As I should do—as I’d planned to do, quite cold-bloodedly, even when I wanted as much from you as you were willing to give! When I was prepared to take everything from you and give you nothing! Do you realise that, Valentine?” forcing her face out into the open and insisting that she meet his eyes, in order that she should no longer labour under the slightest delusion ... if, indeed, she did. “I wanted you from the instant I saw you, and it was part of my plan that you should fall like a ripe plum into my arms and deny me nothing! I had no scruples, not even when you told me your story, and any decent man would have wanted to spare you any further unhappiness ... I wanted you! It was as simple as that!”
“And now?” she asked, looking straight up into his eyes without even a flicker of her long eyelashes, the transparency of pools about the golden eyes. “I have fallen like a ripe plum into your arms, and at the moment one of my ankles would give out on me if I tried to run away from you, so why do you talk as if your plan has been defeated?”
“Because it isn’t a plan any longer,” he answered, with a simplicity that shook her. “It’s a reproach! Any man who could offer you less than marriage would be a ... Well, I’m not that man!” he said, looking down as if fascinated by the shaking movements of his own hand as it cupped her chin again. “I love you, Valentine, completely and absorbedly, for ever and always, and if I once threatened your happiness then I hope you’ll forgive me! But I’m not at all sure I’m the man you should marry... My grandmother would tell you I’ve so many failings she finds it difficult to overlook them, and I’ll make the worst possible husband for any woman! Or that is what she would tell you!”
“She has already told me you have a genius for collecting debts, and that you bear a resemblance to your grandfather who found it impossible to live simply! She also said that, until you are prepared to make sacrifices—per
haps a supreme sacrifice!—you would not be happy,” Valentine told him with a glow in her eyes that was not all teasing.
He seemed taken aback, and then looked almost abashed.
“She said all that ... to you?”
She nodded.
“The wicked old...” And then an appreciative gleam lit his eyes. “If she took you so much into her confidence about me she must have liked you, very much indeed! And, as a matter of fact, I know she does.”
“I—I like her,” she said shyly.
He regarded her humbly.
“Valentine, after a night together in this hut, my grandmother would insist on my asking you to marry me, but I’m asking you to do so because it’s the one thing above all else that I want! You may think, after hearing my closest relative’s opinion of me,” his lips twisting a little wryly, “that I’m a pretty poor bargain, and, as a matter of fact, I am! But if you can put up with me ... If you can trust me to take care of you and make you happy—happier than you’ve been for a long time now, my poor little darling!” pressing his mouth into the hollow of her hand—“then I promise I won’t fail you—ever! I may have a genius for collecting debts, but I also have a certain amount of means, and we won’t starve...”
“But, Alex,” she said huskily, holding him away from her, “you know it isn’t what you wanted! You intended to marry a woman with money...”
“If I said that I must have been drunk!”
“You weren’t in the least drunk. You were merely being very practical.”
“Then I’m not practical any longer,” using his greater strength to break down her resistance, and catching her hungrily into his arms. “Oh, darling, we’re talking too much, and there isn’t any need to talk! ...”
Having silenced her with a kiss that was so unlike any other kiss they had exchanged that it left them without the power to say even a word, and too incoherent to think of anything that could be uttered lucidly, they gazed into one another’s eyes and learned far more about one another than they had ever done before. Valentine had always suspected that the dark eyes of the Baron were a key to emotions he kept locked away inside him, and now those emotions were given their freedom and his unleashed tenderness set her trembling so badly that all his protective instincts were aroused, and she was afforded an entirely new glimpse of his character.
Love in High Places Page 13
