‘Do have a drink,’ urged a girl with friendly blue eyes. ‘Lilli has concocted the most fabulous cocktail with rose petals floating on the surface.’
‘Lilli wants to meet her,’ another girl said, grabbing hold of Daisy’s hand and tugging her free of the throng. ‘Hi. I’m Patsy Smythe. This sure is some party. Have you met Lilli before?’
‘No,’ Daisy said, avoiding the appreciative touch of a strange male hand.
Patsy grinned. ‘Just treat her as if she’s the Queen of Sheba and you won’t go far wrong. Hell. Someone has spilt rum on my skirt. How do you get rum stains out of chiffon?’
Daisy didn’t know. Her eyes met those of Lilli Rainer. Lilli’s eyes were small and piercing, raisin-black in a powdered white face. She had been talking volubly, a long jade cigarette holder stabbing the air as she emphasized her remarks. Now she halted, her anecdote forgotten. She had lived and breathed for the camera. Only talkies had defeated her. Her voice held the guttural tones of her native Germany and no amount of speech therapy had been able to eradicate them. She had retired gracefully, allowing nobody to know of her bitter frustration. On seeing Daisy she rose imperiously to her feet. No star or starlet from Worldwide had been invited to the party. She did not like to be outshone and the girl before her, with her effortless grace and dark, fathom-deep eyes, was doing just that. Every eye had turned in her direction as Patsy Smythe had led her across the room.
Lilli’s carmine-painted lips tightened. ‘This is not a studio party,’ she said icily. ‘Admittance is by invitation only.’
Daisy smiled. ‘I’ve been invited,’ she said pleasantly. ‘I came with Bob Kelly.’
Lilli sat down slowly and gestured those surrounding them away. The amethyst satin dress was pathetically cheap and yet it looked a million dollars. A spasm of jealousy caught at her aged throat and was gone. It was only the second rate that she could not tolerate. And the girl in front of her was far from that. ‘Do you work at Worldwide?’ she asked sharply.
‘No.’
‘Then you ought to,’ Lilli said tersely. ‘It’s a first-rate studio and it has one of the best directors in town.’ She drew on her cigarette, inhaling deeply. ‘Where is Bob going to take you? Warner Brothers? Universal?’
‘No, it would be silly to work in the offices of another studio when Bob is at Worldwide.’
Lilli blew a wreath of smoke into the air and stared at her. ‘Offices? Who the hell said anything about offices? You belong in front of the cameras. Anyone with half an eye can see that.’
Noise rose and ebbed about them. Neither of them heard it.
Daisy said slowly, ‘Bob doesn’t want me to work at the studio.’
Lilli crushed her cigarette out viciously. ‘Whose life are you leading? Yours or his?’ She leaned forward, grasping hold of Daisy’s wrist, her eyes brilliant.
‘There are a few, a very tiny few, who can be instantly beloved by the cameras. It’s nothing that can be learned. It’s something you are born with. It’s in here.’ She stabbed at her head with a lacquered fingernail, ‘and in here.’ She slapped her hand across her corseted stomach. ‘It’s inside you. It’s not actions and gestures, it’s something that is innate.’ She released Daisy’s wrist and leaned back in her chair, ‘And you have it.’
Daisy stared at her transfixed, the blood throbbing in her temples.
‘I wondered where you’d got to.’ It was Bob with Jeff Claybourne at his side.
‘I see I’m a bit late to perform the introductions,’ Jeff said, bending and giving his mother a kiss on her white-powdered cheek.
Bob was talking but Daisy did not hear him. Lilli’s words rang in her ears. Nothing Bob had said had suppressed her desire to return to the exciting world of the studio. Now, suddenly, the longing was overwhelming.
A cocktail glass was pressed into her hand and she took it numbly. She had to get away. She needed peace and quiet in order to be able to think clearly. To still the unsettling emotions Lilli’s words had aroused.
She fought her way from the crowded room into the ornate entrance hall. A chandelier hung brilliantly above her head; the carpet was wine red, the walls covered in silk. There was a marble telephone stand and a dark, carved wooden chair beside it. She sat down, her legs trembling, as if she were on the edge of an abyss. Someone had left cigarettes and a lighter on the telephone table. Clumsily she spilled them from their pack, picking one up and struggling with the lighter.
‘Allow me,’ a deep-timbred voice said from the shadows of the stairs. The lighter clattered to the table, the cigarette dropping from her fingers as she whirled her head round.
He had been sitting on the stairs, just out of range of the chandelier’s brilliance. Now he moved, rising to his feet, and walking towards her with the athletic ease and sexual negligence of a natural-born predator.
She couldn’t speak; couldn’t move. He withdrew a black Sobranie from a gold cigarette case, lit it, inhaling deeply, and then removed the cigarette from his mouth and set it gently between her lips.
She was shaking. Over the abyss and falling. Falling as Vidal Rakoczi said softly, ‘I don’t believe you’ve ever been to Oregon in your life.’
Chapter Four
There was still noise. Laughter and music were still loud in the nearby rooms but Daisy was oblivious of them. She was aware of nothing but the dark, magnetic face staring down at her, the eyes pinning her in place, consuming her like dry tinder in a forest fire. She was suffocating, unable to breathe, to draw air into her lungs. The cigarette fell from her lips, scorching the amethyst satin. Swiftly he swept it from her knees, crushing it beneath his foot.
‘Are you hurt?’ The depth of feeling in his voice shocked her into mobility.
‘I… No…’ Unsteadily she rose to her feet. He made no movement to stand aside for her to pass.
He was so close that she could feel the warmth of his breath on her cheek, smell the indefinable aroma of his maleness.
‘Would you excuse me?’ she asked, a pulse beating wildly in her throat.
‘No.’ The gravity in his voice held her transfixed. His eyes had narrowed. They were bold and black and blatantly determined. ‘Now that I have found you again, I shall never excuse you to leave me. Not ever.’
She felt herself sway and his hand grasped her arm, steadying her.
‘Let’s go where we can talk.’
‘No,’ she whispered, suddenly terrified as her dreams took on reality. She tried to pull away from him but he held her easily.
‘Why not?’ A black brow rose questioningly.
The touch of his hand seared her flesh. To go with him would be to abandon everything she treasured. Bob. The little house on Heliotrope. The hard-won peace and contentment of the last few months. In that one moment she knew that her whole future hung in jeopardy. To go or to stay? Lilli’s words throbbed like a distant echo. Bob’s life or her own? Her throat was dry and parched as she said, ‘Please excuse me. I came with Bob Kelly. He will be looking for me.’
A slight smile curved the corners of his mouth. ‘But he won’t find you,’ he said, and with utter assurance he took her hand and nothing else had any meaning.
She wasn’t aware of leaving the house. She wasn’t aware of anything but Vidal Rakoczi’s hand tightly imprisoning hers as she ran to keep up with his swift stride. They crossed the night-wet lawn to the dryness of the gravel drive and he opened the doors of a pale blue Duesenberg. She didn’t ask where they were going. She didn’t care. She was with him and it was sufficient.
He didn’t drive like Bob, his speed leisurely. He drove with breathtaking recklessness, taking the swooping downward curves of the canyon at suicidal speed, his hands strong and firm on the wheel. Distant houses, trees, lights, flashed by and were gone, swallowed up in the darkness.
She sat in silence at his side, peace and contentment lost to her for ever. Something long dormant had at last been released. A zest, a recklessness for life that caused the blood to pound along her veins,
and her nerve ends to throb. Like had met like. She had known it instinctively the day he had stalked across to her on the studio lot. Now there could be no going back. No acceptance of anything less than life with the man beside her.
He bypassed La Cienga Boulevard, heading out towards the coast.
‘A cigarette?’ he asked, breaking the silence for the first time.
She nodded, and he removed one hand from the wheel, gold gleaming dully as he flicked open his cigarette case. As he closed it and returned it to his inside breast pocket, she saw that instead of initials, a coat of arms was engraved on one corner embellished with a diamond.
The spurt of flame as he lit her cigarette threw his face into sharp relief and she drew in her breath sharply, understanding all too well why this handsome, almost satanic features had earned him his nickname. His black bow tie had been discarded long since and his white, frilled evening shirt was open at the throat. At her swift intake of breath his eyes flicked from the highway ahead and held hers. Heat flooded through her as she returned his gaze in the darkness.
‘Why did you think I came from Oregon?’ she asked.
He laughed, and as he did so her shyness and awe of him evaporated like dew on a sun-hot morning.
‘Your brother said you had left California and returned there.’
‘I don’t have a brother.’
He swung the Duesenberg off the highway, bucketing down an unmade track to where giant rollers thundered on a deserted beach.
‘I know that. It was a remarkable performance from a man who isn’t an actor.’
She didn’t ask who he meant. She already knew.
They crowned the dunes and he halted. In the moonlight the heaving Pacific was silk-black, the swelling waves breaking into surging foam on a crescent of firm white sand. The night breeze from the sea was salt-laden and chilly. He took off his tuxedo and draped it around her shoulders as they slipped and slid down the dunes to the beach. She stepped out of her high-heeled sandals, and raised her face to the breeze.
‘It’s very beautiful here. And very lonely.’
‘That’s why I come.’
The breeze moulded her gown to her body, outlining her breasts and hips, the hem trailing and fluttering in the sand behind her. Vidal’s eyes narrowed appraisingly. She was both innocent and pagan. She would be even more devastating on screen than Garbo.
They walked along in silence for a while, the Pacific breakers creaming and running up the shoreline only inches from their feet.
‘You know what it is I want of you, don’t you?’ he asked at last, and a shiver ran down her spine. Whatever it was, she would give it freely. ‘I want to film you. To see if the luminous quality you possess transfers to the screen.’
The moon slid out from behind a bank of cloud. He had expected lavish thanks; vows of eternal gratitude; a silly stream of nonsense about how she had always wanted to be a movie star. Instead she remained silent, her face strangely serene. There was an inner stillness to her that he found profoundly refreshing. He picked up a pebble and skimmed it far out into the night-black sea.
‘I am a man of instincts,’ he said. ‘I believe that you have a rare talent, Valentina.’ Their hands touched fleetingly and she trembled. ‘I expect complete obedience. Utter discipline.’ He halted, staring down at her. ‘Do you understand?’
Her head barely reached his shoulder. She turned her face up to his, the sea-breeze fanning her hair softly against her cheeks. The moonlight accentuated the breath-taking purity of her cheekbone and jaw-line and he wondered how he could recreate the effect with his chief lighting engineer, Don Symons.
‘Yes,’ she said, and at her composure his eyes gleamed with amusement.
‘Where the devil did you spring from?’ he asked, a smile touching his mouth.
Her eyes sparkled in the darkness as she said with steely determination, ‘Wherever it was, I’m not going back.’
He began to laugh and as he did so she stumbled, falling against him. His arms closed around her, steadying her. For a second they remained motionless and then he lowered his head, his mouth claiming hers in swift, unfumbled contact.
Nothing had prepared her for Vidal’s kiss. Her lips trembled and then parted willingly beneath his. There was sudden shock and an onrush of pleasure as his tongue sought and demanded hers, setting her body on fire.
She was crushed against the hard length of his body. Heat flooded through her. She was his without reservation and then, as suddenly as he had seized her, he released her.
‘Let’s go,’ he said curtly, his face savage as he pivoted on his heel, striding back along the sand so swiftly that she had difficulty in keeping pace with him. ‘You have a long day ahead of you. I’ll send a studio Cadillac to pick you up.’
‘To pick me up from here?’ she gasped.
‘From wherever you live,’ he said shortly, beginning the climb up the dunes.
She slipped and slid in his wake, knowing that, whatever the cost, she could not abuse Bob’s hospitality by allowing a studio car to call for her at his house in Heliotrope. By leaving Lilli Rainer’s party with Vidal she had closed the door firmly on everything that had gone before.
‘I lived with Bob,’ she said simply, ‘and I can’t go back.’
From the crown of the dunes he stared down at her and knew that to argue would be useless. He threw back his head, closing his eyes momentarily. No one ever returned to Villada with him. He sucked his breath between his teeth angrily. Tonight would have to be an exception. Tomorrow he would book her into the Beverly Hills or the Wilshire.
‘Then you’d better stay with me,’ he said tersely, opening the Duesenberg’s doors, hardly waiting for her to be seated before he gunned the engine into life and swerved backwards, circling in a cloud of dust and sand and speeding once more towards the highway.
She sat at his side, her emotions in tumult. He had said he would never let her escape him again. He had kissed her with passionate ferocity. Why then was he sitting at her side like a stranger, consumed by rage?
Only when the highway was left behind them, did she summon the courage to ask tentatively, ‘Did you mean it? About wanting me at the studio tomorrow?’
‘Yes.’ His voice was brusque. ‘I want a damned good screen test to persuade Worldwide to contract you and let me use you in the movie I have in mind.’
‘What movie is that?’ she asked curiously.
His eyes gleamed as they swerved round a hairpin bend.
‘A movie Worldwide has no intention of making… yet.’
‘Will you be able to make them change their minds?’
‘If they don’t, I’ll threaten to take the idea to Cecil de Mille over at the Lasky studios.’
‘Can you do that?’ she asked with interest.
‘I do what I want,’ he said, the abrasive, masculine lines of his face hardening.
Daisy felt the breath catch in her throat. She wanted to be like him. To have the same fearlessness, the same daring, the same insolence towards life. To do what she wanted to do. To be Valentina. The person she herself had created.
In the darkness of the Duesenberg she closed her eyes and vowed that never again would she think of herself as Daisy. Daisy Ford had died. Only Valentina remained.
The hills loomed menacingly above them, black silhouettes in the darkness. At last, when they had reached the barren heights, Vidal swung the Duesenberg off the narrow road towards a large, isolated villa.
A Filippino houseboy hurried to greet them as they entered, his eyes widening in astonishment as he saw Valentina in his employer’s wake.
‘Would you like a drink?’ Vidal asked her as he took his customary tumbler of brandy and soda from the silver tray Chai proffered.
‘No thank you.’
She was gazing around her in amazement. She had never been in a room like it. One whole wall was of glass and far down the darkened hillside a solitary light signified a late-night party still in progress. The carpet was white and a
nkle deep, the walls covered in sensuous black leather. There were paintings on the walls and shelf upon shelf of books. She was acutely aware of her windblown hair and her bare feet, and her cheeks warmed with mortification. Chai nodded impassively as Vidal said briefly, ‘Please show my guest into the Hispano-Mauresque room. We shall both need studio calls in the morning.’
‘Yes sir.’
Vidal moved to the foot of the stairs and then paused, his eyes holding hers, their dark depths revealing nothing.
‘Goodnight,’ he said, and then, without a backward glance, he strode up the stairs to his room. A few seconds later there came the sound of a door slamming hard on its hinges.
Chai was at her side. ‘This way please. The Hispano-Mauresque room is on the ground room. It is a very pretty room.’
She had thought she had left loneliness behind her when she left the convent. Now she was consumed by it. Desolately she followed Chai into Vidal Rakoczi’s guest room and then, bidding the houseboy an awkward goodnight, slipped out of her dress, letting the amethyst satin fall into a shining heap on the floor.
She was in Vidal Rakoczi’s home. He was sleeping only rooms away from her. Wasn’t that what she had dreamed about? Longed for? She slid between the sheets knowing that she should be content and knowing that she never would be until she shared not only his roof, but his heart and his mind. His body and his bed.
She closed her eyes but sleep would not come. Tomorrow she had Bob to explain to. But even that thought could not erase the burning memory of Vidal Rakoczi’s lips on hers.
Determination seized her as it had the day she had resolved to leave her past behind her. She would make Vidal Rakoczi fall in love with her. She brushed her lips with the tips of her fingers, and with a faint smile at last fell asleep.
Chai woke her in the morning with fresh coffee, warm rolls and chilled orange juice. She dressed hurriedly, aware of how bizarre her dress looked in the light of early dawn.
Silver Shadows, Golden Dreams Page 5
