‘Alexander! Oh, thank God!’ The tears coursed down her cheeks. She was laughing and crying, kissing his hand. She heard the doctor call for a nurse, was aware of Vidal’s swift footsteps to her side and then the doctor was saying, ‘Excuse me, Mrs Khairetis,’ as he leaned over Alexander, flashing a thin pencil of light into the pupils of his eyes. When he raised his head he was smiling. There would have to be extensive tests, but the worst was over.
‘Perhaps now,’ he said to a radiant-faced Valentina, ‘you will return to your hotel and rest?’
‘Who is that, Maman?’ Alexander asked, as Vidal’s hands tightened on her shoulders.
She knelt down by the side of his bed, kissing his cheek. ‘It’s Vidal Rakoczi, Alexander. He wants you to hurry up and get better. He wants to talk about movies with you.’
‘Gosh,’ Alexander said feebly, but in awe, and then to Vidal, ‘It’s very nice to meet you, Mr Rakoczi.’
Vidal’s eyes were unnaturally bright. ‘It’s very nice to meet you, too, Alexander,’ he said, and then the doctor was ushering them away so that he could examine Alexander in detail and Alexander was saying plaintively, ‘I’m not just thirsty. I’m hungry too.’
Vidal smiled down at her. ‘He’s going to be all right, my love. Let me take you back to your hotel. You need to rest.’
‘Yes.’ She leaned against him, her heart at peace. As they stepped out into the pale sunlight of early morning, a trumpet could be heard, the sweet sound of jazz mixing inextricably with the sound of birdsong. She paused at the foot of the hospital steps, listening to it with a smile on her lips, and then, Vidal’s arm around her waist, she stepped light-footedly towards the waiting limousine.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
When she awoke she was wearing only a lace trimmed slip and the room was dark, the drapes drawn against the searing light of the afternoon sun. She pushed herself up against the pillows, crying out in fear. Alexander was ill; he was in a coma at the hospital and he needed her.
‘It’s all right, Valentina.’ Vidal crossed the room quickly to her side.
‘Alexander! He’s unconscious! I must go to him!’
She swung her legs from the bed and Vidal caught her hands restrainingly. ‘Alexander is conscious and eating and drinking and there is nothing to fear, little one.’
Little one. How many years had it been since she had heard his deep, rich voice utter that endearment? They had parted in hostile silence and then Alexander had been hurt and she had sent for him. He had left Hollywood and the studio and the movie he had been making, and Alexander had opened his eyes and smiled, and the doctor had said that there was no further cause for fear. Memory brought with it a relief so intense that she half-fell against him.
‘Has the hospital telephoned while I’ve been asleep?’ she asked urgently as his arms slid around her, steadying her.
‘Yes. Alexander’s condition is stable. Everything indicates that there will be no detrimental after-effects, although I imagine he will have quite a headache for a day or two. They want to keep him under surveillance for at least another week.’ He tilted her face up to his. ‘You’ve been asleep for nearly ten hours.’
She turned her head towards the bed. She had slept alone. ‘And you?’ she asked, her heart beginning to pound against her chest.
He smiled down at her. ‘I’ve been waiting,’ he said, and he lowered his head, his mouth covering hers. For a second she was absolutely still and then she warmed against him, her lips opening softly like the petals of a flower. His kiss was long and slow, banishing the past and all its pain. When at last he raised his head from hers she said simply, ‘I love you. I have always loved you.’
‘And I you.’
He kissed her again. This time with a passion that made her tremble. No one else had been able to arouse her deepest emotions. Only Vidal. His lips brushed her temple, her eyelids, her hair.
She looked up at him, her eyes eloquent. ‘Why did you hate me when you returned from Greece? Why were you so cold? So cruel?’
He held her very close, ‘Because I was jealous,’ he said, and at the intensity in the smoke-dark voice she shivered. ‘I was jealous of Brook-Taylor. Of all the other men you had loved.’
‘There were no others,’ she said, her face pale. ‘And I never loved Denton.’
Their eyes held, the moment a pulse-beat in the stretch of time.
‘You didn’t come to me,’ he said quietly. ‘You didn’t write. You didn’t telephone.’
His eyes were black pits full of remembered pain. She tried to speak but at first the words would not come. It was like being on the edge of a precipice. She was terrified of what she might hear. Terrified and full of desperate hope.
‘Your cable asked me not to,’ she said unsteadily.
As the expression in his eyes changed to one of bewilderment, she felt the blood pound along her veins as her doubts became a certainty. ‘Your cable said that Kariana had been badly hurt in the fire. That our plans could not go forward. That I wasn’t to write or to call you. That everything between us was over.’
His bewilderment had changed to an expression of sheer incredulity. ‘Like hell it did! I dictated that cable to Chai within an hour of reaching the hospital. It read: “Safe. Don’t worry. Be with you soon. Plans unchanged.”’
She began to cry, joy and pain so inextricably combined that she didn’t know where one began and the other ended. ‘Oh God,’ she whispered softly. ‘Let me show you, Vidal. Let me show you.’
She stepped away from him, drawing back the drapes, riffling feverishly through the contents of her handbag. At last, as Vidal towered at her side, every nerve and muscle in his body taut and tense, she withdrew a monogrammed leather wallet.
‘It’s in the inside pocket,’ she said faintly. ‘I tried to destroy it, but I couldn’t.’
The ink on the page was as black as if it had been sent only yesterday. The silence spun out between them until she could scarcely bear it. Slowly he refolded the piece of paper that had changed the direction of their lives.
‘I never sent it,’ he said quietly.
‘I know,’ she said unsteadily, slipping her arms around his neck. ‘I’ve known ever since you kissed me.’
It had been Denton. Denton with his ice-cold single-mindedness. She shivered in revulsion, thrusting the memory away from her. ‘Let’s go to the hospital,’ she said huskily. ‘Alexander is waiting to see us.’
He drove the wine-coloured Cadillac limousine himself, his hands gloved in soft black kid. She remembered the first time that she had watched him drive, the power and fascination, which he had exerted over her and from which she had never been able to free herself. As they drove past the sycamores and oaks of Audobon Park he said, ‘How will Alexander take the news that we are to be married?’
She gasped, her eyes widening. A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. ‘I’ve waited a long time, Valentina. I’m not going to wait any longer.’
‘You can’t propose to me driving at fifty miles an hour,’ she protested, her heart slamming against her breastbone as though it would burst.
‘Then I’ll do so stationary,’ he said equably, skidding to a halt, plunging the traffic around him into horn-blaring chaos.
He cupped her chin in his hand, gazing down into her eyes, his dark face brilliant with an expression of such fierce love that it was transfigured.
‘I love you, Valentina. I want you to be my wife. Will you marry me?’
The shadows of the sycamore dappled the leather interior of the limousine. ‘Oh yes!’ she breathed, touching his face lovingly with the tips of her fingers. ‘Oh yes, Vidal. I want to marry you more than anything else in the world.’ The love she felt for him flooded through her with such intensity that she could hardly bear it. Desire, so long suppressed and denied, scorched her blood.
‘Szcretlek,’ he said hoarsely, taking her into his arms with the gentleness of absolute love. ‘I love you, Valentina,’ and he lowered his head to hers, kiss
ing her with all the hungry passion of the long, dividing years.
When at last he raised his head, unshed tears of joy trembled on her eyelashes. He brushed them away tenderly. ‘There is one more thing.’
She looked up at him questioningly, and very slowly he began to take the gloves from his fingers. She had not known. He could tell by the first, fleeting expression of horror that darkened her eyes. She had held his hand in the trauma of the hospital and in the darkness of the hotel room but had not guessed that the flesh beneath her touch was maimed and dead. Slowly he let the gloves drop to the floor.
‘Your hands,’ she said, her voice breaking. ‘Oh Vidal! Your poor, poor hands!’
‘I’m surprised that you didn’t know. That you hadn’t been told.’
‘No.’ She shook her head; the tears spilling down her cheeks. It was the fire, of course. He had saved Kariana from the flames and this had been the cost.
‘Do you mind?’ His tone was casual but she caught the inflection of fear behind it.
‘No,’ she said, taking hold of his hands with their strange white skin, and pressing them against her cheek. ‘Of course I don’t mind, Vidal. How could you think it? How could you ask?’
‘I don’t,’ he said. ‘Not any more.’
The doctor refused to let them stay with Alexander for long, saying that a speedy recovery depended on his being kept calm and rested.
‘But Mr Rakoczi will have to return to Hollywood soon,’ Alexander had protested, terrified that his idol would disappear before he had the chance to talk to him about movie making.
‘I don’t have to return anywhere,’ Vidal said easily, wondering if Theo’s blood pressure would survive the news. ‘I thought we might all vacation together. There’s some splendid fishing to be had in the south.’
Alexander’s eyes glowed. ‘I used to fish in Crete with my father when I was little.’
‘And I used to fish in Hungary with mine,’ Vidal said. His father: Alexander’s grandfather.
‘Did you fish in rivers or lakes?’ Alexander asked with immense interest.
‘I used to live in a castle, and in front of the castle was a large lake filled with carp. The very first thing that I remember is fishing for carp in the castle lake.’
‘Who else lived in the castle?’ Alexander asked, fascinated.
‘My grandmother, whom everyone called “the Old Excellency” with her dame de compagnie and her maid; my father and mother; my mother’s maid; Ferencz, who had been my father’s footman since he was in his teens; my two sisters and our governess and a nursemaid or two.’
‘That’s an awful lot of people,’ said Alexander who, apart from school, could barely remember living with anyone except his mother.
‘There were more people at the castle in summer and at harvest time. The men who came for the harvesting brought their wives and children with them. The women worked in the fields following the reapers and we children played in the woods and fields.’
‘I’ve never been in a real castle,’ Alexander said reflectively. ‘Don’t you miss yours awfully?’
‘Not now. My sister and her husband live there. I enjoyed the fields and the harvesting but I enjoy other things more.’
‘Like making movies?’
Vidal grinned. ‘Yes, Alexander. Like making movies.’
Valentina sat back, regarding them with a curious expression in her eyes. No one seeing them could doubt that they were father and son. They had the same winged brows, the same night-black eyes: Alexander’s jaw was as firm as Vidal’s; his mouth as finely chiselled.
Her eyes lingered on the dark hair curling low in the nape of Vidal’s neck. It seemed to her that she had known him all her life. There had been only the convent. And Vidal. Yet never before had she heard him speak about his childhood. She listened as raptly as Alexander.
‘Is that your family crest on your ring?’ Alexander asked.
‘Yes.’ Vidal stretched out his hand.
For the barest fraction of a second Valentina held her breath and then Alexander took Vidal’s hand, uncaring of the scarred flesh, and said, ‘The engraving is so fine that I can’t read it. What does it say?’
‘Tempora, non mutemur. It means, “Times may be changed, not we.”’
‘I like that,’ Alexander said, leaning back against his pillows suddenly tired. ‘If I had a family motto, I’d like it to be a sensible one.’
The doctor coughed and raised his eyebrow at them. Vidal rose to his feet. ‘We have to go so that you can rest, Alexander. Would you like me to bring some strawberries for you tomorrow?’
‘Please,’ Alexander said, his eyes brightening. ‘And can you tell me what movie you are going to direct next?’
‘I don’t think it’s going to be a movie,’ Vidal said lightly. ‘I think it’s going to be a play.’
Valentina kissed Alexander goodbye and when they were outside the room she said, ‘I didn’t know you were going to direct a play, Vidal. Who is it by? Is it cast yet?’
He grinned, his arm around her shoulders as they walked down the corridor. ‘The play is Lillian Hellman’s The Little Foxes, and only the part of Regina Giddens has been cast.’
Valentina felt a pang of jealousy. She wondered who Vidal’s choice had been. Vivien Leigh would be superb as the ice-cold avaricious Regina and so would Olivia de Havilland.
‘Who has the part?’ she asked, unable to suppress a longing ache for the excitement of performing before a live audience. For the nerve-racking wait for reviews. The heady intoxication of applause.
He turned her round in his arms. ‘You have,’ he said silencing her gasp of disbelief with a long, deep kiss.
As they drove back to her hotel she asked hesitantly, ‘How is Kariana, Vidal? Is she still sick?’
His hands tightened momentarily on the wheel. ‘Yes,’ he replied briefly, swinging out on to River Road.
Valentina was oblivious of the Mississippi rolling in splendid state down to the Gulf. She had no desire to talk about Kariana but she had to. Kariana’s ghost had to be laid to rest before they could marry.
‘Is she in New York?’ she persisted.
‘No, she’s in La Jolla.’
Valentina’s eyes widened in surprise.
He took one hand from the wheel, running it through his hair. ‘I’m sorry for being so brusque, my love. I find it nearly impossible to talk about Kariana.’
His eyes had darkened with remembered suffering and she was instantly remorseful.
‘Then don’t,’ she said, laying a hand lovingly on his arm. ‘I’m sorry, Vidal. I shouldn’t have asked.’
‘No.’ His voice was firm. ‘You had to ask and you have to know.’ He allowed a Cadillac to overtake them and said, his voice oddly flat, ‘The fire wasn’t an accident, Valentina. I didn’t discover the truth till the day Kariana was discharged from hospital.’ His eyes never flickered from the road ahead of him. ‘It was Kariana who set fire to Villada. She told me so herself. I had asked her for a divorce and she thought it was because I wanted to marry Hazel Renko. God knows why. There was never anything between Hazel and myself except mutual liking and respect.’
Valentina knew that the blood had drained from her face. She wanted him to stop. To tell him that she didn’t want to hear any more.
‘It was then I knew I couldn’t accept the responsibility for her any longer. The only other person who knows the truth about the fire is Dr Grossman. I telephoned him immediately and he made arrangements for her to enter his New York clinic.’ His voice was tinged with weariness. ‘Grossman still had hopes that her condition would stabilize, but it hasn’t. When he opened his new clinic in La Jolla six months ago, he took Kariana with him. If she was to make any signs of progress, I think that he would marry her. As it is…’ He shrugged helplessly. ‘Her illness follows the pattern it has always done. Outwardly she is sane for weeks, sometimes months on end. Then, for no discernible reason, she plunges into mania.’
His eyes were filled
with pain. ‘It is a nightmare she is never going to be free of, but at least with Grossman caring for her it is a nightmare that will harm no one but herself.’
‘Do you still see her?’ she asked gently.
‘When I knew that she had caused Hazel’s death and that she felt no remorse for what she had done, I never wanted to see her again. Later, after the divorce and the years in Europe, the revulsion died. She wasn’t to be blamed; she was to be pitied. I began to visit her regularly while she was in the New York clinic, but Grossman asked me to stop. He said that my visits disturbed her and that she was happier not seeing me.’
‘Poor Kariana,’ Valentina said quietly.
He slewed to a halt under the hotel’s porte cochere. ‘Grossman cares for her very deeply. She’s happier in La Jolla than she was in Hollywood. She has no awareness of being a patient. She knows that Grossman is in love with her and she enjoys the attention he gives her. She is as content as she can be.’
They walked silently into the hotel and in the shadowed lobby he turned to her, taking her hands in his.
‘No more talk of Kariana,’ he said, and at the expression in his eyes the blood surged through her veins. ‘We’re together again, and alone. I’ve waited too many years to make love to you to wait another minute.’ His eyes gleamed devilishly and, ignoring the startled gasps of the desk clerks, he swung her up into his arms and strode towards the stairs.
The sensuous joy of their reunion was a memory she knew would live with her always. The warmth of his touch on her inner thigh; the smell of his skin and the feel of his body pinioning hers. The expression in his eyes as he looked down at her.
As the sun-gold afternoon melted into dusk she lay beside him, lightly caressing the strong muscles of his arms and chest.
‘Let’s marry tomorrow,’ he said, pulling her head down to his, kissing her long and lingeringly. When at last he released her her eyes were clouded.
‘We can’t marry tomorrow,’ she said, sitting upright and hugging her knees. ‘We can’t marry until Alexander is well enough to be told the truth.’
Silver Shadows, Golden Dreams Page 38
