The Wild Land

by Isobel Chace

  “You look pretty good yourself,” she retorted with a laugh. “But that you definitely knew!”

  He bowed.

  “Of course. I put on my best pants and boots in your honor. And told the other men to go and mind their own business and to leave you to me,” he added slyly.

  Emma flushed. She couldn’t allow him to say these things to her!

  “Then I suggest that you go and mind your own business—the bulls!” she said sweetly.

  He laughed, leaning forward on to the leather pouches on his saddle.

  “The bulls are only one of my interests,” he teased her. “Some time I’ll tell you about some of the others. They might interest you.”

  But Emma refused to be drawn. She could well imagine what some of those other interests would be! She sagged a little in her saddle. Why couldn’t she dislike him as thoroughly as she wanted to? A nasty, nagging little thought told her that it might be rather sweet to be one of his interests, and the treachery of this made her feel weak. She looked across at him and saw that he was still watching her, the same lazy amusement on his face.

  Damn his eyes! she thought, and was a little shocked by the way the words had come unbidden to her. She didn’t normally swear. She stood up in her stirrups and saw the bright green of the lucerne ahead, and her heart lifted. The cattle could smell the feed ahead and were hastening towards it. The drive was almost over.

  The herd settled down and the riders dismounted at a safe distance, tied their reins to their saddles and turned their horses loose to graze, seating themselves on a bank in the sun out of the wind.

  Madame drew some long French loaves out of her saddle-bag and divided them up amongst them. Somewhere, lost in the centre, was a piece of ham, dry and very unrefreshing. Emma longed unashamedly for a cup of tea and promised herself that in future she would bring her own thermos. She could easily manage that in her own saddle-bag, provided she was careful of it.

  Charles Riedau stretched himself out beside her. He relaxed like a cat, she thought, completely, without thought as to the impression he was making. He looked both self-contained and content.

  “Well, he asked her, “how do you like our manade?” His voice sounded sleepy and full of guile.

  Emma laughed breathlessly.

  “Grand’mere is fortunate to own it all,” she said. “Why don’t you get your own place? Surely you don’t like working for someone else?”

  She held her breath as she waited for his reply. “But I don’t,” he chuckled. “Half of all this is mine. Tante Marrsha and I are joint owners. That’s why we quarrel so much!”

  She reached across and pulled his hat off his face. “It isn’t true? Tell me it isn’t true!”

  He took his hat from her with humiliating ease. “And why should it matter to you?” he asked.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Why should it matter to her?

  She lay back, flat against the bank, defeated. It did matter to her. Terribly. Much more than she would have believed possible. It meant that she had failed even before she had begun.

  Charles Rideau looked amused, and she realized that her chagrin must have been showing only too plainly on her face.

  “When did she sell to you?” she asked.

  “A couple of years back, when she first realized that she couldn’t go on by herself.”

  Emma twisted her hands together uncomfortably.

  “She never told us,” she said.

  He was silent.

  “I wish I’d known,” she added a little sourly.

  He smiled.

  “Do you? What would you have done? Be sensible! This arrangement was by far the best thing for her—”

  “Was it?” she demanded “Was it?”

  She was a little afraid of him as his eyes met hers.

  “Do you really want me to answer that?” he asked coldly.

  She looked away, feeling unexpectedly bleak, as though the sun had suddenly gone in.

  “No,” she said hastily. “I’m sorry if I was rude.”

  He threw back his head and laughed, a rich deep guffaw that made her feel more uncomfortable than ever. He jumped to his feet and pulled her to hers with compelling hands.

  “Come,” he said, “I’ve something to show you.”

  She was reluctant to go with him, but with his hand on her arm she hadn’t very much choice. He stopped and picked up his trident and smiled at her.

  “Where are we going?” she asked, as he sprang lightly across a patch of mud, pulling her after him.

  “Ssh!” he whispered. He pulled aside some branches of a tamarisk bush and pointed out beyond. “Ibis, egret, flamingo.” His voice softened. “It’s not often that one can get as close as this to flamingo.”

  Emma thrust herself further into the bush. The tall white birds with their flashes of salmon pink fascinated her. And the ridiculous way they ate! With their heads upside down and their bills combing the water.

  “Oh, Charles!” she exclaimed. “Do look at that dirty little object. I had no idea that young flamingoes were so plain!”

  He chuckled, pulling her out of the bush and adjusting her scarf round her face.

  “I thought you’d fall for them,” he said in a self-satisfied tone. “You’ve got mud all over your face, Shall I brush it away for you?”

  But she brushed it away for herself with quick, nervous movements.

  “Is it gone?” she asked.

  He nodded, looking at her critically.

  “I like you better without any make-up” he said. “I’ll have to get you a broad-brimmed hat to save your skin, you’ll get as brown as a nut otherwise.”

  “But I want to get brown!” she protested.

  He gave a little Gallic shrug to his shoulders.

  “As you will.”

  The cool dismissal brought her back to reality. How clever he had been, she thought, to turn her thoughts so easily. She had been warned against him. She had no excuses to offer. She had the uncomfortable feeling that she had not been very clever and that he was laughing at both her and the situation in which she found herself. She made an inadequate movement with her hands.

  “I think I’ll go back to the others,” she said.

  Someone else had joined the party while they had been away. A fine-looking chestnut stood among the ponies, groomed to a silkiness they had never known. It looked a valuable animal and rather out of place in the workaday world of the others. The rider stood, smart and languid, beside Madame Yourievska, her bright yellow hair falling to her shoulders. Emma felt Charles Rideau stiffen beside her, but his expression remained as pleasant as ever.

  The girl smiled, mockingly at them both.

  “Why, Charles, you look quite pleased to see me,” she said huskily. “Is this your granddaughter, madame? How odd it must be to have a foreigner so close to one. She is English, is she not?”

  “Yes, I am,” Emma admitted. She wondered who the girl was and why she should have such an effect on Monsieur Rideau. To her astonishment she discovered that she rather resented his interest. Surely, she wondered, she couldn’t be jealous? That would be ridiculous!

  “This is Marie-Françoise,” Madame interrupted her outrageous thoughts. “She is a close neighbor of ours. My granddaughter, Emma Howard.”

  Marie-Françoise pouted, her lips bright with cherry-red lipstick. Had she noticed that Madame had introduced her to Emma rather than the other way round?

  “Madame Yourievska doesn’t entirely approve of me,” the girl said silkily. “But Charles has his softer moments. I’m hoping that this is one of them. Is it, Charles?”

  Charles Rideau looked enigmatic.

  “It might be,” he said. “Where did the horse come from?”

  “Papa gave him to me. Was it not kind of him?” She raised laughing eyes to his. “I wonder where he got the money from, don’t you?”

  Emma was surprised to see that Charles Rideau looked distinctly uncomfortable.

  “That wasn’t how he agreed
to spend it,” he said mildly. “Is he a comfortable mount?”

  Madame looked disapprovingly at them both. Her eyes snapped angrily, and she made no secret of her dislike for the girl.

  “Come, we shall ride home,” she commanded crossly. “Go, bring the horses.” She looked with contempt at Marie-Françoise’s hunting saddle. “It is easy to see that that has never seen any work!” she said.

  Marie-Françoise pouted again.

  “I have others!” she retorted. She allowed Charles to hand her up on to her horse. “I shall ride beside Emma,” she announced. “It will be pleasant getting to know her.”

  Madame Yourievska led them out of the field with the men following her, the two girls bringing up the rear.

  “It’s my father that Madame really disapproves of,” the French girl explained, laughing. She leaned over towards Emma and whispered: “He grows rice!” And then she sighed. “Not that he can make even that pay,” she added. “He is for ever having to sell off pieces of land.”

  Was that where the chestnut had come from? Emma looked thoughtfully at the beautiful, glossy flanks of the stallion. And Charles had bought that land! She was as sure of that as if he had told her himself. Why then didn’t her grandmother know all about it? She tried to read the answer in Charles’s straight back, but it was as enigmatic as he could have desired. With a little shrug of her shoulders, unconsciously copied from him, Emma abandoned the problem. She was tired and hungry and unexpectedly happy. The sun and the fresh, salt air beguiled her.

  Charles Rideau looked over his shoulder and grinned at them both.

  “You’d better stick to the paths,” he called out. “That gorgeous animal doesn’t look as though he’d know the first thing about getting himself out of a bog!”

  Marie-Françoise laughed.

  “I don’t know why you are so beastly about my horse,” she complained.

  He lifted his eyebrows.

  “Don’t you?” he drawled, and the three of them dissolved into helpless laughter.

  The midday meal was a lengthy affair. Charles Rideau sat at the top of the table, opposite Emma’s grandmother, playing host as charmingly and as well as he did everything else.

  “What did that girl want?” Madame asked him. “I don’t like the thought of you getting involved with her family. It will mean trouble for you.”

  Charles dismissed the idea calmly.

  “I shan’t get my fingers burnt,” he said. “There is no need to worry, Tante Marrsha.”

  Madame Yourievska sighed.

  “I hope not,” she said simply. She poured a mixture of oil and vinegar on to her lettuce and cut her steak neatly into two pieces. “I shall ride out to the other herd this afternoon, I think. Will you come also, Emma?”

  Emma looked thoughtfully down at her mud-spattered jeans, but it was Charles who answered for her.

  “You are going to rest,” he said to Madame, “and Emma will come with me to Arles. She has had enough for one day.” He grinned at her. “Be sure to put on your prettiest dress,” he teased her. “Many people say the Arlesienne women are the most beautiful in all France, so you will have some competition.”

  If Marie-Françoise was a fair sample he was probably right, she reflected.

  Her grandmother snorted with laughter.

  “That is good!” she approved. “You sec, Charles? My granddaughter is not all English! I hope you have cleaned your car since I saw it last!”

  An answering gleam came into his eyes.

  “And polished the seats!” he smiled.

  Oh dear, Emma thought. She had no wish to compete with Marie-Françoise for Charles’s favors! Her grandmother would like it, but then her grandmother had a very soft spot for him that was certainly not shared by her granddaughter! Polished the seats indeed! Why, only the most accomplished flirt would even have thought of such a thing!

  But when she saw the car she had to admit that it was very handsome indeed. One of the new, big Citroens, with the revolutionary lines, painted a dark green, with the same green inside on the leather seats. Feeling rather dashing, she sat nervously beside him in the front seat and began on the first topic that came into her head.

  “Why do you want to grow rice?” she asked as they slowly drove down the driveway.

  “It makes money. Tante Marrsha works too hard for what she gets from the bulls and the vines. She is not so young as she was. I try to take most of the load off her shoulders, but the money is getting scarcer all the time.”

  With this car?

  “And the rice would pay you both well?”

  He saw the thrust, but ignored it.

  “I think so,” he said quietly.

  Emma was silent, feeling at once awkward and gauche. She wished she hadn’t brought the subject up again. In future she would be more careful, for even if she didn’t trust him, there was no need to shout the fact from the housetops.

  Charles Rideau smiled at her and she blushed. “How old are you, Emma?” he asked.

  “Twenty-three.” It was out before she could stop it, though she couldn’t see that he had any right to ask her.

  “Old enough not to jump every time I look at you, don’t you think?” he went on conversationally. “Has Tante Marrsha been talking to you? You have to remember that she loves every inch of the Mas Camarica. It is her life. So naturally she would like it to continue as it is after she has gone. Sometimes she thinks she can see a way to go one better. But that wasn’t why you came to France, was it?”

  Emma straightened her back.

  “Grand’mere didn’t actually say anything. I came for other reasons—”

  “Ah yes, your mysterious letter-writer!”

  She colored fiercely, wishing urgently that she hadn’t come with him.

  “If you take my advice,” he said reasonably, “you will ignore this obviously spiteful correspondent. Forget all his insinuations and spend your time here enjoying yourself and giving pleasure to your grandmother.”

  “But I don’t want her to think—” she objected, feeling suddenly rather childish about the whole thing.

  “She will think nothing that you don’t want her to think,” he assured her. “But you cannot prevent her from hoping and pushing you a little.” He gave her an amused, sideways glance. “She is very fond of me also.” He held out his hand to her, his eyes back on the road ahead, so that the onus of taking it was all with her. “Friends?” he asked.

  She knew that she was being managed—smoothly, charmingly, and very confidently. No one, she thought, should be as sure as that of getting his own way. But she found herself taking his hand all the same.

  “Friends,” she repeated.

  He left her in the Boulevard des Lices, at a little table outside a cafe.

  “If you get bored you can go and take a look at the Roman theatre or the Arena,” he suggested. “I’ll find you soon enough when it’s time to go home.”

  But for the moment it was enough to sit in the sun, sipping her coffee and reading the first English paper she had seen since she had left England. It had been a clever touch on Charles’s part, she thought, setting a seal on the new friendly relations he had demanded of her. It was a pleasant street, lined with plane trees and full of people, some of them playing pitanque, a French form of bowls played with metal balls, played interminably on every dusty pavement in Provence to the delight of the whole male population.

  By the time she had finished her newspaper, however, she was beginning to feel cold. The wind was a warm one and softened to a breeze in the town, but even so it dissipated the effects of the early spring sun. She would go for a walk in the town, she decided. She was already a little stiff from her unaccustomed exercise of the morning and movement would stop her freezing up altogether. She paid for her coffee and stood up. It was nice being friends with Charles after all. It gave her a lighthearted feeling of happiness that was all mixed up with the sunshine and the life of the town.

  The narrow streets fascinated her. She
strolled along them, following the signs that directed her to the ancient theatre, past the beautifully carved doorway of the parish church, and up some more streets, faded with sun and rather Spanish in appearance.

  She climbed all over the theatre, happily peopling it with ghosts for her own satisfaction, sure that she was alone. Then quite suddenly, and rather to her annoyance, a man walked through another entrance, built into the amphitheatre two thousand years ago. His face broke into a broad grin of surprise and pleasure. “Emma Howard, by all that’s wonderful!”

  She turned sharply to get the sun out of her eyes, wondering whom she could possibly know here, so many hundreds of miles away from home.

  “It’s me, Sam McGuire! Remember me?”

  She did, of course. He was the American boy who had lived in the next-door flat when she had still been at school.

  “Sam! What are you doing here?”

  She barely noticed that he kissed her as a matter of course, so glad was she to see him. He was broader, she noticed, but his eyes had lost none of their twinkle and in many ways he was exactly the same as the boy she had known.

  “I’m writing a thesis on minstrels and Courts of Love and all that sort of thing,” he told her blithely. “And you, my sweet?”

  “I’m visiting my grandmother.”

  He grinned.

  “Not the one that walked from St. Petersburg?”

  “The very same.”

  He laughed at her gravity.

  “I sure would like to meet her. How long are you here for?”

  Emma released her hand from his warm grasp. “I’m not sure. For some time, I think.” She sat down on one of the hard stone seats. “Tell me more about this thesis, Sam,” she commanded.

  “It’s an excuse for coming to Europe with all expenses paid,” he confessed. “The Middle Ages is my period, and so it wasn’t so difficult to get this opportunity. One of the chief Courts of Love was around here, at Les Baux.”

  Emma laughed.

  “I see you’re as serious about your work as ever,” she teased him.

  He flushed slightly.

  “It’s having an English mother,” he retorted. “It makes me reserved about these things.”