by Susan Barrie
A man in his position, with a great house in England and a flat in Paris, certainly needed someone who could act the part of a hostess and fit in with his life, and Chantal could certainly do that. Besides, whether he knew it or not, James was in love with her.
He would be wise if he stopped running away from her, when she was determined to possess him in the end.
He was standing before the flower-filled fireplace and regarding her almost broodingly when Carole entered the room. Her heart caused her a painful little stab, for he looked so dark, and spare, and handsome in an almost Irish way, with his thick black eyelashes and vivid blue eyes combining to create the illusion that, as the Irish themselves say, the eyes had been put in ‘with a sooty finger’.
There was something repressed about him, and his mouth was a little sullen, and he did not look like a happy man who had finally capitulated to the woman he loved. When Carole stole quietly into the room his back was turned to her, but the quick movement of Armand who went forward to greet her drew his attention to her.
But, quick as the Comte was to welcome Carole, Marty was even more quick to draw him aside. She had something she particularly wanted to show him, she said, and the field was left clear for James, who advanced on Carole with a brow of thunder.
“What happened to you at tea-time?” he demanded. “No one seemed to know where you were.”
“I was upstairs in my room,” she answered.
Whether or not he actually forced her to meet his eyes she did not know, but she did meet them. For a moment the breath caught in her throat as she felt as if she was actually being engulfed by strange, icy blue water.
“Forget all that nonsense about returning my presents,” he said, harshly. “If you do I shall throw them in the lake.”
“That would be a waste,” she returned demurely. “And I hate waste.”
“You know very well that I fully intended you to keep the presents. Everything I bought for you is yours, including the ring. Unless you have a particular desire to be offensive you will stop behaving as if I have done something outrageous, and try and remember that there was a time when we got along quite well together. You may have forgotten some of the things we did during that short time in Paris when you were trying to help me ... but I haven’t!”
She felt as if a pulse beat irregularly in her throat as she looked up at him. Away over in a corner of the room Marty had drawn Chantal, as well as the Comte, into a discussion that centred round a small portrait on the wall, that was a portrait of one of her ancestors. It had been painted by an anonymous artist, and there was no particular value attaching to the portrait, but she seemed to think it important that the visitors should have an opportunity to examine it at close quarters, and be given a brief history of the subject.
Carole swallowed on something that felt like an obstruction in her throat. According to her ideas James had just given himself away completely when he said ‘when you were trying to help me’.
Apparently, he had needed help then, but he did not need it now. He was no longer in any doubt about his feelings for Chantal, and that meant that there was no longer any need to seek protection from her. If she had doubted it before she did not doubt it now, since he was trying to be nice to her, Carole ... and to show her something in the nature of appreciation for what she had done.
“If I tried to help you it was nothing,” she returned, speaking swiftly because Chantal’s attention was wavering over in the corner, and now that she had an opportunity to say something that she felt she ought to say she wanted to get it off her chest. Because she would probably never have the opportunity again. “I was having a dull time at Miss Dove’s—” she smiled wryly, because she couldn’t remember having anything else but a dull time at Miss Dove’s—“and I often envied Marty all the good times you gave her, and the amount of fun she seemed to have, to say nothing of all those ravishing clothes she possesses. So when she asked me to help you I didn’t need to be bribed with promises of rewards for anything I did. It was reward enough to be taken out sometimes ... And you took me out.”
He studied her with a queer kind of fixed earnestness and curiosity, which puzzled her. He, too, was talking hurriedly, because of the restlessness of Chantal in the background.
“Listen to me, Carole,” he said. “I don’t like to hear you talking as if you were a kind of Cinderella. You were never that! And in the whole of my life I’ve never met anyone like you before, so it was a refreshing experience to take you out and about. And if I spent money on you it was money well spent, believe me!” There was an odd note of appeal in his voice, as if it was important to him that she accepted the truth of what he said. And when he laid a hand on her shoulder and gripped it, she felt as if her bones were preparing to dissolve into water. “Carole! There’s to be no question of you returning those presents. Is that quite clear?”
She shook her head.
“I shall return them—and the ring—before I leave here.”
He frowned impatiently.
“Why do you keep talking about leaving here? There has been no alteration in our arrangement ... at least—”
“Yes?”
“You are Marty’s friend, and as Marty’s friend you can remain here for as long as you wish. Just because Chantal arrived here this morning that doesn’t mean that she and I are planning to put up the banns and get married at the earliest possible moment. Chantal may have ideas along those lines, but I haven’t. However,” causing her a bitter pang of disappointment because for one wild moment he had provided her with something like a ray of hope, despite the fact that she would never forget the insulting ingredient in his proposal of marriage, “the situation has altered, and there is very much that has to be considered. It’s no longer a question of running away from Chantal.”
He glanced over his shoulder, and Chantal glanced up and her eyes brightened immediately. She made as if to move towards him.
“Only a fool runs away from a woman,” he said, bluntly, to Carole.
“Perhaps it was more a question of running away from your own conscience,” she suggested, and his dark blue eyes blazed at her with sudden concentrated annoyance.
“You are a little fool, Carole,” he told her. “And if you think you and Armand would get along well together for any length of time you’re mistaken. I may run away from women, but he has no time for them. He prefers them when they’re mummified, or when they’re carved out of stone. A flesh and blood woman like yourself would have a thin time being dragged about the world, with nothing but an excavation site for a home, and no fun at all. Armand is a man with a mission.”
“But all the same, I like him,” Carole heard herself say, and as the Comte detached himself from Marty and came moving briskly towards them she wondered why she had allowed herself to say anything so misleading. For it was perfectly obvious, from the way in which James looked at her, and the sudden, harsh blaze of contempt in his eyes, that he had most decidedly misunderstood her.
“Very well,” he said, just before the Comte reached them. “If that’s the way you feel I’ll have the ring back before you leave here, and you can give my presents to one of the maids. Or toss them into the lake yourself!”
He turned his back on her and walked to meet Chantal, and as she smiled up at him seductively he slid an arm about her shoulders.
“Did I ever tell you, Chantal, that you’re the most beautiful thing in the world?” he said, giving so much curious emphasis to each word that she looked up at him with parted lips.
“You have said something a little bit like that before,” she answered, smiling softly behind her fluttering eyelashes. “More than once, in fact!”
“Then I say it again.” He bent and inhaled the perfume of her gleaming hair. “You’re so lovely that I must show you the rose garden before we have dinner. Tell Cook to hold back dinner for another quarter of an hour at least,” he instructed his sister, glancing at her as if he had no time to really notice her. “If the rest of yo
u are hungry you can start dinner without us, but Chantal and I have a mind above food at the moment!”
With the utmost willingness Chantal disappeared with him through the open french windows, and Carole met Marty’s eyes and realised that she looked almost upset ... as if something had gone wrong.
The Comte de Sarterre spoke at Carole’s elbow.
“Can I give you something to drink, Carole?” he said, and his tone was as soft as Chantal’s had been when she replied to James. “After dinner, perhaps, you and I might have a little talk...?”
But Carole was determined not to be manoeuvred into a tête-à-tête with the Frenchman after dinner, however grateful she felt she ought to be—remembering her somewhat obscure position—for his kind notice of her. And as the host and his lady friend did not return for nearly three-quarters of an hour the others had finished dinner when they finally entered the dining-room.
Carole slipped away, making some excuse about not remaining for coffee in the drawing-room, and Marty—who looked unusually depressed, for some reason—did not press her to stay downstairs.
Perhaps, Carole thought, she rather relished the idea of having the Comte to herself in the drawing room for a short time, and was not altogether sorry that Carole was in no mood to give her any support. And as Carole usually poured out the coffee this meant that Marty had to undertake a duty she disliked.
Once inside her room Carole started packing in earnest. She had no idea when she would see the bulk of her luggage after leaving Ferne Abbey behind her, for according to the plan she had formed while trying to prevent herself choking over the rich food that had been served at dinner she would take little or nothing with her. She would be able to manage one single suitcase, and the rest would have to be sent on when she had an address to which it could be sent, and once she had notified them at Ferne Abbey that she had not entirely disappeared, and had discovered somewhere where she could take temporary root.
The plan had been formed after she had witnessed the departure of James and the lovely French widow into the dusky beauty of the garden, and after she saw them return she knew she was thankful that she had formed such a plan. What with the determination of the Comte de Sarterre to involve her in an affair that had no interest for her, although he was probably perfectly serious, and the slightly blurred appearance of Chantal’s lipstick when she entered the dining-room she knew that she had to escape ... and to escape without any delay.
The one thing she was not going to do was to return to Miss Dove’s. But she would return to Paris, because that had become in a sense her only home, and she had a little money which would suffice for her needs until she obtained another job. She knew a tiny hotel where she could live cheaply, and at least she could teach. And she could do shorthand and typing. She wouldn’t starve.
And, above all else, the one thing she intended to do was to forget James.
It might prove difficult at first. It probably would prove horribly difficult, but she had to do it.
As she emptied her drawers and kept jamming things into her cases she kept repeating to herself that she had to do it.
She waited until after midnight before she stole downstairs to the library and left James’s ring, and his presents, in a noticeable position on the big walnut desk. When James read his letters in the morning, and slit open the envelopes with his silver paper-knife, he would notice the small pile at his elbow.
The house seemed very silent, as if everyone had gone to bed, but she felt reasonably certain that they had not gone to bed. Much earlier she had heard a car start up, and she thought it highly likely that James and Chantal had gone driving together in his long white car. It was a radiantly beautiful night, white with moonlight, and Chantal would look breathtakingly beautiful with the moonlight pouring over her.
No wonder James had told her publicly that she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.
Carole posted herself before her window, having no intention whatsoever of going to bed in case she overslept, and waited for the moonlight to grow less bright, and the far away stars to fade until they were mere pin-heads in the velvety blackness of the night sky. Then she would know that dawn was not very far away, and as at this season of the year it grew light early the night should not prove too long.
All the same, she felt extraordinarily weary—and extraordinarily empty, like a vessel that had been drained, and in her case it was emotion that she had been drained of. As she stared at the lake that was like an island of silver in the darkness, and thought of the morning when James had first proposed to her and then kissed her—not in the least as he must have kissed Chantal tonight—she was amazed that instead of feeling a kind of anguish because after tonight she might, so cruel can life be, never see him again, she felt nothing at all ... nothing but a dreadful emptiness and a strange sensation like futility.
It need never have happened, if Marty hadn’t been so insistent. But now even she and Marty were no longer close friends. Marty had made it plain earlier in the evening that she was growing a little tired of Carole’s affairs, and if Carole couldn’t conduct them to her own satisfaction that was her affair.
If only, she kept saying to herself, if only Marty had left her alone ... Then at this moment she would be enjoying a quiet holiday in Paris, and everything would be completely normal.
It was perfectly true that if you never had something you never craved for it. But she had had James to escort her about, to treat her as if she was someone of purely temporary importance. She had dressed up for James, worn his ring, been complimented by him ... even kissed!
And now all the world was James, James, James, and she began to be aware of a tiny sick feeling at the very heart of her, because she knew that never, never could she get away from James. Whoever came along, whoever took notice of her, he would not be James, and it would be quite unimportant ... utterly unimportant.
As she sat there in the silence of her room she was moved to make a small, whimpering protest. Oh, why, why, why had this had to happen to her?
She had been lifted up, and now she was cast down. She was cast down into some deeps that were like muddy water swirling about her feet.
As soon as the sky lightened and she knew that dawn was approaching she rose and stiffly entered the bathroom. She stripped off her clothes and let the warm water that filled the luxurious bath close round her, and afterwards she gave herself a good towelling that restored some of the circulation to her limbs, and then dressed carefully in a simple linen suit, did her face and her hair, and picked up her case.
She tiptoed quietly along the thickly carpeted corridors of the house, descended the staircase and found a side door which opened easily to the revivifying coolness of the garden.
There was a very heavy dew, and the wet scent of roses floated in the air, and the sweetness of all the other summer scents. She walked doggedly down the main drive—once in the village, which was not far away, she could take a bus—and despite her bath and her careful toilet she felt very weary, very conscious of a dreadful inertia which was tugging at her and preventing her taking any sure steps forward.
She thought once, as she glanced at the lake, if only things had been different ... if only James had meant it when he asked her to marry him. If only there had never been anyone like Chantal in his life.
And then she saw him, standing beside the lake—almost on the very spot where he had stood when he proposed to her that hot July morning—and he was still wearing his dark evening clothes, with a white scarf wound carelessly about his neck against the chill of the early morning; and as he turned and watched her moving painfully down the drive he looked as if he, too, had been up all night, and there was absolutely no colour in his face and his dark blue eyes looked haggard.
He remained motionless for a moment longer, and then he strode away from the lake and towards her, his expression altering slightly and becoming harsh and incredulous.
“What do you think you’re doing with that case?”
“Oh, really?” He put forth a hand and relieved her of the case, and before she could prevent him he had walked back to the lake and tossed it into it. There was a loud splash as the still water received the imitation red leather case, and a series of ripples started spreading in all directions, while somewhere down amongst the reeds at the bottom of the lake loud sucking noises commenced, and the tentacle like fronds of strange vegetation closed greedily over the offering that had been cast to them before the sun was well up and warming the world.
Carole, whose hazel eyes were very dull and lifeless, said something that was not so much a protest as a distinctly irrelevant comment on the high-handed action, and when she thought about it afterwards it struck her as quite an extraordinary thing to have said when her handbag was inside the case, and her passport.
“I’ve had that case since I was first sent away to boarding-school. I don’t suppose I’ll ever see it again now!”
“I don’t suppose you will. At least—” as he strode back to her and stood regarding her and her disillusioned eyes and dejected mien—“you won’t until I’ve had the lake dredged, or sent someone down in a frogman’s outfit. I daresay we could do that if you really want the case back, but for the moment we’ve other things to talk about,” and he took her by the arm and started to walk her back along the drive.
She was aware of a wonderful sensation like being reprieved, and as the sun rose above the trees and discovered a remarkable brightening in her eyes, despite the fact that her feet lagged, she attempted to keep pace with his longer strides, and she spoke breathlessly.
