Armand joined the rest of the party at the table with faintly lowering brows, and as he passed behind her chair he said in a low, fierce voice which only she heard:
“You are not to take on domestic tasks, do you understand?”
She looked up at him with a charming, and rather innocent smile.
“Not until you have made up your mind whether or not it would be worthwhile to pay me a salary?”
She had the firm conviction that he gritted his teeth as he sat down at the table, but he did not address her again during the meal.
CHAPTER X
Later that morning the entire party inspected the chateau. They roamed around its ancient walls, peered at their reflections in the moat, tried to track down the moorhen’s nest, wandered in the overgrown rose-garden and yew alleys, and finally went indoors to admire the nowadays never-used banqueting hall, and climb to the very tops of the tall towers that overlooked the moat.
Oddly enough, Caroline had never been inside the towers before, and she realised that if she had, and seen the portrait of a slender dark man with mocking brown eyes that hung above the fireplace in an enchanting little round room that had once formed part of the private suite of the present Comte’s mother, she would have known at once who Robert de Bergerac was. For the late Comte had repeated himself in miniature when his son was born, and standing beneath the portrait looking up at his father their identical eyes met for a moment and they seemed to exchange a glance of complete understanding and accord.
Armand had allowed the rest of the party to surge on into the next room, and only Caroline remained against the window, trying not to be aware of that portrait, and all that it should have told her—and perhaps warned her of!
Armand looked round at her at last, mockingly.
“It may surprise you to know,” he said, “that my father and mother were very happy together—in fact, my mother was ridiculously devoted to my father! But he had the unfortunate Frenchman’s habit of looking for diversion elsewhere, and this of course was highly regrettable! But, even so, my mother never looked unhappy, and she could bear this portrait in her sitting-room! I expect you find that rather remarkable, don’t you, Caroline?”
He had never called her Caroline before, and his eyes were hard and cold as he did so. And although it was he who prevented her from twisting her ankle on the narrow staircase leading up to the tower rooms, and had actually saved her from tumbling down them when her foot slipped and she missed a tread, by catching her and holding her so fast for a moment that her heart was clamouring wildly when they reached the top of the flight, he turned now and left her alone in the little room.
Feeling utterly forlorn and deserted she stood looking around her at the simple furnishings, thinking how unpretentious they were, and yet how attractive. There was a little couch covered in yellow brocade, and a tiny Empire desk of mellow golden wood like sunlight. Armand’s mother’s work-basket—or it looked as if it was a work- basket—encrusted with mother-of-pearl, stood on a shelf in a little alcove, and a china bowl still held dried rose petals. Caroline put a hand in amongst them, and felt them crumble into dust at a touch, and feeling that she had taken a liberty she stepped back hastily and inspected a couple of miniatures on the mantelpiece. They were exquisite miniatures, and they were both of children, and one of them could have been Armand when he was not much more than a toddler.
Caroline felt her heart beat quickly, as it had beaten on the staircase, as she gazed at those curiously perfect features, not missing the Puckish line to the eyebrows, and the liquid beauty of the great dark eyes. Then she lifted her own eyes to the portrait above the mantelpiece, and for an instant it seemed to her that the man who looked down at her shook his head. It was not so much a disapproving shake, as a faintly pitying shake, and she felt as if her heart lept up into her throat.
“Oh, no,” she actually whispered, as if she was endeavouring to make herself understood. “I couldn’t—I couldn’t share him” And then she added, more flatly: “And I wouldn’t!”
She turned away from the portrait, as if it embarrassed her to meet that steady regard, and the vague tumult into which all her emotions had been flung was calmed as soon as she passed beneath the low arch that framed the doorway, and in an adjoining room she heard Diane protesting a little.
“Armand, I don’t like it up here!” She was clinging to his arm and pressing close to him. “Your mother must have been an extraordinary woman to wish to be so isolated, but I—I am not in the least extraordinary, and I find it eerie!”
Armand stood looking down at her with an amused smile. “That is because you are not used to the country, my little one. You see too much of the bright lights!”
“With you, Armand,” she assured him, putting back her head until it actually rested against his shoulder, “I would endure even the country! But you could not live away from the bright lights for long!”
“Which just shows how well you know me, cherie Armand exclaimed softly, and without pausing to be absolutely certain they were alone bent and pressed his lips to the silken dark hair that was coiled so neatly about her small head. With a gesture of responsive Latin abandon she flung up her arms around his neck and almost thrust her mouth against his, so that he would almost certainly have been less than human if he hadn’t taken advantage of the tempting nearness of those delicately scented scarlet lips.
Caroline, who witnessed the entire performance, turned and blindly negotiated the difficult stairs until she found herself at the foot of the tower, and feeling a trifle sick she eventually made her way out on to the terrace. Christopher Markham and Miss Mansfield were already there, and when the others joined them drinks were called for and they sipped pre-lunch aperitifs in an atmosphere of pleasing sunshine and a gently breeze that actually rippled the surface of the moat.
Helen Mansfield, who had been forced to yield place to Diane whilst the actual exploration of the chateau was taking place, managed, while Diane was accepting another drink, to unobtrusively insinuate herself into a chair beside her host, and from then on she determinedly captured his attention, and Caroline and the rest had to listen to her exclaiming over the beauties of the chateau. She thought that sun umbrellas on the terrace were the only items of improvement it lacked, was amazed that no film producer had sought to make a film there, and didn’t seem to think that Armand was serious when he replied—with an unusually serious look on his face—that during his ownership of the place no film producer would be allowed near enough to take advantage of possessing a film camera. And then, when it did occur to her that he was looking a little remote and cool, obviously put herself out to entice him back into a sunny humour by copying a leaf out of Diane’s book and becoming extremely feminine with him. Caroline felt that unpleasant sensation of actual physical nausea at the base of her stomach growing stronger as the American girl used wiles that were obvious, but excusable, because she was so undeniably attractive, and when she found that they were meeting with a half amused response opened up the battery of her charms to its fullest extent. Just before Caroline decided that there was still time before lunch to pick some red currants
Monique required for a fruit tart for dinner that night, she was unable to close her ears to a frankly wooing note in Helen’s voice, while for the first time Diane looked like someone jolted out of a state of complacency.
It was slightly revolting, Caroline thought—even if one was completely disinterested—to see two women openly and apparently seriously competing for the attentions of one man. And she never knew whether anyone really did protest as she went down the steps, but she had a distinct impression that Armand called after her that it was too hot for picking fruit.
But she made her way to the kitchen garden like one who was almost over-anxious to be alone, and amongst the currant bushes she certainly had a kind of seclusion. But not for long, for Christopher Markham joined her just as she was beginning to fill her basket.
“Can you beat it?” he asked, after h
elping himself to some of the ripe fruit. “Two women determined to make fools of themselves over one man! And that a Frenchman with a very low set of moral values, unless the reputation he seems to have acquired was never really earned!”
Caroline said nothing, but she went on with her picking, and he lighted a cigarette and stood watching her for a moment before starting to help.
“I’m glad to say that, as a fellow countrywoman of mine, you don’t seem to be very badly smitten yourself,” he remarked, after observing that the cigarette smoke would help to keep the flies off. “Aren’t French playwrights with an aura of wickedness and the glamour of a title very much up your street?” He sent her a flickering smile and she looked faintly surprised. “My aunt informs me that you aren’t, as I at first supposed, a particular friend of the Comte, but a friend of his housekeeper, who has been taken ill, or something of the sort. Is that really right?”
Caroline admitted that it was.
“And you yourself have been ill? I’m sorry about that,” he added, thinking that with her bright hair tumbling about her face, and her simple flowered frock, she was the type of girl he could honestly admire. And he also found himself wondering why he had been so captivated the night before by a French girl who hadn’t struck him as nearly so attractive in the cold, hard light of day. Unless it was that he resented being made use of, if only for a short time.
“Oh, I’m quite all right now,” Caroline assured him, smiling a little. “This is such a lovely spot that it would be most ungrateful to remain an invalid for long.”
“You like France?” he asked. “You know it well?”
“No, as a matter of fact this is my first visit.”
He looked about him at the quiet kitchen garden, backed by a spreading orchard, backed by the towers of the chateau itself.
“Pastoral Franco,” he remarked. “Very pleasing, if you like this sort of thing, but I like my corners of the earth to be a little less civilised.”
“You’re referring to Africa?” she asked.
He sent her his friendly smile.
“Yes, Africa...! Ever been there?”
“No.” She shook her head. “I’m completely untravelled”
“That can always be put right. One of these days you may travel a good deal.”
“I don’t think so.” She wished he wouldn’t eat quite so much fruit, but would instead deposit a little more in her basket. Bending her back and her head was becoming a little trying in the hot sun. “You have to be rich to travel, and I’m never likely to be rich.”
“You will marry! You might marry a man who will take you abroad.”
“I might,” she admitted, as he seemed to be regarding her almost speculatively, and then straightened and said she didn’t think she could go on gathering currants. The sun was striking right down on the back of her neck.
Instantly he was all concern, and whipped off the silk handkerchief that was knotted about his neck and insisted on her tying it over the bright brown hair. When they returned to the terrace at last, Monique was just booming a luncheon gong, and the others were about to go inside. But Armand’s glance rested at once on the headdress Caroline had only recently acquired, and unless it was purely her imagination his expression darkened a little, and throughout lunch he pointedly refrained from addressing any remarks to his only male guest.
But, remembering with painful vividness that kiss in the tower room, Caroline found it required no effort at all to make up for the host’s neglect, and address all her conversation to Christopher. And his response, if she had been in a mood to be aware of it—which she was not!— was highly flattering.
That night dinner was served in the main dining-room of the chateau, and by that time Monique had been granted enough help to make some sort of a display possible.
A couple of girls from the village had arrived in response to an S.O.S., and as they were both quietly capable girls Monique was no longer flustered. And Pierre was pressed into service as a waiter, and the service of the meal was considerably quicker than the night before.
The main dining-room at the chateau was a lovely room, and Caroline had often wandered in it alone when she and its owner had the place to themselves. It was lighted at both ends by tall windows, and the floor had a shining pitch of polish which was the result of many
centuries of devoted attention on the part of housemaids, particularly when housemaids were more easily come by. The furniture was elegant, and Caroline was surprised that so much of it remained intact when the Comte had had to live through bad days before his good fortune came to him. It would have been reasonable to suppose that he would have disposed of most of it, but he had not done so. One or two of the more valuable pictures had gone from the walls and the original chandelier that had lighted the bared shoulders and the powdered wigs and the brocades of so many of his ancestors and their invited guests, had been replaced. But otherwise the room was much as it had always been, or at any rate as it had been since the beginning of the eighteenth century, or thereabouts.
The chairs were covered with damask that was the colour of rich claret, and the heavy brocade curtains that were inclined to crumble at a touch were claret-colour also. The sideboard gleamed with silver, and numerous side-tables had graceful Hepplewhite legs. The long dining-table itself gleamed like a mirror after the attention it had received from Monique earlier in the day, and once more Caroline had been called in to arrange flowers. She had chosen some very dark red roses from the rose-garden, and the scent of them hung like incense in the room. Candles flickered in glittering candelabra, and made it unnecessary for the electric lights to be switched on, and the movements of Pierre were almost in shadow as he carried the various dishes to the guests.
To-night the women—that is to say Diane Montauban and Helen Mansfield—had donned spectacular dresses. Diane’s looked as if it was made out of pearl-coloured moth’s wings, and Helen’s was a creation she had found time to have made for her specially in Paris when they halted there. Lady Pen, who had emerged from her room around about tea-time, looked sombre but arresting in very tight-fitting black velvet, and only Caroline was conscious of looking rather inadequate.
She had not come to Le Fontaine prepared for social evenings or occasions when she would be required to look particularly smart, and the only “dressy” type of frock she had with her was a little navy blue silk that looked almost severely neat by contrast with the magnificence of the others. But her hair had been brushed until it shone— mistily gold in the candle flames—and her make-up was more carefully applied than normally, so that there was something really lovely about the small face bent a little demurely so that she appeared to be constantly peering into her lap, rather than looking for any sort of admiration from either of the two men present.
Both wore well-fitting dinner-jackets, and it was the first time Caroline had seen Armand in a dinner-jacket. Her one quick glance at him when he handed her a glass of sherry in the main salon before the meal started had come very near to undoing her. For, with the action of handing her her glass his dark eyebrows had ascended a little, lending him that Puckish, definitely endearing look that was one of the first things she had noticed about him, and his eyes had looked velvety and enquiring and only just a little mocking. For an instant, as they gazed full at one another, and his immaculate linen had made his bronzed face look so much more bronzed, and his hair had seemed to be waving like black satin under the lights, she had wanted to go on gazing her fill, and even to touch his hand impulsively when his fingers came so near to hers.
But somehow she had conquered the impulse, and the mockery in his eyes had been much more noticeable when she had ventured to glance at him again. And, after that, she had deliberately refrained from glancing at him at all.
He took the head of the table in the dining-room, and Lady Pen faced him at the opposite end. She looked along it, at the flowers and the flickering candles, and her old blue eyes lighted with pleasure.
“This is som
ething you should do often, Armand,” she said. “Entertain your friends here in your own country house! So much more delightful than being invited to your flat in Paris, or taken out to a restaurant where the food can be depended on, but everything else is lacking! No atmosphere ... Not this sort of atmosphere anyway.” Armand looked a little quizzical, and there was just a touch of wryness about his quizzicalness.
“And am I supposed to maintain an unwieldy property of this sort in order to entertain my friends occasionally?” “No, but you could get married and settle down here,” came the lightning-like reply. ‘That is to say, you could live in a corner of it, and do something useful with the rest. Children would thrive here, and it’s such a pity to waste what your forbears handed onto you.”
The Comtes expression grew definitely rather impish, “You not only saddle me with a house in which it would be next door to impossible to live comfortably without expensive structural alterations, but I now find that I am to acquire children!” He laughed softly, the impishness invading his laughter, making it sound velvety but mocking. “I, who am a confirmed bachelor! That is not good enough, Lady Pen! And it is unlike you to make such an unconventional suggestion when I am a confirmed bachelor!”
“I suggested that you got married,” she returned, rather tartly. “And you needn’t pretend that you don’t like children.”
“I do, oh, I do! I am devoted to Monique’s two small encumbrances, who seldom leave me alone when I am here! But those are Monique’s responsibilities, and not mine—thankfully! I am not the paternal type.”
“I am quite sure you could be, and I think it’s high time you acquired a few responsibilities. They might help to settle and sober you.”
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