by Susan Barrie
“But you’re an artist,” she reminded him, in some surprise. “And hoping to sell some of your pictures. Isn’t that where Mademoiselle Descarté comes in? You’re hoping she’ll arrange something with the Comte.”
“Of course,” he agreed at once. “But he may not have much time to spare to see me if his stay in Tangier is to be brief. But if I could get aboard the Odette I could thrust some of my pictures quite literally under his nose.” He stood up, smiling at her. “Well, I’m not going to keep you. We will meet again ... I’m sure of that! And until we do, don’t let Gabrielle frighten you into doing anything you don’t want to do. She’s a type who fastens on weak spots ... don’t let her see you’ve got any!”
He in his turn put her into a taxi, and he gave the driver the address of the Moorish garden where she was to meet Neil Heritage.
“What’s he like, this Heritage?” he asked, glancing at her curiously. “He seems to have a lot of unfair advantages! I’d like to sit with you for half an hour in that old garden. It’s one of the most peaceful and picturesque corners of Tangier, and with a pretty girl in a white dress!”
He smiled and left the sentence unfinished, waved a hand, and she was on her way to the peaceful and picturesque corner of Tangier.
But there was to be no half-hour of-dalliance for Steve in the shade of age-old trees, with flower scents floating on the hot noon air and banishing or overpowering other less pleasant but very insistent scents that found their way from the crowded open space nearby, where a busy market was in progress.
She had barely time to appreciate the wealth of color, the pergolas and the sense of timelessness and beauty, of sudden removal to another world, before she became aware of a man who walked impatiently up and down, although there were seats available. One moment of surprise gave place to a sensation of blank astonishment as she recognized—not Neil Heritage, glancing at his watch and hoping that she’d made it in good time to allow them to get back to the villa before the others, but the owner of the villa himself. The Comte de Courvalles!
So far as she was able to observe out of the tail of her eye there was only one other old man in the garden, looking patriarchal in a burnous and a beard, and he was stealing away along the path as if bent on some secret mission of his own, leaving them alone in an oasis of scented silence and still yellow sunshine.
The Comte broke the spell of her silence by speaking sharply.
“So you’ve condescended to arrive at last, mademoiselle! I wondered how much longer I would have to wait for you!”
She glanced automatically at her watch, as if time was important, whereas it was no longer of any importance whatsoever. The only thing of importance now was that she had been found out—caught out in a piece of deliberate deception! And how she was to justify herself she couldn’t think, even if she involved the other two. For it was she, not they, who had lent herself to deception, and taken advantage of her position as a trusted employee.
“I didn’t expect to find you here,” she said at last.
“I don’t suppose you did! In fact, I’m quite sure you didn’t. But I sent the others back in the cars and came after you and Heritage. All that talk about sending a telegram didn’t quite ring true, and for the time being I’m responsible for you!” His cold eyes were furious and accusing. “Why didn’t you tell the truth? Why did you tell it to Heritage, but not to anyone else?”
She sighed inwardly. So Heritage had given her away; but she couldn’t really blame him.
“It was something I had to do, and I ... I explained the situation to Mr. Heritage, because he wanted to escort me to the post office.”
“And the post office was just an excuse? It was a friend you wanted to contact?”
She nodded. Her throat felt dry with nervousness, her hands were almost soaking wet inside her thin nylon gloves, and as a result of her recent hurry and agitation her wits didn’t seem to particularly bright.
“I had no idea when I brought you to Tangier that you already had friends—or a friend here! As a matter of fact I gathered that you were in a peculiarly friendless condition when we met for the first time in Paris!”
She swallowed.
“But, according to Mademoiselle Descarté, you told her about this man last night, and went off to keep some sort of an assignation with him. While I imagined you suffering from a headache you borrowed one of my cars and sneaked off to town! Is that true, mademoiselle?”
Steve’s eyes opened wide.
“Mademoiselle Descarté ... said that?”
“She did,” he replied coldly. “Not in order to do you any harm, or because she likes betraying confidences, but because—like me—she felt there was something about you that was young and inexperienced, and although it would involve you in my displeasure she decided it would be wise to tell me the whole truth before your inexperience landed you in real trouble. Last night she aided and abetted you, but this morning was too much ... her conscience wouldn’t permit her to remain silent.”
“I see,” Steve said quietly.
Suddenly he lashed out at her in icy displeasure.
“You are a disappointment to me, Miss Blair. A lesson that I must be more cautious in future before engaging an employee. It is not enough that a young woman looks pale and bewildered, and that she has already succeeded in pulling wool over the eyes of another good friend of mine ... and I am referring, of course, to Miss Liane Daly, who entrusted you with the key of my flat,” on a burst of angry resentment.
Steve felt as if the worst had happened to her, and she had been packed off home, but she stared at him with quiet eyes. Even mildly accusing eyes.
“You should be more careful, monsieur, when you entrust the key of your flat!” she pointed out to him.
He stared at her for a moment as if she had astounded him, and then a muscle at one corner of his mouth twitched, and a spark of humor invaded his eyes.
“True,” he agreed, “but my friends are more carefully chosen than yours, Miss Blair. There has only been one instance in my life when I took a chance ... and that was with you! Now I learn that you are impressionable, and because a young man noticed you after lunch yesterday you agreed to meet him last night. That wasn’t merely impressionable, it was exceptionally rash in a place like Tangier!”
“I’m sure it was,” she answered, so calmly that he stared at her with bent brows.
“Then you admit that there is no exaggeration in Mademoiselle Descarté’s story?”
She shrugged her shoulders slightly. The sun was beating down on her through the leaves of the vine above her head, a conviction that he would not believe her if she told him the whole truth had her in its grip, and more than anything else she wanted to sit down.
She had climbed the steep slopes of the Kasbah hill that morning, rushed off to keep an appointment that had not even yielded her a cup of coffee, pleaded with Neil Heritage to let her go off on her own, and done as much explaining to him as she dared; and now she was confronted with an irate Comte—a disappointed Comte—to whom explanation would be useless, and the will to attempt it evaded her altogether.
“If that is Mademoiselle Descarté’s story then you’d better accept it,” she said, and groped for the wooden seat behind her. “I—I think I’d like to sit down, if you don’t mind, monsieur.”
At once his expression was a mixture of concern and vexation.
“Why in the world don’t you wear a hat?” he demanded, noticing how the sunlight glanced off her shining hair. He drew her into the shade, and to a more sheltered seat. “Here, sit here for a bit, and you will soon feel better,” he assured her, with a sort of frustrated kindness in his voice. Or was it merely an impatient kindness? “You’re not even wearing dark glasses,” he accused her.
“No, I—I had them in my hand, but I must have lost them,” she said vaguely.
“You were so preoccupied with your desire to see this young man again that nothing else was quite real,” he remarked with a biting cynicism. “Is
there no end to the foolishness of women?”
Then he walked to the door in the wall and looked out.
“My car has returned for me, and if you feel capable of doing so we will walk to it and get away from this rendezvous. It was clever of Neil to suggest it, but myself I would never have permitted you to wander off. You must have been very persuasive, or else he could not resist your pleas, for he is not normally feeble witted.”
“Mr. Heritage was very kind,” she said thinly, defending him, “and I’m quite sure there is nothing wrong with his wits. Also I think he believed me,” she added with the same vagueness, while he guided her unsteady steps towards the car, and when she was lying back in the cool against the comfortable upholstery he gazed at her curiously. Her eyes were dark with strain and weariness. “Mr. Heritage isn’t easily deceived,” she said.
“No?” he murmured, and got into the car beside her. “And I am, petite?” with much dryness.
She gazed at him.
“Perhaps. Yes ... I don’t know,” she admitted, and closed her eyes against the glare. “When do I return to England, monsieur?” she asked.
The car climbed towards the green cliff-top, flashing past the white and color-washed villas with their gardens full of colorful trees and flowers, and the high walls that enclosed them. In some cases the walls were smothered with growth, particularly a riot of triumphant pink geranium, and the eternal bougainvillea.
“I am not aware that I have said that you are returning to England, mademoiselle,” the Comte returned more equably. “Unless you are consumed with a burning desire to leave me in the lurch—and my guests, of course—then I prefer that you should continue in your job.”
Her eyes flashed open, and she looked at him gratefully. “I’m so looking forward to the rest of the cruise,” she admitted wistfully. “I’d simply hate to be sent home after seeing only Tangier.”
He half turned on the superlatively well-sprung seat and looked at her gravely. “Then remember that I dislike all forms of deception—all forms!—and you shall have another chance,” he said. “Be wise, discreet, unimpressionable ... and you shall keep your job. But if you behave foolishly once more then I will send you home, even if we’re in the middle of the Indian Ocean! You shall be sent home!”
“I’ll remember, monsieur,” she answered, and was aware of overwhelming relief. Quite the most extraordinarily keen sensation of relief, as if something far more than a mere job and a promise of sightseeing had been at stake.
He patted her hand, while he regarded her quizzically.
“You look a good child,” he observed, “an obedient child. Not one who is likely to give trouble. In future you must be just that!”
CHAPTER EIGHT
NEVERTHELESS, he was particularly insistent that she join them that night when they dined at a local restaurant, and she wondered whether it was because he didn’t trust her to do the right thing if he left her behind. She might slip away again as she had done the night before, and borrow one of his cars without his permission in order to contact her romantic acquaintance.
For there was no doubt about it, Gabrielle had painted a picture of her as a somewhat naive and easily prevailed upon young woman who didn’t realize that she might be running risks if she formed an attachment with a good-looking stranger in a foreign port. In order to safeguard her own position and prevent any whisper of the truth reaching the Comte’s ears she had cut away the ground under Steve’s feet, and made it unlikely that she would ever be believed if she attempted an explanation of the reason why she had twice met Timothy Strangeways in her employer’s time. Or once, at least, in her employer’s time, for she was supposed to be free in the evenings ... but she was not supposed to tell lies about the reason why she couldn’t face dinner with the others, or keep a paid employee waiting outside an hotel while she went in for stolen meetings.
It was the picture of herself as an over-impressionable and not particularly scrupulous young woman—the picture Gabrielle had painted—that incensed Steve, and made her determine never again to do anything for Mademoiselle Descarté that was in the least underhand, or likely to recoil on herself. One experience was enough, and in future the Frenchwoman would have to find some other means of keeping in touch with her friends.
Although why she was risking so much in order to provide Timothy Strangeways with a means of a livelihood Steve couldn’t think.
Gabrielle looked at her with an annoying, quiet smile in her eyes when they met at lunch, and she even went so far as to apologize in front of the Comte—although she was careful that none of the others were within earshot—for making disclosures about her that might well have led to her dismissal.
“I know that the Comte has a wide understanding, and I hadn’t any real fear that he would punish you too severely,” she said. “But we both agreed that you are young, and must be protected. In future you must be more discreet!” with an elder-sisterly smile.
Steve, who was still feeling a little dizzy in the head after the unaccustomed heat and her somewhat hectic morning, couldn’t think of any reply to make that would have benefited her own position, and remained silent. The Comte put a drink with ice chinking at the bottom of the glass into her hand and advised her to have a quiet afternoon.
“You are not quite as strong as you perhaps imagine you are,” he remarked, surveying her with a faint twinkle in his eyes, although the frown was still there between his brows. “It is not so long since you fainted in London, remember?”
“What a quixotic reason for taking on an employee,” Gabrielle observed, as if for the first time it really struck her as quixotic, “because she fainted in London!”
“It is just possible there were other reasons as well,” the Comte returned blandly, and added:
“One, at least!” Then he lifted his glass to Gabrielle. It was a silent toast, but the look in his eyes brought a faint glow to her cheeks.
On their way into the big dining salon she managed to get close to Steve.
“The letter?” she whispered. “You did get the answer to my letter?”
“It is on your dressing-table,” Steve replied stiffly. “Your maid said that she would see you received it.”
Whatever was in the letter it brought a curious look of satisfaction to Gabrielle’s expression for the rest of the day, and when Steve went to her room to dress for dinner she found a gauzy stole, with many glittering sequins attached to it, lying on her bed. As it smelled strongly of Gabrielle’s distinctive perfume she guessed that it was intended as a reward for her services, and feeling almost affronted she promptly gave it away to the Bedouin girl who changed the towels in her bathroom, and turned down her bed for the night.
The girl was delighted.
The restaurant where they dined had Moorish decor and Arab dancers, but the food was French and excellent. The atmosphere would have thrilled Steve under normal circumstances, but she was feeling too much as if she was there under sufferance, proved in her guilt, to be able to enjoy anything at all. She was certain that everyone knew she had misbehaved, and Rosalie Trent and her mother quite noticeably ignored her.
When the lights went down for the floor show, and the first of the sinuous dancers appeared in the spotlight, Neil Heritage whispered to her apologetically:
“I’m sorry if I got you into a row! I hope our host wasn’t too high-handed?”
Steve shook her head.
“I took a chance, and I got caught out. He was very restrained in the circumstances.”
“But did you explain to him precisely what the circumstances were?”
She glanced at him swiftly. He was studying her as if she interested him far more than the serpentine creature who was discarding veils on the stage.
“I ... There wasn’t very much to explain, except what I told you.”
“And I only got part of the truth!” He touched her hand under cover of the table, but it was intended as a warning touch, not a promiscuous touch. “Don’t allow yourself to b
e made use, of,” he whispered. “It could do you a lot of harm.” And then the lights went up, the atmosphere was heavy with cigarette smoke and perfume—the heavy kind of perfume such as that which always went ahead of Gabrielle Descarté, and proclaimed her presence in advance. The service of the meal was resumed, deft waiters did things over spirit stoves and blue flames leapt high in the air beneath sizzling dishes, and other waiters withdrew the corks from champagne bottles. Beyond the open windows the sea surged softly and looked like indigo under the stars, the lights of the Odette dipped and swung against a tranquil sky, full of a strange luminosity.
Steve sipped her champagne to which she felt she was not entitled, since she should have been left behind to have a meal in her room—and decided that she could never like it. Tonight she had no capacity for liking anything, and even Gabrielle was wearing a sulky expression. For the first time that day she was not smiling provokingly or looking like a contented white-skinned cat with brilliant hair, for the host—behaving like the perfect host—had transferred some of his attention to the rest of his guests, and tonight it was Madelon Villennes who came in for rather more than her fair share of it.
In a dress of white nylon tulle with a scarlet velvet sash, her chrysanthemum mop of black curls shining beneath the lights, her black eyes shining too, and her bare arms and shoulders golden as apricots, she could hardly have looked more desirable. Her chatter was the naive chatter of a schoolgirl, but her glances were the purposeful glances of a young woman who had long ago—possibly in the expensive Swiss finishing-school she had attended—learned how to go about things that mattered.
And marriage mattered ... particularly a wealthy marriage. She was after nothing less!
After they left Tangier they continued the cruise in the calm waters of the Mediterranean, proceeding towards Algiers, where, however, they did not go ashore. The recent disturbances there had put it out of bounds, for casual holidaymakers, and the Comte pointed out that it was merely a larger edition of Tangier, a much more French edition.
