“Lileth! I hadn’t expected you to be home so soon.”
Bing threw his hat onto a chair and in two strides had crossed the room and taken her in his arms.
“Darling, this is wonderful!” he cried. “I thought I should have to wait at least an hour before I saw you.”
He had a small bunch of flowers in his hand and Lileth heard the paper crackle against her back as he put his arms around her, and then she closed her eyes and felt his mouth on hers, kissing her hungrily, possessively and with a sense of urgency that they both knew so well.
She wanted to stop, she wanted to tell him what had happened, but she felt as if it had suddenly become quite unimportant. The only thing that mattered was Bing’s lips awakening her desire –
A long time, a very long time, afterwards, Lileth rose, lit a cigarette and stood looking down at the flowers Bing had brought her. They were a small pathetic bunch of rather tired carnations. She knew that he would have gone without lunch to buy them and something within her wanted to weep that such a sacrifice was necessary.
Then she remembered the orchids that Carl Fulton had given her the night before. She had hidden them in a cupboard so that Bing should not see them, but she knew that she might just as well have thrown them away because there would be more orchids every day, every hour, if she wanted them.
“We must go out to dinner,” Bing murmured lazily from the bed.
“Not tonight,” Lileth answered. “I have an engagement.”
Bing sat up sharply.
“What the hell do you mean, not tonight?” he asked jealously. “And what engagement? You haven’t told me about it before.”
“Something that has come up unexpectedly,” Lileth answered.
“To do with work?”
“Not exactly.”
“Then what?” Bing enquired. “You know I don’t allow you to go out with anyone else, if that’s what you are trying to do!”
Lileth stubbed out her cigarette deliberately.
“It’s not a question of allow, Bing,” she said. “You know as well as I do that you cannot afford to give me dinner and quite frankly, I’m hungry.”
He looked at her with a bewildered expression on his face.
“I don’t know what you are getting at,” he answered. “I have enough money for dinner. Not at the Waldorf Astoria, but in some small place where we can be together. It’s what we had planned if you remember.”
“But we have to face facts sooner or later,” Lileth said.
Because she was nervous her voice was unnecessarily loud.
Bing jumped to his feet and, walking to her side, put his hands on her shoulders and turned her round to face him.
“What’s going on?” he asked. “What are you trying to tell me?”
“I’m going to be married!”
Lileth had not meant to blurt it out like that and, when she saw his face whiten, she thought that she might as well have dealt him a blow between the eyes.
“To be married!” He repeated the words stupidly.
“Yes, to Carl Fulton.”
His hands dropped from her shoulders.
“The millionaire! I’ve heard of him, of course. Who hasn’t? I had no idea you knew him.”
“I’ve known him nearly a week.”
“I see. And he actually wants to marry you. That’s a break isn’t it?”
The bitterness in his voice stung her.
“Oh, Bing, don’t take it like that. Nothing will be altered. We can go on seeing each other. I shall never love anyone but you, but I cannot go on as I am. Can’t you understand? I hate this place, I hate having to work, having no money, having to walk instead of taking a taxi. I cannot stand it any longer.”
Bing turned his back on her and moved across the room to the window. He stood breathing deeply as if the hot air was something absolutely necessary to him.
Lileth, because she was nervous, rushed into speech.
“He’s old, Bing, and he wants someone to be with him – a – a companion, I think. I can keep him amused and entertained but – but it’s quite different from us. Do try to understand.”
He turned then and she was unable to meet the agony in his eyes.
“You’re lying!” he accused. “You always have lied, but it was about things that didn’t matter. You know Carl Fulton’s reputation as well as I do where women are concerned. You will be his third – or is it fourth wife? He may be old and drooling, but he doesn’t want a companion – he wants a woman. And he believes, as all those rich old fools do, that a young one will make him feel young again.”
“It won’t be like that, it won’t,” Lileth protested. “And we’ll – ”
Bing interrupted her roughly.
“Don’t you dare say it!” he stormed. “Don’t you dare suggest that I should be your – your paramour, your gigolo – that I should hang onto the skirts of a rich woman who hasn’t got the guts to marry me, but must prostitute herself to the highest bidder.”
“How can you speak to me like that?” Lileth screamed, stamping her foot and half raising her hand as if she would strike him in the face.
In answer Bing stared at her, then walked across the room and picked up his hat.
“I loved you!” he said. “God knows I loved you!”
She heard the door slam behind him.
‘He’ll come back,’ she thought, ‘when he has got over it.’
She played with the idea of running after him, catching him before he reached the street. Then she remembered that Carl Fulton would be waiting.
The car was calling for her in a quarter-of-an-hour and she had only that time in which to have a bath and put on the dress he had told her to buy. It was hanging at this very moment in her wardrobe, still covered with the tissue paper and the cellophane bag it had arrived in, just in case Bing should see it before she had time to break the news to him.
She had meant to do it in quite a different way and she thought now that she ought to have been more plaintive, more pathetic about her penury. Perhaps Bing would have understood that.
Well, she would have plenty of time to make him see reason, either before the wedding or afterwards.
She would ring him up first thing in the morning, but for the moment it was impossible for her to do anything but get dressed and not keep Carl Fulton waiting longer than was absolutely necessary –
*
Lileth came back from the past to stare at her reflection in the mirror.
She had not seen Bing again until the night before last at Moulay Ibrahim’s party. She had not believed it possible that he would disappear out of her life.
For the first few days after he had left her lodgings she had not worried unduly. He was sulking, getting over the shock, realising that he could not have things exactly as he wanted them. He would come crawling back and apologise for making her feel anxious.
She began to plan the presents she would give him – a notecase, gold cufflinks from Cartier. She might even be able to squeeze enough money out of her very ample dress allowance to give him a car without Carl being suspicious.
But Bing had not turned up before her wedding day and when she returned to New York after a cruise in the Caribbean in Carl’s luxury yacht, which was almost like a small liner, she had been unable to find him.
She supposed now it was because he had changed his name. Cutter! How could she be expected to go about looking for a man called ‘Cutter’ when his name was really Ward? And now she had found him only to discover that he was married to that tedious, inefficient ex-secretary of hers.
It seemed an almost incredible joke for fate to play. But what did it matter? Divorces were easy and now that Bing was rich, they would not have to go through all those tiresome exhibitions of pride that would have been inevitable if she had all the money.
He would never let her pay for anything when they were together. She could imagine what scenes there would have been if she had tried to persuade him to live on Carl’s millions
.
She was disturbed by a sudden noise outside the window.
Lilith’s suite in The Mamounia Hotel overlooked the flower-filled garden. Her bedroom, with the big private sitting-room opening out of it, had wide balconies filled with comfortable chairs where she could sit in the morning and look at the panorama of the Atlas Mountains while she sipped her coffee.
The noise came again and this time Lileth rose to her feet pulling her wrap around her.
“Who is there?” she asked, in a voice that was a little apprehensive because she knew that there was no question of a servant entering her room from the balcony.
It was then that a robed figure clambered swiftly over the balustrade and walking across the balcony entered the room.
Lileth opened her lips to shout for help and then the cry was arrested in her throat for the man in Arab dress spoke.
“Don’t scream, Lileth!” he said.
“Bing!” Lileth ejaculated his name on a note of triumph. “Bing, I was thinking of you. I have been sitting here for ages just thinking of you and wondering how soon I could see you again. And now you’re here. But why – why the fancy dress?”
In answer Bing walked quickly across the room and bolted the door from the inside, then did the same to the door opening onto the sitting room.
“Nobody is likely to come in,” Lileth said practically. “I told the maid I was going to bed early. I am tired. I have had a long journey today.”
“I know that,” Bing said.
“I just can’t believe you are here,” Lileth said, her eyes on his face. “I telephoned The Jasmin Hotel yesterday and they said that you had left, you and your wife.”
Her voice sharpened a little.
“That’s right,” Bing answered.
“Why didn’t you leave a message for me?”
“We had to get out in rather a hurry,” he replied.
“Don’t tell me you were doing a moonlight flit?” Lileth asked with a smile. “Nowadays, with your millions, that’s surely unnecessary?”
“There are other reasons for leaving quickly besides an inability to pay the bill,” Bing said. “Listen, Lileth, I want your help.”
“You want my help?” Lileth repeated. “Oh, Bing, how wonderful! What can I do to help you? You know I’ll do anything.”
“Do I know that?” Bing enquired, raising his eyebrows.
Lileth had the grace to look slightly ashamed.
“Let’s start at the beginning,” she said hastily. “It’s so long since I have seen you that I feel that while you are still Bing, still the man I have been looking for all these years, you are just a little bit of a stranger. Answer me one question first – why are you dressed like that?”
Bing hesitated and Lileth gave an exclamation and put her fingers to her lips.
“Oh, but of course, I know! How silly of me to ask. You were playing with the idea of being mixed up in the Secret Service or some such thing even before you left me. I remember you talking about it. We were sitting in that funny little café we used to go to for a quiet meal. You said a friend of yours had offered you a job, that it would not mean much money, but it was exciting and adventurous and the sort of life you really liked.”
“Yes, I remember our talking about it,” Bing said quietly.
“I had forgotten all about it until now,” Lileth said. “But I remember saying, ‘love is an adventure too,’ and you stopped talking about your job and talked about us.”
“It’s clever of you to remember so much,” Bing said and Lileth was not certain whether he was being sarcastic or not.
“I see now what happened,” she went on quickly, “After you left me, you took the job and that’s why I could not find you. That’s true, isn’t it?”
“More or less,” Bing agreed.
“You must have gone to all sorts of different parts of the world and there was I combing New York, Chicago and even London in the hope of finding you.”
“You must have known I was not coming back,” Bing said.
“How was I to know that?” she asked. “I thought you loved me.”
To her surprise Bing threw back his head and laughed.
“Lileth, you are incorrigible! I thought perhaps you had have grown up a little in these past years, but you are just the same.”
“I don’t know what you mean by that?” Lileth scowled.
“I think you do,” he answered. “Experience has not taught you much, has it? Not about men at any rate.”
“I don’t know what you are talking about,” Lileth replied. “I only know that I loved you, Bing, and you walked out on me. I suffered more than you could believe possible all those years.”
“But comfortably, my dear, very comfortably.”
Lileth gave a little sob.
“You are being beastly to me,” she complained. “I made a mistake, I admit it now. I thought, as I told you at the time, that Carl Fulton wanted a companion. You were right, he wanted something very very different. He was old and perverted and beastly. Even now, when he has been dead three years, I wake up screaming when I remember what I had to go through.”
“But look what you got for it,” Bing said quietly.
The gesture of his hand embraced the room, the jewel case on the dressing table, the white mink wrap that Lileth had carried down to dinner just in case even on a warm night she should feel cold.
“Don’t let’s talk of those things,” Lileth pleaded. “Let’s forget them, forget everything that’s in the past with all the future in front of us.”
Bing’s lips twisted a little wryly.
“Do you really believe that?” he asked. “After six years of being apart.”
“I missed you every moment of them,” Lileth told him. “And I know that, although you are pretending that you had forgotten me, you remembered me even as I remembered you. What could that girl you are married to now give you that I couldn’t give you? It was only money that stood between us and now we are both rich and it’s all so easy, so very simple. Can’t you understand?”
“I’m afraid the money, as far as I’m concerned, was slightly exaggerated.”
Lileth looked bewildered.
“I mean,” he continued, “that the Godfather with the oil wells was just a Fairy tale invented on the spur of the moment.”
“Then you are not rich?” Lileth asked.
“I am not starving,” Bing replied. “My father died several years ago and left me enough so that I never need be hungry again. But I cannot measure up to your millions, Lileth.”
“That wouldn’t matter,” Lileth said sweepingly. “I have enough for us both, in fact far more than we could ever spend.”
“Lileth, my dear, I am not going to spend your money. You know that quite well,” Bing said. “And you have to face facts and realise that what happened six years ago is now over – over for ever and ever.”
“You mean you don’t love me?” Lileth asked.
Bing shook his head.
“Not any more,” he said gently.
“I don’t believe it,” Lileth retorted. “I just don’t believe it. You think you have got over me because your pride was hurt, because you wouldn’t face facts and admit that it was hell for me to go on as I was. I couldn’t stand poverty, Bing, it was killing me. But now everything is different. Now we can start again. We can be happy, really happy.”
“Lileth, there are, I am sure, a lot of men in the world who would like you to say that to them.”
“But I want only you,” Lileth protested. “I have always wanted only you. I have never loved anyone but you. It may seem extraordinary but it’s true. You were the man I loved and I never realised for one moment that I would have to live without you just because I wanted a few comforts, a few things that are necessities for a woman.”
Bing gave a sigh as if the effort of arguing with Lileth was exhausting him.
“May I have a cigarette?” he asked her.
Lileth picked up her case off the dress
ing table. It was of onyx with a ruby and a diamond clasp and her initials in the same stones.
Bing took a cigarette, lit it and then turned the case over and over in his fingers.
“You were the one who always said that money didn’t count,” Lileth pointed out defiantly.
“Now I am older,” Bing replied, “I should have added, ‘to some people’.”
He rose to his feet and walked backwards and forwards across the room as if he was debating something. Lileth followed him for a moment with her eyes and then she rose and trailing the flowing skirts of her wrap behind her settled herself on a chaise longue by the window.
The lights were less bright in this corner of the room and, as her head fell back against the satin cushions, she looked very seductive and extremely beautiful as she held out her hand to him.
“Come and sit near me,” she said and her voice was low and inviting.
“I want to tell you why I came here,” Bing said.
“You have already told me – to ask my help,” Lileth answered.
“That’s right,” Bing said. “I saw you arrive tonight.”
“With Moulay Ibrahim?” Lileth asked. “He is attractive, isn’t he? But what counted really was that he offered to drive me down in his big Mercedes. I knew how much more comfortable it would be than travelling with Ambrose.”
“You were always one for comfort, weren’t you?” Bing said cynically. “I am quite sorry for Ambrose.”
“Oh, he didn’t really mind,” Lileth answered. “He is under an obligation to me, I am paying for his Art Gallery.”
“And money can put everything right, can’t it?” Bing asked.
“Stop it!” Lileth said almost angrily. “Stop sniping at me. Tell me how I can help you and then we can talk about ourselves.”
Bing hesitated and she knew that he was choosing his words.
“I am here, Lileth, as you have guessed, on a very special mission,” he said. “And you can help me by telling me everything that Moulay Ibrahim said that could in any way help me to find someone he has hidden in Marrakesh.”
“He was very interested in you – he had seen us dancing together,” Lileth said. “But he didn’t tell me anything about anyone he had hidden.”
Love Is Dangerous Page 16
