Kingfisher Tide

by Jane Arbor

  "—If with a single look he can tell her, 'I am here and I love you' and she can understand ? Yes, indeed," agreed Marie, "it could have been a nothing, a bagatelle, and soon perhaps, the bells will ring for them as they did today for Clotilde and Benoit—" Suddenly recalling her duty as hostess, Marie broke off to summon her husband with a sharp,

  "Guilbert mon vieux, have you neither eyes nor good manners? Mademoiselle Rose has no glass in her hand nor a morsel to eat !" before hurrying off to marshal bride and groom and their attendants into the rigid tableau required by the wedding photographer.

  Rose drank several ritual glasses of wine, kissed the bride, viewed the wedding presents, danced once or twice, but managed to evade Marie's invitation to join the sit-down supper. There was to be no honeymoon, so the party looked like holding together until midnight and beyond, and it was nearly dark when Rose said her goodnights and walked back across the square.

  At first she thought the car parked under the plane trees was Blaise's. But as she approached it she saw this was a smaller open sports model; nearer still, she recognised its driver for a girl she had met briefly only once before.

  At the sound of footsteps Marie-Claire Odet crooked an arm across her steering-wheel and peered back through the dusk. Then, as if it were Rose for whom she had been waiting, she was out of the car and offering her hand to be shaken.

  "You remember me? We met at Flore Michelet's

  housewarming in the spring. Marie-Claire Odet—you know ?" she asked.

  Rose took her hand. "Of course. Blaise introduced us, didn't he ?"

  "Yes. Then we—my father and I—left early and we haven't met since." The girl ran nervous fingers round the frame of her handbag. "Were you—were you on your way home now? If so, could I come in and talk to you ?"

  "Do," Rose agreed. "I'm alone. My sister Sylvie is out with Blaise, I believe." Her glance went to the monogrammed dressing-case on the back seat of the car. "Will you bring that in with you or leave it here?"

  "My case? Oh, it'll be all right. It's only full of clothes I—sort of—grabbed up before I left. Nothing valuable at all. I didn't want to bring away a thing more than I need." With a touch of desperate bravado Marie-Claire added, "And if you're wondering what I'm doing in Maurinaire at this time of night, I'm running away from home. I suppose that shocks you ?"

  There was a moment's pause. Then Rose countered, "Why should it, if you feel you have to? But come in, won't you? I'll make coffee and you can tell me as much or as little as you like." As an afterthought she reached for the valise. "Perhaps you'll need this after all. Because we can offer you a spare bed if you want one."

  But it was to emerge from Marie-Claire's disjointed, unhappy story that when she had left her father's house in Grasse ("for good, I hope. I hope I never have to see him or take anything from him

  ever again !"), she had counted on there being a welcome, shelter for the night and willing hospitality awaiting her some seventy miles away in Maurinaire, at the Château.

  "Blaise likes me, you see. He is always sweet with me. Madame is good to everybody, and though Monsieur Saint-Guy scares me rather, he has always been kind too. All the way over I was seeing the Château as the one refuge I could make for until I could get to Paris. It never occurred to me that none of them would be there when I arrived—Madame Saint-Guy away in Avignon, Blaise out somewhere for the evening and Monsieur Saint-Guy at Flore Michelet's, Madame Brissac thought. She said I could wait, but she was going out herself to a wedding party. So how could I ? I couldn't be sure Blaise would be first home, and to be found camping on his doorstep by Monsieur—no !"

  Clearly Marie-Claire, overwrought and forlorn, saw the Saint-Guys' absence from home as a major betrayal of her hopes. Rose soothed, "Well, I'm glad you thought of coming here. Because, as I told you, I think Blaise and Sylvie are together, and as they must both turn up sooner or later, you're certainly welcome to stay until they do. Meanwhile you haven't told me—why Paris after this ?"

  "Because my aunt—my mother's sister—lives there. When I was small, I did too. With Tante Noëlle and my mother after she had divorced my father. Then when Maman died, Tante Noëlle hoped she could keep me. But though my father didn't want me a bit really, he turned stubborn, said Maman's death left him as my legal guardian and took me back. But he

  IS too rich and he drinks, and ever since I left school he has taunted me about how I've stood in his way of attracting a young wife, asking who wants a lump of a stepdaughter like me. Then today it all came to a head. We had a big row, and when he had gone out afterwards, I packed and left, leaving him a note to tell him I was going back to Tante Noëlle."

  "But will he allow you to do that ?" asked Rose.

  "He must. I'm of age now, and I know Tante Noëlle will welcome me until I can get a job. I'd love to train as a children's nurse. But I'll do anything to be independent of him. I had to borrow the little car I use, but I shall send it back. The only thing is that Tante Noëlle has closed her apartment while she is on holiday in Biarritz, so that is why I hoped I could stay at the Chateau for a few days until she could have me," Marie-Claire explained.

  "I see. And do you think your father really means to marry again ?"

  The girl shrugged. "I think he would marry Madame Michelet tomorrow if she would have him. But I ask you! Given the choice, which man would you take, Monsieur Saint-Guy or my father ?"

  Glad that the rhetorical question called for no reply, Rose changed the subject by repeating that Marie-Claire was very welcome where she was, and the girl, expanding to sympathy, went on to relate some of the other subtle mental cruelties she had suffered at the hands of her sadistic father.

  They sat at the window as they talked, Rose alerting to the flash of every headlight which might signal Blaise's return with Sylvie. But all the cars went by until at last one came into the square from

  the coast road, swept under the plane trees directly below and stopped.

  Marie-Claire peered. "Could that be Blaise now? I don't know his—" she began.

  But from the car only one figure—Saint-Guy's alighted. He paused for a momentary glance at Marie-Claire's car, then came to the street door and knocked.

  Rose said to Marie-Claire, "Madame Brissac must have told him you would be here." But as soon as she went to open to him she recognised that here was no mere host in search of a guest. For though in his every taut muscle there was anger to a point of savagery, there was in his dark eyes a look—intense, probing—which had never been there for her before.

  For the first time the silent question of his gaze held no arrogance. This, she realised with a queer, electric excitement, was a Saint-Guy she did not know.

  CHAPTER TEN

  HIS first words revealed nothing of his thoughts. "Whose is that car outside ?" he asked.

  "Marie-Claire Odet's." Rose outlined the girl's dilemma, watching for, though fairly certain she need not fear his reaction.

  He said, "But of course the child will be welcome with us while she sorts out her future. You say she is waiting here for Blaise?"

  "Yes, upstairs."

  He stood aside for Rose to go up before him. To her back he said, "I daresay Marie-Claire will settle for me instead. Besides, it's a happy accident that she is here. Because I have a use for her, I think. We both may have, Rose—"

  Rose turned. "We—have?"

  But Marie-Claire, diffident, worried, was at the door of the living-room and after greeting her, all his sure touch was for her until she relaxed to his reassurance of help and the Chateau's hospitality for as long as she wished.

  Whatever the cause of his anger, he kept it in taut control, and he did not enlarge on his cryptic remark on the stairs until he said to her,

  "Meanwhile, little one, you can do something for me if you will. What do you say to playing the role of chaperon to Rose and me for a while?"

  The girl's startled glance went from him to Rose

  and back again. "Your—chaperon ? But of cour
se !"

  "Good. I dare say," he added drily, "if you hadn't been handy, we could have managed without one. But it's very late and Maurinaire likes the letter of the conventions observed." As he spoke he rose. "So if you could content yourself in Rose's kitchen perhaps ?" he invited, and showed her out.

  He closed the door and turned back into the room, but did not sit. Gripping a chairback, he leaned his weight and faced Rose, the intent, searching look again in his eyes.

  "Do you mind? Some questions first—" he said. "You haven't seen or heard from Blaise since he left you this afternoon?"

  She shook her head. "No."

  "And it's true that you had no knowledge of what he meant to do with—shall we call it—the evidence ?"

  "The—evidence?" Rose blanched. "You mean the— ?"

  "Just so," he cut in. "The tape. According to Blaise, you intended to destroy it. But instead he purloined it without your knowledge. That's true, is it ?"

  Bewildered, confused, "Yes, but—" she faltered. And then, "Blaise told you this ?"

  "Not by word of mouth. I haven't seen him. I was out on the estate when he returned from you. But he left a message for me, saying he was going to find Sylvie and asking me to run through a tape he had put on the machine I use in my office."

  "Oh, no !" Her instinctive recoil jerked her head aside, as if by avoiding his glance she could reject the I import of what he had said.

  But in a single movement he was there, kneeling, his face level with hers, his finger and thumb gentle but firm on her chin, turning it round.

  Mimicking her own emphasis, he said, "Oh, yes, Rose. And I expect you can guess what hearing that recording did to me, can't you ?"

  "You should never have heard it ! Blaise had no right— !" she protested.

  A faint smile creased Saint-Guy's face. "Agreed. No right in the world !" he said. "Strictly, the thing was Sylvie's property. So had you any more right to publish it to Blaise than he to me ?"

  "But I came on it by accident !"

  "So Blaise mentioned in his note to me. But you didn't run it through for him 'by accident !' "

  "Of course not. But once I had heard it, how could I possibly do nothing about it ? Sylvie—"

  "I agree you couldn't. You did what you had to, and Blaise took over from there. Whatever the consequences, he rightly decided I must hear it too. But you haven't answered my question—what do you suppose was its effect on me? Do you imagine I could ever forgive Flore-this?"

  Rose said dully, "You are too outraged and shocked now. But I suppose you will come round at least to understanding the need that drove her to it."

  He shook his head at her. "What do you take me for? A blind, lovesick fool? I assure you I understand very well now what Flore Michelet's driving force was . . . is. It is, as it has always been with her, ambition, coveting my name, fear of a wealth-cushioned but lonely future; and now, jealousy of you."

  "Of me? She has never had anything to fear from me in relation to you !"

  There was an instant of silence. Then, "Nothing, you think ?" he prompted. "You don't credit her with enough intuition to have guessed the truth ? That I love you, Rose . . . need you . . . crave you, want to give and give to you and take and take from you . . ." He found her hands and imprisoned them in his own. "For that is the truth which Flore knows, whether you care or not !"

  "It's not. It can't be." Denying it was an agony to spirit and body, but she dared not believe it. Until his cruel doubt of her good faith and her loyalty, he had been kind in his fashion, helpful, generous—but no more than that. And whether or not he loved Flore Michelet, he had planned—still meant?—to marry her for the money she would bring with her. So what was the shaming alternative he was offering the girl he claimed to love?

  He was protesting, "It can be ! It is—" And then pleading, "Rose, if you won't trust my words, let me convince you with—this . . . and this . . . and this—" he drew her into his arms and kissed her over and over on eyes and lips and throat with a passion which did not ask her credence but demanded it.

  At first she resisted, tautening will and every fibre of her body against her longing to surrender, to grasp at a moment of tenderness, at a promise she told herself must be empty, could not endure. But suddenly her tension broke to the pressure of his need . . . of her own, and she was yielding to the tide of shared ecstasy, returning caress for caress, willing to believe at last.

  He held her off from him, looked deep into her eyes. "So? You know now it is true?"

  Her small laugh was a bubble of pure joy. Bewilderedly she pressed her fingertips to her temples. "Yes. I don't know— That is, I believed I knew just what you thought of me, and whether you have approved or disapproved you have always been so cool, so detached. And you had said—" When he did not help her out she went on, "When you told me about the estate's difficulties and said there might still be hope for it, I took that to mean you would be marrying . . . Flore."

  His lean face darkened. "I, marry Flore's money.? A Saint-Guy stoop to battening on a woman's wealth for any purpose in the world ?"

  "Not even to save the estate ?"

  "Least of all for that. It stands or falls as a Saint-Guy possession. Fortunately I know now that it will stand."

  "Oh—how ?"

  "Through my acquiring an interest in some cork plantations near Tangier, whose different periods of yield will dovetail with and 'carry' ours and vice versa. It means that our prices should compete with anyone's and, God willing, we needn't look back. Meanwhile, though I don't know how Flare learned of my difficulties, in the gloves-off session I have just had with her, she took considerable pleasure in admitting her responsibility for those damaging rumours of which I accused you."

  "And the tape? She knows about that?"

  "But of course. When I had read Blaise's note and heard the thing through I took it down to her villa

  and confronted her with it. I told her it had been recorded by the merest chance, but I put her in no doubt of my opinion of her filthy schemes before I had done with her."

  "She didn't hear the recording ?"

  "No. Even with women like Flore, there are limits to which a man can humiliate them. For that reason too, though also because Blaise had asked me to destroy the tape when I had done with it, I burned it in front of her before I left her."

  "It's burnt? Oh, thank God !" breathed Rose.

  "Yes, I threw it into an empty flower-urn on her terrace and we stood there watching it to ashes. I don't know what her thoughts were. I didn't speak to her again. But mine went—`There—if Rose will forgive me—goes the last barrier between her and me.' And when I came to you, I couldn't travel fast enough. Tell me—" he began to play gently with her fingers—"when did you first know you would listen if I told you I loved you ?"

  "I—don't know. A long time ago," she evaded. "When did you first want to tell me?"

  His smile was tender. "That very first night, I think. Then you weren't beautiful as you've been for me since. That night, clad in your so-English raincoat and your bristling indignation, there was nothing rose-like about you at all. But only a man who had fallen in love at first sight would have troubled himself to see you again."

  "Well, thanks !" she laughed happily. "And you did want to see me again ?"

  "That's why I offered you the job."

  "But you said you hadn't created it for me !"

  He shrugged. "Just an elasticity of the truth. My mother did need a secretary; I needed to see you around, so my engaging you satisfied both demands." He paused. "And then, at the other end, my Rose, I confess I stooped to another ruse to be rid of you."

  "You mean," she said slowly, "you knew I wasn't guilty of betraying your mother's affairs ?"

  "I think I did in my heart. But I had believed Flare's stories about you and Blaise; you had always championed and defended him from me, and I had the evidence of my own eyes, even though I realise now it was all laid on for my benefit. And without being able to hate you, I hated
what I thought you were both doing to Sylvie. So that is why I wouldn't listen to my heart. I had to cut you out of it, do you see? And suspending you from the job on the only pretext I had seemed the least committed way of doing that."

  "And for pride's sake I let you !" mourned Rose. "When I left that room I swore I would never set foot in the Château again—"

  "—Never guessing that when you did, you would come as my dearest betrothed? Or are you that?" he teased. "Have you formally accepted me yet?"

  "Have you formally asked me?" she countered.

  "I'm doing it now— Will you marry me, Rose?"

  Her answer had no need of words, for it was in the touch of her hands on his face, the lips she offered to his and the very curve of her body within his arms. Her promise was in her willing trust of him, as his to her was in the rein he put upon his eager, male need of her; both sure that fulfilment lay ahead for them,

  bath content to wait to achieve the peace that it would bring.

  They kissed gently . . . teased a little ... marvelled and planned and talked about the people on the fringes of their happiness.

  Rose worried, "I shall never make Sylvie understand how it has all happened ! I don't think she has a clue—"

  Saint-Guy said, "Mother loves you too, you know. If I had ever thought of marrying Flore, she would have gone to the dower house as her traditional duty, for no Saint-Guy belle-mere would dream of sharing a house with her daughter-in-law. But for you I think she will go joyfully and take Madame Brissac with her."

  Half in mock alarm, half in serious, Rose said, "Heavens, does that mean I must manage the Château alone from scratch ?" To which he said, "You will be Madame Saint-Guy and it will be expected of you," with a touch of the hauteur which helped to make him the man she had come to love and which, she knew, would always act as her spur to please him, to earn his praise for all that she did well.