Rosie Thomas 3-Book Collection

by Rosie Thomas

  And do you love Darcy? She answered herself unhesitatingly yes. If she was not in love with him, as she had been with Oliver … well, that had proved to be suffocating and then agonising. That was to be avoided, surely.

  Slowly Helen looked into her friends’ faces. They seemed to beam encouragement. Masefield was waiting at the door.

  ‘I want to reply “Yes Helen”.’

  ‘I’ll get that fixed up for you,’ he said.

  There, it was done.

  There need be no more barely admitted battle with herself, no more running from the reality of Darcy. That was all that had been needed. Just to be made to decide.

  Then without warning another face floated in front of her. She saw Tom Hart’s sceptical frown, and the hint of amusement behind it that so often pricked her. Tom would be surprised at her. She pushed aside the unwelcome thought, and with it a tiny, deep-seated fear within her. If Tom was her friend, he would be pleased by her happiness. And if he wasn’t pleased, why should it matter to her at all?

  None of this was anything to do with Tom Hart.

  They were all crowding around her now.

  ‘Congratulations,’ somebody said. There were kisses on her cheeks, and arms around her shoulders to hug her.

  ‘This calls for a celebration,’ Masefield decreed. He wrenched the cork from a bottle of champagne and a jet of silvery froth shot over them.

  ‘Here’s to Viscountess Darcy,’ they toasted her.

  ‘No. Just to Darcy’s wife,’ Helen protested. She had a sudden vision of Montcalm sitting aggressively on the skyline under its coronet of turrets and domes.

  Then she saw Lord and Lady Montcalm smiling thinly on the steps, watching herself and Pansy as they climbed into Masefield’s Rolls.

  Did they know? What would they think?

  It wasn’t the time to worry about that now. Just remember Darcy, gentle, loving Darcy, and the wide acres of Mere.

  Helen wrapped her fingers around her champagne glass and drank so deeply that she felt as if the bubbles were exploding inside her head.

  Everyone seemed ready to have a party, but before she had reached the bottom of her glass Helen was overcome with weariness.

  Unsteadily she put her glass down and blinked around at them.

  ‘I’ve got to go to bed. I suddenly feel so tired.’ Sleep beckoned as the most wonderful prospect in the world.

  ‘Are you all right?’ The voices were concerned.

  ‘It’s just reaction to the excitement,’ Kim said soothingly. ‘Just get a good night’s sleep and tomorrow we’ll go and look for some Venetian glass for your engagement present. Although I expect they’ve got more than enough wonderful glass at Montcalm.’ Her voice was wistful.

  Helen found her way to the door. ‘Goodnight,’ she mumbled. ‘Goodnight, everyone.’

  Helen knew that she was waiting for someone. She was confident that he would come, and aware that there was no hurry. So she sat patiently in the sunshine, feeling the warmth of the stone wall beneath her, her fingertips stroking the rough blocks. The view in front of her was old-fashioned English pastureland in early summer, dotted with oak trees and laced over with the milky froth of cow parsley.

  Then she saw someone coming over the tussocky grass. She knew it was not the person she had been expecting, but there was no surprise. Instead she jumped down from the wall and ran to him. The meadow grass brushed her bare ankles as she went.

  Tom held out his arms.

  Her face was against his shoulder and she thought that she could hear both their hearts beating. She opened her mouth to say something, but he stopped her.

  ‘Quiet. Listen.’

  Over their heads a lark was singing, measuring out his territory against the blue sky.

  Tom kissed her. He touched her eyelashes and the curve of her cheekbones as if he was tasting them, and then his mouth found hers. In the darkness of his eyes Helen saw the passion that was so often masked by his cynical smile. His fingers were counting her buttons, white buttons familiar on a dress that she only wore in summertime.

  One by one he undid them.

  His eyes were closed now and she saw the blackness of the lashes against his cheek. With the tip of his tongue Tom traced the arch of her collarbone and tasted the white skin in the tiny hollow at the base of her throat. His hands rippled over her ribs, spanned her waist and then rested on the points of her hips.

  ‘Gipsy Helen,’ he said, very softly. ‘Dearest gipsy Helen.’

  The meadow was gone now. They were lying face to face on a white bed in a shadowed room. Helen was minutely conscious of the kiss of flesh against her own. With a sudden breeze the thin curtains blew inwards from the open window. Helen half turned to look. Her body was washed with physical sweetness and certainty. There was no hurry, no fear, and no distance from the loved body alongside hers. The curtains fluttered once more and she turned back to him, reaching out her hands to touch and her mouth to taste.

  Her fingers closed on emptiness.

  She was alone. The room was the same, her Venetian bedroom with the arched ceiling and the window over the Canal. But she had never shared it with anyone. The dream had been so vivid that she could still feel the warmth of another body hollowing the mattress, but it had only been a dream. No more than that. The lingering happiness that it had left behind was chased away by disappointment, and then dismay.

  Helen sat up. She was awake now, but even so she looked down at the pillow next to her own. It was as smooth and plumped-up as when the maid had left it.

  Pieces of consciousness began to fit together again to make the flat jigsaw of reality. It wasn’t Tom she was looking for, it was Darcy.

  Last night she had agreed to marry Darcy.

  Helen got out of bed and went out on to her balcony. It was very early. A single gondola wove under the Rialto Bridge and a flat barge full of refuse chugged prosaically past her. A thin veil of mist was rising from the water.

  Helen scrambled haphazardly into her clothes and slipped down through the sleeping palazzo. Outside it was cold and she shivered under her thin sweater, then began to walk determinedly. She knew the network of little alleys well now and she moved without hesitation over the worn paving and up and over the sharp summits of the tiny bridges. Her mind was working just as quickly.

  She pushed away the uncomfortably erotic dream and the memory of Tom Hart. It clung too closely, and together with the sensuality that Venice seemed to breed in her she was troubled by a physical longing that she had never known before.

  Instead she thought of Darcy and the immensity of the promise she had made. She was happy to think of the happiness that it would have given him, but a shadow of uncertainty darkened everything else.

  She had never thought of marrying Darcy, yet when the moment came she had agreed unhesitatingly.

  Helen clung to that. If she had answered yes without soul-searching, almost without thought, then deep down inside herself she must know that it was right. Yet she was disturbed to find that she couldn’t recall Darcy’s face. After her dream Tom Hart’s was crystal clear, every mysterious and mocking plane of it.

  The ripples generated by the shock of Darcy’s telegram spread on outwards in her thoughts. Helen remembered her mother, and smiled. Her mother would be delighted with whatever and whoever made her daughter happy, but she would be an unnatural mother if she were not even more pleased because Darcy was who he was. Then there were Their Royal Highnesses.

  No. That was what she and Tom had called them.

  Lord and Lady Montcalm, rather. Helen smiled again, gleefully this time. It would be amusing to see their faces when Darcy took her to Montcalm again, this time not as an unnoticed friend of Oliver’s, but as their future daughter-in-law. She wouldn’t be afraid of them any more. She would have Darcy with her.

  Helen’s pace quickened. She knew that she wanted to see him again very much. In only two more days they would be together.

  She wondered whether he would want the
m to be married quickly, or whether marrying a Viscount took a lot of fuss and arranging. The idea amused her again. She knew Darcy so well, and she was certain that he would insist on the simplest, quietest wedding possible. For a moment the word wedding jolted her a little, and then she collected herself with the thought that it couldn’t happen for a time yet.

  There were Schools to do first, only two months away. Until yesterday the exams had loomed as the most important hurdle in the world. Now they had diminished a little, but they still mattered. Helen wanted her First.

  When she looked around her she saw that she had reached the shabby quarter of the city surrounding the railway station. The houses were patched with peeling paint and plaster here and blanketed with lines of grey washing. At the corner of the street she stood in two painfully thin dogs were tussling over some scraps of food. But in the ripening glow of light Venice still seemed achingly beautiful. Helen stood for a moment drinking it in and then thought I’ll come here with Darcy. It was hard to imagine what effect the peculiar, melancholy spell of the sinking city would have on his solid Englishness, but she would make sure that he came.

  Helen realised that she was hungry and thirsty. In the faded café opposite she ordered coffee and a square of meltingly sweet pastry, then sat down at a little blue tin table in the sun to eat it. A workman in stained overalls came by and smiled suggestively at her.

  ‘Hello, beautiful,’ he said in Italian. ‘Why are you all alone?’

  Happiness suffused her. ‘Oh, but I’m not,’ she beamed at him. ‘I’m not alone.’

  The workman went away looking faintly puzzled, and Helen laughed out loud.

  Her step was light as she made her way back to the Palazzo Croce.

  Everyone was sitting round the table in the dining room, evidently waiting for her. The day was going to be hot, and already the doors stood open on the well of coolness within the inner court.

  ‘Couldn’t you sleep?’ Kim called out to her. ‘I know when Masefield proposed to me I didn’t get a wink for three nights, I was so happy. Wasn’t I, darling?’

  Masefield looked up briefly from the financial pages, clearly deaf to Kim’s talk.

  ‘You bet,’ he agreed. ‘What have you girls got planned for today? Wish I could join you, but I’m waiting to call London. I should be in London. If it weren’t for this Lido development hitch …’ He gathered up his papers and made for the door, kissing the air above Pansy’s head as he passed.

  ‘Masefield,’ Kim said plaintively. ‘Just for once, couldn’t you take the day off?’

  ‘Out of the question right now, pet. Next week, maybe. Have you got everything you want? Why don’t you go out to lunch somewhere nice?’

  For the rest of the day he would be barricaded behind a wall of papers. Kim’s pretty face clouded in a pout, then she sighed and leaned back in her seat to nibble at the last quarter of the single apple she allowed herself for breakfast. Staying slim was her religion.

  ‘Be thankful you’re not marrying a businessman,’ she said to Helen. ‘Masefield works so hard, but he does it all for us, doesn’t he, Pansy?’

  ‘Of course not.’ Pansy was brisk. ‘He does it because he’s a workaholic. And what could he possibly do if he wasn’t working? He lacks the concept of leisure. Poor man.’ She laughed merrily and Kim gazed at her blank-faced.

  ‘What does Darcy do all day?’ Kim asked.

  ‘Farms, mostly,’ Helen told her. ‘Worries about rain, and delivers lambs in the middle of the night, and drives round with bales of hay in the back of a Land Rover.’ Helen’s face softened, and Chloe and Pansy winked at each other.

  ‘Himself?’

  Kim looked so disappointed that Helen hastened to add, ‘You see, there are so many hundreds of acres in the Mere and Montcalm estates that he feels he could never stay in touch with them without working the land himself. He’s responsible for dozens of farmhands and a whole village full of tenants, as well.’

  ‘Oh yes, of course.’ This picture of the feudal lord fitted in much better with Kim’s idea of Darcy’s grandeur. Helen kept her eyes firmly averted from Chloe and Pansy.

  ‘Do you suppose you’ll have to open village fêtes?’ Kim asked, envious. There was a muffled snort from Pansy.

  ‘I think they ask actors from The Archers to do that sort of thing, don’t they? Darcy’s never mentioned it as a regular feature of life, anyway.’

  As she made her light-hearted answer an uncomfortable thought nagged at Helen. Kim’s question hadn’t been so very far off the mark, for all the amusement that had greeted it. However much she wanted it, she couldn’t just be Darcy’s wife in the rural haven of Mere. Whether or not it was at village fêtes, they would have to play a role together in the local life. And when his father died, much more would be expected of them. Helen knew that Darcy hated and feared that side of his life, and she knew too that she lacked the particular strength to help him to be a more public person. She thought, a little sadly, that he should have chosen some kindly, confident girl with the assurance bred of coming from the same background as his own. There must be one somewhere. Not all of them could be like Oliver’s friends. That’s what Their Royal Highnesses would be expecting of him. And instead he would be bringing home Helen.

  Some of the elation ebbed away, and a little, dismal premonition of trouble took its place.

  She made herself listen to the talk around the table again. Pansy was proposing a last boat trip on the lagoon, and a picnic on one of the distant islands.

  ‘Come with us, Kim,’ she invited with unusual warmth. Seeing her stepmother through her friends’ eyes had touched her with sudden sympathy.

  ‘We-ell,’ Kim said. ‘Couldn’t we have lunch at the Lido?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I won’t, then. I need some new shoes, and I want to buy Helen a present she can remember us by.’

  Pansy shrugged. ‘It baffles me how anyone who owns forty pairs of shoes can need another.’

  ‘Unlike you, I don’t choose to slop about in flipflops,’ Kim said sharply.

  Relations had shifted rapidly back to normal again.

  ‘Kim, I can remember you without a present,’ Helen protested. Kim swung round in amazement.

  ‘Oh but you must. It’s part of it all. I was showered with wonderful things when we got married.’

  They let her go to solace herself with shopping, and spent a day idyllic with the first warmth of summer in drifting over the dappled waters of the lagoon.

  The last hours in Venice slipped rapidly past. On their last morning Helen packed her case with a sharp mixture of regret and anticipation. She was leaving the city that had affected her more potently than anywhere else she had ever been, but she was going home to Darcy. One day soon they would come back here, together. Carefully she wrapped Kim’s souvenir and nested it amongst her clothes. It was a set of Murano glass bowls, slightly too brightly coloured for her own taste.

  With the air of a man bestowing a huge privilege, Masefield himself took them to the airport. They were flying standby and seats had materialised at short notice, so he drove with rapid and unwavering determination, just like he did everything else. Kim hung on to his arm all the way, as possessive as a child with a toy.

  Their flight was already being called when they reached the airport and their goodbyes were brief.

  ‘Work hard,’ Masefield ordered his daughter. ‘Any ideas yet about what you want to do when you finish?’

  ‘I want to act,’ Pansy said in a low voice.

  ‘You do? I’ll call Tony Prescott. It’s not one of my companies, but he owes me a favour.’

  ‘No.’ Her voice was suddenly sharp, but she modulated it at once and smiled sweetly. ‘Let me finish my course first. One thing at a time.’

  ‘Quite right. Goodbye, both of you.’ He planted identical kisses on Chloe’s and Helen’s cheeks. A glance showed him that Kim was twirling a rack of glossy magazines. Helen had turned away, but she heard him say, ‘You won’t cha
nge your mind about London?’

  ‘No,’ Chloe said, cool-voiced. ‘But thanks.’

  Helen hurried away towards the barrier.

  When they looked back to wave, Masefield and Kim were standing side by side. They made an arresting couple, the heavy, powerful-looking man and his pretty young wife.

  Within an hour they were over the Italian Alps. Helen peered down at the jagged snowy peaks and turned quickly back to Chloe sitting beside her. Across the aisle Pansy was apparently fast asleep. She insisted that it was the only way to deal with aeroplanes.

  ‘Enjoy your holiday?’ Chloe asked.

  ‘Mmm. Everything seems almost too good to be true,’ she said with a long sigh. ‘Venice, and Darcy.’ Helen hesitated, then decided she could surely tell Chloe about something that had nibbled continuously at the edges of her mind.

  ‘A funny thing happened. The night after Darcy’s telegram, I had a wildly sexy dream. About Tom. I blush to think about it now.’

  ‘Why ever should you?’ Chloe chuckled. ‘It sounds to me like a classic case of anxiety at the sudden closing of options. Explore the possibilities in dreams instead.’

  ‘You think that’s all?’

  ‘Of course. You don’t think that deep down you’re really madly in love with Tom Hart, do you?’

  ‘No,’ Helen said quickly.

  ‘Well then, that’s okay, isn’t it?’

  Was it okay? Helen asked herself. She was disturbed to find that there was no answer.

  ‘Did you enjoy your holiday?’ Helen countered. It occurred to her that Chloe was looking her old self again, sleek and tawny as a tiger. The drawn look and pain-filled eyes were almost completely gone.

  ‘Yes. I began to think that I shall be able to live with myself again after all.’ Chloe glanced down at her hands and then said, ‘Something funny happened to me, too. Masefield asked if he could see me in London.’

  Chloe had been sitting alone in the inner court of the palazzo, watching the evening light thicken on the mosaics. Masefield came out and looked around at the empty chairs.