And Be Thy Love (13 page)

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 helping 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 something 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.”

“And is it so important that I should be settled and sobered?”

“If you are not to waste your life altogether, yes,” she answered, looking at him almost reproachfully along the length of the table. “It is one thing to write plays that bring you in a lot of money, but that is not living your life to the full. There are other things more important than writing plays.”

“Such as?” he enquired, with gentle mockery.

“I have just told you—getting married, for one thing!” “And yet you have never been married yourself, dear Lady Pen,” he mocked her even more softly. “Why is it that you are such an advocate for this

state that you know nothing about?” She tightened her lips and shook her head at him. “What I did with my life is not what you should do with yours, and I would be the last to advise that those for whom I have a fondness should copy my example. Young things should marry.” She shifted her glance and looked thoughtfully at Caroline. “In that way you avoid loneliness in later life,” and she sighed a little as if she had experienced a certain amount of loneliness herself in a long lifetime.

“Dear Lady Pen!” Armand said, with caressing gentleness that no longer held any mockery whatsoever. “You should certainly have married that curate you once told me about—the one who insisted that central African peoples, their diseases and their ignorance, had a far bigger claim on him than any woman could possibly have! And even in central Africa you would probably have enjoyed yourself! But I—I am a different kettle of fish altogether, and even if I felt like getting married and astonishing my friends, who is there who

would have me?”

He seemed to look deliberately round the table, ignoring Caroline—at least his glance passed right over her—giving a certain amount of reflective consideration to Helen Mansfield, who flushed quickly and almost painfully when his eyes rested on her, and then finally dwelling upon Diane Montauban. Her huge eyes hung upon his with a kind of flickering light in them as if surprise had leapt up, and behind it a whole world of response was waiting to be recognised.

“Would you consider that I would make a good husband, Diane?” he asked.

Her brilliant lips seemed to tremble for a moment, and her eyes positively glowed. Then she answered as if she was hoping to shock everyone else at the table.

“You would probably make a very bad husband, but would that matter? Would any woman mind? Since you are Armand!”

“Would you?”

Lady Pen caught her elbow against her wine-glass and it overturned, and the little wine that was left in it ran trickling across the polished surface of the table, staining a lace table mat. Lady Pen clicked her tongue in irritation.

“Such a pity!” she exclaimed. “Monique will probably find it difficult to remove that stain, and one hates to spoil a polished table.” Then, as if they were not all waiting for Diane’s reply—or, at any rate, the other two women were—she turned to Helen on her right hand and suggested: ‘There is a chess-board Armand unearthed for me last night. Will you spare me a solitary game of patience and play chess with me, Helen, once we have had our coffee?”

“Of course,” Helen answered, and her tone was very subdued, as if that eager challenge in Diane’s eyes had sobered her, and the fact that the Comte’s look had so deliberately passed her by had put him into a fresh perspective where she was concerned.

While Helen and Lady Pen played chess, the host wandered off—no one quite knew where—with Diane, and Christopher invited Caroline to take a stroll in the rose-garden.