And Be Thy Love (6 page)

Then de Bergerac himself, when she looked at him— his cufflinks, that looked as if they were made of platinum, and had a winking suggestion of diamonds about them. The watch on his wrist, neat but plainly extremely expensive, and his cigarette-case that had some sort of a crest engraved on it. She wished she could be presented with an opportunity to examine that crest, but didn’t like to ask for permission to do so. And the sheer restrained elegance and perfection of his clothes delighted and satisfied some hitherto unsuspected aesthetic quality within her.

“Whatever it is you are worrying about,” he told her, when they arrived at the coffee and liqueur stage of the meal, and he insisted on her accepting a green chartreuse, “you are to forget it—for the time being, at least! And instead you will tell me something about yourself—the sort of things you do when you are at home in England. The way you live, the way you play! How is it that you know Marthe?”

“She was employed by my mother’s family for a good many years. My mother was very fond of her.”

“And she was devoted to your mother?”

“Yes. But I’m afraid they couldn’t keep her when—

when ---- “

“When they alighted on evil times?”

“Y-yes!” She looked at him in astonishment. “But how did you know?”

“I didn’t. I merely guessed.” He smiled at her, that soft, almost caressing smile that was beginning to do rather more than cause her breath to catch in her throat, and which she knew she had started to watch for. “It was very simple.”

“In what way was it simple?”

He touched her hands, one of which was toying with the short stem of her liqueur glass.

“These are so very delicate—almost flower-like! The whole of you is flower-like, as if it was intended you should be carefully cherished, but some miscalculation on the part of your parents— or some misfortune—made that impossible! Instead you have had to fend for yourself, and that is not right! Tell me, now, how long have you had to do this fending for yourself?”

“Ever since my parents died.” A shadow crossed her face. “They were killed simultaneously in a car accident, just before I was due to leave school.”

“And when you left school there was no money?”

“No, I—I had to get a job at once. But luckily I had taken a commercial course, and I could type and do shorthand, and that sort of thing.”

“And you found a job easily enough?”

“Yes; with a firm of solicitors. I am with them now.” “That is good,” he said. His slim fingers carried his cigarette up to his lips, and he inhaled deeply for a moment, his eyes still resting on

her. “You must have given satisfaction, little one. How many years is that?”

This time it was she who smiled with faint amusement, her wood-violet eyes glinting into his.

“In other words, how old am I? Twenty-two,” she told him.

He made a slight sound as if the breath checked for an instant in his throat, and then she distinctly heard him sigh. It was a quite unmistakable sigh.

“In that case I can give you ten years! Ten years!” he repeated sombrely. “Does that make me seem very old?”

“No.”

But she could have added that the lines in his face— the telltale lines around his mouth, and below his eyes (nothing to do with the laughter wrinkles at their corners) made him seem very old in experience. Those additional ten years of his had been well lived—intensely lived rather than well, perhaps! With such a man it would be unwise to enquire into the manner in which he had spent those years, and the advantages, or otherwise, they had brought him. And at the thought a shadow seemed to fall across Caroline’s heart. He was so attractive, so rather quaintly good-looking. His eyelashes were so thick and long and black that they cast shadows in his eyes, and lent him rather a “little boy” look. But there was nothing “little boy” about the knowledge that lay behind them, although the eyes themselves were soft and lustrous and beautiful. Yes, quite, quite beautiful, she thought...! And felt as if the shadow became an actual tight squeeze in the region of her heart. She looked quickly away from him.

“Tell me how you contracted the pneumonia?” he asked.

She told him exactly how she had contracted it, and by the time she had finished—long before she had finished —his eyes were almost black with concern, and definitely a little angry as well.

“It’s impossible!” he exclaimed. “That such a thing should be allowed to happen...! But it must never happen again!” His voice

was very definite. “We must see to that!” And then, with more curiosity: “But although this thing did happen to you—although you were left alone so long—you have friends in England? Good friends, perhaps?”

“I have one or two.”

“Special friends?”

“There is a girl in my office with whom I often spend weekends. We go hiking together sometimes, and to concerts— when we are in sufficient funds,” with a sudden smile that irradiated the whole of her small, fair face. “The Festival Hall, and places of that sort.”

“No friends of the opposite sex? One in particular?”

She shook her head, feeling her colour rise a little because of the earnestness of his expression.

He uttered an exclamation.

“What is wrong with your fellow countrymen? Have they no eyes?” Then, almost jealously: “You are sure that occasionally no one takes you to a dance, or to the theatre?”

She laughed a little mischievously.

“I belong to a tennis club, and occasionally we hold dances. Naturally on those occasions I don’t always dance with members

of my own sex.”

His eyes seemed to spark a little.

“And afterwards they see you home?”

She nodded.

“And—kiss you? On your doorstep?”

“I think,” she said, feeling around for her handbag, and collecting her gloves, and sounding very demure indeed, “that we should go now. But thank you very much for the lunch, Monsieur de Bergerac.

“Robert,” he insisted. “Say Robert!”

She said it, deleting the ‘T, so that it sounded somehow much more exciting than the ordinary English Robert.

As they left the restaurant he kept his hand under her arm, and he looked much more sombre than when they entered it. Just

before he put her into the car he asked with his dark brows almost meeting:

“You are sure that no man has ever kissed you on your doorstep?”

Suddenly she felt curiously light-hearted, even lightheaded, and she heard herself laughing in a light-hearted manner.

“Where I live there is no proper doorstep. You walk straight into the hall—rather a grim hall!—and then up an appallingly steep flight of stairs to a door with a number on it. There is seldom any real light burning on the stairs, so when you reach your number you go straight in because the stairs are also very narrow, and not the kind of stairs on which one would wish to linger!” His eyes looked down at her, once more a trifle quizzical. “Involved, but satisfactory,” he answered. “I feel the first glimmerings of approval where your landlady is concerned!”

CHAPTER V

They drove back to the chateau through the sleepy warmth of the afternoon, and after such an excellent lunch Caroline felt highly appreciative of the comfort of the red-lined cream car. It was very low-slung, and the seats were superlatively well sprung, and de Bergerac was a smoothly efficient driver. He didn’t put on sudden bursts of speed, and then slow, leaving his passenger’s stomach behind them. He maintained a fairly high rate of speed all the time, but there was so much confidence in his shapely brown hands resting on the wheel that Caroline would not have been alarmed if they had touched even a higher rate of speed.

But when they entered the forest he had, perforce, to slow. The forest trees were all round them, engulfing them as if they intended to swallow them up eventually. The shade was delicious after the glare of the white road leading out of Le Fontaine, and

Caroline felt the prickles of heat fading from her forehead, and a sort of sensuous soothingness entered into her soul. For the first time she noticed that a silvery stream meandered through the woods, and on its banks the coolness was like a

caress. There were long grasses, reeds, and a silver birch or two bending above the water, and in a clear space her companion stopped the car. She found herself looking at the tumbledown gateway to a cottage that was almost on top of the water, and at the end of a flagged path chimneys sagged wearily, a roof gaped open, and a doorway leaned lopsidedly on its hinges.

De Bergerac shook his head as he silenced the car.

“This is bad,” he said. ‘This is worse than I ever expected!”

Caroline looked at him curiously.

“Not—your cottage?” she asked. “The place where you spent last night?”

He smiled at her, a flashing, provocative smile.

‘‘Come and see,” he said, and helped her out of the car. They trod the flagged path side by side, although he was a little in advance of her by the time they reached the door. He put out a cautious hand and thrust it open, and it grated protestingly. Caroline drew back a little, but he urged her forward, smiling more one-sidedly, teasing her about hobgoblins, and then assuring her in. the next breath that there were none in the cottage.

“But you who spent last night alone in a strange chateau would not fear them in any case,” he said. ‘‘You were so certain the chateau ghosts are kindly, but you haven’t informed me yet whether you had any converse with them!”

She smiled back at him uncertainly.

“Did you?”

‘‘Of course I didn’t!”

His white teeth flashed a trifle mockingly, and he stood aside from the doorway.

“After you, Mademoiselle Carol!”

But her footstep was faltering as it carried her over the threshold, and she had no chance to take in more than a bare floor and a brick fireplace, a rickety chair and a table, before something rushed at her, and she let out a terrified shriek and turned and hurled herself into the arms of the man behind her.

They went round her and held her fast with the greatest promptitude, and she seemed to burrow herself deep into his hold, for the noise in her ears had been like the wild rushing of wings, and she had had a distinct impression of a black shape hovering in front of her, and tiny eyes deeply embedded in a mass of fur that had actually brushed against her face.

She shuddered wildly and convulsively.

“Oh...! O-oh...! What was it? What was it-------------------?”

“It was nothing,” the man chided, holding her so tightly that it should have interfered with her breathing, only she didn’t notice it. “Only a bat!”

“A—a bat?”

She put back her head and looked up at him, and his brown eyes looked back at her gently.

“But supposing it had got into my hair!”

He laughed—gaily, ringingly. And then all at once he sobered, and he stroked the bright brown hair from which the shadowy straw hat she had worn with her pink linen dress had fallen, and his fingers had a soothing magic that made her feel instantly ashamed of her behaviour. She tried to draw herself out of his arms, but he wouldn’t let her go, and instead he went on stroking her hair until she felt utterly at peace, and inclined to sigh with relief.

“Even if it had, I could have removed it, couldn’t I? And bats are not so stupid as all that, although the temptation for anything to attach itself to this soft hair of yours must be great indeed!” and he lowered his cheek for an instant, and she smelled the fragrance of his shaving cream. Then she heard him say more severely: “But I shouldn’t have allowed you to come in here first! I am entirely at fault that you have suffered a shock!”

“It wasn’t a shock. I was just silly, I-----------”

She looked up at him, where she still stood in his hold, and their eyes met and held, and went on meeting and holding as if it was impossible for either of them to look away. Caroline felt as if something deep inside her started to tremble a little, and then as if all her bones were no longer quite as firm as they once had been, and inclined to melt altogether beneath the influence of some extraordinary emotion that was creeping up over her like a wave. And she said to herself silently but clearly that she didn’t want to draw herself away—that these were arms that had been designed expressly to hold her, and that all her life she had known that they would do so one day, and he had known it, too, and therefore it was unreasonable that they should have to draw apart, when all they wanted— all they both wanted...!

She gave a little gasp, felt genuinely shocked and bewildered, and succeeded in wrenching herself out of his clasp. She turned unsteadily to the rickety chair behind her.

“You must think I’m—foolish...!”

His eyes were very dark—almost black—and he studied her as if the last thing he thought was that she was foolish. Then he made sure that the chair was stable enough to hold her, and she sat down on it.

“But”—and she looked about the living-room of the cottage in sudden amazement—”you couldn’t possibly have slept here last night! Surely this isn’t the place where you slept... ?”

The tension had passed, and his twinkling smile was back.

“No. I curled up on your mat, as I suggested to you I should do!” As she looked almost horrified, his smile challenged her. “Well, perhaps not literally on your mat, but I selected a room in a wing very remote from the one you are occupying at the chateau, and spent the night there. Part of the night, that is.”

“And the other part?”

“I wandered about—a kind of night watchman, you know!” He sat down gingerly on the edge of the table, and lighted a cigarette. “You didn’t honestly think I would leave you alone, did you, Carol?” his face becoming completely serious. “So worn out, and small, and defenceless—even helpless when I carried you up to bed!” He avoided looking at her, and looked at the tip of his cigarette instead. “I knew I couldn’t leave you, whatever the world might say about our spending the night in the same otherwise deserted house. There are occasions when conventions don’t really matter, and last night was one of them.”

“It—it was good of you to remain,” she heard herself whispering, also not daring to look at him. “I slept very well, but I thought I heard someone moving about on the terrace at one time during the night.”