The Breadth of Heaven (16 page)

They left their box before the applause had really begun to die away, in the hope that by doing so they might be able to slip out of the building almost unnoticed, but this small stratagem was doomed to failure. Their departure had been watched for and duly noted, and by the time they reached the foyer it was packed. As they descended the stairs a sea of faces was turned upwards to watch them, and camera flashbulbs exploded in all directions. The manager and his staff cleared a path for them with commendable speed, but just for a few moments they were actually brought to a standstill, and it was a little frightening. Kathy saw Sonja Liczak swallow quite
noticeably, and turn pale, as the human mass surged around the foot of the staircase on which they stood, and then she glanced at Leonid, and realized, with a little shock that set all her pulses racing, that he was looking straight at her, Kathy. For an instant their eyes met, and she forgot all about the jostling crowd below, and even the photographers’ lights. Then he looked away, and as he did she saw that the people in the foyer were gradually being forced apart to let them through.

Outside, in the Piazza, the night air was startlingly cool and refreshing, and although the more persistent of the journalists and cameramen followed them out on to the steps their cars were waiting for them, and in almost no time they were being driven smoothly and almost silently away from the hectic scene at the entrance to the Opera House.

When they arrived back at the Villa, Kathy prepared to follow Natalia up to her room, but the other girl took a long, keen look at her pale, oddly strained face and ordered her to go to bed immediately.

“You had a headache this afternoon, didn’t you? I forgot—I’m so sorry,
petite
!”
She looked thoughtful. “And we were going to have a little talk
...
But,” more briskly, “we will have it in the morning, I think, for tonight you
are
fatigue
,
and so am I.”

Alone in her own bedroom, Kathy sank down on the stool in front of her dressing-table, and stared at her reflection in the huge crystal mirror which confronted her. She was very pale, and her eyes were enormous and shadowed, their natural hue darkened by the depth and intensity of the colour in her dress. Slowly, she unfastened the single row of pearls, a bequest from her grandmother, which had been her
only adornment that evening, and she put them away quite methodically in the case in which she had always kept them. After that, she supposed she ought to be thinking about getting undressed, but somehow she didn’t seem to have the energy. The sooner she went to bed, the sooner the morning would come; and in the morning she would have to tell Natalia that she could stay with her no longer. Natalia was helpful and sympathetic—Kathy could not help wondering how much she had guessed, lately, about the English girl’s thoughts and feelings—but there would be nothing that she could do, except help her unhappy employee to return to her own country as swiftly as possible, and that was probably precisely what she would do.

By this time the following evening she might easily be in London and Leonid would have gone out of her life for ever.

She lifted a hand to her head, and was just about to start uncoiling her hair when there was a tap on her door, and Rosa came in, looking distinctly apologetic.

“
Scusa
,
signorina
,
but the Signor Principe would like to talk to you.”

Kathy stared at her, while her pulses began to race. Le
o
nid wanted to talk to her
...
?

Her mouth felt dry, and her legs trembled uncontrollably as she walked along the corridor and across the hall to the library—the same library in which she had fainted on her first night in the Villa; the same library in which, that very morning, she and Leonid had begun to discuss something that just for a few moments it had seemed might be important to them both.

And Leonid had said: “We will talk later.” Was that why he had sent for her now?

But as soon as, in response to a somewhat harsh ‘Come in’, she had pushed open the door and entered the room, she knew that the man standing with his back to the marble mantelpiece was in anything but an amiable humour, and at the look on his face something inside her turned cold. He executed a small, stiff, continenta
l
-style bow, and indicated a chair.

“You will please sit down, Miss Grant.”

It was a long time since he had called her ‘Miss Grant’, but even without the abandonment of her Christian name his voice would have told her that he was very angry—and, apparently, with her.

She made no attempt to linger by the door, but with a curious detached dignity walked slowly across the room, and obediently sank into the red leather chair.

His eyes followed her, and as she looked up at him the expression in their inky depths was quite unfathomable.

Then he turned away from her, and lit a cigarette. “I have just received a telephone call,” he told her. “From London.” He exhaled a puff of smoke, and appeared to be studying the tips of his sensitive, well cared for fingers. “It came from the editor of a newspaper called the
Daily Courier.
I was surprised, but I cannot imagine,
mademoiselle
,
that you would have been.” He shot a swift glance at her, and went on: “I had not intended to announce my engagement yet, but obviously it was your opinion that the world should not be kept in ignorance any longer.”

She gasped, and every vestige of colour remaining in her cheeks deserted them.

Leonid looked at her, and his eyes were cold and black and unrelenting. “Apparently the
Daily Courier
had a representative at the opera this evening. But of course, you must know that. You very kindly granted him an interview, and the information which you gave him was so interesting that he naturally telephoned his head office at the earliest possible opportunity. He was quite a young man, evidently, and inexperienced. They had not expected him to ‘come up’, as his editor phrases it, with such a valuable story.”

“Oh!” said Kathy, and the colour came back into her face in a revealing tide of crimson. “I didn’t think—I didn’t know—that he was a reporter
...
” At first, she had scarcely understood what the Prince was saying; it had seemed to her that someone must have made a serious mistake. And then she had recollected the sandy-haired young Englishman who had spoken to her in the corridor, and she realized with painful clarity that she had indeed made a grave mistake. “I
thought...”
she began again, and then her voice trailed away, and she abandoned any attempt to make excuses for herself. She had done an unforgivable thing; she had betrayed all the confidence that had been placed in her, and in an unthinking moment had blithely given vital information to a man who she now realized had had all the appearance of a typical journalist.

“Whatever you may, or may not, have thought, Miss Grant,” said Leonid unpleasantly, “you certainly seem to have been very definite in what you said to the gentleman from the
Daily Courier
.
He told his editor that he was quite sure there could be no mistake. He had spoken to someone who was in a
position to know the truth—Miss Katherine Grant, Princess Natalia’s English secretary.”

“I’m sorry,” Kathy whispered, and looked down at her own tightly clenched fingers.

“Well, I am glad that you are sorry.” His accent was much more noticeable than it usually was, and Kathy thought that never before had he seemed so alien and frightening. “My sister-in-law has been good to you, I believe—very good! She has treated you as a member of her own family, and I should have thought that to her, at least, you would have wished to be loyal. I, of course, have incurred your resentment.” His lips tightened, and he looked straight at her. “I thought you very pretty,
mademoiselle
—I still think you very pretty!—and unfortunately, as you realized, I have a weakness for pretty young women. I have to pay them some sort of attention! That did not please you, and no doubt you are quite pleased to have been responsible for placing me in a fairly embarrassing position.”

Kathy looked up at him. “Oh, no, I—”

He interrupted her. “Perhaps you do not think it an embarrassing position? Well, it is only embarrassing because Mademoiselle Liczak did not wish the announcement to be made quite so soon, but it was a little annoying to be obliged to explain the situation to a total stranger at this hour of the night!”

“I—I’m sorry, Your Highness,” she said again, and stood up. Almost every word he had spoken had pierced her like the blade of a sharp knife. She couldn’t think very clearly any more; but she did know one thing, and that was that she had to get away from the Villa Albinhieri within the next few hours. He
was
going to marry Sonja Liczak; he had
only shown an interest in her because he had a weakness for ‘pretty young women’; and she wished with all her heart that she had never even seen Ransome’s hotel, for if she had never been a receptionist there she would never have met the cold-blooded arrogant man who was now staring down at her disdainfully from his position in front of the great grey marble fireplace.

“I
...
think I’d like to go to bed now,” she told him, wishing that she could stop the curious shivering sensation deep down inside her. And she added: “I’ll leave early in the morning. I’m sure Her—Her Serene Highness will agree that that is the best thing.” She didn’t know how she was going to manage it, but she would arrange things somehow.

“My chauffeur will drive you to the airport.” He wasn’t looking at her, and with a numb feeling of shock she realized that he had no intention of suggesting that she didn’t need to leave quite so abruptly. Probably if she hadn’t suggested that she leave in the morning he would have done so himself!

Just as she was about to open the door and escape, he spoke again. “I imagine I have your permission to convey your apologies to Mademoiselle Liczak? I feel strongly that you owe her an apology!”

“Yes, of course. And do tell her that I
...
h
ope she’ll be very happy
—
when
you decide to announce your engagement!”

She left the room swiftly, with her head held high ... but as soon as the door had closed behind her her shoulders began to droop as if beneath an insupportable burden, and it was all that she could do to get herself back to the temporary sanctuary of her own bedroom.

CHAPTER NINE

The
following morning was wet and cold—for Italy exceptionally cold—and Kathy awoke heavy-eyed, and with a severe headache. But she knew exactly what she had to do, and as soon as she had consumed a cup of coffee—which was as much as she felt she could face in the way of breakfast—she lifted the receiver from the smart white telephone beside her bed, and contacted the British Consulate in Mirano. She asked if it would be possible to speak to Mr. Robert Markham, and in no time at all she was rewarded by hearing the reassuring, essentially English accents of the young man who had visited her shortly after she arrived in Italy.

“Miss Grant!” He sounded positively eager. “I’ve been making all sorts of attempts to get in touch with you—I called at the Villa twice, but the first time I called the maid told me you were out, and on the second occasion she said you just didn’t want to see anybody. I thought it seemed pretty odd, actually, and I tried to get you on the telephone, but that didn’t work, either. They haven’t been holding you prisoner in there, have they?”

Kathy laughed, as he probably expected her to do, but it didn’t really strike her as being at all funny. She had known nothing about Robert Markham’s visits, or his telephone calls, and she wondered on whose instructions she had been kept in ignorance of them. It didn’t matter very much now, as it happened, but it was strange—and irritating.

Nevertheless, for his benefit she thought
u
p a reasonably plausible explanation which seemed to satisfy him, and then got down to the real reason for her getting in touch with him. He listened in silence, and then said, with quick sympathy:

“Something must have gone rather badly wrong for you to want to leave so suddenly—if you don’t mind me saying so, you sound as if you’ve had just about enough. But you don’t have to tell me anything about it if you don’t want to. Look, at a guess I’d say you don’t want to have to ask any of the Karanskas for transport to the airport, do you?” Her throat constricting, Kathy admitted that she didn’t. “But I don’t even know how to find a taxi, you see
...
if you could tell me where I could get one
...”

“You don’t have to worry about a taxi.” His voice was brisk. “I’ll run you over to the airport myself, and then I can help you get your flight fixed up. It might not be easy to get a seat at such short notice, but I’d probably be able to arrange it for you.”

“Thank you.” She was genuinely grateful. “It’s terribly kind of you.”

“Well, I told you you could always rely on me, and to tell you the truth I’ve been worrying about you a good deal lately. I’d a feeling you might be needing help
...
” There was no reply, and after a moment he went on: “There’s a flight leaving Genoa for London at about lunchtime. Could you make it in time, do you think? It would mean my picking you up at about twelve o’clock.” As there was still no answer from the other end, he spoke rather more sharply. “Are you there, Miss Grant?”