The Light Heart (18 page)

“Tell me then if this sort of thing appeals to you,” he said, and watched the spontaneous surprise and pleasure she was showing. “Yes? How right I was to bring you sapphires. A pity that there are none as big as your eyes.” He removed the
brooch from its white velvet bed, adding with a contemptuous flick of his fingers towards the modest pearl and coral affair pinned to the lace of her blouse, “Take off that thing you are wearing and let us see how this one looks there.”

Rosalind removed her own brooch and put it down on the table, holding out her hand for the new one. He ignored her gesture and laid the box aside.

“Allow me,” he said firmly, and his fingers were at her breast, deftly fastening the gift in place. “And what do you say to your lover now, eh?” he suggested as he finished.

“Th-thank you very much,” she whispered. “I shall—treasure it always.”

Again he was amused, leaning towards her.

“You are altogether enchanting,” he said. “I am very for tunate. May I?”

His head came down. She felt his weight above her and shut her eyes. The kiss, which was the first between them, claimed her completely, violent, intimate, and long. When he let her go she was shaking, and caught her breath audibly.

“Forgive me if I startled you,” he said quite gently. “With you it is difficult to contain oneself.”

He began again to kiss her hands, opening her passive fingers to expose the palms, holding them against his face. Rosalind set her teeth and let him have her hands, while a rising tide of panic, hot and cold, engulfed her—I can’t go on—it’s nothing like Willie McBride—
but
I
can’t
go
on
—

“Such cold hands,” he murmured against her fingers. “The time comes soon when I warm them against my heart—such a little iceberg she is, but we change all that—little love, you must have confidence, I will be kind—”

“I’ll t-try to please you—” she got out, feeling that she owed something to his ardour.

“Please me? But how can you do otherwise while you still breathe?” He rose, keeping her hands in his, and drew her up facing him. “I must go now, while I restrain myself. Soon there will be no necessity for that between us. In the meantime—see
how patient I am!” Again he clipped her chin between his finger and thumb, tilting her defenceless face to his gaze. He was smiling, but his eyes were bright and strange. “How your Conrad has been brought to his knees at last!” he marvelled. “A scrap of a thing like you, to bind the eagle with chains! No doubt you will learn soon enough to take advantage of that. Until then—ah, yes, be but a little afraid of
me, it becomes you!”

He pinched her chin playfully and released it, bent formally to kiss her hand, and left the room without a backward glance.

She stood where she was, holding her chin and shaking, her knees unsteady. But he promised to be kind, she thought dizzily—he’s really very fond of me—that was a nice speech about binding the eagle, an Englishman would never have said that—I wonder if I
can
have power—Beneath repulsion curiosity stirred, for his ruthless, conquering magnetism had reached her a little. What next? When he no longer restrained himself, what then? The time was coming soon when he would not have to go away at all. Her heart was beating heavily under the sapphire brooch.

She dropped down on the sofa with her face in her hands, and found herself thinking of Charles, who she was sure had never kissed anyone like that in his life. But probably if you were going to marry him he would. Probably they were all alike, and it didn’t make much difference which of them you married. Only—it seemed fantastic to suppose that one would ever feel afraid of Charles….

She tipped over against the cushions which Prince Conrad had crushed behind them and lay still, her face hidden. I can’t go on with this—not even for the sables—not even to go to Washington and visit Phoebe—not with him—there’s some thing awful coming, and I can’t stop him then, I shall have to pretend to like it—I’m frightened—he
likes
me to be afraid—I’d rather it was Charles….

V
IRGINIA
gave a dinner party at Claridge’s the evening before Rosalind’s wedding, and everybody was there, Prince Conrad foregoing the usual bachelor spree without visible regret. It was much the same company who had sat down to lunch on Phoebe’s first day at the Hall last May, with some additions such as His Highness and a Count Chlodwig von Lyncker who had recently arrived at the German Embassy from Berlin and would be best man, and a few of the Norton-Leigh set, and Lady Shadwell, who was lending her house in Buckinghamshire for the first week of the honeymoon before they went to Paris—Prince Conrad having been explicit in his wish not to begin with a seasick bride.

But it had been a difficult table to
plan, with Rosalind necessarily on Archie’s right and Prince Conrad on Virginia’s left; with Mrs. Norton-Leigh on the host’s left and Charles anywhere but next to her or Rosalind; with Oliver demanding to take in Phoebe, and Dinah begging not to have to sit next to Prince Conrad. Dinah lost on that, though she had Charles on her other side for consolation, and Virginia took Oliver on her right as, she said, moral support.

It was all very decorous and candle-lit and discreetly gay, and everybody drank the proper toasts and said the proper things, and Oliver was just beginning to think maybe he was all wrong and everything was for the best, when Phoebe leaned across him and said confidentially to Virginia, “What was Clare saying to you before we came down?”

Virginia stole a glance at Prince Conrad, who was occupied with Dinah, and leaned towards Phoebe and said, “Don’t listen, Oliver. Clare is convinced that Rosalind is going to back out at the last minute. She’s scared stiff, poor lamb.”

And Phoebe said, “Clare should have
told
her!”

“No
time!
” Virginia reminded her significantly. “Besides, Clare is no help, she says nobody told
her!
Dinah tried to talk to Rosalind upstairs, but Mam
ma
was on top of them instantly!”

“Does this really mean what it seems to?” Oliver asked, bewildered, and they glanced uneasily at him and at each other, and returned to their food.

It was beyond even Virginia to explain even to Oliver that Rosalind’s absymal ignorance, rigidly enjoined by her mother, had brought her to the verge of hysteria, and that nobody could get to her with a few private words of encouragement. But Virginia, acknowledging in spite of herself Prince Conrad’s personal magnetism as most women of any experience did, had remarked to Archie while they dressed for dinner that evening that His Highness scared the daylights out of her in an exciting sort of way, and that Rosalind might be better off than they thought if only she could learn how to manage him. Archie said no daughter of his would ever marry a German, and Virginia asked with interest if he was going to take himself seriously as a father and be difficult about the man Daphne wanted to marry when she grew up. Archie replied that if it was a German he was going to be very difficult indeed. Jerking his white tie into a perfect bow, he added that Mam
ma
was a cockatrice, and would never go to heaven when she died.

Having been married herself without even girlish sentiment on the side of her unfortunate husband, who never realized how utterly he had failed during his brief, conscientious courtship to reach her heart, Mrs. Norton-Leigh was firmly convinced that if girls knew what to expect on their wedding night few of them would ever marry at all, and the human race might soon become extinct. Her bland preservation of an unmentionable mystery overcast with some unpleasantness had by now reduced Rosalind to a state of nervous apprehension far worse than would have resulted from the rudest facts, and even commonsense had ceased to function for her. In the beginning she had tried to tell herself that since Dinah and Virginia were so content there was nothing in marriage for her to dread. But as the days passed and she never saw Prince Conrad alone again, nor had any further opportunity, owing to the vigilant presence of Mamma, to become accustomed to
the small privileges which were rightfully his as her fiancé but which he mostly forebore under Mamma’s eye, that argument became specious and the answer was tormentingly plain—Dinah and Virginia had been in love with their bridegrooms. As for Clare—Rosalind’s mind would flinch away from the memory of
Clare’s lifted brows and careless shrug that time she had said, “My dear, don’t be a goose, one gets used to it—and the baby is fun once you’ve got it.”

Sitting between Archie and Bracken at Claridge’s that night, Rosalind was vividly aware of Prince Conrad at the other end of the oval table, his eyeglass turned attentively on Dinah who seemed to be telling some sort of story which amused him. Dinah knows how to entertain people, she thought—Bracken has taught her—Bracken would be easy to live with—you wouldn’t have to worry about anything with him. Her eyes went on to Charles, smiling his wide, transfiguring smile at Eden, who was looking up at him with affection—Charles was plain until he smiled, and then he radiated friendliness and charm, and made you feel clever and beautiful and confident—you didn’t have to be sophisticated to amuse Charles, and he never expected anything of you more than you knew how to

The now familiar churning of her midriff which was sheer nerves and made it impossible to eat laid hold of her again. Tomorrow night at this time she and Conrad would be dining alone together at Lady Shadwell’s house in Buckinghamshire—she wouldn’t be able to eat, and he would notice, for nothing escaped him, and he would realize that she was paralysed and witless with fright, which would be the ultimate humiliation—

“Drink your champagne, quick,” said Bracken’s voice on her right, and she reached for the glass. It shook and wobbled in her hand as she raised it, and clinked against her teeth. She gulped the cold wine, choked a bit, and gulped again. When she set the glass down it was immediately filled by a watchful footman, and Bracken said, “Steady, now. Not all at once. If
you handle that stuff right it will get you through almost anything.”

She looked up at him piteously.

“I thought I was going to faint.”

“Nothing of the kind, you’re all right, it’s just strain. You’ll live through it, everyone does.”

“Did Dinah—w-was Dinah—”

“Dinah was a wreck by the time I got her away for the honeymoon. All those fittings for clothes—all those presents to deal with—all these parties—weddings are hard work for the bride!”

But Dinah was in love, she thought again dismally, chewing up a piece of roll and forcing it down. Dinah
wanted
to be married, she was the happiest girl I ever saw, even while we were putting her into her going-away dress. Dinah went
dancing
to meet him at the top of the stairs….

“Rosalind, you must eat something, child.” It was her mother’s voice from across the table. “Try and eat the chicken, it’s delicious, and you’ll want your strength tomorrow.”

Rosalind picked up her fork. It slipped from her cold fingers and fell to the floor. She sat helplessly, her head down, while the footman brought her another, and Bracken talked on comfortably beside her, telling some cheerful anecdote she made no effort to comprehend. “Look at me and smile,” she heard him say, and obeyed. “More champagne now. Drink up.”

He pulled her through the meal that way, and she was wordlessly grateful to him. But Bracken would not be beside her tomorrow night….

When the dinner ended at last they drove home to Regent’s Park in Prince Conrad’s brougham with the Polkwitz-Heidersdorf coat-of-arms on the door. He sat with his back to the horses and made polite conversation with her mother. The champagne Rosalind had drunk on Bracken’s advice had made her head sing, rather, and she sat beside Mamma in what she felt was doltish silence all the way, hoping she would still be
fuzzy when she got to bed and could drop off to sleep that way. At the door he said, “May I come in to say Good night?” and to her relief Mamma replied, “Positively No. I do not approve.” “Perhaps you are right,” he commented without resentment, and solemnly kissed their hands and departed.

They went straight upstairs and Mamma saw her to bed with a hot water bottle at her feet, keeping the maid Gibson in the room the whole time. At last she was left alone to lie dully waiting for the champagne to put her to sleep, determined not to cry and spoil her eyes for tomorrow and be for ever in disgrace.

It was much too late now to send that message to Charles at the club and go away with him as he had suggested. It had been too late ever since the afternoon when Conrad had said he could not live without possessing her.
Try
to
thwart
me
in
that
now
and
you
will
find
no
mercy
anywhere
—If Charles attempted to rescue her it would ruin him in the regiment—Army men couldn’t afford scandals. Charles had been the soul of tact to-night—so much so she could hardly believe the scene in the fitting-room had happened—no private glances, no tendency to whisper, no reminder of his offer—just Charles. It had been hard to meet his eyes, and she gave up trying. He would be at the wedding tomorrow, and she would have to tell him Good-bye….

The sickness flared again in her middle and by now it was partly hunger. It wouldn’t do to see too much of Charles from now on, with the strange interview at
Lucile’s
between them and her own belated knowledge that with Charles one wouldn’t have been so nervous. But Conrad wouldn’t understand, he might think she had been in love with Charles, and it wasn’t that, it was just that one had known Charles all one’s life, and he wasn’t a stranger, and he would be—compassionate….

She got up and put on the light and poured a glass of water from the carafe. When she turned out the light again the window showed faintly grey. She went to it and stood looking out at the dark blur of trees that was the Park. The last time.
She shivered in the cool September air and went back to bed and felt for the hot water bottle, which was only lukewarm now. Awful to catch cold and have a runny nose at one’s wedding. She curled herself crosswise in the bed, hugging the bottle, thankful for the dark and the solitude. The last time. Oh, Lord, I’m going to be sick—