Rose in the Bud Page 11

  After a minute he came back to her.

  “Yes; I want you to go home,” he admitted.

  She swallowed. For one moment, while his hands were holding her, she had been prepared to let them close right round her, and the desire to have his dark face lowered to her own shook her as nothing in life had ever shaken her before. But she was not all weakness, and she had been humiliated enough by him.

  “I see,” she said, biting a slightly unsteady lower lip.

  He put a lean finger under her chin and lifted it, forcing her to meet his eyes again. To her amazement they were swimming with tenderness.

  “Little one,” he told her, “life is not always what it seems on the surface, and you must believe me that I have your best interests at heart when I ask you not merely to leave here, but to go back where you belong. For the time being, at least! Cathleen ...” She was reasonably certain that he was about to clasp her by the shoulders again, and incredible though it was that tenderness in his eyes had increased so much that it actually caused her to catch her breath. But as he was about to say something more, and his fingers bit almost fiercely into her soft flesh, the door was thrust inwards without ceremony, and Nicola Brent, the American girl, stood surveying them from the opening.

  Her eyebrows arched, and she looked amused.

  “Well, well!” she said.

  Edouard’s hands fell to his sides, his whole expression underwent a complete change, and he said as if he was consumed with impatience, and nothing more:

  “Do as I advise, Cathy, and continue your sightseeing elsewhere. That is if you won’t go home! But I think you’d be wise to go home!”

  As if she was vastly intrigued Nicola stepped forward into the room, looked from Cathleen to Edouard, and then from Edouard back to Cathleen, and finally shook her head at her.

  “And if you’re anything like me you won’t listen to that advice,” she observed. “You’ll do exactly as you please!” She advanced to Edouard and in a completely natural manner wound her arms about his neck and stood on tiptoe to kiss the tip of his square chin. “Bully!” she exclaimed. “Because the poor girl hasn’t anyone to champion her you think you can inflict your advice on her. But I hope she won’t listen to you ... after all, why should she?” with sublime casualness, as if only half her mind was concentrating on the problem of Cathleen, and it wasn’t a very important one in any case. “Don’t be so bossy, darling,” and she rubbed her cheek against his shaven one.

  “Take me back to my hotel, Edouard,” she requested. “I may or may not be coming back here to stay, but I’ll certainly be at your palazzo bright and early in the morning. If you can spare him, let Giovanni come and pick me up.”

  While she was still standing on tiptoe and running her fingers through his hair Cathleen made good her escape, and she did indeed feel as if she had escaped from something singularly unpleasant and unforgettably humiliating by the time she reached her own room.

  She had no intention whatsoever of facing any member of the family that night, and she even started to pack a bag in preparation for her departure in the morning before getting into bed. The only reason why she refrained from completing her packing was because Bianca knocked lightly on the door and then came in swiftly, looking almost sympathetic at the sight of the open suitcases in the middle of the floor.

  “My dear child,” she said gently and soothingly, as Cathleen looked round at her resentfully—apparently so long as she was a guest at the Palazzo di Rini she was not to be permitted any real privacy. “My sweet child, what do you think you’re doing?”

  Cathleen, who had rid herself of the ruby bracelet and necklace and placed them on her dressing-table, where they blazed like fire in the Venetian splendour of the room, answered almost curtly.

  “I’m going home, Bianca. I’ve decided that it’s high time I went back.”

  Bianca advanced to her and placed a hand lightly on her shoulder.

  “Nonsense, cara,” she chided. “That would be a foolish thing to do, and Paul and I have plans for you. Besides,” her voice dropping a little, and her dark eyes growing darker, “you have not yet discovered what has happened to your sister, and just because Edouard annoyed you ... he did something to annoy you, yes?” she inquired softly.

  Cathleen denied it.

  “It’s just that I want to go home.”

  Bianca put back an end of her bright hair from her brow.

  “Listen, cara,” she said soothingly, “Paul and I are your friends, and you cannot just walk out on us. If Edouard has upset you you must remember that he has upset numberless young women like you since he discovered the appeal he has for our sex, and if you want to know the truth about Nicola Brent she, too, has tried hard to marry him. Of all the women he has known I think he admires Nicola more than any other, and if he ever does marry it will be she who will become the Comtesse de Moroc—”

  “Comtesse?” Cathleen interrupted in some surprise.

  Bianca smiled at her.

  “You didn’t know?” She sounded almost sympathetic. “My poor child, Edouard really is a prize, for he is almost vulgarly rich, and his title is one of the oldest in France. True, he doesn’t always use it, but most of his friends know about his houses in France, his flat in Paris and villa in Rome—in addition to the palazzo you have already seen.” She sighed suddenly. “I suppose we have all tried to ensnare him at some time or other, but he is as elusive as air and as unrepentant as a man without a heart. Nicola, being born American, and with very little sensibility, has pursued him more openly than most, and in her case he really does seem to be attracted ... at any rate, she seems to wield some power over him.” The expression of her face changed—it looked almost contorted for a moment, and her eyes were sullenly resentful. “If you are like me you will not wear your heart on your sleeve,” as if she had long ago seen through Cathleen’s pitiful little pretence, “and to run away home to England would be to make it appear that you are so affected by Edouard that you cannot remain in Venice and be near him. Whereas, if you do remain, and if you behave cleverly, you will convince him in time that you have got over him without the smallest difficulty. And would not that be more of a comfort to you when you get back to your cold, grey England than the knowledge that you let him see only too clearly how you felt?”

  Cathleen stared at her. She had never heard Bianca make such a long and impassioned speech before, and she felt mildly hypnotised by the other’s powerfully expressed argument.

  “But I really will have to go home before very long—” she argued.

  Bianca agreed.

  “But not yet, cara. Paul and I do not wish to part with you yet.” Once more her white hand came to rest on Cathleen’s shoulder. “And as for Edouard, tomorrow it is all arranged that we lunch with him at his palazzo, and you must be one of us, of course. Just behave as if you could not care less about Edouard, and Paul and I will help you. Treat him with disdain. Tell him, if you like, that you are thinking of marrying Paul!”

  “But that is absolute nonsense!” Cathleen exclaimed. “You know very well that your brother and I—”

  Bianca smiled at her with extraordinary sweetness.

  “Go to bed, child,” she advised, “and forget everything. In the morning you will probably look at things as I do.”

  She went across to the dressing-table and collected the rubies.

  “I will return these to the safe,” she said, “but they are yours when you wish to wear them ... the bracelet really is yours! Paul,” she emphasised, “wishes you to have it. You may not be in love with him, but he,” smiling archly, “is very much in love with you!”

  CHAPTER VIII

  Despite the fact that she felt strongly that she would be far wiser to return to her own country without delay, and follow up clues concerning Arlette’s disappearance from there, Cathleen agreed to accompany Bianca and her brother to Edouard’s palazzo for lunch the following day, and although she despised herself for her weakness she also found it quite i
mpossible to forget the feel of Edouard’s hands when they alighted on her shoulders, and the look of extraordinary tenderness in his eyes just before Nicola Brent had burst in upon them at the Palazzo di Rini.

  Nicola, wearing skin-tight pants in a brilliant orange colour, and a low-cut emerald top, was already there when they arrived, and not merely was she there but she was curled up like a kitten on the model’s couch and smoking a cigarette in a foot-long holder, and declaring that she was exhausted after having posed for Edouard since sun-up.

  “As a matter of fact, we decided it would be a pity to waste valuable time returning me to my hotel,” she explained with a kind of relish to Bianca, “and Edouard brought me here for breakfast, and he sent Giovanni to fetch some of my things.” She stretched herself seductively, and the skin-tight slacks looked as if they were threatening to burst at the seams. “Don’t you think we were wise to take advantage of the light?” indicating an easel on which the rough beginnings of a portrait was displayed for all to see.

  “That depends on whether or not Edouard is going to make a good job of you this time,” Bianca replied in an arctic voice, crossing the room to examine the portrait. “The last time I was not very much impressed by your insistence on posing as Salome.”

  “Minus the seventh veil.” Nicola, who was really quite extraordinarily lovely in the broad light of day, giggled. “Only Edouard refused to permit me to discard it. I didn’t know, until we got as far as that, that he was so old-fashioned,” and she regarded him with amusement.

  Edouard, who was plainly disinclined to discuss his attempted portrait of Nicola, put a glass containing one of his own specially blended cocktails into Cathleen’s hand. She had seated herself demurely—and somewhat distantly—in a chair near the window, and her eyes were resting broodingly on the canal as he crossed over to her.

  “When are you going home?” he asked curtly.

  She looked up at him with a slightly disdainful expression.

  “I haven’t any plans for going home yet,” she replied.

  His face hardened—or so she thought.

  “Don’t tell me you seriously imagine Paul is interested in you?” There was an unexpectedly cruel edge to the inquiry that brought the colour flooding into her face.

  “What—do you mean?” she demanded.

  “I think you know very well what I mean.” He was bending over her, in order that their voices should not need to be raised and carry across the room to the others. “Those rubies last night, the fact that Bianca is encouraging you to wear her clothes, and plans to take you on an expensive shopping spree. She is labouring under the delusion that you have a very great deal of money, and because Paul has virtually none she will marry him to you if she can. But first you will have to provide proof that the money is in the bank.”

  The hot colour in her cheeks was literally scorching them.

  “I ... How dare you?” she exclaimed. “And the amount of money I have in the bank is nothing whatever to do with you!”

  “True,” he agreed, unsmiling and hard-eyed. “But unless you wish for unpleasant repercussions you will disabuse Bianca of the notion that you are a rich young woman as soon as possible, hand back the rubies and go home. Otherwise you might well find yourself the centre of an humiliating situation.”

  She bit her lip. She felt as if she had been exposed as a kind of adventuress, and in the midst of her distress she wondered how he had managed to arrive so close to the truth ... that is, she wondered how he knew—which she was certain he did—that far from being a wealthy young women she had considerably less than five hundred pounds in the bank.

  Her wide, startled eyes met his, that struck her as dark, deep and remote as the stars.

  “You—know how much money I have?” she enquired in a choked whisper.

  He nodded.

  “I know.”

  Bianca, graceful in striped silk, came across the room to them and wagged a finger at them coyly.

  “Now then, you two! I must warn you that Paul will not be at all happy if he sees you putting your heads together like that!”

  “Paul?” Edouard regarded her with interest.

  “Yes.” Smilingly Bianca went round behind Cathleen and touched her cheek. “We are keeping it secret for the moment, but I am very much hoping that —before long—we shall have an announcement to make, and then you will all be invited to the Palazzo di Rini to celebrate.”

  “Indeed?” Edouard murmured, in a colder tone. Bianca flashed a smile at him that had in it a certain provocative, skilfully disguised hostile quality.

  “Yes. Isn’t it wonderful?” she declared in that smooth, soft voice of hers, and once again her finger touched Cathleen’s cheek. She stroked it caressingly. “Poor Paul has been unhappy for a long time now, and it often seemed to me that I would look in vain for a sister-in-law after my own heart. But Cathleen—so very like Arlette, of whom we were all quite fond—is not merely acceptable to my heart, but I’m sure she is acceptable to Paul’s. You may have noticed how much more contented he appears lately.”

  They glanced across the room at Paul, who was flirting outrageously with Nicola. Edouard smiled in a queer, sardonic manner, Bianca looked vexed, and Cathleen exclaimed indignantly:

  “But I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about, Bianca!”

  Bianca bent over her warningly.

  “Not so loud!” she cautioned, speaking close to her ear with a mixture of playfulness and anxiety. “You know we have agreed to keep matters secret a little longer, and Paul will be upset if we do not observe this arrangement. It will be his pleasure to make the announcement when the time is ripe!”

  Leaving Cathleen staring upwards into Bianca’s face as if she was fairly certain she had not heard aright, Edouard walked away with deliberate steps and joined his other two guests. His attitude was unexplainable, but there was a certain amount of distaste in the way he refrained from glancing back over his shoulder at the Count’s sister and their visitor, and when later a movement was made to go into the well-equipped dining-room for lunch he concentrated all his attention on Nicola, and it was she who sat close to him in the dining-room, and who plainly found it easy to hold his interest.

  Bianca, unaccustomed to being ignored, and resenting it openly—her pine dark eyes developed indignant sparks as the meal progressed, and her thin but beautifully cut lips grew even thinner before the coffee arrived—lapsed into a silence that was intended to make clear her displeasure, and as Cathleen was also more or less ignored—except by Paul, who divided his attentions almost equally between the English girl and the bright-eyed American Nicola—she was glad when the meal ended, and they went out on to a deep balcony that overlooked the canal to recline in long adjustable chairs.

  Bianca talked about calling on some friends who had rented a villa on one of the neighbouring islands, but Paul was so plainly attracted by Nicola that he was loath to leave. It must have seemed somewhat peculiar to Edouard—if he hadn’t been very familiar with Paul’s little ways—if he was contemplating marriage with Cathleen, while the provocative looks and smiles of another girl who was in actual fact far more beautiful than Cathleen could ever hope to be, although in some eyes she might have more charm, obviously had the same effect on him as a magnet.

  He was trying to be polite and charming to Cathleen, but it was Nicola with whom he exchanged badinage and whose conversation plainly inspired him—perhaps because she spoke an effortless form of Italian that made it unnecessary for him to have constant recourse to English. And when at last Bianca managed to insist on leaving he was equally insistent that Miss Brent should dine with them that night, if she wouldn’t stay with them.

  In the meanwhile, Cathleen wandered off and attempted to explore the palazzo. Actually she was looking for the picture of Arlette that she had first come upon in the studio, but when she searched for it amongst the canvases piled against the wall she found that it had gone. Edouard, whom she had believed too occupied with Nicola—when
she left the others he had been paying her almost as much attention as Paul—to notice her withdrawal from the balcony, came up behind her as she searched, and startled her with a few clipped words.

  “You won’t find it there!”

  She rounded on him, and then felt annoyed with herself because she coloured guiltily.

  “How do you know I wasn’t simply admiring your work?”

  He shrugged.

  “It doesn’t matter to me whether you admire it or not, but it was fairly obvious to me that the reason you came back here was because you wished to find your sister’s portrait.”

  “Well?” she demanded, with an aggressiveness she was far from feeling.

  He shrugged again.

  “You won’t find it there because Arlette herself has it. I sent it to her before I left for Paris.”

  “Then you must have Arlette’s address...” She felt a kind of anguish because he could bother to send Arlette her portrait, but for herself he had nothing but contemptuous looks, and his tone was uncompromising when he addressed her again.

  “I want to know what you think you’re doing keeping up this farce of being a guest of the di Rinis—an important guest, with hopes of becoming something more later on!—and what arrangements you have made for cutting short your visit? I warned you last night that you must not stay on at their palazzo.”

  She bit her lip.

  “Last night your warning didn’t impress me very much... in fact, nothing very much about you impresses me,” she lied.

  He appeared unaffected by her criticism. If anything, his hard dark eyes looked harder and colder, but he did not comment on her observation.