Air Ticket Page 3

  She smiled with a sudden touch of impishness.

  “But I left the glasses behind in my flat.”

  “Then you ought to send for them.”

  “I don’t think it’s worth it, because I shan’t be here long enough.”

  “How long do you intend to remain?”

  “Oh, perhaps another week.”

  “And then you will go back to London?”

  “Yes.”

  He stood up suddenly.

  “I must be going, but I’ll look in to see you tomorrow. If you should want me you know where to contact me?”

  “No.”

  He penciled a telephone number on the back of Beverley’s letter and handed it to her.

  “That will always find me. And don’t hesitate if you do want me!”

  He looked in as he had promised the following afternoon, but his visit was very brief, and the next day it was even briefer. The day after that she did not see him at all, and she decided that possibly he had no intention of calling at the hotel anymore, and that she might not see him again. She hoped he would not omit to send her a bill for professional attendance, and was wondering what she should do about it if he did not, when he arrived outside the hotel driving a car and without his chauffeur.

  The telephone beside her bed rang and the reception bureau informed her that Dr. Andreas would like to see her if it was convenient.

  “I’ve got to visit the clinic,” he said, “and although it’s only a short drive I wondered whether you would like to come with me? I’d like to take you at least a part of the way up into the mountains, but I’m afraid I haven’t got time. However, we might do that another day.”

  “Oh,” she exclaimed, “that would be lovely!” And she was afraid that her eyes gave away the fact that she was extremely pleased.

  When she had fetched a coat and her handbag, he helped her into the car. He slowed the car after they had been driving for only a few minutes and brought it to rest outside a dignified house with a neat brass plate beside the door, and when she looked up at it she realized that it was his own house.

  “I must pass on a message to my secretary,” he said. “Will you come in? I won’t keep you waiting very long.”

  ' Fraulein Neiger was emerging from her office when he opened the door with his key. She looked in some surprise at Caro, and Caro received a swift impression of an extremely good-looking young woman in a neat and admirably tailored dress with white collar and cuffs.

  “This is Mrs. Yorke, Fraulein Neiger. She and I flew out together from England a week ago.” He opened the door of a room on his right and smiled at Caro as he stood aside for her to enter. “I expect you’d like some tea while you’re waiting, wouldn’t you?” he said. “I’ll get my housekeeper to bring you some.”

  And then Caro found herself alone in a room that instantly aroused all her admiration. She was admiring one of the Dutch flower pieces when the door opened and an elderly woman came in with a tea tray.

  Whatever the instructions Dr. Andreas had had to pass on to his secretary, they had occupied very little of his time. He lay back comfortably in his chair and asked her whether she played the piano.

  “I used to do so quite well,” she admitted.

  “Which means that you still do,” he said, “but you don’t play by ear, and you haven’t got your glasses so you can’t read music!”

  A dimple appeared at one corner of her mouth. “I’m on holiday from my glasses,” she said.

  “I would like to see one of your miniatures.”

  “Perhaps you will one day,” she replied with a touch of awkwardness, and she was glad when he suggested that they go on to the clinic, if she had quite finished her tea. By that time the light on the lake was blinding and beautiful, the snow on the distant mountain peaks almost as dazzling, and there was no need to search for topics for conversation.

  He took a very roundabout route to the clinic, so that she saw many of the more attractive houses on the lakeshore, and on the way back he drove very slowly and leisurely.

  He refused to reenter the hotel with her for a drink, but before he descended to help her alight he said quietly, “I’m flying to Vienna tomorrow, and I shall be away for a few days, but will you promise me to be here when I get back?”

  “Oh!” She looked up at him, faintly startled. “I—why, I ... I’m not sure.”

  “There’s no reason why you should return yet, is there? You’ve been here only a week.”

  “Yes,” she agreed, thinking it wisest to look away from him, “I haven’t been here very long, and I might as well stay a little longer.”

  “Then you will be here?”

  “Y-yes.”

  “And you’ll have dinner with me on the night I get back? I’ll telephone you in the afternoon.”

  She felt as if all her pulses, accustomed to behaving rationally for so many years, were behaving in an extraordinarily erratic manner.

  “Thank you,” she said. “That will be very nice!”

  “I hope so,” he smiled, and suddenly his hand covered hers. He pressed it lightly. “And write to your Mrs. Moses and ask her to send you on your glasses. I think you ought to have them, and I’d like to see you wearing them!”

  During the next few days Caro was not quite sure what had come over her, but she went twice to a local beauty parlor and at the end she hardly knew herself.

  She wondered what Beverley would say if she could see her and her new makeup. She would probably put her golden head on one side and with a puzzled gleam in her eyes, demand wonderingly, “But, in any case, why all the effort, mummy?”

  Why? Why all the effort...?

  The days crawled by, four, five and six of them. When she was out, she began to be terrified that the telephone was ringing. Because Dr. Andreas had said he would ring in the afternoon, she hardly ever went out after lunch, only sat on her balcony and waited. She was vaguely concerned, because she knew quite well what had happened to her.

  She had taken one look at a man while he was seated on the opposite side of the aisle to her in a British Airways airliner, and a schoolgirl could not have capitulated more completely!

  On the seventh afternoon the telephone did ring.

  “I’ve been away a little longer than I expected,” he said, “but can I see you tonight? Have, you been tempted to run away?”

  She answered yes and no to those questions, and hoped he did not detect the faint excited tremble in her voice.

  His answering voice had a touch of laughter in it.

  “I don’t believe you,” he told her. “I’m sure you’ve more than once been tempted to pack up and catch the next plane. If I call for you at half-past eight, will that be all right?”

  She assured him that it would be perfectly all right, and felt almost glad when he hung up.

  That night she dressed for the evening as she might have dressed when she was Beverley’s age and someone very special was taking her out to dine. Lucien Andreas was probably so used to elegant women that he would hardly notice what she was wearing, and he was merely being kind in taking her out for an evening at all. He thought it might amuse him just a little to take her out and talk to her before she went back to England and they never saw one another again.

  In any case, she knew absolutely nothing about him—not even whether he was married! The thought shook her, although almost instantly it occurred to her that a man with a reputation to maintain such as he obviously had would not ask any woman out for the evening if he had a wife at home in his house!

  She added a spot of perfume to the lobes of her ears and told herself to stop thinking along lines that didn’t concern her in any case, and to be thankful that she didn’t have to spend another evening alone in the hotel hoping that the telephone might ring the following day.

  When he called for her she had been ready at least half an hour. He was in evening dress, and it became him so well that no one could look upon him and remain entirely unmoved, or so Caro thought.
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  Once again Caro was handed into the black car, and as they moved into the thin stream of traffic she watched the well-shaped hands on the wheel and thought that they were the most capable and well-cared-for masculine hands she had ever seen.

  They pulled into the short drive in front of one of Oberlaken’s most expensive hotels, and within a matter of minutes after that they’d been bowed to a table in a corner of the huge dining room. The table was decorated with some very dark red roses, and as Caro lifted her eyes from them she met the eyes of the man facing her.

  “Red roses go very well with that dress of yours,” he said. “Do you know, you are the loveliest mother of a married daughter I’ve ever met! In fact, I’ll go further and say that you’re the loveliest mother of a daughter I’ve met!”

  “Oh!” Caro exclaimed, and felt swamped by confusion. She uttered the first coherent speech she could think of: “Did you ... did you enjoy your visit to Vienna?”

  “It was not a visit remotely connected with anything like enjoyment,” Dr. Andreas replied, his expression softening as he studied that rising tide of color in her cheeks. “And it took up more of my time than I anticipated. I really was afraid you might have flown by the time I got back, in spite of your promise to remain here.”

  She lifted her clear eyes and looked at him. “But I promised, and therefore I stayed.”

  Suddenly Caro felt her curiosity overcoming her. “Dr. Andreas,” she began hesitantly, “I find myself wondering quite a lot about you. Do you realize that I don’t even know whether you’re married?”

  “I’m not,” he answered a little curtly.

  “And you never have been?”

  “Yes. My wife died,” he told her in clipped accents, “and the daughter I very nearly possessed died, also!”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry!” she exclaimed at once, with instant sympathy, but his frowning brows told her that he had no desire to pursue the subject, and she cast about in her mind for a fresh topic to introduce. And once again all she could think of was his trip to Vienna.

  “Tell me about Vienna,” she requested rather quietly. “I’ve never been there, but I’d love to go one day. Is it really as gay as all the waltz tunes make one think it is?”

  '“Yes, Vienna is quite gay nowadays,” he responded, and she felt he was watching her with something uncertain in his expression. There was even a trace of uncertainty in his voice. “If you’ve never been there you certainly must go one day—it’s quite unlike any other capital in Europe.”

  He went on talking about Vienna for quite a while, and Caro listened to him with a feeling of flatness because since her unhappy attempt to pry into his affairs a certain amount of the pleasure of the evening had vanished for her. And she was not sorry when at last he stood up and she found herself outside again and in his car.

  The night was dark, and there were few stars reflected in the surface of the lake, but the roads were beautifully clear. He was very quiet as he drove, and she thought drearily that in a few minutes they would be back at her hotel, and she would have to thank him for a pleasant evening and say goodnight.

  “Have you made up your mind when you’re going back to London?”

  She was a little startled by the question, and disturbed by the cool, blunt way in which he posed it.

  “No,” she admitted, “no, I haven’t really made up my mind—but I think it will be quite soon. Probably the day after tomorrow.”

  She suddenly realized that it was his house and not her hotel outside which they were stopping. He switched off the engine. “If you’re not in a hurry I’d like you to come in for a while. I’d like to talk to you.” He led the way to the room in which they had had tea, and there he switched on the lights and also an electric fire. Caro moved to the piano and ran the fingers of one hand lightly over the keys.

  “You have a nice touch,” he said. “Play something from memory.”

  “I’m not very good at playing from memory.”

  “Then sit down, and I’ll play something for you.” She was not surprised to make the discovery that he was a far, far better player than she was. The room became filled with melody—a Chopin waltz, Debussy’s Clair de Lune. Then, with a ripple of final chords, he stood up and left the piano and came toward her. He looked at her with a faint smile in his eyes.

  “That was in the nature of a sedative—something to make you forget that our evening has not been an entire success,” he said, astounding her because she realized he knew exactly how she had been feeling. “And now I’m going to provide you with a drink and then we’ll have our talk, shall we?”

  “What ... do you want to talk about?” she asked.

  “Oh, all sorts of things—you and me among them!” Once again his eyes sent that queer half-smiling look in her direction.

  He sat down near to her, and all at once she knew she was feeling nervous—a kind of excited nervousness. She wanted to pick up her drink, but she knew that her hand would shake, and once again he anticipated her wish and placed it in her hand for her.

  He looked at her more thoughtfully, more gravely.

  “I want to apologize,” he said, “for biting your head off when you asked me about my marriage! I knew all about your marriage and you naturally had a right to find out a few things about me. But it’s—something I haven’t discussed with anyone for years.”

  “I see,” she said, and stared down at the liquid in her glass.

  “Unlike you, I did marry for love, and it didn’t last very long.”

  Once again she told him that she was sorry. She meant it. She meant it so sincerely that her eyes, when she lifted them to his face, were almost limpid with her sympathy, and they were quite definitely his undoing. An overpowering desire to kiss her and hold her overcame him. She looked so small and slight in the warm glow of the shaded lights. She had a little polished head that reflected the light, and her skin was as pale and smooth as a camellia. Her eyes could hardly have been more attractive, and the soft vividness of her mouth was a temptation.

  He set down his drink, removed hers from her hand and then stood up and pulled her almost roughly out of her chair and into his arms.

  “Oh, Caro!” he whispered as his mouth found hers.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Caro watched the stars. She realized that she ought to go to bed, but she knew she would not be likely to sleep. She could still feel a man’s arms around her, and a man’s hard, demanding mouth taking toll of her own. He had kissed her eyes lingeringly many times and told her that he had wanted to do so almost from the moment he first saw her. He wished that instead of resisting the temptation he had kept her in his car when he offered her a lift at the Zurich airport, and whisked her off somewhere to marry her.

  “But you don’t really want to marry me? You hardly know me.”

  “I know all I want to know about you,” he had informed her. But he had not told her he loved her. He’d told her that she was enchanting, that he knew he could not let her go out of his life, that she had bewitched him and that because she was small and very feminine he wanted to look after her.

  “And the only way I can do that is by marrying you,” he had added. “So whether you like it or not, you’ll have to marry me! Do you think you could bear it?”

  “Bear it...?” Even as she had clung to him, and his lips had moved softly, gently, in her hair, she had wondered whether he would be horrified if he knew what a tempest of feeling he had aroused at the heart of her being. She who was normally so cool and contained, and thought of little else but painting miniatures! And was the mother of a daughter like Beverley! She had wondered if he fully realized that she was not a young woman, though it was true she was only thirty-eight. She felt that she ought to warn him of the things he might be missing.

  Lucien had laughed and held her rather more closely when she tried to put her thoughts into words. She wondered, as she looked at him adoringly, whether any man in the world ever had such perfect white teeth when he smiled, or such an in
triguing cleft in his firm chin, or eyebrows that were so beautifully marked.

  “Do you realize, Liebling,” he had said to her softly, “that I have been a widower now for ten years, and as I am forty-one, and my period of married life was very short—not even as long as yours—a little arithmetic will inform you that I was always cautious about marriage even when I was young. So I don’t honestly think your warning that I may possibly be making a mistake is necessary.”

  “All the same—” she suddenly drew in her breath “—I am thirty-eight! And I never intended to marry again.”

  “You may be thirty-eight, but there are moments when you look about eighteen,” he had told her, studying her as if she amused him. “And what is there about me that has caused you to change your mind about risking a second husband?”

  Her eyes as they gazed at him were transparent pools. “Everything,” she had answered simply.

  His expression had grown more grave. “Are you quite sure about that?”

  “Quite sure.”

  “Caro,” he had asked her almost abruptly, “do you love me?”

  She’d drawn another long breath. “I could hardly love you more than I do,” she admitted at last.

  “Then, my darling, we will be married without any delay whatsoever,” he’d told her, causing something inside her to quiver like a live thing. “I will not even allow you time to inform that precious daughter of yours that we are going to be married. You can send her a telegram as soon as you’re my wife, and if she and her husband are in Italy they can break their journey by stopping in Switzerland on their way back to England and see you and wish you well personally.”

  And now here she was on her balcony, wondering how she was going to live through the hours until she saw Lucien again. As soon as it was light enough, she sat down to write to Beverley. She had to tell something to someone of all that had happened to her since she’d left England. But she would hold back the letter for a few days. If it reached Beverley hard on the heels of her telegram that would be the ideal time.