Authors: Rose Burghley
Caroline winced as if she had been struck by several flails at this reference so early in the day to Armand’s unfortunate reputation, but if it had only been Robert de Bergerac the old lady was besmirching she would have defended him hotly. As it was the Comte de Marsac she had nothing to say—at least, only sufficient to clear her own reputation in the eyes of Lady Penelope.
She explained about her illness, and Marthe’s unavoidable absence, and Lady Pen gradually looked a little more knowing. In fact, she looked surprisingly knowing.
“It is so like Armand to wish you to stay on here and have your holiday as if nothing had happened—he is the soul of generosity!—but it is a little unlike him to stay on here himself under the circumstances.” She looked at Caroline thoughtfully. “As I said just now—half terrified that you might take offence, and the last thing I would wish to do would be to offend my Caroline’s granddaughter!—you are not the type with whom Armand would start an affair, and there are several excellent hotels in Le Fontaine where he could have put up for a few nights if he was needing a little rural quiet, and they would almost certainly have made him very comfortable at the village inn. But in fact he stayed on here...
She went on regarding Caroline very thoughtfully, and the girl found herself wondering—and feeling sharply curious about it— why this shrewd little woman of the world (as she undoubtedly was!) should be so firmly convinced that Armand would not start an affair with her. An affair that would be meant to terminate some day!
And perhaps because some of her puzzlement showed in her eyes, Lady Pen endeavoured to explain, gently: “Armand has a sort of code, and he likes to match his weapons with his opponents—or people who are likely to become involved with him in some way or other! Diane Montauban, for instance, although I believe she comes of an excellent family, knows all the rules....And he wouldn’t hesitate to have an affair with her (which he is probably having at this very moment, hence her arrival here yesterday afternoon!) and if he never becomes serious about her, she won’t be hurt, because in her heart she doesn’t expect him to be serious. Helen Mansfield, on the other hand, as nicely brought up as you have been, would make him an excellent wife—and between you and me and the gate post, that is one reason why I have brought her here! I thought that Armand might recognise what an excellent wife she would make—with money of her own, an undemanding disposition, and a certain healthy charm— and make up his mind and settle down with her. At least,” her old eyes all but glued to Caroline’s infinitely revealing face, “that is what I did think...” Caroline was glad that she had come to the end of her sugary biscuits, and looked as if she would like some more, and she stood up eagerly and offered to fetch her some.
“I thought you would like to have your breakfast tray a little later on,” she explained. “Monique is quite good at English breakfasts, if you would like something more substantial than rolls.”
“No, thank you my dear, I have to think of my figure nowadays,” smiling at her nevertheless as if she was already conscious of feeling affection for her. “But I shall stay in bed until lunch time, if that won’t cause any inconvenience to anyone.”
Caroline assured her that it would cause absolutely no inconvenience, and the old lady recommended her to get out into the sunshine, remarking that she hardly looked strong enough to be bearing other people’s trays up to their rooms, and she hoped she wasn’t about to perform the same service for Mademoiselle Montauban, or Miss Mansfield.
“They are both thoroughly fit, and they can wait on themselves,” she said, “if Monique can’t manage it. But you can
go down and sun yourself, my dear.”
Caroline went down, but not to “sun herself”, although after a more or less sleepless night she was feeling curiously used up. Pierre had once more been pressed into service, and he was unwillingly laying a breakfast table on the terrace, as he had done once before, when Caroline joined him, and she at once took the cutlery and the napkins out of his hand, and said she would do it herself.
“You go back to your kitchen garden, Pierre,” she said, gently. “I know you hate this sort of thing.”
Pierre gave her a grateful look, and then vanished without any more pressure having to be brought to bear on him. And it was while she was allocating the cutlery, and giving it an extra polish with a spare table napkin, that Diane and the Comte came along the terrace.
Diane was wearing a candy-pink-and-white striped dress that breathed Paris all over it—especially as the neckline was very low—and about her absurdly slender waist was a deep belt of glowing rose-coloured suede that matched her rose-coloured finger and toenails, peeping from open sandals. Her sleek hair was banded about her head so that it looked like a satin cap of sable highlighted here and there with russet, and her eyes were huge and dark and provocative as they roved between the Comtes face and the breakfast-table.
Without looking up Caroline was aware that her hand was resting familiarly in the crook of Armand’s bare, tanned arm.
“Well, this is nice,” Diane declared, as she surveyed the table laid beside the parapet. “In Paris, of course, I wouldn’t be up at this hour of the morning, but in the country one feels differently about early rising. Also, of course, one sleeps better.” Her eyes rested speculatively on the English girl’s face. “But you, Mademoiselle Darcy —you do not look as if you slept in the least well! There are shadows beneath your eyes, and you are pale—or is that because you are still something of the invalid?” There was something mocking in the enquiry, as if she was perfectly well aware of the reason why Caroline had passed a sleepless night, and it amused her a little. But Armand, who had been trying to avoid looking directly at Caroline, accepted her observation as an excuse to do so, and instantly he frowned swiftly.
“I told you before that you are not a maidservant, Carol,” he said sharply. “It is not your job to do things that Pierre could very well do!”
“Isn’t it?” Diane leaned really heavily on his arm, and looked up at him. “What is Mademoiselle Darcy’s job, and why is she here at all?”
Caroline did not wait for his answer, but sped away to the kitchen, and when she returned she was bearing a basket of crisp rolls fresh out of the oven, and a crock of the golden butter Monique had sat up late the night before shaping into a near impersonation of a swan drifting tranquilly, as the swans on the moat drifted tranquilly. The breakfast party had been swelled by being joined by Helen Mansfield—in tight blue jeans and a crisp white top, that made her look very wholesome indeed, if not quite as feminine as she ought to look by comparison with the extremely feminine French girl—and Christopher Markham, and all four were leaning against the parapet and looking down into the moat when Caroline made her reappearance. Christopher, possibly a little piqued by
Diane’s open transference of her allegiance to Armand— who, after all, was her first conquest as well as her host— moved to take the basket of rolls from Caroline, and also the crock of butter, and as he did so he sent her a more discerning glance than he had hitherto done. As a result of that glance he swiftly pulled out a chair for his fellow countrywoman at the table, and smiled at her as if there was something more between them than the bond of owning the same nationality.
Armand joined the rest of the party at the table with faintly lowering brows, and as he passed behind her chair he said in a low, fierce voice which only she heard:
“You are not to take on domestic tasks, do you understand?”
She looked up at him with a charming, and rather innocent smile.
“Not until you have made up your mind whether or not it would be worthwhile to pay me a salary?”
She had the firm conviction that he gritted his teeth as he sat down at the table, but he did not address her again during the meal.
CHAPTER X
Later that morning the entire party inspected the chateau. They roamed around its ancient walls, peered at their reflections in the moat, tried to track down the moorhen’s nest, wandered in the overgrown rose-garden and yew alleys, and finally went indoors to admire the nowadays never-used banqueting hall, and climb to the very tops of the tall towers that overlooked the moat.
Oddly enough, Caroline had never been inside the towers before, and she realised that if she had, and seen the portrait of a slender dark man with mocking brown eyes that hung above the fireplace in an enchanting little round room that had once formed part of the private suite of the present Comte’s mother, she would have known at once who Robert de Bergerac was. For the late Comte had repeated himself in miniature when his son was born, and standing beneath the portrait looking up at his father their identical eyes met for a moment and they seemed to exchange a glance of complete understanding and accord.
Armand had allowed the rest of the party to surge on into the next room, and only Caroline remained against the window, trying not to be aware of that portrait, and all that it should have told her—and perhaps warned her of!
Armand looked round at her at last, mockingly.
“It may surprise you to know,” he said, “that my father and mother were very happy together—in fact, my mother was ridiculously devoted to my father! But he had the unfortunate Frenchman’s habit of looking for diversion elsewhere, and this of course was highly regrettable! But, even so, my mother never looked unhappy, and she could bear this portrait in her sitting-room! I expect you find that rather remarkable, don’t you, Caroline?”
He had never called her Caroline before, and his eyes were hard and cold as he did so. And although it was he who prevented her from twisting her ankle on the narrow staircase leading up to the tower rooms, and had actually saved her from tumbling down them when her foot slipped and she missed a tread, by catching her and holding her so fast for a moment that her heart was clamouring wildly when they reached the top of the flight, he turned now and left her alone in the little room.
Feeling utterly forlorn and deserted she stood looking around her at the simple furnishings, thinking how unpretentious they were, and yet how attractive. There was a little couch covered in yellow brocade, and a tiny Empire desk of mellow golden wood like sunlight. Armand’s mother’s work-basket—or it looked as if it was a work- basket—encrusted with mother-of-pearl, stood on a shelf in a little alcove, and a china bowl still held dried rose petals. Caroline put a hand in amongst them, and felt them crumble into dust at a touch, and feeling that she had taken a liberty she stepped back hastily and inspected a couple of miniatures on the mantelpiece. They were exquisite miniatures, and they were both of children, and one of them could have been Armand when he was not much more than a toddler.
Caroline felt her heart beat quickly, as it had beaten on the staircase, as she gazed at those curiously perfect features, not missing the Puckish line to the eyebrows, and the liquid beauty of the great dark eyes. Then she lifted her own eyes to the portrait above the mantelpiece, and for an instant it seemed to her that the man who looked down at her shook his head. It was not so much a disapproving shake, as a faintly pitying shake, and she felt as if her heart lept up into her throat.
“Oh, no,” she actually whispered, as if she was endeavouring to make herself understood. “I couldn’t—I couldn’t share him” And then she added, more flatly: “And I wouldn’t!”
She turned away from the portrait, as if it embarrassed her to meet that steady regard, and the vague tumult into which all her emotions had been flung was calmed as soon as she passed beneath the low arch that framed the doorway, and in an adjoining room she heard Diane protesting a little.
“Armand, I don’t like it up here!” She was clinging to his arm and pressing close to him. “Your mother must have been an extraordinary woman to wish to be so isolated, but I—I am not in the least extraordinary, and I find it eerie!”
Armand stood looking down at her with an amused smile. “That is because you are not used to the country, my little one. You see too much of the bright lights!”
“With you, Armand,” she assured him, putting back her head until it actually rested against his shoulder, “I would endure even the country! But you could not live away from the bright lights for long!”
“Which just shows how well you know me, cherie Armand exclaimed softly, and without pausing to be absolutely certain they were alone bent and pressed his lips to the silken dark hair that was coiled so neatly about her small head. With a gesture of responsive Latin abandon she flung up her arms around his neck and almost thrust her mouth against his, so that he would almost certainly have been less than human if he hadn’t taken advantage of the tempting nearness of those delicately scented scarlet lips.
Caroline, who witnessed the entire performance, turned and blindly negotiated the difficult stairs until she found herself at the foot of the tower, and feeling a trifle sick she eventually made her way out on to the terrace. Christopher Markham and Miss Mansfield were already there, and when the others joined them drinks were called for and they sipped pre-lunch aperitifs in an atmosphere of pleasing sunshine and a gently breeze that actually rippled the surface of the moat.
Helen Mansfield, who had been forced to yield place to Diane whilst the actual exploration of the chateau was taking place, managed, while Diane was accepting another drink, to unobtrusively insinuate herself into a chair beside her host, and from then on she determinedly captured his attention, and Caroline and the rest had to listen to her exclaiming over the beauties of the chateau. She thought that sun umbrellas on the terrace were the only items of improvement it lacked, was amazed that no film producer had sought to make a film there, and didn’t seem to think that Armand was serious when he replied—with an unusually serious look on his face—that during his ownership of the place no film producer would be allowed near enough to take advantage of possessing a film camera. And then, when it did occur to her that he was looking a little remote and cool, obviously put herself out to entice him back into a sunny humour by copying a leaf out of Diane’s book and becoming extremely feminine with him. Caroline felt that unpleasant sensation of actual physical nausea at the base of her stomach growing stronger as the American girl used wiles that were obvious, but excusable, because she was so undeniably attractive, and when she found that they were meeting with a half amused response opened up the battery of her charms to its fullest extent. Just before Caroline decided that there was still time before lunch to pick some red currants