Lou glanced at her carelessly, and then slipped a hand inside the Baron’s arm and rested her blonde head against his sleeve.
“I can’t, because we’re going on a frightfully hazardous run this afternoon, and I can’t think of anything else!
”
The Austrian gave an order to Gretchen, and although strands of fair hair tickled his chin, and the scent of it rose up to his nostrils, his face remained impassive. Giles Haversham said quickly to Valentine that he would walk back to the hotel with her if she was ready, and as they slipped out no one turned their head. The Baron by that time was smiling whimsically into Lou’s blue eyes.
It was a wonderful afternoon for Valentine, a
nd
she thoroughly enjoyed it. She had forgotten how exhilarating it could be to race across frozen snow with the eerie whine of the churned-up wind in her ears, and the sting of it on her unprotected glowing face. She forgot occasionally what to do with her ski-sticks, and had some undignified tumbles during the first hour; but Giles
—
who was a much better skier than she was, and certainly hadn’t merited that cool criticism of Lou’s in the cafe
—
betrayed the utmost patience in coaching her, and by degrees some of her schoolgirl confidence came back to her. They laughed every time he had to dig her out of a small mountain of snow, and when his hands brushed her free of the clinging particles there was a tiny flickering light in his eyes that made her realise there was nothing unattractive about a very high colour and hair that was matted with snow.
On the contrary, red-gold hair that was matted with snow struck him as curiously beautiful, and he very nearly told her so as they tramped back to the hotel. But her eyes were so clear and bright, and she was looking so animated, that he didn’t want to arouse
self-consciousness
and bring back that near-tragic look she had worn sometimes the night before. He wanted her to be gay, and carefree, and enjoy herself, and that much he did tell her as once more the high peaks turned rosy with the sunset, and the valley filled slowly with a grape-like bloom before it was abruptly blotted out by the coming of the night.
“We must do this often,” he said, “or as often as you can manage. It will do you good. You were far too pale last night.”
“Was I
?
” she returned carelessly, contentedly. “But redheads are always pale. You should know that.”
“How long do you think Miss Morgan will stay on here
?
” he asked, frowning at the lights of the hotel as they approached it.
“I don’t know. As long as the Baron von Felden stays, I should think,” Valentine added, with a little smile.
“And he’s such an unknown quantity that it would be impossible to predict how long he’ll stay.”
She glanced at him quickly.
“Would you say he’s an unknown quantity
?
It hasn’t struck me that there’s anything pretentious about him. The local people know him, and he’s very well vouched for.”
“I didn’t mean that. I mean
that
...
he, in himself, is an unknown quantity! He probably doesn’t know himself what he wants from life! He’s a drifter, aimless, without any sense of direction. Deprived of all the trappings that made his title valuable he’s a little bit pathetic too.”
“You mean he’s a playboy
?
”
Haversham shrugged.
“A gigolo, perhaps. I wouldn’t know. But the ladies love him, don’t they? Miss Morgan isn’t the only one.”
Valentine had been aware of that ever since she had been aware of the Baron. Feminine eyes followed him everywhere, and he couldn’t help but be aware of it. And when everyone in the hotel, from the bell-boy upwards, addressed him as
Excellency,
he must realise that that, too, added to his appeal for lonely widows with big bank balances, and impressionable young women with the eternal feminine in their hearts, and a desire for romance above everything else.
If he was a gigolo it was because women made him that very thing. Because so many of them wanted it that way, and he was too hard up to have principles.
When they reached the hotel he was standing in the brightly lighted entrance, and he saw them at once as they passed inside. Lou was apparently nowhere about.
“You did very well,” he told Valentine, as she would have passed him by. “With practice you will do better, but you did very well.”
She sensed that Haversham, at her side, resented the criticism, but the Baron did not even acknowledge him. He was leaning back against the panelled wall to be out of the way of the ski-sticks and the returning skiers, and a pair of elk horns above his head in some way emphasised the brooding dark beauty of his face, with its thickly lashed eyes. A cigarette smouldered between his fingers, and as Valentine looked up at him a thin column of smoke rose between them and the severe black sweater he was wearing, with a wine-dark muffler wound about his neck and tucked into the front of it. And she had a momentary recollection of a black shape that had shot out above her head, and right across the valley, while she was clinging to a dizzy
ledge earlier that afternoon.
She knew now that it was the Baron who was demonstrating not merely his close affinity with a pair of skis, but his ability to take note of what was going on around him while in mid-flight as it were.
“Where is Lou?” she asked, rather stupidly, standing still to put the question although Haversham would plainly have preferred to go straight on to the lift.
The black shoulder shrugged.
“She was not in a very good mood when we came in. Rather cross.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.” His dark eyes were cynically amused. “Ought I to know?”
But upstairs Lou revealed immediately why she was cross. They had spent the entire afternoon hanging about, as she phrased it, doing nothing in particular, although she had been promised an exciting climb to the heights of the Eisenhorn, and then a long run down it on the treacherous eastern face. It was to have been an afternoon full of thrills, a challenge to her who loved challenges, but Alex had called it off because he hadn’t liked the look of the banked-up masses of cloud, with their threat of further snow.
“And even if we’d run into a blizzard I wouldn’t have minded,” Lou declared, as she tied the sash of her bathrobe and stalked into the bathroom. “There are always plenty of climbing-huts, and we could have taken refuge in one of those. Everyone knows they’re well stocked and provisioned, and we could have hung out for days.” Her eyes sparkled at the thought of the experience that might have been hers, and then grew petulant because she had been thwarted. “Alex can be terribly obstinate when he feels like it, but he’s taking me to see his
schloss
as soon as the weather settles again. We’ll probably spend a week-end there, and you can come along as chaperon. It might be a good plan if Alex invited the Haversham man to give you a bit of support.”
Make certain I don’t intrude in any way, Valentine thought swiftly
—
unusually intuitive. Although it was never very difficult for her to read Lou’s mind.
If the American girl had thought it a wise policy she would have gone off to the
schloss
without Valentine. But it was marriage she was after, and despite her wealth one had to be very careful when one was aiming at marriage. It was a high goal, particularly when it carried with it a title, and the man was just a little matrimony-shy. Just a little, she had discovered.
For although he was as old as Giles Haversham, he had not so far been trapped ... in spite of constant financial difficulties. Possibly occasional crises!
There came a soft flurry of snow against the windows, and later that night it was snowing quite heavily. Yet shortly after midnight the stars were as bright as ever, and the frozen peaks stood out clearly against the violet-blue sky. The Baron von Felden’s knowledge of the district, and his weather-sense, had not failed him, but if he had been expecting a continuous blizzard he had been wrong.
Neither he nor Lou would have come to any harm on the Eisenhorn that afternoon, and they could have been back in the warmth and comfort of the hotel long before the weather broke. They would not have been driven to seek shelter in any mountain hut.
Yet when a man did know the possibilities of his own area he was wise not to take risks. Better to mar the afternoon of someone like Lou, and hang about on the safe slopes
...
Where Valentine herself was performing!
He had actually watched Valentine siding, and approved her performance!
As she lay in bed and watched some lights twinkling on a snowy plateau on the other side of the valley Valentine tried to force herself to stop thinking about Alex von Felden. He was a whimsical young man ... a creature of moods. His eyes betrayed the fact that he was seldom in the same mood for any length of time, and his reasons for doing anything were probably incalculable.
An unknown quantity, Haversham had called him.
Valentine shut her eyes, and determined to stop thinking of the Baron. But she couldn’t imagine him afraid of a blizzard ... a gentle blizzard. And there were always the huts, as Lou had said.
“You did very well, but you’ll do better with practice,” he had said.
She would if she had anyone like him to instruct her!
CHAPTER FOUR
The
next day the weather definitely broke, and the mists came swirling down the mountainside, followed by more snow.
Inside the hotel the central heating worked overtime, and the imprisoned guests gazed from their windows at a wall of vapour that refused to lift
—
except for those occasions when it dissolved into a howling blizzard
—
and there was no hope of any outdoor exercise, or even a glimpse of the sky. Nothing but a sensation of being completely cut off from the rest of the world.
And as day after day passed, and the same conditions prevailed,
vorlagers
vanished to give place to smart day-time dresses and well-pressed suits, and there were
thes-dansants
and cocktail parties, that went on noisily for hours at a time in the cheerful atmosphere of the bar; and in the evenings everyone danced as usual, or listened to the Schulplattler singers who fought their way up from the village inn to relieve the boredom.
Lou was amongst the first to grow seriously bored, for confinement irked her, and she was impatient for her visit to the Baron von Felden’s
schloss.
The Baron himself was as popular as ever
—
even more popular when there were so few other distractions; and that was another reason why Lou grew peevish and much more addicted to the little outbursts of temper that were not really typical of her when everything was going her way. But with lovely women with wardrobes as extensive as her own drifting aimlessly about and openly admiring the one man she was anxious to secure for herself it was not easy to appear as if she didn’t mind in the least.
Alex was as attentive as usual in his alternately gay and rather brooding fashion, and whenever possible she got him to herself; but unless you were openly engaged to a man you couldn’t reasonably object if he danced occasionally with someone else, or wandered off and left you to talk to a man in the bar. Or got roped in to a party that went on until the small hours, and included far too many eager-eyed young things to make it a pleasant party for Lou.
And in spite of his even temper, and fairly consistent good humour (for even when his thoughtful moods overcame him von Felden never forgot his excellent manners) there was, at times, a touch of dignity and aloofness about the scion of a noble house. A kind of hauteur which the American girl sensed and recognised, and which made it impossible for her to charge him with neglect, or deliberately force him into a position as a result of which he might propose.
All in good time he would propose ... she felt sure of that. He liked and admired her, and they got on well together, and he needed her money. It was as simple as
that!
...
But even so, the pace could not be forced, and she would have to be patient. She must be patient.
But while she was endeavouring, by every means in her power, to prevent him realising how really very impatient she was to have everything signed and settled
—
to be able to write home to her father in Texas and say,
“
I’
m going to be the Baroness von Felden! You can fly out and give me away!”
—
her temper became so frayed that it was Valentine who really suffered. She was constantly ordered to do things to expensive dresses that were not likely to improve them, but the fact that they were altered gave Lou the feeling that she was straining every nerve, and not missing any cue to gain what she wanted.
Half dressed, she would rip off a gown or discard a sweater, and declare that she hadn’t anything decent to wear, and then Valentine would go through everything she possessed and persuade her that she had some spectacular surprises in her wardrobe still. She would complain about her complexion, and insist upon instant beauty treatments, and when the hotel hairdresser altered the style of her hair, she was nearly frantic until Valentine had got it back into its old style again.
She kept Valentine occupied for most of the day, but in the evenings she permitted her to have an hour or two to herself, and it was then that Giles Haversham had a chance to attach himself to Valentine. He was by no means as sympathetic towards Miss Morgan’s anxiety neurosis as Valentine was, but because it was through her that he had met Valentine he attempted to overcome a growing dislike for her.
“She’s spoilt and selfish, and I think you could have found an easier employer than she’s turned out to be,” he said more than once, but the first time was when Valentine confessed to being too tired to dance, and asked if they could sit in the glassed-in veranda.
She was getting to like Giles Haversham very much, and his thoughtfulness touched her. While they sat in the blissful emptiness of the veranda, and the muted strains of the dance music reached them, she learned a lot about him, and the things he did when he was at home in England. He had a cottage in the Cotswolds, and his mother lived there with him, and he was very sure his mother would like Valentine rather more than she could possibly like any other young woman. Despite the dissimilarity in age they were much of a type, he assured the girl with the red hair that curled so softly
about
her face and just touched her shoulders ... rather like an eager flame caressing the paleness of the thoughtful brow, and the delicate cheeks.
She smiled at him, wondering what it would be like to be a secure old lady in the charge of such a man as this, and he lifted one of her ringless hands and regarded it thoughtfully.
“One day I hope you’ll meet her,” he said. “You must meet her, Valentine!”
Gently she disengaged her hand, and recollected that she had a letter to write, and it would be quite impossible to get it done in the morning.
Another night when she had been dancing with Giles Lou sent her up to the suite to get her a clean handkerchief and a stole. On her way down in the lift the Baron stopped it at his floor and they continued to the ground floor together.
“I never see anything of you,” he said, as if he was registering a protest. “Are you always at the beck and call of Lou
?
Or do you find the charms of Mr. Haversham so great that you devote all your spare time to him?”
His dark eyes were gazing straight down into hers, and in the gilded opulence of the lift she felt extraordinarily alone with him ... which, in point of fact, she was. But as she stood beside him she was so overwhelmingly aware of him that she wondered whether he heard the quickened beating of her heart.
“I don’t have a lot
of
...
free time,” she said.
“So Lou is a slave-driver, is she
?
I always suspected that she could be.” He regarded the tip of his cigarette thoughtfully. “In this life we are either masters of our souls, or we have no soul to be master of! I wonder which category you come into
?
”
There was so much musing in his voice, with his attractive foreign accent
—
although his English was faultless and beautiful
—
that she looked up at him quickly and unguardedly.
“I hope I shall always be master of my own soul!”
“If not of your leisure periods
?
But it is impossible to have it all ways, isn’t it? To be a lady of leisure you would require a certain amount of means, which apparently you lack. And if I would be master of my own soul I must inherit a fortune, and I don’t think that is likely, somehow!”
She wanted to say quickly: “Your grandmother...
?
” And then she realised, just as quickly, that it was no concern of hers, and he was probably only talking to her in this strain because she was no one of any particular importance, and it was rather more like musing aloud. Perhaps he felt the need to talk to someone just then.
And then their eyes met again
—
coming together as if they could neither of them avoid seeking each other’s glance for long, when there was an opportunity to seek each other’s glance
—
and the strange little flickering light that dwelt at the back of his dark eyes confused her as it had confused her once before.
“Why do you not join our party to-night and let me talk with you?” he asked, almost abruptly. “I have seen you dancing with Haversham, but I have never yet asked you to dance. You don’t make it easy for me to do that!”
The lift had reached the ground floor, and the doors slid open. Fortunately there was no one about, and she answered swiftly:
“I don’t think Miss Morgan would approve of that, Herr Baron. I am, after all, on her payroll, as she would phrase it herself!”
“You are the mysterious Miss Valentine Brown, about whom I would know much more than I do know. Meet me in the small writing-room
—
the one that is hardly ever used, except by the most determined letter
-
writers like old Lady Frobisher, who never gets up before noon—tomorrow morning at eleven. Lou will be still in her bath, and you can tell her you wish to speak with Haversham.”
Her eyes widened with incredulity
—
because he should imagine for one moment that she would tell such an untruth to her employer, and because he should have any desire at all to waste part of his morning discovering things about her.
“I
... I’m sorry,” she said, “but I can’t do that!”
“I shall be waiting for you,” he told her, his dark eyes compelling her. And then he bowed in front of her very formally
—
a stiff little half-military bow from the waist. “It would look odd if I was seen hanging about to no purpose!” and he moved gracefully away from her along the corridor.
For a moment she stood there, before the ornamental lift gates, a bewildered expression on her face, that was succeeded by one of utter stupefaction. And then, clutching the clean handkerchief and the gauzy stole she had been sent to fetch for Lou, she made her way back to her employer by an opposite route to the one the Baron took, and by the time she reached them Lou was laughing up into his face and had no time at all to spare for Valentine, and she certainly didn’t notice that there was anything particularly meaning in the glance the Baron sent her.
“Good girl,” she said, as she tucked the handkerchief into her bag and submitted to the stole being draped about her shoulders.
Valentine vanished discreetly.
In the morning Valentine had her breakfast as usual in her own room
—
piping-hot coffee, crisp rolls and cherry jam always tasted particularly good to her at that hour
—
took Lou her tray nearly an hour later, and then ran her employer’s bath for her. She said, as the latter snuggled down beneath her enormous feather eiderdown and declared she could still do with some uninterrupted sleep:
“Do you mind if I have a short while to myself this morning
?
I
—I
have an important letter to write.”
“Of course,” Lou answered, good-tempered because she had thoroughly enjoyed herself the evening before. She yawned like a kitten. “Go and get it over, and then you can mend that white lace somebody trod on a couple of nights ago. Horribly clumsy, some of those German youths
...
Heaven knows what they’d be like in a china shop!”
As Valentine left the room she felt as guilty as if it were she herself who had deliberately ruined the white lace ... or borrowed it when her employer wasn’t looking.
She went downstairs in the lift, as she had done the night before, only this morning there was an attendant on duty, and he smiled and chatted to her. He told her the sky was clearing, and by noon the sun would be shining again as brightly as ever it had shone, and there would be a general exodus from the confinement of the hotel. The new snow would take no time at all to harden up, and the enthusiasts would be racing over it again in a matter of hours.
“It is good news,
Fraulein,
ja
?
” he said.
“Seht gut!”
“Very good news,” Valentine agreed with him. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror on the wall, and she thought that even her face looked guilty. It was a little pale, as if with excitement, and the eyes were bright. Her hair was brilliant and shining, but her dress was sober. A neat grey uniform-like dress, with impeccable white collar and cuffs.
She hurried over the thick carpet of the public rooms to the writing-room, and there was no one in the dignified outer room with its couches and magazines and writing-tables. In the inner a man was glancing idly at an English periodical, turning over the pages with his slim brown hands and glancing every now and again at the watch on his wrist. He sprang up from a French Empire couch covered in striped satin as Valentine appeared in the doorway, and once more she received the little bow she had received last night.
“You are punctual,
Fraulein,”
he said. The smile he gave her was more concerned with his eyes than
his
mouth, but it had the effect of making her heart turn right over
...
something that had never happened to her before.
“You will sit here,” he said, patting the couch. He sounded boyish and pleased, and even faintly eager. “It is not very comfortable, but then these antiques pieces never are, are they
?
In my flat in Vienna I have gone
in for comfort and this sort of thing is severely banned.”
“Herr Baron
...” she b
egan.
“Make it Alex,” he said. “It is much less formal.” She turned to look at him, biting her lip.
“It is not my custom to deceive,” she said. “I
—
I know I shouldn’t be here, but you insisted
...”
“I always insist when I want something,” he told her, sitting a little sideways so that he could regard her fully, and smiling that heart-shaking smile of his. There was also a glint of wickedness in it, she thought. “Women never have the courage to insist
... at any rate, not at first, until they are quite, quite sure that it is what they want! ... But I know what I want immediately, and so it is all quite uncomplicated.”
“And because you want something ... You expect other people to
—
to help you to what you want
?
”
“Men are not always pliable, but women have a habit of falling in with one’s wishes.”
“All
women?” she asked, feeling slightly repelled.
He smiled in a rather more lazy fashion, his eyes glinting at her with amusement.
“It would be a little sweeping if I admitted as much as that. But the important thing is tha
t
you
are here! You didn’t disappoint me, and I hoped so much that you wouldn’t.”
“I can’t think why,” she answered, and he looked at her in such a way that her heart very nearly stopped. All in a moment his face was grave, his eyes dark and significant, his mouth set and quiet.
“Can’t you?” he asked, after a moment, and the lovely colour seeped into her face, and she wondered whether she was imagining things. “Tell me about yourself, Valentine,” he ordered quietly.
She hesitated for a few seconds only, and then she began. She told him things she had not yet told to Giles Haversham.
“My father was Sir Walter Pelham-Brown, and I was his only daughter. We had a lot of money
—
or I thought we had!
—
when I was young, and because my mother died when I was small we did everything together. We travelled about all over the place, and lived in the best hotels, and although I never went to school I had a governess, and I had a year at a Swiss finishing school when I was seventeen. Our headquarters was an old family house in London, and we also had a cottage in the country. It seemed to me that we had everything
...
Until I came home from Switzerland, and my father told me bluntly that he was completely broke. There was nothing left
...
everything that was mortgageable had been mortgaged long ago, and now it was just a matter of facing up to the creditors.”
She paused, swallowed, and von Felden said quietly: “Go
on!”
“One or two of them would have been helpful
—
patient
—
but my father had lived beyond his means for too long, and he couldn’t face the thought of a cheeseparing existence. Once the wells ran dry even his will to live ran out, and on the night before our London house ceased to be ours any longer he
—
committed suicide! Nothing horrible or spectacular
...
Just an overdose of sleeping tablets!”
“And then you were left alone?” von Felden said, as she put two shaking hands up to her face and kept them there.
“Yes.” For an instant the hands were lowered, and the travesty of a smile showed in her eyes. “I hadn’t even an aunt
...
And most people have an aunt, haven’t they
?
Or an uncle. Sometimes masses of other relatives besides. But my father was an only child, and so was my mother. I was an only child.”