He zipped up her windcheater for her, and removed the thick woollen scarf from his own neck and wrapped it round hers. He even removed his gloves and made her put them on over her own, for they were large enough to accommodate both her small fists and her inadequate mitts, and of much better quality than anything she
possessed.
“Better?” He sounded so anxious that she was a trifle amazed, and in her slightly bemused state after dropping off into that brief doze she didn’t quite know how to cope with it or his solicitude. “Is there any coffee left in that flask of yours
?
If not, there’s some in my own.” And he started to unstrap his canvas knapsack.
“No, no, I’m beautifully warm now, and I don’t need any coffee. I had a whole flask full!” She laid a hand on his arm to stop him, and suddenly the realisation that it was actually him, and that he was here with her in the pine wood
—
and there appeared to be no one else for miles!
—
affected her like an electric shock. She released his arm as impulsively as she had clutched it at. “But I
—I
don’t understand how you
—
why you’re here
?
...”
“I went back to the hotel to fetch you, and Willi said you had come up here. He thought you’d be having your lunch here, so I came straight on up!”
“You went back to the hotel
?
...”
“I didn’t know Lou was going to give you the day off, otherwise I’d have insisted you came with us. But as soon as I learned I determined you shouldn’t spend it all alone, and I started back to get you.”
“And what did Lou think of that
?
”
Her golden eyes peered at him inquiringly.
He looked suddenly disdainful, and the cold curl of his lip was as unfeeling as the frozen wastes around them.
“Does it matter?” he asked. “I’m not here to discuss what Lou thought or said, but to make sure you don’t catch a chill. You obviously aren’t capable of looking after yourself, and if I’d had the faintest idea what you intended to do ... this
morning..
.”
He
looked down at her, every suggestion of unfeelingness banished from his eyes, and in its place there was something that could have melted her bones, even in the bleak confines of the little wood, with a thin wind beginning to whine eerily through it, and the sun falling less goldenly on the open hillside.
Valentine knew that, as far as she was concerned, the situation was unfair, and she was still so far from being in possession of all her normal cautious faculties that that glance from his eyes set her trembling deep down inside her. Trembling and feeling as if she had been caught in a net.
“What would you have done
—
this morning
—
if you had known what I intended to do?” she counterquestioned faintly, keeping her eyelids lowered.
“I’ve told
you
...
Insist that you come along with us! The last I saw of you, you were standing on your balcony, and although I was still angry with you I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving you behind!” He captured the hands that wore his gloves. “Oh, Valentine,” he told her oddly
—
unsteadily, “I’ve been angry with you for days, and you’ve avoided me for days, but last night I was unspeakably detestable to you! I meant to be detestable!”
“You called me Cinderella,” she recalled in a voice so small it was utterly unlike any voice she had ever used before. “That wasn’t very detestable.”
“It was because you were alone, and you’ll never be a Cinderella. You could be the belle of the ball every time if you wanted to be, but you’re stupid and obstinate and so conscious of your present position that you prefer to hold yourself
aloof
...
and behave like Cinderella
!
”
“I have a job to do,” she told him, staring so hard at the pocket of his windcheater that it seemed to acquire for her an irresistible magnetism, and she yearned to lean forward and just touch it with her cheek. And then the thought of what she was contemplating startled her so much that she drew back sharply and averted her face. “I have no time to aspire to be the belle of any occasion, even if I wanted to be anything of the sort. And I can assure you I don’t! And I’m not a holidaymaker
...
Or whatever you people who drift about Europe call yourselves!”
“Lotus-eaters,” he replied, with a wry twist to his mouth. “That’s what you think
I
am, don’t you
?
”
“I don’t think about you at
all!
...
I don’t think
...”
And then, with her heart beating thickly, heavily, she had to look round at him again, and her breath caught. He was gazing at her as if he knew this was utterly untrue, and she knew it, too.
“Not even last night?” he said. “After you saw me kiss Lou in the veranda, and rushed away up to your room as if you were trying to escape from something that pursued you? Weren’t you thinking about me at the very moment that I knocked on the door
?
”
She swallowed and looked down at his gloves. She removed them deliberately and handed them back to him.
“I don’t want these.
I...”
He caught hold of her chin and tilted her face so that he could look into her eyes.
“How badly were you hating me, Valentine, when you heard that knock on the door
?
”
Truth came to her rescue, and prevented her saying something foolish and undignified. Instead, with her golden eyes gazing into his appealingly, she admitted:
“I wasn’t hating you
!
...
Myself, perhaps!”
“Oh,
Liebling!
” he said, very gently, and touched each of the eyes with a reverent fingertip. “And there was no need to do that, for it was another part of the punishment. I
knew
you were there, and I was consumed with a desire to make you feel something at least. If I could have been absolutely certain that it would hurt you ... As I think it did!”
She made no response, but her eyes spoke for her.
“I would have spared you. But you have walked past me so many times in the past few days, ignored
me
...
And Haversham you encouraged, sat out with him in the veranda, let him follow like a favoured dog at your heels when you were free.” His hands cupped her face, the glowing coldness of her cheeks, and in spite of the steady lowering of the temperature they were warm and vital, and trembling a little. “But if I’d thought that he’d ever done
this
to you
...”
His hard, firm masculine mouth closed over hers, and she gasped as she sank against his windcheater and knew that this was what she had been craving for for weeks
...
Or was it merely a couple of weeks since he arrived at the hotel in a horse-drawn sleigh
?
She had watched him arrive, and watched him ever since ... secretly. She had envied Lou without realising it because he was likely to become her property, and last night, when she saw him kiss Lou, she had suffered a mixture of jealousy and anguish that had both amazed and disturbed her.
But now Lou was somewhere on the far side of the valley, and it didn’t greatly matter
where
...
It didn’t matter that she existed at all! All that mattered was the demanding sweetness of the mouth that devoured her own, the hard thudding of the heart against her own, the determined desperation of the arms that held her. Desperation that set alight the same feeling in herself!
And, aware of
—
and perhaps astounded
—
by the completeness of her response, Alex’s bounding pulses raced faster than ever, and his eyes were full of triumph as he lifted his head at last and looked down at her. She was clinging to him dazedly, her golden eyes bewildered.
“Little redhead,” he whispered, “my lovely little redhead! Oh, Valentine, I adore you, and now I know you love me, too! Nothing else matters, my sweet, but our knowledge that we love one another, and it was why I came up here to-day ... to find you! I had to find you, and be alone with you, and Willi guessed as much. He’s a romantic
—
an incurable romantic
...
”
“Willi
?
” she repeated stupidly.
“He was the one who saw you go.” His white teeth dazzled her with their brilliance as he betrayed amusement in a smile. “He lives always in the past these days, but if he were twenty years younger he’d be chasing after you, too.”
“W-would he?” But she put up a hand and held him a little away from her. “You mean the Count
?
”
“That’s right, my heart. One of my oldest friends, and therefore the one most capable of reading my mind.”
“I see,” she said, the floods receding, the storm abating, the cold light of reality breaking all over her. She was so appalled by the strength of her own weakness that it made her voice shake. “And does he also know about Lou? Does he perfectly understand what your plans
are for her?”
“Of course, darling.” But he tried to draw her close to him again, and kiss her with anguished sympathy. “Valentine, if you really were Cinderella, and I were a prince with a kingdom to offer you, it would be yours at this very minute, and all our problems would be solved. But I’m a man who lives largely by his wits
—
oh, not entirely, for I have a certain amount of money!
—
and you have suffered more than most young women of your age. It’s not your fault that you have to work for someone like Lou, but if only the circumstances were different
...
If only I could offer you a future that would be a
secure
future for both of
us!
...
”
“If only I were Lou, and
not
Valentine, there would be no complications, is that what you mean?” she asked, and struggled to get out of his arms.
“There is only one Valentine,” he told her sharply. “There will always be only one Valentine!”
But having remembered in time the woman who paid her her salary Valentine fought to get away from him. She had never been so ashamed in her life
—
or so sickened because she had been weak
—
and the memory of her weakness lent strength to her struggles. If she didn’t get away she might be weak again, and already she could see the flush rising up in his face, and the glitter of annoyance in his dark eyes because these stolen moments were to be ruined by her attack of conscience. His fingers hurt her as he gripped her strongly, and his arms were brutal as he crushed her once more up against him.
“Valentine,” he ordered, “don’t be ridiculous! I love you, and you love me, and that’s all that matters!
Valentine!
...”
But she twisted all ways to avoid him, and he knew he was hurting her soft flesh. Nevertheless, his mouth clamped down on hers again, and this time he forced her lips apart and kissed her until the pine tops swayed above her, and the whole world rocked round her. She was forced once more to cling to him, and they stood swaying dizzily on the edge of a drop that was like a plunge into infinity, and the fire of a desperation that was coursing through his veins lighted such a responsive one in hers that when at last they had to tear their lips apart in order to draw breath her golden eyes were as black and strained as his own, and they neither of them had any noticeable tan at all.
He was rather white around the mouth.
“Oh, Valentine,” he breathed, “how could you be so stupid
?
How could you think we could ignore
this
?
”
But, to his utter stupefaction, she raced away from him through the pine wood, through the denseness of the little twilit place, and
—
heedless of the drifts beside the track, and the unseen rocks and tree-roots
—
went sprawling full-length in the very middle of the path as he recovered himself sufficiently to race after her. In a panic, as she lifted herself and saw him standing above her, she made an unwary movement and rolled down a slope and into a little hollow, and she was lying very still when he threw himself down on his knees beside her.
“Are you hurt?
Liebling,
you’re not hurt, are you?” he implored. His voice was shaking, his face white and stricken, and he lifted her gently into his arms.
She shook her head. Her cap had fallen off, her curls were brilliant against the snow, but her face was paler
and more bewildered than ever.
“No. No, I’m perfectly all right.”
He cradled her tenderly as if she were a baby, stroking the tousled hair, and bringing colour back to her cheeks, with the warmth of his fingers. And then she put back her head and looked upwards into his eyes. They had the same strange, intense darkness of a few minutes ago
—
an all-enveloping darkness
—
and behind it were several flickering fires. For although she had shocked him by running away
—
shocked him still more when she fell
—
his need of her was still paramount.