“Although I’m not entitled to one, I do most earnestly wish that yours will come true,” he told her, his dark eyes caressing her.
Rose for an instant had a faintly wistful air about her.
“It was quite a simple wish,” she said. “It could come true.”
But she didn’t add that she hardly expected it to do so.
Camillo took her to lunch at one of Rome’s most exclusive restaurants, introduced her to some very smart young members of Roman Society, and begged permission to take her and Mrs. Wilson-Plunkett the opera. But sticking to her resolution to rest for a while, Mrs. Wilson-Plunkett declined the invitation for herself, while insisting that Rose would be delighted. And Rose wore a white lace dress that had been specially designed for her in London, and spent a somewhat unreal evening in an atmosphere of other far more splendid dresses and glittering displays of jewellery, and was afterwards entertained to supper in a very up-to-date night club, and driven home through the soft warmth of the Roman night with the feeling that she ought to be grateful for such an attentive escort.
There was another night when Mrs. Wilson-Plunkett, feeling more refreshed, accepted an invitation for herself as well as Rose to dine at Prince Paul de Lippi’s villa, and on that occasion Rose wore drifting leaf-green chiffon, and Mrs. Wilson-Plunkett looked magnificent in black velvet and diamonds. The villa was situated on the heights above the town, was filled with costly treasures of period furniture, and some priceless collections of china and glass—for the prince, a wealthy man, was well known as a collector, and all sorts of objets d’art appealed to him—and surrounded by a garden that was like a garden in a fairy tale. There were slender pencil-like cypress trees, etched like black silhouettes against the starry night sky, terraces of silvery olives, paved walks bordered by exotic shrubs, and exquisite statuary. Rose was enchanted by it, and the host was delightful. His nephew paid her such exaggerated compliments that they frequently embarrassed her, but Prince Paul was more old-world in his attentiveness, very gentle and full of undeniable charm.
She was not surprised, when she learned from Mrs.
Wilson-Plunkett that he was a widower, to learn also that he was very much sought after by mothers with marriageable daughters and by ambitious widows and ladies who could not rightly describe themselves as widows. In fact, both he and his nephew were immensely popular, and were seldom allowed a dull moment whenever they returned to Rome.
“We simply must return the courtesy and invite them both to dine with us,” Mrs. Wilson-Plunkett said after the night at the villa.
And that was how it came about that, less than a fortnight after her arrival in Rome, Rose found herself dancing one evening in the cleared space in the magnificent dining-room of the hotel where they were staying, being expertly piloted by Camillo, while his uncle and Mrs. Wilson-Plunkett sat at a flower-decked table on the fringe of the floor and watched them moving very harmoniously together.
Camillo looked down at Rose’s russet-hued head with unmistakable admiration in his handsome dark eyes, and the skirts of her white lace dress floated out behind her. Other eyes watched them, apart from the two pairs that had a right to be interested in their movements, and one pair of hitherto rather bored masculine grey ones developed a sudden, rather startled look of amazement in them as the lovely girl and the striking young man passed within a few feet. His companion, an exotic-looking woman of somewhat uncertain years, magnificently dressed, arched her brows for an explanation as he followed the progress of the pair.
“Is it that you know that young woman with the red hair, or are you perhaps acquainted with Prince Paul de Lippi’s nephew?”
Although she spoke English beautifully, she had an unmistakable soft Italian accent, and there was a quality of silken smoothness in her voice as she put the question. There was an expression on her face as she watched the Englishman who was sharing her table that was rather reminiscent of a cat watching a bowl of cream it had earmarked for its own consumption.
Sir Laurence Melville’s frown grew.
“And who is Prince Paul de Lippi?”
“Oh, a very charming man, a very wealthy man — that is him over at that table on the other side of the floor, with the very old lady with the dyed curls.”
Sir Laurence looked and recognized Mrs. Wilson-Plunkett.
“What is wrong?” his companion asked, still more softly. “You look as if you are quite annoyed!”
“I am,” Sir Laurence returned rather shortly, and crushed out his cigarette in the ash-tray.
It was at that moment that Rose, listening to Camillo telling her that although her eyes were almost green they reminded him, for some reason, of violets hidden in a bed of fern, moved her head a little restlessly, and looking deliberately away from the dark eyes above her encountered those of the man she had looked upon for the last five years as her guardian. She was so surprised that she instantly muffed her footsteps, Camillo found himself treading on one of her dainty silver sandals, apologized profusely, and then came to a standstill as he saw that she was scarcely attending.
“Is anything wrong?” he asked as he saw her eyes were wide and that she was staring as if hypnotized over his shoulder.
“No—no . . .” she answered, told herself that it must be the effect of the single glass of champagne she had drunk at dinner, and that she was imagining things; and then, without quite realizing what she was doing, looked in an entirely opposite direction.
Camillo swung her once more into the sensuous rhythm of the tango the orchestra was playing, holding her very closely because for a few moments it had seemed to him that she had ceased to be aware of him altogether. He guided her once more partly round the glistening floor, and then when the music suddenly came to an end and everyone clapped with Latin enthusiasm, led her back to their table, and Rose sank down in her place with the feeling that she simply dared not look again into the corner of the room where a man who looked like Sir Laurence was seated.
For it simply could not be Sir Laurence, sharing a table with a dark-haired tempestuous-looking Italian beauty who had actually had a hand resting caressingly on his arm!
“Bravo!” the prince exclaimed, diverting her for a moment. “You dance in a way that is a delight to watch, signorina, and if I were a little more skilled in these modern dances I would beg you to accept me as a partner. But as it is, I think you had better stick to Camillo,” smiling at her.
Rose was only vaguely aware of how the rest of the evening passed, but she knew that she danced several more dances with Camillo, and that each time they drew near that end of the room where she was certain eyes still watched her, she rigidly refrained from looking where every instinct urged her to look. She grew mildly footsore, and rather tired, and the great room seemed to her to become oppressively warm, and at last Camillo whisked her out into the coolness of a huge glassed-in veranda. He placed her in a comfortable basket chair beside an open section of the glass, and then suggested fetching her something reviving to drink. As she accepted gratefully and smiled up to him, he lightly touched a loosened tendril of her hair, smiled back with that strong suspicion of an actual caress in his eyes,
and then left her alone for the first time that evening.
And she was so grateful to be alone that she could almost have sighed with relief. It was one thing, she decided, as she lay back limply in the chair and felt the cool air fan her face, to be admired openly and treated like something rare and exotic—the spray of pure white orchids, for instance, attached to the front of her off-the-shoulder gown, which had arrived in cellophane for her that afternoon, with Camillo’s
card enclosed—for a short time. But for any length of time it became a little exhausting, especially as she was not yet accustomed to masculine admiration— certainly not masculine admiration backed by Italian ardour.
She liked Camillo immensely, and she wondered whether he treated all his girlfriends to such an excess of devotion in the first few weeks after making their acquaintance,
but she felt a little unable to cope with it tonight. And she wanted to think about the strange coincidence of that pair of eyes in the dining-room . . .
She had felt them following her progress before ever she suddenly turned her head and met their full regard, and in spite of surprise she had been certain immediately that she was looking into the eyes of Sir Laurence.
But lighting effects, warm air—that single glass of champagne—could have something to do with creating an illusion. Sir Laurence, even if he was in Rome, would not surely be consoling himself after six months with an obvious beauty like that brillianteyed Italian woman who had so possessively grasped at the sleeve of his dinner-jacket?
And then slow, rather measured, footsteps sounded behind her, and she turned. A voice—very dry and masculine and measured also, and cold like the drip of ice—addressed her:
“So nowadays you don’t recognize me when we meet, Rose? Such a lot of water has flowed underneath the bridge since that last night at Enderby that you prefer to forget about me altogether!”
CHAPTER VII
ROSE deserted her chair so swiftly and with such a startled movement that to an onlooker complete surprise would have been immediately deduced from her action. But it would have been a mistaken deduction, for although the sound of that well-remembered voice falling so suddenly on her ears did
actually take her so much aback that she even turned a little white, she knew that she had been subconsciously waiting for it for very nearly a full hour. Ever since she had danced a tango with Camillo de Lippi.
“Perhaps,” Sir Laurence suggested, his lips thin and curving a little bleakly—a kind of wintry half-smile—in the discreetly veiled light in the veranda, “you really did fail to recognize me when you and your Italian admirer passed close to my table in the dining-room? In which case six months must have altered me a good deal— just as they have most decidedly altered you!” Rose put both hands up to her throat and clutched instinctively, with embarrassed fingers, at the single row of pearls that encircled it.
“I couldn’t believe that it—that it was you,” she said after striving to find a voice.
“Because I really have altered?”
“No; of course not,” the words coming more rapidly. But in the dim light, rendered a little unnatural by the brilliance of the stars that seemed to be hanging close above the earth outside, he actually did strike her as being thinner, with a sharper line to his features, and one or two rather more noticeable silvery threads in his crisp brown hair at the temples. “But I wasn’t expecting to—to see you so suddenly . . . And you were not alone . . .”
“Neither were you,” he murmured. “And I wasn’t expecting to see you at all—with or without an escort!”
“Signor de Lippi is a friend of Mrs. Wilson-Plunkett.”
“And you have attached yourself to that good lady in the capacity of a long-lost daughter, or something of the sort?”
“I am her—her companion. She employs me.”
“The sort of employment a good many young women of your age would like to obtain, I feel sure,” he remarked, his eyes resting cynically on the pale perfection of her gown, and the spray of white orchids attached like butterflies’ wings to the creamy warmth of one of her bare shoulders. “How much do you receive a week for services that have already struck me as quite unusually light?”
Rose moistened lips that had gone suddenly absolutely dry—not so much as a result of nervousness as shock, because he was suddenly standing there before her in the flesh, after she had dreamed about him and thought about him so often in the six months during which she had had no idea at all where he was, or what he was doing, but because it was plain he was still actively hostile towards her. His eyes looked bleak and hard and cold—not even with that slight softening he had introduced into them that last night at Enderby, when he had said that they must part friends. And trying to think up something to say to him to explain away her deceptive appearance of affluence—for she was no more than a companion really, and she did try to do everything in her power to merit the definitely quixotic generosity of a possibly whimsical old woman—her own eyes grew large and dark and abashed, and if anything her face grew paler with a sudden keen anxiety to convince him of her natural integrity.
“I had to do something,” she said quickly, “and Mrs. Wilson-Plunkett wanted me to live with her—” “Sit down,” he interrupted rather harshly, “and never mind Mrs. Wilson-Plunkett just now. Your Adonis friend will be returning very soon, I expect, with whatever refreshment he has gone to fetch for you, and I had to let you know that I had seen you. Why haven’t you drawn your allowance during the last six months?”
“I had never any intention of drawing it,” she replied, glad to sink down once again into the basket-chair she had so recently vacated, because for some reason her limbs were trembling a little, and the suddenness of the meeting had caused her heart to pound rather heavily. “That is to say, I had never any intention of drawing it after—”
“After I spoke to you in a way you were quick to resent?”
“No”—flushing rather painfully—“after I left Gerhardt. I planned to earn my own living once I left school.”
“And that’s what you’re doing now?”
“I—yes. I haven’t any need to draw any sort of an allowance.”
“But what if there hadn’t been any Mrs. Wilson-Plunkett? Would you have thrown yourself on the mercy of your Paris friends?”
“I might.”
“Rather than continue to look upon me as a guardian with a right to support you?”
“You never had any right to support me—I mean, I never had any right to expect you to support me ...”
A shadow approached them from the far end of the veranda, and when it drew nearer Rose saw that it was the elegant Italian woman of uncertain years. As she drew really close the younger girl could make out the dark exclusiveness of her dress, scattered all over with sequins, so that she shone like a myriad fireflies in the gloom. And against the shadowy darkness her skin looked matt and white as milk, her hair as dark as ebony, her mouth a scarlet lacquered flower. She smiled, and her teeth were small and perfect, her eyes disturbingly lustrous.
“I came in search of you, Lance,” she said, slipping a hand inside his arm, “because it seemed that you were a long time away. Is this the little red-head who is your ward?”
Rose was conscious of a shiver of distaste passing through her. So he had discussed her with this woman who had a Mona-Lisa-ish smile, and whose voice was drawling and a trifle mocking!
Sir Laurence made the necessary introduction formally.
“Rose, this is Signora Bardoli. I have already explained to her our relationship. Lola—Rose Hereward!”
“I am delighted to know you, little English Rose,” Lola Bardoli said very softly, but Rose was quite sure she mocked as she held out a be-ringed hand.
“Although I would not say that you-are very typically English. With that hair, those eyes, and that skin”— the lustrous eyes flickering over them in turn—“you are just that little bit too exotic! Like a rare plant!” Rose said nothing, and Sir Laurence’s brows set in a quite noticeable frown.
“Rose,” he said quickly, “will you tell Mrs. Wilson-Plunkett that I would be glad if she would see me tomorrow about twelve o’clock? And tell her also that if she will not lunch with me I shall expect you to do so!”
Rose stammered something about being willing to convey the message, and then added rather foolishly: “I suppose, then, that you are—that you are staying in Rome? We had—we had no idea . . .” Signora Bardoli laughed softly.
“A guardian and a ward who know nothing about each other’s movements! Oh, Lance,” looking up at him with a good deal of amusement in her eyes, “where is your sense of responsibility? Miss Hereward does strike me as being a little too emancipated to need a guardian—one who is not any older than you are, anyway! —but you should keep an eye on her, you know.”
To Rose�
��s relief, they were joined at that moment by Camillo, full of apologies for having taken some time in obtaining her drink, and more introductions took place. Rose thought that Sir Laurence looked with even greater bleakness in his eyes at the young and beautifully mannered Italian than had been noticeable in the grey depths when he looked at her, and she introduced him simply as Sir Laurence Melville, and not as anyone who had a right to interfere with any part of her life.
When he and the signora had left the veranda, Camillo looked after them with a faint, casual smile in his eyes.
“Very English!” he commented, plainly referring to Sir Laurence. “I have a feeling that he did not quite take to me, somehow. And the Signora Bardoli is not his type. But that,” looking down at Rose in his
caressing fashion, “is his affair, isn’t it?”
When Mrs. Wilson-Plunkett received Sir Laurence’s message she exclaimed impatiently:
“Bother the man for turning up just now! What on earth brings him to Rome? Tell him I’m not at my best these days, Rose, and that I have to rest a good deal. But if you have to lunch with him alone, don’t let him bully you! You have told me he isn’t your legal guardian, and he has forgotten all about you for six months, so he can go on forgetting about you.”
“But he did make financial arrangements for me,” Rose felt forced to defend Sir Laurence. “I would have been quite secure, even if you hadn’t been so terribly kind.”
“Rubbish, child!” the old lady exclaimed, recalling the dazed manner in which Rose had arrived at her London flat when she admitted that she had all but run away from Enderby after the disastrous breakdown to Sir Laurence’s marriage. “You know very well you wouldn’t have touched his money, and there is more to being a guardian than just providing a roof over your head. And if Sir Laurence had had any sense in the beginning he would never have got himself mixed up with Heather Willoughby, and there would never have been any jilting at the altar, or any necessity for him to disappear as he did—in a typically selfish, masculine fashion! —and forget every obligation he had undertaken.”
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