Your most loving, and hopeful Aunt Pat.’
Tears smarted in Lauri’s eyes when she came to the end of the letter. Poor Aunt Pat, having to put up with all that pain, and yet not complaining. Lauri read again the part in which her aunt said that Maxim had written to her. It was a thoughtful gesture, and made Lauri feel ashamed of the way she had behaved when he had said he understood her anxiety.
Venetia had also called him kind, and had seemed almost shocked that Lauri should consider him otherwise.
Lauri smiled wryly and wondered what Venetia and her aunt would say of the demon who conducted the rehearsals at the Fenice. She and the rest of the company had just returned from the theatre, where they had been dancing since early that morning, and Lauri had sought the privacy of the walled garden in order to read her letter.
She sighed as she folded it and put it in the pocket of her jacket. The backs of her legs ached and her toes felt a. trifle sore, but the water-tinged breeze through the willows was comforting, and she leaned back in the garden seat and tried to relax. The water whispered beyond the old grey walls, and the bells of a nearby church made deep bronze music.
Had Maxim guessed that her toes felt sore? She had noticed his frown when she had made a mess of that series of lifts with Michael, before the final pose, sitting on his knee. It was difficult but so beautiful when performed correctly ... oh lord, it wouldn’t do for anything to go wrong with her toes.
Vines rustled as the sun died and dusk began to creep into the walled garden. She ought to be going in, but it was so peaceful here, a retreat from the constant talk about the new ballet season and the part she was to play in it. Everyone was amazingly helpful and encouraging, but at the back of the general kindness Lauri detected shades of doubt.
‘Don’t worry, everything will be fine,’ they said to her, but dancers have speaking eyes, and Lauri knew that they were as worried as she was.
At rehearsal that afternoon she had feltthe tension in the air when she had done those lifts so clumsily with Michael. Now added to her sore toes was the ache of disappointment that Aunt Pat would not be coming to Venice...
Again the vines rustled, a bird twittered, and her spine stiffened as she heard footfalls. They were unhurried on the path leading to her retreat, and then a lean hand parted the veiling willow leaves and Lauri was discovered by Maxim.
He stood looking down at her, and the dusk merged with his eyes and shadowed their expression. ‘I saw a letter awaiting you on the hall table,’ he said. ‘I guessed it was from your aunt—is she all right?’
‘Her arthritis is very bad.’ Lauri couldn’t keep the concern out of her voice; nor the keen disappointment which the letter had brought her. ‘She won’t be able to be with me when the season opens.’
‘I am sorry, I realize how much you were looking forward to her support.’ He drew in his breath rather sharply. ‘Now, of course, you feel that you must face everything on your own. Le Sacre—the virgin chosen for the sacrifice.’
‘If you mean to be humorous,’ she said shakily, ‘I’m afraid I am not in a laughing mood.’
‘No,’ he agreed, ‘something has been wrong with you all day.’
‘I’m tired.’ She jumped to her feet in sudden alarm. ‘It’s the nervous tension—’
‘Come with me.’ He caught hold of her hand and held it firmly in his. ‘I want to have a look at those feet of yours.’
‘M-my feet are all right.’ She held back from him, but his fingers were like steel, hers like mere pins. She was drawn by him through the garden to his tower, and propelled up the spiral staircase ahead of him. The lamps were cosily alight in his tower room, and a manservant waylaying the table.
For two, Lauri saw.
Maxim gestured at the sofa and she sat down, knowing it was useless to fight him, ‘Off with your shoes and stockings,’ he said. ‘Come, there is no need for false modesty—I have seen legs before.’
Cheeks pink, eyes stormy, she turned aside from him and removed her fiat-heeled shoes and seamless nylons. She felt like a child as with calm impersonality he took first her right foot in his hand, then her left one, and examined her toes. His fingers were lean and hard against her Achilles tendon, the most vulnerable part of a dancer’s foot, and at last he glanced up at her.
‘I suppose you would have gone on dancing with sore toes until you were unfit to dance at all.’ he said curtly. ‘The slippers you wear are not hand-made, I take it?’
She shook her head. ‘Ballet slippers wear out so quickly, and the ready-made sort are less expensive.’
‘They are dearer in the long run, if a dancer has sensitive feet.’ He turned to his manservant and said something in Italian. The man went out of the room, and returned with a jar of salve. Maxim handed it to Lauri and told her to rub some of it into her feet. ‘Yes, right now,’ he added, ‘and before you go to bed. Tomorrow I will take you to be fitted for new slippers, and you will promise me never to wear any other sort. Your feet are valuable to you, and vulnerable because they are still such young feet.’
‘It’s kind of you to worry about my feet.’ She stressed the last two words as she applied the cool salve to her sore toes.
‘You don’t really think I am being kind.’ She heard a glass stopper clink as he withdrew it from a decanter. ‘You think I am safeguarding an investment.’
‘Aren’t you, signor?’ She flexed her toes and had to admit to herself that they felt easier.
‘Please rest my investment on this.’ He slid a hassock towards her feet, and there was a smile of irony in his dark eyes as he handed her a glass of sherry. ‘I happen to know that Michael Lonza is dining out tonight with some people who patronize the arts, so you are free to have dinner here with me.’
She glanced at the table and saw the candles in Venetian glass holders, and the flowers. ‘I—I thought you were expecting someone special,’ she said confusedly. ‘I’m still in my everyday clothes—’
‘Don’t let that worry you.’ His eyes flicked the bandeau that held back her hair, her face that was innocent of powder, and finally her small bare feet on the hassock. He was himself wearing a black velvet smoking jacket over immaculate grey trousers.
‘Drink your sherry and relax,’ he said lazily. ‘Perhaps a little music will help.’
He went over to the radiogram and put on a record. The music of Swan Lake drifted to Lauri, bringing back vividly to her mind her first encounter with Maxim di Corte. She had thought him the most intimidating man she had ever seen, with his proud Venetian face, his penetrating eyes, and infrequent smile.
She looked at him over the rim of her sherry glass and wondered if he was reading her mind. ‘You took on quite a task, signor, when you decided to turn, a duckling into a swan,’ she smiled diffidently.
‘I enjoy a challenge,’ he leaned against the baluster of the small spiral staircase that led up to his book gallery, but if you had danced like a pudding I should still have taken you as a pupil.’
‘Because I look a little like Travilla.’ Lauri studied the portrait and saw the air of defencelessness about Travilla, the blend of poetry and wistful passion about her features, the brown eyes with motes of light in them. TPs strange,’ Lauri murmured, like looking into a pool and seeing one’s reflection a little out of focus.’
‘When you wear her costume to dance in Giselle, the audience at the Fenice will think they are seeing a ghost.’
Lauri cast a wide-eyed glance at Maxim. He inclined his head and smiled quietly. ‘Yes, the costume she wears in the portrait. Even the headdress of leaves and flowers. They will help you, eh, to feel a little less alone?’
He swung away from her when he said that; and informed his manservant that he could bring in their first dish. Lauri slipped into her shoes and out of her jacket and went into the bathroom to wash her hands before joining Maxim at the table. He had lit the candles and turned out the lamps. The smell of the flowers seemed to grow stronger; dark crimson, hothouse roses, as sensuous as their
perfume.
‘What lovely flowers.’ Lauri wondered again if he had been expecting someone special—Venetia perhaps—who had been unable at the last moment to come and dine with him. Lauri studied him through the screen of her lashes and glimpsed a look of tension about his lips; a smouldering in his eyes as he cast a glance at the roses she had just admired. Was he thinking that they were wasted on her?
‘Roses are like women,’ he said. ‘They change with the hours, and are lovelier by candlelight than in the glare of sunshine.’
He poured their wine into the Venetian goblets Lauri remembered from that other unexpected meal with him in his tower. She glanced round the circular room with its gleam of old polished wood, its books, and Travilla’s woodland eyes upon them. Everything about the room was designed for repose, yet Lauri was aware of a play of tension, as definite as the flutter of the candle flames between herself and Maxim.
Delectable pieces of fish in a wine sauce were placed in front of her. ‘To the recovery of your aunt’s good health.’ Maxim raised his wine glass. ‘I am sure she will be with you in spirit if not in actuality, when you dance next week at the Fenice.’
Lauri’s heart skipped a beat. ‘Next week?’ she echoed, and took a quick gulp of wine for courage.
‘Will it be so bad for you, because your aunt will not be coming to Venice?’ Maxim captured her eyes across the roses and the candle flames. ‘You will have Lonza for a partner, and I shall be standing by, I shall be in the wings all the time.’
‘Like my Svengali,’ she smiled shakily.
‘No,’ he spoke with sudden harshness. ‘I have never beguiled you into doing anything. I have only tried to bring out what is already in you. You foolish child, don’t you understand yet?’
‘I understood a long time ago,’ she said, slightly unnerved by his sudden anger.
‘What do you mean?’ He stared across at her. ‘What do you understand?’
‘That you have always wanted to give to ballet-lovers another Travilla.’ Lauri glanced down at her plate. ‘I hope, signor, that I live up to your hopes of me.’
He sat silent, and in the end she looked at him. He was holding his wine glass in his long fingers, and the strangest smile was playing around his lips.
‘You will make me a promise,’ he said, ‘always to stay as unworldly as you are now.’
‘It seems a fairly easy promise to make.’ She smiled and touched a fallen rose petal with her fingertip. ‘The duckling will not turn easily into a swan, signor.’
‘Talking of swans,’ that slow smile of his grew into a flash of warmth, ‘Lorenzo is going to give us one to eat.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ Lauri gasped. ‘How awful!’
‘You had better not say that to Lorenzo,’ Maxim laughed. ‘He is quite proud of the bird, which is all white with a strawberry beak. He promises that it will be delectable.’
‘I shan’t eat a bite,’ said Lauri, and she gave Lorenzo a most dubious look when he brought in the roast, with potatoes and other vegetables baked in the gravy.
Maxim sat laughing as though at a secret joke, then he said something to his manservant in Italian. Lorenzo beamed at Lauri as he set her plate in front of her, then he hurried away, and returned with a swan made of vanilla and strawberry ice-cream, resting on a lake of grape jelly.
‘Lorenzo made it especially for you,’ Maxim said.
‘For me?’ Lauri looked at him, then at Lorenzo, and finally at the dark crimson roses. She seemed for a moment to drown in their scent, then she came back to reality with a little gasp. ‘It’s a lovely swan, Lorenzo,’ she smiled. ‘It seems such a pity to eat it.’
‘It would be a greater pity to let it melt away,’ said Maxim. ‘You can’t hold on to a rainbow, a bar of music, or an ice-cream swan, my child. As you grow older you will learn to love and let go.’
She met his eyes as Lorenzo went discreetly from the room, carrying the swan back to the fridge for another quarter of an hour. ‘You can do that, signor?’ Lauri asked. ‘Love—and let go?’
‘If I have to,’ he said, with a hint of gravity. ‘You cannot snatch at happiness, for it is like trying to take hold of water, or a ray of sunlight. It just slips through your fingers ... now let us eat our veal before it gets cold.’
Lauri bent her head to her plate and ate obediently. Although she could no longer see Maxim’s eyes, their expression of a moment ago remained with her. I can love, and let go, he had said. Did that mean that he knew Venetia might not be able to let go of her memories so she would be free to love again?
‘This veal is delicious—a little more wine, Laurina?’ Maxim smiled across at her enquiringly.
‘No, I still have half a glass, signor.’
‘Well, drink it up, it will do you good.’
‘Yes,’ she said, and again she obeyed him. Laurina, he had called her. Venetia’s name for her.
They shared the vanilla and strawberry swan, and afterwards they listened to a record of romantic piano sonatas. Then Maxim said it was time for her to go to bed, and he escorted her to the hall of the palazzo. As he opened the door, a draught touched Lauri and she shivered. It was like the ghostly brush of fingers, and she drew back involuntarily against Maxim.
‘What is the matter?’ His breath stirred her hair.
‘Oh,’ she gave a nervous little laugh, ‘I sometimes wonder if the palazzo is haunted.’
‘All old houses have their ghosts.’ He turned her towards him and studied her pale, triangular face in the shadowy light of the wall lamps. ‘How odd we human beings are, how superstitious, and vulnerable,’ he murmured. ‘A mouse stirs in the shadows and we think we hear a footfall. A draught whispers along a stone floor and we think it is the silken skirts of a medieval lady. I have heard these little sounds myself, child. They are part of this old palace on the water, and I am sure you know really that your young imagination plays tricks with you.’
‘Of course.’ She drew away from him until his fingers alone held her by the wrists. ‘Buona notte, signor.’
‘Buona notte, signorina.’ He carried her wrists to his lips and kissed each one. ‘You will not go to rehearsal tomorrow because I wish to have you fitted for new slippers. You have the salve for your, feet?’
‘In my pocket.’ She smiled a little, and thought it typical of him to kiss her wrists, and discuss her feet almost in the same breath—her precious dancing feet. ‘Thank you for the salve. My feet feel easier already.’
‘I am glad to hear it—now off with you to your bed.’ As she slipped through the hall door, she turned a moment to glance at him. He stood tall and dark at the foot of his tower, and it might have been a trick of the shadows that made him look so lonely.
CHAPTER TEN
THIS was the night. Behind the scenes there was a lot of bustling about, excitement and tension, men moving scenery, women hurrying by with glittering costumes.
Out front the rows of seats and boxes were filling up with people clad for a gala performance. The attendants were periwigged and wearing gold-embroidered uniforms, there was a rustle of silk, the glitter of gems, and that intangible feeling of magic in the air which ballet creates for all those who love the art.
Everyone knew that a fresh young ballerina was dancing Giselle in place of Lydia Andreya, and curiosity was added to the general excitement. The girl was English, and very young. She had never danced a major role in public before ... there was a rumour that she had been given the chance because she looked like Travilla di Corte.
‘The girl may look like her,’ said those who remembered Travilla, ‘but no one these days has quite the enchanted quality that she had.’
Backstage, Lauri knew with every nerve what everyone must be thinking and saying. White with nerves, she added the eyelines that made her dusky-gold eyes look larger than ever. The bare electric light bulbs round the mirror showed her every contour of her face and her long, slim neck. Tonight her neck would be bowed under the sword of acclaim ... or the sharp knife of
criticism.
She was afraid, and so alone, for Maxim had allotted her a small dressing-room right at the end of the passage, away from the bustle of the other dancers. ‘You will need to be tranquil before going on,’ he had said. ‘My other dancers are accustomed to first nights and they react to them as they would to a glass of wine. You are different.’
He had not elaborated on that remark, but Lauri had guessed what he meant. He could rely on his other dancers to the last pirouette ... when she went out on to the stage of the Fenice it would rest with the gods whether she danced brilliantly or badly.
She touched the tiny leaves and flowers of the headdress which Travilla had worn the last time she had danced in Giselle, and gave a little shiver as through the mirror she glimpsed the shrouded second act costume which a dresser would help her to put on. It looked ghostly in its white wrapper ... the dress of a ghost who must surely be haunting this theatre tonight.
At that moment the dressing-room door was tapped upon. ‘Come in,’ Lauri called out. The door opened and there was a burst of colour and perfume as a smiling boy brought in a big basket of bird-of-paradise flowers, and a bouquet of myrtle, small lilies, and half a dozen golden rosebuds.
‘How lovely!’ Lauri ran to smell them, to touch them, and read the cards that were attached. The basket of flowers was from the members of the corps de ballet, who wished her luck on this her most important night.
Quick tears came to her eyes, and blurred the words on the other card.
‘Lilies for innocence, golden rosebuds for youth, and myrtle—a token of the love we will dance for everyone tonight.’
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