“I must thank you for fulfilling your part of the contract. I enclose my side of it as arranged.
Dart Huron,”
Aria stared at the letter and slowly sat down in the chair, reading the words over and over again.
Almost automatically she opened the cheque.
It was, as she had expected, for three thousand pounds and with a sudden surge of pride and resentment she made a gesture as if to tear it up.
It was at that moment that Nanny came into the room carrying a plate of eggs and bacon.
“A cheque!” she exclaimed with the familiarity of a trusted friend of the family. “That’s good news and I was expectin’ it to be another bill. Who’s it from, dearie?”
Without saying a word Ana handed her the pink form. Nanny took it from her, stared at it, her eyes widened in astonishment and though her lips parted, it seemed for a moment as if no sound would come from them.
“Three thousand pounds!” she exclaimed at last in an awed tone. “But what can it be for and why is it made out to you?”
“Tear it up,” Aria said wearily. “I cannot accept it.”
“It’s a present then?” Nanny enquired. “From Mr. Dart Huron? Why should he be givin’ you a present like that?”
The sudden sharp suspicion in her eyes and tone made Aria shake her head and give her lips a faint twist, a mocking reflection of a smile.
“It’s not for what you think, Nanny,” she said. “He is not interested in me – except so long as I served a useful purpose. He asked me to become engaged merely to save him from having to admit an engagement to another woman. If I did that, he was prepared to pay me three thousand pounds.”
“So that’s the explanation,” Nanny said. “As I said to Mr. Charles last night after you had gone up to bed, there was somethin’ wrong somewhere, I could see that as plain as in your face. I haven’t looked after you all these years, dearie, without I knew when you’re happy or unhappy.”
“I couldn’t talk about it last night,” Aria said. “I am sorry, because I knew you were wanting to hear all about it. It’s just that I couldn’t talk.”
“I understand. We all gets like that at times. Three thousand pounds! Think what it would do to this house. Think what it would mean to the farm.”
“Yes, I know,” Aria said, “and that’s why I agreed to his suggestion at the time. But I can’t take the money, I can’t, Nanny.”
She felt the tears suddenly welling into her eyes and there was a break in her voice as she spoke the last words.
Nanny gave a little sigh.
“I expect you knows best, dearie,” she said. “But t’would mean a great deal of difference to you and Charles.”
“Yes, I know,” Aria said. “Can’t you understand that is just why we can’t take it? It would be charity, or worse still, it would be gaining money by what are really false pretences. I have run out on him, or rather Charles made me leave, and so I am not entitled to be paid for something which is only half done, half finished.”
She walked across to the window as she spoke and stood looking out, hiding from Nanny the fact that the tears were running down her cheeks.
“Well, if that’s how you feel,” Nanny said, “there is nothing more to be said, is there? Tear it up, dearie. I’ve always said as how there was no money in the world that could heal a sore heart.”
“A sore heart!” Aria said. “Is that what I’m suffering from?”
She felt the depression that had hung over her all night weighing her down. Desperately she tried to thrust it aside, to whip her emotions into anger rather than despondency.
She hated him, she told herself. Hated him for writing as he had, for insulting her with his money. And yet in justice she had to admit that it was, from his point of view, a debt of honour that he must meet.
“Now come and eat your breakfast,” Nanny commanded. “I remember my old mother saying that things never seemed so bad after a meal and that’s true enough, so come along before your eggs get cold.”
Reluctantly, feeling the last thing that she wanted to do was to eat, Aria sat down at the table. For Nanny’s sake she made the pretence of eating, sipping at the cup of hot but weak tea poured out from the brown teapot.
There was a knock at the back door.
“I expect that’s the newspapers,” Nanny said.
She hurried off and Aria heard her talking to the boy who brought their newspapers every morning on a bicycle.
“Sir Charles says how you were two days late last week with The Farmer and Stockbreeder. Don’t you be forgettin’ it this week. Thursday’s the day we should get it.”
“I can’t bring it before it comes in, can I?” the boy answered impertinently.
“Well, tell your father what I’ve said,” Nanny ordered him and shut the door with a slam.
She brought the newspapers, The Daily Telegraph and The Daily Express, and set them down on the table beside Aria.
“That reminds me,” she said as she did so. “My pools haven’t come this morning. I was plannin’ to myself half the night how I would fill them in. One day I shall bring off that big dividend, you see if I don’t.”
“I am sure you will, Nanny,” Aria said almost automatically.
This conversation was one that repeated itself week after week until she knew every word of it.
She put down her knife and fork and as she did so caught sight of the headline of the paper laid in front of her.
For a second she could only sit very still as if turned to stone.
“WELL KNOWN AMERICAN SHOT BY FAMOUS FILM STAR” she read.
She could hardly take the words in and then her hands went up towards the newspaper.
Tremblingly she held it before her eyes.
There was a picture of Dart Huron in his polo kit. There was another of Lulu Carlo, wearing the exotic semi-naked oriental clothes that she had worn in her last film. Aria could only stare at the photographs and then, after what seemed to her an aeon of time, she started to read the article.
“Mr. Dart Huron, the internationally famous character and crack polo player, was found badly injured last night in the library of Summerhill House in Surrey. He was discovered by Mr. McDougall, the butler, who entered the library after hearing two or three shots fired in quick succession. He found Mr. Huron lying on the floor and Miss Carlo, the famous film star, who has been called the most alluring woman in the world, standing by him with a revolver in her hand. A doctor was fetched and the Police visited the house later. They both refused to make a statement to the Press.”
There followed after this a long description of Dart Huron’s wealth and possessions in America, of the various films in which Lulu Carlo had appeared.
But Aria did not read any further. She could only sit trembling, the newspaper rustling in her fingers, every vestige of colour drained from her face.
It was then that she knew what she must do.
She must go back!
She rose to her feet almost instinctively, even as Nanny, coming into the room to collect the dishes, saw the expression on her face and exclaimed,
“What’s the matter, dearie?”
“Mr. Huron has been shot,” Aria said, and was somehow surprised that her voice sounded so normal, so unhysterical.
“Good gracious and who has shot him?” Nanny asked, drawing her reading glasses in their black case out of the pocket of her apron.
“I must go to him,” Aria said, and now her voice sounded strange and far away, the voice of someone she did not know, a voice that seemed to speak without her conscious volition.
Nanny was reading the newspaper and clucking with her tongue as she did so.
“It’s a good thing that you’re away from there, if you asks me,” she said. “Such goings on. Charles was right to fetch you when he did. He said he didn’t approve of what was happenin’. I should think not, indeed!”
“Nanny, I have got to go to him.”
Nanny raised her head in surprise.
“Go to Mr. Huron! But how can you, dearie? He’s bad, if the papers are to be believed.”
“You don’t understand,” Aria said. “I have to find out what has happened. I have to run the house and look after the servants. Who else will do it?”
Nanny opened her lips to speak and suddenly was all solicitude.
“Now, you sit down, dearie, while I fetch you another cup of tea,” she said. “It’s been a shock, I can see that. It’s a pity we haven’t got a spot of brandy in the house. I gave the last to Charles for that calf that was so ill.”
“I don’t want any brandy. I don’t want anything,” Aria argued.
“You’re as white as a sheet,” Nanny contradicted. “A nice hot cup of tea with a lot of sugar in it, that’ll do you good.”
“I am quite all right,” Aria said irritably. “Can’t you understand that I can’t wait about here? I have got to go to Summerhill.”
“And what will Charles say to that I should like to know? He was upset enough when Joe brought the paper up to the house two evenings ago. ‘That’s Aria, Nanny,’ he said to me. ‘So it is!’ I exclaimed. There was no mistakin’ that it was you, even though the photograph was none too good. He read everything that was written about you without saying a word. Then he gets up to go to bed. ‘I’ll fetch her home tomorrow morning, Nanny,’ he says.”
Nanny stopped talking suddenly.
She realised that Aria was not listening, only staring at the picture of Dart Huron.
“You had better stay away, dearie,” Nanny said uncertainly.
“I love him.”
The words seemed to burst from Aria’s lips.
“I love him, Nanny, and I didn’t know it until this moment.”
“There now, dearie, you’re overwrought,” Nanny said soothingly.
Aria jumped to her feet.
“I love him!” she repeated, her voice stronger now and seeming to echo round the room. “I thought I hated him – but I was wrong. I love him and – though he doesn’t care anything for me, I have got to help him now he is ill. What will happen to her?”
Nanny looked down at the seductive picture of Lulu Carlo.
“I don’t know,” she answered, shaking her head.
But the posters on the London hoardings gave Aria the answer.
“Lulu Carlo arrested,” she read, as she stepped out of the bus that had taken her as far as Hyde Park Corner. She jumped into another, which took her to Victoria. There she caught a train to Guildford, having first telegraphed to tell McDougall the time of her arrival.
As she expected, a car was waiting for her. The young chauffeur who was driving it was one she hardly knew well and so said nothing to him other than “good morning”.
Summerhill looked just as she had left it. The garden was ablaze with blossom as they turned in at the drive and McDougall was waiting for her on the front steps.
“Good morning’, miss. I’m real glad to see you,” he said. “I think I ought to warn you there are a number of the Press waiting in the morning room.”
“How is Mr. Huron?” Aria asked.
The question had been trembling on her lips and she wondered if the words sounded as strange to McDougall as they did to herself.
“He’s as well as can be expected,” McDougall answered. “There are two nurses with him and the doctor has just left. Would you like to go up?”
“I think I will wait a moment.”
She walked across the hall and into the dining room. It did not seem possible that she had been gone only twenty-four hours.
She felt as if a whole lifetime had passed since she had left this house, driving away with Charles after those last bitter words with Dart Huron at the foot of the stairs.
“Can I get you a glass of sherry, miss?” McDougall asked in the doorway.
“Yes, please.”
She did not in the least want anything to drink, but she thought it would dispose of him for the moment. She wanted a few seconds in which to collect herself, to steady the flurried beating of her heart.
She had not realised until this moment what an ordeal it was going to be to come back to Summerhill knowing, as she knew now, that she loved the man who was lying ill upstairs.
She had left Queen’s Folly impulsively, disregarding Nanny’s protests, without saying goodbye to Charles and driven by an urgency that would not be denied.
On the way in the train she had thought of only one thing – that she must go to Dart Huron, she must help him, she must be beside him.
Only now that she was here did she realise how difficult it was going to be. He had nurses and doctors to attend to him. He did not really want her. And now she had come, what was her position?
She had known in the train, as the wheels seemed to repeat his name over and over again, that she loved him enough to brave the headlines, the publicity and the searching questionnaires from the Press.
She was well aware that she had only to stay in Queen’s Folly, to keep out of sight and there was every chance that she would be forgotten in the general turmoil and excitement over Lulu.
All the horror she had experienced over her father’s death was revived again now as she saw Dart Huron’s face in every newspaper, Lulu’s name on the posters and knew exactly what would be waiting for her at Summerhill.
She could remember that interrogation in the hotel at Monte Carlo all too vividly. She could remember the quick searching questions, the flashing of the photographers’ bulbs, the shrill insistent cry of the telephone, the curious glances of the other guests, the whispering that took place every time she appeared.
Was she prepared to go through all that again? She asked herself the question as she stood in the beautiful long drawing room with its windows opening onto the terrace.
It seemed for the moment to be very quiet – the sun was making a pattern on the carpet, a butterfly tapped against a pane of glass.
And then suddenly she knew that nothing mattered except the man who had been hurt. He did not care for her, but she loved him enough to know that the only happiness she could ever know was to serve him, to do what she could to alleviate his pain and to take any worry from his mind.
McDougall came back into the room with a glass of sherry on a silver salver. She thanked him with a smile.
“It’s all right, miss,” he said in a conspiratorial voice. “Nobody knows yet that you’ve arrived. I didn’t show the telegram to anyone.”
“That was good of you, McDougall, but I’m not afraid. I want to help Mr. Huron.”
“I thought you’d feel like that, miss,” McDougall replied. “As soon as I got your telegram I thought to myself, ‘she’s the one that’ll stand by him in this trouble’.”
Aria felt herself almost flush at the compliment.
Then she said quietly,
“How bad is he?”
“Better than we expected, miss. One bullet went through his arm, the other through his shoulder. The third missed altogether.”
McDougall shrugged his shoulders.
“But why – why did she do it?” Aria enquired.
“I’m afraid that’s something we shall never know, miss. The police arrested her this morning. She kept saying as how it was an accident and she meant to kill herself, but I don’t think they believed her.”
Aria drew a deep breath.
“She might have – killed him,” she sighed.
“That’s what we all felt,” McDougall answered. “When I found him lying on the floor, I thought at first he was dead.”
“Will you find out if I can see him?” Aria asked.
“I’ll go upstairs right away,” McDougall replied. “If you ask me, Mr. Huron will be glad to hear you are back.”
Aria could only pray that this was true. Suppose he was still angry with her? Suppose he commanded her to go away? She felt herself tremble at the thought.
And yet her only feelings, as she crossed the threshold to Dart Huron’s bedroom, were anxiety for him.
She had forgotten herself completely as she moved across the big room to where he lay in a four-poster bed.
The curtains were drawn, but it was easy to see him lying there, his dark hair silhouetted against the whiteness of the pillow, his arm and shoulder heavy with bandages.
“Here’s Miss Milbank to see you,” a nurse said gently, gliding out of the shadows towards the bed, her starched apron rustling as she moved.
Aria drew nearer and realised as her eyes grew accustomed to the darkness that he had turned his head to look at her.
His eyes seemed very dark – it was difficult to guess what he was thinking.
“Oh, you’ve come back,” he said in a low voice.
“I thought I might be of use,” she replied humbly.
“I’ve wanted you.”
She suddenly felt a sudden ecstasy of delight that he should admit his need for her.
She said quietly,
“I will stay if there is anything I can do to help, you know that.”
“I want you here.”
It was more of a command than a statement and, for the first time, Aria realised that she was welcoming his masterfulness rather than resenting it.
“He mustn’t talk too much,” the nurse said from the other side of the bed.
“I understand,” Aria replied.
She turned again to Dart Huron.
“I will see to everything,” she said. “Don’t worry.”
She turned and went from the room into a world that suddenly seemed golden.
He had wanted her! He needed her! That was all she wanted to know.
Downstairs the Press were waiting and she knew that now at least she had the courage to face them. She went into the morning room and they jumped to their feet.
“Miss Milbank!” someone exclaimed.
“Milborne.” Aria corrected. “The reports which appeared in the newspapers the other day were most inaccurate.” She smiled at the curious faces around her. “I am not Miss Nobody from Nowhere. I am Aria Milborne, daughter of the late Sir Gladstone Milborne.”
“Not the Sir Gladstone?” somebody questioned.
“I am sure by the sound of your voice that you are referring to my father,” Aria said with a smile. “But let me make one thing quite clear. There is no possibility at the moment that Mr. Huron and I will be able to announce our engagement. We are old friends and there is, if you like to put it that way, an understanding. That is all.”
Love Forbidden Page 22