Robert Markham, however, thought that she could hardly have looked more attractive, as she lay back in a deep armchair, and looked up at him with a rather wan little smile. The only thing about her that worried him was the fact that the smile was so wan, and that her small face looked so alarmingly white. He didn’t know why she was running away from the Karanskas—he hadn’t asked her, and he didn’t intend to do so, although he had an uneasy feeling that she was badly in need of advice—but whatever the reason it was causing her a great deal of unhappiness, and he didn’t like to see it. Apart from anything else she was one of the most fascinating little things he had ever seen, with her huge violet eyes and her glorious hair, and he found himself wishing with profound and unaccustomed vehemence, that she had been staying in Italy a little longer—or at least that he had been more successful in his various attempts to see something of her while she was in Italy. Of course, she was going home to England, and he, too, would be going home some time ... But the Katherine Grants of this world didn’t usually remain unattached for very long, and there might even be someone waiting for her. Somehow, he didn’t think that he would stand very much of a chance ...
A little after one o’clock her flight was called, and she stood up and held out her gloved right hand to him. He gripped it very firmly, and she wished he would not look so searchingly into her face.
“Thank you ... thank you very, very much,” she said, smiling at him as warmly as she could. “You’ve been so—”
“Kind to you. Yes, I know ... you said so! But what I’ve really been doing, you know, is pleasing myself.” She blushed faintly, and he laughed. “Have a good trip, and if ever you’re in Italy again ... well, get in touch with me.”
It was still raining quite hard as she crossed the tarmac, but in no time at all she was mounting the steps of the aircraft, and then a smiling stewardess was relieving her of her umbrella and showing her to her seat beside a comfortable, middle-aged American matron. The atmosphere was warm, and oddly peaceful, and the American matron beamed at her as they both fastened their seat belts.
Despite the rather poor weather conditions, they made a very smooth take-off, and although for most of the way they were flying through dense cloud the journey was remarkably uneventful. Kathy accepted a pile of glossy magazines from the stewardess, and pretended to become absorbed in them, although in actual fact for most of the time she scarcely saw the pages before her eyes. The American woman at her side turned out to be of a sociable disposition, but fortunately she derived considerably more pleasure from talking than from listening, and it was entirely unnecessary for Kathy to contribute more than an occasional monosyllable to the conversation. She heard about the other’s fairly extensive travels described in great detail—Venice, Rome, the Greek islands and the Yugoslavian coast filling in the time until they touched down in Paris, and the glories of Andalusia and the north coast of Africa colouring the final stage between Paris and London. When they parted at the Customs barrier, the older woman pressed her hand as if they had known one another for some considerable time, and before she was forced to turn away bestowed a curious smile on Kathy.
“I don’t really know what’s troubling you, honey, but I could make a guess ... And my advice is, forget him!” Then she smiled again, and was swallowed up in the huge concourse of incoming travellers.
Feeling startled, disconcerted, and more than a little annoyed with herself, Kathy got herself through Customs and passport control, and then boarded a bus which was headed for London.
She had laid her plans before leaving Italy, and she knew exactly what she was going to do. There was a girls’ hostel in Central London at which she had known she could be reasonably certain of obtaining accommodation—just to set her mind at rest on that point she had telephoned the hostel immediately after her arrival at the airport—and she would stay there for a few days, while she looked around for a job. She hadn’t a great deal of money left, but she had enough to keep herself for a month or two if it should be necessary—provided, of course, that she wasn’t at all extravagant. And she had every hope that she would be able to find a job in a very much shorter space of time than a month.
In London it was very cold, and rain was falling with depressing persistence from a sullen grey sky. She supposed that she should at least feel some sort of relief at being home, but she didn’t; she simply felt a strange sense of numbness, and a complete inability to do more, at the moment, than plan for her immediate future.
Very early the following morning she set out to do a round of the employment agencies, and by lunchtime, to her considerable astonishment, she was already in possession of a job ... the position of private secretary to a director of one of London’s most important estate agencies. It was a job which called for efficiency, a good appearance and a pleasant manner; and the shrewd-looking grey-haired woman who interviewed Kathy seemed to feel that she represented the embodiment of these virtues. On the next morning she started work, and within a week she was fairly well settled in ... although there was still something about her which her employer, a benevolent but not usually particularly perceptive elderly man, frequently found puzzling. He wouldn’t have expected her, as a responsible, hard-working young woman, to bubble over with an unceasing flow of high spirits, but it seemed to him that her attractive mouth had a curious droop to it; and then there was the lack-lustre expression that stole into her eyes whenever she imagined she wasn’t being watched. He was extremely pleased with her work, into which she appeared to be throwing herself with an almost unnatural zest, but he hoped that there wasn’t anything too serious on her mind, and he suggested to her that she might indulge in rather more recreation than he fancied she had been indulging in just lately. A day in the country, he told her, would do her all the good in the world, and she nodded and smiled politely, and said that she’d probably try it. But she had no intention of doing anything of the kind, for leisure meant having time to think, and that was the last thing she dared to do. She avoided thinking of anything at all that could have a connection with her own personal life, and she was heartily thankful that, generally speaking, her new job was a demanding one and left her little time during the day to consider her own affairs, even if she had wanted to consider them. And at night she was too tired to think, and after a makeshift supper went straight to bed.
Her first weekend was spent wandering disconsolately round a selection of art galleries which she had imagined might divert her, and in attending Sunday morning service at St. Martin’s in the Fields—after which she felt slightly more cheerful—and when she arrived back at her desk on the following Monday morning she stared at the work which lay in front of her, and wondered how she was going to get through it.
By mid-morning she felt very little better, and when she was told, by means of the intercom, that an extremely important client wished to see Mr. Hartley, her employer, she sighed rather heavily, because every small effort seemed a little too much for her just then.
When she contacted Mr. Hartley, in his inner office, she discovered that he was in the middle of a very important long-distance telephone call, and could not see any client, however important, for at least another five minutes, so she gave instructions for the gentleman to be shown into her office instead, and wearily but instinctively patted her hair and brushed a tiny speck off the otherwise immaculate sleeve of her plain blue dress.
When the door opened, she did not look up immediately; she had just caught sight of what looked to her like an absurd mistake in a letter she had just finished typing, and her eyes were still lingering on the error when somebody spoke ... and she decided that either she had slipped into a kind of day-dream, or her ears were playing tricks on her.
“Good morning, Miss Grant,” said the voice. “How strange to find you here.”
She lifted her eyes, and an odd little shudder ran through her. “Your Highness!”
Leonid carefully closed the door behind him, and then walked across to the desk. “This coincide
nce is really quite extraordinary, mademoiselle.” He paused, and looked down at her. “How are you?”
“I’m ... all right, thank you.”
“My sister received your letter. I believe she has replied to it.”
“H-has she?”
He glanced around him in an almost bored fashion. “May I sit down? Your employer, I believe, will not be able to see me immediately.”
“No.” She swallowed, and bit her lip in an effort to stop it trembling. “Then ... you do—”
“I do wish to see your employer? Yes, of course. Charming as this unexpected encounter is, it is unexpected. I did not know, mademoiselle, that when I entered this room I would see you sitting behind that desk. How could I?”
She realized that he was waiting for her to resume her seat before sitting down himself, and she slowly sank back into her chair, at the same time, with tremendous determination, forcing herself to look straight at him.
In a small, tight, muffled voice, she said: “I hope the Princess—well, that she understood why I left so ... suddenly.”
“I am sure she did.” He smiled, but his eyes were abstracted, and she had the impression that, beyond being mildly surprised at seeing her where she was, he was not in the least interested in her. “I am looking,” he told her suddenly, “for a house in England. Do you think that your ... Mr. Hartley, is it not? ... will be able to find me something suitable?”
Kathy stared at him. “A house ... in England?”
“Yes. As, you understand, I am being married so soon. And I think my wife and I will definitely wish to settle in England.”
“I see.” To her, it seemed absurd to continue the conversation, but as he evidently wished to behave as if he were an ordinary customer who had never seen her before today she moistened her dry lips and made a violent effort to talk in a normal matter. “What—what sort of house are you looking for?”
“Oh, an old house ... I think. Yes, I am sure, an old house. I don’t think that my future wife would appreciate a modern one. Quite large, of course ... Not too large, but it is important to have accommodation for one’s friends. A family house—I believe that is the correct expression?”
The intercom buzzed on Kathy’s desk, and she was spared the necessity of answering him. Her employer could see him now.
He bowed to her as he got up, and once again, before he entered the inner office, bestowed on her that slight, detached little smile.
Twenty minutes later he emerged, with Mr. Hartley at his elbow, and both men looked more than satisfied with the results of their discussion. Leonid executed another small bow in Kathy’s direction, and Mr. Hartley beamed at her.
“Put those papers aside, my dear. You’re going down to Sussex for the day!” He smiled at her again, and added, not without a rather quizzical expression in his keen brown eyes: “I had no idea that you and Prince Leonid were known to each other!”
To her annoyance, Kathy felt herself blushing. “Yes, we—we met a short time ago.” She had always felt guilty because she had not told her present employer about the very last job she had occupied, and she felt more so now. She could not meet Leonid’s eyes, but she knew instinctively that he would not have told Mr. Hartley any details of their acquaintanceship. He must think it rather odd, she supposed, that she should not have mentioned having held a position which any young woman would be proud to have occupied. He could not know that it hurt her even to remember, in the private recesses of her own mind, that she had once lived under the same roof as himself. “G-going down to Sussex?” she repeated, as she suddenly realized the implications of what had just been said. “You want me to ... go down to Sussex?”
“Yes. I shan’t find it very easy to spare you, I’ll admit, but the Prince was insistent.” He looked at Leonid almost indulgently. Clients of his calibre did not appear every day, even in the offices of London’s topmost estate agent. “His Highness is interested in Chanbury Manor; you may remember I discussed it with you. It’s near Little Chanbury, and that’s not terribly far from Chichester. Anyway, it’s in West Sussex. It’s a fairly long journey, but the Prince has a car with him, I understand. If you leave now, you should get to Little Chanbury by early afternoon— stopping for lunch on the way, of course.” He looked affably from one to the other of them, and Kathy realized with embarrassment that he had decided they might not be particularly anxious to hurry. If Leonid had insisted upon detaching her from her regular duties so that she should be free to give him her personal attention perhaps his assumption was not entirely incomprehensible, and only Kathy knew that in doing such a thing the Prince could only have wanted to hurt her in some way.
She could not really understand it—she would never have believed him to be quite so mercilessly vindictive—but she supposed he felt that his revenge was not yet entirely complete. An afternoon of polite but cruel taunting—was that what lay in store for her?
But there was no possible escape, and in any case she knew—although the knowledge made her despise herself heartily—that she didn’t really want to escape. An afternoon in Leonid’s company ... He might taunt her, he might be quite brutal, but she would be with him. She would sit beside him while he drove, she would hear his voice—speaking to her— and only this morning she had expected never to see him again ... It was like being granted a reprieve, and although it was only a temporary reprieve, and the whole purpose of the excursion was the inspection of a house which he would one day share with Sonja Liczak—when, of course, she was no longer a Liczak! —she couldn’t do anything about the light which sprang into her eyes as she looked at Mr. Hartley, and which only he saw.
“I ... I ought to go home and change,” she said, glancing down at the dark blue dress.
Leonid nodded briskly. “I’ll drive you.” He held open the door, at the same time bestowing a formal smile on Mr. Hartley, and then followed Kathy out of the room and down the stairs to where a smart pale blue sports car was waiting by the kerb. She looked at him a little apprehensively as he placed her in the passenger seat and then settled himself behind the wheel, but his face was completely impassive, and he said nothing whatsoever until he brought the car to a standstill outside the hostel in which—largely because she couldn’t be bothered to move—she was still sharing a cheap room. Then he said:
“This is a hostel for young women?”
“Yes.” He was looking distinctly disapproving as he helped her to alight, and she glanced at him in surprise. “I have to stay somewhere,” she said a little stiffly, “and this sort of place is rather convenient. And it’s inexpensive too, of course.”
“But you have a very good job, I think?”
He sounded as if he were determined to get to the bottom of the matter, and Kathy felt a little confused. It didn’t occur to her to think his pointed questioning impertinent, but she hesitated for a moment before answering slowly: “I suppose I just haven’t bothered ... to look for anything else ...”
“I see.” Something in his voice made her look quickly and instinctively up at him, but the expression in his eyes was utterly unreadable. Then he closed the car door with a snap, and said briskly: “Don’t be too long. I can’t park here for more than ten minutes.”
Just over seven minutes later she returned, this time wearing a light tweed suit ornamented with a very attractive golden fleck, and a pair of slim, elegant, casual shoes. In her hand she carried a folded silk headscarf, just in case it should become necessary to protect her hair against the elements, but as a pale, early spring sun was just on the point of emerging from behind the clouds, and the temperature was decidedly warmer than it had been in England for weeks past, it seemed very likely that she might not be needing the protection.
Leonid started the car, and for twenty minutes they weaved and threaded their way through the intricacies of London streets and London traffic, then they were in the suburbs, moving along broad streets lined with houses, and Kathy sat staring in front of her, and wondered why the man at her side was so obvio
usly determined not to speak ... and why, in fact, he had wanted her with him at all.
By the time they reached the green, open country, it was nearly noon, and the day had begun to fulfil its earlier promise of being bright and comparatively warm. They sped through the small, picture postcard villages of Surrey, and every so often the road wound through bare, grey woods, in which this morning, for all their bareness, there was a strange feeling of awakening life.
Still Leonid did not speak to her, but, despite his silence, and the fact that this would probably be the last time she would ever see him, Kathy felt almost happy. She could look sideways and see Leonid’s chiselled features ... the slight frown contorting his brow as he concentrated on the curves of the road ahead. And she could study—discreetly, of course— the deep waves in his thick, dark hair, and watch the way in which his capable, sensitive hands controlled the swing of the steering-wheel.
It wasn’t very long before they had crossed the border into Sussex, and just a little after half past one they stopped for lunch in Midhurst. The inn which they decided to patronize was very old, and very lavishly equipped, and the food was excellent, but Kathy wasn’t particularly hungry, and Leonid seemed detached and almost impatient. She realized that he was anxious to see the house which he might, by the end of the afternoon, be intending to buy, and because she didn’t want to hold him up any longer than was strictly necessary she hurried through her own lunch, and refused coffee. He looked faintly conscience-stricken as he handed her back into the car, and when he had got in himself he looked at her.
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