An Introduction To The Eternal Collection Jubilee Edition

by Cartland, Barbara

  ‘She has gone to the Casino,’ Jeanne answered. ‘She left a message for me to say that she would be back soon. But those that start gambling lose all sense of time.’

  ‘I should not have thought somehow that Aunt Emilie would like gambling,’ Mistral said. ‘She always seems to me to be rather careful of money.’

  ‘She is!’ Jeanne answered. ‘She hates losing it, but she likes winning it.’

  ‘I suppose everyone is like that,’ Mistral said with a laugh. But I do not think I want to gamble even if I won. I watch the people’s faces when they are playing. They look tense, greedy and cross. You seldom see anyone look happy and really amused by it, except perhaps the Prince, but he is always laughing.’

  ‘Did you enjoy your drive?’ Jeanne asked.

  Mistral nodded her head.

  ‘It was lovely. The Prince told me all sorts of legends about Monaco. It has a wonderful history, Jeanne.’

  ‘What else did he say to you?’

  ‘Nothing much else,’ Mistral answered. What did you expect him to say?’

  She thought that Jeanne looked at her queerly, then the old woman started to fold up her work.

  ‘I didn’t expect anything,’ she said.

  Mistral sat down suddenly on a stool at Jeanne’s feet and looked out of the window.

  ‘Why do you think Aunt Emilie lets me go out alone with the Prince, Jeanne?’ she asked after a moment. ‘She is perfectly furious if I even think of speaking to anyone else, and when a nice old man tried to talk to me at the Casino last night and offered me a cup of coffee, she almost annihilated him, she was so angry.’

  ‘A kind old man!’ Jeanne repeated. ‘I expect he was no better than he ought to be. Old men should stay at home looking after their grandchildren instead of talking to young and pretty girls.’

  Mistral laughed.

  ‘Jeanne, you are as bad as Aunt Emilie! But why does she get cross with me? I do try to do what she wants.’

  There was something pathetic in the young voice, and Jeanne instinctively put out her hand and laid it on Mistral’s head.

  ‘Now don’t you go worrying too much about your aunt,’ she said. ‘She has had a hard life one way and another, and it has made her a bit queer and not herself at times. Monsieur Bleuet was not an easy man to live with either, though he could be kindness itself when it suited him. But your aunt found him difficult, and it’s hard for a woman when her husband is not naturally congenial to her.’

  ‘Husband? Monsieur Bleuet?’ Mistral asked in tones of surprise. ‘I thought Aunt Emilie had married a Comte?’

  There was no disguising the consternation in Jeanne’s face.

  Her hands flew up to her cheeks as the blood rose slowly and painfully into them.

  ‘There now, what have I said?’ she exclaimed.

  ‘It is of no consequence,’ Mistral said quickly. ‘Do not perturb yourself, Jeanne. If I was not meant to know, I will forget what you said.’

  ‘You best do that then,’ Jeanne said, ‘or your aunt will half murder me. Listen, child, she has her own reasons for not telling you things, and now, stupid old fool that I am, I have let the cat out of the bag. But keep it to yourself, please, or you will get me into bad trouble.’

  ‘Of course, I will not say a word,’ Mistral answered, ‘but it is true then, that Aunt Emilie’s husband was called Monsieur Bleuet and that she is not really Madame la Comtesse?’

  ‘That’s the truth, God help me!’ Jeanne said, glancing over her shoulder as if she half expected to see Emilie listening to them in the shadows.

  ‘And is he dead?’ Mistral enquired.

  ‘Yes, he’s dead,’ Jeanne said. ‘He died seven years ago next Christmas, and to tell the truth I know no more than you do why your aunt should pretend to be the widow of a Comte.’

  Mistral sighed.

  ‘I hate mysteries,’ she said. ‘I cannot understand why people want to have secrets. They are nasty, spooky things, in which a person gets all involved and before you know where you are, you are telling lies.’

  ‘That’s true enough, my dear, so don’t you have any secrets,’ Jeanne said approvingly.

  ‘I will not,’ Mistral said, and then remembered Sir Robert. That was a secret, and one of her very own. So perhaps after all everyone had them!

  Who was she to criticise Aunt Emilie, Mistral thought humbly, and because she felt that Jeanne was still perturbed at what she had unwittingly revealed, she got to her feet and put her arms round the old woman’s shoulder.

  ‘Pray do not worry,’ she said. ‘The secret is safe enough – yours and mine.’

  ‘God bless you, ma chére,’ Jeanne said suddenly, ‘and God help you too, whatever lies ahead.’

  Her words came from the heart and Mistral suddenly felt apprehensive as if something unknown was lying in wait for her just around the corner. It was then that they heard the door of the sitting room and instinctively they turned towards it, drawing apart.

  The door opened and Emilie came in. She was dressed in a smart costume of green ottoman silk trimmed with plaid, and there were feathers in her green hat.

  ‘Ah, here you are, Mistral,’ she said. ‘Did you enjoy your drive?’

  ‘Yes, Aunt Emilie. The Prince came to the Church and told me that you had said he might take me out in his carriage.’ ‘Yes I gave him permission,’ Emilie said. ‘He is a delightful boy. I hope you were nice to him.’

  She looked at Mistral searchingly as she spoke.

  ‘I think so, Aunt Emilie,’ Mistral answered.

  She did not know why, but her Aunt’s question made her feel guilty.

  ‘Good!’

  Emilie turned towards Jeanne.

  ‘We shall need two of our best gowns tonight, Jeanne,’ she said. ‘Mademoiselle will wear the grey chiffon trimmed with lace. She has not been seen in that one as yet, and I will wear the gold brocade.’

  ‘I will see that they are ready, Madame,’ Jeanne said. Emilie turned towards Mistral.

  ‘Well, have you an invitation for tonight?’

  ‘An invitation, Aunt Emilie?’ Mistral enquired.

  ‘Yes, did the Prince ask us to dinner or supper?’

  ‘Neither, Aunt Emilie.’

  Emilie’s expression seemed to darken.

  ‘Strange! I should have thought that he would have suggested one or the other when he left you. Are you sure that you were nice to him?’

  ‘I – I think so, Aunt Emilie.’

  ‘Well, don’t think,’ Emilie said sharply. ‘Know one way or the other. I have told you, Mistral, what I want of you, and if you are deliberately disobeying me, you will be sorry for it.’

  ‘But, Aunt Emilie, I was nice to the Prince. I enjoyed the drive and I think he did too, and he said that he would be seeing me again very soon.’

  Emilie seemed to relax.

  ‘That is better,’ she said. ‘Why didn’t you say so at once, you stupid child?’

  ‘It would be easier if I understood exactly what you wanted me to do or say,’ Mistral said tentatively. ‘You do see, Aunt Emilie, that I have had very little to do with men until now, in fact I have known very few of them.’

  ‘That is all the better,’ Emilie said. ‘You don’t want to know a lot of men, Mistral. Most of them are brutes who disguise their bestiality with words spoken in lying tongues. Women are happiest without men in their lives, but the silly fools never know it until it is too late.

  Beware of men, shun them as you would shun the devil himself, for they bring you nothing but misery, heartache and unhappiness.’

  Emilie spoke passionately in a low, monotonous tone. It was almost as if she were talking to herself, and she only appeared to be aroused when Mistral said,

  ‘But, Aunt Emilie, if men are so bad, why do you tell me to be nice to the Prince?’

  ‘The Prince is of importance in your life, Mistral. Do not forget that. When you think of men, remember what I have said.’

  ‘I – I will try, Aunt Emilie,�
� Mistral replied, but at the same time something within her cried out that what her aunt had said was not true.

  She was certain that all men were not brutes and beasts, not Sir Robert at any rate. She could not imagine him bring brutal or bestial in any way whatsoever. Perhaps Aunt Emilie had been unfortunate in the men she had met. Jeanne had hinted that her life had been difficult with Monsieur Bleuet.

  Mistral suddenly felt very sorry for her aunt. She was old and cross and at times her face was as hard as granite.

  ‘She could not look like that and be happy,’ Mistral thought, and she felt a sense of pity well up inside her.

  She was just about to say something affectionate to Aunt Emilie, she even contemplated slipping her hand into hers, when Emilie perceived a card lying on a table just inside the door of the sitting room.

  ‘Who left this?’ she asked, walking towards it and picking it up.

  ‘I have no idea,’ Mistral answered. ‘Jeanne did not say that anyone had called.

  She looked round for Jeanne, but the maid had gone. It was then that Emilie gave a cry and it seemed to Mistral to be a cry of horror. She was holding the card close to her eyes so that she could read it, and her face, drained of all colour, was strangely contorted.

  ‘Henry Dulton!’ she said in a high voice which suddenly cracked. ‘Henry Dulton!’

  7

  Emilie sat alone in the sitting room waiting for Henry Dulton. On his card, written in the thin spidery writing which she knew so well, were inscribed the words,

  I will call on you at three o’clock tomorrow afternoon.

  She read the sentence over and over again, striving to find in it some meaning but the obvious one – that he had recognised her and was coming to claim her acquaintance.

  All night she had tossed sleeplessly on her bed, trying to think how she could delude and circumvent him or how she could keep him quiet for at least a few more weeks.

  To the last question she knew the answer. Money! She could recall all too vividly Henry Dulton’s greed for money, the way he would undertake any commission, however squalid and unpleasant, if it was made worth his while.

  She could see him now coming to 5 Rue de Roi for his commission on the clients he had introduced. She had always hated him, hated the way he came softly, almost silently, into a room, the way his eyes were shifty behind the pale lashes which, matching his almost colourless hair, gave him the appearance of a sleek ferret.

  Yet he had his uses. It would have been stupid to dismiss him because of a mere personal prejudice, and she had accepted him, as she had accepted the other employees at No. 5, with a philosophical toleration.

  Yet it was the most diabolical ill fortune that Henry Dulton of all people should have turned up at Monte Carlo just at this particular moment. She had never imagined him working anywhere except in Paris, and yet she should have known that where there was wealth and luxury and pickings to be obtained from those who were rich Henry Dulton would be around.

  What could she say to him? With a sudden groan Emilie rose to her feet and walked across the sitting room to the window. The brilliant sunshine, the sparkling blue of the sea and the soft movement of the palm trees were a hollow mockery to the dark tumult of her feelings.

  ‘The little rat!’ Emilie said aloud. ‘I always hated him!’

  Even as her words were spat forth on to the soft air, she thought that she might have been speaking of almost any man she had ever met. Yes, she had hated them all with a hatred bred in her from childhood by the ignoble position in which she had been born. That was her father’s fault. She had hated John Wytham, half for her own sake, and half because she was jealous of the undying love her mother bore him.

  And after her father with his careless regard for the ties of parenthood she had hated Léon Bleuet, her husband.

  Only for a very short while had Léon evoked in her any feeling but one of disgust and dislike. She could recall their first meeting as if it had happened yesterday. She had travelled from Brittany to Paris, and how vividly she could remember that journey!

  How strange she must have looked, severely dressed in her best Sunday black, her face grave and resolute as she set out on an almost desperate adventure!

  Jacques Riguad, her grandfather, had died but two months after her mother had passed away. It had been suggested by the family that the younger of old Jacques’ sons, although he already had a farm of his own, should help Emilie keep the family estate together. She might continue to live in the farmhouse, but would spend all the hours of daylight in the fields and tending the animals. She could see their heads nodding together as they agreed on this, their work-worn hands almost applauding their own generosity.

  But Emilie had already made up her mind as to what she intended to do. She had indeed been making her plans for years, and while to her family they were astounding, to her they had already become common place because she had considered them for so long.

  First Mistral was to go to school, not to the kind of cheap establishment which lay within the limits of the Riguad purse, but to an Academy for Young Ladies or to one of the expensive Convents at Lucerne or near Paris.

  On this Emilie was determined. She had decided a long while ago that Mistral must be properly educated, decided it when she was walking the motherless baby up and down the kitchen floor. Hidden in a secret place were the pearls which Alice had given into Emilie’s keeping the night before she died.

  ‘These are for my child,’ Alice said. ‘They are the only things I brought away with me. If the necessity arises, you must sell them. They are very valuable.’

  Her eyes had closed wearily when she had finished speaking, she had already been in labour for some hours. Emilie had stared stupidly at the beautiful translucent necklace which Alice placed in her hands.

  She had never seen any pearls like them before and she was sure that Alice spoke the truth when she said they were very valuable.

  How had Alice kept them hidden from her all these months? She wondered. And she hated with a bitter, burning hatred the man who had changed the happy, talkative girl she had left at Monaco into a miserable, reserved woman. Nothing she could do or say would make Alice talk about what had happened. Emilie had pleaded, commanded, entreated – all without effect.

  ‘I do not wish to talk about it,’ Alice would repeat over and over again.

  And only when Emilie, goaded beyond endurance, had threatened to write to the Grand Duke did she vary the sentence with,

  ‘You have promised on the Bible, you cannot break your vow! There is nothing you can do.’

  No, there was nothing Emilie could do but watch Alice with frustrated, angry eyes.

  When Alice died, Emilie had hidden the pearls away and had spoken of them to no one, but from the very first she was determined not to sell them. They became another part of the weapon that she was creating – a weapon which would ultimately avenge both Alice and herself.

  The pearls had gone with her to Paris. When she told the Riguad family that she was leaving for the Capital, they were even more astonished than at her decision to give up the farm.

  ‘Paris!’ they exclaimed. ‘But what will you do? And how will you live? Paris is very expensive.’

  ‘I shall work,’ Emilie said.

  ‘But what at?’ they asked. ‘You have only worked here on the farm. There are no farms in Paris.’

  ‘I shall find something to do,’ Emilie said confidently.

  Her confidence was justified, although she did not feel as self assured as she looked when she set off on the long train journey. Yet hidden in the bottom of her black bag was the pearl necklace and she knew that, if all else failed, she could sell it. Not only for herself but for Mistral’s schooling. The fees for the first term at the Convent had already been paid out of the small sum Emilie had realised in selling her share of the farm to her uncles.

  But despite her lofty airs with the family, the expenses had shocked Emilie. There were so many extras. In addition to the Co
nvent’s fees Mistral had required new clothes and finally there had been the journey to Lucerne.

  Was she fond of the child? Emilie asked herself the question as Mistral clung to her at the final moment of parting, afraid of leaving all that was familiar, afraid of the unknown. She was not sure of the answer. Her love for Alice had been an overwhelming, devouring emotion. She could never recover from the shock of Alice’s deception, her reticence and secrecy and finally her death. Mistral was Alice’s child, she was also a constant reminder of Alice’s betrayal. At times Emilie would hate not Mistral herself, but the fact that she was alive while Alice was dead.

  But Mistral must be educated, Mistral must be brought up expensively and luxuriously because Emilie’s plan for the future depended on her having all the social adjuncts to a personal success.

  Even while Emilie reassured her own fear of failure and thought of the pearl necklace as security against utter destitution, she resolved with an almost fanatical determination that she would not part with it, however hard it might be to resist the temptation to do so. It was essential to her scheme.

  Emilie had reached Paris at six o’clock in the evening. It was growing dusk – the blue, dusky twilight which makes Paris seem very mysterious and exciting, a place of adventure, a place of love, of soft music and of happiness. But Emilie saw none of these things. As she stepped out of the train, she felt cold, dirty and frightened. She had reached Paris, it was true, but she was alone in a strange city in which she had not even one friend. She stood forlornly in the station, her face white and drawn against the black crêpe of her unfashionable bonnet.

  It was then that Léon spoke to her. She started and looked round to see an elderly man with a little pointed beard that was turning grey and dark eyes which seemed to Emilie to be comfortingly friendly.

  ‘Can I be of assistance, Mademoiselle?’

  ‘No, thank you, Monsieur.’

  ‘The friends who were meeting you have perhaps been delayed?’

  ‘I am not being met.’

  ‘No? Then Mademoiselle is well conversant with Paris?’

  ‘No.’

  But – but – it is dangerous for a young women to arrive so late. You will perhaps permit me to direct you to where you are staying.’