“But Miss Brown hasn’t any close relatives.” He looked at Valentine. “Not even, I remember you said distinctly, an aunt!”
“It’s perfectly true that I haven’t an aunt,” Valentine answered wretchedly, aware all at once of the enormity of the evasion of the truth she was responsible for, and the deception she had played. An unfortunate young woman alone in the world was not quite the same article as a young woman with a distinguished grandfather, who would soon be revealed as exceptionally wealthy as well! “But there were reasons why I ... why I couldn’t tell you all the truth at the—at the time! Why I didn’t want to!” She clenched her hands. “But now I wish I had!”
“It’s all right, my dear,” the Countess said amiably, surveying her with a comfortable gleam of amusement in her eyes. “Alex ought to think himself lucky that things have turned out as they have ... and, from his point of view, they could hardly be more satisfactory!” She turned deliberately to Alex to enlighten him still further. “General Fabian is chairman of the Fabian Line, and I’ve no doubt you’ve travelled in some of his ships. You’re accustomed to travel with the very maximum amount of comfort, and it’s hardly likely you would overlook a line of steamships famous for wrapping its passengers up in luxury.” The dryness in her voice was acute. “And if you’re thinking of having a honeymoon in the immediate future what could be nicer than one afloat—as the nautical expression goes—with the bridal suite made ready for you, a tropic moon, and so forth? And of course, the captain’s blessing, General Fabian’s blessing, and mine ... it goes without saying!”
Alex looked straight at her, and for a moment it seemed to Valentine he turned quite white under his tan. He was holding himself very stiffly, like someone who had sustained a shock, and she had never seen his mouth look so grim before, or his chin and jaw so set. Unnaturally set.
“Thank you, Grossmutter,” he returned, and his voice sounded smothered, choked, “but when I plan a honeymoon I will do so without your assistance or interference, but at the moment I am not planning a honeymoon! I am not even thinking about one ... This morning when I arrived back here I considered myself betrothed to a Miss Valentine Brown—I asked her to marry me only yesterday!—but now I am sure you will all understand that as she has ceased to exist there is no engagement.” He didn’t even glance at Valentine. “Perhaps you will all excuse me. I wish to change my clothes!”
And, without another word, he left the room, and they heard him striding quickly across the hall towards the staircase. A second or so later they heard him taking the stairs at a furious rate.
The General glanced at the Countess, and he looked a little concerned.
“Do you think that was wise?” he asked. “Is there any man living who would wish to have a wife sold to him? Well, not even sold! Made over to him with a large number of advantages!”
The Countess looked down at the gold knob of her cane, and although she shrugged her shoulders her eyes were inscrutable.
“I don’t really know,” she said. “I don’t even pretend to understand modern young men...” She looked across at Valentine. “He’s probably indulging in a burst of temperament, my dear ... Reaction! So I wouldn’t worry!”
But Valentine knew he was doing nothing of the kind, and she was worrying. She looked with stunned, reproachful eyes at her grandfather.
“Oh, why did you have to come here, Grandfather?” she demanded. “Why did you have to come here now?”
“That’s hardly the right attitude to adopt towards a grandparent,” the Countess criticised her, a little severely. “Go and copy Alex’s example, my child, and change your clothes. Then perhaps Helga can serve us all up some breakfast!”
But the only ones to appear at breakfast were the Countess herself, General Fabian, Giles Haversham and Germaine. The rest—even Willi Hochenberg, who decided he could do with some long-delayed sleep—remained in their rooms.
Lou went and tapped on Valentine’s door as soon as she arrived in her own room. Valentine opened it and gazed at her, white-faced and weary-eyed and too distressed to care very much what Lou thought of her.
But all Lou said was:
“You’d better get some sleep, honey. You look all in.”
Valentine swallowed.
“I suppose you think I’ve ... behaved abominably?” she said.
Lou considered for a moment, and then shrugged her shoulders.
“No, not really,” she answered surprisingly. “It’s every man—and that goes for women, too, I suppose!—for himself in this world, and I’ve suspected you had a ‘thing’ about Alex for some time. Two nights ago I knew he had a ‘thing’ about you. And now he’s sulking because you’ve turned out to have as much money as me—or pretty nearly!—and it never occurred to him before that he could have cake and cream and jam! The mixture seems indigestible now that it’s practically his, but he’ll come round to it in time, and everything’ll be O.K. You’ll see!”
“And you don’t ... mind?” Valentine gasped, amazed.
Lou shrugged again. Her eyes looked indifferent, but there was a tiny hurt in them just the same.
“Not really. I was only kidding myself about having fallen so badly for Alex, you know, and it was really his title I wanted. Pop’s keen for me to have a title...” She grinned suddenly. “But I’ve been getting on very nicely with Willi in your absence, and maybe I’ll be a countess instead! I’m giving the matter thought, anyway!”
“You’re joking,” Valentine said, but Lou refused to admit whether she was or she wasn’t.
“He’d make a nice amenable husband,” she said. “And what does any woman want more than a nice amenable husband?” She thrust Valentine back into her room. “Hit the hay, honey, and you’ll feel better when you wake Probably Alex’ll feel better, too. By the way,” just before she closed the door between their rooms, “I hope you made the most of all those hours you spent together in a mountain hut. That was something I wanted to happen to me, but instead it happened to you!”
“If you think...” Valentine cried, rushing to reopen the door, and horrified because she knew very well precisely what Lou meant, “if you believe...”
Lou laughed.
“Does it matter? You got your man! Or you will!”
“But it’s not true,” Valentine repeated, appalled because it was suddenly borne in on her what they must all think. And it wasn’t true!
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
But she managed to convince her grandfather later in the day that the Baron von Felden had behaved as befitted a gentleman of his rank during the hours that had passed in the hut, and by that time she had also apologized to the General for any anxiety she had caused him during recent months, and the lack of enthusiasm in her greeting when she found him at the schloss.
He was a lonely old man, arid he had suffered bitterly through the loss of his daughter and his granddaughter, and when it was too late he wished he had overlooked the constitutional weakness of his son-in-law. He wanted Valentine to forgive him for the injury she believed he had done to her father, and after a long, serious talk in the library—to which no one else penetrated while they were alone together—they became better friends than they had probably ever been before, and the subject of what to do about Alex became of more burning importance than anything that had happened in the past.
For Alex had not so far appeared outside his room, and even his grandmother had been refused an interview. She had gone so far as knocking on the door of his suite herself, but he had sent his manservant Max to tell her that the Baron didn’t wish to be disturbed. Not even by his grandmother.
The old lady went away with her head in the air, and a flush of annoyance in her cheeks, but otherwise she was not particularly affronted.
“It will probably take him a long time,” she thought, “a long time ... And the Feldens were always stubborn!”
The next morning Valentine was the first down for breakfast, and Alex made his appearance immediately after her. They directed one qu
ick look at one another, and then Valentine hastened to pour him out some coffee.
“Alex,” she said quickly, “I ... we must talk!”
“What about?” he asked, looking at her coldly. “It doesn’t strike me that we have very much to talk about!”
She gasped.
“But what about all our plans? ...” And they had made such wonderful plans on the way home from the hut.
He shrugged.
“You can forget them! I have! I don’t even want to remember that I was such a fool as to be taken in by a forlorn manner and an appealing voice! I had a conscience about you ... Right from the beginning I had a conscience about you, and yesterday I’d have sacrificed anything and everything to make you happy! You were so worthwhile, so wonderful ... and I loved you!”
“And now you don’t love me any longer?” she said, in a husky voice. “And just because I’ve got a grandfather!”
“If you’d a grandfather who didn’t make me feel a worm every time I looked at him ... a fortune-hunter, an heiress-hunter, a man who’s got to be ‘bought’... it’s possible I’d get over the shock of discovering you’re capable of lying deliberately—not only to me, but to Lou and presumably that fellow Haversham as well! But with your sort of grandfather, and your sort of prospects...”
Suddenly he leaned across the table and caught her wrist.
“Why did you do it, Valentine?” His eyes hurt her dreadfully because they were filled with such unconcealed hurt. “I thought I’d found someone perfect, and my whole future was going to be different because of it, and because of you! ... We were going to have a blissful life together even if we hadn’t much money, and I was even ready to work for you ... I’d been turning it over in my mind whether or not we’d go back to Canada!” He laughed angrily. “And now when I go back to Canada it will be without you, and with the determination to forget all about you!”
She swallowed.
“You—aren’t seriously thinking of going back to Canada?”
He regarded her mockingly.
“Indeed, Miss Pelham-Brown, I am! I’m off at the earliest possible moment that I can arrange things, and believe me, I can hardly wait!”
She put out a hand and touched his sleeve. There was a whole world of appeal in her voice as she spoke to him.
“Alex, I know you’ve a certain amount of right to feel angry ... disappointed in me!”
He put back his head and laughed with brief bitterness.
“Disappointed in you? That is the understatement of the year! I despise little girls like you who go about deceiving everybody because of a whim! Little rich girls playing at being poor, and no doubt getting a kick out of it!”
“I never got a kick out of it,” she stated, with a set mouth and goaded eyes. “I worked because I had to, and because I needed money to feed and clothe myself. I still haven’t any money to spare ... perhaps enough to get back to England if it becomes necessary! My grandfather is certainly not poor, but you’ve got to believe that I didn’t intend ever to get in touch with him again. At least ... I might have got in touch with him, but I didn’t intend to let him assist me financially. There were reasons ... My father died because my grandfather wouldn’t assist him any longer, and that made me bitter.”
“In that case, why didn’t you tell me the whole truth, instead of a part of the truth, when we had our talk at the Imperial?” he asked, watching her as if he would soon catch her out over that. “Why didn’t you tell me ... yesterday? It’s customary to let the man you propose to marry get a clear picture of your background!”
She looked down at the table, and the basket of rolls, as she had done once before when they were as good as alone at the breakfast table.
“I ... I don’t know quite—why—I didn’t...”
Alex pounced.
“Oh, yes, you do! At the back of your mind you would always distrust me ... hold me in contempt! ... And you’d never be sure it was you I loved, and not your money, once I’d married you knowing you would one day inherit money! It might even have occurred to you that I’d try and persuade you to get in touch with your grandfather and have good relations restored once it was reasonably well established that we were to be married.”
Her lip trembled, and she turned pale.
“It wasn’t that...”
“It was!”
“Well...” She gave a long shuddering sigh... “If it was, perhaps that wasn’t completely unnatural! You had told me yourself that you were going to marry Lou for her money, so why shouldn’t you marry me for mine? ... If you thought I had any! But I still insist that I haven’t.”
“I don’t care what you’ve got,” he said, rising from the table. His manner was freezingly cold. “But now that there’s a Dickensian ending to your running-away-from-grandfather story I should advise you to see a little of life and enjoy yourself. Get him to take you on a round-the-world cruise in one of his luxury liners, or rent a villa on the Riviera and throw lots of parties in your honour. The fortune-hunters will come from far and near, and you’ll soon find yourself a soulmate from amongst them! I guarantee you’ll be married in six months! Or you might think seriously of marrying Haversham...”
As Haversham had been plainly shaken by her disappearance for twenty-four hours in the company of the Baron, and her return after a night in a mountain hut with him, this sounded more like a jibe. Especially as Germaine’s golden looks seemed to be going a long way already towards consoling him.
Valentine stood up also, and she hid her shaking hands behind her back.
“There doesn’t seem there’s much more we have to say to one another, does there?” she said.
“How right you are,” he agreed. “Personally, I hope you’ll take my advice and go globe-trotting with grandfather. He appears to me to be a nice old boy, and he needs you. But the trouble with you, Valentine, is that you’re not very good at giving ... You want something in exchange! The General had to burden himself with your father endlessly, and you’d never have run away. You want love—and marriage—and a husband without any failings! Well, I hope you’ll get all those three things!”
When he had left the room she stood listening to the lethargic beating of her heart, and she said to herself that this was good-bye.
He really had finished with her.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
That night Lou packed, and Valentine helped her.
“There’s no reason at all why you should do this kind of thing for me now, honey,” Lou said. “I can hardly go on employing the granddaughter of a man like General Fabian, although I don’t mind confessing I’m going to miss having you around. You’ve got to know all my ways, and we didn’t get along too badly until Alex made his appearance like a gift from the gods! But it would appear we’re neither of us to have him, since you’re obviously not on speaking terms.” She looked hard at Valentine as she knelt beside a trunk. “Is he just sulking, do you think?”
Valentine shook her head.
“No, he can’t forgive me because I lied to him. Because I told him I hadn’t any relatives.”
“Instead of which you’ve a rich grandfather! ... H’m!” Lou regarded her nails. “That’s a pity, because it seems to me you’re two of a kind—I mean, as I once said, you speak the same language. You’d make a sweet little baroness, and in time I think you’d have our Alex settling down and taking an interest in the nursery, and that sort of thing. He’s already bored with the superficial side of life. I know that.”
She sat down suddenly on the edge of the platform that supported the great four-poster bed.
“Valentine, what are you going to do?”
Valentine looked at her helplessly.
“I don’t know.”
“Well, I’m a great believer in things righting themselves in time, but I don’t quite see how they’re going to do so in your case.” She hesitated. “Val, will you do something for me?”
Valentine answered quickly, impulsively, “Of course.”
Lou smiled slightly.
“Well, come back with me to the States. Tell your grandfather you’ll meet up with him later on, but you’d like to fulfil your contract with me. We didn’t have any contract, but that doesn’t matter. Just pack your things and leave here with me to-morrow morning, and then I won’t have to do without you until I get back to America. Please, Val!”
Valentine hesitated. To-morrow ... Once she left the schloss she would probably never see Alex again, but on the other hand he had told her to go off with her grandfather and enjoy herself, and that meant that once she left she wouldn’t be likely to see him again in any case. He didn’t want to see her. His face had been hard and cold and contemptuous when he’d said she didn’t know how to give, and she had the feeling all at once that he hated her. It wasn’t merely a revulsion of feeling ... It was cold, concentrated dislike.
And how could one overcome dislike?
Her heart felt like a stone within her.
“All right,” she said, “I’ll come.” She bit her lip until the blood came. “I’ll be happy to come!”
In the morning their cases were carried down by Stefan, with the assistance of Max, and the General and the Countess stood waiting to say good-bye in the hall. The General was staying on for a few days with his old friend before returning to Vienna, but he had received the assurance of his granddaughter that she would keep in touch with him, and although he hated the thought of her going back to America with Lou, he had been won over finally by her second promise to live with him as soon as her contract with Lou ended.
“We’ll have nice times together,” he said, as he clung to her hand before parting. She felt terribly guilty as she looked up at him because she’d left him alone so long. “I’ll see that you have some fun, child ... although I’d rather you were getting married! It’s a pity that young man’s so obstinate.”
The Countess clucked.
“He isn’t merely obstinate, he’s a fool!” She stared hard at Valentine. “For the first time in his life he wants something—enough, mark you, to make sacrifices for it!—and he’s running away. Coward!”
Love in High Places Page 15