Vidal was striding towards the centre of the ravaged battlefield. The battle had been fought and was over. All that was left was the churned up earth, the bodies, and Queen Margaret and the Earl of Suffolk in battle-weary triumph. She could hear his volley of orders to the hundreds of extras as he arranged and rearranged them in grotesque attitudes of death, see the lean, tanned contours of his body beneath the light silk shirt he wore.
A black stallion and a white stallion pawed impatiently at the ground. Soon, when everything was as Vidal required it, she and Rogan would have to walk across to them and replace the stand-ins who had been mounted on their backs for over an hour.
He turned, speaking to Don Symons. His profile was grim. He didn’t look like a man about to welcome home his wife. Perhaps he didn’t yet know that she was on her way west. Studio gossip was so refined an art that often the source of the gossip was the last person to know that his marriage was on the rocks, that he was being dropped from a major production, or that, as in Vidal’s case, his wife was coming home.
He was striding back towards them. The cameras, the bodies, were in position. Rogan sighed. ‘Come on. Once more into the breach. How I hate that bloody horse.’
Vidal halted a mere foot away from them. She could smell his sweat, almost feel the heat of the flesh she was unable to touch.
‘I want it just like the re-runs yesterday. The horses are slightly abreast and you sit facing each other.’ His white shirt was open to the waist. She averted her gaze from a crisp pelt of darkly curling hair. ‘You’re exhausted, mud-splattered and triumphant. It is the first major battle against the Yorkists and it is a battle that you have won. So I want weariness, elation, and I want to be aware of the unspoken passion between the two of you.’ There was a cool edge to his voice. ‘Any problems, Valentina?’
She avoided his eyes. He had been almost courteous of late and surprisingly gentle when she had first had to mount the white stallion for close-up shots.
‘No,’ she lied. ‘Everything is fine.’
‘Good. Replace the stand-ins and let’s do it in as few takes as possible.’
She began to walk with Rogan across the field that had been so carefully churned the previous day.
‘I swear to God he can’t wait for that horse to bolt with me,’ Rogan said savagely. ‘Have you ever seen such a temperamental beast? It’s a wonder I haven’t been thrown already and had my back broken.’
Valentina didn’t answer. She wondered if Kariana shared her husband’s love of riding. She knew that Vidal rode every morning. When Kariana was home did she join him on those early morning canters into the hills? Did they laugh and talk and did they perhaps lie down on the grass and make love?
She pressed her hands to her eyes in an effort to erase the tormenting images.
Rogan took hold of her. ‘Are you okay? If you’re ill, there’s no need to go through with this shot today. They can take the distance shots with the stand-ins.’
‘No,’ she lowered her hands from her face and managed a shaky smile. ‘I’m fine, Rogan. Really I am.’
She patted the stallion’s velvet-soft muzzle. The nostrils dilated and liquid-brown eyes surveyed her compassionately. It was as if, instinctively, the animal knew of her inner suffering and was trying to give her sympathy.
She swung herself up on to his back and her robes were meticulously arranged, her make-up checked.
‘Okay. Camera one, ready? Camera two?…’ The familiar directions were given. With steely determination, she banished Kariana Rakoczi from her mind. She was Margaret, Queen of England. A tigress who never accepted defeat.
Chapter Ten
‘Thank goodness that’s over,’ Rogan said with fervent gratitude when he was at last able to dismount from his horse and the day’s shooting was finished. ‘If I don’t have a drink I’ll die. How about seeing me in the Polo Lounge in an hour’s time?’
She managed a smile and shook her head. Rogan groaned in despair. ‘You’re turning into a recluse, Valentina. It isn’t healthy. Hell, it isn’t even normal!’
‘I’m tired. We’re shooting in the studio tomorrow and I want to make sure I’m word perfect.’
‘You use that excuse all the time and it isn’t valid. You’re always word perfect.’
‘That’s because I don’t go out at night,’ she said, but her smile did not reach her eyes. For the first time Rogan noticed that beneath the heavy make-up, she was paler than normal. Perhaps she did need rest. Rakoczi had been working them all to the point of exhaustion.
‘Okay,’ he said, capitulating gracefully. ‘But I’m not going to continue taking no for an answer. In the scene between King Henry and the Earl of Warwick we won’t be needed for days. There’ll be no excuse for tiredness then.’
She shivered. Not to be needed on the set seemed inconceivable. Pushing the thought away, she walked tiredly towards the luxurious bungalow that Theodore Gambetta had assigned to her as a dressing room. Ellie, the maid from the Beverly Hills Hotel, was now her own personal maid and was waiting to remove her make-up and help her from her heavy costume of mud-splashed velvet. As her royal robes were replaced by a beige silk shirt and neatly fitting slacks, Valentina said, ‘There’s no need to wait for me tonight, Ellie. I’m staying at the studio for a little while. Have the chauffeur drop you off and then return for me.’
‘All right,’ Elle said doubtfully. ‘If you’re sure…’
Such a thing had never happened before. When the day’s work was over, Valentina always returned immediately to the hotel.
When Ellie had left, Valentina wandered restlessly around the bungalow, loath to leave the familiarity of the studio. Picking up a sweater, she closed the bungalow door behind her and walked down the shrub-shrouded pathway that gave her dressing room its illusion of privacy.
There was the sound of hammering as a distant set was constructed ready for the morning. She continued without direction or purpose, past the sound stages, the photographic studios; the cutting rooms. She paused at the door of the projection room and wondered what time it would be when Vidal looked at the day’s rushes. Then she continued on past the story department and the publicity offices.
This was Theodore Gambetta’s dream factory and this was where she belonged. She was as avidly interested in the set designers’job as she was in her own. Everything fascinated her and aroused her curiosity.
The scene scheduled for tomorrow was a particularly tense one between herself and Rogan. No doubt some of the crew would still be working on the set. They wouldn’t mind if she wandered in for a few moments to familiarize herself with the lay-out.
For a few seconds the darkness was all engulfing. The only lights were at the far side of the set where the carpenters were still at work. She stepped over a cable and sat down. The chalk marks had not yet been put in place. She thought she knew where Vidal would require them. She murmured her opening lines and then fell silent. There was something awesome about a sound stage when it was deserted. She rose to leave and was halted by the sound of Vidal’s voice.
‘They’ll be working all night on this set. Our schedule is pretty tight.’
‘Is it a palace? It looks very beautiful.’
The voice was soft and melodious. With racing heart, Valentina tried to move and failed.
‘The ceilings are to be vaulted.’ Once again she heard the timbre of his voice and then they strolled into view.
Rogan’s studio gossips had been wrong: Kariana Rakoczi was not about to leave New England for Hollywood; she had already arrived. Everything about her was ethereal and insubstantial. Her gown was of floating chiffon, gossamer sheer. Her hair was pale gold, falling forward in stunning simplicity on either side of her face. As Valentina watched, she saw Vidal slip his arm protectively around his wife’s shoulder and glance down at her with an expression of exquisite tenderness.
This time, when she tried to move she succeeded, stumbling out into the blessed coolness of the evening, the nebulous dreams she had c
herished withering and dying.
The Rakoczi marriage was not on the brink of divorce. There was no hope of a future where Vidal would love her as she loved him. She half ran to her waiting Cadillac, hurling herself on to the rear seat, trembling convulsively, wondering how she would live through the next minute. The next day.
Her chauffeur eyed her in the mirror with troubled eyes and then drove smoothly out of the studio towards Sunset Boulevard. As he drew to a halt beneath the porte cochere of the hotel, Rogan was just about to step into his limousine. He had been drinking in the Polo Lounge and was now en route for Ciro’s and his date for the evening. On seeing Valentina he halted.
‘Hi,’ he said, as her chauffeur opened her door for her. ‘How about a drink?’
She looked up at him, her face bleak. ‘Thank you,’ she said, a curious expression in her voice. ‘I’d like a drink very much.’
The dark and cosy Polo Lounge was already full. At first very little notice was taken of them. Everyone knew Rogan and had already exchanged friendly words with him earlier on. Then the whispers began to fly from banquette to banquette. The casually dressed girl at Rogan’s side was the elusive co-star of his new movie. The girl Theodore Gambetta was betting millions on.
Within minutes some of the most illustrious names in town were strolling casually past their table, exchanging words with Rogan and being introduced to Valentina. A photographer snapped Rogan and a Paramount male star, drinks high, wide grins on their faces, a smiling Valentina between them. The next day The Examiner printed it beneath the headline, ‘Mystery Star Emerges at Last!’
When Vidal strode on the set the next morning there were white lines etched round his mouth and his eyes glinted dangerously. For six months Valentina had shunned the glittering social world she was eligible to enter; now it seemed she was shunning it no longer. And the man she had chosen as her escort was Tennant. He could hardly control himself as he surveyed the finished set and went over the lighting with Don Symons. There wasn’t a damned thing he could do. Tennant was between marriages and Valentina was single. The publicity department would be ecstatic.
He paced the set, ordering first one camera to be moved and then another. When shooting finally commenced both cast and crew knew that they were in for a rough day.
‘Tilt your chin to the left, Tennant! Uristen! You are an English earl. Be arrogant! Proud!’ He stormed back to his director’s chair. ‘Camera one?’ he rasped, ‘Two? Three? Sound? Okay. Turn them over.’
Valentina kept her eyes steadfastly averted from him. It was the first rule she had made for herself through the long, sleepless night. She had fallen in love with him in an instant. Falling out of love with him would be a hard, painful process, but she would do it.
She obeyed his directions as impeccably as always, but something had changed between them and it was apparent. When he spoke to her, she no longer held his gaze with fevered intensity, and there was a cruel edge to his voice that made even Harris and Don Symons wince.
‘What devil is riding Rakoczi today?’ Sutton asked Leila Crane in a whisper.
Leila shrugged. ‘Perhaps he does not like his two stars becoming so friendly off the set.’
Sutton raised his eyebrows. ‘When did that interesting event take place?’
‘I don’t know, but I don’t think there is any doubt that it has.’ She nodded in the direction of Rogan and Valentina who were waiting together at the far side of the set for the lighting to be perfected for their next scene. They were drinking coke and there was something about the easy intimacy in the way they were standing. Their unnecessary closeness. And then, as Rogan put down his coke, his hand slid down Valentina’s arm and he lightly clasped her hand.
‘So the young lady is not quite so remarkable as I first thought,’ Sutton said with regret. ‘A pity, but no reason for Rakoczi to behave like a fiend. It isn’t as if he’s an interested party. If he had been, we would have known about it by now.’
‘Yes…’ Leila’s voice held doubt. ‘Yet when they are together, when he is directing her, there is such a feeling.’
‘He is a great director,’ Sutton said simply. ‘And he has at last found a star worthy of his talents.’
‘Is she really so remarkable?’
‘Incredible,’ Sutton said. He had been in the business over a decade and was one of the tiny few who had successfully made the transition from silent movies to talkies. Leila listened and believed.
‘Yet off screen she is so quiet. So self-contained.’
‘Look into those eyes and you’ll see nothing quiet or self-contained,’ Sutton said drily. ‘You’ll see a passion that is quite frightening in its intensity. For Rogan’s sake I hope she doesn’t make him the object of it. He isn’t equal to such fire. There are no soul-dark depths to Worldwide’s leading lover boy.’
Harris’s voice silenced them. ‘All right now. Places everybody. This is a take.’
Queen Margaret was leaving her lover to return to her monastic husband. It was one of the most important scenes in the movie and had been rehearsed countless times by Rogan and Valentina. Even with Rakoczi in a good mood, it would be a hard scene to shoot. In his present mood both cast and crew mentally prepared themselves for a harrowing afternoon.
‘Are you ready?’ Valentina could sense Vidal’s eyes burning into her as he snapped the question.
She kept her eyes averted from him and nodded.
‘Okay,’ he said tightly. ‘I want everything you’ve got.’ There was complete silence on the set. ‘Right. Camera. Action!’
Leila and Sutton and the watching extras held their breath. Don Symons crossed his fingers. They could be days, even weeks, on this one scene.
Valentina lifted her head and her hauntingly beautiful eyes were misted with unshed tears.
‘My duty is with my husband,’ she began heartbrokenly and Vidal felt his blood begin to churn. She was flawless and she continued flawlessly, lifting Rogan along with her, releasing in him an emotional power that no one at Worldwide had ever suspected he possessed.
‘You are my life. You have my heart, my body, my soul,’ the Earl of Suffolk’s hand was held against her cheek. She was playing the scene with a nervous vulnerability and sensitivity that rendered Vidal breathless. There was a sense of open, daringly expressed pain and despair about her that he had never seen equalled.
When it was over no one moved or spoke. At last Vidal said brusquely, ‘That’s it. Print it.’ One of the most difficult scenes in the whole movie had been shot in one take.
Valentina felt a wave of relief. She had been terrified that her own tormented emotions would have crippled her ability to act. Instead, they had intensified it. She said shakily to a perspiring Rogan, ‘I think I’d like a coffee, please.’
‘You deserve champagne,’ he said, aware that thanks to her he had just played the most stunning scene of his career.
She laughed, aware of a surge of adrenalin. An I-can-do-anything feeling. In some mysterious way she had just proved something to herself and she knew that she would never be quite the same again. The uncertainty had gone.
Vidal’s shadow fell across her. ‘You were good,’ he said tersely.
All day long she had avoided his glance. Now she raised her eyes to his.
‘Yes,’ she said, and there was defiance in her voice. ‘I was, wasn’t I?’
All his life he had been in control. He had never broken any vow he had taken. And he had vowed never to succumb to the affinity of spirit he felt for Valentina.
‘I would like to see you tonight,’ he said, and the dark, smoke-rich quality of his voice held her rigid. ‘Perhaps we could have dinner together?’
Her heart began to beat in slow, thick strokes. There were flecks of gold near the pupils of his eyes and she could smell the faint tang of his cologne. Desire shot through her, and she suppressed it ruthlessly.
‘I’m dining with Mr Tennant tonight,’ she said coolly.
His jaw tightened; ‘Then tel
l him you now have other arrangements.’
Pride gave her strength. If he wanted to discuss The Warrior Queen with her then he could do it when it was convenient for her. During the day, on the set.
‘But I haven’t,’ she said, and a demon of jealousy drove her to add recklessly, ‘though if I ask him, I’m sure he won’t mind if you and Mrs Rakoczi join us for dinner.’
The blood drained from his face, leaving the strongly defined cheekbones and jutting nose and chin menacing and hawk-like. For a second an expression of such raw pain flared in his eyes that she physically flinched, then it was gone and she was staring up into a face shadowed and shuttered and devoid of all emotion.
‘Thank you,’ he said, and the coldness of his voice chilled her, every word a sliver of ice entering her heart. ‘But that will not be possible.’
She tried to smile politely, to make some brittle, bright remark, but failed. Her hands splayed out behind her in search of something to hold on to. He looked down at her for another long moment and then shrugged, his shoulders lifting dismissively beneath his immaculately tailored jacket as he turned on his heel and strode away.
She fought an onrush of tears, aware that friendship, as well as love, was now beyond her grasp.
‘What did our lord and master want?’ Rogan asked, handing her a paper cup of coffee, his blue eyes glinting with pleasure at the knowledge that his changed status with Valentina was arousing the Hungarian’s wrath.
‘I…Nothing.’
Vidal was deep in conversation with Harris. With difficulty she tore her eyes from the lean, tanned contours of his body and gave her attention to Rogan.
‘He must have wanted something.’ Rogan raised a fair, sleek brow and the corner of his mouth quirked in an amused smile.
She sipped at her coffee and then said, her voice steadier, ‘He wanted to talk to me about The Warrior Queen.’
‘It didn’t look as if your comments pleased him very much. He was scowling like the devil when he walked away.’
Silver Shadows, Golden Dreams Page 13