He was trying to speak in the same calm voice he had used all the evening, but now he remembered all he had felt when Magnolia had told him she preferred Raymond.
He was also furious at the deceitfulness with which she was trying to come back into his life, and this changed his voice and, although he was not aware of it, the expression on his face.
“I was wondering when I went for a walk by the Seine,” Warren went on, “how, when I return to England tomorrow I can avoid the scenes that I will undoubtedly have to endure from a woman who is incapable of speaking the truth.”
Again the condemnation seemed almost to vibrate from his lips and he finished by saying,
“Now I have no wish to die, but instead I would find it very easy to commit murder!”
If he had intended to startle Nadia, he certainly succeeded.
He saw her large eyes widen and her fingers were clasped together as if she was personally disturbed at the violence of his words.
Then, as if he remembered how young and frail she was, he said in a different tone,
“Forgive me, I should not speak like that, but I wanted you to understand and help me.”
There was a little pause before she replied,
“I would like to help you, but I cannot see how it is – possible for me to – do so.”
“When I walked by the Seine tonight,” Warren answered, “my thoughts were of vengeance – how I could hurt somebody who had made me suffer so acutely that, like you, I wished to end my life.”
There was silence as if he was feeling for words before he added,
“A dozen different ideas rushed through my mind, one of them being that I might hire an actress to return to England with me.”
Nadia looked puzzled.
“Why should you wish to do that?”
“Because I thought the one certain way to show the woman I am speaking about that I am no longer interested in her,” Warren explained, “would be to come home with either a wife or a fiancée.”
Now Nadia was very still as if she understood what he was saying to her.
Then, as if she thought it was impossible for him to entertain such an idea, she asked,
“And you – intended to find this – actress?”
“It was just a wild idea, which is impracticable because I am leaving tomorrow and have already telegraphed to my mother to expect me.”
“Then – what are you – saying?”
Her words were very low, but he heard them.
“I am saying,” he replied, “ that it seems to be Fate that you should come into my life at this particular moment, or should I say that once again our Guardian Angels have taken a hand in making things easier for both of us?”
“I-I still do not – understand.”
“What I am suggesting is that you should come back to England with me as my fiancée. You will not come under your own name, so there will be no embarrassment for you as a person. We will give you a name and, to make my revenge really effective, a title!”
He almost spat the last words, then seeing Nadia draw in her breath he controlled himself to say without any expression in his voice,
“I will ask you to play your part for only as long as it is necessary. Then we can announce to the few people who will be interested that we find we are incompatible, and I will pay you enough money to keep you in comfort for a long time. I will also try to find your Charrington relations who can look after you.”
He paused and realised that Nadia was staring at him as if she could not believe what she had just heard.
Then, as if she was convinced it was a fantasy, she said,
“I-I suppose you are joking?”
“I have never been more serious.”
“But it is – impossible! How could I do – such a thing?”
“Why not?”
“You have only just met me – you know – nothing about me.”
“That is immaterial. What is important is that nobody in England knows anything about you. They will therefore accept exactly what we tell them.”
“I would – make mistakes – I would let you – down!”
“I see no reason why you should do that. I think it would be a mistake for you to be English and foreigners are not supposed to be au fait with all the protocol of English Social life.”
Nadia looked away from him, then quite unexpectedly she laughed.
“I don’t believe – this is true!” she exclaimed. “I must be dreaming or perhaps by mistake I am – acting in a very strange comedy.”
“As far as I am concerned, it is a drama that might easily have become a tragedy.”
Warren was frowning as he remembered how desperate he had been when Edward had joined him at the Club, and how agonising the wounds Magnolia had inflicted on him had been, for months after he left England,
It was only when the difficulties, problems and discomforts of everyday life in the desert had occupied him almost exclusively that she had ceased to haunt him.
He knew, however, that what she had made him suffer had left scars that would remain on his mind and what he thought of as his heart for the rest of his life.
As if, while he was thinking, Nadia was also turning over in her mind what he had told her, she said,
“Suppose when you see – this lady again, you – realise that you – love her so much that you will – forgive her as she – wants you to do?”
“Never!”
As he spoke, a surge of rage seemed to sweep over him and he brought his clenched fist down on the table, making the glasses jump.
“Never! Never!” he declared. “Let me make this quite clear, Nadia, I have finished with love, and if I do marry eventually because I want an heir, it will be a marriage of convenience such as the French have and which proves in most cases exceedingly successful.”
The cynical lines on his face seemed to accentuate as he added,
“‘Once bitten, twice shy!’ I will never allow myself to be humiliated again.”
“I can understand your feelings,” Nadia said. “At the same time perhaps, although you did not realise it, it is better to have learned what the lady was like – before she became your – wife rather than – afterwards.”
This was something that had never occurred to Warren before and he thought that Nadia certainly had a point.
He visualised, because he had a very fertile imagination, what he would have felt if after they had been married he had had to watch Magnolia yearning to be with Raymond instead of with him.
What was more, she could have been deeply envious that she could not live at Buckwood or eventually become a Marchioness.
He would have tried to please her, tried to ensure that she was not discontented in the small Manor house they would have lived in on the estate.
Yet he knew now as Nadia had suggested, it would have been a slow and painful agony to acknowledge the truth, and better to endure the short, sharp blow Magnolia had given him that had nearly knocked him out.
As if he could not bear to think of what might have been, he said abruptly,
“Let us concern ourselves with the situation as it is. Will you help me?”
“Do you really think I can?”
He looked at her and said,
“Shall I be very frank? You are a lady. I know without your telling me that you are well educated and, if you were properly fed and well dressed, you would be strikingly beautiful.”
He spoke quite impersonally as if he was cataloguing Nadia’s finer points and yet the colour swept into her face, making her seem not only very young, but also very human.
Because she was so pale, so thin and so unhappy, she had seemed somewhat divorced from reality, but now she was only a young girl who had received a compliment.
Then she gave a little cry,
“You said, ‘well dressed!’ I have already – told you that I possess – nothing! I have sold everything – even my shoes.”
“In which case we have to work very sw
iftly.”
He drew his gold watch from his waistcoat pocket and looked at the time.
It was almost eleven-thirty.
He raised his hand to catch the proprietor’s attention, who understood that he wanted his bill.
It was ready and, as he put it down on the table Warren placed a large number of francs on the plate and rose to his feet.
“Come along!” he said, “we will find a voiture, then I will tell you where we are going.”
He knew as Nadia rose that she was still contemplating whether she would do as he suggested, or run off and find her way to the river without his interference.
Then, as if something young and irrepressible within her told her that she would rather live than die, she gave him a faint smile.
They walked into the street and, when they reached the main road that ran alongside the Seine, they saw a voiture for hire coming towards them.
“Take us to the Rue de Rivoli, to the late market!” Warren ordered.
The cab driver touched his hat with his whip and obviously impressed by Warren’s appearance replied,
“Bien, monsieur!”
Warren climbed in beside Nadia, who asked,
“Why are we going there?”
“Because it is the only place open at this time of the night,” Warren explained, “and I have to buy you a cape and perhaps a hat before I can take you into my hotel.”
She looked at him quickly and he said,
“I am going to ask the manager’s wife, who I remember is a very able woman, to find you enough clothes in which you can travel to England. After that my mother will provide you with those that you lost while you were travelling to Paris.”
“Will your mother believe that?”
“You must make certain she does. At the same time we first have to have a convincing story to tell Madame Blanc who, I am quite certain, will be very inquisitive.”
He was silent as the voiture drove over a bridge across the Seine and a few minutes later they were in the Rue de Rivoli.
At the smart end, where it joined the Place de la Concorde, the shops at this late hour were of course all closed.
But Warren had remembered that beyond the Louvre, where there were the big cheap Emporiums, there were also some small shops that stayed open late.
There was also an open market where one could buy food as well as all sorts of strange objects that the French considered bargains.
When the voiture came to a standstill, Warren got out and told the man to wait.
He took Nadia by the arm and then they mingled with the throng of people who had just left the restaurants or the theatres and a number of rag pickers who were doubtless also pickpockets.
Warren steered Nadia through the crowd which was very good-humoured, joking and laughing amongst themselves, until he found a shop that was illuminated and had its door still open.
There were a number of flashy gowns and some very seductive under garments in the window, but inside there was a clothes’ horse with a long rail on which there hung some long cloaks that the Parisian women wore at night over their evening gowns.
He picked out one that was on a hanger, but thought it too gaudy, then found another in a dark blue material that he placed over Nadia’s shoulders.
It reached almost to the ground, concealing her threadbare gown, and he thought it suited her.
“You will have to choose the hat,” he suggested.
He pointed to where there was a miscellaneous collection of hats, straws, velvets, some decorated with feathers or flowers, some gaudy, all heaped together on the side of a counter.
Nadia hesitated.
Then, with what he thought was unerring good taste, she picked out one that was plain and yet unmistakably had a touch of Paris chic about it.
It was a light felt, obviously left over from the winter collection, but it was small and trimmed only with one large black quill stuck into the band around the crown. She put it on her head and looked at him for approval.
“Excellent!” he exclaimed.
He paid an indifferent saleswoman, who looked tired and was obviously watching the clock for closing time.
They walked back to the voiture, Warren gave the address of his hotel to the cab-driver and as they set off up the Rue de Rivoli he said,
“Now you have another part to play and I shall be interested to see how good an actress you are.”
“You are – frightening me!”
“You certainly need not be frightened of Madame Blanc, although I admit I have found her somewhat intimidating in the past!”
Nadia realised he was laughing at her and she pleaded,
“Please tell me quickly what I have to do.”
“This part of the story is rather complicated,” Warren said. “I left the hotel telling the manager I had to leave first thing in the morning for England. He was to make all the arrangements for me. I return with a very beautiful young woman, for which the French have only one possible explanation!”
He did not wait for Nadia to reply, but went on,
“I should have asked you this before, but what other languages do you speak besides English and French?”
He knew from Nadia’s momentary hesitation that she was considering what reply to make.
It was strange how he could read her thoughts and he was fully aware when he intruded on something she wished to keep a secret.
He did not even think it was extraordinary that he was so perceptive about her. He only knew that his instinct told him so much more than she would put into words.
Hesitatingly she answered,
“I-I can speak – Hungarian.”
“Good! That is exactly what I hoped, or rather, that it would be the language of one of the Balkan countries of which most people are lamentably ignorant.”
He smiled at her in the darkness of the voiture, as he said,
“This will fit in with the tale we will tell when we reach England, so at least you need not change your identity.”
“It sounds just like something in a novel!” Nadia exclaimed.
“We have to make it credible!”
“Very well then – I am Hungarian.”
“Tell me an Hungarian name.”
“Ferrais – or Kaunitz!”
“Ferrais will do,” he said, “and your father is an extremely wealthy nobleman.”
Nadia did not speak and he continued,
“Because he is so wealthy, you were kidnapped when you were travelling to Paris and held to ransom.”
Warren spoke every word as if he was seeing it actually happening as he described it.
“The men who captured you were utterly and completely ruthless. They starved you, told your father you would die unless he paid them an enormous sum of money, and confiscated your clothes, your jewellery, in fact, everything you possess.”
“It sounds – terrifying!” Nadia cried, but there was a hint of laughter in her voice.
“Then today, by some great good fortune,” Warren went on, “I discovered among my letters an anonymous communication telling me where I would find you. Because your captors were not expecting you to be rescued, I was able to steal you away without their preventing me.”
Nadia clapped her hands.
“It is exactly like one of the novelettes Mama would never let me read.”
“Well, now you can not only read it but live it,” Warren replied, “and make it convincing.”
“To Madame Blanc?”
“Exactly! We are relying on her not only to believe you, but to provide you with the clothes for you to travel to England in, and in which you will look very attractive, despite all the privations you have suffered at the hands of your kidnappers.”
“And you really think she will – believe us?”
“It depends on how well we tell the story!”
*
When several hours later Warren went to bed, he stood for a moment at the window looking out over the moonlit view beneath him.
There was a smile of satisfaction on his lips that had not been there when he had gazed at it before.
He had known, when he told his dramatic tale to Monsieur and Madame Blanc in the manager’s office and saw their absorbed attention to what he was saying, that Nadia would not fail him either here in France or when they reached England.
She played admirably the part of a shocked and frightened young girl, who had suddenly been subjected to the horrors she had endured after being kidnapped.
Wisely, she said very little except to exclaim piteously over her sufferings.
Her thin face and huge eyes were so pathetic that he knew Madame Blanc’s heart had been wrung with sympathy.
“Because I could not bring my cousin here to the hotel in the state to which she had been reduced,” Warren explained, “I bought her a few clothes at the market in the Rue de Rivoli. But you understand, madame, she must have something very different in which to travel to England.”
“I can of course buy clothes very easily, monsieur,” Madame Blanc assured him, “but not until the shops are open, and Mademoiselle la Comtesse must have the best!”
“Yes, of course, the very best!” Warren agreed. “And money is no object.”
He thought as he spoke of the huge fortune he would inherit when he became the Head of the family in his uncle’s place, and knew that for the first time in his life there was no need for him to count the cost of anything.
He made it clear to Madame Blanc that Nadia’s father would reimburse him for anything he spent, so that it would be foolish to buy cheap things, which they would throw away when they reached England.
“My cousin is used to having clothes that are the envy of all her friends,” he said with a smile, “so I must look to you, madame, to replace those which have been stolen from her.”
“But of course, monsieur!” Madame Blanc said eagerly.
Then she looked at her husband.
“How long do I have, Etienne, before Monsieur wishes to depart?”
It took quite a lot of argument and pleading from Madame before Warren finally agreed to leave Paris on a later train, which would connect not with the morning cross Channel steamer from Calais, but the afternoon boat.
This would mean their arriving much later, but he knew it was impossible for him to take Nadia to England without the right clothes.
Revenge of the Heart Page 5