by Susan Barrie
CHAPTER SIX
DURING the next few days Carole discovered what it was like to be someone of importance—purely temporary importance, of course, in her case—and to be courted, envied, spoiled, considered, and admired.
The admiration she surprised sometimes in the eyes of James Pentallon, and it also looked at her out of the eyes of certain members of the teaching staff at Miss Dove’s, and a large number of the pupils, when they discovered how well she could look in the right sort of clothes, and with a kind of aura of unnatural elation clinging about her because for the first time in her life she was being permitted what she had honestly to describe to herself as a ‘good time’.
Not merely did Marty make over to her half of her wardrobe—some of the dresses and outfits she had not yet worn in public—but every day she was excused taking any sort of a part in the running of Miss Dove’s establishment, and James called for her in his rakish white car and they set off on a kind of voyage of adventure. They combed Paris and its surrounds as if they were tourists, haunted art galleries and museums with catalogues in their hands, lunched, dined and wined at the best restaurants, and even patronised a few of the more homely temples devoted to eating—in particular a little place in Montmartre, where the food was good and the service excellent, although the tablecloths were checked and there was a carafe of vin ordinaire in the middle of the table when they sat down at it.
Afterwards they climbed to the Sacre-Coeur, and lingered there in the hot afternoon sunshine. Although Carole had visited it several times before, she had never experienced the strange feeling of contentment and leisurely peace that she experienced in the company of the dominating Pentallon, who was the easiest person in the world to get on with when he relaxed and appeared to be bent on enjoying himself and nothing else. They talked about all sorts of subjects, and found that they had many shared interests ... But even so, during moments when he was not so relaxed, and was thoughtful and preoccupied, James was very much the brother of Marty, cool, remote, reserved, very much a law unto himself, inhabiting a world that was his own particular world, but inside which no outsider could set a foot unless previously invited.
Carole was doing him something in the nature of an extreme favour, and he was very grateful to her. He showered her with presents which she did not wish to accept, spent a lot of money on her, consulted her wishes, admired her very frequently. She had the feeling that he might enter into a lighthearted flirtation with her if she was willing, which of course she was not.
He was amused by her determination not to lose sight of their real relationship. He plainly thought her determination also to give value for money was rather entertaining—even intriguing—and the freshness of her enthusiasm over unaccustomed pleasures perhaps a little touching. Young women of her type were a novelty to him, and she more than suspected that he was inclined to enjoy the novelty ... while it lasted. But because all this would end very soon, and, once ended, their paths would probably never cross again, Carole was careful not to let herself be entirely carried away by all that was happening to her since she had agreed to a form of deception that was far from acceptable to her own conscience. It was something that could never have happened to her had she not been such a close friend of Marty’s ... And although she would probably keep in touch with Marty during the years ahead, that would be her only contact with the Pentallon family once the deception was ended, unbelievable though it might sometimes seem while James Pentallon was her constant escort.
She looked so charming in some of his sister’s outfits that it would have been extraordinary if he had not found it easy to act the part of an attentive fiancé. Always deceptively demure, her demureness acquired a kind of sparkle under the influence of high living and appreciative looks. Soft lights and background music, plushy salons and austere elegance, formal gardens and woodland walks, the wind rushing past her ears in his low-slung car ... all these things contributed to give her confidence, and bring out the best in her. While she went from exclusive club to exclusive club, accompanied her supposed fiancé to the homes of his friends, danced with him in an atmosphere thick with elegance and the perfumes of fashionable women, felt his hand inside her arm whenever they left a building, his protective gaze on her whenever they crossed a broad main thoroughfare or someone approached too close to her, and there was some danger of having her toes trodden upon, she could not but labour under the purely temporary delusion that she was some creature of value ... And in one man’s eyes, at least, she had a particular value.
She would never have believed that she could allow herself to become a different being so easily ... to deceive so easily. James’s godmother, who had professed herself as utterly delighted by the news of the engagement; the Comte de Sarterre, who had appeared anything but delighted when Pentallon introduced her as his future wife. Even Chantal St. Clair, who was the reason for the subterfuge, was being rather crudely deceived.
Unless, perhaps, she wasn’t really deceived...
The day after he had purchased her engagement ring James explained to Carole that she would have to submit herself to certain ordeals before the engagement was terminated. There was no point in going to the amount of trouble that they were going to unless they drove it well and truly home that he was no longer a free man, and the polite world accepted her as his fiancée. She would have to be introduced as his future wife to as many people as was possible in a short time, and that meant a special dinner-party to celebrate the engagement. As his own apartment was fairly small—although extremely luxurious, as she discovered during a brief visit to it—the dinner would be given by Lady Bream, wife of Sir Darrel Bream, who was James’s chief while he remained in Paris; and that meant a definitely outsize ordeal for Carole, since she had to convince two very important people of the validity of the engagement before ever she was presented to the rest of the guests.
At first she was quite certain that she couldn’t possibly do it, but James refused to admit that she had any reason for panic. All she had to do was to behave naturally and normally ... and leave the rest to him!
He gave her his word that he would give her the very maximum amount of support, and she had nothing to fear, really: She looked the sort of girl he might decide to marry—one day!—with a curious little one-sided smile as he looked at her, and Lady Bream, he was certain, would love her at sight, and Sir Darrel would definitely approve.
All she had to do was to wear something very suitable, decline to allow anyone—least of all Marty’s hairdresser!—to interfere with her hair-style, since it suited her admirably, and perhaps wear rather more make-up than she was accustomed to doing in order to give the impression that she was more sophisticated than she actually was ... James’s taste almost always running to sophisticated members of her sex.
“We don’t want anyone to be really surprised,” he remarked, as they sat in a small private sitting-room at Miss Dove’s and discussed the arrangements, with Marty to offer helpful hints every now and again. “And as I’m more than ten years older than Carole I don’t want to be accused of cradle-snatching,” smiling at her sideways.
“She’ll have to have a new dress,” Marty declared with emphasis. “Something really spectacular for the occasion!”
“There isn’t time,” James said firmly. “You’ll have to lend her one of yours.”
But his sister shook her head just as firmly.
“A new dress,” she insisted. “I’ll see that she gets it in time. I’ll make the arrangements this afternoon, and she can have a first fitting tomorrow morning.”
Carole was not very much concerned about whether or not she had a new dress, but she was agitated by the fear of something else.
“Madame St. Clair,” she said falteringly. “Is she—is she likely to be amongst the guests?”
James smiled at her with the same urbane affability. But before he answered he lighted himself a cigarette, and he spoke through a faint haze of cigarette smoke as he lay back with deceptive languor in his c
hair.
“Of course,” he answered. “She is the one person who has to be convinced that everything is above board ... And in any case, she’s an old friend, and will most certainly be there. I shall expect you to be especially sweet to her, Carole!”
His sister regarded him somewhat thoughtfully. “Isn’t that asking rather a lot?” she demanded, after a moment of silence. “Of Carole, I mean?”
James’s dark blue eyes looked almost slumbrously amused.
“Since Carole will have my support, and is in no way involved in this undertaking—not seriously involved, I mean—the answer to that is, I think not,” he replied.
But Marty looked, for once, extremely doubtful, and as for Carole she realised perhaps for the first time—although when she thought about it afterwards she knew it was not for the first time—that James was using her in a cool and deliberate and almost cold-blooded manner that caused her temporarily to forget how kind and considerate he could be, at times. And the fact that she knew he was planning to make her some sort of expensive present as a mark of his appreciation for her wholehearted co-operation when the whole charade was over filled her with sudden nausea.
She was a tool, and he was using her. She was his sister’s ‘little friend’, and even Marty was depending on her loyalty and the strength of her attachment not to let her brother down.
James remembered an appointment suddenly, and casually took his leave. But before he left he blew his ‘fiancée’ a careless kiss with the tips of his shapely fingers, and then waved even more carelessly at Marty.
“I’ll see you both in the morning,” he said. “I’ll collect you about ten. And make sure you don’t forget that appointment with your dressmaker, Marty,” before he let himself out at the door. “I can’t have Carole disgracing me on such an all-important—vitally important”—derisively—“occasion!”
CHAPTER SEVEN
IT seemed to Carole that everything and everyone was lined up against her, and that she no longer had any choice in the matter. From Mademoiselle, who thought she was genuinely engaged, to Miss Dove, who returned unexpectedly from England to add her delighted congratulations to the rest, she felt certain that there was no one who would have believed her for an instant if she had attempted to let them into a secret and revealed that she and James Pentallon were not really planning to marry one another, but that he was merely allowing the world to think he intended to marry her.
The web of deceit was so fine, and delicate, and skilfully woven that no one could detect it. No one, apparently, thought it odd that a rich man was planning to marry a penniless girl who was merely attractive, and not in the least beautiful like either Marty or Madame St. Clair. The whole school was looking forward to a wedding, and expecting invitations en bloc ... They were even collecting for a wedding present!
How they would react when the cold wind of disillusionment started blowing and Carole was either jilted, or the engagement was discreetly terminated in such a way that no one would be in a position to believe she had been actually jilted, she couldn’t think ... and she didn’t wish to think.
She only knew she was being extremely weak and foolish, and the most puzzling part about it all was that she didn’t really know why she was being so foolish.
She would probably have to leave Paris and get a job elsewhere when it was all over, and for that she would have only herself to thank ... and no sound excuse that she could think of.
All the same, she would have been less than human and not in the least feminine if she hadn’t been thrilled to the very core of her being by the dress that she was to wear for the all-important dinner party when, following the final fitting and some last-minute adjustments, it was delivered to her at Miss Dove’s. It was of embroidered tulle over a white silk sheath, and it was the loveliest thing she had ever seen in her life. The embroidery was in many tones of green and pastel pink, and at the heart of each tiny flower was a sparkling rhinestone. The effect was extraordinarily youthful and pleasing, and the strange iridescence of the embroidery in some way emulated the iridescence of the opal ring she wore on her finger.
The day before the dinner-party James Pentallon presented her with a necklace of milky pearls in a satin-lined case. Startled by the expensiveness of the gift, she insisted that she would return the necklace when the dinner-party was over, but James said carelessly that if she did he would decline to accept it, and it would be despatched to her again ... And if she declined to accept it it would be ownerless.
Carole realised that he was quite capable of doing precisely what he said, and she thanked him in halting sentences. He looked at her rather shrewdly, as if half suspecting that she didn’t like pearls, and then made a suggestion that made it impossible for her to feel any real pleasure in acquiring the pearls.
“They’re good,” he said. “If you ever need money you can sell them, and they’ll provide you with a little nest-egg.”
She felt suddenly as if his lack of perception and insensibility was like a brutally hard wall she had stumbled against without properly realising it was in her path. At the same time she was not entirely sorry because he had provided her with a reminder that their acquaintance was to be short-lived, and any generosity he displayed to her now was because he knew himself in her debt.
On the night of the dinner-party flowers arrived for her and were carried up to her room by one of the housemaids. The girl looked frankly envious as she handed them over in their transparent container ... creamy-pink roses to match the creamy-pink pearls. And they blended with the honey-colour of Carole’s hair, and they lent warmth to her complexion, just as the creamy-pink touches in the dress that was arrayed across the bed did.
Marty came in to subject her to a careful scrutiny when she was finally ready and they were both waiting to be collected by James. Marty was looking extremely sophisticated in something ice-blue and sparkling, and she had that air of casual confidence which seldom deserted her because she knew there were few flaws in her appearance whatever she wore.
But Carole was somewhat different. Carole had a role to fill, and she was plainly very nervous. Marty shook her head at her.
“You don’t need to be,” she said. “You look delightful.”
It was true. Despite James’s advice—indeed, his very earnest advice—she had had her hair washed and set by Marty’s own hair-stylist, and its honey-coloured splendour was quite remarkable under the dressing-table lights. It had a gentle, natural wave of its own, so it was the simplest hair in the world to set, and it had been shaped to draw attention to the slight elfin cast of her face. Her eyes were brilliant with nervousness, and more green than grey as a result of the same emotion, and her long eyelashes fluttered agitatedly as Marty looked her up and down in an almost merciless fashion.
“That dress is a success,” Marty declared. “It’s young, but not too young—after all, Chantal is a radiant widow, and you have to outshine her!—and, on the whole, you make me think of a piece of rare porcelain. I think James is lucky ... or everyone who sees you tonight is going to think he’s lucky,” she amended swiftly.
She turned to the door.
“We’d better go down. James is bound to be a bit nervous himself, and we mustn’t keep him waiting. Don’t forget your bag—” it was white velvet to match the slim white velvet coat she carried over her arm, and inside it was a small gold compact and other etceteras. “You’d be lost without a few running repairs during the course of the evening.”
James arrived so promptly that it added to Carole’s nervousness, and she thought he also looked a little grim and detached when they set off at last. He had hardly noticed her appearance, and he had certainly not commented on it. As she sat beside him at the wheel of the car she wondered what his thoughts were that the muscles at the corners of his mouth were so indicative of tension as he drove to announce a forthcoming marriage that was unlikely ever to take place.
The home of Sir Darrel and Lady Bream was in the heart of fashionable Paris, and so
beautifully appointed and almost crushingly elegant that Carole felt affected by it almost immediately. And the effect was an adverse one ... as if she had no right to be there.
Lady Bream, to her relief, was rather a motherly person, but it was obvious that her couturier did not seek to emphasise this. She literally scintillated with diamonds as she moved, and her lovely white hair was so elegantly arranged that it might have been a creation of adaptable silk. Sir Darrel, too, was not really in the least alarming, and in the flower-banked drawing-room, or salon, he put up his eye-glass and greeted Carole with some heart-warming words of blunt appreciation. This was after she had hastily repaired the slight ravages to her appearance caused by the short car journey in Lady Bream’s own satin-draped bedroom, while one or two other recent arrivals crowded round the mirrors and did the same.
“Upon my word,” Sir Darrel declared, gazing fiercely—but it was a deceptive fierceness—through his eyeglass, “you ought to be complimented, my boy! Complimented as well as congratulated! I don’t know where you found this young lady, but if I’d been unattached and your age myself I wouldn’t have hesitated to snatch her up!”
And then he winked deliberately at Carole. “Don’t know that I can say the same thing to you, young lady,” he told her. “James has been a bachelor for too long, and you’ll probably find him a little set in his ways! But I’ve no doubt you’ll find a way to shake him out of them!”
Carole stood looking confused—and feeling it—while Lady Bream stood by and watched her with a perfectly kindly form of criticalness. Carole could tell, by the way her pleasant blue eyes twinkled, that she was not finding it an entirely easy matter to accept Carole as the girl the much-sought-after James Pentallon had at last decided to marry. And in a brief aside she confessed as much to Carole.