by Susan Barrie
She stared at him in blank surprise.
“But I do not need the advice of other people. I can look after myself. I’ve had to look after myself for years ...”
“That is too true,” he said. “That is apparently, all too true!” His dark eyes looked straight at her. “Miss Brooke, I have given you no cause so far to think that I am very much concerned with your affairs, but I am. And I would like a few omissions to be rectified. You must have someone other than Martine to be with you all the time; you are very young really, you know—” his smile surprised her afresh with its gentleness “—and although, to your English ears, this may sound old-fashioned, you need a chaperon! Especially in your new circumstances! Whatever you plan to do with your life eventually, you have now become a well-to-do young woman, particularly well-to-do if one takes into consideration Chaumont and its contents. And in view of what you have become, allied to what you are ...”
She looked at him very levelly as he paused.
“Is it in your mind, Dr. Daudet, that I might ask ... people I know ... to the apartment, and that that would not be correct according to your views?”
One of his dark eyebrows ascended a little, and it lent him a slightly puckish appearance, particularly as his eyes held a mildly mischievous gleam and the tips of his ears were slightly pointed.
“You mean ... the young man?”
“I have only met him twice,” she confessed impatiently, “and so far I haven’t asked him to the apartment. I may be English and a lot of other things you don’t approve of, but I am not madly impulsive! And I’m a little bit old-fashioned, too!”
“I am vastly relieved to hear that,” he assured her, but she thought that his sigh of relief was extravagant, and the gleam in his eyes seemed to make fun of her gently. He had exchanged a derisive mockery for a more subtle humoring. “I am also intrigued because it has obviously crossed your mind that this young man you have met only twice could be invited to the apartment! Would it be indiscreet to make any further inquiries about him? Is he, for instance, a compatriot?”
“Yes,” she admitted.
“I thought he might be, because you have apparently been quite drawn to him!”
She hesitated.
“I don’t mind telling you about him.” After all. she thought, he had known Miss Constantia for a number of years, and somehow she felt a desire just then to talk to someone about Peter Fairfield. “He is the nephew of Sir David Fairfield, of Fairfield House. Norfolk, and he’s been over here in Paris for about six months. He has an allowance from his uncle, and he ... writes. We met at a restaurant where we were lunching one day, and we met there again the next day.
“And you had lunch with him?”
“Yes.”
“Does he know what has happened to you recently?”
She felt herself flushing.
“I told him about Miss Constantia—yes!”
“And the terms of her will?”
“Y-yes!”
Suddenly he reached out and covered both her slim hands, which were nervously clasping her handbag, with one of his own. He gave them a most unexpected little squeeze.
“You really are young!” he said. “And of course this heir to a baronetcy—or isn’t he the heir to the baronetcy—wants to see you again? To go on seeing you?”
“He does want to see me again, but if you think that ...” She was suddenly aghast. “If you think that Peter—and I don’t know whether he’s his uncle’s heir or not—wants to go on seeing me just because ...!”
“No, no,” the doctor said soothingly. “I don’t think anything of the kind, and it is perfectly natural he should want to go on seeing you. He is very likely a very charming young man with the right sort of appeal for you, but I still feel that you should not continue to live alone, and I want you to try and think if there isn’t someone you can invite to stay with you for a bit. A woman older than yourself, for preference, though for companionship you wouldn’t want her to be too old ...” And all in a flash Valentine thought of Jane—Jane Beverley! In her last letter, just before Miss Constantia’s death, Jane seemed to have been heavily sunk in the doldrums. It appeared that a new boss had superseded her old one, and she didn’t think she was ever going to get to like him. In addition to which, she had succumbed to seasonal flu and was feeling very low spirited indeed. As she wrote in her letter:
When I think of you in Paris at this time of the year, I feel so envious that I wish I could suddenly sprout wings and fly over and join you! If anyone would find me a job in Paris I would simply leap at it, and my much disliked Mr. Paugrove could find himself another secretary, and you and I would visit all the spots Gavin and I visited on our honeymoon! To think that we had two weeks in Paris and stayed at the Meurice and did things properly.
And now I’m slaving away for a firm of accountants and growing old on my own.
But Valentine hesitated. Would it be fair to ask Jane to give up a secure job and come over to France and live with her for a period that couldn’t possibly extend itself beyond twelve months?
“You have thought of someone?” Dr. Daudet said, watching her.
“Yes. Yes, but ...” And then she explained why she wasn’t so sure she was the right person after all.
“But that is nonsense,” Dr. Daudet exclaimed. “A woman of thirty-three isn’t afraid of life, and your friend has stated in her letter that she finds life growing impossible. She is in a rut and she wants to get out of it, and you can help her to do just that very thing. You are in a position to pay her a good salary, and a little bit over as a kind of bonus when ... when the year is up, shall we say?”
Valentine’s eyes had suddenly grown rather bright.
“I would love to have Jane over here with me,” she admitted.
“Then that is excellent!” And then with sudden caution, “But she is not a featherbrain, this young woman? She has been married, you say, and has a sense of responsibility? She would be able to guide you? Advise you?
Valentine looked at him and smiled slightly.
“I tell you I do not need any guidance, or advice, but Jane is the one to give it if it was needed. She is a most capable person ... And she has a great sense, of humor. I have always thought it would be splendid if she got married again.”
“Marry yourself, young woman,” he said sternly beside her, “before you concern yourself with the remarrying of someone who has already experienced connubial bliss—if there is such a thing!”
She. turned and looked at him with a sudden mildly provocative light in her eyes.
“I didn’t think Frenchmen believed in connubial bliss. I thought their ideas of marriage were strictly practical. Someone to run their homes and bring up the family, and ...?”
“And?”
“And any excitement—romance—would be outside the domestic circle!”
When she had said that she was horrified, because she didn’t quite know why she had said it. and she caught her breath and didn’t dare look at him.
“Ah, well,” he said at last, almost lazily “there might be something to be said for an arrangement of that sort. It’s a sort of all around arrangement and covers most things. But I wonder where you got your knowledge of Frenchmen?”
“I don’t know any Frenchmen, or rather, many Frenchmen, apart from you. And Monsieur Dubonnet.” she added.
“It might surprise you to learn that Dubonnet is very happily married, but I’m not surprised I’ve put strange ideas into your head. Like you, I have no time for marriage!” And he started up the engine.
The car purred and vibrated gently, and Valentine felt curiously sorry that they were moving on. He had given her a very nice lunch, and he could be very whimsical at times, and ... and Miss Constantia had liked him. Her very last words had referred to him, “Leon has such a firm tread!”
She watched his hands on the wheel. They, too, were firm and capable, and his square jaw, when she peeped at him sideways, was very firm. It was the sort of jaw that
wouldn’t give way. But his mouth was distinctly human. She liked the shape of it, the attractive masculine lips, the laughter lines at the corners. And as her eyelashes swept upward, and she could see his pleasant straight nose, his thick black eyelashes, strongly pronounced eyebrows and little touches of frost in the blackness at his temples, she wondered more than ever why she had made that silly remark about Frenchmen.
And then she remembered Madame Faubourg! “Why,” she asked suddenly in rather a small voice, “why, Dr. Daudet, do you think Miss Constantia left me so much of her money?”
“In order to make you happy, little one,” he replied, concentrating on the bumpers of a sleek car ahead, which, having a woman driver at the wheel, he strongly suspected might come into contact with his own front bumpers at any moment. “In order to give you one glorious year ... perhaps!”
“But you don’t really believe that, do you? You think she wanted me to marry?”
“We return to the subject of marriage as if it was a serpent with hypnotic eyes! And undoubtedly the original serpent in Eden had hypnotic eyes. Yes. I think she wanted you to marry.”
“She said she had never been married herself, and she wished she had. She said she would have liked to have had a husband who would have arranged little treats for her and brought her home simple presents like ... like earrings!”
A tear splashed down onto her gloved hand, and then to her horror another, and another ...
Dr. Daudet reached for his immaculate linen handkerchief and passed it to her.
“Before you wash us both away, and my car as well!” he said, but he spoke gently.
CHAPTER SEVEN
That night he telephoned her. and she felt very much surprised to hear his voice on the other end of the wire.
“ ‘Alio, ‘alio!” he said. “You distracted me so much on our homeward drive this afternoon that I didn’t receive your promise to write to that friend of yours—Madame Beverley. I think it would be as well if you did so without delay. And don’t encourage callers while you are alone.”
“I have no intention of doing so,” she said, knowing to whom he was referring.
“Good!” he exclaimed. “But don’t be bored, either. Madame Faubourg will take you under her wing if you’d like her to, you know. And I have another suggestion.”
“Yes?” she said.
“I have an old aunt—one with a sense of humor like your Madame Beverley—whom I would like you to get to know. My suggestion is that I take you to tea with her one afternoon.”
“But ... but why should you bother to do that?” she asked, surprised.
“Perhaps because you press on my conscience, my little Anglo-Saxon! You are so transparently what you are, and I did not treat you well in the beginning. I have explained that I thought you were too ornamental! And you know that we Frenchmen have a weakness for collecting ornaments, and perhaps I did not wish to be tempted! Now I feel that your particular quality of being ornamental is the type that should be shut away in some glass-fronted cabinet in a quiet English drawing room, but I do not happen to have an English drawing room handy, and you would almost certainly wither in a glass case. So, as you are far more vulnerable than you realize, and I stand to lose a considerable sum of money if someone like that young Englishman of yours should persuade you to alter certain of your views before a year is out. I must bestir myself to make the money safe. My aunt will be good for you and produce the right friends for you.”
“No young men?” she asked with a deceptive demureness in her voice.
“No young men!” he answered. “You will have to wait for those until the year is up!”
“Thank you, Dr. Daudet,” she said. “Thank you for your desire to protect and your overwhelming interest!”
“It is self-interest, as I have told you.” he replied and he laughed softly on the other end of the line. “Very, very selfish self-interest.”
She didn’t know what to say, or why he was laughing at her in quite that gentle, but nevertheless jibing, way. And then, still lightly, but with a change of tone, he exclaimed. “Well, as I am going out to dinner I must hang up now. What a thing it is to have one’s personal engagements overlapping, don’t you agree?”
“My personal engagements seldom overlap,” she told him. And then, as if something prompted her to do so. she added, “It is kind of Madame Faubourg to be willing to take me under her wing, bur you needn’t tell her so tonight. I ... I will tell her so myself when I see her again.”
But as she set down the receiver, she thought. I don’t know that I want to see her again! I don’t know that I even like her, or could ever like her.
For his careless rejoinder hadn’t pleased her.
“You must possess a witchball, little one! But take my advice and don’t look into it too often! And now go to bed early and make certain that you have a good night’s rest. At your age it is important always to have a good night lest the roses fade, and those sky-blue eyes of yours would not look well underlined by shadows. Bonne nuit, ma petite!”
She picked up Fifi and sat down by the fragrant log fire, and she thought a little resentfully that he could have a dinner engagement and go out for the evening! She was to go to bed early!
But she did what he wanted her to and wrote to Jane the following day. Jane replied on a perfect wave of enthusiasm for throwing up her present job and joining her the instant it was possible in Paris.
Never did I think you would one day be in a position to employ me, darling, but you can take it from me that I’m absolutely delighted you are in that position. What times we’ll have! What orgies of shopping! And I’ll keep all the fortune hunters away, if necessary with a revolver.
She did not know yet about the special clause in Miss Constantia’s will, and Valentine thought it best to let her know when she arrived, not before.
Once she knew that Jane was coming she began to look forward almost feverishly to seeing her, for she and Jane had a lot in common, in spite of the ten-year difference in their ages. There was a spare bedroom in the apartment, and it was got ready for her. Miss Constantia’s bedroom had been closed and locked, and Valentine had no intention of taking it over for herself, although it was the main bedroom. It was too full of memories of Miss Constantia and that last morning.
Sometimes Fifi scratched at the door, as if asking for admittance. But Valentine swept her up in her arms and hugged her and said, “No, my pet, you’re mine now. Miss Constantia particularly stated in her will that I was to keep you always, and that means I don’t have to lose you at the end of a year! You really are mine!”
And Fifi, although bewildered at first, quickly got used to the change of mistresses.
She accompanied Valentine on her walks, and the two of them became familiar figures in the Tuileries Gardens. The Tuileries Gardens were within brisk walking distance of the apartment, and it was there that Valentine spent most of her time in those early spring days while she waited for Jane.
Peter Fairfield telephoned several times to make some arrangement with her, but each time she put him off. She didn’t quite know why she did so, and his voice sounded a little more hurt each time he telephoned. And one night the hurt was so noticeable, and he became so persuasive, that she relented and agreed to let him take her out to dinner. After all, she thought with that quick stab of resentment she had experienced before, Dr. Daudet didn’t ask her permission when he wanted to spend an evening with something choice and elegant in the way of feminine company, and he hadn’t even bothered to find out whether she had written to Jane and what sort of reply she had received.
Daily she had been expecting him to make some inquiry, but he hadn’t. And she heard no more, either, about his aunt.
So when Peter said pleadingly, “You’ve only allowed me to take you out once, and I thought when we met it was the nicest thing that had happened to me since I arrived in Paris!” something inside her grew very soft toward him.
“I liked meeting you, too,” she said.
“Then let’s meet again soon—tonight! I’ve just received my allowance, and something must have touched my uncle in a spot where I believed he was incapable of being touched, for he’s added to it something in the nature of a bonus. We’ll blow it all on a really good dinner. White tie and tails, and for you something, well, you could hardly look nicer than on the first day we met!”
She laughed. “Nevertheless, I’d look a little odd accompanying you in all your magnificence of white tie and tails dressed in a tailored suit and blouse! No, if you really mean it ...”
“I do!” came the reply promptly.
“And you’ll let me pay something toward the cost of the dinner ...”
“Woman!” His voice was sharp this time. “Do you want to humiliate me? I’ve told you I’m in the money, and I can think of nothing more worthwhile than you to spend it on. Seriously, Valentine—” a note in his voice reducing her to even greater pliability, “—I hate to think of you as a kind of heiress, or whatever it is you are. I wish we’d met before you’d been left all that money by that old woman.”
“Oh, you mustn’t call Miss Constantia an old woman!” she reproved him at once. “She was the most adorable elderly lady I’ve ever known.”
“Well, you know what I mean. She’s put you out of my reach, in a way. And I ... I resent it.”
Yes, she knew what he meant, and her heart swelled because it proved Dr. Daudet was entirely wrong, and she had done nothing rash when she made the disclosure of her legacy and its conditions to him.
They arranged that he would call for her at the apartment. All at once she didn’t see why she shouldn’t allow him to do so. And when he rang the bell Martine admitted him, and Valentine was waiting for him in the exquisitely furnished living room. She was wearing a black net dress that was the only really expensive purchase she had made since her arrival in Paris, and its deceptive simplicity and plainness could hardly have suited her better. Her hair was in a chignon low on her neck; she had a row of pearls around her slender throat, and her cobwebby sandals looked as if they were made of moonlight.