by Susan Barrie
She didn’t know why she added such a thing, but it seemed to cause him to frown temporarily.
“It shouldn’t matter to you what Bianca wears. She has the di Rini jewellery, some of which is excellent, and some vulgar; but she won’t possess it much longer unless Paul marries money.”
“You don’t think she is interested in the idea of marrying money herself?”
He looked slightly startled for a moment, and then he frowned and threw away his cigarette.
“I suppose most women wish to marry for money—or at least, where there is some money,” he remarked as he rose. “Just as men can be tempted by it. Now, shall we return to the hotel?”
CHAPTER IV
When they reached the hotel the first person Cathleen saw waiting for her in the main entrance hall was Count Paul di Rini. At first, when she caught sight of him in conversation with an attractive, dark-haired young woman behind the reception desk, she received the impression that he was making enquiries about something or someone, until he turned and came quickly towards her, ignoring Edouard in the first few moments of recognition.
“Signorina Brown!” he exclaimed. He put forth his hands and clasped both of hers. “Bianca and I have been searching for you everywhere! The hotel said you were in for lunch, but that afterwards you went out again.” He glanced with an air of displeasure at Moroc. “Presumably with you, Edouard? Were you the ‘gentleman’ with whom Miss Brown lunched?”
“I was.” Edouard’s expression was faintly challenging.
Count Paul seemed to relax a little. He made a shrugging movement with his shoulders, as if deploring the enterprise of some people, and then once more seized hold of Cathleen’s hands and this time retained them in a slightly moist grip.
“You are looking delightful, Miss Brown,” he told her, “and as if you have been soaking up the sun. Did you ever know sunshine like this in England?”
“No, never,” she answered. Actually, she was acutely aware of the fact that, in the process of ‘soaking up the sun’ she had acquired a slight shine on the tip of her nose, and her hair felt definitely untidy. The smart white outfit she had put on with such pride that morning felt crumpled and soiled.
She noticed that in his buttonhole—and he was very smart this afternoon, very much the owner of one of the oldest palazzos in the district, with an aristocratic disdain for all lesser mortals around him (particularly obvious tourists, at whom he glanced as if they had no right to exist)—he wore a slightly wilting red rosebud, and it caused her to remember the gift of red roses she had received that morning. With a slight shock—for the last thing she wished to believe was that it really was Count Paul who had sent her the flowers—she wondered whether it was purely a coincidence that his buttonhole had obviously been purchased in the same florist’s that had despatched the roses to her.
“Bianca and I have decided that we must call you Cathleen,” he said, as if he expected her to feel mildly flattered, at least. “After all, your sister was Arlette to us, and you cannot continue to be Miss Brown. It would be ridiculous!”
“Quite ridiculous,” Edouard agreed, in an extremely dry voice.
Paul turned and looked at him. Despite the lustre of his eyes they were bleak and cold.
‘Bianca was expecting to see or hear from you to-day,” he told him. “Apparently last night you made some sort of an arrangement.”
“If we did I must have a very bad memory,” Moroc returned quietly. “An inexcusable memory!”
Paul shrugged again.
“Well, there is little point in our standing here like this. I have run Cathleen to earth, and now I have to pass on to her Bianca’s invitation. To-night we shall be dining at Francini’s, and we look for the pleasure of having you join us, Cathleen. Edouard, too, if he has nothing better to do,” with very little empressement in his manner, however.
Cathleen looked at Edouard, and she expected him to shake his head instantly. After all, he had already invited her to have dinner with him, and unless he released her from the invitation she couldn’t accept another. She would much rather have dinner with Edouard—whom she felt by this time she was getting to know a little—in any case; but, to her astonishment, the same thing happened that had happened the night before. One moment he had been planning to take her home, the next he had casually resigned the pleasure to Paul. Now he smiled at her as if he was up against major opposition, made a slight, expressive gesture with his hands, and spoke coolly.
“There was something I was planning to do, but I’m sure Cathleen will enjoy Bianca’s party best. And if Bianca is labouring under the delusion that I planned to meet her to-day I shall have to make my peace with her. For my part I accept.”
Paul offered no comment. He looked at Cathleen, and the bleakness vanished from his eyes.
“And you, signorina?” he asked.
“Thank you, I—I shall love it,” Cathleen answered, rather stiffly; and when Edouard remembered that his boatman was picking him up at six o’clock and turned to hurry away she barely acknowledged his departure, and forgot to thank him for the exceedingly pleasant day she had passed in his company.
Paul, who had permitted her to snatch away her hands but was gazing down at her as if she was good enough to eat, expressed himself as delighted that he would see her that evening.
“I shall call for you here myself,” he said, “and it will be a pleasure I shall look forward to.” He glanced down at the rose in her belt and detached it and cast it away in disgust. “That thing is dead,” he said. He regarded her thoughtfully. “Now what, I wonder, are your favourite flowers? Not orchids...? No,” he shook his head emphatically, “you do not suggest to me orchids. But camellias, yes. Or gardenias!” He glanced at his watch as if he had a commission to execute. “Tell me, Cathleen, what is the colour of the dress you will be wearing to-night?”
Cathleen was so surprised that she didn’t answer immediately. For one thing, she hadn’t the least idea what she was going to wear that night ... except that the white dress Edouard had asked for would not now be worn. She didn’t know why she was so certain about that in her own mind, but she was, and the only explanation she could think of afterwards was ... acute disappointment.
“Well?” the Count demanded, as if he was mildly impatient. “What will you be wearing, Cathleen?” Cathleen thought for a moment. She had brought three dresses that would be suitable with her, and one was black lace. Black lace seemed a fairly safe thing to wear in any case.
The Count was enchanted.
“You will look delightful in that, signorina. With your skin, and your eyes, it could hardly be better.” But Cathleen was in no mood for dressing herself up once she got upstairs to her room. She felt like a child that had been denied a treat ... a promised treat. And she simply could not understand why Edouard Moroc, who had the air of being very much master of his own fate, and was even slightly disdainful and arrogant at times, as if he was accustomed to ordering his life without interference, should have so meekly submitted to being roped in to a dinner-party that he didn’t appear to wish very much to attend, and which meant submitting Cathleen to the slight embarrassment of being set aside as if she was, after all, a thing of very small account in his public world, even if in his private world he enjoyed her company.
But did he really enjoy her company? As she lifted the black lace—really rather exquisite black lace that had cost her quite a lot of money—out of her wardrobe and examined it dispassionately, she wondered.
She was reasonably certain that the Count was making himself very pleasant to her—quite noticeably pleasant—because he was the victim of a misunderstanding, and as a result of that misunderstanding he believed she was the one thing she was not ... a young woman of means. His attitude towards her when she first arrived at the palazzo had been carelessly charming, but he had been prepared to let her go without expressing the smallest wish to see her again—in fact, at one stage she felt he would be thankful to see the last of her!—right up
until the moment when she mentioned having inherited a sum of money.
From that moment his attitude had changed entirely, and it was not perhaps surprising since, according to Edouard, he and his sister, although living in their crumbling palazzo still full of family treasures, were very badly off.
Cathleen could see the hand of Bianca in this desire to get better acquainted with herself.
And looking back on Edouard’s attitude she was not impressed by what she could recall. Edouard had seemed particularly disdainful, and his disdain had not melted until he returned to the salon with the coffee tray and overheard Cathleen in the midst of her admission about inheriting money.
A nasty pang smote her. She couldn’t really believe it, having spent practically the whole of a day with Edouard, and read certain unmistakable things into his expression at times, that he, too, was only interested in her because someone had left her money.
She remembered that he had particularly asked her not to let him know the extent of her means. He had said it was nothing to do with him.
And, of course, it wasn’t!
There was a knock at the door, and a corsage of gardenias was handed in. They were the faint pink of the inside of a shell, or a pearl, and with them there was a card on which the name Paul was scrawled, while the edges of the card were heavily embossed.
This time she was left in no doubt as to who had sent her the flowers she was to wear for the evening, and although the beauty of them delighted her she would far rather she had not received them than that Paul di Rini had footed the bill for them.
Had he formed the habit of sending Arlette flowers, and had he decided she reminded him of a gardenia?
In Italy time, she was to discover, meant nothing, and it was late when she was finally collected and escorted to Francini’s. After spending more than an hour waiting in one of the public rooms of the hotel she felt a little out of humour at the commencement of the evening, and her good humour was not restored quickly when she realised that Edouard had not yet put in an appearance.
But the Count’s guests were already numerous, and they were in high good humour. The restaurant was brilliantly lighted, with almost as many waiters as there were guests threading their way amongst the tables, and what instantly riveted Cathleen’s eye was the enormous horseshoe table at one end that was groaning under an assortment of chickens, lobsters, cold salmon, grapes, peaches, pineapples and other exotic fruits.
Champagne corks were popping like machine-gun fire all around them, and as she was placed in a chair between Paul and a florid dowager—who looked as if sooner or later she would wish to learn all about her—she found herself mentally trying to calculate how much such an evening as this was likely to cost the Count, and if he was really as financially insecure as Edouard had intimated she couldn’t help wondering where the money came from. The money that would pay for it all.
Did families like the di Rinis live on credit? Was it always assumed that they would many well, and if they did not were their assets enough to justify the confidence of their bank manager in them? All those pictures on the walls at the palazzo, the jewels in the bank vaults, the fading heirlooms?
Although there was a charming young woman in white on the other side of Paul he devoted himself almost exclusively to the guest on his right hand. He pressed her to discover an appetite, to look as if she was really enjoying this, her first trip to Venice.
“Forget Arlette,” he whispered in her ear, while Bianca, in shimmering cloth of gold, on the far side of the table, managed to pay attention to her own near neighbour and at the same time keep her inscrutable eyes fixed on her brother and the girl he had singled out for so much attention. “You are so much more charming than Arlette could ever hope to be, and already I feel that I have known you for years.” He was gazing into her eyes, forcing her to meet the ardent look that embarrassed her acutely, had he but known it; and every time he lowered his voice and spoke confidentially she was aware of other eyes watching them apart from Bianca’s ... shrewd, speculative eyes that increased her embarrassment tenfold.
They were so soignee and patrician, these Italian women of good family. They had slender necks and sloping shoulders, like the shoulders of women in Old Masters, and their eyes were brilliant and fantastically long-lashed. She didn’t for one moment make the mistake of attributing these lashes to false ones, for the men were distinguished in the same way. But the women had the advantage every time in their couturier-designed dresses, and their brilliant jewels. They chattered like birds in a cage, and their exquisitely dressed heads were either black as ebony or excitingly Titian.
She knew now why Titian had painted his women with that hair that resembled damped-down fires. Against creamy skins it was enchanting.
But still Edouard failed to put in an appearance, and even Bianca began to lose interest in Cathleen and watch the door. She looked as if something had gone wrong with her evening, and Cathleen decided it was the continued absence of the Frenchman.
When twelve o’clock struck he had still not arrived, and by that time most of the party were dancing.
They danced modern dances, but the orchestra was a muted affair, soft and sensuous. Cathleen, with the Count’s arms round her, wished he would not hold her so tightly that she found it difficult to breathe. She was crushed up against the front of his jacket, and his one idea seemed to be to dance cheek to cheek. All the time he whispered to her of the perfection of her dress, her hair, her eyes ... and she was heartily thankful when a floor show took place, and for a brief period at least she was permitted to sit quietly and watch.
The room was growing very hot, exotic perfumes floating in the atmosphere and heavily overcharging it. Even for the floor show the chattering guests refused to be silent, and Cathleen’s head began to whirl a little, while she actually felt that if this went on much longer she might faint.
The lights went down for a Harlequin dance, and it was then that she felt a hand on her shoulder. She looked round and up and into Edouard’s eyes.
“Time to go home,” he barely breathed in her ear, and as the Count was temporarily preoccupied in another corner she managed to dip silently and swiftly away. Edouard ordered a waiter to fetch her wrap for her, and outside in the silken coolness of the night she was able to draw breath.
Not only that, for the first time that evening she was content. As she looked up at Edouard his eyes were laughing at her, and he drew her unresisting towards one of the pontoons.
“My gondola is waiting,” he said. “It is a bad thing to waste a night like this! I thought we would explore Venice by night. Is that as you would wish?”
Cathleen answered breathlessly, “It is as I would wish!”
Cathleen had no idea what the time was when she stumbled into bed at last. It seemed to her quite unimportant in any case, and as her head was full of magic and her eyes were bedazzled by a thousand lights in inky dark water the tiny face of her travelling-clock would have blurred if she had attempted to study it.
She had seen the lights go out in the palazzos and their ghostly shapes bathed in the silver of a late-rising moon. In the daytime they were a harsh red, or merely a faded pink, but by night they came into their own, especially around the hour of dawn when the canals were still and silent, and their spires soared into the starry sky as if reaching for contact with the stars.
Edouard’s boatman had brought a guitar with him, and he had strummed and sung softly for nearly two hours. Cathleen had marvelled at his capacity for dissociating himself from the couple in his boat, the extent of his repertoire, and his tirelessness. Edouard explained that he was paid by the hour, and this piece of intelligence could have ruined the magic, but after being rescued from Francini’s, and having Edouard beside her, nothing, it seemed, could dim the contentment she felt.
They explored all sorts of little side canals, sat quietly watching the flares on the Rialto bridge, crept past landing-stages where couples lingered in the throes of saying goodnight—or r
ather, good morning. When the moon rose the silver sands of the Lido looked like a strip of silver ribbon; the island of San Giorgio appeared to be actually floating on the water.
Edouard explained casually that he had been prevented from attending Paul’s party by some pressing business, but he did not explain why he had not pressed his prior claim to have dinner alone with Cathleen. Apparently this late-night excursion was intended to make up for any disappointment she might have felt, and although Cathleen would have preferred an explanation—if an apology was too much to hope for—under the influence of the night and the unreal beauty she very quickly ceased to remember that she had even the smallest cause for grievance.
It was enough for her that Edouard had rescued her from the di Rinis, and that the curious anxiety she had felt about him during the whole of the evening was now abated. Edouard was on the seat beside her, and whenever she turned to look at him he appeared to be regarding her thoughtfully, and with something that the night only partly permitted her to see in his eyes.
It could have been simply admiration ... for a pretty girl in a black dress that emphasised the purity of her skin and the beauty of her hair. It could have been partly unexplainable, since there was at moments a certain detachment in his manner, as if a portion of his mind was occupied elsewhere, or there was some matter that preoccupied him to such an extent that he couldn’t entirely forget it.
But having rescued her he was determined to provide her with a few imperishable memories to take back to England. The singing gondolier was hardly his idea of entertainment, but he could tell that Cathleen was bemused by the warm tenor voice and the soft twanging on the guitar. The melodies were mostly old Italian folk songs, although from time to time one of the latest pop releases sounded a trifle odd rendered in liquid Italian. The boat made absolutely no sound as it slid through the dark waters of the canals, and as traffic on the canals had practically ceased there was little or no competition to detract from the tirelessness of the gondolier’s singing.