For a moment, I hesitated, then, drawing my shawl more closely around me, I moved towards him. Still, he didn’t turn.
“Lajos?” I said gently, touching his shoulder. He jerked quickly towards me, and I stepped back at once. “I’m sorry. I was afraid you were ill.”
His impatient expression vanished. “Not at all. And don’t apologise. Stay with me a while, if you are not tired.”
In the dim light, I hesitated, then, calmly, I sat in the chair beside him and waited for him to speak.
“What did you think of Iancu?” he said at last, and I relaxed, for that seemed easy to answer.
“That he is very serious, and very young, and probably very dangerous.” I thought he would laugh at the last description, but rather to my alarm, he only nodded.
“Yes. I thought so too.”
“But you won him over,” I pointed out.
He lifted one hand deprecatingly. “To some extent, perhaps.” The candlelight flickered over his angular face, making his dark eyes appear very deep set and shadowed. “We achieved something. A little trust. A little understanding. Even a little friendship.”
I looked at his averted, steady gaze, and felt rather bewildered.
“Then why are you so sad?” I asked gently. “Isn’t that enough?”
His head turned to look at me, and what I saw in his eyes frightened me. “No, I don’t think it is enough. I don’t think it’s nearly enough.”
Instinctively, I stretched out and took his hand. And at last his lips moved into a semblance of the smile I loved. The hand I held turned and clasped mine. With the other, he reached out and touched my cheek caressingly.
“Katie,” he said softly, “my sweet, my only comfort...”
Under his palm my skin burned. Now, I thought, now I should tell him my decision before I find it impossible to turn back. But his eyes, those dark, terrible eyes, kept me paralysed. He leaned forward, and my breath caught. I felt panic. I felt longing. And then his mouth softly kissed my forehead.
“Good night, Katie,” he said quietly, and then he was on his feet, past me and gone before I could act on my crazy instinct to call him back.
* * * *
When we resumed our journey in the morning, Lajos still seemed a little strange and preoccupied, but gradually, as we travelled through the beauty of the country, it seemed his spirits began to lift, and with him we all rose, though my own almost desperate happiness was hiding a deeper misery.
That night was the last of our stolen week. While we waited for supper to be cooked, I tactfully left Katalin and Alex alone together and went to my bed-chamber, where I did nothing but sit on the big, soft bed and think of how and when I could tell Lajos of my decision.
But that was taken out of my hands too. I heard a tap on the open door, and looked up quickly to see him strolling into the room. For a second I was paralysed. Then I found myself on my feet, starting towards him in panic.
“Lajos! What are you doing here? You can’t...!”
“I wanted to see you.”
“Not in my bed-chamber!” I said indignantly. But his eyes were laughing at me. “Lajos, I’m serious! It’s — it’s an invasion of my privacy!”
He was standing in front of me now, his dark eyes grown watchful.
“It’s the sort of invasion I hope to do a lot more,” he said quietly, and my gaze fell. I looked at my hands, twisting together before me until I stilled them deliberately. I could feel his eyes on me, as searching, as penetrating as ever, while he asked directly, “Have you had time to think, Katie?”
Defeated, I didn’t even pretend to misunderstand him. I nodded.
“And?”
Slowly, I looked up at him again. I could see the texture of his skin, the deep, fine lines on his young face, his warm, steady dark eyes. Surely I should not have to do this....
“It — I — it is not possible,” I said with difficulty, and as if he had expected some show of opposition, his lip quirked. Casually, he turned back and pushed the door closed with his foot, and then he came and took my hand; it jumped in his and was still.
“I think I can convince you that it is,” he said softly.
“No,” I said quickly, as he began to draw me into his arms. I was lost if he came too close. “You do not wish to be married.”
He paused. “I told you. I wish to be with you — that is enough.”
I shook my head. “Not for me. I couldn’t live with you knowing I had dragged you to the alter. And I believe, in time, you would not be able to live with the woman who had made you abandon your principles and your freedom. I won’t be your ‘constraint’, Lajos. I can’t be.”
He had gone very still. “That isn’t how it would be.”
“Yes,” I said firmly. “It is.”
“You’re making this too complicated.” There was an edge to his calm voice now, and I rejoiced in it, for part of me still longed to be beaten down, defeated, taken. But I smiled.
“Everything to do with you is complicated. I’m glad you told me what you did — I can’t begin to tell you what a difference it makes to me. I think I can live with myself in peace now, but I couldn’t live with you, Lajos, as your mistress or as your wife. Though I am honoured...”
“Honoured?”
He threw the word back at me with a revulsion that struck me like a blow. His face was suddenly white, his lips thin as I had never seen them, his whole bearing tense with an anger so fierce that it frightened me. “Do you think we’re playing some silly, social game? I’m not one of your aristocratic puppies that can be turned off with any old piece of flattery — so honoured by your proposal, kind sir! — don’t ever treat me that way!”
Appalled, trembling at the storm I had provoked, I was staring at him, at his unnaturally pale face, at his eyes which were hard and glittering with a tempestuous, dangerous passion. It was not the passion I had seen directed at me before — that had been warm, exciting; this was close to sheer fury.
“I didn’t mean that,” I said desperately. “I truly honour you — I always have. God knows I value every sign of affection you have ever given me, how much you will never know! But I cannot marry you, Lajos...”
He turned abruptly. My hand, which he almost flung away as if it burned him, fell uselessly back to my side as he strode towards the window. Miserably, anxiously, I watched his rigid back. I had never seen him like this before, never expected such a reaction. Listening to my own uneven breathing, I felt helpless, afraid.
At last, he turned to face me again. He was calmer, and the terrifying glitter had gone from his eyes, but it had been replaced by a contempt that pierced me through the heart.
“Don’t give me that flummery, Katie,” he said quietly. “The truth is, you are afraid of life, and make feeble excuses for not taking the chances which offer. You love me, but you would rather stay quietly where you are — bored, moping, miserable and safe — than risk anything for the sort of happiness you could have with me. And one day of that happiness is worth more than a lifetime of your tedious safety. But of course, you will never know that.”
A small, mirthless smile tugged at his lips as he walked towards me. Shocked by his words, by the shattering, unacknowledged truths they contained, I backed away from him. But he came after me, still speaking, his words like so many slaps.
“One day you will have to risk something; you will have to reach out and grasp life with both hands before it passes you by. But it will have to be your decision, Katie — I’m damned if I’ll make it for you, though we both know that I could.”
For a moment, I was dragged into his arms. A brief, hard kiss was pressed on my gasping mouth, and then I was released. A second later he was gone, and I was alone.
Slowly, I turned and stared at the closed door. He was right. In his embrace, I would have agreed to anything and I hated myself for that weakness as well as for everything else. His words had stung me, shaken me, but I knew I was in the right. Besides, he had been hurt: I had hurt him
, and some wicked, unamiable part of me rejoiced in that power to wound. But he had had no right to speak to me as he had, to say these things about me when I was only trying to look after us both.
I brushed my hand across my wet face, but it made no difference. The tears kept coming.
* * * *
We parted at more or less the same spot as we had met more than a week ago. It was hardly a sad farewell, since Alex and Lajos would be in the village at least for the next few days, and I was not about to show anyone how I really felt about the ending of our adventure. My sardonic wit well to the fore, I bade a careless good-bye to our less reputable companions, and then Katalin and I were driven smartly into Beszterce, properly escorted by Mattias. We stopped briefly at a comfortable inn where the Szelényis were well known, and a little later drove on to the castle and the battlefield which awaited us.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
The unthinkable had happened. We had been found out. The first we knew of it was when we stepped out of the carriage into the gathering dusk to see a footman hurrying down the steps towards us. Rather to my surprise, he hissed something to Mark on the box before bowing to us and remarking woodenly that the Count awaited us in the library.
It was the tone of his voice rather than the actual words which caused Katalin and I to exchange glances of alarm. Being well brought up, we did not question him, but went on into the castle with sinking hearts. Mattias, however, had no such scruples. “Hopping mad, is he?” he asked ruefully behind us, and the footman answered in the affirmative, still perfectly wooden. Katalin looked at me again, her eyes dilating.
“Shall we go and change first?” she suggested anxiously. “In fact, if we go straight to bed, he might leave us alone till the morning.”
I admit I was tempted, but in the end I said resignedly, “No, let’s get it over with. Do you have any ear muffs?”
Katalin giggled nervously. “They wouldn’t make any difference, not if he is really angry. I wonder how he found out?”
We discovered that almost immediately. Laure Kossary, Katalin’s friend with whom we were supposed to be staying had, in fact, written asking to come and visit at Szelényi. The letter had arrived only yesterday, and the Count, torn between concern and curiosity, had finally opened it himself. As a result, though he had no idea where we were or whom we were with, he certainly knew where we were not.
The three of us stood before him like guilty school children while he waved the damning letter in our faces and, purple with anger, demanded to know where we had been. Mattias looked at the ceiling. Katalin shuffled her feet. I sighed.
“Nagyzseben,” I said succinctly. The Count blinked.
“Nagyzseben?” he repeated blankly. “What the Devil is there in Nagyzseben? Apart from a parcel of Saxon and Romanian malcontents!”
I saw Katalin’s eyes flicker to him and away. For a moment I hoped he might have missed her involuntary gesture — a tortuous and extremely plausible tale was already forming in my unprincipled brain — but he was still sharp-eyed. He stared at her.
“You wouldn’t,” he said unbelievingly, and I knew the game was over.
“Wouldn’t what?” Katalin said defiantly.
“Did you go there to meet that Romanian nobody I sent about his business last year?”
“Captain Zarescu,” I said helpfully.
“We know his name, Miss,” my grandfather snapped. “I choose not to speak it!”
“Then you are being very foolish,” I said calmly. “It was that same foolishness of yours that compelled us to act as we did. Since you will not permit Katalin to meet the man she loves in the respectable security of her home, she is driven to underhand methods. You must excuse Mattias, incidentally. He didn’t know what we were about until too late, and then he felt obliged to stay with us to preserve — er — our reputations.”
The Count’s choleric eye turned on his son. “You should have brought them home immediately,” he ground out.
“He couldn’t,” I said at once, “without causing a scene.”
“So the pair of you cooked this whole thing up yourselves? Dragged you brother and the damned servants into it?”
“More or less,” I said cautiously. “Ilse and Mark were in the same boat as Mattias — except, of course, that they are obliged to obey orders.”
“Not when they are contrary to mine! I’ll turn them off for this!”
“They didn’t know,” I said firmly, “that our orders were contrary to yours. I expect they thought we had just changed our minds.”
“My God, this passes all bounds! Have you no shame? Either of you?”
“I have done nothing to be ashamed of, Papa,” Katalin said valiantly. “Apart from lying to you, and it was you who forced us to those lengths. What is more, I should be obliged if you did not shout at Katie, for she was only trying to help me.”
“Help you? I’ll be surprised if she has not ruined you!” He swung suddenly on me with renewed venom. “Is this your revenge for my supposed slighting of Sofia?”
Anger stirred within me, but knowledge of my own guilt managed to quell it.
“No,” I said calmly. “And I don’t see how Katalin can be ruined when she had her brother, her maid and me with her for the entire journey.”
The old man’s face was draining of colour. I knew this to be a bad sign. From nowhere, I wondered if this time he really would fall down in an apoplexy and die.
“I suppose the whole scheme was yours?” the Count demanded.
“I suppose it was,” I said thoughtfully.
“No,” Katalin said at once, but I gave her a fierce, silencing look.
“Don’t try to protect me,” I said. “It’s time to be honest now.” I confess a slightly hysterical urge to laugh assailed me as I spoke those words, but my grandfather’s reaction was far more overwhelming.
“Honest?” he exploded. “When have you ever been honest in your life? You deceived your way into my household, insinuated yourself into my family’s affections, and now repay us with this disgusting, deceitful prank! But then, I should have known what to expect from the daughter of your parents!”
And suddenly, I couldn’t help it. I was speaking before I even felt the resurgence of the old anger inside me. And I didn’t just speak: I yelled like a fishwife, and quite as loudly as he; and everything came spilling out, all the pent-up resentment and rage of years, fed, I think, by all my suppressed emotions concerning Lajos. In any case, I lost control. I was only dimly aware of Katalin and Mattias standing open-mouthed on the edges of the scene while my grandfather and I abused each other at the pitch of our voices, sharing nothing except a white-hot fury.
I don’t remember exactly what we said. I don’t even remember leaving the room, but all at once I was standing in the hall, on the other side of the closed door, staring at it, shaking. My face felt both frozen and burning hot. My head was aching. Hazily, I wondered if I had gone mad.
* * * *
When I rose in the morning I was still tired. My nerves still jangled from last night’s outburst; but mingling with my shame for the truly awful things I had said was the odd remembrance that never in the entire fracas had my grandfather told me to go, and I had never once offered to. Perhaps, underneath everything, we did actually love each other...
At this point, a brief knock at the door heralded the arrival of Katalin.
“You’re up early,” I observed in surprise.
“Yes, I couldn’t sleep. I came to say thank you.”
“For what?” I asked distractedly, aiming the last hair pin with more hope than accuracy.
“For drawing his fire. Mattias and I were most impressed.”
“Actually, I am not quite so selfless,” I said ruefully, inserting the pin and dropping my arms to my side. “Do you think he will forgive me, if I apologise?”
“He likes apologies,” Katalin said non-committally.
I looked at her directly. “Has he forgiven you?”
“I don�
�t know. You rather took his mind off me. Mattias and the servants have been cleared of blame, though they still languish in the darkness of His Excellency’s disapproval. I don’t expect we shall be allowed over the door now without a chaperone, and that will no longer include each other.”
“How sympathetic is Elisabeth?” I asked flippantly.
“Not very.”
I sighed. It didn’t seem worth mentioning Maria. “Come on. Let’s face him again.”
However, when we only encountered Mattias at the breakfast table, I couldn’t help feeling relieved, for it never seemed to matter how contritely one began a scene with my grandfather, sparks always flew before the end of it.
It was as I left them to go to the nursery that I first became aware that something was not right. There were no servants around for one thing; but in addition, I was conscious of an inexplicable atmosphere of unease. I should not have been surprised, for my grandfather in a temper could cast a blight over the entire district; this just felt — different.
Passing the narrow staircase used by the servants, I paused, listening to the definite sounds of commotion drifting up to me. I knew it was trouble. I would have blamed it on Lajos, if he had not been with me over the past week.
A door slammed suddenly below, and the next instant a maid shot up the stairs towards me as if all the fiends in hell were after her. For a moment I thought they were. But it was only human beings who pursued her, fellow-servants, though from the sounds they made they were scarcely recognizable as such.
Before I could properly take it all in, the maid had crashed into me. Automatically, I caught her by the arms, but she leapt back with an animal cry of such terror that my hands fell back nervelessly to my sides. It was the timid maid who used to bring my coffee in the mornings; but even she had never looked so frightened before. She was trembling uncontrollably, her dark eyes hugely dilated in her white, wild face, as they stared into mine.
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