A Growing Moon

by Jane Arbor

  ‘Not—not how. And not until Cesare suggested I must have an enemy. Then I think I almost knew, because I knew she had never liked me. But I couldn’t think how she managed it, and I still can’t.’

  ‘And I’ll leave Cesare to enlighten you on the details.’

  ‘Oh—do I have to see him? He is not here with you?’

  ‘How do you suppose I got here at this hour, if he didn’t bring me in the launch?’ his mother countered. ‘But tell me, child, when you suspected La Lagna, why didn’t you say so to Cesare?’

  ‘Because—I felt I mustn’t accuse her to him. It wouldn’t have been fair, considering what they were —are—to each other. And when Cesare—well, when

  he.......’ Dinah broke off, her lips out of control.

  ‘Well, did he tell you that when he saw how dis tressed and worried I was, out of some quirk of pity for me he proposed to me? Not meaning it, of course.

  How could he? And I couldn’t take any more. So I ran.’

  The Signora said calmly and distinctly, ‘He told me, yes, that he asked you to marry him, meaning every word.’

  ‘But he couldn’t! It was a joke or misplaced kind ness or—something. He knew he would have to take it back. He doesn’t love me!’

  ‘Any more than you love him?’

  Dinah looked out over the chimneypots and the aerials, and for the second time in hours said, ‘That’s unfair.’

  ‘Which gives me my answer, and I have suspected it for some time. Why else do you suppose I catechized you about Cesare and Francia Lagna if I didn’t want to find out what your reaction was? So you have fallen in love with my bad son?’

  Dinah could only nod. ‘I shall get over it,’ she muttered after a moment.

  ‘Will you indeed? That doesn’t speak too well for your future with him!’

  ‘My future?’

  ‘Tch, weren’t you listening, child? He asked you to marry him because he wants to marry you. Haven’t I made that plain?’

  ‘You mean—he has said so?’

  ‘If he hadn’t, I should st ill have guessed. Mothers have intuitions about these things.’ The Signora rose and made a fastidious gesture of brushing down her skirt after a critical glance at the padding of the window bench. ‘Not exactly an ideal loveseat,’ she commented of it,’ but I daresay you will manage. I’m going to send Cesare to you now.’

  ‘Why, where is he?’

  ‘Below. I told him to give me ten minutes with you, and my time is up. I’ll see myself out. In a two-by-four place like this, who couldn’t?’

  ‘Oh, please, I.........’ Dinah begged in panic.

  Signor Vidal turned back on her way to the door. ‘Shy? Scared? Not looking your best, h’m? What of it? In marriage there will be plenty of times when you won’t be, or he won’t be looking his. Dirty faces and unshaven chins and colds in the head a re great levellers, but you’ll love each other all the same, if you begin that way. Cesare’s father and I did, so believe me, I know. ’

  For Dinah there was a heart-thumping, sense- benumbing pause before she heard Cesare coming up the stairs. Then he was there, holding out both hands to her—real, virile and very, very dear. But hers ?

  His fingers were beckoning an invitation to her, and when she put her hands in his, he drew her close.

  Over the top of her head he asked, ‘Why did you run away? Or no— Mamma has told me why you thought you had to—because you couldn’t believe I was serious. But, carissima, would any man commit himself so far without a serious purpose to it? Now would he?’

  ‘Trevor Land did—in words,’ Dinah murmured.

  ‘For duty’s sake to you, though he didn’t love you? But why should you think I could hurt you in the same way?’

  ‘But Trevor didn’t hurt me. I had never loved him enough for that, and I knew it before he did.’

  Cesare held her off and looked accusingly into her eyes. ‘You let me think you were hurt, and that it was out of pride that you turned him down! ’

  ‘My letting you think so wasn’t deliberate, though I realised later that you did.’

  ‘Then why didn’t you put me right?’

  ‘I didn’t suppose it was enough concern to you.’ ‘No concern? Why, by the time you had edged your way into my heart—and that had happened long since—my nerves jumped with jealousy at every sight or mention of the man! And when I thought he had jilted you, I was ready to go berserk. And crazy to comfort you, though I judged you were in no mood for being consoled just then. And anyway, what of the little dogmatist who claimed a woman would always know when she was loved, and yet didn’t know about me!’

  ‘I thought I should know,’ she admitted. ‘I hoped you liked me, but if you did, it would only be because you said I debated like a man, and I made you fight to win an argument.’

  He nodded. ‘I remember the occasion. Yet nothing else I said—or did—that night told you otherwise, and more?’

  She looked down, unable to meet his searching eyes.

  ‘I’d wanted you—so badly—to kiss me................’

  ‘Well, didn’t I? With feeling which you should have understood!’

  ‘But afterwards you said there was no future in it!’

  ‘I was only making it easy for you to retreat in good order.’

  ‘But I didn’t want to retreat!’

  ‘So I’d hoped—while you seemed all acquiescent and your lips were warm and liquid under mine. But as soon as I let you go, you were as distant as if I had never touched you. Why?’

  ‘Princess Lagna,’ Dinah said, leaving the name to explain itself. ‘Francia? You didn’t understand she was a business asset I was cultivating and sponsoring for our mutual benefit? Which she will justify in time, though not now where I’m concerned. I’ve finished with her. But you thought marriage to her was a clause in our contract? No—really!’ ‘You were always together, and people said so.’ ‘People?’

  ‘Well, Signora Rienzi, and Trevor told me it was the general gossip. The twins, who didn’t like the Princess, had the same idea, and even your mother.’

  Cesare threw back his head and laughed. ‘She frightened you too, did she?’

  ‘Frightened me?’

  ‘At my request, sweetheart. On her own, she had guessed what I felt about you, and did what she could to help. For instance, her diplomatic headache, the night she sent us to the Casa La Corba without her, though it was her homecoming we were supposed to be celebrating. And when I admitted it, and suggested she might test your reaction to her pretended fear I was going to marry Francia, she played up nobly. You were frightened, and showed it, she said.’ Dinah thought back to the signora’s hints and questions on the day they had spent at Le Rose. Her hands on Cesare’s arms administered a mock-threatening shake. ‘Oh—you! ’ She had time to accuse him before he gathered her close again, making of the hard pressure of his body and his demand for her lips a claim which she could not, and knew she never would, deny.

  Passion surged, spoke and promised, and on the promise, was at last content with mere tenderness. Hands gently explored. A finger smoothed an eyebrow. Lips found the hollow of a throat. Tongues murmured lovers’ foolish nothings. They were confident of future enchantment in store, and tenderness was enough.

  Then they were talking again, telling, questioning, answering.

  ‘What did you mean, when you said you had finished with the Princess?’ Dinah asked, hoping she knew.

  ‘Just that, and she knows it. And why. But how much did Mamma tell you about her murky little plot against you?’

  ‘Only that she was involved in my—trouble. Which, when I thought about it, I had more or less guessed.’

  ‘Though not guessing that she did it for fear of my interest in you? She claimed she only did it for a joke—to give you some minor difficulty with your chief. Want to hear how she did it?’

  ‘Please. Though then I want to forget it.’

  ‘And you shall. It began with Francia’s dropping in at Bertholde’s o
ffice to leave a message for Signora Lesogno. While she was there he was called away, he says, and when he came back, the cheque for you which he had signed but hadn’t filled in. It wasn’t still on his desk. He thought no more of it when he couldn’t find it, knowing that if he had in -advertently destroyed it, it could be made out again. Once I knew this, I made Francia confess she had filched it, though with only some vague idea of using it against you. When she realised how she could, she filled it in for that absurd sum which looked like bribery, and took it to your chief, leaving him to draw his conclusions. She knew the trick couldn’t hold credence for long. But while it did, she saw it as — fun.’

  'Fun?' Dinah echoed faintly.

  ‘Exactly.’ Cesare compressed his lips. ‘So then I rang your chief; said a few trenchant things to him, made him promise you a full apology, and told him you wouldn’t be going back to Plenair.’

  ‘I could. If he apologises, perhaps I ought to,’ Dinah hesitated.

  ‘As a married woman? Over my dead body!’ Cesare declared.

  ‘Oh!’

  ‘Oh!’ he mimicked. ‘Hadn’t you realised that is what you will be, just as soon as I can arrange it?’

  ‘You haven’t asked me to m------------------ ’ She checked

  and blushed. ‘Oh, but you did!’

  ‘And once is enough, if it gets the right answer And you’ve given it since, haven’t you, my love? So come here again, before we go down to Mamma to tell her that history has repeated itself with another Italian-English alliance in the family.’ In his arms once more, Dinah asked, ‘Will she be pleased? Does she like me enough? Did she really want it to happen for us?’

  Cesare said, ‘If I know Mamma it will not be long before she is claiming that she planned the who le thing. You’ll see.’

  They found the Signora sunning herself in the launch and engaged on a small piece of petit-point.

  ‘I always take to my embroidery in moments of crisis,’ she explained as she put it way. ‘Well?’

  Cesare helped Dinah into her seat and stooped to kiss his mother before taking his place at the wheel. ‘The lady is mine, Mamma. All is well,’ he told her. ‘No crisis. No call for you to be plying your needle at all.’

  ‘Good.’ His mother’s smile for Dinah was sweet and welcoming. ‘Then as soon a s we get home I must send a telegram. Two telegrams. One to Reading and one to Oxford..........’

  There was a moment’s silence. Then—‘To the twins?’ Cesare queried. ‘Telling them what, if one may venture to ask, mamma mia? ‘Saying the same to both of them. “Mission accomplished. They will be married at Christmas, and you must be here.” When I was in England, we discussed both the possibility and the desirability of getting you two together, and obviously I have to let them know how well we have succeeded, haven’t I?’

  Cesare echoed gravely, ‘But obviously,’ then sent a sly, knowing grin at Dinah.

  ‘What did I tell you?’ he said.

  But if the Signora heard or understood, she gave no sign.