A Moment in Paris (8 page)

Diana blinked unbelievingly at the Comte himself, and she saw him wrench open the rear door of the car for his aunt and his fiancee, and Lady Bembridge climbed out stiffly and protested that she was exhausted enough as it was, and what in the world was he doing there ahead of them? They had left him behind in Paris, and that’s where he ought to be ... unless there was something wrong with her eyesight, and her powers of hearing!

‘You couldn’t possibly have come by road,’ she said, tottering about on the cobbles of the courtyard, and prevented from falling by his strong right hand. ‘You must have flown, Philippe.’

‘I did,’ he admitted, in the same brusque voice, and without thinking it necessary to explain why he had done anything of the kind he lifted Celeste bodily out of the car and set her on her feet.

Lady Bembridge was assisted into the house by a manservant and Diana dived into the back of the car to collect some of the hand luggage that was strewn all over the seat and the carpeted floor space. She had actually laid hold of the poodle’s basket, and its teddy-bear rug, when the Comte fairly snatched them from her and thrust them into the arms of another servant who had emerged from the house.

‘Leave everything!’ he ordered harshly. ‘And don’t pretend you’re feeling much fresher than the others, for if you’ve driven only a part of the way you’ve a right to be more tired!’

She looked up at him, in the yellow light that filled the courtyard, and as she mechanically put back an end of her hair from her forehead it seemed to her that they had journeyed backwards in time—he and she—and his attitude towards her was the hard, unfeeling attitude she had first come up against.

‘Did you drive?’ he demanded.

‘Yes,’ she answered, ‘and I enjoyed it.’

‘You would,’ he replied mockingly. ‘Give you a chance to prove what you’re made of and you’ll take it! It is a pity you are not always so strong,’ a note of ice underlying the caustic disapproval in his tone. Then he turned back to Celeste and transferred his entire attention to the task of seeing her safely into the house.

Diana followed in their wake, stumbling a little because she was bewildered as well as tired. And in an enormous room with stark white walls and a positive blaze of colour in the rugs and hangings, and lovely period furniture, a tray of refreshments awaited them, and the Comte bent solicitously over his future wife and his aunt, after seeing them into two of the most comfortable chairs the room contained, and plied them with glasses and tempting-looking sandwiches.

He put a glass of something specially blended into Celeste’s hand, and received a limpidly grateful smile from her as she lifted her violet eyes to his face. Lady Bembridge lay back against the scarlet velvet cushions in her chair and declared she was so exhausted she could not have travelled another half-mile.

Diana was temporarily ignored by all three of them, and it was an elderly servant with kindly dark eyes that betrayed his Basque blood who tried to persuade her to eat at least a part of a sandwich and drink a small glass of sherry. But she felt as if anything she tried to force down her throat would choke her just then, and she gathered up her bag and coat and asked the servant if she could be shown to her room.

‘I’m tired, monsieur,’ she told the Comte. ‘If I could be excused...?’

But he answered inexorably:

‘Dinner is at nine, and we shall expect you to join us. If you can make yourself useful to Mademoiselle Celeste in the interval between now and dinner, I’m sure she will appreciate it. She, too, is tired after her journey.’

‘Yes, monsieur,’ she answered, and turned blindly towards the door.

Celeste came to her room shortly after she had been shown in to it, and she attempted to apologize for the Comte.

‘He’s in one of his cross moods—’ although there had been nothing cross in his manner to Celeste, and perhaps that was why the American girl looked just a little self-satisfied—‘and you don’t have to go down to dinner if you don’t want to. And of course you don’t have to do anything for me tonight.’ But Diana scrambled into the dark dinner dress she had extracted from one of her cases, and went down to dinner a couple of minutes before nine o’clock. She was still too shaken inwardly to take much note of her surroundings, and the only thing that impressed her was the sombre simplicity of the dining-room. Here again the furniture was magnificent, splendidly preserved and beautifully cared for; and the great chair at the head of the table—the one occupied by the Comte—had the de Chatignard crest skilfully carved into the dark wood of the head-rest.

Before she went upstairs to bed the Comte spoke to her.

‘I would like you to ride with me tomorrow morning, Miss Craven. My aunt tells me that you do ride.’

Diana whirled and gazed at him in astonishment ‘But—Celeste...?’

‘Unfortunately, my fiancee does not ride .... yet,’ he emphasized with dryness. ‘It is a matter that will have to be put right sooner or later, but I’ve no doubt she will prefer to have what she describes as a long lie-in tomorrow morning.’ He glanced for an instant at Celeste. ‘Is that not so,
petite
?’
Curled up on a deep settee and trying to conceal her inclination to yawn—and, incidentally, doing it very prettily—Celeste nodded and looked apologetic.

Philippe turned back to Diana.

‘Will six o’clock be too early for you? The sun is already up at that hour, and it is very pleasant.’

She agreed that it was very pleasant at six o’clock, and promised not to keep him waiting. This time it was he who held open the door for her and as she passed him he said calmly: ‘Good night mademoiselle.’

She found herself forced to glance up at him, and her heart leapt violently in her breast. His eyes were infinitely dark and a little mysterious, but was that a gleam of apology in them? ... Appeal? Deliberate appeal?

In the morning she knew the answer. He was waiting for her in the courtyard of his chateau in the sparklingly beautiful Pyrenees. And they were so beautiful, at that hour, that they took away her breath.

The sun was sending down a flood of gold which lay like a brilliant mantle over the snows, and the sky was a wonderful soft blue. There were rosy streaks left by the sunrise streaming like banners across the sky, and there was even the pale shape of the moon that had not yet vanished lying like a ghost on the rim of a mountain peak.

Down in the valley there was sparkling mist, like a woman’s sequin-scattered, gauzy grey stole, and a few spirals of it crept upwards and floated about the courtyard where the Comte waited with a couple of horses and an attendant groom. Above them the pepper-box towers of the white chateau—dazzlingly white in the sunshine—looked out across the valley and the shifting mist.

The instant Diana looked towards her employer—seeing, at first, neither of the horses, although one was a particularly handsome bay with a white star on its forehead, and the other a slim grey mare obviously intended for herself—she knew why it was that she had slept scarcely a wink all night, and had been up and out of her bed as soon as the slight greyness in the eastern sky could be called daylight.

However harshly he treated her—however, perhaps, unfairly he treated her—Philippe de Chatignard was the only man in the world who would ever be able to bring her to his feet by the mere lifting of a finger. The thought shook her so much that, for a few seconds, she was appalled by the truth of it; and as she walked across the courtyard towards him she determined to conquer her weakness.

Philippe came quickly to meet her, leaving the groom to hold the horses’ heads. But all he said, softly, was: ‘Good girl! I knew you wouldn’t keep me waiting!’

It was he who assisted her into her saddle, putting the reins into her hands. There was something masterful, and dominant, and satisfied about him this morning, although the faint hint of pleading was in his eyes again whenever they met hers.

‘Monique should carry you beautifully,’ he said. ‘She is exactly the right weight for you.’

He signalled to the groom to let the horses’ heads go, and they trotted out of the courtyard. The tortuous path ahead of them, which the Comte elected to pursue, appeared to lead right into the heart of the mountains; but the mare picked her way daintily along, and ahead of Diana the Comte’s broad back—exceedingly shapely in a tweed hacking jacket— was a sight to inspire confidence.

She had the feeling that he was much more than at home in the saddle, and could do things with horses that would surprise her considerably if the opportunity arose. And yet nothing he did would ever really surprise her, for he was a man with an iron nerve and an iron will, and now she had the opportunity to observe that he had iron hands too ... in spite of their slim brown shapeliness and the expensive primrose gloves that concealed them for the moment.

He waited until the path broadened, and then swung his mount aside so that she could draw level. He looked directly at her, and now his eyes were pleading and something else ... they were vitally anxious.

CHAPTER SIX

‘Diana, I know I behaved badly to you last night ... but will you forgive me?’ he pleaded.

She reined in her mount, and looked down at her gloved hands, clutching the reins.

‘There is nothing to forgive,’ she replied stiffly. ‘If you were annoyed with me, then you had a perfect right to air your annoyance.’

‘But you are not weak, only foolish...’ He sounded as if he were attempting to excuse not only himself, but her. ‘You have been hurt badly once, and you are asking to be hurt badly again. Don’t you know that men like Michael Vaughan are constitutionally incapable of being loyal to anyone? They have their own interests at heart and nothing but their own interests.’

She gazed at him in growing astonishment.

‘Are you trying to tell me that you were angry with me last night simply because I had dinner with Michael?’

He frowned, and brought his horse so near to hers that the white star in the middle of the bay’s forehead was on a level with the grey’s pricked ears.

‘And isn’t that a sufficient reason for anger? Why else did you think I was so boorish to you?’

‘I don’t know ... I couldn’t really think.’ Once more she looked down at the reins in her hands. ‘I suppose I imagined it was because you thought I had neglected Celeste in some way or other.’

‘And because of Celeste you thought I would be discourteous to you? ... Abominably discourteous! I left you to find your own way into the house because I was seething with anger, attended to the others although I was so much aware of you that it was almost more than I could do, refused your poor little request to remain in your room! Your eyes were so big and bewildered that they haunted me all night ... And yet all I could think of was that fellow Vaughan, and what satisfaction it would give me to wring his neck!’

Diana uttered a little sound like a gasp, and looked up at him with widening eyes.

‘But that’s so absurd, I—I’ve never heard anything so ridiculous!’ she declared.

‘Ridiculous? Perhaps so. But I am a man so painfully jealous of someone who once figured prominently in your past that I find it difficult to think clearly these days! My whole attitude—every waking thought—is affected by it, this bitter, burning, hostile jealousy!’

He reached for her hand. ‘Oh, Diana,’ he confessed, with a simplicity she knew she would always remember, ‘I love you as I once thought I might love a woman one day; but that was when I was very young, and still had a lot of illusions. If I had only known that you were in the world—that you were real and warm and human, and that one day we would meet...!’

He carried her small hand up to his lips and kissed it passionately. ‘I meant to tell you all this after our ride, but I found that I couldn’t wait. I could tell that you were unhappy too. It was in your eyes when you appeared in the courtyard.’

‘I—I didn’t sleep very well,’ she admitted, and then as he once more kissed her hand, lingeringly, adoringly, she whispered: ‘Oh, Philippe!’

They looked at one another with the last of the scales falling from their eyes, and as men and women in love have looked at one another from time immemorial. And then he released her bridle and spoke softly.

‘Come, beloved, we will not remain here, for the horses are restless, and the path is dangerous. Follow me, and we will find somewhere where we can talk.’

She followed him with the meek obedience of one who would follow him to the end of the world, if the opportunity was hers, and he led the way along the sloping path that twisted in and out of the mountains. The iron ring of the horses’ hooves sounded like music in her ears as it echoed from one frozen peak to another; and even in the slippery places where the mounts had to be held in strongly and with concentration if they were to negotiate them at all, she could still feel only a wondering happiness and had no room at all in her heart for fear.

Sometimes Philippe half turned in his saddle and directed her attention to various features of the landscape, such as a partly frozen torrent feeling its way down from the heights and developing into an excitingly rushing stream where it joined the brown earth, and the meadows; a farmhouse nestling in a hollow, and looking snugly secure, although at close quarters it was probably in a badly dilapidated condition ... unless it happened to be the property of the Comte de Chatignard, who looked after his tenants well, and saw to it that the roof over their heads was as stout as he could make it.

‘But this is a poor district,’ he explained to Diana, ‘and life up here in the mountains is mostly hard. The winters are long, and the summers not nearly profitable enough. Some of these peasants would starve but for outside assistance.’

‘The assistance that you give?’ Diana asked, watching him closely, finding his grave, concerned expression utterly absorbing.

‘My godmother is very good at looking after her people,’ he admitted, not anxious to accept all the credit. ‘We do the best that we can between us, but it is still not enough.’ He indicated the thinning mist below them. ‘There is a lake down there that is very beautiful, fed, of course, by these mountain torrents. You will not be able to see it this morning, for the mist will not clear sufficiently until about noon. But another morning you will see it.’

His eyes were on her, charmed by the picture she made in her daffodil-yellow sweater and slim-fitting jodhpurs. The bright red-gold hair was unconfined and free to be gently stirred by the breeze, and the lingering dampness fastened a stray tendril or two to her creamy brow.

‘Let us dismount here,’ Philippe said huskily, as they reached a green plateau. There was a little clump of woodland behind them—some of the branches black and bare, others delicately greening over and resembling a froth of lace against the brilliant morning sky—and a cluster of farm buildings.

He secured the horses to a corner of one of the buildings, opened a low half-door into a barn-like interior, and stood looking at Diana.

‘We have plenty of time before we need return. There is no one, precisely, waiting for us,’ he added a little dryly, ‘so shall we go in here?’

But Diana hesitated. She had a mental picture of Celeste curled up in her comfortable bed, almost certainly still fast asleep, and probably dreaming of future shopping expeditions and all the lovely, costly things she would yet acquire, but knowing nothing of what was going on outside in the world where the bright peaks soared, and the grass was wet with morning dew. And although Diana had no real sympathy for her in that moment, still she hesitated.

It was Celeste’s loss that she was not here with Philippe in this sparkling atmosphere ... But would Celeste appreciate it if it was pointed out to her?

‘Please,’ Philippe said, and Diana stepped forward into the semi-darkness, and the scent of hay and rotting beams. Philippe came quickly up behind her.

‘Diana, why did you?’ he asked.

She turned quickly and looked at him.

‘Why did I ... what?’

‘Dine with that ... with Vaughan!’

Her whole expression softened miraculously. Her eyes grew dark and deep with tenderness. She had suffered the agonies of jealousy herself, and she knew how they could destroy confidence, create an intolerable sensation of frustration.

‘Merely because I couldn’t very well get out of it,’ she told him truthfully. ‘He said that he would be waiting for me, and I ... well, I had to go. It was too late to get a message to him.’

‘But you didn’t really want—to go?’

‘Of course not.’ The softness in her eyes was like a caress that reached out and touched him. ‘The days when I thought I was only happy seeing a lot of Michael are finished with. Quite dead and done with!’

‘You’re sure of that?’

‘Absolutely sure!’

He put his hands on her shoulders and felt her tremble. She tried to withdraw from him.

‘Philippe...!’ There was desperation in her voice. ‘Don’t you think you ought to try and find someone else to—to help Celeste? I ought to go away ... I must go away!’

But his arms were round her, and he was pressing her bright head into the hollow of his neck. The very feel of his arms, his quickened breathing as he inhaled the scent of her hair, the violent pounding of his heart as her ear was crushed against it, were so much at variance with even the thought of her going away that she didn’t honestly expect him to answer the question just then. And when he drew back her head by grasping the soft curls at her nape and she saw the tumult of feeling in his eyes—such a tumult of feeling that it all but stopped her breathing—she could only formulate his name with her lips.

‘Philippe!’

His mouth descended and devoured hers, and without a thought for Celeste she responded ... responded and clung to him as she had never even dreamed she would one day cling to a man, untroubled by the thought that she hadn’t a shadow of right. His kisses had fire and passion, and it was a long time before they separated, and looked at one another with pale, perturbed faces.

Diana was remembering Celeste ... belatedly. And Philippe’s breathing was still so uneven that even his hand shook as he attempted to light himself a cigarette. He threw it away, selected another, and threw that away, also. At last he returned his cigarette case to his pocket, and confronted her.

‘Diana, I ought to apologize, but I can’t and I won’t! I love you! ... You know that I love you!’

‘I love you too, Philippe. ... But I should never have let you guess!’

‘Why not, my darling?’ He moved nearer to her, his eyes swimming with tenderness, his voice so gentle that it shook her to the very core of her being. ‘I think we’ve loved one another from the very moment that you walked into my office in Paris, and that sort of love is quite inevitable, quite uncontrollable. Oh, my sweet one,’ putting his fingers under her chin and lifting it, ‘don’t you believe that some things are really and truly ordained?’

She nodded, swallowing a little.

‘But we’re both forgetting ... Celeste.’

Instantly she could feel him stiffen. ‘I have not for one moment forgotten Celeste. I do not forget my obligations even when it would be more comfortable to put them out of my mind!’ His face looked thin and ascetic, the mouth firm, the jaw strong. ‘No, my little one, you must understand that when I enter into a contract—whether it is a business contract, or a marriage contract—I do not set it aside, or attempt to wriggle out of it. Celeste is my future wife, and that is something no circumstance can alter ... unless she herself decided she no longer desired to marry me!’

Diana swallowed again, and she found it quite impossible to say anything at all. She had expected that that would be his attitude, of course—she wouldn’t have had it any other way!—but the faint rebuke in his voice, the cool clarity of the way in which he made their position clear, was like a slap across the face after the bewildering experience of finding herself in his arms.

Suddenly his eyes softened again, grew very dark.

‘My dear one!...’ he began. But she put out a hand as if she was warding him off, and moved a little away from him.