Roman Summer (21 page)

CHAPTER NINE

Erle
’s question went unanswered, for at that moment Agnese sagged and would have fallen but for his support. He released Ruth in order to hold her upright. ‘Had the fire reached either of you?’ he asked.

Ruth said, ‘Not me. It was just catching at Agnese’s skirt, and all I could think of to do was to throw myself on top of her to try to quench it.’ She looked across at Agnese. ‘I’m sorry. I must have hurt you,’ she said.

Agnese tried to draw herself up and free of
Erle
’s hold. ‘No, no, it was foolish of me and careless,’ she said grudgingly. ‘I tried to light the lantern and knocked it over. I did not know anyone was near.’

‘Lucky for you that Ruth was, though she shouldn’t have been,’ said
Erle
. ‘And may I ask why you were out here yourself,
signora
?’

‘I wanted to make sure that all was safe.’

‘After I had promised you I would patrol the whole place myself? Anyway, even if you didn’t trust me, why an oil lantern? Why not bring a torch to light you around?’

‘
I had one. I have it.’ She touched her pocket. ‘But
it failed, and the lantern would have served if
—
’

‘If
you hadn’t knocked it over and spilt oil among this sort of fire hazard.’
Erle
kicked at the scattered debris from the canted bundle. ‘Fireworks, no less.’

‘
Fireworks
?’
Ruth echoed, peering down. ‘Then that was the explosion and the smaller ones which followed!
I couldn’t
think what—
But what were fireworks
doing here?’

‘That I don’t know. But I will, before the night’s out,’
Erle
promised grimly. He broke off as Agnese began to shake uncontrollably. ‘Shock,’ he said briefly, and as Ruth nodded agreement he told Agnese, ‘I’m going to get you back to the house. Carry you there, in fact, for warmth and brandy and bed.’

Momentarily she managed to stiffen. ‘That’s not necessary nor—seemly,
signore.
I can walk
—
’

But, a hand under her knees and an arm round her shoulders, he was already balancing her considerable weight as easily as if she had been a child. ‘My torch,’ he said to Ruth. ‘I threw it down when I dived for the fire-buckets. On that sack over there—will you bring it along?’

They set out, skirting the tamarisk hedge when they came to it without
Erle
’s throwing the belvedere a glance. At the explosion which had alerted him to danger, he must have sent Stella back to the party for safety, Ruth decided. He knew the place would be empty now. In her hand she weighed the big torch she was carrying for him and wondered that he should have brought it with him. She would have expected them to prefer the anonymity of the darkness.

At the house Agnese told Ruth where to find cognac and blankets, and then there arose the question of leaving her for the night.
Erle
drew Ruth aside.

‘I’ll drive you back straight away if you’ll give her a bed at the flat,’ he suggested.

‘Of course I will—if she’ll come,’ Ruth said doubtfully.

‘Why shouldn’t she? I shall make it an order and fetch the car. I’ll tell the assembled company as
little
as I can and come back to the party myself, after seeing you both safe. A pity about the anti-climax for you, but we’ll make up for it—some time,’ he added.

While he was away Agnese grudgingly allowed Ruth to find her night things and a change of clothes, and when he came back he brought Ruth’s cloak with
him.
From the flat, when they reached it, he telephoned Cesare at Quindereggio, telling him what had happened and promising that Ruth would keep Agnese as her guest as long as necessary. Which could be about as short a time as she can bring herself to accept my hospitality, thought Ruth, overhearing. But she didn’t say so to
Erle
.

She made up a bed for Agnese in the room Cicely had had and went to shed her grimy peasant dress and to take a bath. She meant to see Agnese comfortably settled before she went to bed herself, but Agnese forestalled her by coming to the door of her room as Ruth emerged from the bathroom.

‘May I speak to you before you go to bed?’ said Agnese, her gruff tone making it a demand rather than a request.

‘Of course. I was coming in to see you anyway. Won’t you get into bed?’ said Ruth.

Agnese did so, sitting bolt upright against the pillows, staring at her big hands outspread on the quilt.

‘You saved my life,’ she announced.

Ruth shook her head in deprecation. ‘Oh no,’ she said.

‘
Yes.
I was afraid. I lost
my nerve. If I had got to my
feet I should have run in panic and that would have
fanned the fire. Instead
—
’

‘Instead, I knocked you flat and sat on you,’ said Ruth, smiling. ‘Forget it, please.’

‘No. This is not all I have to say.’ Agnese rubbed a hand anxiously across her brow. ‘How was it that you were there?’

‘I had left the party a little while earlier. I had seen your light in the Casa and I had gone there to see you. But you weren’t there, and I was on my way back, using the stable yard as a short cut.’

‘To see me? What for?’

Ruth looked down at her own hands in her lap. ‘Well, in case we didn’t meet again, to say goodbye to you without ill-feeling,’ she admitted.

‘And if I had repulsed you, what then?’

‘I’d have been sorry, but at least I should have tried.’

‘As I must try now. I am proud, and it is difficult. But I have to tell you,
signora,
that I have deliberately slandered you, blackened your name in public for my own ends. Because you had encouraged and then scorned my brother, I twisted what I knew to be the truth.
I
told those false stories to the gutter Press
—
’

Ruth nodded slowly. ‘Yes, I know,’ she said.

‘You
knew,
and
—
?’

‘That’s not quite true. I didn’t know for certain, though I thought it must be so.’

‘Because I had warned you I would stop at nothing to revenge myself on you?’

‘Yes. But I think I realised how hurt you were, and when I went to the Casa tonight I did mean to try to convince you that I had never knowingly encouraged
Cesare, and that he knows and accepts the reason why I couldn’t marry
him.’

Agnese nodded. ‘Yes, he has always been more generous than I.
O
r perhaps more easily deceived. For he says you have told him you are entirely happy in your engagement to Signore Nash. Yet, as I have taunted you myself, with such a man, how can you be sure he means as well by you as you by
him?’

Ruth coloured. ‘How can one ever be entirely sure of another person’s affection? One can only hope,’ she parried.

‘Only, sometimes, to be cruelly mistaken.’ Agnese looked away across the small room, as if at a scene beyond its confines.

Ruth ventured, ‘You know, perhaps, what it is to be so misled,
signora
?’

Agnese brought her gaze back to the present. ‘Once, yes. But it is a long time ago now; an old story not worth the telling. I have forgotten the effect of it. Now I have Cesare to care for, and I am well content.’

‘And if he should marry for love, as I hope he may?’ Ruth asked.

Agnese drew herself up. ‘That is his right as a man, and I shall not stand in his way,’ she declared stoutly. ‘But I will
not
have him scorned because he is poor or wanting in the courage to prove his worth, or see him encouraged and then rejected for a lesser man.’ She paused. ‘All this I believed of you, and it made you my enemy in consequence. You understand?’

‘I think so. I’m glad you told me,’ said Ruth.

‘Even though you say you knew some of it already?’

R
uth smiled. ‘The results. Not the full cause, and that I do now understand. Cesare is fortunate to have you for a sister.’ She stood up and laid a hand over one of Agnese’s. ‘You have forgiven me now,
signora
?’

‘And you me?’ Agnese added diffidently, ‘All happiness in your coming marriage,
signora.
I must wish you that.’

‘Thank you,’ said Ruth, almost tempted, as she had been with Cesare, to confess that there was no happines
s
in store for her in marriage to
Erle
. But she said nothing. Cesare, Agnese, everyone would all know soon enough that there was to be no future to their engagement, and until then she must keep her promise to
Erle
.

The next morning
Erle
telephoned to say that a doctor would be coming to see Agnese, and asking Ruth to keep her until he had been. ‘As I remember,’ he added, ‘you haven’t explained what had taken you down to the stables last night?’

‘I hadn’t much liked the thought of her alone, and I’d been over to the house to see her,’ said Ruth.

‘Against orders?’

‘As part-hostess, I felt I was privileged to break them. But I missed her, and I was making my way back to the party across the stable yard.’ Wondering what he would say if she enquired how
he
had managed to be so promptly on the scene, she asked instead, ‘Have you found out how the sack of fireworks happened to be where it was?’

‘Nobody wants to take responsibility for it. But from my sifting of the evidence I deduce that it may have been delivered at some time when the caterers weren’t on the site, so it had been dumped there instead of being added to the main stock they had in hand.’

‘I’m sorry I missed the display. Was it a good one?’

‘As spectacular as most, with the awed “Oohs” and “Ahs” tending to run out of superlatives before the grand finale.’

‘What time did the party break up?’

‘In the small hours, with its objective achieved. Stella pronounced herself enchanted with its success as a last appearance of the season for her, and made me her proxy for thanking you for giving it.’

‘It was your party for her,’ Ruth reminded him.

‘But in the circumstances, generous of you to cooperate.’

Did he m
e
an generous in view of her false role as his
fiancée
, or generous to a more favoured rival? she was wondering as he went on, ‘Either the doctor or Cesare Fonte may beat the other in descending on you and Agnese. When I spoke to him—he rang me again last night—Fonte said he was coming back to Rome, leaving Quindereggio at dawn. He should have news for you. I think
.’

‘News for me?’

‘
And for his sister. But news I imagine he’ll want to give you. I instructed my agents to make him an offer for the goodwill and the stable stock of the Casa, and he has accepted my figure
.
’

Completely surprised, Ruth asked, ‘But what do you want with a riding-school business?’

She heard
Erle
laugh. ‘I don’t,’ he said.

‘Then why buy one?’

‘
Say that when I have a major project in mind, I believe in clearing my decks first.’ He laughed again as he rang off.

In fact, the doctor had pronounced Agnese only in need of rest and quiet some hours before Cesare arrived. He was anxious to hear all the details which
Erle
had not given him, and when Ruth protested that she had ‘done nothing’, said he preferred to take Agnese’s version of the affair. Before he arrived, Agnese had said, ‘I think we should not tell him that we already know of his settlement with Signore Nash’— a suggestion which told Ruth much of a brother-and-sister relationship which would not wantonly spoil the other’s fun.

So they showed admirable surprise, and the
r
e was no doubt of the pleasure it gave Cesare to make scoop news of the transaction. ‘The papers making the offer were sent to me at Quindereggio,’ he said. Turning to Ruth, ‘You have a phrase in English—“beyond the dreams of avarice”—and
Erle
’s figure goes beyond my furthest hopes of anything I could ask or get elsewhere.
It mean
s
everything
—
’ He checked, frowning. ‘No,
not everything. But ease, freedom from worry for a very long time to come; until Quindereggio is on a footing which will serve Agnese and me very well.’