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Authors: Jane Beaufort

Tags: #Mills & Boon Romance 1974

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BOOK: Love in High Places
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And it was at that moment that Valentine, catching sight of her employer, made up her mind that she ought to retire. Her new acquaintance protested, advancing arguments that the night was young and Miss Morgan couldn’t reasonably object to her enjoying herself

especially as she didn’t apparently do so very often. But Valentine insisted, and they went back to their table and collected her handbag, and on their way to the lift they had to pass by the table where Lou was queening it with her two distinguished men friends, and a waiter was uncorking a bottle of champagne. Valentine would have avoided the ordeal if she could, but Lou caught sight of her, and in her bubblingly happy mood couldn’t refrain from demanding that the two should come over and join them.

“This is Val, who looks after my clothes and things,” she said gaily to von Felden. “You wouldn’t think it tonight, because she’s wearing one of my cast-offs, and although she looks a poppet she’s much more at home running my bath. Sit down, sweetie,” she said to her employee, “and share in this toast the Baron’s determined to drink. I don’t know what it’s all about, but any occasion’s an occasion for champagne!”

Giles Haversham said stiffly:

“I was just escorting Miss Brown to the lift. I think she’s rather tired, and would prefer to go to bed...

“Nonsense!” Lou cried, in her elevated, insensitive mood. “What has Val done to make her so tired?
I
should be tired because I’ve been out all day in the fresh air, risking my neck on perilous slopes, and Val doesn’t even ski.”

“Then that is something we can put right,” Alex von Felden said quietly behind Valentine’s back, and he put a glass of champagne almost ceremoniously into her hand. “Why is it that you do not join in the general rough-and-tumble like everyone else,
Fraulein
?” he inquired, his dark eyes subjecting her to a long and somehow uncomfortable scrutiny. At least, she found it uncomfortable, for it was oddly searching, somehow, and yet at the same time it was overpoweringly courteous, and on top of Lou’s introduction it made her
feel as if her wits were deserting her.

“I
—I
do ski,” she answered, and looked across at Lou. “But I’m not employed to amuse myself in Miss Morgan’s time.”

“Oh, come now, Val!” Lou exclaimed, feeling momentarily ashamed of herself. “I’m not such a taskmaster, am I? And there’s always the instructor who would take you under his wing if you wanted him to do so. He’s terribly good-looking and most of the girls here seem to love falling about all over the place while he’s looking on.”

“There’s no need for Miss Brown to fall about all over the place,” the Baron said incisively. He had a slight attractive accent which might have appealed to Valentine if she hadn’t been feeling so uncomfortable just then. “And there is no need to relegate her to a ski
-
instructor.”

“You’re not suggesting that
you
give her lessons, are you
?
” Lou demanded, with rather an unpleasant laugh.

The Baron bowed formally in front of Valentine.

“Why not?” he asked. “Why not, Miss Brown? It is such a very

unusual name,” he added softly.

Valentine put down her glass of champagne untasted as she felt Lou’s cooling glance upon her.

“I think if you’re tired you’d better go to bed, Val,” she said.

The elderly Count von Hochenberg smiled at her rather charmingly, the Baron stood stiffly, as if at attention, and Giles Haversham moved in a relieved fashion to continue his escort to the lift. But the Baron moved forward quickly.


I
will see Miss Brown to the lift,” he said. “I wish to ask her about such an unusual name!”

Valentine felt him moving at her side, a dark, graceful, elegant shape, and she knew that his dark eyes were brooding on her thoughtfully as they made their way down the length of the ballroom and crossed the vestibule. Behind them they left a wide-eyed, incensed Lou, an amused Count, and a distinctly annoyed detective
-
story writer.

“Tell me, Miss Brown,” Alex von Felden said softly in her ear, “are you easily upset? You must not be, you know! Lou does not realise that she can be crude at times, and the English Miss Browns are a little more sensitively constructed.” He took her hand before he parted from her at the lift gates. “You really must join us sometimes when we are out on the snow,” he said. “It can be fun, and Lou does not need a constant attendant. I had no idea that she kept someone like you imprisoned here.”

“But I’m not imprisoned
...
” Valentine protested.

He smiled down at her, and never in her life had a man smiled at her in quite that way before. Never in her life had she even dreamed that a man’s eyes, and the shapely curves of his mouth, could take on such a look while he was lightly clasping one of her small, pale hands as if it were a piece of porcelain.

“Good night, Miss Brown,” he said softly. “Miss Valentine Brown! It should never,
never
be Val!”

 

CHAPTER THREE

The
following morning Valentine wandered through the village after it had been deserted by the flock of eager skiers who poured from their hotels as soon as breakfast was over, and their morning mail read. She made for the cafe that was empty at this hour, but would be crowded a short while before lunch, and ordered herself a beaker of hot chocolate and a couple of tempting-looking pastries.

She had no need to bother about her figure, for, if anything, it was a little on the too-slight side, and although she had a reasonably healthy colour there was a Dresden-china delicacy about her at times. Her pastel
-
blue
vorlagers,
and daffodil-yellow parka, seemed to emphasise the delicacy. She had a spring-like quality about her, a quality of untried youth, although her golden eyes were sad sometimes, and she lacked the sparkle of eager youth. She was alone, forlorn, but somehow not particularly vulnerable.

She had grown beyond vulnerability, and done it in a remarkably short space of time.

The owner of the cafe liked to talk to her, and unlike so many of his customers she could chatter away in his language with the greatest of ease. She had had an excellent education, was widely travelled, and he liked to hear about America and other lands across the seas he had never crossed. His daughter, who had once worked in England in a domestic capacity, pressed upon Valentine only the choicest of the cream cakes, and beamed at her as if she were a very close friend or relative. She had seen her with the golden-headed American girl who appeared to have the right to order her about, but she considered Valentine had something the other lacked.

She couldn’t flash an expensive cigarette-case about, or order coffee laced with cream for every casual acquaintance who followed her into the cafe. But she had a smile that was different, her voice was low. Low and quiet and friendly.

When a villager greeted her with the inevitable
“Gr
u
ss Gott
,” she responded immediately. She came alive easily at the most unexpected moments, rather like His Excellency the Herr Baron who was staying up at the Grand Imperial Hotel, and who sometimes looked so bored it was a kind of deathly boredom. But when there were children around he would catch them by their yellow plaits and ask them whether they liked chocolate, and laugh to see them eat it, and thrust a whole handful of notes into Gretchen’s hand to provide them with more.

The American girl was never very far from the Herr Baron’s side, but she didn’t seem to be very fond of children. She would protest that he would make them sick.

“And why not?” he would demand, his white teeth flashing at her, his eyes alight. “Have you never been sick yourself, my lovely Lou, as the direct result of eating too much of something you liked
?
It is one of the few delights left to us in this world to make pigs of ourselves when the opportunity arises!”

But his lovely Lou plainly did not agree with him, and she would look down fastidiously at her elegant parka and shrink lest chocolatey fingers touched her accidentally. And the Baron would put his head on one side and regard her speculatively, buy her another drink, and urge that they went to lunch.

“A pity we do not see eye to eye on quite a few things,
Liebling,”
he would say. “But who is to say that they are important things? We must convince ourselves that they are quite, quite unimportant!”

And Gretchen herself would have agreed that the village children could survive without chocolate

although it put money into her till

and excess was always a bad thing.

This morning, when Valentine Brown entered the cafe, she seemed more than ever alone. Perhaps that was because there was not another single soul sitting at a table.

“It is a pity you do not go off with the rest,
Fraulein
,” Gretchen observed, as she handed over the usual foaming beverage. “It would be amusing,
ja
?

“Perhaps.” Valentine was growing a little tired of explaining that she was not entirely a free agent, and she concentrated on admiring the knitting that lay on the counter. “You must teach me to knit in the way that you all do it out here,” she said. “It is so much quicker, and it looks so easy. I will buy some wool and bring it here and you shall show me exactly how you do it.”

Gretchen smiled at her pityingly. A young woman with a skin like a drift of apple blossom, and eyes as golden as honey, and she talked about learning to knit. She should be out there on the snow slopes, the sun and the wind in her face, a stout young man at her elbow to pull her out of a snowdrift when her skis buckled and she lighted head first in one. Instead of which she discouraged the admiring looks of all young men, and preferred to be alone.

The door opened behind her, and a very tall man entered. He was not precisely young

somewhere about thirty-five, Gretchen judged him

but he had a tanned face and most pleasing grey eyes. When Valentine whipped round to look at him her own eyes grew a degree or so brighter.

“Mr. Haversham!” she exclaimed. “What are you doing here at this hour of the morning
?

“I’ve been stalking you,” he admitted. “I saw you leave the hotel, watched you buy stamps at the post office, and come on here. I followed you, and now I’m glad I did, for I can do with some of that hot coffee.”

“They do an excellent hot wine punch here,” she told him, “but it’s only intended for the experts who risk their necks on the ski runs.”

“Then why aren’t we risking ours?” he demanded, sinking into the place beside her and smiling at her. He was wearing a thick windcheater and a gaily tasselled cap, and somehow the warmth of his smile made her suddenly aware of the brilliance of the morning outside, the dark shadow of the pines on the snow, the hard blueness of the sky, the yellow gold of the sun. “As a matter of fact, I planned to ask you last night whether we couldn’t go off ski-ing together to-day, but I allowed the opportunity to pass me by. Will you take pity on me this afternoon and let’s risk our necks in unison
?
” She smiled back at him slightly.

“There are lots of pretty girls who would be willing to take pity on you, Mr. Haversham. Why pick on me
?

“Because you’re by far and away the prettiest,” he answered without a moment’s pause.

She was so unaccustomed to compliments

or had been during the last year or so-that she blushed vividly.

“That was a very nice thing to say,” she told him. “Very nice! Particularly if you mean it,” she added.

“I do mean it.” His eyes were on a stray curl

the dark reddish-gold that Titian would have loved

escaping from under her close woollen cap, and suddenly she realised that he was not a man who paid idle compliments. “Will you let me explain something?” he asked almost gravely. “Something I think you ought to know. Something I want you to know!”

“Why, of course,” she answered, but the colour lingered in her cheeks, and she stirred her coffee vigorously. “Is it an explanation of the reason why you pay such delightful compliments to a young woman you’ve only known a few hours? Or perhaps you normally do that
?
” with a sideways glance at him.

“No. No, I don’t. I don’t find it easy to pay compliments.”

“Well
...
?” She lifted her lashes, and brown eyes and grey eyes looked closely at one another.

“A few weeks ago I had ’flu. Oh, nothing serious, but it ran me down a bit, and I couldn’t work. I have a lot of work to do

writers don’t get much time to themselves, you know!

and I decided I’d better brisk myself up a bit by taking a holiday. I decided to come here because I’ve been here before, but I wasn’t very keen... until last night. When I saw you
!

She said nothing, but her eyelashes fluttered.

“But before I left I had a curious kind of conviction. This wasn’t going to be an ordinary holiday ... an ordinary break! Although I would honestly rather have stayed at home and swallowed a few vitamin pills I
had
to come
!
Was that Fate, do you think
?

She smiled uncertainly at her finger-tips.

“I think it was Mr. Haversham, the detective, getting down to the job! There’s probably something or somebody here that’s going to provide you with some wonderful material for a new book. Perhaps a murder on the snow slopes!”

“You don’t think it could possibly be love on the snow slopes?”

Her face went blank, she moved without seeming to do so very slightly away from him, and his hand went out and covered one of hers. He patted it gently.

“All right, perhaps it was just the old instincts at work
...
the incessant desire to get hold of some new copy! But I’ll tell you one thing more, if I may
?
The detective in me has been very definitely alerted by a certain Miss Valentine Brown, and if I could get to the bottom of the mystery she represents then it would be a cause of great satisfaction. I’d like to know, for instance, why the name of Brown leapt so readily to mind when it had to be married to a perfectly legitimate one of Valentine, and why you’re performing all those nasty little tasks you told me about last night. Putting an anything but helpless young woman to bed, and that sort of thing
...
And having ‘cast-offs’ flung at you!”

“They’re never flung at me,” Valentine said, defending Lou. “And they’re frequently very welcome!”

“Very likely so,” he agreed. “But it’s a pity you couldn’t pick an employer who could refrain from putting you in your place publicly!”

Once more Valentine leapt to Lou’s defence.

“She didn’t mean it,” she said. “It’s just a way she has sometimes, and last night was not one of her good nights. It began badly and ended unexpectedly well.”

“With the return of the Baron, you mean? Well, it’s obvious she’d like to be a Baroness, but it might be wiser in the long run if she refrained from rushing things too much. There are Barons and Barons, and she’s got a find out all I can about you, Valentine,” he told her quietly, “before we both leave here. Do you mind
?

She regarded him uncertainly.

“Not really
...
Or I don’t think I do!”

“Good.” He smiled. “You understand I’ve no intention of prying
?
It’s vital interest.”

Her soft mouth quivered.

“It’s quite a long time since anyone took a vital interest in me.”

“I guessed that,” he said softly, and once again his hand touched hers lightly. “And we’ll ski together this afternoon? You admitted last night that you do ski.”

“Yes. It was one of the things we had to learn when I was at school in Switzerland, and my father
...
My father was keen.”

They went on talking for nearly another hour, and then the door burst open and the first of the hot wine
-
punch drinkers stamped noisily in. Amongst them was Lou and the Baron von Felden, and the latter glanced curiously at the table at which Valentine sat quietly engrossed in conversation with her fellow-countryman. Lou said something in her loud, unmistakably American voice, and Valentine started and looked round almost guiltily to find the Baron’s eyes fixed on her.

“You should have been with us this morning,
Fraulein,”
he told her. “We would have been happy to have you, and I would have been interested to make the discovery how well

or how badly!

you perform on skis!”

His tone was dry, disinterested, but his eyes had a look in them that made Valentine feel as if her blood had grown sluggish over the past year or so, and all at once it was quickening with a desire to flow freely. So dark and deep they were that she wanted to gasp, and at the same time she felt her cheeks grow hot.

Lou spoke impatiently.

“Don’t force Val to admit that she’s not the athletic type,” she said, as she climbed on to one of the leather
-
covered stools at the counter. “If she has a thing about breaking her neck then let her keep it to herself, and don’t be such a pest, Alex. We can’t all shine in the out-of
-
doors.”

“I don’t think Miss Brown is in the least afraid of breaking her neck as a result of sampling the amenities of a place like this,” Giles Haversham exclaimed, with rather a curt note in his voice. “And as a matter of fact I have just asked her to try one of the easy slopes with me this afternoon. I’m not much of a veteran myself, and I’m sure she can do better than I can.”

“Then you must both amuse yourselves on the nursery slopes,” Lou replied more affably. “I noticed the other day that you weren’t a
terribly brilliant
performer,” smiling at him to take the sting out of her words. “And so far as I know there’s nothing special Val has to do for me.”

“Not unless you can think of something,” Valentine interjected quietly.

BOOK: Love in High Places
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