Rose in the Bud (10 page)

He smiled at her gently, as if he was humouring her.

“And do you still believe that I deceived your sister by causing her to believe that I would one day marry her, and then permitted her to disappear nursing a broken heart?”

There was gentle raillery in his voice, but she could not respond to it. The subject of Arlette and a possible broken heart was not a subject she wished to dwell upon just then.

“I must have read something into her letters that I was not intended to read,” she excused herself in the same awkward tone. “Anyhow, I realise now that I must have made a mistake.”

“Good!” he exclaimed softly, carried one of her hands up to his face and held it there for a moment—despite the fact that the hotel was a hive of activity at that hour of the day—and then straightened and squared his shoulders and said that they would go.

“I told Bianca that I would take you straight back to the
palazzo
,” he said. “She has invited several people to meet you for lunch, and before that I know she wishes a—how do you call it?—heart-to-heart talk with you!” He smiled contentedly. “You girls when you get together! You have so much to talk about! You chatter like birds in an aviary, and a mere man can simply hope that he has some part in the conversation, and that it is not all connected with trifles!”

He led the way out of the hotel, and Cathleen followed him, secretly rather perturbed by that mention of a girlish get-together with the slightly formidable Bianca.

She was quite sure that Bianca di Rini never chattered exclusively about trifles, and that men figured largely in her conversation. Since Cathleen had been invited to the
palazzo
partly, at least, because both brother and sister were labouring under the mistaken delusion that the girl they had insisted on becoming their guest had recently inherited a large sum of money it was almost certain that the man they would discuss would be Paul
... with a possible amount of side-tracking that would draw Edouard Moroc into the conversation, for the sole purpose of putting Cathleen off him completely.

And as she never wanted to see him again that would be unnecessary.

All the same, Cathleen would rather that no one mentioned the subject of Edouard Moroc to her so long as she remained in Venice. Once she returned home to England, well, she could think of him. She would inevitably think of him ... but only when the wound he had inflicted had had time to heal. Or so she hoped.

Bianca was awaiting them when they reached the
palazzo
,
but considerably to Cathleen’s relief she did not snatch at the first opportunity to suggest that they put their feet up comfortably and got to know one another. Arlette’s old room had been prepared for Arlette’s sister, and it was so unexpectedly comfortable that Cathleen was not surprised her sister had regarded the job as a sinecure when first the old Contessa di Rini engaged her—through an agency in London—to act as her companion and write her letters. Everything a young woman who liked luxury could possibly desire was contained in the room, and although in the brief wintertime its marble floor and lack of central heating must undoubtedly turn it into a kind of mausoleum, at the height of a Venetian summer it had everything to commend it.

It had its own balcony overlooking the canal, with comfortable chairs for reclining and also for entertaining the odd visitor; and in the room itself there was a writing-desk and long mirrors, a bed with a highly ornamental bedspread and piled-up pillows each in its satin case embroidered with an enormous ‘R’ for di Rini, a case of books in several languages, and bowls of flowers. The flowers on the dressing-table were scarlet roses. Cathleen touched one of them impulsively in admiration, and then drew back as she remembered the deep red roses still sparkling with dew that had been delivered to her on her first morning at the hotel.

Watching her, Bianca smiled a little quizzically.

“The roses were Paul’s idea,” she admitted. “You like them, yes?”

“They’re—they’re beautiful,” Cathleen replied, but her impulse to bend over and inhale the scent of one of them was checked. She knew perfectly well that she did not wish to receive red roses from Paul
... especially as they were not really for her at all but for a mythical young woman with an inexhaustible bank-balance.

Bianca made certain that she had everything she needed, and then left her. Cathleen went through into the tiled bathroom with its somewhat antique bath and
modern
shower and washed her hands and re-did her face before lunch, and then spent a quarter of an hour on her balcony enjoying the life of the canal and the warmth and brilliance of the sunshine, but taking particular care to keep her eyes averted from that end of the waterway where Edouard’s small but very beautiful and well-preserved
palazzo
was sited.

She had one moment of almost pure panic when the time came for her to make her way to the main
salon
and it occurred to her that Edouard himself might be amongst the guests for lunch, but to her infinite relief they were all strangers, and she was able to relax and respond to their careful English without any of the embarrassment that would have been hers if the Frenchman who had kissed her and then told her he had no intention of falling in love with her had been there to throw her off balance with his dark eyes.

Her first day at the Palazzo di Rini was really quite uneventful, and her host and hostess really put themselves out to ensure that she was really comfortable. The next day they spent the whole of the morning on the Lido, and Cathleen was glad that in her luggage there were some really smart outfits that enabled her to feel at least as much in the picture as the rest of the guests as they disported themselves on the shining sand and in the sea. Lunch was eaten at a gay cafe where the striped sun-blinds and the inevitable champagne all added to the sensation of ‘living it up’ in some particularly imaginative Continental brochure for holidays for the really wealthy and fashionable for Cathleen, and once again she was glad that Edouard Moroc did not appear suddenly and rob her of all her careful composure.

After lunch, Paul took her for a long drive in his pure white car across the Venetian plain, the strip of land some thirty miles in extent that runs between the mountains of the interior and the
sparkling
Adriatic, and in addition to a fashionable bathing resort they visited ruins and hill villages, Byzantine relics and the sites of modern excavations of Roman
remains
and by the time they returned to the
palazzo
there was barely time for a drink before dressing for dinner, to which still more fresh faces were invited and presented to Cathleen.

She began to get the idea that she was partly on show, and partly the cause of some bewilderment to the visitors. They were all so very aristocratic and so beautifully brought up that most of them attempted to conceal their bewilderment, and one or two of the older men were perfectly charming to the English girl. One elderly count paid her such marked attention that Paul declared, when he detached her from him, that he was growing jealous, and from the slightly bleak expression on his face as he led her out on to the main balcony to admire the rising moon that was casting its silver light across the waterway Cathleen could have deduced that if not actually jealous, he was undoubtedly a trifle vexed.

“You are here because Bianca and I wish to have you to ourselves,” he declared, a trifle pettishly, and Cathleen couldn’t help wondering why, if that was really the case, they invited such large numbers of their friends to meet her.

Paul drew her towards the parapet, and they looked down on a gondola that was taking a couple of late diners out to dine. The girl, in a glittering evening dress and silken cloak draped lightly about her shoulders, was reclining on cushions with a man in evening dress beside her, and as they passed beneath the balcony their gondolier started to strum softly on a guitar and to sing in a voice of honeyed sweetness.

“Tourists!” Paul exclaimed, a trifle contemptuously, as he watched them and their high-prowed, old-fashioned means of water transport disappearing awkwardly in the direction of the Rialto Bridge. “You can always tell them.”

Cathleen, too, looked down. She was never likely to forget the night when she and Edouard had spent hours together in just such a boat in just such a silvery haze of moonlight and she had allowed herself to dream dreams. She had been very foolish then. She looked up at Paul curiously.

“How is it that you can always tell the tourists?’ she asked.

He smiled in that faintly contemptuous fashion again.

“They’re obvious,” he replied. “They have one idea in their heads when they come to Venice, and that is to travel on the waterways in a gondola that is so antiquated it’s a miracle they keep afloat, and of course the gondolier has to entertain them in the time-honoured way. It’s all part of the Venetian scene
... the kind of thing tourists expect. The girl doesn’t realise how much her escort has to pay for the entertainment, but his reward is that under the influence of so much glamour she becomes comparatively easy game. In fact, I doubt very much whether she could put up any resistance even if she wanted to
!”

Cathleen felt suddenly a little sick. Had she been such easy game? Could she have resisted Edouard if he’d continued to make love to her even if she’d wanted to do so?

She turned away from the balcony rail and pretended to feel suddenly chill.

“I think I’ll go and get something to put round my shoulders,” she said.

Paul, following her thoughtfully back into the
salon,
smiled at the creaminess of her exposed neck and shoulders.

“It seems a pity to cover them up,” he murmured.

The next day he had some sort of business to attend to at a distance, and she and Bianca saw little of him until evening, when once again there was to be a dinner-party in the
palazzo.
This time, Cathleen understood, it was to be a really large party, and some of the dresses would be really splendid.

“Dress up and make yourself look really charming,” Bianca said to Cathleen as she followed her into the latter’s room before they separated to change for the evening. “I know you have some very pretty dresses, but to-night you must really shine. May I be permitted to look at your clothes and to select something for you from amongst them?”

Surprised, but unable to think of any reason why she should say ‘No,’ Cathleen flung open the door of her capacious old-fashioned wardrobe and invited her to make her inspection. With a thoughtful frown drawing her brows together and an intent look in her eyes Bianca concentrated on the row of dresses, suits and other garments that succeeded in filling only a very small part of the wardrobe, and separated them with a slightly disdainful hand. She examined each in turn, and despite the fact that she had described them as pretty was obviously not very much impressed.

She turned and studied
Cathleen
, and then shook her head.

“You look well in colours, but you are at your best in white,” she said. “Apparently you have only one white dress suitable for evenings, and that is not really the type of dress I would wish you to appear in tonight. I wonder,” crinkling her brows, “whether you would take offence if I asked you to select something of mine to wear to-night? We are much of a size, and I should be so happy if you would allow me to lend you something.”

Cathleen regarded her in perplexity.

“But is there any particular reason why I have to appear at my best to-night?” she inquired, with a lightness that disposed of the idea that she had any particular desire to ‘shine,’ as Bianca phrased it, at any time. “I mean, I’m simply a guest here
...”

“You are Paul’s guest, and mine,” Bianca said, as if that was really important, “and there will be people here to-night who might very easily make you feel dowdy if you do not do as I wish, and since you
are
our guest I do
think
you ought to consider us a little.”

She smiled charmingly, and laid a gentle hand on Cathleen’s arm. “Will you,
cara
?
To please us!”

But still Cathleen hesitated.

“But surely,” she protested, “if I wear something of my own ... I mean, I honestly can’t understand why you want me to look so smart. I couldn’t hope to compete with the better dressed of your guests, in any case.”

“Couldn’t you?” Bianca inquired sweetly.

“Well, I suppose if I felt like being extravagant I could buy something extravagant
... or I could have done if I’d known about this in time.”

“My dear,” Bianca responded, with the same sweetness and air of gentle humour, “perhaps that was why we did not let you know. A hurried purchase of the wrong type of gown would not do at all, but if you wish to go shopping some time I shall be delighted to accompany you. I can, indeed, introduce you in all the right quarters and make certain that any new outfit of clothes will be the right outfit for you. But in the meantime I myself will be happy to come to the rescue, and you must make your choice from the contents of my wardrobe. Come along!”

Her bedroom—part of a luxurious suite—was an enormous white room that rather took Cathleen’s breath away, it was so full of costly and exquisite things. If the di Rinis were financially insecure there was no evidence of it here. Her dressing-table was of beaten silver, almost certainly a priceless piece in itself, and the carpet was so thick the feet became lost in it. There were bowls of white roses, a white velvet robe hanging on the door that led to the bathroom. The atmosphere was heavy with perfume—perfume contained in giant crystal flagons on her dressing-table.