Rose in the Bud (3 page)

“But this is an old-fashioned gondola,” she said. “Even I can recognise that!”

Edouard smiled.

“I decided to humour your whim,” he said, “although this type of craft is fast dying out now on the waterways. This one belongs to a friend of mine—a very ancient boatman—and it is guaranteed not to leak.”

As they slipped away from the landing stage he moved nearer to her and placed a light
rug
over her knees.

“It is cool on the water at night, and you are very thinly clad,” he said. “It would be a pity if you caught cold during your first trip to Venice. By the way, we may be a little late in reaching the
palazzo,
but they will understand, I’m sure, when I explain the reason ... and possibly, also, amused.”

“Oh, I do hope they won’t mind if we’re late,” she said. But she was excited by the darkness, the ripples on the water, the lights streaming from the ancient houses lining the banks. And this time it was really dark under the multitudinous bridges, and their slow passage made it possible for her to overhear the solemn plop of the pole as it was plunged into the inky depths of the water, and the slight gurgling that occurred in the wake of the gondola.

After the heat of the day the smell of the waterway was not as offensive, but there was a distinctly musty smell from the ancient velvet of the cushions that protected the hardness of the seat, and a kind of back flavour of moth-balls. But having come all the way from England Cathleen preferred these discomforts to the crude modernity of the motor-vessels that plied up and down the canals. And at night the palaces on the distant banks looked infinitely romantic, each with its landing-stage and lantern glimmering at the head of the flight of steps—in almost every case marble steps—leading up to the once impressive front doors.

The waterway was more lively by night than it was by day, and parties of people passed them on their way to dinner-parties or the night spots of Venice. Couples called across the water to Edouard, and waved their hands. Noisier parties were already in festive mood, and the wash of their motor-boats set the old-fashioned gondola rocking.

More than once Cathleen had to reach out and steady herself by clutching at Moroc, and he laughed in amusement.

“There is a certain amount of attraction about the old, but for convenience the new is best,” he murmured. “Perhaps you agree with me by this time?”

But Cathleen did not agree with him. She was actually looking forward to her evening
... while not forgetting how important it might be to Arlette that she should not be entirely carried away by the beauty and the charms of Venice.

The Palazzo di Rini was a blaze of light, as if some very important function indeed was being held there. Cathleen hardly recognised it as the badly faded, damp-stained, crumbling building she had seen for the first time earlier in the day. The balconies that overlooked the canal were, in particular, very brightly lighted, and for the first time she noticed the swinging baskets of flowers glowing excitingly in the bright glare of the illumination.

Paul di Rini was waiting for them on the steps. Unlike Edouard, who wore a conventional black dinner-jacket, he wore a crisp white one and cummerbund. Separated from his blue shirt and his paint-stained
j
eans he looked every inch an Italian aristocrat, and his greeting to Cathleen was courteous in the extreme. For one moment she thought he was about to kiss her hand after he had helped her out of the boat, and then she saw that his eyes were laughing at her although they were also filled with admiration.

“You are so beautiful,” he murmured, “you Englishwomen
... so much like flowers!” And then he did kiss her hand, and she snatched it away somewhat hastily, because it was the first time anything like that had happened to her and she was not at all sure she liked it
... not from the Count di Rinis of the world, anyway.

His lips felt cool and gloating, somehow... and yet at the back of his lustrous eyes there was a tiny little glow like a flame.

His sister came out on to the steps to welcome them, and seeing her for the first time Cathleen understood what Arlette had meant when she wrote that Bianca was ‘quite superb.’

She had an unmistakably disdainful air, and her attitude towards Cathleen was not particularly friendly, but she strove to behave like a welcoming hostess, and the condescension that was betrayed by her manner was partially mitigated by the unusual beauty and mellow cadences of her voice. She spoke English faultlessly—as, for that matter, did her brother—and as it was quite plain that Cathleen was very English she made no attempt to interlard her English with flowing Italian, as well as a few French phrases, as she did with Edouard Moroc.

She had a figure that must have delighted her dressmaker, and the clinging loveliness of the heavy oyster satin dinner-dress she wore was richly ornamented with gold embroidery, and the pearls at her ears and throat could not have looked more real. She was very like her brother, but her hair was flaming red rather than burnished, and her complexion made Cathleen think of warm white velvet and Devonshire cream. Her eyes were sparklingly beautiful, very large, very well set, but without the emotional fires that dwelt in Paul’s. If fires lay at the back of them they were very well damped down.

“Ah, Edouard!” she exclaimed, as he bent over her hand. She pouted very noticeably as his dark eyes appeared to quiz her a little. “You should have warned me that we could expect you this afternoon and I would have cancelled my appointment with the hairdresser! It is more than a week since you remembered our existence!”

“A thousand pardons,” he replied, in a very soft tone, “if I have appeared to neglect you, Bianca, but I have been unusually busy. You must come to my studio and see some of my work.”

“I will,” she replied, but she snatched away the hand which he seemed to wish to retain, and turned to one of the other guests who had joined them on the steps.

“This is Miss Brown,” she said, introducing her. “She is the sister of the other Miss Brown who was companion for some time to my late aunt.”

Cathleen found that she was received with a certain amount of curiosity by the other guests. Most of them—and there were about a dozen altogether, mostly young people with the same, dark, flashing good looks of the di Rinis, and perhaps a couple of more mature Venetians—regarded her speculatively, or so it seemed to her, and behind their smiles there was a measure of amusement, and something else that she didn’t quite understand.

The apartments which the Count and his sister occupied in the
palazzo
—and Cathleen discovered later that a large number of rooms were completely unoccupied, as well as unfurnished—were very gay to-night, and the quantity of flowers emphasised the fact that this was the warm, sunny land of Italy. The Count’s studio was only visited after dinner by those who wished to see evidence of the hours he devoted to filling canvases which were quite unlikely to attract recognition later, and aperitifs were served in a splendid and rather over-ornate room, which was as full of collector’s pieces as a museum.

Cathleen wondered whether the Tintorettos and Titians on the walls were genuine, and decided that if they were the di Rinis could still muster a small fortune between them if the need arose and their home had to be sold up, and the silver-gilt furniture in the dining-room was so reminiscent of a stage-set that she was inclined to doubt its authenticity. All the same, it was the first time in her life she had sat between a young woman dripping with diamonds and a young man with emerald studs in his shirt at a table so loaded with silver and glowing Venetian glass that, even if every single piece was not an heirloom, the effect achieved was sufficient to make one think of the Borgias and their standard of entertaining, particularly when one glanced at the handsome brother and sister presiding one at each end of the table.

After dinner coffee and liqueurs were served in the
salon,
and Bianca reclined on a satin-covered couch while a white-coated servant did the honours with the coffee-cups. Cathleen refused a liqueur, and after the champagne that had been pressed on her at dinner she thought it wise to do so. She was not accustomed to champagne, and it had seemed to her only common sense to say ‘No’ every time attempts were made to refill her glass.

Paul, who had often looked along the length of the table at her and smiled and waved his hand, attached himself very purposefully to her after dinner. Edouard had been placed at Bianca’s right hand in the dining
room, and after dinner she seemed disinclined to relinquish her right to keep him close to her side if she wished.

Like a spoiled, pampered, luxurious cream-coloured cat with flaming hair she lay on the exquisite eighteenth-century couch, and Edouard sat on the foot of it and told her entertaining stories and
smiled
at her with his inscrutable dark eyes. By contrast with the other men present he was aloof, controlled, and an enigma; but not, apparently, to Bianca, whose wide eyes gazed into his so frequently that a looker-on could have received the impression that, without displaying anything in the nature of personal interest, she yet had a message to convey to him, and one that she was determined should not escape him or be capable of misinterpretation before they parted that evening.

As for Moroc himself, it would have been impossible to have gathered much from his expression, or even his attentiveness. But it was obvious he realised what was expected him, and the hostess kept him chained to her side without, apparently, the smallest difficulty.

Paul, once dinner was over, attached himself to Cathleen as if he, too, had a purpose. But it had no connection with her journey to Italy. Try as she would she could extract nothing from him that threw any light on her sister’s disappearance, and apparently Bianca was unwilling to enter into any revealing discussion on the subject of Arlette.

When Cathleen asked Paul whether Signorina di Rini had been able to provide any clue to Arlette’s extraordinary disappearance he merely shrugged his shoulders and shook his head, smiling regretfully.

“I am sorry,
signorina,
but Bianca is as ignorant of Arlette’s whereabouts as I am.” He spoke soothingly. “Believe me, we would help you if we could, but there is nothing, I’m afraid, that we can tell you. After all,” trying to ensure her reasonableness, “your sister did not have to tell us where she was going.”

Cathleen bit her lip.

“You have no knowledge even whether she left Italy?”

“None.”

Bianca looked across the room at her brother and Cathleen thought that her eyes were hard as glass. She appeared to shake her head a little, and then rose and came sinuously across the room towards them.

“Miss Brown,” she said, when she reached the settee on which they were seated, “you are so like your sister that it gives me quite a shock every time I look at you.” She sank gracefully on to a footstool and wrapped her arms about her knees. “How long do you propose to stay in Venice
?
”

Cathleen looked vague.

“I haven’t, really, any idea.”

Bianca drew thoughtfully on her cigarette, and then waved away the sm
o
ke that had settled between her and the English girl.

“It must be a little lonely staying in an hotel,” she observed. “Especially if you are travelling alone.”

“I am.”

Brother and sister exchanged glances, and then Bianca smiled with extraordinary sweetness and leaned impulsively forward.

“Then why not come and stay here with us?” she suggested, causing Cathleen to feel uncertain whether she was actually hearing aright. “There is so much room in the
palazzo
that it is quite ridiculous you should be forced to endure an hotel, especially when there is already a link between us in the shape of your sister. If my aunt were alive she would absolutely insist that you came here.”

Cathleen found herself stammering:

“It’s very kind of you,
signorina,
but I’m perfectly comfortable in the hotel. As a matter of fact, I couldn’t be more comfortable.” She thought with a touch of cynicism that if Bianca di Rini could see the flat in the Cromwell Road, London, that she and her mother shared, and which they both disliked thoroughly after the country home they had once had when her father was rector of a Worcestershire parish, she would not be surprised that the
modern
Venetian hotel, run on lines of oiled efficiency, and with every luxury thrown in—if one was willing to pay!—struck her, Cathleen, as superbly comfortable.

Bianca looked unconvinced, and she also looked as if she was willing to try persuasion.

“Ah, but for one so young it is not an ideal thing to have to suffer the amenities of an hotel,” she protested. “And if you have no knowledge of the language—”

“I speak a little Italian,” Cathleen said quickly.

“Ah!” An impatient hand crashed out the cigarette in an ash-tray. “But you do not speak it fluently, and therefore you are, in a sense, vulnerable. And there is so much that Paul and I could show you if you came here. A tourist’s knowledge of Venice is always limited. We could introduce you to all the worthwhile sights, enable you to see Venice from the inside, as it were. And if you are not in any hurry to return home to England then you could stay here as long as you wish—”