An Introduction To The Eternal Collection Jubilee Edition (100 page)

‘Does it matter?’ Sir Robert asked. ‘Does anything matter except that you are safe?’

His voice was very low and deep. His eyes looked down into hers and suddenly Mistral felt herself begin to tremble. She did not know why, for she was not afraid. Indeed the most wonderful feeling she had ever known was creeping over her, burning through her like a flame, making her breath come quickly from between her lips. She could no longer meet Sir Robert’s eyes and her lashes were dark against her cheeks as she heard him say,

‘You are so lovely, so perfect!’

She felt as if she could no longer bear the intensity of her own feelings. With a little inarticulate murmur she turned her face and hid it against his shoulder. He drew her closer and she could feel his heart beating quickly and strongly beneath her cheek. She knew then with a happiness she had not believed possible that he loved her even as she loved him.

They were both silent for there was no need for words. They were close, joined by a glory which seemed to vibrate in their veins like music.

The horses drew up and the carriage came to a standstill. Mistral raised her head. She was aware without looking out of the window that they were back at the
Hôtel de Paris.

She wanted to cry out that this moment must not end, that they must drive on, that she could not leave Sir Robert, but even as the night porter came hurrying from the hotel, he said quickly,

‘I will see you tomorrow. There are many things I want to say to you, my darling, but I am not free to say them yet. You must trust me a few more hours.’

She could not answer him. There were no words in which she could reply. She could only look into his eyes for a long breathless moment. She knew then that they belonged to each other for all time. That strange magnetism which she had known first when they had met by the sea shore joined them once again.

She felt as if he drew her irresistibly and possessively into his keeping. She surrendered herself to his will, knew herself captured and conquered and gloried in the ecstasy of it.

The door of the carriage was opened. Mistral felt as if she was rudely dragged back to earth from the radiant sunlit Paradise. Her shyness returned and her eyes were veiled.

Sir Robert got out and handed her out of the carriage. She did not look at him as they walked up the steps to the door of the hotel, then she felt his lips, warm and insistent, against her fingers.

‘Until tomorrow, my beloved,’ he said softly and was gone.

13

Sir Robert watched the first pale flush of the dawn light the sky and then spread, growing golden and yet more golden every moment, until the whole vista of sea, sky and land was ablaze with brilliant colour. As he watched, he thought, as he had done often before, that it all had a sense of unreality about it. It was both as beautiful and as ephemeral as a dream.

That, he thought suddenly, was the right way to look at Monte Carlo. It was a dream world one could enter for a little while and accept as lightly and as unselfconsciously as one accepted the dreams which pass in the night. It was a place made for enjoyment, for excitement and often for happiness, but it was never meant to be lived in or to be a foundation on which one could build a real life or the future.

It had a loveliness almost beyond description, he thought, as he watched the sea turn to vivid blue with streaks of emerald and then pale where it met the horizon to amethyst tinged with silver. But he knew that for him personally, while he could acknowledge the beauty of Monte Carlo, his heart would always find perfection not on the

Côte d’Azur but at Cheveron.

There was a sudden flight of pigeons winging their way over the white roofs below him, and vividly they conjured before his eyes the pigeons coming home to roost in the woods with which Cheveron was surrounded.

The trees would be in bud, the snowdrops and crocuses would be out on the lawns, and everywhere there would be that freshness, that breathless sense of wonder which each year heralded the miracle of spring. Soon the lilac bushes would be heavy with purple and white blossom, and the apple trees would be scattering clouds of pink and white petals, while the water lilies would be golden against the shining waters of the lake.

Cheveron was calling him, and unconsciously Robert made an impulsive movement as if he could not wait another moment but must leave immediately for the home he loved so dearly. Yet he must curb his impatience, for he knew that when he went he would not go alone.

He had not slept last night, but had walked for a long time by the sea shore, and when at length he had gone to his own room it had been to sit on the balcony, looking out into the darkness until the dawn came. He had been thinking of Mistral, of her head against his shoulder, her face raised to his.

How lovely she had been in even the flickering, uncertain light of the carriage lantern! How hard it had been not to kiss her, and how very nearly he had done so! Her lips had been so near to his and he had known by the soft trembling of her body and by the expression in her eyes that she would not have refused him.

But some deep-rooted sense of honour within himself had held him back. He had forced himself to wait, to shut the door on the past before he opened the one which led to the future. He had done the right thing, he was sure of that, but every nerve in his body ached all night as the thought of Mistral’s loveliness and her nearness of which he had not taken advantage.

When he left her at the
Hôtel de Paris,
he had told the carriage to drive immediately to the Villa des Roses. Mistral’s innocent question had recalled Violet to his mind and he realised now how unbearably rude he had been to leave her without explanation or apology standing alone outside the
Restaurant des Fleurs.
But all thought of her had vanished completely from his mind when he imagined that Mistral was being abducted by the Prince. His only thought had been to rescue Mistral, and a blind, insensate rage had made him oblivious of everything and everybody.

Now he must apologise to Violet, but worse still, he must tell her the truth. It would not be easy to explain not only that he was in love with Mistral, but that he intended, when morning came, to ask her to be his wife.

He knew now that he had never been in love before, never even had begun to realise what it might mean in his life or to plumb the depths of which his emotions were capable.

Violet had attracted him, it was true. He had desired her almost from the first moment of their meeting, but it was she who had made their relationship a deeper and more intimate one. It was she who had led him further and further into a maze of his own passions and emotions until, when it was nearly too late, he had found the way of escape that was almost closed against him.

He had not meant it to be like that. He had intended nothing serious that first night at the Devonshire House Ball when impulsively he had written his name against every dance on Violet’s programme and flirted with her with the experienced sophistication of a man of the world.

It was later, much later, that he had begun to guess that Violet was falling in love with him, and it was only when his Mother’s reproaches and expostulations began to irritate him that in a kind of obstinate defiance he thought of asking Violet to be his wife.

By that time he had been infected with some of her contempt and indifference towards the conventional. Until he met Violet, he had always done exactly what was expected of him and behaved with a correctness and a formality which would have done credit to an older man. But after some weeks in Violet’s company he felt rebellion stir within him, a rebellion against the slanderous tongues of their friends who, anticipating evil, invariably forecast that it was an inevitable conclusion. If that was what was wanted, he would give them something to talk about, he decided.

But deep in his heart Sir Robert had known that Violet fell very far short of the ideal he had held secretly all his life of the woman who would be his wife. It had to be someone who would love Cheveron and who would be happy there, someone whom Cheveron would both love and accept.

He had known, even while he defied his mother and those who whispered about Violet, that they were right. He could not take to Cheveron a woman who had been divorced, he could not enthrone her there as an example to those on the estate who trusted and respected him.

And yet he had played with fire, wanting, as so many men had wanted before him, to have both Cheveron and Violet, salving his conscience by assuring himself over and over again that Violet was not really serious, that her love for him was as light and transitory a thing as his for her. But as the horses neared the Villa des Roses after having left Mistral at the Hotel, Robert was afraid.

He let himself in with a latch key. It was a relief to see that the lights were lit in the drawing room and that Violet had not yet gone to her bedroom. She was sitting at her bureau writing as he entered the room. As she rose, he saw that she had changed from the formal gown she had worn earlier in the evening into a negligée of some soft flowing material. Her only decoration was a bunch of artificial roses which she wore at her breast. Her face was pale as she said quietly,

‘I thought you would come.’

‘Naturally! I owe you an apology.’

His voice was grave and steady and, as he looked at her and looked away again, she saw an expression in his eyes which she had never seen before. And it seemed to Violet that for a moment she could not get her breath. The fears and the anxiety which had been accumulating this past hour or so appeared to unite and in their combination to fashion some terrible weapon which stabbed her now to her very heart.

She knew the truth, knew it without words, without explanation. And she wished only that she might die before she heard it from Robert’s own lips.

But Violet had generations of blue blood in her veins, and this enabled her to say easily and without a tremor in her tones,

‘Won’t you have a drink, Robert? You must have had a trying time since I last saw you.’

‘Thank you!’

There was almost a note of gratitude in his voice as Robert crossed to the wine table and poured himself out a whisky and soda. He was grateful for even a moment’s respite, grateful that Violet seemed calm and unemotional.

He had no idea that, as she watched him cross the room, noting the breadth of his shoulders, the proud carriage of his head and the clear cut handsome features, Violet wanted nothing so much as to be able to cry out her love, to rush towards him with outstretched, clinging arms.

Some primitive savagery within her told her to do just this very thing, to entwine herself about him, to impel him to realise how much she loved him and to arouse his passions by revealing her own. She had made him desire her once, why could she not do so again?

But even as the thought came to her, she turned away from it in disgust. Then, as if the Devil himself tempted her, Violet knew there was another way that she could keep Robert – she had only to appeal to his honour, his chivalry. She had but to tell him clearly in no uncertain terms that he had compromised her and that he could only reinstate her in the eyes of the world if he made her his wife. If she spoke of such things, she knew clearly and unmistakably that he would marry her. Robert was a great gentleman, he would not fail her.

But unfortunately, she thought wearily, she was a lady. If Robert would not behave like a blackguard, neither could she.

If Robert was honourable, then she, too, had a sense of honour.

He turned from the wine table with the drink in his hand and walked across to the fireplace where she was standing.

She knew he was nervous. And there was something infinitely pathetic in the knowledge that Sir Robert Stanford of Cheveron was nervous of her. She had known him in many moods, she had watched him experience many emotions, but never before had she known him afraid, nervous or embarrassed, and she knew that now he was all these things and perhaps more.

For the first time since they had met, Violet felt her age.

Robert was so intensely masculine that always she had thought him as being so immeasurably older in the things that mattered. He had commanded and she had obeyed. He had always been the stronger of the two, both physically and mentally, but now in this moment of crisis Violet realised that he was in some ways very young where woman were concerned. His ideals had never been shattered. To him a woman was a very wonderful and very lovely creature, lovely both in mind and body.

At that moment Violet felt a jealousy so violent in its intensity that it almost tore her in pieces – a jealousy of the woman whom Robert would love and who would be his wife.

He would lay all these great gifts of his at her feet, and what was more, he could offer her what was to all intents and purposes an untouched heart. He was sensitive, he had imagination, he would be able to give to the woman he loved so much more than anyone else, including herself, had up till now been able to take from him.

Violet’s jealousy burned within her like a fire. As suddenly as it had flared up, it died away, leaving her curiously depleted and for a moment emotionally detached.

Robert put his hardly touched glass of whisky down on the table. It seemed as if he were not thirsty although his lips, were dry. He took a deep breath.

‘I have something to say to you,’ he began.

It was then that Violet knew what she must do, knew that to save him from humiliation and self-reproach she must sacrifice herself and the last remnants of her pride. She had lost him, lost him completely and absolutely, she knew that.

She had failed in what she had set out to do and had destroyed herself in the effort. She loved Robert as she had never loved a man before and never would again, but because she loved him, and loved him utterly and unselfishly, there was one last thing she could do for him.

She put out her hand as if she would lay it on his arm, then checked herself and let it fall to her side. She dare not touch him – she
dare
not.