Authors: Rose Burghley
She took off her hat and held it in her lap, and her hair stirred in the same light breath of wind that moved the trees. It was rather long hair, forming bright wings on her shoulders, and she shook it back from her face, so that the smooth delicacy of the latter was plainly revealed. That, and her sharply noticeable pallor, made her look a little like a ghost herself, particularly as her suit was grey and merged with the greyness beneath the trees.
Behind her, in the ill-kept drive, a car came nosing its way round the many bends, a long, rakish-looking car, pale as Devonshire cream, with a scarlet lining. Its occupant looked a little rakish, too, with his hat reposing on the unoccupied back seat, and his Indian- black hair lifting a little on his forehead. His face was thin and brown, attractive rather than handsome, quizzical rather than humorous, and with one corner of the mouth definitely crooked. His eyes stared ahead, surprisingly soft and brown like velvet, from under well-marked infinitely black brows; and he was lying back gripping the wheel as if he was a little weary of doing so, but conscious that he was on the last lap of a journey. And because he was on the last lap of a journey he sang softly beneath his breath, a hit from one of the latest Paris musicals.
But the song came to an end in mid-air, as it were, when he caught sight of the girl on the fallen tree-trunk, and a bare second or so later his tyres protested as he applied his brakes. He sat looking across the space that separated them at Caroline.
“I am perfectly sober,” he remarked, to no one in particular. “I did not even stop for lunch, and in fact I am too sober! Then there is something wrong with my eyes! That is the explanation!”
Caroline turned and looked at him, and startled by the very questioning quality of his regard she got quickly to her feet. Still clutching her hat, her large pouch handbag, and the present for Marthe Giraud, she looked as if she was contemplating immediate flight to the very heart of the woods, where no one would ever find her again.
But he prevented that by alighting swiftly from his car and walking towards her purposefully.
“You are real, mademoiselle.?” he demanded, when only one of his easy strides divided them—and he sounded as if he was still very doubtful. “Or is it the hour and the spot that has conjured you up?”
Caroline stared back at him. There were laughter wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, but his voice was wholly serious.
“Of course I’m real,” she answered him at once, but her voice was a shade breathless. “I’m—I’m on my way to the chateau.” “Indeed?” A look of exaggerated relief overspread his face. “And even at the chateau they do not yet entertain hobgoblins! So I can breathe again!” And then he smiled at her with a flash of startlingly white teeth. “And you are English...! You reply to me in my own tongue, but with an accent that is unmistakable! Excellent schoolgirl French as acquired in a very select seminary somewhere down on the south coast of England!”
“I went to school in Yorkshire,” she told him a little stiffly. “And I am supposed to have quite a fluent command of French!” “Splendid!” he exclaimed, softly. “An English girl who speaks French fluently—and on her way to the chateau. ”
“Can I give you a lift, mademoiselle? Or have you walked all the way from England—from Yorkshire?—and are you proposing to continue the journey on foot?”
She felt suddenly as if exhaustion literally rushed up over her, and it was impossible to frame any more words. It had been far too warm a day for a flannel suit, the train journey had been wearisome, the fact that her taxi had come to grief had caused her to walk at least a couple of kilos, and now she found herself actually swaying a little on her feet. She put out a hand and clutched at him.
Instantly his expression changed, and she felt a strong arm supporting her, giving her back her strength.
“Hang on to me, little one!” he said. “It is that you are ‘all in’, as I’ve no doubt you would say!” His brown eyes searched her face. “And that is why you looked so much like a ghost in the gloom!”
“My taxi broke down,” she explained weakly, taking advantage of his invitation and clutching at the lapel of his jacket— faultlessly tailored, as she discovered afterwards.
“The one that I came upon beside the road, a kilo or two from here? The driver was cursing his misfortune, but is now on his way back to Le Fontaine. And you,” he added gently, guiding her uncertain steps towards the car, “will soon be at the chateau, in the care of the good Marthe.”
CHAPTER II
BUT man proposes, and other things dispose of his apparently simple plans.
It would never have occurred to Caroline, while she was travelling across France in an up-to-the-minute example of that country’s excellent type of rolling-stock, that Marthe Giraud— who, so far as she knew, had never failed anything in her life— should have become giddy on a pair of kitchen-steps and fallen and broken her ankle. And that while she herself was still admiring the scenery on either hand Marthe was in an ambulance on her way to the local hospital, where she was to remain for several weeks.
Marthe left behind her a note, a shining kitchen, and a well-stocked larder, but Caroline was not informed of these things until a small glass of neat spirit had gone a long way to putting fresh life into her. And even then she couldn’t take them in. She sat with the empty brandy glass in her hand, disliking the unaccustomed taste in her mouth, and thinking what a huge room it was in which the shadows seemed to be lengthening moment by moment. There were mirrors on the walls, and sparkling chandeliers descended from the ceiling—at least, they would sparkle, she felt sure, if someone depressed an electric light switch. Unless the place was too remote for electricity. But, even so, a house of this size and magnificence could surely generate its own supply?
And she was proved right about this when the slim dark man, with a kind of feline elegance about him, who had driven her up to the house in his car, returned from conducting a conversation with an agitated old man in the kitchen. The agitated old man was the hewer of wood, and drawer of water, who had been present at the time of the accident. But as yet Caroline knew nothing about this, and she watched the room spring into radiance with a dull but definite feeling of appreciation.
The chandeliers didn’t merely sparkle, they looked like large clusters of diamonds overhead. And the walls of the room were a kind of pale sea-green, very restful, very reposeful, particularly as the ceiling repeated the colour-scheme; and if the paint-work was a little chipped and stained here and there, and gilded cornices and vine-leaves wreathing graceful columns were a little tarnished, it didn’t seem to matter very much, because the general effect was so altogether pleasing. At least, Caroline found it infinitely pleasing. She was able to identify various examples of Empire furniture, in spite of the fact that a great deal of it was shrouded in dust-covers; and a little Louis Quinze writing-desk against the farther wall could hardly have looked more in its element. And the portraits looking down at her from their appropriate panels appeared to be benign and smiling, as if they had no objection at all to seeing her there.
There was one old gentleman in a full-bottomed wig who sent her quite an encouraging look, and a lovely lady, who looked a bit as Madame Recamier must have looked in her heyday, parted her full red lips at her.
Unless it was the effect of the brandy!
“What a lovely room,” she heard herself murmuring, with growing appreciation. “What an absolutely perfect room!”
The dark man was frowning a little.
“I’m sorry I left you in the dark,” he apologised, “but affairs here are not so simple. In fact they are extremely complex.”
“Complex?” She looked up at him with a dreamy expression in her eyes, and they were wood-violet eyes, heavy and languid with a desire for sleep. The fumes of the brandy were definitely mounting a little, and she wished Marthe would make her appearance, and that some suggestion about a big bed with downy pillows would be forthcoming. It didn’t matter about food, because she wasn’t hungry, but her whole body was stiff after her journey, and she yearned to relax her limbs between cool sheets. “What is it that is so complex?” she asked.
“The fact that Marthe is not here,” he explained
“Marthe not here!”
She felt conscious of a shock. She had come all the way from England, and Marthe wasn’t here...!
“There has been an accident.” He paced up and down in front of her, his cat-like strides fascinating her a little, the sinuous grace of his build fascinating her still more. He wasn’t tall, he wasn’t short...and he struck her as having a tremendous supply of vitality. Curious, restless vitality. His linen was immaculate and he looked as if he patronised the most expensive tailor; but there was something Continental about his tailoring—something very French. He was a Frenchman who hadn’t introduced himself, and she felt it would be a little less confusing if she knew who he was.
“An—accident?” she repeated.
“Yes.” He stopped and smiled down at her one-sidedly, as if to soften the bad news. “It is Marthe who has met with an accident.” And he explained exactly what had occurred.
“But this is terrible!” she exclaimed, and stood up, holding a little unsteadily to the arms of her chair. “This is absolutely terrible! Poor Marthe!”
“I agree.” He spread his hands and lifted his shoulders in an extremely French gesture. “But there it is, and the problem we have to decide is how we may overcome the awkwardness that it entails. You, for instance...! Perhaps you will be good enough to inform me, mademoiselle, who you are, and why precisely you are visiting here? Pierre understands that Marthe invited you as her guest.”
“Pierre?” she echoed.
“The gardener and odd-job man.”
“Oh, yes.” She remembered Marthe had sometimes referred to Pierre in her letters. “And he is right. My name is Caroline Darcy—not spelt as you would spell it, but as if it was all one word—and I did come here to stay with Marthe. She invited me. She didn’t think the Comte de Marsac would mind, because he never comes here himself, and he is just letting the place go to rack and ruin.”
She frowned because the brandy had fired her indignation, and having seen what a truly beautiful old place the chateauwas at close quarters she felt she could never forgive the Comte de Marsac. He must be a man of execrable taste if he could neglect this delightful property, and choose to live in Paris. The nearest she had come to seeing Paris for herself was when she passed through it in a train; but a spreading mass of bricks and mortar, however elegantly planned, was too reminiscent of London to appeal to her strongly. And Paris wasn’t even London. It wasn’t as respectable as London! It was associated in her mind with the Folies Bergere, the Moulin Rouge, Montmartre and the Left Bank. Whereas when one thought of London one thought of Hyde Park and Buckingham Palace, the Horse Guards and the Mansion House.
“I think it’s a crime to allow a building that has been left to one by one’s ancestors to fall into a state of decay,” she declared quite decidedly, although so far she hadn’t had much evidence of actual decay. “It’s a failure of trust, and the Comte de Marsac must be lacking all sense of responsibility to behave as he does. His forbears would hardly be proud of him, especially as he makes a lot of money writing plays. I don’t suppose they’re very worthwhile plays.”
“You think not, Mademoiselle Darcy?” as if her opinion interested him.
“Marthe has indicated in her letters that they’re rather doubtful plays—the sort of entertainment Parisians probably
enjoy.”
“Indeed?” and his dark eyebrows ascended a good deal. “You know Paris, Miss Darcy?”
She had to admit that she didn’t know it at all, although she had passed through it that day, and his expression grew a little curious. She even thought there was a kind of cool humour about the set of the lips.
“Then you are hardly in a position to state with any accuracy the type of entertainment Parisians enjoy,” he remarked drily. “But I can confirm that de Marsac does appeal to what you would probably describe as the least respectable element of our capital’s teeming life.”
As she flushed a little, as if she was wondering why she had let her tongue run away with her about a man in whose house she was proposing to stay, he went on: “However, all this is hardly relevant at the moment. What is relevant is that you have arrived on a visit and there is no one to look after you!”
“No one?” a little more falteringly. “Oh, of course, Marthe has always lived here alone. But I can look after myself—unless you think I’d be intruding at such a time...?” “There is no question of intrusion, but you are quite obviously not in a very robust state of health at the moment.”
“I have been ill,” she admitted, “but I’m much better now. And I’m used to looking after myself... ”
“Then, if you’ll forgive me, mademoiselle,” he said suavely, taking in through narrowed eyes the pallor of the small face, and the smudged mauve shadows beneath her eyes, and at the corners of the rather revealing mouth, “for saying so, the indications are that you do not do it with very much efficiency! Unless the illness was of a particularly devastating nature?”
“It was pneumonia,” she said briefly.
“That was bad,” he observed, and his brown eyes expressed so much sympathy all in a moment that it was a little disconcerting. “That was very bad!”
“But not as bad as this thing that has happened to Marthe!” she exclaimed, clinging agitatedly to the arms of her chair. “Where is she? Have they taken her to hospital? What do they say about her? Will I be allowed to visit her soon... ?”
“Not until you yourself have had a considerable amount of rest, I should say,” with an imperturbableness that made her feel angry. “And as to Marthe, she is at the moment quite comfortable, and everything is being done for her that can be done. I have already spoken over the telephone to the hospital authorities, and nothing will be lacking in her treatment. She left behind her a note for you, and instructions about your room, which is all ready for you. And judging by the contents of the larder the house is well provisioned.”