One Coin in the Fountain Page 7

  Rose said nothing to this, but she still could feel nothing but sympathy for Sir Laurence because he had had to endure what he had had to endure, and she knew that she had never been a real obligation of his. He had been kind to her, and generous—far kinder, and far more generous than she had ever had any right to expect him to be—and she exonerated him completely from having failed her in any sense of the word as a guardian.

  When he arrived at the hotel at twelve o’clock she was waiting for him in the main entrance lounge. She was wearing an oatmeal silk suit with a thickly-pleated skirt, and her hair was curling softly and vividly under a tiny brown velvet Juliet cap. Her accessories were all perfect—hand-made snakeskin shoes, with very high heels, a hand-bag that matched them, and suede gloves that emphasized the smallness and shapeliness of her hands.

  Sir Laurence looked down at her for a moment as if he was deliberately taking in every detail of her appearance, and then remarked with an odd smile curving his lips:

  “Why did I never realize before that you must be one of the loveliest young women in the world, Rose? Or did it take Mrs. Wilson-Plunkett’s genius to bring out the best in you?”

  Rose returned no answer to this but her heart was beating more quickly than normally as she accompanied him from the hotel, and she was glad that he didn’t seem greatly to mind when she explained about Mrs. Wilson-Plunkett. She had the feeling that eyes watched them as they left the hotel, and she realized that her escort looked extremely distinguished — and no doubt “very English” in the eyes of observant Romans— dressed in his usual impeccable fashion, and in spite of the fact that he was definitely thinner and older-looking than six months ago, with something about him that attracted glances like a magnet. Especially, Rose noted, feminine glances.

  She decided that it was his experiences—or the lingering effects of one bitter experience—over the past six months which had lent him that look of cool aloofness and faint hardness, as well as a certain cynical detachment, which he had never noticeably worn before.

  “Where would you like to go?” he asked when he had hailed a taxi. “Have you tried one of the open-air restaurants yet? If not, it might be a change for you.”

  His tone suggested that as she probably enjoyed a good many fresh experiences these days he was not expecting her to show enthusiasm; but when they were seated beneath the pergola of an open-air restaurant that was obviously very popular, judging by the well-filled tables, he noticed that her transparent and extraordinarily beautiful greenish eyes brightened as if the novelty appealed to her a good deal. Apart from that, she was looking rather pale, and the uncertain movements of her hands indicated a state of nervousness. He was not to know that she had slept very little the night before because, after weeks of putting him as much as possible out of her thoughts, and having nothing to remind her of him, his sudden reappearance in a part of the world where she had never dreamed of meeting him had affected her like a harsh coming face to face with realities.

  All night she had tossed restlessly and heard him accusing her of being the cause of the breakdown of his marriage plans, and all night she had felt shaken because a man in whom she had placed absolute trust had turned and regarded her as if she was a viper he had suddenly discovered he was nursing in his bosom. And although he had apologized afterwards she knew that the apology could never mean very much.

  The old relationship between them was at an end. And she had dressed that morning with a dread of meeting him again, although something deep down inside her had looked forward pathetically to the meeting.

  “Rose,” he said suddenly, after studying her face rather intently for several seconds and realizing that she deliberately avoided any direct contact with his eyes, “I’m more than sorry about that last night at Enderby. I’m afraid I said something very unpleasant to you, and it wasn’t in the least true.” Rose, with a wine-glass half-way to her lips, felt her hand tremble, and she set it down again.

  “You were very upset,” she said mechanically. “And you probably thought it was true at the time.”

  He smiled suddenly with a touch of the old sweetness.

  “Poor little Rose! Of course there was no shadow of excuse for what I said!”

  “Well—it doesn’t matter now.” She looked down at

  the wine in her glass, and he thought how delectable the shadow of her long eyelashes was on her creamy cheeks. “All that is—well, it belongs to the past, doesn’t it?”

  “Does it?”

  “Yes. Yes, of course.” She took a hasty sip at her wine and hoped he didn’t notice that her hand was still unsteady. “I hope that in future everything will be—well, very much happier for you, and that you won’t need ever to recall that last night at Enderby.” He was silent for a few moments, while the waiter provided a fresh course. And then, when the man had disappeared he said:

  “I haven’t been back to Enderby since October, but it never occurred to me that you would rush away from it, too.”

  “I don’t think you were in a state of mind at that time to care very much what I did,” she remarked, staring at the spaghetti in front of her and hoping she didn’t sound as if she was accusing him of turning his back on his obligations. And in order to correct such an impression if she had created one she added: “But of course I understood the state of mind you were in.”

  “Did you? Did you, Rose?” looking at her through darkened and suddenly inscrutable eyes. “I hope you never understand quite such a state of mind as that!” Rose attacked the spaghetti and felt that it would choke her, in spite of the fact that it was superbly cooked and known locally to be incomparable, as all the misery and tension of that last dreadful day at Farnhurst Manor washed over her.

  “When you marry, Rose,” Sir Laurence addressed his own heaped plateful of food, with an expression on his face which suggested he expected it to turn to dust and ashes in his mouth,

  “you must be very, very careful to pick someone who will never under any circumstances let you down! Very, very careful!” he repeated.

  Rose returned no answer to this, and he twirled the stem of his wineglass thoughtfully, his eyes returning to her as if she was a magnet that drew

  them.

  “But you’re young yet,” he remarked, studying the delicate outline of her face, the sensitive, vulnerable lines of her soft mouth, and the strength of the little chin below it. “Much too young even to be thinking of marriage for years yet.”

  And then he saw how the eyes of a couple of darkhaired young men near to them were watching her, recalled the look in, the handsome eyes of Prince Paul de Lippi’s nephew the night before, when Rose had been closely held in his arms—the graciousness of the prince himself when the girl returned to her table—and felt himself frowning suddenly.

  “Don’t you agree with me, Rose?”

  “I”—Rose looked up and met his eyes directly for the first time—“I haven’t really thought about such things—not seriously,” she admitted. And then she rushed on: “But I would like to know something about you—how you—you’ve been getting on all this long time. Naturally, I’ve thought about you . . .” That, she could have told him, was a vast understatement. “You were always very kind to me, and I suppose I’ve worried about you, too.”

  “That, Rose,” he told her with a gentleness that could have overlaid a certain mockery, “was very good and feminine of you!”

  She tried not to look abashed, although she had to lower her eyes before the undisguised mockery in his.

  “I’ve wondered whether—whether you were travelling about very much. It’s quite a long time — six months . . .”

  “It is,” he agreed very quietly. “And I have travelled quite a bit—here, there and everywhere!” His bleak smile did not suggest that he had enjoyed himself. “But at least I’ve been diverted, and now I’m in Rome I’m thinking of getting down to some serious work again. A friend of mine has lent me his flat, and it’s very comfortable, and I think I can work there very well. T
he architecture of this city intrigues me—both the old and the new. The old seems to be practically imperishable, and the new could blend with it so much less harmoniously than it actually does do.”

  Rose agreed with him with sudden enthusiasm, and they talked for a while of Rome in voices that were more or less normal, and the girl felt a little of the tension die out of her as she discovered that they both shared a great deal of admiration for the city of the Caesars. But then he asked her how long she had been in the Italian capital, and what she had been doing before that, and when she told him about Austria and the visit to Ireland before that, she saw him smile a little enigmatically.

  “You’ve suddenly become a very travelled young woman, Rose,” he told her. “I’ll confess that when I saw you last I didn’t think your emancipation was going to be so sudden—or so complete!” his eyes taking in all the perfection of her beautifully fitting silk suit, and everything else calculated to arouse admiration about her. “Before, you were a very charming nineteen-year-old who had just said goodbye to her finishing school, and had no real plans for the future—now you’re a completely finished product, devastatingly attractive—if you’ll permit a mere ex-guardian to make the observation!—and all as the result of a little expenditure by a very wealthy old woman! Is she going to adopt you, Rose?”

  Rose shook her head instantly.

  “Of course not!”

  “Marry you off, then, to someone as wealthy as herself? And take to herself all the credit for doing so!”

  Again Rose said “Of course not!” but her face flamed a little.

  Sir Laurence’s now very cynical gaze continued to rest on her.

  “You’re a beauty, Rose, and you’ll no doubt cause a lot of havoc amongst masculine hearts before you’ve finished. But I strongly recommend you not to be carried away by the ardour and admiration of young men like the younger de Lippi, with whom you were dancing last night. His uncle is a man of substance, and unimpeachable reputation, and a different proposition altogether; but from the little I’ve been able to gather about Camillo in a matter of a few hours there is nothing to indicate that he will ever be a man of substance also. He isn’t even his uncle’s heir, although supported by him for the time being—so don’t take him too seriously, will you?”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Rose said, flushing again, and rather more wildly than before.

  “Don’t you? Then I’ll put it into simple language for you,” Sir Laurence replied, leaning across the table towards her and gently touching one of her hands. “Young men like Camillo de Lippi are not exactly two a penny in Rome, but there are a great many of them, and most of them are looking for wealthy wives. It would be a pity if this young man got the wrong ideas about you—and the relationship in which you stand to Mrs. Wilson-Plunkett!”

  For an instant Rose’s embarrassment was almost painful and then she got the better of it, and a feeling of anger and resentment took possession of her.

  “I don’t think,” she said, her voice quivering a little as it had quivered once before when she had found the courage to stand up to him and say things she had felt very strongly at the time ought to be said to him by someone, “that you have any right at all to try and turn me against the friends I have made. Or to make inquiries about them for the purpose of turning me against them! And even if Camillo de Lippi were not my friend—and nothing more!—you would still have no right to under-value him in anyone’s eyes!” “Touche”, Sir Laurence exclaimed, and gave her fingers a firm, hard squeeze. “You once told me that I ought to have had more sense—or you inferred it! — at my age than to pick upon a woman to marry who would let me down in the worst possible fashion, and I’ll admit I was surprised at the time. In fact, I was astonished! But now I’ve returned the compliment by expressing my belief in your having more sense— although you’re not much more than a babe in arms compared with my advanced years!—than to allow yourself to succumb to Italian flatteries which might lead nowhere. And I’m not under-valuing the looks of that so obvious admirer of yours!”

  There was a faintly rueful expression in his eyes, as well as a kind of earnest desire that she should not altogether decline to listen to him. She said quickly:

  “I know I owe you an apology for the things I said to you that night. You were upset—I hadn’t any right to attack you as I did!”

  “On the contrary, I found what you said distinctly salutary.” But the faint smile in his eyes was still rather more disturbing than rueful. “And, Rose, I haven’t any intention of relinquishing the right to keep an eye on you, so I’m afraid you’ll have to go on looking upon me as an unofficial guardian. I don’t turn my back on responsibilities, and I promised your father I’d look after you.”

  “But he hadn’t any right to expect you to do so.” She collected her handbag and gloves as he looked towards the waiter and demanded their bill. “And as far as I’m concerned,” not meeting his eyes, but feeling quite determined nevertheless, “in future I intend to be entirely responsible for my own actions!” His smile was unusually quizzical as he followed her out from under the pergola and into the almost blinding sunshine.

  As they subsided on the back seat of a taxi he asked:

  “Are you in a rush to get back, Rose? Is your Mrs. Wilson-Plunkett a slave-driver?”

  “Of course not.” Rose denied the charge almost indignantly. “She’s terribly kind to me.”

  “That was the impression I had rather gathered,” he admitted, with another dry look at her clothes. “Then in that case can you spare me a little more of your time and let me show you a wonderful view?”

  “I’d love to see it—if you’ve got the time to spare for me!”

  She meant it, and in fact her heart almost leapt at the thought that she would not have to say good-bye to him again for a little while longer. For, once she said good-bye to him, who knew when she would see him again?

  But he sent her another quizzical look.

  “That was rather an edged reply of yours, Rose — or ought I to address you as Miss Hereward now that

  our relations are a little different?”

  “Don’t be absurd, Sir Laurence,” she answered quickly.

  “Sir Laurence? It used to be Lance!”

  She smiled at him a little mistily—or that was the impression her limpid green eyes managed to convey in the gloom of the taxi—and with a great deal of the old Rose simplicity and rather shy contentment.

  “Thank you very much, Lance, for taking me out to lunch,” she said, with the same shy simplicity in her voice. “It was something I—didn’t expect this time yesterday!”

  CHAPTER VIII

  THE view he wanted to show her was certainly breathtaking, but before she could see it she had to allow him to escort her into the lift which served several floors of a handsome block of very up-to-date flats, and on the top floor he opened the door of his own flat and led her into it. She looked about her in delight at the airiness of his sitting-room, with its extreme air of comfort and almost lavish furnishings, and then followed him out on to the balcony on to which the windows of the room gave.

  “There! You see what I mean, Rose?” Sir Laurence demanded as he waved a hand to indicate the view. “The whole of Rome spread out before you! Rather like being up in an aircraft, isn’t it?”

  Rose clutched the balcony rail excitedly, and agreed that it was.

  Although the height was not really great, there was a sensation of being elevated in space, and in the sparkling warmth of the afternoon she could see Rome in its entirety, with its towers and its campaniles shimmering against the backcloth of the Latium hills and the Alban mountains. And in spite of the warmth there was all the freshness and tenderness of spring in the air, and she could almost smell the flower-filled gardens of the palazzos and villas that were so much a part of the beauty of Rome, and the hot scent of the olives that crowned the slopes.

  “I’ve been here about three weeks now,” Sir

  Laurence said, “
and I’ve decided that I shall never grow tired of this view.”

  “I don’t think I should ever grow tired of it either,” Rose murmured.

  Three weeks, she thought! And she and Mrs. Wilson-Plunkett had been staying in their hotel for nearly a fortnight now—he had been here on the very night of their arrival, when she had looked up at the crescent moon and wondered in which corner of the world he was at that moment!

  He turned to look at her, the faintest of smiles on his face.

  “Odd that we should meet again in Rome, of all places, Rose! We say good-bye at Enderby—and come face to face again in the Eternal City!”

  His eyes flickered over her very deliberately.

  “I like you as you are, Rose, but I shall never forget my small and earnest schoolgirl who sent me such carefully-written letters—and, incidentally, never forgot my birthday!—during the five years that we have known one another! Now come inside and take off that jacket and relax. Would you like some tea? This is a kind of service flat, and I can ring for some.”

  When the tea arrived and she was sitting in a thin silk blouse with a plain neckline and little collar that drew attention to the girlish column of her throat, he invited her to pour out. Her hair seemed to flame in the pleasant dimness of the room, and although it was beautifully styled, and very carefully looked after, the removal of her hat had ruffled it a little, and that, too, lent her a much younger and less sophisticated look.

  “That’s better!” the man said as she manipulated the teapot and remembered without asking that he took two lumps of sugar. “I like it when you look less like a fashion-plate. It seems to bring the old Enderby days closer.”

  “Do you miss them?” Rose asked, longing, but not daring, to ask also whether he was beginning to get over the dreadful disappointment of his frustrated wedding plans. Looking at him, she could hardly tell what he was really feeling like, but she had no doubt at all that his experience had definitely embittered him.

  “It’s all right, Rose—you can ask me if you want to,” he said, smiling into her large eyes as she handed him his cup. The smile twisted his lips a little. “You can ask me anything you like.”