CHAPTER TWO
IT was the evening of Charme St. Cyr's birthday party and all was excitement at the house on Melisande Terrace. Coloured lights were strung out round the drive, and the members of a small orchestra had just arrived with their musical instruments. The buffet was laid in the lounge, where the drinks would also be served. The drawing-room had been denuded of its furniture and the floor prepared for dancing. The french doors were open to the garden, where more fairy lights were strung out round the trees, glimmering on the clusters of lilac and laburnum.
Charme was delighted that it was a fine evening, and enchanted with her costume, which was made in the style of an eighteenth-century court dress. Her mask, which she had just unwrapped, was a genuine antique with a jewelled handle ... a gift from the dark-browed, rather dangerous-looking new friend who had come all the way from Cornwall to attend the party. Each guest had been asked to come in fancy costume. Ruan had helped to send out most of the invitations, but a few more had been dispatched on Saturday and Charme had been rather mysterious about them.
Ruan raised the jewelled mask to her eyes and studied Charme through the openings. She wondered again where Eduard Talgarth fitted into Charme's plans. 'You look odd!' Her stepsister almost snatched the mask from her hand. 'Be a pet and take Taffy for a run. I've been so rushed off my feet I haven't had time to spare" for him.'
Ruan found the poodle under the piano, barking at one of the members of the orchestra. 'That pooch is no lover of music,' growled the young man.
Ruan thought it diplomatic not to remark that Taffy adored Chopin and was also partial to Ivor Novello's music. She tucked him under her arm and was going out of the front door as her stepfather entered.
'Where are you off to, Ruan?'
'Charme asked me to take Taffy for a run.'
'Is she excited?' Stephen St. Cyr broke into a fond smile. •Well, don't be too long. The party begins at eight-thirty.'
She nodded. 'The fairy lights look nice.'
'Yes, child.' A lean hand fondled Taffy. 'Talgarth will be at the party, Ruan. I'd like you to be - friendly. He's rather a personage down there across the Tamar, and I was rather annoyed the other evening by the way you ran away from the chap. You mustn't be frightened of men, Ruan. You mustn't let your mother's mistake ... well, you understand what I mean. We don't want you to end up as a spinster,' he laughed, his eyes flicking the russet hair that hung straight to Ruan's shoulders, the same colour as her mother's had been. 'You aren't unattractive, you know. You have a certain elfin appeal that some men like.'
Ruan was struck a little sideways by this conversation. Her stepfather had never said before that she had any ornamental value. 'I promise not to clutter up any of your shelves, Stepfather,' she said lightly. 'I'll move out if I look like being in the way.'
'Ruan!' His pale-blue eyes took on a glitter. 'Now that's no way to talk to me. I have your best interests at heart.'
He didn't bully her quite as much as Charme, she admitted to herself. 'I'll give Taffy a run by the river and I'll hurry back to the party,' she promised.
He nodded, and she felt him watching her as she ran down the steps with Taffy bounding at her heels. Her stepfather was certainly keen on Eduard Talgarth being made welcome at the villa, which must mean that the Cornish-man was well off and maybe a good prospect as a son-in-law. Charme wouldn't marry for love, in Ruan's estimation. She would place worldly considerations before romantic ones, having always given the impression that love itself was elemental and uncivilized.
Ruan strolled along beside the river and she couldn't help wondering what the dark Cornishman's views were on love... he looked, himself, rather elemental.
From across the river she could see the lighted theatre, and she hoped ardently that she might again have the good fortune to speak to Tarquin Powers. Right now he would be in his dressing-room preparing for Arms And The Man, in which he played the role of Sergius. Ruan would have loved to see him in the Shaw play, but she didn't dare play truant from Charme's party.
It was a little crazy of her to feel so romantically about a charming stranger, but she couldn't fight the magic of it. It was so thrilling that such a man should notice her, smile at her, and say a few kind words. It would be something to remember when he left Avendon ... but right now she had become aware that a sports car had drawn into a nearby kerb, and that the driver was steadily watching her as she stood in the gloaming while Taffy chased a large moth. The man's face was in shadow, but Ruan felt the impact of his gaze.
And then to her dismay Taffy darted towards the parked car and she had to turn and call him. She saw the man fully then. He was leaning slightly forward, talking to Taffy, who was wagging his stumpy tail in friendly recognition.
Ruan's dismay increased, strangely enough, as she recognized that dark and vigorous Celtic face; that iron-dark hair, fitting close like a helmet. Her hair blew against her cheek as she looked at him, and she saw that Taffy was on the step of the car, up on his hind legs and fondling with his nose the lean hand of Eduard Talgarth.
'Good evening, Miss Perry,' he said. 'The Mask Theatre seems to have a fascination for you. Are you stage-struck?'
There was the trace of a smile on his lips, and it seemed to her that he mocked her.
'I bring Taffy here to have a run round the trees,' she said stiffly. 'Avendon is a town and it's a mile or so to the open country.'
'You should see Cornwall - Taffy would go delirious let loose on the moors. Miles of them, covered in heather high • enough to hide a girl, let alone a poodle.'
'I'm afraid I shall never have the pleasure, Mr. Talgarth, of hiding myself in Cornish heather.'
'Who can tell what may happen, Ruan Perry, to make you want things you may never have dreamed of wanting? Life can play strange tricks on people, but you're too young to know about that.'
'I'm nineteen, and I've always known that life can be sad, Mr. Talgarth.'
He nodded, as if he remembered what St. Cyr had said about her mother. 'One finds compensations for the loss of something loved - is yours the theatre? You're fond of it^ aren't you?'
'Yes.' She spoke shortly, for she didn't wish this conver-sation with a friend of Charme's to veer in any way towards Tarquin Powers. What a joke, what an amusing incident to laugh over! Funny little Ruan, all aglow because an actor threw her a smile and a few words ... crumbs from the banquet he probably shared with his lovely leading ladies.
'I must be getting home .... the party will have begun and I'm not even dressed for it!' She bent to fasten Taffy's lead, and as she did so Eduard Talgarth opened the car door and the poodle skipped inside and jumped on the spacious front seat. 'Really!' Ruan glanced up and met the dominating eyes that held hers as he pushed the door a little wider.
'You might as well jump in, child,' he said. 'I'm going to the party and we'll both get there a little quicker if you'll stop disliking me for five or ten minutes. Come on, force yourself!'
She flushed, and at any other time she would have marched off independently and left him to drive the poodle home. But it was growing late, and the habit of conciliating Charme was too strong to be ignored on her birthday. She slipped into the car and felt the give of the leather seat, the brush of Talgarth's arm as he closed the door. He started the Lancia and they swung out of the layby on to the road, and he headed in the direction of Melisande Terrace.
Taffy sat erect between the two of them, and the evening breeze felt cool against Ruan's cheeks. She half-turned to gaze back at the theatre, and then remembered the shrewd glint in Talgarth's eyes when he had asked if she was stage-struck. 'You aren't wearing fancy costume,' she said. 'Charme wanted everyone to come in masquerade-•'
'I'm not the sort for dressing-up,' he drawled. 'Your sister will have to excuse me on the grounds that I'm from the wilds of Cornwall and that I don't go to many parties.'
'She'll make you wear a mask,' Ruan warned. 'We're all to be masked until the stroke of midnight.'
'I'll submit to being masked,' a smile creased his cheek. 'In any case most people wear a sort of "mask" a good deal of the time. It's rare to come across someone who is completely guileless.'
'If people weren't a little secretive,' said Ruan, 'then they'd be much less interesting.'
'Wise child!' He looked directly at her, a look that lasted but a second and yet left her with the vivid impression of a man who was very deep, and capable of many things... including kidnap.
•You've driven past the terrace where I live!' she exclaimed.
'Ah, so I have.' Traffic was quiet along the High Street, so he backed the car and swung it expertly into Melisande Terrace, with its detached villas all looking rather alike until they came to the one with the fairylit drive and several cars already parked there. There was a sound of dance music. The party had begun.
'I'd better go in through the back way.' Ruan pressed the lever that opened the car door and as she slid from the seat she felt Eduard Talgarth's sea-blue eyes upon her. The wind had ruffled his hair and a dark strand was caught upon the peak of his left eyebrow; always raised in that slightly wicked way. A trace of a smile was on the lips that somehow belied the hard, cool authority of the rest of his face,
He wasn't a man who could be called handsome, but the very strength of his features, that touch of the relentless, made him far from easy to forget. He was like the Cornish corsairs of long ago; the smugglers who brought brandy and laces from Brittany, to hide in the water-lashed caves that had stone passages leading to dark old mansions on the cliff tops.
Those dark, lawless seamen had to be part of the history of Talgarth, for he had sailed the oceans of the world himself, a skipper who had dealt in all sorts of wares, some of them exotic, some of them contraband. Charme had told her, 'He's retired from the sea to a house in Cornwall that used to belong in his family years ago. A strange place, they say, the people down in Penzance. A sort of French-styled house called the Chateau of St. Avrell. There was a French prince who fled from a rebellion. He was said to have built it for the French girl he hoped to marry. Eduard's mother came from Brittany.'
'What sort of costume are you wearing for the masquerade?' he asked dryly, as if he thought her a child who would enjoy disguise.
'You mustn't ask, Mr. Talgarth.' She was out of the car, and Taffy came reluctantly to her call. 'That's part of the fun, guessing who is who.'
'Perhaps I should have worn a scarlet scarf around my forehead.' His eyes taunted, as if he knew her thoughts of him. 'Would that have been appropriate ?'
'Yes,' she said frankly. 'You would make a very good pirate.'
'They weren't good, Ruan Perry. They took what belonged to other people.'
She had a mental picture of Simon Fox, who had been courting her stepsister for almost a year, but it was really none of her business if this stranger came all the way from Cornwall with the intention of running off with Charme. When he saw her tonight in her court dress, he would want all the more to install her at the Chateau of St. Avrell. He was probably quite rich, and Charme's evaluation of herself was that she was beautiful enough, and charming enough, to rate a man of means. 'I must go in!' Ruan ran and Taffy chased at her heels.
By eleven-thirty the house was packed with people. They were dancing in a crush in the drawing-room, seated in couples up the staircase, eating sandwiches and cake off paper plates. Some were out in the garden, masked figures laughed among the trees. The party was an enormous success, and many of the costumes were inventive and amusing.
One man stood just inside the open french doors of the lounge. He wore a Hungarian tunic buttoned at the shoulder, narrow dark trousers and topboots. A red-lined cloak hung in dashing folds around his tall lean figure, and a mask of black velvet concealed most of his face.
Ruan couldn't take her eyes from him. She was at the buffet table, a sausage roll in one hand and a Coke in the other. She wore the costume of a pierrette, with her hair tucked under a peaked cap, and a silver mask across her eyes. A little halfmoon of silver was affixed to the dimple in her left cheek.
Slowly she took a bite from her sausage roll. She looked a shy little clown as she stood alone, and her heart began to beat fast as the cloaked figure moved and began to thread his way through the chattering groups of people to where she stood. He came to her, deliberately, inexorably, and she knew him with every nerve in her young body.
'I feel the same as you,' his voice was deep and warm above her head. 'Sausage rolls are irresistible.'
She knew that mobile hand, that bloodstone ring on the middle finger, the magic of his voice. As he took a roll and bit it in half, she broke into a smile. 'It's you!' she whispered, in a kind of wonder. 'At your service, Pierrette.' He gave her a gallant bow. 'Mmmm, excellent sausage rolls. I think I'll have another. Tackling Shaw's verbal acrobatics for a couple of hours always give me an appetite, and along with Ann Destry and her fiancé, and one or two others, I came straight from the theatre without bothering to change. It said on the invitation cards that the party was to be in fancy costume, so here you see me - Sergius!'
The party for Ruan was suddenly lit up with stars and fanfares. She hadn't dreamed that her stepsister had invited Tarquin Powers and other members of the company to her birthday masque, and it was a wonderful surprise. Unintentional, of course, for Charme had no idea that the actor had struck up an acquaintance with Ruan.
'I'm sure you'd like something stronger than a Coke,' she said, and smiling, she led him round the table to where the bottles of wine, vodka and whisky stood in a rather depleted cluster. 'Help yourself, tovarich.'
He laughed and his eyes were upon her as he helped himself to vodka and tossed it back in the appropriate manner. 'I'd better not toss the glass in the fireplace, eh?'
She smiled and shook her head, and her eyes were held by his through the openings of his black velvet mask. 'I just live here,' she said, and then a gasp escaped her as he swept his arm around her waist and suggested that they dance. The drawing-room was packed and all they could do was shuffle about on the same spot. But that in itself was exciting. It meant that she was close to Tarquin, and she was thrilled, shocked, by her response to him. When he spoke to her, his lips close to her ear because of the din, she felt herself defenceless, at the mercy of something she should fight. He was Tarquin Powers, not a boy from Avendon, with whom it would be cosy and right to fall in love.
Love ... even as the word shook her heart, she caught Charme's eye and tried to look as if she hadn't a clue to the identity of her dashing partner. Charme was standing with her Cornish guest, who had permitted himself to be masked but who stood out like a rock in a garden in his sober dark evening suit. He looked directly at Ruan and she knew from the thoughtful raising of his left eyebrow that he recognized her partner. He had a seaman's eyes, penetrating even through a mask, and trained to see further than other people. What did he see right now, a foolish young girl falling in love with a man she could never hope to hold?
'Let's get away from the crowd!' Tarquin danced her through the french doors, thrown wide open to let in the evening air. There was a narrow terrace and three steps to the garden, and his fingers held hers as they strolled down a path and came to a halt beneath a lilac tree, purple-flowered but with a grassy tang.
'It's a lovely spring night, Pierrette.' He drew aside a cluster of lilac so the new moon could shine through. 'Have you ever wanted to swing in the cradle of the moon, for it's there that a pierrot belongs, far above the crowd, a little sad and also rather charming.'
'I'm glad you like my costume, Mr. Powers.'
'You mustn't be formal with me, Pierrette'. His eyes laughed down into hers. 'You must call me Quin, which is what I prefer to be called when I step off the boards.'
The fair girl had called him Quin, and suddenly she remembered what he had said, that Ann Destry had come to the party with her fiancé. Lovely as she was, and Tarquin's stage lover, she had no place in his private life except as a friend!
'Would you very much mind,' Ruan crushed the lilac -in nervous fingers, 'if I called you Tarquin? I... I rather like the name.'
'You may call me whatever you like,' he said amusedly. 'The stage is littered with darlings and pets, and some women have been known to call me a brute.'
'Oh, but why?' Ruan couldn't believe that he could ever deserve such a name.
'For various reasons,' he said, a quirk of a smile on his lips. 'Romantic actors are supposed to be great flirts, on and off the stage.' 'And you are a flirt?'
'No, Ruan.' Now he spoke seriously, and his brilliant eyes held hers with their deep humour, their whimsicality, their love of the acting art itself. Suddenly a laughing couple chased by them, ran around the tree and cut between them. Tarquin raised his hand and slipped his mask from his face; the moonlight was upon it and she saw that his fine features were rather tense.
'Let's get out of this madhouse,' he said. 'Where can we go?'
'Out through the side door ... it's only five minutes' walk to the river.'
'Then come on!'
'Can we go like this?' She was laughing a little as she removed her pierrot's cap and her hair tumbled about her face.
*Yes, why not?' He caught hold of her hand and they fled from Charme's party, leaving behind them the lights and the laughter; walking quickly away from the house, almost with urgency, as if there was so little time for them to be alone; only these brief pauses between their separate lives.
'You don't mind if I kidnap you?' He looked down at her as they paused at a kerb to let a car swish by. It had rained a little, but now the air was soft and cool and moonlit.
She shook her head, and thought briefly of that other man who looked capable of running off with a girl. Other girls, never Ruan, yet here she was at midnight, her hair streaming out behind her as Tarquin ran her across the road towards the silver-dark glint of the river. A lone white swan glided by like a ghost - a restless, lonely swan perhaps, who wasn't sleepy enough to join its mate on the little island where the birds slept.
Ruan shivered a little, with excitement more than cold, and Tarquin took off his cloak and draped it around her, and she didn't dare to meet his eyes. His hands as they touched her seemed like the hands of a lover, but it would be folly to let herself dream that he wanted more than a confidante, someone to talk to of swans and towers. 'There!' He clasped the cloak, and they walked beside the river and the theatre stood dark and silent across the water and they were the only disturbers of the peace. The lone swan made no sound, pale neck bent as it glided, a Pavlova of the moonlight.
'What does it feel like,' she asked, 'to walk out on a stage in front of a thousand people?'
'Terrifying,' he said at once. 'Always in those first few moments it's a kind of hell, like judgment day. Even the most seasoned actor is sure he will forget his lines, stumble over something, be out of accord with the mood of the playgoers. The intense relief when you begin to speak, the joy of it when you begin to feel those first ripples of warmth rising towards you from the auditorium - it's tangible, Ruan, like the salt in sea-air. An actor senses it with his nostrils, and then he knows with all his nerves that he has captured a thousand souls in the net of the play. It's a wonderful feeling then. You want nothing else. You touch the stars."
'It's like Lawrence's description of love,' she smiled. '"Splendour, pride, assumption, glory and lordship."'
'Exactly like that, Ruan.'
They paused to gaze across at the theatre, his world which she could only enter as a visitor, as a lover of the play. Yet when she looked at him in the moonlight, his profile outlined in all its clarity against the deep violet sky, she knew that she loved him beyond the play; from the moment she had heard him speak, touching her heart that yearned for something to love.
Their glances interlocked, and there was no more fighting what she felt for him. She knew she surrendered part of herself during that glance. Something tender - broodingly. tender - stole into his expression.
'You aren't much like your sister,' he said.
'Well, we aren't really related. Her father married my mother, but apart from that we've very little in common.' Ruan smiled. 'Charme is considered the belle of Avendon, and though I admire her beauty, I'm afraid we don't get along all that well. It's a case of a stray kitten sharing the house with everyone's pet. Charme likes cushions and cream, but I'd be ******* with-' Ruan bit her lip, for she had been about to say affection. Since her mother had died she had not been loved, only cared for in a material sense.
Tarquin was listening carefully, and suddenly the floodgates opened and Ruan was telling him everything. 'I'm not really ungrateful to the St. Cyrs. Stephen was good to Catrina, my mother. I never knew my real father. All I know is that he was a soldier and Catrina loved him. She always said he meant to marry her, but suddenly he was posted abroad and the next thing she heard was that he had been killed. She was a maid in his mother's house and she didn't dare to tell anyone her secret. She ran away and for seven poor but happy years we were together, until she married my stepfather. Then while I was at boarding school she became ill and died ... Tarquin, do you think I should feel ashamed because my parents weren't married? Charme thinks so. She finds me a bit of an embarrassment.'
'The showy things of life are often shallow, Ruan, holding but a candle to the sun.' Tarquin traced with his fingertips the fine bones of her face. 'A child of love is a thing of love, Pierrette. Like a goblet chased all over with rare, strange patterns. Filled to its brim with a warm wine. It's what we are, Ruan, what we make of ourselves that counts.'
And with those kindly words he made her feel that she could never again be hurt by her stepsister's remarks. It was strange, holding a dreamlike quality, that she was alone like this with the famous Tarquin Powers. She had the feeling that she answered some transient need in him; a reaching back into his youth, perhaps, for the innocence and trust he saw in her eyes.
"You should have been called Alice,' Charme had once said to her. 'You look one minute as if you're in wonderland, the next instant as if you're at the mad hatter's tea party.'
Ruan smiled to herself. Didn't Charme understand that there was a certain wonder, and a certain craziness to living?
'What are you smiling about?' A lean hand tilted her face to the moonlight, so that it seemed to grow even more wistful.
A tremor ran through her, for she was unused to the touch of a mature and attractive man. 'I'm wondering if my stepsister noticed that we stole away from her party.'
'I hope she did,' he chuckled. 'It will teach her that glamour isn't everything, and that "Ruan" means "deep-running brook".'
Ruan's eyes widened with surprise. 'How did you know that?'
'I looked it up in a book,' he teased. 'As a matter of fact I used long ago to be taken on holiday to Cornwall, that most Celtic of kingdoms. There was a place where the rocks looked like knights at their vigil, where the moors made one think of the romantic stories of Camelot, and one large rock with a complete archway through it which led to a cave I called the Grail. I used to keep there my collection of sea-spoil - shells and pieces of quartz and hanks of seaweed."
He paused and smiled, and his arm slipped around Ruan in a kind of careless camaraderie. 'I'm trying to remember the name of the place - what stands out in my memory is the house that stood way up on the cliffs. It was like a chateau, strangely enough, with turrets and a tangled garden. Nobody lived there, yet a notice on the gate said Trespassers Beware! I suppose that part of it intrigued me more than anything else. I trespassed and found the windows shuttered and ravens nesting on the roof. There wasn't even a caretaker. It was as if the place was haunted and no one dared to live there.'
Ruan caught her breath; for one wild moment she was tempted to tell him the name of the house, and of the man who now lived in it - unafraid of ghosts. Who might take Charme to live there with him. Yet she didn't speak. Almost at once she knew that her revelation would not- be welcomed. Memories were precious things. They shouldn't be brought up to date, their magic distilled with the mundane. He didn't like Charme. Her beauty meant nothing to him because he had seen greater beauty; had held in his arms women who had been far more enchanting.
He would, she was sure of it, have nothing in common with Eduard Talgarth. There was no hint of the sensitive in the Cornish skipper; he had said himself that he had no time for masquerade. He and Tarquin were as unalike as two men could be!
'Have you ever been back?' she asked curiously.
'No.' He smiled thoughtfully, and she felt a slight tightening of his arm around her. The swan glided by on its vigil and he watched it. 'There hasn't been the time, not since so much work caught up with me. There was drama school - I was lucky enough to win a place - and then Rep, where I carried scenery about until the director let me carry a spear. My first speaking part was in Julius Caesar. I played the soldier who has to stab Cassius, and now the role of Cassius is firmly established in my own repertoire. It's one of my favourites. I find the character deeper, more devious, than Antony or even Brutus. One can bring to the tent scene, on the battlefield, a lot of meaning and emotion.'
He gave a slight laugh and glanced down at Ruan. 'Am I boring you, Pierrette ? You're very quiet.'
'I'm enthralled,' she said at once, and could not keep the betraying thrill out of her voice. 'Do go on!'
She heard him laugh again, softly. 'Are you starstruck, Ruan? Despite the freckles - and they're really rather charming - wouldn't you like to be an actress?'
'No.' She glanced up at him, still a little shy of him but unafraid that he would scoff at her ideas and find them unsophisticated. He could not be the actor he was if he didn't have much heart, and a sensitivity that he probably had to bide, even fight against, for the world of acting was a tough one, where hurt feelings had to be borne with a gay laugh, a nonchalant shrug of the shoulder.
'I like to watch,' she said, 'and I love to listen. I think really good actors are born, not made. They even have the right kind of faces - if you know what I mean?'
'Ravaged Greek gods, eh?'
'Yes.' They laughed together. 'Ann Destry is very lovely. The stage lights seem to catch in her hair. I loved that moment in Othello when you covered her throat with her long hair, as if to hide the marks of your fingers.'
'Ah, you noticed that?' He looked pleased. 'Yes, Ann is rather lovely and a good actress. I was lucky to get her for the season. The sandy young man you saw with her at the Mill Loft was Buckley Holt, her fiancé He's making quite a name for himself as a stage designer. He isn't the regular sort of designer, but I won't go into that. Buck is all man, and he's produced some superb sets for our production of Hamlet, which we intend to put on towards the end of our stay at the Mask. It runs over four hours, and we decided on a spectacular staging. I'm not keen on modern variations of the play and great cubes that are meant to represent lord knows what! Our Hamlet will be as Elizabethan as if the author himself might stroll in to watch. It will be a highlight for me, Ruan - the first time I've played Hamlet.'
'I'm sure you will be great, Tarquin.'
'I want to be.' He spoke soberly. 'Just once in a lifetime an actor wants to give a performance that will be his memorial, if you understand me? He wants to know that long afterwards people will say, "Ah yes, I saw him play that part. He was unforgettable!" Actors are vain creatures, Pierrette. They want the adulation to continue even after the final curtain call.'
'Tarquin!' Something in his voice had struck a chill through her, and she saw that in the moonlight his face had a pensive look and his cheekbones seemed more hollowed. She wanted to put her arms around him, to make him safe, somehow. He was as vulnerable as her lonely self.
'Have I frightened you?' Abruptly his arms were holding her. 'Shall I take you home?'
'Yes, I must go home ...' Her voice shook a little.
'And I should say good night and let it be good-bye.' He paused, then added almost savagely, 'But I don't want that! I want to see you again, Ruan, on Sunday. We'll drift in a punt on the river and eat good things from a picnic hamper -is it a date?'
'Yes ... oh, yes!' Her eyes filled with a happy radiance. 'Where shall we meet, and shall I bring the food?'
'We'll meet at noon by the Mill Loft, where we can hire a punt. I'll get a hamper from Lemon's. I seem to remember that they lay on quite a feast of turkey legs, foie gras patties, and a bottle of wine.'
'You like everything done with style.' She smiled and there was a wistfulness in her eyes, as if even yet she couldn't believe that she fitted into his life, even for a few short hours.
'I hope there isn't a boy-friend?' he murmured, half teasingly. 'Some young Romeo-?'
'No.' She spoke quickly, too unworldly to hide her joy in wanting to be with him. 'There is no one - and I'd like very much to go on the river with you.'
'Good, it's settled. Well drift with the tide, Ruan, and let happen whatever is meant to happen.' And then before she could speak he leaned forward and brushed his lips against the little silver moon that clung to her thin young cheek. 'You know, don't you, and you're just a child,' he murmured.
'What do I know, Tarquin?' Her heart was beating quickly, and she knew she could be hurt as never before if she allowed herself to love this man. But she wanted to love him. She would cherish each hour he gave her out of his theatre life; live each day as it came, and if she died a little when he went away, she would have lived as she had never hoped to live.
'That my life has been lonely, Ruan, even in its most crowded moments.' He smiled a little wryly. 'I'm not hand-ing you a "line" and you know that as well. Quelle purete fame. You think with your heart, don't you?'
'Yes.' She thought of Catrina, who had done the same. Only a few hours ago St. Cyr had said that she mustn't be afraid of men because of her mother's mistake. How could she feel afraid in Tarquin's arms when she felt only happiness? She met his eyes fearlessly, and it was as they stood there, speaking with their eyes alone, that the moon was scarred by a cloud.
'I must take you home.' He said it with regret. 'It's going to rain again.'
It caught them as they ran laughing towards the house. Nearly all the cars were gone, several of the fairy lights had flickered out, and all that was left of the music was someone playing a record.
Tarquin's hand gripped Ruan's and then let it go. 'Don't forget,' he murmured.
'No.' Ruan swept off his cloak and handed it to him just as Ann Destry and her fiancé came out of the house.
'Quin - there you are! We'll give you a lift to the hotel.'
'I'm obliged, ma'am.' He swept her a bow, and at the same time Ruan felt the brush of his teasing eyes. Her heart skipped a beat. She hugged to herself the secret that was theirs. No one must know that Tarquin Powers meant to steal away with a girl on Sunday. The curiosity of other people could only spoil what to them was strangely enchanting. Amazement that he could find attractive a girl who was plain but for a pair of violet eyes would burst the bubble, dispel the magic, destroy a tenuous delight.
'Good night, everyone!' She ran indoors, and felt the look that followed her from Ann Destry. She met Charme in the hall, saying good night to someone so tall and dark he was unmistakable.
'Ruan?'
'Lovely party, Charme!' Her smile was gay, mischievous; a warmth for everyone flowed from her heart. 'Did you enjoy yourself, Mr. Talgarth ?'
She half turned on the stairs to look at him. Her hair was rain-straight, her eyes were shining, and still the little moon clung silver to her cheek.
'Did you, Miss Perry?' he countered, and she knew from his eyes - so penetrating - that he had seen her depart with Tarquin.
'Yes, it was fun.' A little flash of defiance lit her eyes, for what right had he, this stranger, to look disapproving? As the little stepsister was she supposed to sit in a corner and have nothing, nobody, no delight but charity from the St. Cyrs? All at once she was shaken by anger. She could have struck at this man's face, with its bones like rocks under the sea-browned skin. She hated him] He was arrogant ... one of those who thought that only the beautiful were meant for love.
'Will you be staying long in Avendon?" she asked coldly. 'Or can't you wait to get back to your chateau?'
His eyes narrowed, and for this brief electrical moment they were alone while Charme was held in conversation by friends of her father's. He stood below Ruan, looking up the white-painted stairs at her slender figure, his brows a black dangerous line, his eyes burning blue in all that darkness.
'There are two kinds of people,' he said softly. 'They are the tame and the wild, and if you ever come to Cornwall, I shall teach you what manner of man I am.'
'I have you summed up already,' she said recklessly. 'And I have no intention of ever coming to visit you and your wife.'
'I have no wife, Miss Perry.'
'But you will have, won't you, Mr. Talgarth?' She swung on her heel and raced up the stairs, aware that he went on standing where she left him, dark, so very dark against the pale woodwork, the blue carpet like a sea pool under his feet, a gleam of onyx at his cuff as he slicked from his eyes that black streak of hair.
She knew what manner of man he was, and she almost pitied Charme who would have to cope with him. He might be generous with his gifts, but he was not the sort to uproot himself for the sake of a woman, even one he might desire. The woman would have to go his way, and Ruan couldn't picture her stepsister in the wilds of Cornwall, even as mistress of a chateau built long ago by a princely rebel.
A storm was in the air, Ruan thought, as she stood at her window and ran her hands through her rain-tousled hair.
'Tarquin.' She murmured his name, and curled down into the window seat. A breeze stole in and kissed her cheek, and remembering his kiss she forgot Eduard Talgarth and the anger he had aroused in her.
In four days' time she would see Tarquin again.
03-12-07, 06:07 PM
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