Summer Lightning (4 page)

Robert Tenby, however, took the first opportunity to speak a line he had generally found effective as an opening gambit. “I say, we must see more of each other, Miss Linden.”

“Must we?”

He looked a little crestfallen, though she hadn’t meant to be snubbing. “Well,
I’d
like it. And I’d hoped you might, too,” he said engagingly.

Chloe smiled. “I’m afraid I’m going to be very busy. I’ve come to Malta to work, you know,” she said with a glance at Professor Vining.

“But even wage slaves like you and me must play some time—mmm? You’re going to work for Vining on the dig?”

“Yes.”

“Then that’ll be all right,” Robert said easily. “We’ll enlist my brother’s help.”

He went into action when the talk—steered there determinedly by Louise—turned to naval festivities.

“There’s a match for a cup at the Marsa polo ground on Saturday. It should be quite good. I’d be delighted if you’d bring Mrs. Carlyon along sir, and have tea with me afterward,” he told Dominic.

Louise blew him a kiss. “Of course we’ll come, my pet.”

Glancing at their host, Chloe again had an impression of that barely concealed irritation. However, he said pleasantly, “Thank you, Robert. If we can spare the time from work.”

“Of course you’re invited, too, Miss Linden.” Robert’s look was guilelessness itself.

“Oh, thank you. I’d love to come.” The words were out before she stopped to think.

The swift color rose in her cheeks as gray eyes met her own across the table.

“I think we must arrange our working program before you make any social engagements, Miss Linden.”

His manner was courteous enough; his voice so chilly that she felt gooseflesh rise along her arms.

Wow! I asked for that
,
she thought vexedly.

As she murmured an apologetic, “Of course, Professor Vining,” she noticed Louise. Louise was watching her discomfiture without a trace of woman-to-woman sympathy or friendliness. Her eyes held derision, cool appraisal, and even, Chloe realized with surprise,
malice.

She resents me,
Chloe thought.
But why? What have I done?

Robert gave her a comical, rueful grimace.

“I know how it feels. Like when my captain has me up on the mat,” he murmured. She smiled, her spirits restored.

They finished their coffee, lit cigarettes.

“Sorry to hustle,” Dominic said, “but it’s high time we got along to Mdina, and work.”

As they stood up, Louise tucked her arm possessively through his.

“Work! Phooey to that. You mustn’t be pompous and dreary, my pet, now Louise is here at last.” The words, in her deep, carrying voice, caused heads to turn.

Without replying Dominic called their waiter, signed the bill, and led the way out. Robert, maneuvering himself next to Chloe, touched her hand and whispered, “May I telephone? You’re at Santa Clara? I must see you again soon.”

“Remember, I’m a working girl.”

“As Louise would say, phooey to that. So long.”

Louise had slid into the front seat with Dominic, chatting vivaciously. Chloe got in behind with Mark and looked around, alert and interested, as they left Valetta and the long, crowded main street behind them and drove into more open country.

She saw with delight that it was full springtime—the magical Mediterranean spring that almost overnight throws a brilliant, flowery patchwork over the winter-scarred, stony earth.

She had met it before—in Corsica, in Majorca, in Greece.

“Isn’t it heaven?” she said to Mark; but Mark had overeaten and was too somnolent to do more than nod vaguely.

She feasted her eyes on massed poppies, marigolds, pink asphodel, blue iris and crimson clover. She could smell the wild thyme that carpeted the verges.

They passed through another tall, apricot cream village and skirted the bosky gardens of the palace of San Anton. A little distance ahead was a hilly ridge. Green terraced slopes of tender young vines and fig trees led up it toward high, massive ramparts. Behind these she glimpsed a storybook citadel, with rounded domes and tall towers.

“That is Mdina,” Dominic said, half turning his head to include her. “They call it ‘the silent city.’ I’m afraid you’re going to find it far too dull and quiet for your taste, Louise.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll soon wake it up,” she assured him blithely, taking off her bizarre sunglasses to get a better look. “My
dear,
it looks terribly phony, doesn’t it?”

“Phony?”

“Untrue. Like a backdrop. Or like something thought up by a Hollywood mogul.”

Dominic said nothing, eloquently, and Chloe saw Mark grin.

They were climbing a steep length of road that turned sharply to the right into an open garden square. Here red buses stood like panting dragons, crowds milled around food stalls, radios played full blast, horns tooted, donkeys brayed and fireworks exploded shatteringly overhead.

“Did you say silent, darling?”

“This is Rabat—and today happens to be one of their
festas
,” Dominic said testily. “Mdina is inside the ramparts.”

They crossed a bridge over a wide moat, dry now, very wide and deep. Ahead of them was a high stone archway with heraldic carvings.

They passed under it into a dreamlike city of stately apricot cream palaces, churches, convents, divided from each other by meandering paved alleys, only just wide enough for a car to pass. In an open square a vast cathedral raised its towers and domes. A friar walked softly, reading his breviary. A line of young men was entering the gates of what might be a college for priests.

It certainly was silent. Only the whisper of their tires broke a silence that could almost be felt.

Louise stared around her with candid disbelief.

“My goodness, it
is
a movie set after all,” she exclaimed. “I bet it’s hollow behind.”

Chloe saw with amusement that Professor Vining was having considerable difficulty in controlling his temper.

Luckily they seemed to have arrived. They turned right into an alley where massive gates, set in a high blank wall, opened from within at the discreet toot of their horn.

Passing between these, they pulled up in a shady, flowery courtyard. A fountain played tinkling music in a stone basin. In one corner a curtain of bougainvillea glowed purplish crimson.

Louise clasped her hands and gazed around her at the massive walls, broken by tiers of long windows with out-curving wrought-iron guards.

“Our palazzo in Malta, yours and mine, Dominic. I can’t tell you how thrilled I am,” she said intensely.

Chloe saw Mark grin again. He seemed to be finding Louise as good as a play.

An Amazonian woman, swarthy-faced and wearing the black garments of the island peasantry, had arrived from the house to help the porter with the luggage. The pair of them hauled out Louise’s expensively matched set of pigskin with gold initials, and Chloe’s two light bags.

Dominic went over and spoke a few rapid words in Maltese, and the woman nodded impassively, glancing at Chloe.

“That is Lotta, our housekeeper,” he said, returning. “She will show you to your rooms.”

“Oh, but you must take me on a tour of the place first, Dominic dear,” Louise insisted gaily.

“Mark will take you.”

“No, darling,
you
.”

He shrugged.

“Very well. Then perhaps Miss Linden would like to go upstairs with Lotta.”

It was an order. Obediently Chloe followed Lotta up a curving marble staircase, and skidded in her wake along miles of black and white marble squares like a chessboard. She glimpsed—and marked down for further consideration—the handsome portraits, very dark and Old-Masterish, that brooded on either side, and the splendid suits of armor standing beneath the long windows and looking as if at any moment they might step forward and engage each other in battle.

As they passed a half-open bedroom door Chloe stopped, startled by a noise like the rapping of a stick on the floor. Lotta stopped, too. A harsh, imperious voice called out, “Lotta, is it you? Who is that with you?”

Lotta swung around and pushed the door wide open with her knee.

“
Contessa
, it is the new young lady.”

“A young lady? What do you mean? Bring her in here at once.”

Lotta beckoned Chloe inside the room. It was vast and gloomy, with a painted ceiling, massive dark furniture, a deep-piled carpet, heavily draped curtains of thick silk damask drawn across the windows and a monstrous four-poster bed. In the bed, propped against a mound of pillows, lay a handsome old woman. Her snow-white hair contrasted oddly with her dark olive complexion. Her fine, dark eyes were full of a restless brilliance.

His mother
,
Chloe thought.
I can
see a resemblance. It’s easy to see where he got his looks—and temperament.

“Who are you?”

“I’m Chloe Linden.”

“English?”

“Yes. I’ve come out here to do some photography for Professor Vining.”

She smiled as she spoke and the old lady’s hand, splashed with the brown stains of age and heavy with rings, stretched out to take hers in a surprisingly strong grip. The brilliant eyes studied her for an embarrassingly long time.

Suddenly the old lady began to laugh, with a sort of relish. “Well, well. So you are going to work with my son, are you? An English girl—and a pretty one. Excellent. Welcome to Santa Clara, my dear. Tell me, where is your home?”

“I live in London,
contessa
.”

“With your parents?”

“No. With my godmother, Lady Stanton.”

The white head nodded approvingly. “The wife of the vice admiral? Ah, of course. I knew her when they were here in the island. A long time ago. I hope she and Sir Amyatt are well?”

“He died two years ago.”

“Ah. A great loss. And so she is your godmother? And your parents? Are they still alive?”

“Only my mother. She has married again and left England.”

“For where?”

“For Nassau. Her husband has an estate there.”

“I visited there once. It was even hotter than Malta. And your father—was he in the Navy, too?”

“No—in the Colonial Administration.”

“So.”

Chloe had the feeling that she had been weighed up, placed and found acceptable.

“You poor child,” the contessa went on kindly. “Santa Clara must be your home while you are in Malta. I’m very glad indeed you have come, though Dominic didn’t tell me. So, we shall see...”

The searching, penetrating scrutiny was hard to bear, but Chloe forced herself to endure it smilingly.

“Tell me, has
she
arrived?”

“She?”

“My nephew Richard’s wife. Or his widow, perhaps—who knows? I mean Louise Carlyon.”

“Yes, she’s here. I left her downstairs in the hall, with Professor Vining. ”

“Doing what?” Dominic’s mother snapped.

“She wanted him to show her over the—the palace.”

“
Did
she? The effrontery of her! Forcing herself on us—a telephone call this morning was all the warning we had—no doubt hoping to upset my poor Dominic again, as if she hadn’t done enough, spoiling his life, turning a normal young man against women, against marriage ... You’ve seen her—what do you think of her?”

“I only met her this morning—it’s a little early to say, contessa. She’s very attractive.”

“Attractive! A siren, no doubt. And as heartless. There should have been sons by now to carry on the Valmontez name. Instead it looks as if the family must die out. Louise has driven Richard away, he’s gone, lost, poor boy, probably dead...”

She broke off, coughing violently between gasps. Chloe ran to fill a glass from a water jug and brought it to her. With an arm under the frail shoulders, she supported her while she took a few sips. The contessa rested for a moment against her, trying, it seemed, to regain her composure.

“I think I can guess why she came here now,” she said at length. “That is one reason I am so glad you have come, too. Perhaps you and I, between us, can manage to spoil her plans, my dear.”

Puzzled, Chloe said nothing.

“You’ll help me? Promise. You must promise.”

“Of course,” Chloe murmured, anxious to soothe the old lady, and not stopping to ask what she was promising. As she watched her apprehensively, the contessa fell back on her pillows.

“So tired ... rest a little now ... keep
her
away,” she muttered, and was instantly asleep.

Chloe stayed on for some time, watching her compassionately and thinking over what had been said.

The contessa had confirmed her suspicion that there had been something in the past between Dominic and Louise.

Surely a love affair that had gone wrong? And that Louise would like to resuscitate? All the signs pointed to that...

When she slipped away at last from the contessa’s room, Chloe felt oddly dispirited; she was almost ready to wish she had never accepted this assignment in Malta.

CHAPTER FOUR

Lotta was waiting, with impassive patience, in the marble-paved corridor. Now she threw open the door of a room across the hall from the contessa’s, and a little farther along.

Chloe got an instant impression of space and light. Investigating, she found that the windows of her room were flush with the ramparts; the palace must actually have been built into their massive thickness on this side. When she opened the sash, she found she was looking down a sheer drop to the terraced vines and fig trees below.

It was as if, she thought delightedly, she were standing in a high tower, with all the island spread flatly around her. Overhead, a jet plane scraped chalk marks on the blue arch of the sky. The distant sea bordered the coastline in misty azure.

“What a wonderful view,” she exclaimed. “And this room is quite lovely, Lotta.

Lotta’s face remained impassive. “Yes,
signorina.
You would like the bags unpacked now?”

“I’ll do them myself, thank you.”

“As the
signorina
pleases.”

She opened a door leading out of the bedroom.

“The bathroom is here. It for the
signorina
and
signora
to share.”

It looked sumptuous, with sea green tiles and modern chrome taps. Evidently Santa Clara had had its plumbing modernized, however medieval the rest of it might be.

A glass door led from the bathroom to a tiny circular balcony, with a low, beautifully patterned wrought-iron balustrade.

Mrs. Carlyon’s room, then, must be on the other side of the bathroom.