Love in High Places (6 page)

CHAPTER SIX

The
next day Lou, in an unusually expansive mood, told Valentine she could take the whole day off if she chose.

“Alex and I are going off with a party on some new climb, and we might not be back until evening. In any case, I can look after myself if we do get back and you’re not here. Take the ski-lift up to the Devil’s Plateau, as they call it, and have lunch at the little hotel there. The food’s quite good, and it will make a change for you. Also there’s a tea orchestra, if you’d like to stay for it. I’ll be responsible for all the wild extravagance.”

“Thank you, but I can pay for my own extravagance,” Valentine assured her, smiling, however, gratefully, because Lou was prepared to be generous.

Lou struggled into her windcheater, and Valentine zipped it up for her.

“All right. Be independent
...
and English!” But Lou touched her cheek almost affectionately. “And have a good day. That’s the important thing!”

Valentine watched them depart from the hotel, a noisy cluster of rainbow-hued figures. The men had packs attached to their backs, as well as skis carried at the correct angle on their shoulders, and Valentine guessed there would be a meal in the open
—
a merry meal accompanied by much laughter, and possibly the popping of champagne corks, while the sun scorched down from the cloudless heaven and burned them browner than they were. She couldn’t resist a sensation of envy as she listened to the noisy tramp of their feet winding their way up the village street, and the thought of the lonely day that stretched ahead of herself made the envy grow stronger.

Then one of the group turned and looked up at her window. It was the tallest amongst them, a bareheaded man with shining hair that was blue-black in the sunlight, wearing a primrose-coloured windcheater and black
vorlagers.
She saw his hard white teeth as he flashed a derisive smile upwards at her balcony, and her fingers clutched the balcony rail so tightly that they were numb for some time afterwards. And then he sketched her a salute, and Lou
—
all powder-blue to-day, and radiant as the morning
—
looked upwards also in some surprise.

Then she, too, waved a hand, and immediately afterwards forgot all about the girl she employed. She clutched at the Baron’s arm in a familiar manner, and the whole of the village street echoed to their determined tramping. In a matter of minutes they had rounded a corner by the cafe, and were out of sight.

Valentine went back into her room and started to tidy it automatically. The maid, Lisa, who did her room was a willing girl, but she hated to give her too much trouble, for the hotel was over-full, and Lou demanded rather more attention from the staff than she could reasonably expect.

Valentine began to make a plan for her own unexpectedly free day. She was not very much in favour of the Devil’s Plateau idea, but there were other things she would like to do. She rang for Lisa and made the unusual request of a picnic lunch for herself, and with it strapped inside a knapsack went out into the resinous freshness of the morning. The resin was the odour of the pines that guarded the hotel, and their shadows lay like blue-black pencils on the whiteness of the snow. The overhead arch of blue sky had an amazing quality of purity about it, as if it had been carefully distilled through layers of gauze, and was even yet protected by an invisible layer of gauze that softened anything in the nature of a blemish which would otherwise have been revealed to the naked eye.

Valentine looked up at it appreciatively, and felt a sudden lightening of her spirit. The warmth of the sun even at that early hour, made her suddenly intensely aware of the fact that it was good to be alive, and although the village street confronting her was comparatively empty, and there were few people left on the steps of the hotel, she didn’t feel nearly so alone. And even though she was alone it didn’t matter, for there was a whole day stretching ahead of her, and she needn’t bother about nylon underwear or pressing seams or banishing cigarette burns in taffeta evening skirts. She was free to enjoy every minute of the day, and as preparation she drew in some exciting breaths of the wine-like air and tightened the strap of the pack on her back.

She was wearing navy-blue ski-pants and a scarlet windcheater, and there was a navy-blue cap on her curls. One or two of the people who still lingered on the steps of the hotel glanced at her curiously as she stood there, poised, as it were, for adventure, and a glimmering of admiration appeared in more than one pair of eyes. These English, they had such excellent complexions, was the general consensus of opinion of the German and American element, and the Austrians
themselves were impressed by the touch of fragility.

You didn’t get it in a country where there were so many mountains, and so many opportunities to enjoy outdoor sport and exercise.

“You go off by yourself,
Fraulein
?
” said a voice behind her, and Count “Willi” beamed at her as if he thought it a very excellent notion. “That is good! So long as you do not go too far, or forget that this is not Piccadilly Circus! So?” And he laughed as at an extremely funny joke. “You will remember that here people can get lost
?
”

“I’m not likely to get lost,” Valentine reassured him, smiling as if she thought his joke amusing, too. “I’m going to have a wonderfully lazy day and do practically nothing, except sit in the sun.” She pointed upwards at a wood that crowned the crest of a rise. “I’m going to explore that. I’ve never been there before.”

The Count looked upwards a little wistfully, shielding his eyes from the glare.

“I wish I could offer to come with you,
Fraulein
, but nowadays I find that I cannot climb.” He touched his noticeable paunch, and then his chest. “My breath refuses to come, and I gasp and gasp!
...” He rolled his eyes horrifically, and then smiled his ridiculously angelic smile. “So I, too, will sit in the sun and smoke a cigar. It is all I can do now that I am growing old!”

“Nonsense.” The warmth of her smile, and the soft brilliance and clarity of the golden eyes stirred something inside him that would probably never grow old, and, indeed, he suddenly yearned to be able to escort her. “But I hope you’ll enjoy your cigar!”

By noon she had reached the little plateau where the
pine wood spread its protecting branches, and as the sun, by that time, was fiercely hot, she was glad to find a fallen tree trunk on which she could sink down thankfully and begin her lunch.

It was deliciously cool in the pine wood, and the green twilight that hung between the trees was a rest after the glare of the open snow slopes. She was able to remove her dark glasses and put them away in her knapsack, and the serried shapes of the trees that rose up all around her assumed an additional sprightliness and a grace that was surprising when one thought of the storms that lashed at them.

Eating thick slices of bread interspersed with sausage, cheese tarts and an apple in this tranquil shade, Valentine thought how even more delicious it would be here in the summer-time, when instead of trodden snow underfoot there would be a warm carpet of pine needles on which one could recline, and the aromatic scent of them would rise like a cloud of incense on all sides. And instead of the stark whiteness of the valley confronting her there would be a green slope covered with wild flowers, the hazy shimmer of sunlight in the long luxuriant grass, and the endless silver glitter of streams and cascades finding their way down from the heights.

There would be the babble of the running water
—
instead of this frozen silence
—
the noisy chirping of unseen regiments of crickets, the music of cow-bells stealing down, also, from the high pastures. And at this hour of the day it would be hot, hot
...
So hot that one would think thankfully of falling fast asleep, and almost certainly succumb to the temptation to close one’s eyes, at least. Sink deep into the pine needles
...

After such a hard climb as she had done that morning
Valentine would have been glad to close her eyes just for a minute, and lean back against the stout pine behind her. But there was a nip in the air when the sun’s rays couldn’t touch one that warned her of the foolishness of doing anything of that kind, and instead she concentrated on the lonely figure of a man towing a sled up from some deep pocket of the valley. There was another figure some considerable distance to the right of him
—
a figure without the bright blob that represented a cap
—
and although he appeared to be moving more quickly, and with greater ease, he was too far away to be of any real interest to Valentine.

Almost certainly someone from the hotel
—
or one of the other hotels in the village
—
not bothering about hurrying back for lunch. Possibly armed like herself with a lunch packet.

Then, abruptly, her thoughts drifted to Lou and von Felden. That week-end they would probably be visiting his
schloss,
and she wondered whether she ought to go along with Lou
—
although what would she do for a chaperon if she didn’t?
—
and what sort of an excuse might be acceptable if Lou could find someone to take her place. Then, because her mind was growing a little drowsy, and vital problems were better shelved, she wondered about the
schloss
itself.

What was it like to own a castle
—
a medieval castle that had belonged to one’s family for generations
?
What would it be like to live in it? In a setting like this it could be wonderful. Even if the place was falling about one’s ears, summer and winter up here in the mountains would be an experience. There would be very little contact with other human creatures, a splendid sort of remoteness.

Her imagination worked overtime, and she tried to get a picture of life as it could be lived under such conditions. A touch of the spartan in the day-to-day routine (or could there be such a thing as central heating, and hot and cold running water?) storing colossal supplies of wood for the winter, a baronial hall with a great fire burning at one end, servants with thick woolly stockings who played the zither in the evenings. And if there were bathrooms they would be huge and draughty, corridors would be grim and wind all over the place, storms would hurl themselves against the windows in spring and autumn, summer would bring the scent of new-mown hay and alpine roses into all the rooms
...

And one would be monarch of all one surveyed! Lord of the castle, lord of the valley, Baron von Felden!
...
Excellency
to the villagers! A wonderful, feudal existence indeed!

But where would Lou fit in in such an existence
?
Or, if it came to that, how would Alex von Felden fit in
?
How
did
he fit in
?
... The comforts of a modern hotel, a flat in Vienna, a trip round the world paid for by someone like Martin C. Morgan, luxury liners, air liners, mountains of pigskin suitcases
...
Those were the things one associated him with. But not a lonely mountain
schloss
! Not even if Lou got to work on it, and turned it into a luxurious mountain retreat.

For a few weeks, yes
...
But the business of life was movement, variety, constant and endless change, and no danger of beco
mi
ng involved in anything serious
...
Not even a love affair!

Love had to be accompanied by a sugary pill
...
Wealth!

At this stage Valentine must have closed her eyes, for in spite of her determination she fell asleep, her head resting against the straight support behind her. The figures in the valley no longer existed for her, and therefore she did not know that one of them climbed steadily to her chosen retreat. He was much better at scaling the almost vertical side of a steep hillside than she was, and he didn’t require so many rests, so she hadn’t been asleep for many minutes when he was standing beneath the trees and looking down at her.

Valentine’s eyes flew open as if they had been automatically pulled open by wires. They were still clouded by sleep, and the dreams she had been having, and for a moment she couldn’t even move.

She said stupidly:

“But I was dreaming of you
!
I thought we were all on a visit to your
schloss
!
...”

“Did you?” He sank down beside her on the tree trunk and gazed at her reproachfully. “What right had you to fall asleep in the open at an altitude like this
?
Don’t you know that if you’d gone on sleeping you might have eventually frozen to death? At best you’d have caught a chill!”

“But I was so hot after I’d climbed, and it was lovely sitting here. So peaceful.” She sat up awkwardly, and shivered. “I do feel a bit cold now
...
”