Rose in the Bud (9 page)

After all, she had come to Venice for that purpose, and after being temporarily diverted from her purpose by a fascinating dark-eyed Frenchman she was very much afraid she would never quite forget, she felt like a hound getting back on the scent of her quarry, and this time nothing—
nothing,
she vowed to herself—should confuse the issues for her or cause her to forget why she was there, spending a large part of her legacy
in hotel bills and other items which were not strictly essential, but which now at last could be justified.

She opened her bag to pay for her drink, and was in the act of tipping the waiter when a shadow fell across the table and Bianca di Rini stood looking down at her and smiling in a friendly fashion.

“Signorina Cathleen!” she exclaimed. “Paul said it was you, and that you were looking lonely and neglected, which is an unforgivable thing in Venice!” She sat down at the table and lifted an eyebrow as if asking permission. “This is an hour of the day when I choose to relax, and to drink an aperitif. You will join me
?
”

“No, thank you,” Cathleen answered.

Bianca, who was looking strikingly elegant in sheer silk the colour of liquid honey, and with many expensive-looking bracelets jingling on her wrists and turquoise studs in her ears, looked upwards at the waiter and somewhat arrogantly ordered a pink gin for herself. Then she opened her handbag and produced a toy of a cigarette-case in gold and tortoiseshell and offered it across the table to Cathleen.

Once again Cathleen shook her head.

“As a matter of fact, I was just leaving,” she explained.

Bianca surrounded herself with a faint haze of cigarette smoke. Through it she smiled in an inscrutable but quite charming fashion at the English girl.

“You were leaving because it is dull to sit alone, yes
?
” she said. “And to be alone in Venice ... well, that is very dull!”

“I haven’t found the past two days dull,” Cathleen denied swiftly.

Once again the inscrutable, baffling smile confronted her.

“Ah, but Edouard has been escorting you, has he not?” she stated rather than asked. And as Cathleen turned faintly pink in a revealing fashion the exotically made-up mouth of the Italian beauty curved in rather a hard sort of a way. “My dear Miss Brown,” she said softly, “I feel I should warn you about Edouard. He is an artist, with an artist’s temperament, and a fresh face intrigues him for a while, but always it is the same when the attraction begins to fade. He has a reputation for dropping the most exciting beauty after forty-eight hours of appearing to become her slave ... and,” she gave a deprecating shrug with her olive
-
tinted shoulders, “the beauty is left high and dry, as you might say! In your case I’m sure he found you fascinating, but if you do not see him for a few days you mustn’t take it too
m
uch to heart.”

“I won’t,” Cathleen declared, her cheeks burning fierily because she felt she was being sympathised with. “To be truthful, I haven’t the smallest desire to see Monsieur Moroc again,” with a little burst of impulsive candour.

“Indeed
?
” Bianca looked interested. “Don’t tell me Edouard has offended already?”

“I don’t know what you mean by ‘offended,’ ” Cathleen bit her lip.

“Well—” Bianca flicked ash into the ash-tray, and smiled slightly—“I hesitate to use the word ‘dropped,’ because you are so very English and so very charming that one cannot imagine arty man finding it a simple matter to put you out of his thoughts, but as I have already explained to you Edouard is not quite like the average man ... my brother Paul, for instance. As a matter of fact he does nothing but talk about you.”

“I’m flattered,” Cathleen replied stiffly. “But as for Monsieur Moroc—”

“Forget him,” Bianca advised, leaning a lit
tl
e towards her. “Forget him and come and stay with us
at the
palazzo
, and let us make up to you for any defection Edouard has been guilty of. Oh, I know,” as if she was imparting a girlish confidence, “how you feel about Edouard
... How most women feel about him, until they discover what he is really like. There was a time when I, too, thought that the sun shone out of his eyes and that all my happiness in the future revolved around him, but after a somewhat painful period during which it was not easy to recover from my infatuation I succeeded in getting over him completely, and now he cannot even cause me a quickened heartbeat when I see him,” making the revelation with a wryly amused look in her brilliantly beautiful eyes.

“Indeed?” Cathleen murmured uncomfortably, recalling at the same time the barely concealed hostility that was always present in the Italian girl’s whole attitude when she and Edouard came into contact with one another.

Bianca shrugged.

“Of course, it is sad ... but there it is! One loses one’s heart, and then recovers it. Which is not the happy termination to all Edouard’s affairs.”

Cathleen heard herself asking a question that she afterwards partly regretting asking.

“Did my sister Arlette see much of Monsieur Moroc while she was living with you at the
palazzo
?
”

Bianca looked suddenly intrigued.

“So you have discovered?” she said, very softly. Her fantastic eyelashes fluttered, and she looked down at the tip of her cigarette. “The poor child would not listen to advice,” she declared with a sigh.

“Then—then it is true?” Cathleen leaned towards her eagerly, but at the same time she shrank from learning the real truth.

Bianca’s eyes commiserated with her.

“Shall we say no more than that Edouard is Edouard, and your sister was—fascinated.” She crushed out her half-smoked cigarette in the ash-tray, and lighted another almost immediately. “Paul would have interfered if he could, of course, but what can a young man in his position do when the young woman is actually living beneath his own roof? I know that Paul admired her himself, but he would never have done her any harm.”

“It isn’t true that he wished to marry her, is it?” Cathleen asked, determined now that she had the opportunity to hear the whole truth.

The Count’s sister shook her head.

“There was never any question of marriage between them,” she said. “Your sister’s obsession was with Edouard, not with Paul.”

“I—I saw a picture that he had painted of her in his
palazzo
,” Cathleen confessed.

Instantly Bianca’s eyebrows shot up. For a moment she sounded really surprised.

“Then you have visited at Edouard’s
palazzo
?
He does not normally take his lady friends there ... only —occasionally.’ ’

“It—it was just that he thought I would be interested in seeing the
palazzo
,” Cathleen, who wished now that she had not made this revelation, said awkwardly.

“But of course.” Bianca smiled at her almost gently, as if she understood perfectly and would never betray the confidence to a soul
... not even to Paul if he became curious. Once again she leaned across the table and brought her exquisite face a little closer to the English girl’s. “My dear, come to us and we will give you a wonderful time,” she promised. “And, more than that, we will help you to find Arlette. I have discussed the matter of her disappearance with my brother, and we both feel that it is up to us to do our utmost to trace her. After all, our aunt was very fond of her, and she lived with us for several months. She was not as pretty or as charming as you are, my dear, but she had engaging ways, and we became quite attached to her, therefore it will give us pleasure to help you to find her.”

“Then you honestly don’t know where she is?” Cathleen exclaimed, as if she had strongly suspected that they did know where Arlette was hiding herself away.

Bianca looked mildly hurt for a moment, and then shook her head on its slender neck with emphasis.

“Do you think we would have lied to you about her if we knew where she was
?
The family of di Rini does not stoop to lying about such matters. But I will admit that
we have an idea
,”
with a different kind of emphasis.

“Wh-what do you mean?” Cathleen demanded, sounding almost startled.

Bianca shook her head again.

“At this moment I cannot say a thing, but if you will come and stay with us I will give you my word we will leave no stone unturned to trace your sister. And Paul and I will be so happy to have you.” She genuinely looked as if it would give her personal pleasure to act hostess to Arlette’s sister. “And after all, why should you go on living in an hotel when we have so many rooms at our disposal? Some of them are, perhaps, a little damp, but all of them are comfortable. And you shall have Arlette’s room, which is very comfortable.”

Cathleen hesitated, however.

“It doesn’t seem to me that it would be fair to—to put you to so much trouble,” she objected.

“Nonsense, my dear.” The Italian voice was warm and even caressing. “It will be no trouble at all, and if you refuse we shall feel that you hold it against us because your sister has disappeared—”

“Oh, but of course I don’t do that
!”

“Then you will become our guest? You will allow Paul to collect you to-night? Or to-morrow morning if you would prefer it?”

“I think I would prefer to remain in the hotel for another night. After all, I made a reservation for a fortnight.”

“Think nothing of it,” Bianca advised her. “Paul will explain to the management that you are to stay with us, and there will be no difficulty whatsoever. You will not even be charged for your room.” She glanced at her watch. “Now I must go, but I shall pass on the good news to Paul and he will call for you to-morrow morning.” Her dark eyes were full of the utmost satisfaction, and she gathered up her white bag and gloves as if now that the matter was settled she had no desire to linger. Her small, perfect teeth flashed brilliantly as she stood smiling down at Cathleen. “Paul is meeting me, but first I have some shopping to do. I will see you in good time for lunch to-morrow,
signorina,
at the Palazzo di Rini!”

And it was only when she had actually left her, and Cathleen was once more sitting alone at the cafe table, that the invited guest wondered whether she shouldn’t have made a bigger effort to retain her independence. And then suddenly she thought of Arlette, and Bianca’s promise to assist her to find her, and she was quite sure her mother would consider that she had done the right thing.

Up till now she had made no great effort to find Arlette. Edouard, with his dark, apparently fatal charm, had come between her and her objective, and but for the fact that he had happily dropped her as, according to Signorina di Rini,
he
had dropped numbers of women in the past—very obviously, it now seemed, Arlette—she might have continued to forget the real reason why she had undertaken this trip to Venice, and that would not have pleased her mother at all. It would not have pleased her once she came to her senses.

But now, thankfully, she had come to her senses, and with the help of the di Rinis she would discover what had really happened to Arlette. She was not particularly attracted by the idea of becoming a guest in the
palazzo
—occupying her sister’s old room
!
—but to have refused the invitation so pressingly put would have seemed, at the very least, churlish, and one day she might be thankful that she had accepted it.

When she had
discovered Arlette
!

CHAPTER VII

As i
f he could barely wait to see her installed at the
palazzo
Paul arrived at the hotel the following day to collect her and her luggage before she had actually completed her packing. She sent down a message that she would be with him in ten minutes, and when she stepped out of the lift and her cases appeared in the charge of a couple of porters the expression on his face registered something almost like relief, as well as highly flattering pleasure.

He gripped both her hands and held on to them for a few moments before he carried one up to his lips and kissed it, and then with his black eyes gleaming he spoke softly.

“At last!” he exclaimed. “I cannot tell you how delighted I was when Bianca told me she had induced you to change your mind, and that you were coming to stay with us! It seemed almost too good to be true ... quite wonderful, in fact
!”

Cathleen blushed self-consciously, and she also looked rather acutely embarrassed.

“I can’t think why,” she declared in answer. “It’s I who am very grateful to Signorina di Rini—”

“Bianca,” he corrected her swiftly.

She flushed again, and echoed him awkwardly: “Bianca
... for being so kind as to insist that I accept her invitation. After all, just because my sister was employed at one time by your aunt there is no reason why I should expect to stay at the Palazzo di Rini.”