The Questing Heart (18 page)

The wind blowing up the Channel seemed suddenly icy and Clare gripped the rail in front of her with nervous fingers, as she slowly assimilated Christopher's preposterous proposal A marriage that was no marriage when she wanted him with all her being—could any situation be more cruel? And for what? To save her good name? Nobody knew she had been away alone with Chris, even her parents thought she had been staying with a family; besides, was it so important in this permissive age? But there was one person who knew and had threatened to expose them, to the detriment not of her reputation but of Cedric Radford's.

'Is it because of Signora Albanesi that you've thought this up?' she demanded. 'Will anybody care what she says or believe her?'

'They might. That woman is a menace to my peace of mind,' Chris returned. He laid his hand over hers on the rail. 'Darling, don't let me down, I really do need your help. Once the play is reviewed and she finds there's no mention of Cedric Radford's engagement she'll make enquiries and discover little Miss Underwood has vanished into the mists of Manchester and I'm still a free man. She's a very determined woman and if she comes to London, as she will, she'll pursue me relentlessly, and I need all my concentration for my part. She's even capable of putting it about that she's engaged to me, and a lot of people will believe her, including her relatives, of which she's got a shoal. Sparrow, have a heart! Just let us be engaged until she gives up or preferably marries someone else. It won't hurt you to do that, and I'll see you have a good time, and of course a ring—we'll get that in London—which I want you to keep ... in memory of a feckless play-actor whom you befriended.'

This long speech, so utterly egotistical in its content, should have repelled her, but she was conscious of an undercurrent, as if he were not stating his real reasons; only the piece about the ring rang true. She should have met it with an instantaneous refusal, but he was standing beside her, his hand over hers, his coaxing vibrant voice, the instrument of his trade, mesmeric in its quality. She felt like an indulgent mother with a beloved but spoilt child, unable to refuse him. But she desired some clarification about his attitude towards Violetta, for wasn't he still half under her spell and that was why he feared her?

'You derogate the Signora now, but Chris, didn't you love her once?'

His eyelids flickered. 'Well ... er ... we were a bit matey,' he admitted slightly shamefacedly. 'But she wants to
marry
me! You know I'm not a marrying man, Sparrow, marriage wouldn't be good for my career.'

'Yes, I do know.' Clare fought to keep bitterness out of her voice: He had just offered a form of marriage to her, which he did not consider binding. 'But she does offer considerable inducements.'

He snapped his fingers. 'What? Wealth? I can earn all I need and more. The
castello
? I couldn't live there permanently. Beauty? She's already beginning to fade, she's a good five years older than I am, and she doesn't want children, says she can't have any, and seems to think that's a further inducement, as you call it. If ever I am fool enough to embark seriously upon matrimony, I'd want a family. It's the only reason for marriage.'

'I couldn't agree more,' Clare said fervently.

'Yes, you want children. Is that why you want to leave me? You've got your eye on someone up North who's been waiting for you all this while, you sly puss, and you think it's time you got on with it?'

'Maybe,' she did not deny it. 'Not all men shun domesticity and I'd make a good wife.'

'The very best, to the right man, which I'm not.'

He need not flog the point, she thought, she was well aware of his sentiments.

'You're the last man I'd ever consider as a husband,' she declared, and thus having salved her pride by another he, she stared bleakly out to sea while tears pricked her eyelids.

Perversely her statement did not seem to please him.

'Charming!' he exclaimed, and moved away from her. That knocked his vanity, she thought with dreary satisfaction.

'We'll part when we get to London,' she said decisively. 'And I'll go home, unattached.'

That brought him back. 'No, please, darling Sparrow, don't say that.' He seemed really distressed. 'Once my play has started its run, if it runs, I'll have more time to give to you. You must come back to London and we'll have a register office wedding just to show Violetta we meant business, and when it suits you, we'll have it annulled.' She made a movement of distaste. 'Don't let that worry you, theatrical unions are rarely permanent, and you'll have all the fun of dressing up and everyone will fete you ...'

'I suppose it hasn't occurred to you that what you call fun doesn't appeal to me at all,' she interrupted. 'Nor does pretence. You're making a mock of holy things.'

'Oh, my God!' Chris tore at his hair distractedly. 'You're more of a Puritan than I feared.'

He strode a few paces down the deck while Clare watched him from under her eyelashes. So irresponsible and yet so dear. If she agreed to this fantastic proposition she would be in close contact with him until ... until he decided to put her out of his life for ever.

He came back and stood beside her and she longed to throw herself into his arms. What would he do then? Tell her not to make a fool of herself and send her packing, while he found some other stooge to carry out his purpose? The thought was unbearable.

'Clare darling, I appeal to your kind heart,' he began half-humorously. 'Don't let me be sucked dry by that vampire.'

Clare suddenly remembered her dream and shuddered, » but she asked calmly:

'Have you ever made the Signora any promises that have given her ... expectations?'

'Never,' he declared. 'Oh, I sympathised with her at first; it was cruel to bind her to an old man when she so obviously needed a young husband, but I never, never,' he emphasised the word and his voice held the ring of truth, 'offered myself as a substitute. I liked Enzo, he wasn't a bad old stick, but Violetta insists that she fell in love with me and was sure I was only waiting for him to die. I told her when I saw her in Nice that it was no go, and I thought all was well when she took up with Gambetta, but unfortunately he got cold feet or she took a dislike to him, so she came raring after me again and your presence added fuel to the flame. Darling, you must continue with the good work and give me your protection.'

'As if you couldn't cope!' Clare declared energetically.

'But I can't. She'll catch me in a weak moment and it'll be all up with me.' Clare flinched. Was the night of the thunderstorm one of his weak moments? 'Then there are her kinsmen, they're capable of sticking a knife into me if they imagine I've insulted her. Your family are much more reasonable, aren't they?'

Clare smiled wryly. She could not imagine Alf Underwood avenging her honour with a stiletto. He would have to know about this pseudo-engagement if she agreed to it, but would be highly relieved if it were broken off. He would consider Christopher Raines, alias Cedric Radford, was far ephemeral a being to make his daughter happy. She could not believe that Chris really feared Signora Albanesi or her relations, and was at a loss to account for his insistence that he needed her 'protection' as he called it, but could think of no motive for piling on the drama.

'Besides,' Chris began, and now he sounded more serious, 'when she finds out our engagement was phoney, she's quite capable of going to your so respectable parents and spinning them a lurid yarn about your goings-on in Italy, if only out of sheer spite. It would be much more pleasant to be known as my wife-to-be than something much less polite.'

Clare wilted. She would hate her parents to learn all that had happened from Violetta, and she had put herself in a vulnerable position by her rash action when she originally went away with Chris. Everything came back to the Borgia lady, and the poison she distilled was word of mouth, not poison in a cup. Even at this distance and in this colder clime some violent emanation seemed to touch her from the
castello.
When Christopher's play was produced he would be in the limelight and his love affairs under scrutiny. Violetta would be a goldmine to the gossip columnists, and a damaged reputation would not help her to find a good job.

Chris was watching her expressive face closely; though his own was inscrutable, his amber eyes had the intentness of a hovering hawk's. He told her:

'You're as much in need of protection as I am, my darling. Won't you agree to at least an engagement for our mutual benefit?'

'I wish you wouldn't call me your darling,' she said peevishly, seeking to vent her nervous irritation on this minor issue. 'It's the last thing I am.'

'You'll have to get used to it, if I'm to pose as your adoring lover,' he pointed out airily. 'Anyway, in my profession everyone calls everybody darling. It doesn't mean anything. 'That's why I don't like it.'

'You put a premium on sincerity, don't you?' he mocked. 'But I'm an actor and used to make-believe.' She must never forget that, Clare reflected. 'Sometimes a little whitewash does a lot to oil the wheels. Oh dear, what a mixed metaphor, I must be slipping!'

He was silent for a while and a cruise ship appeared in the distance, the white superstructure standing out against the grey sea, music from her afterdeck coming faintly to their ears borne on the breeze.

'She's off to the sun,' Chris said regretfully. 'Italy perhaps, and from the look of the sky, it'll be raining in London.' Then he dropped his voice and added earnestly, almost as if he were confessing a sin, 'I mean darling when I'm addressing you, and you're the only woman I could ever endure to live with permanently.'

The glance that accompanied the words was half eager and half questioning, but Clare steeled herself against it. She did not believe him and wished desperately that she could.

'You needn't perjure yourself,' she retorted. 'I'll do what you want ... temporarily, so you don't have to bribe me with soft soap. No woman could ever catch you, you're as slippery as an eel.'

Chris moved away abruptly, leaning over the rail staring at the vanishing cruise ship, and she wondered for one swift moment if she had misjudged him. But no, she knew Chris, who had admitted he was versed in make-believe. He had only been trying to beguile her to get his own way.

He turned back to her with a mischievous gleam in his eyes.

'Even eels can be caught,' he said lightly, 'however much they squirm, but I don't like your simile. I don't try to wriggle out of serious commitments.' He drew her arm through his in a brotherly manner. 'It's chilly up here, let's go below and drink to ... our continued good relations.'

C
LARE
sat in the dress circle watching the motley collection of people filing into the stalls and pit below her. Some were in the full regalia of evening dress, but the majority, like herself, had either come straight from their place of business or had travelled some distance by bus and wore their day clothes. A few arty-crafty rebels against the establishment flaunted slacks and sweaters. Clare had taken off her coat and was dressed in one of the dresses Chris had chosen for her in Nice. She did not normally wear them for work in Manchester, considering a blouse and skirt more suitable, but tonight was an occasion, and her expectancy exceeded that of the audience who had come full of anticipation to see Cedric Radford in his latest play.

For it was six weeks since Christopher had put her on the train at Euston with a hastily purchased ring on the third finger of her left hand. Six weeks since she had come home and told her parents that she was engaged to a theatre man—actor and dramatist. They had been a little dismayed. Her father feared she was moving into a circle where she would find herself an outsider, her mother said frankly that stage folk were 'kittle-cattle' and undependable. Neither had ever seen Cedric Radford act. They did not care for television plays in which Clare knew he had sometimes appeared, always preferring alternative programmes, so she did not disclose his theatrical pseudonym, though the advent of the opening of his play was splashed about in the provincial press.

He wrote to her frequently, and all about his play and the problems that had to be surmounted. Being familiar with it she was able to reply knowledgeably on the same subject. She had found an office job and spent her evenings re-writing her novel, for which her recent experience had given her stimulus. It followed the lines of her own romance and the hero became modelled on Chris, though he would never have recognised a resemblance, especially as he cared deeply for the heroine and would in the last chapter marry her. So different from what would happen to her, for if she ever got as far as a wedding it would be no love match but entered into on his part with the determination to end it as soon as he found it expedient to do so.

In retrospect she found his reasons for insisting upon their engagement a little thin, and came to the conclusion that it was not only Violetta he wanted to keep at bay but other forward females who considered an actor their natural prey. A complacent wife in the background would preserve him from the consequences of his follies and act as a brake upon their importunities. She admitted she had been weak to allow herself to be persuaded into considering a marriage of convenience, but unfortunately she was so besotted she could not bear to relinquish the tenuous link between them. While it existed she would still have contact with him, once it was broken he would pass out of her ken. So she collected what crumbs he offered to her and treasured them, and these during the past weeks had been in the form of his letters, which were always witty and amusing, sometimes even affectionate, but not love letters.

He had seen to it that she received a couple of tickets for his premiere, and had written saying he would see her after the first night. The two days he would be in Manchester beforehand would be spent rehearsing and he would be too rushed to arrange a meeting.

'And,' he wrote, 'I'm not fit company before an opening. I'd probably bite your head off. Actor's nerves!'