The Questing Heart (6 page)

'No ... no...' she objected. 'Boss, new boss, not lover.'

Marie-Celeste winked. 'Same thing.'

'Not at all,' Chris corrected her. 'I never mix love and business.' He shook Clare. 'Remember you must give in your notice tomorrow.'

Clare lifted a dazed face towards his.

'Kiss me goodnight.'

'Oh, go along with you.' He pushed her towards Marie- Celeste..'She doesn't know what she's saying—my fault, I'm afraid. Goodnight, ladies.'

Marie-Celeste watched his hurried exit with appreciative eyes.

'Mon dieu,
but he is
ravissant!
Come along,
mademoiselle, doucement,
we must not wake Madame.'

The sturdy maid practically carried Clare's much slighterform upstairs, and dumping her on her bed, proceeded to undress her.

'Sleep it off,' she said kindly.
'Ces jeunes hommes,
they give a silly girl too much wine and it is all over.
Mais, moi,
I would not mind being seduced by that one.'

Clare did not hear her for she was already asleep.

She awoke with a headache and no recollection of her arrival at the villa on the previous night, so that Marie- Celeste's conspiratorial air when she brought her an early cup of tea was lost upon her. But she did remember very clearly that she had pledged herself to work for Christopher Raines and Monica had to be informed.

She approached her after breakfast, stating that she had been offered a better situation and wished to leave. Mrs Cullingford was taken aback and proceeded to give her a long lecture about the folly of leaving her erudite establishment where an intelligent girl could learn so much if she watched and listened and her regret that she was unable to appreciate her privileges, winding up with the reminder that she was entitled to a month's notice.

'Not that you'll be difficult to replace,' she said loftily, 'but I need time to pick and choose, next time I must make sure I have engaged the
right
person.'

Clare meekly accepted the snub and said she was prepared to stay the requisite period, though she knew it would be a very trying month. To her relief Monica did not ask where she was going or who was employing her, not that she had any intention of telling her. Monica had already dismissed her from her mind and was thinking that it would be more amusing to engage a male secretary who would give her the adulation, real or feigned, that Clare could not bring herself to pretend. She wondered if there were any chance of persuading that delightful Mr Raines to accept the post, which would be mutually beneficial as she could give him advice and encouragement in return for his compliments.

Chris rang up during the afternoon and Clare answered the phone as she usually did on Monica's behalf. She told him that all was well and she would be free after working out her month's notice. To her dismay he declared he could not wait a month; he needed her services at once.

'Then I'm afraid it's all off,' she said regretfully, aware of acute disappointment. 'I can't just walk out on her.'

'Nothing easier,' he returned. 'But I suppose you can't help being a conscientious idiot.'

'She can be vindictive, she'd probably sue me.'

'Don't you worry about that. I'll deal with Madame Monique, and I'll send a taxi to collect you tomorrow morning.'

Clare was alarmed, but before she could expostulate, he hung up, and she did not know from where he was ringing. She hoped he would not do anything reckless and she did not believe he would be able to placate Mrs Cullingford, who would not be pleased when she learned by whom she had been engaged. She visualised more lectures and some of Monica's criticism would be justified, for she was acting unwisely, but so strong was Christopher's attraction becoming that she was loath to sunder their association. Because of that her folly was all the more apparent and she could not wholly justify it. In sudden panic she wondered if she could rescind her notice.

Clare was on tenterhooks for the rest of the day, fearing Chris might call on Monica, but as he did not put in an appearance she decided he had thought better of it, and had accepted that she was unavailable, in which case she had lost the job. She felt bitter as she reflected upon his unreasonableness, but artistic people were not au fait with » business practices or he would have known she could not walk out at a moment's notice. Other people had to be considered besides Mr Christopher Raines' convenience.

That evening Mrs Cullingford told her that she was going out to a cocktail party and Clare need not wait up for her.

'I'll make sure my next secretary is a qualified driver,' he told her acidly. 'Then he'll be able to chauffeur me around.'

Clare noticed the masculine pronoun. So Monica was making plans and there was no going back. Since Christopher could not wait, she would have to return to Manchester without a job at all.

Disconsolately she went to her room after Monica's departure, and idly glanced through her manuscript but felt no urge to add to it. She stared despondently out of the window at the spangled sea glimpsed through the trees, wrapped in the velvet Mediterranean night. Fireflies gleamed in the bushes near the gate, points of green light. Manchester had never seemed less attractive. Finally the excesses of the night before caught up with her and, early as it was, she went to bed and slept.

She was awakened early by Marie-Celeste bringing in a breakfast tray on which was an envelope with her name upon it in Monica's scrawling handwriting. Opening it, she found a note and a cheque for what salary was owing to her.

'Madame said you were to go at once,' Marie-Celeste informed her. 'But I could not let you depart without your coffee. She meet your
jeune homme
at her party. What he do I not know, but she come home what you say ... in at the deep end. She tell me she throw you out then and there only she fear that the neighbours make scandal. You must go now, shall I help you pack?'

Clare nodded mechanically while she perused the note. She had never dreamed that Chris might be at the party, somehow he must have engineered it, and he must have said something drastic to Monica to produce the letter she held. For Mrs Cullingford declared that Clare was a deceitful, unscrupulous snake in the grass who had abused her trust and solicited her guest. The sooner she returned to the gutter where she belonged the better for all concerned, and she never wanted to see her face again. 'If you were starving,' the note concluded, 'I would not give you a crust.'

Clare drank the coffee but could not eat any food. She dressed hurriedly under Marie-Celeste's repeated urgings, and bundled her belongings into her two cases. The maid was anxious to get her out of the house before her mistress was astir and Clare was equally anxious to be gone; she had no wish to encounter Mrs Cullingford in her present mood. She remembered that Chris had said he would send a taxi for her, which had seemed to her at the time an act of blind optimism, for she had not contemplated being able to use it, but it seemed she had underrated him. She hoped it would come, for she did not think she could manage her luggage on the bus, nor did she know where to go, since he had not given her an address. She was beset by a sudden terrible doubt that he had played a malicious trick upon her, the sort of jest that fitted his occasionally cruel humour. He had effected her dismissal, as he had said he would, and she shuddered to imagine what he must have said to Monica to achieve it, but he was unpredictable, and she was never sure when he was serious and when he was joking. If he did not succour her now she would be . stranded.

The early hour, Marie-Celeste's panic haste and Monica's letter had dragged her spirits down to zero, and she had never felt more alone or more abandoned, and it was all her own idiotic fault. She never ought to have listened to Christopher's beguiling tongue.

But her despair and her doubts proved to be quite unjustified, because as she was humping her cases downstairs, Marie-Celeste came running into the house with the welcome news:

'The taxi... he come!'

Clare was driven to an unpretentious hotel in a back street in Nice. During the drive she reflected that her hand had been forced. She had no option now but to fall in with Christopher's wishes,, unless she went home defeated, a proceeding she was reluctant to contemplate. But first she must discover by what means Chris had obtained her dismissal; if they were too reprehensible she would tell him what she thought of him and go home.

He was standing outside the hotel when she descended from the taxi, a demure insignificant figure in her neat dark suit. He ushered her up to the desk while a porter dealt with her cases.

'I've arranged for you to stay here tonight,' he told her, as the receptionist showed her where to sign her name and she handed over her passport. Obviously she had to stay somewhere and this place did not look beyond her means. Key in hand, she turned round to confront Chris, who was hovering behind her, his whole bearing expressing triumphant glee.

'So it all went according to plan,' he crowed. 'There was no hitch?'

'You mean you deliberately schemed to have me thrown out?' she asked indignantly. 'Mr Raines, what on earth did you say to Mrs Cullingford? I didn't even know you were going to see her until Marie-Celeste told me this morning you were at the party.'

'Ssh!' With a proprietorial hand at her elbow, he guided her away from the desk to a distant seat beneath a potted palm. Dumping her down upon it, he told her: 'That was my strategy. I got myself invited to the same party knowing that she couldn't vent her venom on me too vehemently with other people around her—not that she wanted to. You were the villain, my pet, and I was the victim of your shameless wiles.'

'Oh, really!' Clare exclaimed in exasperation.

Still looking very pleased with himself, Chris seated himself beside her and went on, oblivious of her rising anger:

'Not that your desertion would have done the trick alone —I had to hint that she was nurturing a viper in her bosom.' He brought out the preposterous phrase with gusto. 'I told her that you were pilfering her ideas to use in your own manuscript, copying her style quite cleverly, and you had shown me parts of your
Perfidious Passion,
which was a fair imitation of her
Passion Fruit.'

Clare nearly choked over this monstrous piece of invention.

'Chris... Mr Raines ...' she gasped.

'Chris will do.'

'Mr Raines,' she repeated with emphasis. 'How could you do such a thing!' Her eyes became grey pools of reproach, and her voice quivered with distress. 'I told you about my writing in confidence, and my book is not called
Perfidious Passion ...
hideous tide!'

'It's a better one than hers, that's what narked her most.

Seriously, Clare, why the tragedy? You didn't want to stay with her, did you, and I needed your services urgently. You're splitting hairs, and you can't deny you were secretly aiming to compete with her.' Clare turned her head away, for that was true, but it had seemed such a remote possibility it had not troubled her sensitive conscience. 'I had to get you away somehow, and I had a heaven-sent inspiration.'

'More likely it came from the devil,' Clare rapped tartly. 'You're a ruthless man, Mr Raines.'

Chris only laughed. 'One has to be ruthless to get what one wants,' he declared.

'I'm surprised you consider I'm worth so much trouble and ingenuity.'

'No trouble at all, darling, and I enjoy exercising my wits. I'd decided you would suit me and all that was entailed was presenting a few facts to Mrs Cullingford to make her fall in with my plans.'

'Oh, was it?' Clare's smouldering anger flared up. 'Do you realise you've maligned me to her and stripped me of everything? Even my good character. I can't ask her for a testimonial now.'

'But you don't need one.' He met her rage with careless insouciance. 'Oh, come off it, Clare, keep cool. You've been moaning about life passing you by, and you'll have more fun with me than with her. You ought to be thanking me for my
... er ...
ingenuity.'

'Fabrications!' she snapped. She was too upset to be easily appeased. She had meant no harm to Monica by attempting to imitate her. The field was wide enough to accommodate them both and if she ever had any success, which was doubtful, she would have probably left Monica's employ by that time. Christopher's betrayal of her ambition seemed a deliberate violation of her private life, and bitterly did she regret having given him her confidence to put to such an unscrupulous use.

'I must have been mad to agree to work for you,' she told him. 'I can't now, not after what you've done.'

Christopher's eyes narrowed to mere slits, and his brows drew together, as he said silkily:

'Have you any alternative, darling? Your only option is to go home in disgrace without a reference. What will your respectable parents, and I conclude they are respectable, think of that? Especially as I might feel it was my duty to inform them of the sort of life you'd been leading under the pernicious influence of the Riviera. Last night, for instance.'

'What about last night?' she asked anxiously, for her recollections of the latter part of it were hazy.

He grinned and lifted his arm in a significant gesture.

She stared at him, horrified. 'You mean ... I was tipsy?'

'Near enough.'

'Then it was your fault,' she said firmly, recalling Marie- Celeste's remarks. 'My parents wouldn't believe you.'

'Although you had returned so hastily and without a character? Mrs Cullingford would confirm that you'd been running after me.'

She stared at him in shocked disbelief, stunned by his twisted distortion of the facts, and he went on flippantly:

'I would tell them I had written to them wholly for your sake, because I was distressed to see such a nice girl being corrupted by the low standards of foreign playgrounds, and suggest that they persuaded you to stay at home in future.'

'You ... scum!' she exclaimed in a low tense voice.

He only laughed, his curious cat's eyes glinting.

Clare drew a deep breath. He could not really mean what he was saying—at least not all of it; he was an inveterate tease. She said composedly, 'You don't mind hitting below the belt, do you, but surely even you wouldn't stoop to blackmail.'