Love Forbidden Read online

  “Oh, but you mustn’t say that when you are going to be so rich,” Lady Grania cried. “But I knew as soon as I saw you that you wouldn’t marry Dart unless you really loved him.”

  Aria turned her face away and busied herself with getting out of the green dress.

  “I have a feeling,” Lady Grania chattered on, “that Dart has always been looking for something in his life and I believe it’s real love. He is like Don Juan, who went from one woman to another because he could not find what he sought. The women over here make an absolute beeline for him and the same thing happens in America.

  “It’s not because they really love him. If he were just Mr. Huron with no money at all, ninety-nine out of a hundred wouldn’t even look at him. It’s only because he’s so rich and has so much glamour behind him that they ply him with compliments, hang round his neck and generally behave as if he was a God or a superman. Sometimes it makes me rather sick.”

  “I feel like that, too,” Aria agreed.

  She was thinking of Lulu with her possessive attitude towards Dart and her softened, almost mesmeric voice when she spoke to him, of her caressing hands and the look in her eyes. And Lulu cared for nobody except herself.

  “What fools men are!” Aria said suddenly.

  “Not always,” Lady Grania replied. “Dart has been very clever in that he has found you.”

  “Please, you mustn’t say that,” Aria said quickly. “It isn’t – er – anyway, I don’t want you to say it.”

  “You are so sweet,” Lady Grania went on, not understanding. “And I’m so thrilled you will wear the green dress tonight. You will look wonderful. Everybody will be gaping at you.”

  “If you mean they won’t recognise me, that’s more than likely,” Aria laughed.

  She tried to speak sensibly. At the same time she could not help a little thrill of excitement at the thought of appearing on equal terms with the lovely women who would be coming to dinner and to the dance.

  It was only going to be a small party, about fifty couples in all, and yet, she thought a little wistfully as she dressed that night, it was the largest and most important ball she had ever been to.

  She had danced in the hotels where she had stayed with her father when she was still a schoolgirl. She had danced in the village hall near Queen’s Folly when there had been some special evening arranged in aid of the local Boy Scouts or the Village Institute.

  But usually the entertainment at such functions was whist or a concert put on by the vicar, and in the last three years the dances she had attended had been so few as to be almost negligible.

  She had said nothing to anyone else about her own appearance that evening and she thought it was typical of Dart Huron, who had, when he returned from polo, talked extensively of the arrangements, not to remember the part that she must play in them.

  “We are having a lucky draw,” he said to Aria. “There’s a gold and sapphire clip for the ladies and a cigarette case for the men. We don’t want to say too much about it as it looks so bad if that sort of thing gets into the Press.”

  “Are the Press coming?” Aria asked a little apprehensively.

  “Not if I can help it,” he replied. “They have not been invited and I have told McDougall to refuse them admittance. At the same time, one never knows nowadays who’s not a gossip hound amongst one’s acquaintances. I don’t mind betting you that the most intimate details of what goes on tonight will find their way into The Evening Standard tomorrow.”

  Aria said nothing and, noting her serious little face, he asked,

  “Are you nervous?”

  “Very,” Aria replied. “I am frightened of letting you down.”

  “I’m not afraid of that,” he answered. “You won’t forget to see that the band have plenty of champagne, will you?”

  He sauntered from the room, leaving Aria with the feeling that he almost resented her nervousness because it showed inefficiency.

  He had made it very clear that, although they were engaged as far as the world was concerned, he still intended her to earn her money as his secretary and housekeeper.

  Lulu had not been seen all day. Trays of food had been taken up to her room, but, as her hairdresser had come down from London, Aria imagined that she intended to make an appearance in the evening.

  She wondered how anyone could be so thick-skinned as to remain on at Summerhill after what had happened that morning. But she was well aware that Lulu knew that Dart Huron’s engagement was nothing but a blind and a subterfuge to avoid his name being linked with hers.

  She had not by any means given up the fight. She had taken him away from one woman, a clever and attractive one at that. She was not afraid of an obscure little secretary who was obviously being used as a cat’s paw.

  Aria dressed slowly, savouring, with a sense of anticipated delight, the moment when she could put on her green dress. She had a bath, brushed her hair until it was the colour of copper beech leaves and shone with the gleaming brilliance of old brass.

  Then she set it in tiny curls in almost a symmetrical pattern so that she looked not unlike a Greek statue with her delicate features and perfectly shaped head.

  Usually she used very little make-up, but tonight she was more daring. She darkened her long eyelashes, putting a touch of blue on the eyelids and reddening her mouth until in contrast it drew attention to the pearly whiteness of her skin.

  Lady Grania had given her a pair of green sandals that matched the dress. Fortunately they fitted. They were mere wisps of green satin with long high heels studded with diamonds and little diamond buckles to hold ankle straps in place. Aria put them on and admired the effect in the glass.

  She had always had tiny and very beautiful feet and never since she had grown up, had she been able to afford the right kind of shoes to show them off to the best advantage.

  Then at last the moment came when she could slip on the green dress and ring for the housemaid to do it up for her.

  Most of the guests were assembled in the drawing room when she came downstairs. She was feeling a little shy because what she was wearing tonight made her feel a very different person from her usual self.

  She was halfway down the staircase when below her she saw Dart Huron come out of the dining room to speak to McDougall in the hall.

  “Where is Miss Milbank?” he said sharply. “Send someone up to her room and tell her to come down at once.”

  “I am coming now,” Aria called out quickly, before McDougall could answer.

  “You are late,” Dart Huron said. “I was wondering what on earth had happened – ”

  He stopped.

  She reached the last two steps of the staircase and he stood for an appreciable moment without speaking. She came down onto the floor of the hall and walked towards him, her dress shimmering and glistening beneath the chandeliers, the soft frou-frou of its silken petticoats rustling as she moved.

  “You look very beautiful!”

  “I expected you to be surprised,” Aria said with a flash of humour that she could not help and a little curl of her lips that made her seem unusually provocative.

  “Everyone is waiting to see you,” he said. “I thought perhaps you had backed out on me.”

  “I couldn’t do that, could I?” Aria asked a little sharply. “Not until I had been paid.”

  She didn’t know why she wanted to strike at him in a manner that she knew would make him angry and yet perhaps it was because, womanlike, she resented his surprise at her changed appearance even while she was flattered by it.

  “You are not as sweet as you look,” he said as they reached the drawing room door.

  As she had no opportunity of replying to him, she felt that he had the last word.

  Dinner was the first meal that Aria had ever really enjoyed at Summerhill. She was seated on Dart Huron’s left, Lord Buckleigh was on her other side. A new dress and perhaps the flattery and adulation of the other guests went to her head like wine.

  She, who had
sat silent at so many meals, now sparkled and chattered, laughed and made repartee and found that it was all very exhilarating and as frivolous and inconsequential as a glass of champagne.

  “I have found out the truth about you at last,” Lord Buckleigh said in a low voice.

  “What is that?” she questioned.

  “That you are really a witch in disguise,” he said. “You were testing us to see whether we should recognise you and now you appear before us in your true colours. Don’t laugh at me, it’s driving me mad.”

  She looked at him from under her eyelashes.

  “Why should my laughter do that?” she enquired.

  “Because you know what I want,” he answered a little roughly. “I want you! I want you to come away with me. Do you think any of these fools here care for you like I do?”

  “I don’t think you know the meaning of the word,” Aria replied.

  She was flirting for the first time in her life and enjoying every moment of it.

  It was only when dinner was halfway through that she realised that Dart Huron was strangely silent. Lord Buckleigh was engaged in conversation by the woman on his left and she had perforce to turn towards Dart Huron.

  “What have you done to yourself?” he enquired.

  “Am I any different?” she asked with mock innocence.

  “You know exactly what I mean,” he said. “It isn’t your dress, although that’s pretty enough. It’s you. You are a different person tonight.”

  “I have a part to play,” she said. “Would you have me give an indifferent performance?”

  His lips tightened for a moment as if he would have said something scathing, but the Ambassadress on his right bent forward to speak to him and there was no chance of further conversation.

  As soon as dinner was over, outside guests began to arrive from neighbouring houses. Aria was kept busy shaking hands and being introduced.

  People who yesterday would have ignored her very existence today were tumbling over themselves to make her acquaintance. But once everyone had arrived she was free, free to dance with whomever claimed her first, and at this Lord Buckleigh was an expert.

  “I had no idea you were so tiny,” he said, holding her very close to him so that she had to throw back her head to look up into his eyes.

  “I am so very sorry you are disappointed.”

  He drew her even closer and held her hand so tightly that the fingers were bloodless.

  “You know what I feel about you,” he said. “I love you! You know that.”

  “Hush!” Aria looked over her shoulder apprehensively. “If you speak so loud, people will hear you.”

  “Do you think I care what they hear or what they say? I am going to see Dart Huron tomorrow and tell him the truth. That I love you and – ”

  “That you don’t intend to marry me nor I you,” Aria finished for him.

  “That’s not true. I would marry you by Special Licence if – ”

  “If! If! If!” Aria said. “There are so many ‘ifs’, aren’t there? If we had any money, if we loved each other – or, rather, if I loved you. No, there’s no future for us and well you know it.”

  “When you look at me with your witch’s eyes, I can think of nothing except that somehow I will possess you – whatever the cost,” he answered.

  There was so much passion in his voice that Aria realised that he was really roused for the first time. This was no playboy flirting with love, seeking a brief inconsequential affair. This was a man who really seemed to be awakening to love.

  There was no chance to answer him or to say more for at that moment the music stopped and they found Dart Huron standing beside them.

  “May I be permitted to claim a dance?” he asked Aria with a sarcastic note in his voice.

  “But, of course,” she answered.

  “You have been so preoccupied,” he said, “that I haven’t liked to interrupt your tête-à-tête with Tom. However, as, doubtless, people are talking, it would be wisest for us to take the floor together.”

  “It’s the first time I’ve ever known you worry about what people are thinking, Dart,” Lord Buckleigh said.

  But he walked away and Dart Huron put his arm round Aria’s waist.

  It was a tune she particularly liked. She swung into the rhythm of it, realising almost at once that, as she might have expected, he was a magnificent dancer.

  Lord Buckleigh had only really propelled her round the room, but with Dart Huron she was made to dance, following his steps with a sense of almost breathless excitement as the tempo of the music quickened and they found that, in some curious way, they were almost ideally suited to each other.

  “Are you enjoying yourself?” he asked after a moment.

  “I am. More, I think, than I have ever enjoyed myself before at a party.”

  She spoke simply and without the sarcastic note in her voice that she knew could goad him to anger.

  “You are looking lovely,” he said. “People are astonished and excited about you. They can’t think why they have never seen you before.”

  “Cinderella is ready to disappear at midnight,” she said. “Or, shall we say, when the party ends. Tomorrow she will be back in her rags and tatters sweeping the hearth.”

  “But tonight she is Princess Starlight,” he said. “Wasn’t that what she was called in the story?”

  “I think it was,” Aria agreed with a little smile.

  “And, if you remember, she thought that the Prince was charming.”

  She glanced up at him from under her eyelashes.

  “All the same, he didn’t trust her,” she said. “He disguised himself as Dandini – more, I have always thought, for the selfish motive of wanting to have a good time without any responsibility than because he wanted to be loved for himself alone.”

  “Perhaps he wanted both,” Dart Huron said. “And because it was a Fairy story he got it.”

  “Something that never happens, of course, in real life,” Aria finished.

  “I wonder,” he said. “Even in real life the unexpected can happen.”

  Aria smiled as she thought of his surprise as she had come down the stairs. That had been unexpected and the fact that they were dancing so close and so well together was unexpected too. Tomorrow seemed far away, when she must go back to being herself.

  Tonight she was Princess Starlight and she felt as if there were stars in her eyes as she said,

  “I don’t believe that Cinderella worried about anything except that the ball was the most wonderful party she had ever been to and the Prince said all the right things, so it didn’t matter who he was so long as he was kind and sweet to her.”

  “Shall I be kind and sweet to you?”

  She hardly heard the question, it was asked in such a low rather deep voice.

  “You might try – just for tonight?” she replied.

  The music came to an end and they stood for a moment looking at each other.

  She hated him, Aria thought, but it was hard to go on hating anyone when the ballroom was bathed in a soft seductive light, there was the scent of the great bowls of fragrant roses arranged along every wall. The music was soft and romantic and through the open windows there was a glimpse of a moonlit garden with the stars hanging pendant in the sable sky.

  “It’s my dance now, Dart. You can’t be so selfish as to keep her any longer.”

  It was Lord Buckleigh who spoke and he whirled Aria away in his arms before Dart Huron could reply. They danced round the room once and before she realised what was happening he had taken her by the hand and drawn her through one of the windows into the garden.

  They walked down the centre of the lawn to where a little arbour, covered in honeysuckle, was silver in the moonlight. Chairs covered with soft cushions had been arranged all over the garden, and in the arbour there was a sofa pulled a little back into the shadows on which a couple could sit in seclusion without being seen.

  Aria seated herself and spread out her skirts.r />
  “I mustn’t stay long – ” she began, but stopped abruptly because Lord Buckleigh, having seated himself beside her, had bent forward to kiss her naked shoulder.

  “You are entrancing,” he said. “We can’t go on like this. Aria, I am really serious. Marry me. I love you and I will make you happy.”

  “Please, you mustn’t say things like that to me. I have told you that I don’t love you and you know too that I am engaged to Dart Huron. You are employed by him and so am I. We must be loyal.”

  “Loyal! What’s loyalty? What’s honour? What’s anything when one is in love?” Lord Buckleigh said through his teeth.

  He would have put his arm around her waist, but Aria rose to her feet.

  “I must go back to the house,” she said a little unsteadily.

  “I won’t let you go. I won’t let you leave me. I know you despise me because I have tried to made love to you without intending to marry you. I thought, fool that I was, that loving you would be sufficient, but I know now it would never satisfy me. Even if you come away with me, even if you would live with me, it still wouldn’t be enough.

  “I want you as my wife. I want to own you. I want you to bear my name. I love you, Aria! Oh, God, how I love you!”

  He put his arms around her and drew her close to him with a frenzy and a passion that was inescapable. Then his lips were on her mouth. He held her there captive for a moment, until gently she stirred and moved away from him.

  “It’s no use, Tom – ” she began, only to feel a shadow cross the moonlight and to look round with a start to find that Dart Huron was standing only a few yards away from them.

  They both stood silent, feeling there was nothing to say and that words had entirely escaped them and flown from their consciousness.

  Then Dart Huron moved in closer.

  “Go back to the house, Tom,” he said harshly. “I shall want to speak with you later.”

  “But, Dart – ” Lord Buckleigh began,

  “I told you – go back to the house!”

  The words came like the crack of a whip. As if he could not help but obey, Lord Buckleigh squared his shoulders and walked away. He moved swiftly out of the moonlight into the shadows of the trees and Aria watched him go. He did not look back.