An Innocent in Paris Read online

  Apart from anything else, how could she say to a strange man that she had no money? Her purse was empty except perhaps for two or three francs left from the English money she had changed at Calais.

  “I will stay here,” she said firmly. “Now I am feeling better, I could perhaps go upstairs and look for my aunt. I am afraid the butler or whoever he was did not give her the message I sent to her.”

  “I can only advise you that it would be a mistake,” Lord Hartcourt replied.

  “Are you a very great friend of my aunt’s?” Gardenia asked.

  “I am afraid I cannot claim that privilege,” Lord Hartcourt answered. “I know her, of course, all Paris knows her. She is very ‒,” he hesitated for a word, “hospitable.”

  “Then I am certain she will extend her hospitality to her only niece,” Gardenia insisted.

  She rose from the couch and picked up her hat from where it had been flung on the floor.

  “I am most grateful to you for your kindness in bringing me here and for arranging that I should have some food. I shall ask my aunt tomorrow to express her gratitude to you too,” she said and then, as Lord Hartcourt said nothing, she held out her hand.

  “I think before I fainted so very foolishly you wanted to leave. Please, Lord Hartcourt, do not let me keep you.”

  He took her hand in his and said abruptly in a voice curiously devoid of any emotion,

  “Will you allow me to tell the servants to take you upstairs and show you your bedroom? In the morning, when your aunt is awake, she will be far more pleased to see you than she will be at this moment.”

  “I think you take too much upon yourself. Far from creeping up the backstairs as you seem to suggest, I have every intention of seeing my aunt at once.”

  “Very well,” Lord Hartcourt replied. “So in that case I will bid you ‘goodnight’. But just reflect, before you do anything stupid that, seeing you in the clothes you are wearing now, other people at this party may get the same impression as my friend, the Comte André de Grenelle.”

  He walked out of the door as he spoke and closed it behind him.

  Gardenia stood staring after him.

  Then the implication of his words and, what she felt was the insult in them, hit her. Her hands went right up to her flaming cheeks. How dare he mock her? How dare he sneer at her clothes and at her appearance? She felt she hated him, the stuck-up aristocratic Englishman with his cold manner and cynical twist to his mouth.

  What impertinence to suggest that she would not be welcome in her aunt’s house or that she was not good enough for her smart friends who were making so much noise upstairs.

  Then, as suddenly as it had been aroused, Gardenia’s anger ebbed away. But, of course, he was right. It was the way he had said it that annoyed her. She felt it had been a battle of wills between them, Lord Hartcourt had been determined that she should not see her aunt tonight and she was equally determined that she should.

  Even so, he had won because he had struck at what was always a vulnerable point where a woman is concerned. Her appearance.

  The moment of terror and panic that she had felt when the Comte’s arms had gone round her and she had known that his lips were seeking hers, returned to frighten her. How could he have imagined that she was nothing but the play-actress of a Music Hall turn to amuse the guests upstairs? What had he said about her getting into the trunk – ?

  She put her fingers up to her ears as if to shut out the memory of his voice. She wished she could also forget the expression in his eyes. And yet, if she did not go to her aunt, what was she to do? Lord Hartcourt was right. To walk up to the ballroom in her travelling dress would be to cause a sensation and to be an object of curiosity and unfair speculation.

  Gardenia might have been defiant with Lord Hartcourt because she resented his attitude, but she knew, now that he had gone, that she was after all too much of a coward to do as she had intended.

  ‘Well, one thing is certain,’ she told herself with sound common sense, ‘I cannot stay in this room all night.’

  She thought of going into the hall and asking for the Major Domo, then she remembered that because of her shabby appearance she had already aroused his surprise and contempt.

  ‘If only I had some money,’ she thought despairingly, ‘I could tip him and that at least might make him respect me.’

  But she knew that the few miserable francs left in her purse would mean nothing to the Major Domo or to any of the grand supercilious footmen with their powdered wigs.

  She crossed to the mantelshelf and rang the bell. The bell-pull was a beautiful piece of tapestry hanging from the cornice with a gold tassel. Gardenia could not help the involuntary thought that even the price of the bell-pull would provide her with a new dress.

  The bell was not answered for some few minutes. In fact Gardenia was wondering if she should pull it again when the door opened.

  It was a footman who had come in answer to her summons, the same footman Gardenia thought, who had brought in the tray of food for her. For a moment Gardenia hesitated, and then she spoke slowly in her excellent almost classical French.

  “Will you please ask the housekeeper to attend me,” she said. “I am not well enough to join Her Grace’s party and I would like a room prepared for me upstairs.”

  The footman bowed.

  “I will see if I can find the housekeeper, mamselle,” he replied.

  It was a long wait. Afterwards Gardenia wondered if the housekeeper had retired to bed and had been forced to rise and dress herself again. At length she appeared, a rather blowsy-looking woman, big-bosomed with somewhat untidy greying hair, not at all the austere type of her English counterpart that Gardenia had somehow expected.

  “Bonjour, mamselle, I understand you are the niece of Madame?” the housekeeper said.

  “That is correct, but I am afraid that I have arrived at rather an inopportune moment. Of course I am impatient to see my aunt, but, as I am rather tired and indisposed after the long journey, I think it would perhaps be wise if I waited until the morning when my aunt will be less occupied.”

  “It would indeed be much wiser,” the housekeeper agreed. “If you will come with me, mamselle, I will show you your bedroom. I have already told the footmen to take your trunk there.”

  “Thank you very much,” Gardenia said gratefully.

  The housekeeper turned towards the door and opened it. It seemed to Gardenia as if a loud sound entered the room like a whirlwind. There were high shrill voices, men shouting, a woman’s shriek, a crash as of some heavy object followed by a burst of raucous laughter.

  What was happening outside in the hall Gardenia could not imagine.

  The housekeeper closed the door.

  “I think, mamselle, it would be easier if you would condescend to come up the back way. There is a door from this room that leads to the back staircase.”

  “Yes, I think that would be wiser,” Gardenia agreed.

  She would not have liked Lord Hartcourt to think her a cowar but she shrank with every nerve of her body from going out into that noise and turmoil and running the gauntlet of that shrill insistent laughter.

  The housekeeper crossed the room. She must have touched a secret switch for a part of the bookcase swung open and there was a doorway leading into a long narrow passage.

  Without any comment she let Gardenia follow her through the opening and pulled the bookcase to again. Then she led her along the passage and up a narrow rather dark staircase. She passed the first floor and, climbing still higher, reached the second.

  Here the housekeeper seemed to hesitate at the door of the landing and Gardenia thought that she was about to open it. Then, after listening for a few seconds, she changed her mind.

  “I think a room on the next floor would be best, mamselle.”

  They climbed again and this time the housekeeper opened the door on the landing at the top of the stairs onto a very well-lit and heavily carpeted passage.

  Moving along they re
ached the main staircase. Gardenia glanced over the banisters. She could see, it seemed to her, there were men and women bulging out from all floors beneath her.

  The noise of their voices was deafening and it was even hard to hear the violins above the roar of their laughter.

  There was something rather frightening about the laughter itself. It sounded strange and uncontrolled, as though the people who laughed had drunk too much. Then she dismissed the thought from her mind. It was unpleasant and disloyal. These people were French. It was obvious that being a Latin race they were not so reserved as the English would be in similar circumstances.

  Then she almost ran from the banisters to follow the housekeeper, who had opened the door of a small room.

  “Tomorrow, mamselle, I am sure Her Grace will want a bigger and better room prepared for you,” the housekeeper said. “Tonight this is the best we can do. I made a mistake in the room I told the men to carry your trunk to. I will find them and send them here immediately. Is there anything else you wish?”

  “No, thank you and I am very grateful to you for the trouble you have taken.”

  “It is no trouble at all, mamselle, I will get her Grace’s personal maid to tell you in the morning when Her Grace is awake. She will not wish to be disturbed before midday at the earliest.”

  “I can quite understand that after a party,” Gardenia commented.

  “The housekeeper gave a little shrug of her shoulders.

  “Here it is always a party,” she said and then went from the room.

  Gardenia sat down on the bed. She felt as if her knees were too weak to carry her any further.

  “Here it is always a party.”

  What did that mean?

  Would she be expected to live at this high pressure, to join in with the laughing crowds whose noise seemed to increase rather than diminish although it was past two o’clock in the morning?

  Had she made a mistake? So should she not have come?

  She felt as though a cold hand clutched her heart. It was almost physical in its intensity. But what else could she have done? Where else could she have gone?

  Suddenly there was a knock on the door.

  “Who is there?”

  She did not know why she was frightened. It was just that for a moment the fear of all that laughter downstairs seemed to bring her uncertainly to her feet, her voice trembling and her heart leaping in her breast

  “Votre baggage, mamselle.”

  “Oh, yes, of course,” Gardenia breathed to herself.

  She had forgotten that her trunk had been sent to the wrong room. She opened the door. Two footmen carried in her shabby trunk and, setting it down at the end of the bed, they undid the worn straps and with respectful bows left the room.

  “Bonne nuit, mamselle,” they chorused as they went.

  “Bonne nuit et merci,” Gardenia replied.

  As the door closed behind them, she rose to her feet. Crossing the room, she turned the key and locked the door. It was something that she had never done in her life before.

  But now she locked herself in and locked out whatever might be outside. Somehow only with the door fastened did she feel safe. Only with the key held tightly in her shaking hands did she know that the laughter and noise downstairs could not encroach on her and not come near her.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “So this is where you have moved to,” Bertram Cunningham commented as he entered the large sunny room in the British Embassy where, at the far end, Lord Hartcourt was seated at a desk writing.

  “I forgot to tell you I have been promoted,” Lord Hartcourt answered.

  The Honourable Bertram Cunningham seated himself on the edge of the desk and tapped his shiny black riding boots with the tip of the leather switch he held in his gloved hands.

  “You will have to be careful, my boy,” he said in a jovial tone. You were always a bit of a swot at Eton. If you don’t look out they will be making you an Ambassador or something.”

  “There is no fear of that,” Lord Hartcourt replied, “Charles Lavington went off ill and decided to chuck in his hand so I have taken his place.”

  “If you want my opinion,” Bertram Cunningham said, “his illness was entirely due to too much Maxim’s and the expenses of that little ladybird he was always taking to Cartier the morning after.”

  “I should not be surprised,” Lord Hartcourt replied to him in a somewhat bored tone.

  He disliked conversation that verged on gossip and it had never interested him.

  “Incidentally,” Bertram Cunningham chatted on, while we are talking of ladybirds, what is this story André de Grenelle has been telling me? I met him riding in the Bois de Boulogne. He was full of a sensational denouement at Lily de Mabillon’s last night.”

  “Never, never listen to anything the Comte has to say,” Lord Hartcourt said coldly. “It is inevitably inaccurate if not entirely invented.”

  “Oh, don’t be stuffy, Vane,” Bertram Cunningham said. “There must be something in the story. Why, de Grenelle told me that the Duchesse had imported a new turn from the Moulin Rouge, who looked like a nun or even a schoolgirl. But before she could appear upstairs she collapsed into your arms and you carried her away into another room and locked the door!”

  Lord Hartcourt laughed briefly, but the sound had no humour in it.

  “Well, is it true?” Bertram Cunningham persisted. “I just cannot credit de Grenelle with having made all that up.”

  “It has a slight element of truth somewhere, lavishly ornamented with the Comte’s very vivid imagination,” Lord Hartcourt said drily. “Mind you, I do like de Grenelle up to a certain point. He is amusing when a trifle foxed. But the morning after he is a dead bore. Personally I avoid him and I advise you to do the same.”

  “Now stop evading the question,” Bertram said, slapping his whip down on the polished desk. “I want to know what happened and by Jove, Vane, you are going to tell me!”

  And if I don’t?” Lord Hartcourt enquired.

  “Then I shall go straight round and demand to see Her Grace and find out what really went on.”

  Lord Hartcourt laughed again.

  “You will get very short shrift at this hour of the morning. Besides I can imagine nothing more depressing than to see the debris after one of the more spirited parties chez Mabillon!”

  “Then who was the charmer? André was extremely flowery in his description of her. Fair hair, grey eyes and heart-shaped face combined with an air of real or assumed innocence. It sounds most intriguing to me.”

  “De Grenelle was drunk!” Lord Hartcourt pointed out.

  “I should not imagine any of you were very sober,” Bertram Cunningham chaffed, “but it is just my luck to have to escort the Ambassadress to a party when all those excitements were going on. Very dull it was too. Would you believe it, we sat on gilt chairs for over two hours listening to some long-haired Pole playing the piano and afterwards we danced. There was not a woman in the room under fifty!”

  This time Lord Hartcourt laughed without reservation.

  Then he rose from the desk and put his hand on his cousin’s shoulder.

  “Poor Bertie. You really do earn your salary at times like that.”

  “I don’t mind telling you now,” Bertram said hotly, “if there are many more of them I am going to send in my resignation. I am becoming fed up with the whole thing. If it was not for you being here and one or two other chaps, I would then go straight back to London. After all it will be Royal Ascot in a few weeks.”

  Lord Hartcourt sauntered over to the window and looked out over the Embassy garden. The lilacs and magnolias were in full bloom and tulips made a glorious patch of red beneath a tree of golden laburnum.

  “England is always beautiful at this time of the year,” he said quietly. “Perhaps we are fools to waste our time and our money in any foreign country, even Paris.”

  “Henriette being difficult?” Bertram asked with a sudden sympathy in his voice.

 
; “Oh no!” he replied. “She is as entrancing as ever. It is just occasionally, Bertie, I find the whole thing so damned artificial. Too many parties, too much drink, too many people like the Comte making a drama about nothing.”

  “You still have not told me what ‘nothing’ was,” Bertram Cunningham said pointedly.

  Lord Hartcourt turned from the window to walk back to his desk.

  “It is of little significance. As the Comte and I were leaving, we found a girl sitting in the hall. She was English, shabby, travel-stained and obviously very out of her element and when De Grenelle tried to kiss her she protested. And I obviously had to go to her rescue. Then she fainted from lack of food, not from fear of the Comte’s Latin attentions.”

  “So he was telling the truth,” Bertram Cunningham exclaimed. “Was she outstandingly pretty? André has gone into eulogies over her.”

  “I really did not notice,” Lord Hartcourt relied in a bored voice. “I told the servants to bring some food, gave her my advice, which she had no intention of taking, and came away.”

  “You left her after all that excitement?” Bertram Cunningham asked.

  “It really was not very exciting,” Lord Hartcourt said with a twist of his lips. “The girl was exhausted. She had been travelling since early morning and, I fancy, the wooden coaches of a French train are none too comfortable.”

  “But who is she? Did you find out?” Bertram Cunningham enquired.

  “She said she was the Duchesse’s niece.”

  “Her niece!” Bertram exclaimed. “In that case André is most likely right. She is a chip off the old block! You undoubtedly spoiled her grand entrance. According to André she was going to get into her trunk in her dress and get out with little on save a few spangles!”

  “De Grenelle talks the most utter nonsense,” Lord Hartcourt said. “I don’t think for one moment that she was anything but a genuine traveller. As for being a niece of the Duchesse, who knows?”

  He shrugged his shoulders and started to tidy the papers on his desk.