The Star of Love Page 7

  Cliona began to wander on ahead of him.

  “Who are these lovely little boys?” she asked, stopping before a portrait.

  “My father and his brother,” said Charles, coming up beside her. “They were twins.”

  “And these?” she asked, moving on again.

  “One of them is me, the other is my cousin John. We both take after our fathers, which is why we’re so alike.”

  “Yes, for a moment I thought they were twins too. But now I look closer I can see the differences. Were you close?”

  “Yes, we were,” he said after a moment. “As boys we were like brothers, always getting into mischief and backing each other up.” He smiled as memories of those days came back to him. “One of us would do the dirty deed and the other would be the lookout.”

  “What dirty deed?”

  He grinned. “Any dirty deed that needed doing. We didn’t care. If it got the grown-ups upset it was fun. At school they tried to split us up, thinking we were less dangerous apart. It didn’t work. We just gravitated back together.”

  His smile faded as his memories became more intense. “He was my best and dearest friend. I told him things that I have never told anyone else. And he confided in me too. I thought I knew everything that he was thinking.”

  There was a long silence before she asked sympathetically, “and you didn’t?”

  “No,” he said quietly. “I didn’t.”

  “What happened?”

  It would have been so easy to tell her all about John, but strangely he found that he just couldn’t do it. Talking about his childhood had seemed to bring the old John back for a moment, bright, witty, daredevil and someone the young Charles had secretly admired.

  For a moment he forgot the recent past and thought about the person who had once been closer to him than anyone in the world. The glow of that golden time lived again, and he knew he could not speak badly of John, even to her. It would have been disloyal.

  Seeing her looking at him curiously, he hastened to say, “nothing really happened. We grew up and grew apart.”

  “But surely you could still be friends?”

  “Our lives lie apart. He lives in London. It is useless to dwell on the past.”

  “Oh yes, I do agree,” she said with quick sympathy. “Whether it was happy or sad, dwelling on it can be just as painful.”

  She spoke with a peculiar inflection, as though her words had a special significance, personal to herself, and he looked closely at her.

  “You are so young,” he said gently. “Surely there hasn’t been time for your life to contain much of either?”

  “It takes only a moment for happiness to be destroyed,” she replied.

  “You are right,” he said sombrely. “And a long time for it to be created.”

  “Not always. It can happen in a moment, as I found by your river. A moment before I had been feeling discontented and unsettled. But then I saw this hurrying water, shining in the sun, and it seemed to speak to me, as though it was offering me a gift. And it gave me a moment of such happiness.”

  “I’m so glad,” he said tenderly.

  As they talked he had led her towards the door and out into the passage. He took her downstairs using a private staircase, rather than the main one which they had used to descend to dinner.

  At the foot of the steps they paused, listening to the music that was still coming along a narrow corridor from the music room.

  “We should go back to the others,” he said.

  “Yes, I suppose we should.”

  “But let me show you the garden first,” he suggested, taking her hand and leading her in the other direction.

  Outside, darkness had fallen. The flowers were turned to silver and the trees seemed to be hiding secrets.

  “How lovely everything looks in the moonlight,” said Cliona. “Sometimes I wish it could always be moonlight – soft and mysterious.”

  “But dangerous,” he added. “Moonlight can hide so much. Isn’t it better to see the truth in the sunshine?”

  “But do you see it?” she asked. “I think it can be an illusion that we see better when a bright light is cast over things.”

  Again she spoke as though she was thinking of something personal, and Charles was moved so say, “Why were you feeling discontented and unsettled that day by the river?”

  “Oh – ” she shrugged, “everything and nothing. Many people would think I was the luckiest girl in the world.”

  “You told me that your father died last year. I suppose that must have been very sad for you. And your mother a year earlier.”

  “Yes, I loved my mother very much. I loved Papa too and he really did love me.” She sounded as though she was trying to persuade herself. “I know he did. It was just – he thought everything would be all right – he always thought that.”

  “He gambled a good deal, didn’t he?” said Charles gently.

  “You heard? I suppose everyone heard. That’s why we moved abroad. To escape the notoriety. And it can be easier to gamble abroad.”

  They began to walk away from the house, deeper into the garden, finding their way by the moonlight.

  “Were you very unhappy having to live away from your own country?” asked Charles.

  “I didn’t mind. It was a very free and easy life compared to how I would have lived in England. It was exciting too. Sometimes Papa would win a lot of money, and we would live well, and at other times he’d lose and we’d have to move out of our hotel very fast, before the bailiffs came. Sometimes we had everything and sometimes we had nothing, because Papa sold things to pay his debts.”

  Charles frowned, glad that the darkness was hiding his face. He found this story painful for reasons he could never have told her.

  “It sounds far too exciting,” he observed after a while.

  “Well, to a little girl growing up it could be fun. Papa taught me all sorts of things that a young lady isn’t supposed to know.” She gave a little laugh. “You wouldn’t believe how many card games I can play.”

  “Your father taught you?”

  “He taught me everything. Oh dear!” she stopped with her hand over her mouth. “I promised Aunt Martha I wouldn’t tell anybody. She said Papa was disreputable, and it would make people think me ‘an improper person’.”

  “Don’t worry,” he said tenderly. “Your secret is safe with me.”

  “Oh I know that, or I wouldn’t have told you. It is such a relief to be able to speak freely. You don’t know what it’s like having to conceal the truth of your whole existence.”

  “Perhaps I do,” he said quietly. “But please tell me more about your life. I gather it’s been like no other girl’s.”

  “In many ways. I have met many unusual people –”

  “Improper people?” he teased.

  “Some of them were on the run from the law. Papa made friends with everyone. As I said, I quite enjoyed it. But Mama was different. She didn’t find it fun. She wanted a quiet, settled life in her own country, living as other women lived.

  “Papa kept promising that one day soon he would win a lot of money and we could all go back to England, but it never happened, and at last Mama lost hope. He was still making promises on the day she died.

  “I think that’s when I grew up. Suddenly I saw that it wasn’t really fun at all. Mama had pined and pined, longing for her home and her own family. And Papa had given her fine words and forgotten them five minutes later, because he was too selfish to care for anything but his own pleasures.

  “Because of him she was buried in a foreign grave among strangers. And still Papa would not admit that there was anything wrong with the way we were living. He said he was giving me a good education, because I learned to speak several languages. We had friends in high society because he could charm his way wherever he went. He couldn’t think what more I could want.

  “And I didn’t know how to tell him how much I wanted a home, certainly not in words that he could understand.
And then he died when we were in Berlin, and I was left alone.”

  “Completely alone?” Charles echoed, aghast.

  “I had my old Nanny, and she saved me. I felt quite desperate, and I prayed and prayed for something good to happen. But Tibby told me, ‘It’s no use sitting down and waiting for good luck to come through the window. You have to go out and find it yourself. Or create it.’

  “She knew that my mother’s brother was an explorer. He was usually living in a tent on the other side of the world, but he happened to be in Paris at that time, lecturing about his discoveries. Tibby said, ‘we’re going to Paris,’ and bundled me onto a train.

  “She was wonderful. In Paris we waited outside the lecture hall and when my uncle came out she just pushed me in front of him. Luckily I look very much like Mama, so he knew I was his niece. After that I stayed with him, and for a while I had a kind of home, but early this year he too died.”

  “That’s a terrible story,” Charles admitted.

  “Oh no, not really, because when things were at their worst, there was always some moment of beauty to make life worthwhile. I’d be feeling weary and depressed, and I would hear a bird singing. That’s why I believe in miracles. Even a little thing can be a miracle, and sometimes the little ones are the ones that matter.”

  He could not speak. Her simple belief in the goodness of life, her conviction that a kindly power was watching over her, made him feel that he had yielded to his own despair too readily.

  And suddenly they heard a sound from the house.

  Somebody was playing the violin, a gentle aching tune that reached them on the breeze. It was poignant and beautiful and they listened in silence, looking at each other in the moonlight.

  She smiled at him.

  “You see?” she said softly.

  Turning, she began to walk away from him across the lawn, almost seeming to float. And the music drifted after her.

  CHAPTER SIX

  For a while Charles stayed as he was, feeling as if he was transfixed. Then he began to follow Cliona across the lawn, her pale dress just visible as it fluttered in the semidarkness.

  Between the trees and flowers he moved, until he came to a small stream where Cliona was standing, looking into the water, as he had first seen her.

  It flashed through his mind that perhaps she was so fond of the water, because she was part of it herself. That somehow, if he was not careful, she would step into it and disappear.

  Instead of being earth-bound and ordinary as other women were, she was mystical and not really of this world.

  ‘I must stop thinking these absurd thoughts and be sensible,’ he told himself.

  But he did not want to be sensible where Cliona was concerned. He wanted to fall at her feet.

  As he neared her she glanced up at him and then looked away to where the stream meandered into the trees.

  “Have you found what you are looking for?” Charles asked her.

  There was silence for a moment. Then she asked,

  “Is that was you think I’m doing? Looking for something?”

  “After what you’ve told me tonight, I should think you have been looking for something special all your life.”

  She nodded. “I’ve always sought something to hold onto, but I think that’s true of everyone in different ways.”

  “Something to hold onto,” he mused, “something that will guide us when we cannot guide ourselves.”

  He spoke very softly. As she looked up at him, he could just make out her face and sense her surprise.

  “You will find it,” she said in a voice that came from her heart. “Just as I did. I know that it is God himself who protects and helps us.”

  “I want to believe that,” he burst out, “but I can’t. There’s no answer for me, I know that now. I search in all directions, but I know there’s no hope.”

  She gave a gasp of horror.

  “No, that’s terribly wrong. You mustn’t give up hope. That is the only real sin, to despair and believe that God will not help you.”

  Then to the Earl’s surprise he felt her slip her hand into his, as she said, “you don’t see it now because we’re only human and we don’t understand God’s way, but He will show you what you are seeking.”

  It was as though she had the mysterious power to read his thoughts. How else could her magic be explained?

  But then he knew that there was another explanation, that her magic was the oldest in the world and he had been a fool to let himself fall under her spell. For by doing so he had certainly made things worse for himself. To debt and despair he had now added the pain of a parting from a woman he loved.

  A woman he loved.

  No, he thought at once. The woman he loved.

  He had loved before, or thought he had. But never like this. Other women had charmed and excited him, but no more than that. This woman’s soul spoke to his.

  For what seemed like an age, he floundered in silence. At last, as if the words were torn from him, he said,

  “Then I am the worst of sinners, because I do despair. There is nothing else for me. My prayers don’t reach Heaven or, if they do, nobody listens to them.”

  Scarcely were the words out than her finger tips were across his lips. “Never say that. Never. Try to have faith.”

  “I have faith in you,” he replied. “Only you.”

  “I will pray for you, just as you must pray for yourself. And you will no longer be unhappy and afraid.”

  She spoke in a very soft quiet voice. Yet Charles seemed to hear every word almost as if she was saying it from Heaven itself. He was in a dream, but he tried to think clearly.

  “How can you know that?” he implored. “How can you be sure that what you are saying to me is the truth?”

  “What I have said will come true,” Cliona said in a very low voice. “I feel it in my heart and in my soul.”

  She turned and started to walk back the way they had come. He followed her and by the time he caught up with her she had reached the steps.

  “Look at me, Cliona,” he said.

  She turned and gazed at him without speaking. He could just see her in the moonlight.

  “You were born under a lucky star,” she said. “When we met the other day, I knew as soon as you spoke to me that somehow I would be able to prevent you from suffering so much.”

  “How could you know that?” Charles asked.

  But Cliona shook her head.

  “It’s a mistake to ask too much. Can you not simply trust me?”

  He said hoarsely, “I would trust you more than anyone in the world.”

  “Look!” She pointed to the sky. “I said you were born under a lucky star. There it is, do you see it?”

  Charles followed her pointing finger up into the heavens. He was standing so close to her that her sweet fragrance reached him, like the scent of fresh flowers, making him giddy with delight and desire.

  “Which one?” he asked. “I can’t tell.”

  “There! The one that’s sparkling more brightly than any of the others. Can you see how it outshines them all? That is your star.”

  “Because you say so?” he asked tenderly.

  “Because it’s true.” She swung round to face him. “I know. Trust me, I know. Don’t you believe me?”

  “I think I would believe anything you told me,” he said quietly.

  She smiled. The moonlight was directly on her face and he saw again how lovely she was. There was a soft glow to the pearls in her hair and about her neck, but a deeper glow in her eyes.

  For a moment he just looked at her.

  Then his arms seemed to move without his urging them. Suddenly they were around her, he was pulling her close, his lips seeking hers in a burning kiss.

  In the past he had kissed many women. Too many, perhaps. But this was unlike anything he had experienced before. This was the kiss he had been waiting for all his life. The kiss of the one and only woman.

  He felt her body soft against h
is and pulled her closer still, feeling that they were part of each other.

  “Cliona,” he murmured, kissing her again and again.

  At last he drew back a little to look down on her sweet face, half expecting her to berate him for his forwardness. No gentleman kissed a girl passionately on such short acquaintance. He had proved himself a cad – that was what she would say. Then she would slap his face. And he would deserve it.

  He even hoped that she would do so and startle him out of the spell in which he was helpless to do anything but pursue her like a man pursuing a pixie light through a forest.

  But she did nothing. She only stood there in his arms, a look of sweet contentment on her face, half smiling at him in a way that destroyed his resolution.

  A kind of madness overtook him. With a groan he gathered her against him again, raining more fierce kisses on her upturned face. For a wild, intense moment passion overcame him completely. All his honourable resolutions counted for nothing against the joy of holding this wonderful woman, feeling her lips against his, her heart beating against his own.

  He could have died at that moment and counted the world well lost.

  He felt her responding to him and knew that her feelings were as strong as his own. Her soft arms reached up to him and he could sense her innocent soul in the embrace she gave him.

  She had no false modesty, he knew that at once. No pretence of reluctance in order to inflame him. No coquettish feminine tricks to lure him on and make a fool of him. Everything in her was honest and true. If she loved a man she would be too generous to deny it in thought, word or deed. For a blissful moment everything in him rejoiced in that knowledge.

  But then he was swept by a black sense of his own dishonest behaviour.

  He could not marry her. He had told himself that and he knew it to be true. He had vowed, too, to kill the attraction between them and kill his own rapidly growing feelings for her, because they could not be pursued with honour.

  And what was he doing?

  Behaving in a way that would compromise her if it were known. Risking the destruction of her spotless reputation for the gratification of his own feelings.