Sweet Enchantress Read online

  Hastily she walked out of her cabin and then, as she passed the superstructure on deck and came in full sight of the bow, she saw Chuck.

  He was standing on the prow beside Kate and her arm was linked in his as they watched the ship nose its way out of the harbour into the open sea.

  Kate was looking up at him, speaking earnestly, her attractive profile with its little tip-tilted nose and full mouth silhouetted against the blue of the sky.

  And Chuck was looking down at her.

  There was something in the closeness of them and their obvious oblivion to everything and everybody except their own conversation that made Zaria feel as if she had been turned to stone.

  She must have stood there for almost half a minute before she turned and very slowly retraced her steps.

  She walked slowly, almost as if she had suddenly become an old woman or as if something young and tender had gone from her leaving her utterly defeated.

  Wildly a hundred thoughts rushed through her head.

  What did she know about Chuck?

  Nothing!

  Who was he?

  Where had he come from?

  How could she explain even to herself why she had trusted him when he had burst into her room, throwing himself on her mercy and begging her help? Was it surprising, now that he had got what he wanted, that he had little use for her?

  And it had been obvious, even last night, that Kate found him attractive and was determined to get hold of him.

  ‘Why should I mind? What is it to me?’ Zaria asked herself.

  She knew that she could never explain in words what Chuck did mean to her, except that he was the one secure, one understandable thing in a world that was almost too bewildering to be tolerated.

  She had reached the companionway and would have gone below if she had not felt a touch on her arm and found Edie Morgan standing beside her.

  Without meaning to she shrank away from him, but he caught hold of her and in a friendly familiar way slipped his hand under her elbow and drew her to where the others were sitting under the red awning.

  “Come along, Miss Brown,” he said. “We’ve been wanting to see you.”

  He paused and smiled down at her small shrinking figure.

  “And why the heck do we call you ‘Miss Brown’ all the time?” he asked. “Zaria’s a real pretty name and that’s what your young man calls you, isn’t it? Well, Zaria, Mr. Virdon wants to have a word with you.”

  ‘I know what’s coming,’ Zaria thought wildly.

  There was nothing she could say or do but let Edie Morgan lead her across the deck and settle her comfortably in one of the red-cushioned armchairs beside Mr. Virdon.

  She was very conscious as she did so of Victor’s pebble-like eyes staring at her and of Madame Bertin’s quite undisguised curiosity.

  “Lulu,” Edie said, turning to the latter. “You haven’t met Zaria have you? She’s Corny’s secretary and a pretty good one you can be sure of that, although Corny hasn’t got down to much work so far this trip.”

  “Enchantée,” Madame Bertin said. “I am delighted to meet you, mademoiselle.”

  “Now see here, Zaria,” Edie said, seating himself beside her. “When I told you yesterday that Corny was going to send you and your young man back home because he thought it was unfair to keep you at work when you wanted to be together, he was just being unselfish. That’s the trouble with Corny. He’s always impulsive, always thinking of other people. Isn’t that right, Corny boy?”

  “I hope it’s right,” Mr. Virdon said. “I certainly try to do so. Too many rich men in my position forget that others are less fortunate than themselves.”

  He spoke with great solemnity, his face quite impassive behind his dark glasses.

  Somehow Zaria felt that his words did not ring quite true.

  “Well, that’s Corny all over,” Edie Morgan went on. “But now, just through being warm-hearted, he’s put himself in a spot. A friend of ours who was to have turned up with Madame Bertin has been – er – unavoidably delayed. And so, Zaria, we’re going to ask you to be a real sport and stay with us!”

  “What about Mr. Tanner?”

  Zaria did not mean to ask the question, it slipped out, and she saw the glance that passed between Edie and Victor before the former said,

  “Where you go, Mr. Tanner goes! That’s the arrangement, isn’t it? We’re not quarrelling with that. Glad to have him. He seems a nice boy, eh, Corny?”

  “Of course, we’re delighted to include Mr. Tanner in our party for as long as he wishes to stay,” Mr. Virdon replied.

  “Then that’s settled,” Edie Morgan said with satisfaction. “Thank you, Zaria. You’re a real sport.”

  Even as Edie spoke Kate and Chuck appeared.

  “Haven’t you kept a drink for me?” Kate demanded.

  “No, and you can’t have one because you’re late,” Mr. Virdon answered. “Grub’s up, let’s eat. It may get rough later and I don’t want to miss any more meals.”

  “No, indeed!” Kate exclaimed. “Lulu, you’ve no idea how rough it was. We all felt absolutely ghastly.”

  She slipped her arm into Madame Bertin’s and they walked down to the Saloon chattering gaily.

  Zaria found herself looking up at Chuck. He smiled at her, but she fancied that there was something lacking in his smile, some warmth, something that had been there before.

  ‘I am imagining things,’ she told herself, but she was still too miserable to do anything but turn blindly away and follow the others.

  Luncheon was delicious, but as far as Zaria was concerned she might just as well have been eating sawdust.

  All she could think of was Chuck and wonder what he was thinking as he sat beside Kate on the other side of the table from her.

  “You come here,” Kate had said with her inviting smile and he had obeyed her without any protest, leaving Zaria to sit in a vacant place on Victor’s right.

  Madame Bertin was between Mr. Virdon and Edie Morgan and was regaling them with a very amusing account of her struggles to get all her boxes into two cars.

  “What sort of dresses have you brought, Lulu?” Kate asked.

  She had been whispering something to Chuck, something that Zaria could not overhear and now her attention seemed to have been caught by the idea of clothes.

  “Toutes les choses,” Madame Bertin replied. “And at every price. I go to all the big houses and I look at what they have and then I go home and design my own collection. Exquisite! Unique! Divine! You know as well as I do that French women are far more particular about what they buy than any other women in the world.”

  “And after all that fuss I don’t think they look as hot as all that,” Kate said spitefully.

  Madame Bertin’s eyes flashed.

  “You don’t understand what you are saying, you stupid child. A Frenchwoman may not have the complexion, the hair or the figure of an American girl, but because of the care she takes, because of her good taste, she makes herself the best dressed, the most chic woman in the whole world.”

  “It’s a lie!” Kate exclaimed. “It’s a lie, isn’t it, Chuck? You tell them.”

  “Give me a girl, any girl,” Madame Bertin said, “and by teaching her how to make the best of herself and by dressing her with genius, yes, genius is the right word, I will make her outstanding even though you are competing with her, my pretty flamboyant Kate.”

  “Well, I don’t believe you,” Kate replied petulantly. “It’s all very well to talk like that, but I’ll bet my bottom dollar it’s what a girl leaves off that attracts a man not what she puts on!”

  “I think if it comes to a competition I’ll put my money on Kate,” Edie piped up.

  “Darling, we’ll have one,” Kate laughed, “and it’ll cost Lulu a pretty penny.”

  “But I’m not certain I don’t back Lulu,” Victor remarked. “She’s got something, you know, just as I tell you those French girls have. It isn’t their looks and it isn’t their figures, it’
s something else.”

  “It is their clothes,” Madame Bertin reiterated, her voice rising almost to a shout.

  “Well, I would certainly like to see this competition,” Chuck said. “Although I should not care to be the judge.”

  “But you shall be,” Kate said suddenly, a little glint in her eyes. “You shall be judge, Chuck, and so shall Corny and Edie and Victor. We’ll make Victor eat his words as well.”

  “What do you mean?” Victor asked curiously.

  “We will have the competition here and now,” Kate said. “I’ll put on my best for tonight, I’ll show you what I look like when I’m got up to kill. And Lulu! There’s your model. Make what you can of her.”

  To Zaria’s astonishment and consternation Kate pointed across the table to her, her finger outstretched, her blue eyes alight with mischief as she said again,

  “There she is. Now, Lulu, prove your words and turn Miss Brown into a beauty.”

  “No!” Zaria said quickly. “No, I don’t want to take part in this.”

  “Now, don’t you get het up,” Victor said. “It’s only a bit of fun and we have to pass the time somehow. Let Lulu do her best – or her worst. That is if she agrees. What do you say, Lulu?”

  Zaria felt Madame Bertin’s dark eyes flickering over her, taking in every detail. It almost seemed to Zaria as if she undressed her and her pitifully thin, bony body was exposed to the ridicule of those watching.

  Then to her complete astonishment Madame Bertin said,

  “Bien! I accept. What I have said I have said. What are the stakes?”

  “One hundred dollars?” Edie said. “Two hundred?”

  “Five hundred dollars,” Madame Bertin replied. “That is what the challenge is worth to me. And what is more, I want a secret ballot. No one will know who has voted for which girl. Is that understood?”

  “Agreed,” Edie said briefly. “And no cheating, Kate. I’m not having you take the hell out of me for the next six months if I vote against you.”

  “You vote against me and I’ll kill you,” Kate snapped. “And that goes for you too Chuck,” she said, turning her face up in a seductive gesture that no one could misunderstand.

  “I shall be as impartial as I think Mr. Morgan will be,” Chuck answered.

  “But, please! I don’t want to do it,” Zaria said, her voice so low as to be almost indistinct.

  “Go on, be a sport,” Kate admonished. “It’s only fun. I want an excuse for dressing up. And it will do Lulu good to open those boxes of hers. There are certainly enough of them.”

  They were all against her. It was part of their enjoyment and nothing she could say or do, Zaria realised, was going to prevent them using her for their entertainment.

  She pushed back her chair with a little bang. She felt as if she could bear no more. She wanted to cry out to Chuck, to say aloud what she had heard this morning – the threat that had been in Edie’s voice.

  And then she knew with a sudden sickening feeling of impotence that it was more than likely he would not believe her.

  Things had changed, things had altered since yesterday. He might only think that she was jealous. He might just laugh at her for being imaginative.

  “Zaria, venez avec moi,” Madame Bertin commanded. “We have a lot to do, you and I. Come!”

  She walked from the Saloon and, because Zaria felt there was nothing else she could do, she followed her blindly.

  They went down to Madame Bertin’s cabin.

  It was the largest one in the yacht. A double one with two beds, a bathroom opening out of it and a number of fitted mirrors that seemed to reflect and re-reflect the pitiable object she appeared as she followed the Frenchwoman into the cabin.

  “Sit down, ma petite, and let me look at you,” Madame Bertin said as she shut the door.

  “Oh, please, madame, this joke has gone far enough,” Zaria said. “Let me go to my cabin and say I am ill. You haven’t a chance of winning the wager.”

  “Why should you say that?” Lulu Bertin asked. “Do you not believe that clothes can alter and change a woman?”

  “I am sure that they can when a woman has something to start with,” Zaria said. “But you can see what I am like.”

  She spoke humbly and almost despairingly.

  Madame Bertin gave a little cry of exasperation, her hands going up and her shoulders rising.

  “Sacré nom d’un chien,” she said. “Could any woman talk in a more ridiculous fashion? You are young, you have life! And what is more, you can smile. Forget everything else, just remember that above all you have a heart. It’s the heart that matters. It’s the heart that must show in the face and on the lips.”

  “I don’t think I understand,” Zaria said, but for the first time there was an answering sparkle in her eyes as she looked at Madame Bertin.

  “I have been watching you,” Madame Bertin said. “Shall I tell you something that helps us more than anything else?”

  “Oh, yes! What is it?” Zaria asked.

  “That you are in love, ma petite!” Madame Bertin smiled.

  For a moment it seemed to Zaria as if everything stood still. She just stared at Madame Bertin and then something clicked in her brain and she remembered.

  Of course, she and Chuck were engaged! She had said so, everyone aboard the yacht knew it.

  With an effort the world began to move and spin back into perspective.

  “Of course,” she said in a low voice. “Mr. Virdon has been kind enough to allow my fiancé to come on this trip.”

  Madame Bertin laughed.

  “That is not what I meant, chérie,” she said. “Women talk about ‘my fiancé and my husband’ and what does it mean? Something legal, something that, in my country, has often been arranged – un mariage de convenance. But love, that is a very different thing! It is when a woman is in love that it alters her face. You, mon enfant, are in love!

  Quite suddenly Zaria realised the truth. It came to her like a blinding flash, as if a streak of lightning suddenly illuminated the cabin or she shot on a falling star across the dark firmament into an unknown universe.

  She was in love! It was the truth, even though she could not believe it and could not grasp what her senses and her heart told her.

  In love with Chuck!

  A man of whom she knew nothing, whom she had only just met, who had come into her life in the strangest and most suspicious circumstances.

  It was so incredible, incomprehensible and ridiculous – and yet she loved him! She knew now why she felt secure when he was beside her, felt her finger flutter beneath his touch and ached for him when he was not there. And why she had felt despair and misery when she had seen him smiling down at Kate.

  It could not be true! It couldn’t! And yet it was!

  “Eh, bien,” Madame Bertin said with a little smile as if she could almost read Zaria’s thoughts. “You are beginning to understand. Every woman can be beautiful. It is her heart that matters, not those ridiculous things people call features.”

  With a tremendous effort Zaria tried not to think of the new awakening knowledge within herself and the strange emotions rushing through her body that made her legs feel weak and her hands tremble.

  Striving to be matter of fact, she said,

  “You are very kind, madame, but I feel you have undertaken the impossible. I am distressed that you should lose your money.”

  “But I must not lose it,” Madame Bertin said. “I need five hundred dollars, I need them very badly. When I say I succeed, I will succeed. Voila! You have but to believe in me.”

  ‘I wish I could,’ Zaria thought to herself, almost hypnotised by the power and passion in Madame Bertin’s voice. ‘If I could be beautiful, perhaps Chuck would look at me and perhaps he could love me.’

  “Put on this robe de chambre,” Madame Bertin said, throwing a pretty dressing gown across the bed as she rapidly unpacked a suitcase that she had opened on the floor.

  “Mon Dieu! But this case is not
what I want. It’s my other baggage that I must have. They will have put it in Kate’s room, I daresay.”

  Madame Bertin pulled open the cabin door and ran into the passage shouting, “Steward! Steward!” at the top of her voice.

  Slowly Zaria sat down on the stool in front of the dressing table, staring at herself in the mirror and searching her face for what Madame Bertin could see there.

  She was in love! How did it show? To herself she looked very much the same.

  She was still ugly. She was not so stupid as to deceive herself. She was ugly and therefore Chuck would not find the beauty he was seeking in her, but in Kate.

  For the moment Zaria felt that she could not even resent this. Love was something so new, so overpowering.

  She was almost content to know that she loved him and to ask nothing more. It was a happiness beyond belief to imagine that she was feeling again the comforting pressure of his hands and seeing that steady sympathetic look in his grey eyes.

  With a start Zaria realised that she had not had a chance to tell Chuck what she had overheard. Somehow she must find him alone and somehow she must find the opportunity of telling him what these people were really like.

  She had half risen to her feet, anxious to go to him then and there, when the door was flung open and Jim appeared carrying a heavy trunk, with Madame Bertin behind him lugging a small suitcase.

  “This is what I want,” she cried happily. “Fortunately I had the good sense to label the boxes with the sizes of the models I had packed in them.

  “Thank you, Steward,” she said to Jim, who went from the cabin after smiling at Zaria in an understanding way as if he found the Frenchwoman not only incomprehensible, but also a little mad.

  Madame Bertin flung back the trunk lid and looked inside.

  “Bien! They are all here,” she said. “Now then, there is a lot to do before we come to the clothes.”

  “Wh-what?” Zaria asked nervously.

  In answer Madame Bertin walked across the room and, picking up a comb, ran it through Zaria’s hair.

  “So ugly!” she exclaimed, “and so English! All those downward lines make your face more pointed, thinner, more, how do you say it in English, more peaky. Now come! This is no time for talking.”