CHAPTER XXI
Walking across the lawn toward the château half an hour later, Rosemary found herself once more laughing at her suspicions of Peter. Peter!! Heavens above! what turn were her suspicions taking?
Did she really believe for one moment that Peter was intriguing with these crafty Roumanians for the undoing or the persecution of his own kith and kin? The very thought was preposterous. The suggestion untenable. Whatever Jasper might think, whatever he might fear, she, Rosemary, was nothing but a traitor if she allowed herself for one moment to harbour such thoughts of Peter.
He was changed, certainly he was changed. But between that and Jasper's suspicions—! It was Jasper who had first put thoughts into Rosemary's head by extracting that strange promise from her. Not to talk to Peter. Not to discuss the situation with Peter. Otherwise she would never for one moment—
Of course, of course, the thought was preposterous. Peter and intrigue! Peter and crafty Machiavellism! Peter and a double game he was ashamed to avow! Why, reason should have rejected the first hint of such a possibility, even if loyalty did not.
"Hallo, Rosemary!"
Peter's voice brought Rosemary back to reality. She had wandered up the veranda steps, hardly conscious of where she was. Thank Heaven, after her musings she was able to look Peter loyally in the face. He had his hands buried as usual in the pockets of his trousers, and the inevitable cigarette between his lips. Rosemary felt hot and tired; the sun had been baking the lawn while she walked across it, and she had no parasol. With a contented little sigh she sank into the basket chair that Peter pulled forward for her.
"I suppose," he said abruptly, "that they have been telling you about the nonsense that's going on in their dear, silly heads."
And with a nod he indicated the summer-house where, against the creeper-clad entrance, Elza's white dress gleamed in the sunshine. Rosemary made no reply. Peter's words had somehow acted like a douche of cold water upon her sense of rest and well-being. It was true then! He did know. Though Elza and Anna had told him nothing, he knew. How? Rosemary would have given worlds for the right to ask him, but suddenly her promise to Jasper loomed before her with paramount importance, and put a seal upon her lips.
"Won't you tell me?" Peter insisted.
Of course there was a simple explanation for the whole thing. Those dear people, Elza, Maurus, even Anna, were not models of discretion. Their voices were loud and penetrating, and, when they were excited about any project or event, they would discuss it here, there and everywhere at the top of their voices, and with a total disregard of possible eavesdroppers. Peter's knowledge of Elza's plans may have come about quite innocently. Rosemary was quite sure it had come about innocently. But somehow she longed for that perfect security and trust in Peter which she used to feel even when he was most capricious and his love-making most tempestuous. Why hadn't he told Elza that he knew? Why, instead of discussing the plan over with Elza or one of the others, did he feign ignorance with them, and suddenly elect to go away on an obviously futile excuse?
Oh, how Rosemary hated all this mystery! And how she feared it! And how, above all, she hated that promise which she had made to Jasper, and which prevented her at this moment from having a straight talk with Peter.
"So you won't tell me?" he reiterated, and his voice sounded curiously harsh, quite different to his usual very pleasant, musical tones. Peter had the voice of a musician. It was deep in tone and beautifully modulated. Peter's voice had been one of the things about him that had captivated Rosemary's fancy in the past. Now, he spoke through his teeth, with that hateful cigarette in the long holder held between the corners of his lips. Rosemary tried to be flippant.
"Dear me!" she exclaimed, with a little broken laugh, "are you trying to play the role of the heavy father, Peter, or of the silent strong man? And now you are frowning just like the hero in one of Ethel M. Dell's books. When are you going to seize me by the wrist and whack me with a slipper?"
It was very easy to make Peter laugh. He was laughing now, and the scowl fled for the moment from his face.
"Don't play the fool, Rosemary," he said in his slangy, boyish way. "Tell me what Aunt Elza has been saying to you out here?"
"But you silly boy," she riposted, "There's nothing to tell."
Back came the scowl on Peter's face, darker than before.
"So," he said curtly, "I suppose that you and Aunt Elza and Anna have been discussing frocks for the past hour and a half."
"No, dear," she replied coolly, "only the arrangements for to-morrow's ball."
Whereupon Peter said "Damn!" and swung round on his heel, as if he meant to leave her there without another word. But for this move of his Rosemary was unprepared. She did not want Peter to go. Not just yet. She was perfectly loyal to him in her thoughts, and she was irrevocably determined not to break her promise to Jasper, but she was not going to let Peter go off to-day without some sort of explanation. She might not see him again after this-for weeks, for months, for years! So she called him back.
"Peter!" she cried.
He swung back and returned to her side. His deep, changeful eyes, which at times were the colour of the ocean on the Cornish coast, and at others recalled the dark tints of his Hungarian ancestors, looked strangely resentful still. But as his glance rested on Rosemary, wandered from her delicate face in the pearly shadow of her garden hat, along the contour of her graceful shoes, the resentful look fled. And Rosemary, glancing up, caught a momentary flash of that soul-holding gaze which had taken her captive that lovely night in June by the river, when she had lain crushed and bruised in his arms, the gaze which that other night in the Albert Hall box had filled her soul with abiding regret.
"What do you want me to tell you, Peter?" she asked in that stupid way that comes to the lips when the soul is stirred and the mind commands self-control.
"Nothing," he replied roughly, "that you don't want to."
"Peter," she retorted, "why are you so strange with me? One would think I had done something to offend you. You scarcely will speak to me; when you do you are so rough and so abrupt, as if-as if— Oh, I don't know," she went on rapidly, and her voice shook a little as she tried to avoid that memory conjuring glance of his. "It seems as if something had come between us, almost as if we were enemies."
Peter laughed at this, but his laugh sounded rather forced and harsh.
"Enemies!" he exclaimed. "Good God, no!"
"But something has happened, Peter," she insisted. "I cannot tell you how I find you changed."
"Well," he said curtly, "something did happen, you know, when you married Jasper."
"I don't mean that, Peter. I saw you in London after I was engaged, and you had not changed then. It is here-in this place-that you seem so different."
"You must admit the place gets on one's nerves," he said with a shrug.
"You must make allowances, Peter," she rejoined gently. "They are in such trouble."
"Are they?" he retorted.
"Why, you know they are!" And her voice rang with a note of indignant reproach. "How can you ask?"
"I ask because I don't know. You say that they-I suppose you mean Aunt Elza and Maurus and the kids-are in trouble. How should I know what you mean? Since I've been here they have done nothing but shout, dance and make plans for more dancing and shouting, and when I ask you anything you only tell me lies."
"Peter!"
"I beg your pardon, dear," he said with sudden gentleness. "I didn't mean to be caddish. But you know," he went on, harshly once more, "you did tell me that Jasper had gone to Budapest on business."