[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.”“You were, Grandmère? But why?” Yola asked.“I have had a telegram from the Marquis,” her grandmother explained, “asking if he might arrive this evening”Yola forced herself to look surprised and her grandmother continued,“I cannot imagine why he wishes to come a fortnight earlier than he was expected, but even if I had had the chance to refuse I would not have done so.”“No, of course not, Grandmère,” Yola agreed.“But we have no time to invite a party to meet him.”She was trying only to speak naturally and to behave as her grandmother expected, but she knew that she wanted nobody else there – she wanted to meet Leo alone.She went to the window and thought of the pleasure it would give her to show him round The Castle where he had lived as a little boy and to see if he noticed any of the improvements that she and her father had made.There had not been a great deal that she and her father could do, as it had always involved an argument or a quarrel with her mother.But they had put on show a great many of the treasures which had not been very well displayed in her grandmother’s time and Yola thought that they made the inside of The Castle look even more beautiful than it had before.Now she told herself excitedly that there were so many more things she wanted to do, which Leo could help with and advise her.All the rooms that had been closed in her mother’s time would be opened and the bedrooms would be redecorated and they would place new curtains in the dining hall.It would all be exciting because he would be beside her, because she knew that they had the same taste and that their minds, like their hearts, were linked together.“You are not listening to me, Marie Teresa!” she heard her grandmother say behind her.“I am sorry, Grandmère.My thoughts were far away.What did you say?”“I asked if you would see the chef and order a dinner that you think the Marquis would appreciate.I made some suggestions this morning, but I am sure that you know better than I do what young people like.”Yola was not deceived.She knew quite well that her grandmother was longing to say at dinner, if the Marquis enjoyed it, that the menu had been Yola’s choice.It was another way of showing her off to the Marquis and she thought how angry it would have made her a week ago! But now it was something she wanted to do, something she could do for him and she said eagerly,“Of course, Grandmère, I will go to see the chef now, but I am sure that your choice has been an excellent one.”“I would rather it was yours, ma chérie,” her grandmother replied.“I suppose there will be four of us for dinner, if your friend is still with you.”“When I learnt the Marquis was coming, I suggested that she should return to Tours.”“Surely that was very high-handed, Grandmère.”“To tell the truth, my dear, I found her rather a bore,” her grandmother answered.Yola knew that the real reason why her grandmother had sent her friend away was because she had no intention of allowing the Marquis to be distracted from anything but the girl he was to marry.It struck Yola that perhaps her grandmother was feeling as nervous as Yola herself was, but in a different way.The Marquis was a mature man and he might, after all these years, have very different ideas about who he would marry.Then she thought with a little smile that her grandmother was supremely confident that no one who was not a lunatic would refuse The Castle and the Beauharnais estates.She went from the salon, her heart singing with happiness and ran upstairs to her bedroom.It was a very beautiful room, which her father had decorated for her and the colours, the furniture and the pictures were all treasures they had enjoyed together.She knew that once she was married she would move into the Master suite, which had always been occupied alone by her father because her mother preferred the austerity of the single bedroom that was almost like a nun’s cell.In the Master suite, which stood at one of the corners of The Castle, there was a view over the valley that was unsurpassed by any other castle Yola had ever visited.There, one could see not only the Indre moving silver through the valley but catch a distant glimpse of the Loire, wide and majestic, carrying the life-giving water that made ‘the Garden of France’ the most beautiful and fertile place in the whole country.‘We will look at it together,’ Yola thought and suddenly felt breathless with excitement and anticipation.She ran down to the kitchen, changed a few of the dishes on the menu and ordered the most superb wines in her father‘s cellar.Then she went out to the garden to pick some flowers for the Marquis’s bedroom.The garden was full of flowers, which were grown for the house and arranged with an artistry that her father had insisted was part of the beauty of The Castle itself.Yola wanted to put something personal in the Marquis’s room and she found a rose bush almost in bloom and thought it would remind him of the buds she had worn in her hair the night he had kissed her in the Bois de Boulogne.She arranged them in a little blue Sèvres vase and put them beside his bed and then she chose her favourite books and put them there too.‘I love him! I love him!’ she thought, looking round to see if there was anything else she could do.Then, after talking to her grandmother for a little while, she went back upstairs to decide what she should wear.The noon train from Paris reached Langeais at about five-thirty in the afternoon, which meant that the Marquis would arrive at The Castle at six o’clock.Yola decided to wear an afternoon gown in which to receive him
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]