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  Determinedly she held his glance, daring him to evade so direct an attack. But he did. Unmoved, evenly, he countered, 'Seems to me you've answered your own question—that it's tactics on my part. What else?' Then he looked at his watch and rose. 'Will you excuse me? I have to telephone. Then we'll be on our way.'

  He left her to a strange sense of defeat. Of emptiness. Of an awareness that between the beginning of her tirade and its end, something cruelly revealing had happened. By the time she had uttered that last 'Why?' she hadn't meant it as an attack, but an appeal ... a cry that hadn't been answered.

  She had wanted him to tell her she was wrong; that, both times, his purpose had been his male need to know more of her as a woman; at least that he had sought her company because it had some sort of value for him. But nothing had come, and without it she felt bereft; as rejected as by a lover's brutal telling that he had finished with her...

  A lover? Thinking of love in the same breath as of Karl Adler? How could she? She must be mad! She couldn't have fallen in love with a man with whom she was so much at odds, as he was equally with her. It wasn't possible. In love there had to be a mutual reaching-out, a tenderness, a need to explore with every shared, pleasured sense—none of which she had experienced at this man's hands. Between them there was only a wary circling of the issues, a kind of readying of weapons for future use. Or so he hinted it was for him. But for her—what? If she didn't, couldn't, didn't want to tear clear of this madness—what then?

  When he rejoined her she looked at him with shy new eyes, still seeking, if not hoping for, a rewarding change in touch or voice or look of which she could make something she could treasure. But of course there was nothing different about him. He was the self- assured stranger of the Innsgort road and now her enemy; ready to parley with her for his own ends, but with reason, in his own estimation, to regard her with scorn.

  He drove her to the Kleinmayer trade entrance and told her that a Herr Bezold was the buyer she must see. She thanked him for the lift and went up the stairs to an outer office where two other travellers were waiting when she handed her card to a girl clerk. Having by now learned the art of patience, she sat down, prepared to take her turn after them.

  But in a Very few minutes the girl answered a buzzer and beckoned to her. 'Herr Bezold will see you now, Fraulein Harmon.'

  Juliet rose, but hesitated, glancing at the two men. 'It's not my ' she began.

  'Herr Bezold is waiting, Fraulein,' said the girl, sounding bored, and though Juliet felt guilty of breaching an accepted trade code, she had no choice but to obey.

  Herr Bezold was a man of few words and swift decisions. Twenty minutes later he had completed placing a substantial order with her, and she was repacking her samples when the girl clerk opened the door to announce to her chief, 'Herr Adler to see you, sir,' and Karl followed her in.

  He and Herr Bezold greeted each other and shook hands. 'A word or two about that dining-suite consignment. But one moment first,' Karl told the other man, and turned to Juliet. *

  'Have you finished for the day?' he asked.

  'I think so, yes.'

  'You came over by car? Where is it parked?'

  She told him, and he said, 'If you'll wait for me in the lobby, I'll drive you there. It's on my way.'

  He came out to her presently and took her sample case from her. 'How did it go?' he asked.

  'Very well indeed. It was my best order of the day.'

  'But not the only one?'

  'Oh no.' (After all, a quarter-dozen ashtrays and a cigar-box which were her only other meagre pickings did count as an order, didn't they?)

  Arrived at her garage she thanked him for the lift and left the car, only to be puzzled by the empty office and the iron grid gates which barred the forecourt of the place. She faced about, seeing that Karl had not yet driven off.

  'It's closed,' she announced blankly.

  'At this hour? It can't be.' He got out and joined her, pointed to a notice pinned to the gates. 'It can,' he contradicted himself. 'Didn't you read this?'

  She read it then. 'They should have warned.me!' she protested.

  'They probably thought you could read—that, owing to tomorrow's public holiday, all cars parked on today's ticket should be collected by two o'clock. They've taken the rest of the day off.'

  'They should have told me as well, for I could have fetched mine earlier.' She bit her lip in vexation. 'Now what do I do?' asking it of herself, thinking aloud. 'Train, I suppose, to Gutbach and a taxi from there.'

  'The alternative being that I drive you.'

  She shook her head. 'Oh no. That's out of the question.'

  'Even though I was going out later to the Schloss for dinner with Ilse and the Baronin?'

  She looked at him doubtfully. 'You really were?'

  'And spending the night and tomorrow's feast-day. I have to go back to my office and my apartment first. But after that we can be on our way. Get in.'

  On the huge forecourt of Adler Classics he left her in the car and was gone for half an hour. At the block where he had his apartment, facing the English Gardens, he suggested she go up to it with him.

  'If you stay here, you may be badgered by the police to move the car on,' he advised when she hesitated.

  The living-room of his apartment on the mezzanine floor was carpeted with blue rugs on parquet and furnished with low claw-legged tables, cushioned wooden chairs and free-standing book-fitments. The wall decorations were tapestried; there were antique bowls and jars of coloured porcelain on the tables, and a single framed photograph on the open flap of a writing-desk.

  It was signed 'Fur Karl' with a date Juliet could not read and was unmistakably of Ilse Krantz, bare-shouldered and swan-necked; a studio pose, seductive to a degree.

  Was that why Karl had urged her to come up to the apartment? Juliet wondered. So that her sight of the photograph should spell out to her his intimacy with

  Ike? But she dismissed the idea. As if he cared about her opinion of his relationship with Ilse! He couldn't guess at her heightened awareness of his attraction for her and be warning her off ... could he? The very possibility chilled her.

  He did not keep her long while he changed from city clothes to slacks and an open-necked shirt, the thin silk of which, clinging to his diaphragm, emphasised the muscularity which rippled beneath the golden bronze of his skin. The wide spread of the shirt's collar revealed the twin hollows at the base of his throat and, resist the urge as she would, Juliet found herself wanting to trace a fingertip touch from there along the line of his collarbone. The skin would be satin- smooth, warm ... and the folly of indulging the wish quite, quite mad!

  Before they left the city he bought extravagant sheaves of flowers for the Baronin and Ilse, and dropped a small posy of violets into Juliet's lap with the comment, 'A modest tribute to a semi-reluctant guess.’

  'Thank you.' Scorning to protest with a conventional 'You really shouldn't '. she smelled the sweetness of the posy, then clasped it in her hands, idle on her lap. They were travelling by the Autobahn; the car's speed was constant, the roadside view dull. She had been up at dawn and this easeful uniformity acted as a lullaby. Conscious that she was drowsing, she scolded herself and managed to jerk awake more than once. But it was happening again and she couldn't help it. Her eyelids were drooping deliciously, the peace was exquisite. Just a few minutes—she would allow herself no more ... and after that was aware of nothing for an unknown period that was last to her for ever.

  She half-woke—to the cupping of her face between cool hands and the pressure of lips upon hers in a long kiss to which her mouth was drowsily yielding ... responding in desire.

  Who ? How ? She stirred, touched the wrists of the hands about her chin, felt bare arms above the wrists, and came to with a gasp. The car was standing at her own door; she saw the outline of the house gables against the twilight sky—over the shoulder of Karl who was looming above her, his head lifted now, watching her.

  For the
space of a pounding heartbeat she stared back at him. 'You kissed me,' she accused.

  'Yes,' he nodded.

  'But why should you—need to?'

  'Isn't it the classic method of waking a lady?'

  'I was only dozing!'

  'Dozing? You haven't been among those present for the last thirty kilometres! You were so far under that it was a choice between assault and battery, bawling in your ear or the pleasurable method I used.'

  'Pleasurable?' she echoed. 'To kiss me?'

  'Why not? Asleep, you were attractively vulnerable, and it could be said I was only obeying the same healthy male instinct which made me invite myself to lunch with you on the Innsgort road. A pretty girl-— the opportunity of finding her alone—or asleep—why,. it would be flying in the face of Nature for a man to pass up such a chance!'

  She recognised ridicule and it stung. 'Just any pretty girl, hm? Or even, perhaps, any girl?' she taunted.

  'When one is in the mood, perhaps. Though naturally there's more piquancy to choosing to kiss a pretty one.'

  'As if I'd have let you kiss me that day, just because we happened to be there! And you wouldn't have dared to try!'

  'Oh, I don't know. Who can tell how we might have fraternised if I'd been allowed to share your sausage platter and whatever wine you had brought along?'

  'I certainly shouldn't have let you kiss me then, and since, it's obvious you couldn't want to. Which makes —all this quite pointless '

  While she had slept she had relaxed in her seat and now she pushed herself upright—a movement which brought her so close to Karl that it should have caused his recoil. But it did not. His thumb flicked open the buckle of her seat-belt and he caught her to him, arching her body into the unyielding curve of his own.

  So near now that his breath fanned her face, he murmured, 'Pointless, as you say—this fuss about a kiss claimed on the spur of the moment!' and with studied deliberation took her mouth again.

  She twisted away, but he did not let her go. Almost amusedly he said, 'There are kisses and kisses—didn't you know? Some with the emotional impact of an earthquake, others exchanged against one's better judgment, others again '

  She bore down on his encircling arms with both hands and he released her, straightening and facing forward. 'You can spare me the list of all the kinds you've sampled at—at other people's expense!' she panted. 'So now will you please let me get out, and— and I'm sorry I had to trouble you to drive me home!'

  'Don't mention it.' It was a privilege,' he said, and as he opened the car door for her he indicated the violets.

  'Are you sure you aren't fighting an urge to throw them in my face?' he mocked her mortification.

  Juliet looked down at them, then back at him, shaking her head. 'Nothing about this silly argument is their fault. I wouldn't demean them so,' she said.

  He gave no sign that the barb had gone home. She didn't look back again, but knew he waited until she had reached and opened her door before he drove away. Then she watched the car out of sight.

  She was trembling, not too far from tears. Of anger? Shame? Or of regret? All of them in a tangle of emotion she couldn't analyse. Karl had kissed her, admitting to a passing impulse which had meant nothing to him. She had—almost—kissed him in return; had been stirred to her depth by an ache to surrender to his touch. And had to—had to!—deny even to herself that she had suffered anything at all.

  Chapter Five

  Juliet hadn't meant to reclaim her car until her next sales trip to Munich, but on the evening of the public holiday Ilse Krantz rang, suggesting she drive her the next morning, when she would be going in to the city herself.

  For Juliet it should have been a day at her desk and in the workshops, but though she was surprised by the offer, she could hardly refuse. She thanked Ilse, and the arrangement was agreed.

  Use's car was a low-slung sports model which she drove with competent assurance. They talked about the progress being made at the Schloss, Ilse being emphatic on the subject of its old-fashioned image which she was determined to efface. In consequence Juliet felt compelled to defend it, urging the view, as she had to the Baronin, that if a twelfth-century castle hadn't the right to be old-fashioned, what had?

  'It hasn't, if the idea is to appeal to modern tourists,' snapped Ilse. 'Satin damask curtains and antique oak are all very well, but people nowadays are prepared to settle for nylon plush and teak veneer, as long as they get a swimming-pool and regular barbecues.'

  'All the same, the Baronin never seemed to lack for a clientele until she decided to quit,' Juliet suggested mildly.

  'A clientele of a type, no doubt. "The old school"— the same dodderers season after season, lacking the spirit to go somewhere fresh!' sneered Ilse. To which Juliet countered,

  'But wasn't it a recommendation that they did choose to come back year after year?' only to be rebuked by a scornful silence until Ilse remarked, - 'You know, considering the difficulties you are trying to make for Karl, I must say he is extraordinarily indulgent of you—taking you skiing, lunching you at Die Silberkanne where everyone knows him, organising lifts for you. In fact'—appraising Juliet with a swift glance—'one wonders what special charm you work on him which the rest of us should envy?'

  With difficulty Juliet contained her annoyance. She said, 'I don't "work" anything where Karl Adler is concerned. I happen to be a stumbling-block for him because I have rights that he knows he can't claim— yet. When we went skiing, he made no secret of his having nothing better to do that day while you were with the Baronin, and his being able to give me a lift from Munich the other day was just something that happened.'

  'And of course the luncheon date also "just happened" ! But what about the strings he had to pull, to get you orders for your stuff which you couldn't get for yourself?' Ilse insinuated.

  Juliet took that in only slowly. 'Strings?' she echoed. 'What do you mean?'

  'Well, you don't imagine you'd have got straight through to Martin Bezold of Kleinmayer or sold him anything on your first trip, if Karl hadn't talked him into seeing you?' Use challenged.

  Juliet gasped, 'But'he didn't! That's just not true! He asked me which stores I had tried, mentioning Kleinmayer and another, and I told him I'd already decided to make Kleinmayer my next call. So there

  was no question of—of ' But there her voice

  trailed away as she remembered. The telephone call which Karl had gone to make before they had left Die Silberkanne! If Ilse were right, that could have been when he had prevailed on Herr Bezold to see her ... when he had interfered. If Ilse were right—and from her thin smile, it seemed that she was.

  'You are saying Herr Adler told you he had had to do that for me, as well as inviting me to lunch with him, and giving me a lift home?' Juliet asked. 'He wanted you to know that he had used his influence on my behalf without letting me know that he had?'

  'So you admit now that he did?'

  'And chose to boast about it!'

  Ilse shrugged. 'I don't know about boasting. He was telling the Baronin about it when I happened to go into the room, and I don't suppose he was over-concerned whether you knew or not.'

  'He must have known I'd resent it.'

  'He probably realised you would feel so small that you would claim to resent it. Though why should you? It's only all of a piece with the rest of his gallantries towards you. Which, I ought to warn you, aren't likely to continue for too long, if you persist in the matter of your "rights". His patience isn't going to last for ever, and then !'

  'That's a risk that's always been there,' said Juliet. 'In fact, I'm as surprised as you that he and I are on speaking terms.'

  'Only through his forebearance!'

  'And through mine—I've had to exercise some patience too. But all the cards aren't stacked in his favour. I can play some winning ones as well.'

  They had reached the outskirts of the city some time earlier, and Ilse stopped the car at the garage to which Juliet directed her. She let the engine
idle and looked at Juliet in mock-pity.

  'I ought to make you quote six samples of the methods you think of using. But I won't,' she said. 'I'll leave you to your dreams of beating a tycoon like Karl at his own game. But you can't win, you know. Against Karl, no one does.'

  'Even with time on their side, .as it is on mine?' Juliet got out of the car. 'Meanwhile '

  But Ilse cut short her thanks for the lift. 'Don't bother,' she said. 'My convenience entirely. It gave me the chance to tell you a few home truths I thought you should know. No hard feelings, one hopes?' Without waiting fpr a reply, she drove away.

  She left Juliet seething and mortified. Home truths? In other words, threats barely veiled. Conveyed to her by Ilse as Karl's messenger, or on Isle's own malicious initiative? She had bluffed Ilse as she had bluffed Karl. But of course Ilse was shrewdly right—she probably couldn't win against Karl; she could only hope to delay his plans, and he had only to defeat her in the matter of her lease and she would be finished. He couldn't force her out of the School, but subtly Ilse had contrived to undermine her defiance of the man, and newly faintheart, she found she was doubting her ability to prod it back to life.

  A twist of fate had made a girl named Juliet Harmon the enemy of a man named Karl Adler before they had been anything more than names to each other. Another twist, and they were doing battle on yet another level. At first there had been excitement to the contest. But since then a strange alchemy had been at work, Somehow, even when she clashed with him for pride's sake, her heart was not now in the fight. She would much rather have been in accord with him, and since his inexplicable impulse to kiss her out of sleep, the memory of his mouth's pressure upon her willing, parted lips, could set every nerve aquiver p the longing for his kiss to have been a lover's assertion, a lover's quest in search of a love that he hoped was returned.