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  It was ludicrous to picture his ever threatening to deal with Ilse by methods she wouldn't like! Ilse would only laugh in his face and dare him to try it. Whereas a Juliet Harmon who had begun to write her own doom with him when she had rejected Gerhard Minden was never going to be allowed to acquit herself of that guilt.

  A few days later she was invited by the Baronin to a party to mark the hotel's re-opening under Ilse Krantz's management. There were already enough guests in residence to make it a gala occasion of dinner, a floor-show and, if the weather were kind, a cruise by launch on the lake.

  'Don't drive up,' Magda advised. 'Someone shall come down for you, and if the cruise is possible, there will be plenty of spare seats in the cars going down to the shore. And Karl Adler, who will be staying the night, can see you home afterwards.'

  Juliet accepted, with the mental reservation that if it had been Ilse .who had asked her, she would have found some excuse to refuse. But saying No to Magda would involve her in explanations she didn't care to make to Magda's kindly assumption that the tensions between her and Karl were slackening with time. She had to go, and wouldn't have been entirely honest if she had denied a dangerous urge which didn't want to say No. Besides, salt rubbed upon a wound was supposed to be curative, wasn't it? And there should be plenty of salt for her, in seeing Ilse and Karl intimately together.

  She debated what to wear. Certainly not the brown velvet which had evoked Use's snide apologies for her own under-dressing. And a formal dinner, a floor-show and possibly dancing, combined with a late night cruise on the water, posed their own problem in the matter of dress. She went to Munich to solve it, and chose a long full-skirted dress in soft creamy banlon, its plunging neckline and back offset by a detachable draped hood, which she could pull over her hair out of doors.

  'The gown's simplicity is all. No jewellery, gnadige Fraulein!' the salesgirl advised, to which Juliet agreed, sharing the flattering pretence that she possessed a jewel-case full of diamonds and topes of pearls from which to choose and reject.

  She wondered whether Magda would ask Karl to chauffeur her both ways. But on the night, she was called for by a young man who introduced himself as Johan Seiber, a learner-designer with the Adler group, who was to be her partner for dinner.

  The Schloss was once again floodlit from its courtyard, its turrets and crenellations outlined against the sky like a one-dimensional stage set; a fairy-castle back- cloth to a pantomime's transformation scene. Inside, its foyer and main rooms were massed with banked flowers, but Juliet noticed with some satisfaction that Use's despised potted plants were still in place, as was also the heavy dignity of the Baronin's antique walnut and oak.

  Ilse, sheathed in bottle-green silk jersey, her magnificent hair piled high to a jewelled comb, was playing hostess to the party, greeting the non-resident guests as they came in. Karl was not with her, nor anywhere in sight as Juliet crossed to speak to Magda, holding a small court of her own.

  Drinks were being handed. Juliet was soon separated from Johan Seiber; apart from a few old friends of Magda's she knew hardly anyone present, but she was quickly drawn in to chattering groups, was asked for her first name and was thereafter addressed by it, or in default of it, as liebchen. Looking about her and listening to the crescendo of noise, she felt she did not care too much for this sample of the clientele Isle had attracted. Most of the men appeared too grossly prosperous and their women were too loud.

  'You're being impossibly square and super-critical,' she chided herself. But to judge by the way Magda kept aloof in her own circle, Juliet suspected she might have felt the same.

  Until shortly before they went in to dinner, there was no sign of Karl. But then suddenly he was there, elegant and assured, and her heart defied her will by quickening its pulse at her sight of him.

  His height gave him precedence of the people milling near him. Above their heads he was looking about him ... carelessly over at her, and as their eyes met before they both looked away, she recalled the hackneyed lyric line—'Across a crowded room'—and recognised the strange magnetism he had for her for what it was. Against all likelihood, against all wisdom, she had fallen in love with him, and the very paradox of her weathervane feelings and actions bore it out.

  She defended herself hotly because she wanted him to think her worthwhile. She fought him on issues of justice for other people besides herself, but wishing all the while that they could agree. She froze in pride when a tenderness she craved wasn't there for her ... and melted to the few generous gestures he had made her ... and froze again, because a one-sided love with no future mustn't show.

  He was moving her way now, pausing to speak to people, but coming. If only, if only she had the right to run to meet him, hands outstretched ! But Johan

  Seiber was at her side before him, inviting her to go in to dinner.

  Chapter Six

  Dinner was served at tables for four beneath the brilliance of crystal chandeliers to which the soft candle- glow on each table of the Baronin's regime had given place. Juliet and her partner found their cards at a table which they shared with two of the resident guests. The immediately adjacent table remained empty until, when everyone was seated, Ilse and Karl took their places at it, sharing it with no one throughout the meal.

  Ilse smiled distandy at Juliet, and Karl nodded to Johan. He was an attractive youth, with black hair, velvet brown eyes and a dimpled smile. He laughed a lot and used the brown eyes flirtatiously for Juliet's benefit, and she rewarded him for trying so hard by responding as vivaciously as she could. Besides, flirting with him as if she hadn't a care in the world acted as a temporary sedative for the bruising knowledge she had just faced. And if, as she suspected, Ilse had arranged the dinner placings in order to impress her with her own charm for Karl, Juliet was not unwilling to show how little she was being impressed by anything other than Johan's lively attentions.

  Unfortunately he proved to have no flair for managing his drinking. He had ordered champagne, consumed most of it himself, laughed increasingly and foolishly as the meal progressed, to the point where Juliet realised that to any onlooker, she must appear to be abetting and indulging a near-drunk man. And the one onlooker whose opinion she cared about was Karl Adler...

  At the end of dinner she was glad to escape to the cloakroom with the young wife with whom they had shared the table.

  The girl sympathised, 'You've a bit of a problem with your boy-friend, haven't you? Or are you used to managing him in that kind of mood?'

  Juliet said, 'He isn't my boy-friend; I was only given him as a partner for dinner. If I'm careful, I probably needn't see him again.'

  'Then be careful with us, if you like,' the girl offered. 'My Bruno shall act as your bodyguard.'

  Juliet thanked her. But obviously she couldn't latch on to them for the rest of the evening, and presently, when people began to dance and to group, chatting, they drifted "apart. She joined Magda's party for a time; danced once or twice with strangers, and later, when Johan came in search of her for the drive down to the lake, he seemed to have sobered up.

  He wasn't taking his own car. They were to go in a big hatchback with several other people, and the same crowd stayed together when they boarded the hired launch at the landing-stage.

  It was a luxurious craft, dressed and lighted for the occasion; its saloons ablaze, its afterdecks discreetly awninged and dim; spacious enough for a hundred people to find themselves a lone corner or to gather anywhere without overcrowding.

  It got under way to the soft strains of Viennese waltz tunes relayed from the main saloon. The Silbersee, dark and smooth, parted to its bows with scarcely a ripple and followed it with a soft creaming wake. The night air was gentle and windless; summer in Bavaria had arrived.

  Juliet soon detached herself from her crowd to explore alone. She mounted a companionway to an upper deck, but found it was being used as an impromptu dance-floor, and came down again. She went to lean on the rail of a deck behind the saloon where, excep
t for the occasional couple who strolled past, she was alone with the night and the lake and her thoughts.

  But not for long. Presently there was a touch on her shoulder from a hand which slipped lower to her waist. She turned to face Johan Seiber, his encircling arm claiming her and holding on.

  'Why did you run away from me?' he wanted to know.

  'I didn't run away,' she said. 'You were talking to the others, and it was so hot in the saloon, I wanted some air.'

  'You ran away,' he insisted obtusely. 'Not very friendly of you, was it, considering the fun we had at dinner, and all we could have before the night's out?'

  'I was going back, so shall we go now?' was all she could find to reply.

  But he wasn't to be humoured so easily. He was in a post-drinking contrary mood. 'Why should we, now I've found you? Besides'—pursuing his obstinate line of thought—'you did run away from me, don't deny it, and for that you owe me a forfeit which I'—he made a separate point of each following word—'am ... now ... about... to ... take!'

  'You are not?’ Juliet could have given in, but she would not. She fought him, pressing down hard on the grip of his hands at her waist, as determined that he should not kiss her as he was that he meant to.

  She turned her head this way and that, avoiding his lips. He had been smiling, but he wasn't now. He called her an ugly name when at last she broke free, panting, stepping back from him, her heel coming down on the foot of someone standing immediately behind her.

  She turned in apology. 'I'm terribly sorry! I hadn't heard '

  'Don't mention it.' She had sensed who it was before Karl Adler spoke. He looked across at Johan. 'Enough is enough of that, wouldn't you say?' he queried coldly. 'Or is it only to a common onlooker that the lady has made it clear that she is Not Amused?'

  Johan muttered, 'She's a ' Karl cut him short.

  'Maybe, but a man should recognise when he's on to a losing thing. So cool it, will you, and ?' A jerk of his thumb in the direction of the saloon pointed his meaning, and with a shrug Johan took the hint.

  Juliet, reaching for the hood which had slipped from her hair, met Karl's hands flicking it up and adjusting it for her. She said again, 'I'm sorry about that. I hope I didn't hurt you?'

  'I shall live,' he said laconically. 'And the scene I interrupted—what was that in aid of?'

  She stared out over the water. 'He'd claimed he had the right to kiss me, and I didn't want him to. It was all very—silly,' she concluded lamely.

  'Even though you may have allowed him to think he had the right?'

  She turned her head quickly. 'But I hadn't! I !'

  'Are you sure?'

  She frowned. 'What do you mean by that?'

  'That if you'd encouraged him and then turned him down, he had every excuse. Men don't take too kindly to being fooled.'

  'Fooled? I hadn't encouraged him!' she denied.

  'You surprise me. Nobody seeing die two of you at dinner could be blamed for supposing you knew very well what he was asking of you, and that you were responding with considerable fervour then.'

  'He had begun to drink too much, and I had to humour him, to play along.'

  'I've been talking to him since, and he wasn't drunk. And I'd say he wasn't drunk just now. Just a shade party-high, that's all.'

  'You are taking his part! You are claiming he had the right to—to maul me and to kiss me against my will?'

  'He appeared to think you'd given him an amorous promise which you were breaking, and from all the signs at dinner, I'd be inclined to agree with him.' Karl paused. 'And perhaps I cut him short too soon. Perhaps you had asked for the shock of hearing what he thought of you.'

  'He had already called me by a filthy name which I didn't deserve. And you have the nerve to defend him!' Juliet's hands, curled into fists, were at her breast, pressed there partly to control the trembling of her wrists, partly to ease the ache of a sense of injury that was almost a physical pain. She went on, 'Anyway, even if it's only a kiss, why should a man expect to take what he wants, when he wants it, against a woman's will?'

  'Probably because Nature made him that way, and quite frequently he may only be jumping the gun of an invitation '

  She had to unclench her teeth in order to speak. 'Johan Seiber had had no invitation from me!'

  'Any more, on a wider canvas and over a longer time, than Gerhard supposed he had had from you, one questions?' Karl insinuated.

  She stared at him, aghast. 'You can leave Gerhard out of this,' she said, her voice thick. 'He had no encouragement and no cheap invitations from me— none! And how dare you compare him to a—a puppy like Johan Seiber?'

  '"Puppy" could be right,' Karl agreed. 'But the parallel is there. At dinner you were signalling Yes to Seiber, only to floor him later with a rather waspish No. So wasn't it possibly the same for Gerhard? A man "takes" at random without much fore or afterthought. But I can't believe that Gerhard reached the point of proposal to you without your having given him some hope he would be accepted.'

  'I've told you already, I'd given him none. And before he proposed to me, he'd hardly asked for any. It was only after I had refused him that he began to accuse me of wronging him, which was why I was forced to leave the School and go home.'

  'Then perhaps his technique was at fault. Perhaps he should have "taken" while he could; cut his losses, but at least have shown you pretty forcibly what you might be missing, marriagewise.'

  'I knew what we'd both be missing if I married him,' she said in a low voice.

  'But weren't prepared to forgo it, to help a dying man?' Karl moved a step closer, covered each of her fists with a hand and drew down her arms to grip them rigidly at her sides. He said very softly, dangerously softly, 'You have no heart, have you, Juliet Harmon? Either to indulge a puppy in a few harmless kisses, or to share an unromantic year or two with a man who, as things were for him, couldn't have been a burden on you for too long? And so—do you know?—I'm inclined to treat you as Gerhard should have done—and didn't. Teach you a lesson on how, with a .woman like you, a man may be entitled to "take" at his will, not hers, and without any invitation or implied promise— like this!'

  He released her hands; one of his own tangled in her hair, bunching it to drag back her head. His other arm went round her, pinioned her close to him, knee touching knee, thigh to thigh, breast to breast. Beneath the drape of the hood which had fallen away his fingers explored her bare back and fastened below her shoulder-blades with bruising pressure on her flesh.

  He studied her face with insolence, even contempt, in his eyes. Then, making a deliberate exercise of something which should have spelled tenderness and mounting rapture for them both, his lips took hers ... searched ... demanded their surrender without any gift of himself behind the savagery of the kiss.

  Just so had she sometimes indulged wayward dreams of being taken into his arms for a love which, by some miracle, he returned. But he had nothing for her, and she had to fight a welling need to give, to respond, to yield, which threatened to betray her.

  She struggled—to no avail. Karl's hold imprisoned her and when his kisses went, errant and exploring, to her throat and to the daring plunge-line of her dress, her will ceased to protest and she was all melting woman, spendthrift of passion, reckless.

  He lifted his head and released her suddenly. Juliet's hands went to her burning cheeks. How could she hide from him the naked desire he had roused in her—how? But in self-defence she must. 'You'd warned me that in certain circumstances you could be crude,' she accused him. 'But I didn't realise how crude until now. You think I mistreated Gerhard, and —all that was designed to punish me for it?'

  'Let's say I couldn't resist the urge to help you to repay something of the debt you owed him; using your own callous coin for the job, in other words. I'm right in thinking you didn't enjoy it?'

  'Entirely right,' she lied.

  'Good. I didn't intend you should.'

  She stared in disbelief that none of her sincerity ha
d got through to him. 'I think you hate me, don't you?' she asked.

  'I hate jilts '

  'I never jilted Gerhard! I never gave him any promise, any hope!'

  '—and stone-hearts, in that order. Take your pick,' he finished, then took her by the elbow in a prison warder's grip.

  'I'm going to return you to so-called civilisation. It could be safer for us both,' he said as he moved with her towards the saloon.

  Juliet was silent, scorning to ask him what danger he could possibly suppose he was in.

  When he left her inside the door of the saloon, she watched him join a table where Ilse was sitting with another couple. Then she wept to the cloakroom, which was empty. She sat down at a mirror, going through the motions of combing her hair and renewing her make-up while the fret of her thoughts belied every calm movement of her hands.

  She remembered Magda's promise that Karl should see her home after the party. Impossible now that he would either agree or offer. After this, he could not want to see her again tonight, any more than she could bear to have to speak to him. So before the question arose, she would have to find her own solution to that one.

  And later? The future ahead when, from time to time, they would have to meet with reasonable decorum, while each must be remembering the raw aggression with which he had treated her tonight? How were they to carry it off? How was she going to react to him, torn as she was between the magnetic spell which her will could not control, and the knowledge that, since with every word and action he had " wronged her, she must keep her self-respect inviolate from him? He mustn't be given the chance of such abuse of her again. At all costs, she must keep her distance from him; force him to keep his.