THERE was in indefinable magic, Rose thought, about driving in an open car with the breeze blowing in one's face. As they left Cannes and bowled dizzily along the steep, winding roads of the Corniche their speed increased until they seemed to be taking corners on two wheels. She clung to her seat and from the corner of her eyes saw Lance Hammond glance at her.
"Nervous?" The hint of mockery in his voice compelled her to lie.
"Not at all."
"Good. Then I can go a bit faster!"
He was true to his word and as they tore round the bends, Rose thought each second was going to be her last. The wind was now tearing at her hair in fierce gusts and hairpins fell on to her lap. Hurriedly she slipped them into her pocket and then kept her hands hidden there, lest he should notice their trembling.
She would lie rather than let him know she was afraid!
At last, when she felt she could bear it no longer they began to lose speed and the long-nosed car swung between wrought-iron gates and along a wide drive-way flanked with cypresses. To one side lay a blue-tiled swimming pool and beyond it stood a palatial pink-walled villa, its wide verandah dotted with gaily colored chairs and tables. The car stopped with a squeal of brakes and Lance turned to Rose, looking at her flushed face for a moment without speaking.
"You're the first girl I've met who doesn't seem to mind getting her hair blown about in the wind," he said at last, and reaching out, touched the coil of
chestnut hair which was lying halfway down the back of her head. "I've never seen such long hair before. Is it all yours?"
"Certainly," she said sharply, and jumping out of the car took the pins out of her pocket and fixed the plait into position again, conscious that he was
watching her intently. The familiar act of pinning her hair into position restored her composure and when next she spoke her voice was matter of fact.
"In the rush I'm afraid I forgot to bring my secateurs or a basket to carry the flowers."
"Never mind. I'll fix you up here."
He preceded her on to the verandah but as he reached the top he stopped so suddenly that Rose, directly behind him knocked against his side. She followed his gaze and saw why he had halted to abruptly. At the far end of the verandah stood a chaise-longue and on it lay a figurine of a woman in a sheath dress.
Even from a distance the vivid blue of her eyes told Rose that this was Lance's mother, although in every other respect they could not have been more
dissimilar. Where the son was tall and blond and arrogant, the mother was diminutive with the personality of a humming bird. Her hair was cut short and dyed a brilliant red-gold. It curled over her forehead and clung closely to the delicate shell-like ears on the lobes of which winked outsize diamonds.
But it was not at his mother that Lance Hammond was staring, but at the man bending over her. Medium-sized, he had the black hair and olive skin of a Latin and it was with Latin effusiveness that he was holding out a fullblown rose to
the woman who was gazing adoringly up at him.
"Wear it in your hair, mia cara," he was saying. "And your beauty will make it fade by comparison with yourself. I shall —"
He stopped as Lance walked forward, the expression of chagrin that flitted across his face instantly giving way to a smile. Lance ignored him and moving over to his mother lifted her small, scarlet-tipped hand and pressed it to his lips. "Hello, Didi."
"Hello, darling." She turned to the dark man at her side. "I believe Lance could even give you points on gallantry, Tino."
"He's had a great deal of experience," Tino said smoothly.
"Not more experience than you have," Lance said equally smoothly, "although I can't see you wasting any of it on your mother."
Tino frowned but before he could answer Diana Hammond swung her feet to the ground and stood up.
"Really, Lance, here am I complimenting you on your gallantry and you haven't even introduced me to your new girl friend."
"She isn't a girl friend. I came to pick some flowers from your garden and Miss er… er… is a florist."
Lance disappeared into the villa and Diana Hammond looked at Rose and giggled like a schoolgirl.
"Well, I'm sure, Miss Er… you'd like to get on with your job. But first perhaps you'd care to tell me your name."
"Rose Tiverton."
"Rose Tiverton. How English! I thought you didn't look French. Come and sit down and have a drink."
"I'd rather not if you don't mind," Rose replied. "I'm in a hurry to get back."
"Oh very well." Feeling she had done her duty as a hostess, Diana Hammond
lost interest and waving her hand vaguely in the direction of the lawns
resumed her seat on the chaise-longue and gave all her attention to the man at her side.
Feeling embarrassed, Rose wandered along the verandah and had almost reached the end when Lance came out through the french windows carrying a flat-bottomed basket and an outsize pair of secateurs. He handed them over and led her along the side of the house to the back. Here the garden faced the mountains and had been allowed to grow wild. Masses of scarlet bougainvillea climbed the pale pink walls while the flowerbeds were a mass of wild color.
"It's wonderful," she breathed.
"You've seen nothing yet," he answered and led her down some stone steps to a green archway. She stepped through and stopped, enchanted by the beauty that met her gaze. Roses of all colors nodded their heads to the deep blue sky.
Roses such as she had thought grew nowhere but in England, each color more exquisite than the one before, each bloom larger and more lovely.
"I never knew roses could be like this," she whispered.
"They cost my mother a fortune," Lance said coolly. "Didi has a special English gardener to take care of them." He touched a bud. "But I don't only want to pick roses. I think there are other flowers equally nice."
"I don't," Rose said. "Although I shouldn't really say so, being a florist. Maybe it's because I'm named after them."
"Really," he said. "Are you called 'Peace' or 'Flaming Beauty'?"
She went scarlet. "My name is Rose," she replied and turning her back on him began to pick some flowers.
He watched for a moment in silence and then tiring, walked back up the steps.
"I'll be on the terrace when you've finished and I'll take you home."
She nodded and made her way deeper into the garden. The next half hour was one of sheer delight. She had seen flowers as beautiful as these, but never before had she had the pleasure of picking them, and she strolled from bush to flowerbed and from flowerbed back to bush in an ecstasy of enjoyment.
She was laden with blooms when at last she returned to the verandah to see it
was deserted. The chairs were empty and even the whisky glasses which she had earlier noticed on one of the tables had been cleared away. She glanced at her watch and saw it was almost six-thirty. The sky was already deepening into dusk and the air was soft and damp. She heard footsteps behind her and
turning, was delighted to see Alan.
"My luck's in," he grinned. "Lance has to change for a party and he's asked me to take you back. He also hopes you'll be able to deliver the bouquet to Enid before she leaves her suite tonight."
"That was the whole object of my coming here," Rose said stiffly and felt a pang of annoyance that Lance Hammond had not spared the time to take her back to the hotel himself. Realizing she was being irrational she pushed the thought away and smiled with unusual warmth at the man by her side.
"I didn't know Mr. Hammond lived here," she said. "I thought he stayed on his yacht."
"He lives anywhere the fancy takes him." Alan caught hold of the heavy basket of flowers and led her back to the car.
"Do you follow him around?" she asked as they drove out of the drive and along the winding road back to Cannes.
"Yes," he said. "It's part of my job. For nine months of the year we chase the sun and the rest of the time we chase the snow!"
"Doesn't he ever work?"
"Sometimes. And when he does, he's darned good. He's got a fine brain if he could be persuaded to use it more often. If he marries I hope he'll settle down and give up jaunting around. The trouble is that unless you really have to work for a living it's hard to knuckle down to it."
Rose's thoughts wandered to Enid Walters. Some how she could not see the tall blonde socialite allowing her husband to knuckle down to anything other than a round of pleasure. In that she was probably well suited to Lance
Hammond.
'What a waste of a man,' Rose mused. 'Idling away his time like a loafer. He's handsome, though, but not my type. Definitely not my type!'
"Hey!" Alan said. "That's the second time I've spoken to you. What are you thinking?"
She started guiltily and then, as she felt his gaze on her, touched the flowers in her lap.
"I was just thinking how to make the bouquet," she said, and spent the rest of the journey wondering what had prompted her to lie.
In the days that followed, Rose found it difficult to put Lance Hammond out of her mind and she scanned the gossip columns of the local papers with as much avidity as Jacqueline. She could have satisfied her curiosity by talking about him to Alan, but she was loath to do so; indeed loath to put into words an interest of which she felt ashamed.
"I guess I need a boy friend of my own," she decided one evening as she lay in bed listening to the sound of revelry that floated up from the street below. Yet she could not work up any enthusiasm over Alan. He was a pleasant
companion, interesting, sympathetic and intelligent. But the vital spark was missing between them and nothing could put it there.
However, this did to stop her from accepting his invitation to dinner the next night, and she took especial pains with her appearance, rewarded by the admiration in his eyes as she came towards him on the terrace of the hotel.
"You've no objection to having a drink here first?" he asked as he held a chair out for her.
"Not at all. It gives me a thrill to think of myself as a guest here instead of an employee — even if it's only for a few hours."
"In that case we'll dine here too," he said. "I feel in a very generous mood.
From now on my motto is going to be live while you're young." He drained his drink and signalled the waiter for another.
Rose looked at him curiously, wondering at the sudden change in his behaviour.
"You haven't won a fortune, have you?" she asked.
"No. But every so often I decide I'm going to Live with a capital L. It doesn't last for long, though. By tomorrow I'll be my old stodgy self again."
"You're not a bit stoggy," she protested.
"It's nice of you to say so. Living with a man like Lance makes any man feel stodgy by comparison."
Much as she disliked all that Lance Hammond stood for, Rose could not in all honesty disagree with Alan, so she kept silent and sipped her drink, gazing around her at the chattering throng.
Gone was the casual, carefree air of the beach, and smooth tanned shoulders arose arrogantly out of exquisite dresses while graceful necks were smothered with expensive jewels. The bohemianism of the South of France might exist in St. Tropez, Rose thought ruefully, but there was very little difference between the terrace of one luxury hotel and another, whether it be Claridges or the Hotel Plage or the Waldorf Astoria.
"If Lance Hammond got married," she said abruptly, "what would happen to your job?"
"Nothing for six months or so. I'd give Lance that long to settle down. I told you a little while ago he's got a good brain and I'm hoping he'll soon start to use it. That's when my job should really become interesting."
"But you're wasting an awful lot of time waiting for him to get started. Why don't you leave and start up on your own? Or ask him to get you another job in his organization. Surely he could if he wanted to?"
"Of course he could, but I don't want to leave him. I'm fond of Lance, believe it or not, and he needs someone around him whom he can trust."
"You're making him sound like a poor little rich boy," Rose said dryly. "What's this, a plea for sympathy?"
Alan set his glass down and stared soberly into the distance. "Lance doesn't — and wouldn't — want anyone's sympathy. But that doesn't mean he isn't in need of it. You're still young enough to believe that rich people don't need sympathy, but believe me, they need more of it than the average person.
Having wealth puts an awful burden on you. And it also robs you of any privacy. That's one of the hardest things a rich person has to learn to do
without. Privacy. Their money can buy them anything else they want, yet being left alone is something that's very often out of their reach."
"I shouldn't have thought that would worry Lance Hammond. He strikes me as the sort of person who'd revel in publicity."
"Maybe he does now, but it was the bane of his life when he was a kid. And he didn't have a very happy childhood, either. He was devoted to his father who died when he was just thirteen. His mother never bothered much with him.
She didn't have any understanding of children and she thought that if Lance was fed and clothed and sent to a good school that was enough. But of course it wasn't. Once his father was dead Lance never had the feeling of being
wanted or of being important to anyone. Why, he hardly saw his mother from one year's end to the other."
"What about the holidays?" Rose asked.
Alan half smiled. "Can you imagine how welcome a schoolboy would be to a woman like Diana Hammond? You've met her and seen the sort of person she is."
"She seemed very friendly and charming," Rose said.
"I grant you all of that. She's always charming and friendly — so much so that you can never get below the surface and know what she's really thinking — or if she's capable of thinking at all! I keep telling myself not to judge her too harshly, but I can't help It. I know she was very much in love with Edward Hammond and his death was a dreadful shock to her. Maybe that's why she won't allow herself to care deeply for anyone again. Maybe that's why she's drifted from one affair to the other and always with men young enough to be her sons. You can imagine how happy that's made Lance."
"Can't he stop her?"
Alan shook his head. "He wouldn't even if he could. Lance is a great believer in freedom. Do you know Mrs. Hammond has never allowed him to call her
mother because she's afraid of getting old?"
"I remember him calling her Didi," Rose said softly. "I thought it was a sort of pet name."
"It is," Alan said. "But I'm pretty sure Lance would rather call her Mum! No, the woman who's really close to him is Helen Rogers."
Rose stared at him in amazement. "That wouldn't be the Mrs. Rogers who lives
in Charles Street?"
"Why, do you know her?"
"I should think I do!" Rose cried. "It's because of her I'm here. She's the woman I told you about. It was her dog I saved."
"What a strange coincidence. I must remember to tell Lance."
"He's probably forgotten me by now," Rose said coolly.
Alan did not contradict her and she was conscious of a feeling of pique. Yet after all, why should Lance remember an unimportant little florist? Her
thoughts were abruptly halted by the appearance of the very person of whom she was thinking and she watched as he and Enid Walters were escorted to a table on the far corner of the terrace. What a striking couple they made; both tall and blond and both with the moneyed look that Rose was beginning to know so well.
"Do you really think he's serious about her?" The question came out before she could stop it and Alan, who had seen Lance come in, nodded.
"Enid's the one person Lance knows isn't after him for his money. She's got stacks of her own. So if she does agree to marry him it isn't for what she can get, but for love."
"I can't imagine her loving anyone except herself," Rose said and glanced at Alan. Seeing how intently he was looking at her she flushed. "You must think me very catty. I'm sorry."
"Don't apologize. My opinion of Enid is the same as yours — and I haven't got feminine intuition to go on either!" He picked up his drink. "But let's not talk about my boss any more. Let's talk about you."
With an effort Rose tried to forget the couple sitting not more than a dozen tables away. But even though she laughed and joked with Alan, she was
conscious of the arrogant blond head gleaming under the lights, and knew an infinite sense of relief when Lance Hammond stood up and led Enid off the terrace and into a waiting car.
Later that night as she prepared for bed, Rose could not help remembering all the things Alan had told her about Lance and his mother, and though she did
not want to feel pity for him she could not help thinking of the sort of life he
not want to feel pity for him she could not help thinking of the sort of life he