The Punishment of a Vixen

CHAPTER ONE 1903-1

CHAPTER ONE

1903The open carriage drawn by two horses stopped outside the door of the villa and a gentleman climbed out.

As he paid the driver who had brought him from Cannes station, he heard the sound of music coming from the house and saw that the garden was decorated with Chinese lanterns.

There was only one leather case to be set down and a footman running down the steps lifted it up to carry it into the house.

The driver touched his cap in acknowledgement of a generous tip.

As he drove away, the gentleman stood for a moment on the steps looking between the tall dark cypress trees to where some distance away the Mediterranean gleamed in the moonlight.

It was very beautiful and the music in the background enhanced the inevitable suggestion of romance. Then he turned and walked up the steps to where in the hall the butler was waiting for him.

“Good evening, Mr. Tyrone,” he said with the welcoming smile of an old retainer. “We were expecting you yesterday, sir.”

“Yes, I know, Ronaldson,” the newcomer said, “but the trains from the East are invariably unpunctual and I arrived in Paris too late to catch my connection.”

“Her Ladyship’ll be very glad to hear you’ve arrived safely.” “Don’t tell her until I have washed and changed,” Tyrone Strome said. “I see you are having a party.”

“Yes, Mr. Tyrone, a dinner dance for the young people.” There was something almost contemptuous in the butler’s voice that made Tyrone Strome laugh.

He was well aware that Ronaldson, who had been with his sister’s family for many years, disliked what he considered ‘informal occasions’.

“Show me where I am to sleep,” he suggested. “As I am travelling light, I doubt if I shall be smart enough for a party.”

“Knowing, sir, you’d doubtless be staying with her Ladyship,” Ronaldson answered. “I brought a suit of your evening clothes with me from London.”

Tyrone Strome smiled,

“I am grateful, Ronaldson, as I always am for the excellent way you look after me. I only wish I could take you with me on my travels.”

“Heaven forbid, Mr. Tyrone!” the butler exclaimed. “I would have enjoyed your type of life, sir, when I was young, but I’m past adventuring at my age.”

Tyrone Strome laughed quietly and followed Ronaldson as he moved slowly and rather pompously along a corridor on the ground floor of the villa passing a number of salons as he did so.

He was aware that he would be sleeping in the rooms which he invariably occupied when he enjoyed his sister’s hospitality.

He was, however, always so vague as to when he would arrive or when he would leave that he did not count on having special treatment, except that Ronaldson would have been affronted if he had not been accommodated in what the butler considered proper style.

The rooms they finally reached were built out from the villa, connected to it by a long covered passage.

The previous owner had been a writer who desired solitude and had therefore built himself what was to all intents and purposes a tiny chalet.

On the edge of a ravine it had in the daytime a breathtaking view over the sea and coast.

High up on the hill Lady Merrill’s villa had an unequalled position, but even better than the main building itself was this small chalet which her brother always looked upon as his own.

“Everything is ready for you, Mr. Tyrone,” the butler said with satisfaction, “and I’ll send a footman, sir, to unpack your valise. He’s French, but well up in his duties.”

“Thank you, Ronaldson. As you realise, I have been travelling very light, but my yacht should be in the harbour by now, in which case I have a number of things aboard which I can send for tomorrow.”

“I think, sir, you’ll find everything you need for this evening.” “I am sure I shall.”

As he spoke, Tyrone Strome climbed the narrow stairway from the sitting room to the bedroom over it.

As he entered the attractive room in which the decorations were predominantly white, he saw his tailcoat and stiff shirt lying ready for him on a chair.

He looked at them and made a grimace, thinking how uncomfortable they would be after the casual clothes he had been wearing these last three months.

He had in fact been on a secret and at times dangerous mission to the East, travelling incognito so that the passport he carried did not bear his real name.

When he had sent off his report from Paris last night, having on arrival spent most of the night preparing it, he had known that certain people in London would be extremely pleased at what he had been able to achieve.

Tyrone Strome had always been a mystery man to his contemporaries, to his friends and even to his sister who adored him.

He had worked in the Foreign Office for some years. Then unexpectedly and without explanation he had taken to travelling to obscure parts of the world, leaving no address behind and being very reluctant on his return to talk of where he had been.

Many people considered him just an inveterate traveller. It was only in a certain anonymous department of the Foreign Office that Tyrone Strome’s name was always spoken of with awe and respect.

Now, when he knew he could relax the pressure under which he had worked for the last months, he felt suddenly very tired.

It was, he knew, the reaction to having to be permanently on the alert and on his guard – never being able to enter a room without thinking that someone might be behind the door, never being able to speak without choosing every word with care.

Now it was all over, he thought, and he intended to enjoy himself with his sister Helene and make no plans for the future until they were forced upon him.

He started to undress and as he did so there was a knock at the door and the footman Ronaldson had sent entered.

“I’ve come to unpack, monsieur,” he said in French. “Thank you,” Tyrone Strome said. “There is only my valise.”

He pointed to where the other footman had left it beside the wardrobe, then throwing his coat onto a chair walked into the bathroom.

One of the pleasant things about his sister’s villa was that it had modern bathrooms of the type that were rare in Europe.

The Americans, Tyrone Strome thought, were almost like the ancient Romans in their desire to bathe frequently and they made sure there were a number of luxurious bathrooms in every house they occupied.

In Europe, especially in England, the choice was usually between a hip bath in one’s bedroom, with brass cans of water dragged up innumerable stairs by sweating servants or a bathroom situated at the end of a long cold corridor where it took hours for the hot tap to produce anything but tepid water.

Lying in the deep, warm, comfortable bath with which he was provided here in the South of France, Tyrone felt as if he washed away not only the dust of his journey but also the anxieties that had made his latest exploit a hair-raising experience.

It had been one of the most difficult assignments he had ever undertaken and he told himself that his success entitled him to have a very long and lazy holiday.

This he intended to spend with his sister, who was the only close member of his family alive and for whom he had an unswerving devotion.

Lady Merrill was in fact fourteen years older than her brother and had mothered him after their mother died when Tyrone was a very small boy.

Left a widow three years ago, she had only one son, David, now Lord Merrill, whom she adored.

David had been at Oxford when Tyrone Strome had last been with his sister and he remembered now that he had not seen the boy for nearly two years.

He looked forward to renewing his acquaintance with his nephew, but he realised that, as David was now twenty-one, he would not find the villa as quiet as it had been in the past.

There would be dinner dances, of which Ronaldson obviously disapproved, doubtless taking place night after night and he told himself in that case he would either stay quietly in his own chalet reading or sleep aboard his yacht.

He had no intention of being part of the gay glittering set which had made the Riviera one of the most fashionable parts of Europe.

Monte Carlo had always drawn the famous and the infamous ever since it had opened its doors to gamblers, but the King when he was the Prince of Wales had made Cannes fashionable.

Now rich Noblemen, politicians and social climbers were all seeking villas in the vicinity.

‘I have every intention of being quiet,’ Tyrone Strome told himself.

He knew he could rely on his sister not to try to lionise him as so many other people had tried to do.

It was not difficult to realise why.

Tyrone Strome was not only an interesting and wealthy young man who came from a distinguished family – he was also extremely handsome and had a mysterious, intriguing quality about him that women found irresistible.

They had no idea, of course, of the dangerous work in which he was so often engaged.

But no one could have achieved what Tyrone Strome had in the past few years and not developed a personality which made him an object of interest and curiosity wherever he appeared.

As he dried himself now after his bath, an impartial observer would have thought that his lean athletic frame looked like a Greek God.

He was outstandingly fit and, when he went into his bedroom, the French valet, who was waiting to help him into his evening clothes, stared at him in admiration.

Tyrone Strome talked to the man in perfect French. Then, when he was ready with the exception of his evening coat, he dismissed him.

“There is no need to wait.”

“I will tidy up later, monsieur.”

“Thank you.”

Tyrone Strome, waiting until the footman had withdrawn, turned out the lights and walked across the bedroom and through the open windows onto the balcony.

He wished to look at the beauty that lay beneath him and at the star-strewn sky.

He felt as if the loveliness of it soothed him, almost like a cool hand on his forehead.

There was the smell of syringa and mimosa on the air and he knew that the purple bougainvillaea and the pink scented geraniums climbing over the balcony would in the morning hum with the sound of bees.

It was all very familiar and peaceful and, as he put his elbows on the balcony and felt a very faint breath of wind from the sea, he wondered if he should stay here, content with his thoughts and not join the party.

He felt out of tune with the noise and exuberance of young people, a dance band and the ‘pop’ of champagne corks.

Then he told himself that the change was just what he needed.

He had been concentrating so fiercely on the problems and difficulties of his assignment that it would take some time for his brain to become less active, his senses less perceptive.

He was just about to take one last look to where the sea gleaming silver in the moonlight met the hazy horizon when he heard voices below him.

“Listen to me, Nevada, I beg you! You have to listen!”

It was a man’s voice and there was a note of urgency and pleading in it which seemed to Tyrone Strome to be almost like a signal of distress.

“There is no such word as ‘must’ where I am concerned,” a woman replied.

“You have been avoiding me, Nevada, and it is driving me mad! Why have you changed? Why are you treating me like this?”

“Like what?”

The words were almost a drawl and Tyrone Strome thought that she had a touch of an accent.

“You know quite well what I mean. You were so kind and so sweet to me, then suddenly, after sweeping me up to the highest Heavens, you dropped me down into the deepest hell!”

“Oh, David, how poetic!”

“Dammit, will you take seriously what I am saying? I love you, Nevada, and you are driving me insane!”