Tender Is The Tyrant Read online

  Her gaze followed the moon, and she thought of the Venetian poem which likened the first gondola to a crescent moon, dropped out of the sky to provide shelter for a pair of eloping lovers. Lauri enjoyed old stories and legends and Venice was probably full of them. She began to feel more eager to see the city, where the ballet company was to reside for a couple of months at the palazzo which had been in Maxim di Corte’s family for centuries.

  He was the last male member of his family. And it was plain that he was as proud and shrewd and able to command as the Venetians of long ago, whose efforts had made their city so beautiful and famous. His line was an old one and he would have to marry to ensure its continuation. Lauri thought of Andreya, with her strange, striking face ... and the husband she already had.

  Again, as Lauri stood at the ship’s rail, she became aware of the tangy, drifting aroma of a cigarette. She half-turned and saw the outline of a long, lean shape in one of the steamer-chairs behind her. Though the smoker’s face was masked by the shadows, the scent of his cigarette gave him away to Lauri.

  ‘You look very lonely in the moonlight, Nijinka,’ he drawled. ‘Why are you not dancing with the ship’s officers this last evening at sea, like all the other girls?

  ‘Because no one asked me to, Mr. Lonza.’ She smiled nervously as she answered him, for he was still a stranger to her.

  ‘How formal you British are.’ With lithe ease he swung off the steamer-chair and came to her side. He pitched the butt of his Russian cigarette into the sea, after killing it, and then before Lauri realized his intention he laid his hand over hers on the deck rail. What a cold hand, he murmured. ‘Are you nervous of me?’

  ‘The sea breezes have chilled my hand,’ she rejoined. ‘I—I ought to be going down to my cabin—‘

  ‘You seemed content to remain here another hour, until you realised my presence a few feet away from you.’ Amusement mingled with the foreign intonation of his words and made his voice extra fascinating, somehow. Lauri had net been alone with Michael Lonza before, and she was in awe of him as a danseur noble, and extremely aware that he was as dangerously attractive off-stage as on.

  ‘Stay and talk to me,’ he coaxed. ‘I am rather lonely myself.’

  ‘I can hardly believe that, Mr. Lonza,’ Lauri looked at him with shy eyes in which a little laughter danced. ‘I am sure every woman on board this ship would be thrilled to keep you company.’

  ‘It is not the company of every woman on this ship that I want.’ He lounged beside her and kept her hand a captive within his. ‘I think you and I should get to know one another. We will be living at the same palazzo, sleeping under the same roof, and dancing on the same stage.’

  ‘I shall be at the back of the stage, a very minor member of the corps de ballet,’ she reminded him.

  ‘What of that?’ Laughter crinkled the corners of his eyes and intensified their charm. ‘Our Director has not ruled a demarcation line between his chorus and his stars, which we must toe—besides, my Romany instincts tell me that you will not be for long a wood-nymph or a swan-maid.?

  She tautened at his side as she felt him turn her hand palm upwards in his. ‘The moon crosses your palm with silver and invites me to read it,’ he said. ‘I am half Romany, you know, and we have mysterious powers.’

  ‘How fascinating,’ she smiled. ‘I suppose reading a palm by moonlight adds a certain magic?’

  ‘Of course,’ he agreed. The moon has always held sway over the hearts of women.’

  ‘And the earth over men,’ she capped him.

  He chuckled, then bent his attractive gaze upon her palm, and though she believed he played a game, her heart beat fast as she watched him. ‘Mmm, I see two people in this small hand, a man and a girl destined to become friends—or lovers.’ His fingers tightened about hers. ‘I see also that you are not a person to seek the limelight. You shy from it—as from a flame—yet you are drawn inescapably into its white heat and the roar of applause that sweeps up out of the darkness like the sound of fire—’

  ‘Please—stop!’ Her hand struggled in his. ‘You know I have reason to hate the very mention of fire—’

  ‘What are you saying?’ His puzzled eyes searched hers. ‘I know only your name, and that you have never danced professionally.’

  ‘But—’ her eyes were raised wonderingly to his—‘it’s uncanny that you should know how I feel.’

  ‘I am sorry I touched on something so painful to you, Nijinka.’

  She felt his sincerity, and told him quietly about her parents. ‘I wish I could be anything but a dancer,’ she sighed. ‘But I suppose Signor di Corte is right, we must follow our destiny, our star.’

  Her gaze was caught by a star overhead, which gave the curious impression of being pierced on that sickle moon, and Lauri gave a shiver. ‘Several times you’ve called me Nijinka,’ she said. What does the name mean?’

  ‘It is Russian for tender one,’ he replied. ‘I think the name suits you. You are a tender lamb for di Corte to have brought into his company of swans and panthers.’

  ‘Lonza the panther,’ she murmured. ‘People who dance in ballet always seem to get associated with graceful cats and birds, but I hope I’m not going to get tagged as Lauri the lamb.’

  He gave a soft laugh, his head thrown back so that the blade of the moon seemed to shimmer across his throat. ‘I will tell you something,’ he said. ‘When I saw you for the first time at that Strand Palace party, looking drowsy from several hours of ballet and one glass of champagne, I thought di Corte must be crazy to have signed up such a child. I am rapidly changing my mind about you. You are the sort a man has to discover slowly, and I am growing eager to see you dance.’

  He gazed down at her, plundering the gold that glimmered behind her dark lashes, raking the soft scarlet of her unpainted mouth. ‘I hope you are not one of those who has merely learned the mechanics of the dance,’ he said. ‘One can always hear that sort counting each beat of the music, concentrating earnestly like busy housewives watching eggs boil in a saucepan. Did you dance much at home?’

  She smiled. ‘In the summer I used to go up on the Downs near where we lived and dance under the sky in my bare feet.’

  ‘Like Isadora Duncan,’ he smiled. ‘She brought freedom of movement into ballet, but she was not constituted to accept its disciplines ... only to be a martyr to love. Have you read her life story, Lauri?’

  He used her name like an old friend and she felt suddenly warmed. ‘I try to read about all the famous dancers,’ she said. ‘Pavlova, Nijinsky, and the Signor’s grandmother, Travilla. Do you mind having your dancing compared to Nijinsky’s, Mr. Lonza?’

  ‘You must call me Michael, little one. Quite frankly, I hate to be compared to anyone else. When I dance I am Lonza and no other man. It is true that I have Tartar ancestry, but unlike the great Nijinsky I don’t cry in my soul for a lost and wounded youth. I enjoyed my youth.’ He gave a chuckle. ‘I was a dancer and a drifter; a wood-cutter and a peddler. Homeless as the Wandering Jew, and often as ragged as Lazarus. Then one day Maxim di Corte found me, as he found you, and I left the gipsy troupe with whom I was travelling and trained seriously for ballet. ‘Our Director is clever and shrewd, Nijinka, but he is not an easy man to know. I believe he rather frightens you, eh?’

  ‘I do find him rather alarming,’ she admitted. ‘He’s so imperious and knowledgeable, and he expects so much. Does he ever take any of—the classes at the palazzo?’

  ‘Frequently.’ Michael Lonza was looking rakishly sympathetic. ‘He is a great teacher, and he will make you hate him before he makes a real dancer of you. He has a certain ambition, you know, which Lydia Andreya has never fulfilled—he wishes to give to the world another dancer like Travilla.’

  ‘But Andreya is so exotic, so spellbinding,’ Lauri gave him a look of amazement.

  ‘Yes, Andreya knows how to bewitch an audience,’ he agreed. ‘She is a sorceress of the dance, and now and then, as at Covent Garden, superlative. But she lacks th
e fey innocence for which Travilla was loved, even after her marriage to Falcone di Corte. You see, people go to ballet to recapture the romance about which they dreamed before everyday life caught up with them, and now and again a dancer emerges who can give them romance. She is Cinderella, and Psyche. A breath of innocent wildness and joy, captivating as a bluebird, or a pixie spinner of moonbeams. Such a dancer never seems quite of this mundane earth. Andreya, who has been through the mill of a broken marriage, conveys bitterness and passion rather than romance.’

  All that he said was true. Andreya had a striking face, Lauri admitted to herself, but to watch her dance was to have the feeling that she was poised on the brink of some inner torment or fury, to which she would have to give way. This created excitement and tension, but left an audience keyed up rather than enchanted.

  Lauri recalled her own restlessness in Andreya’s company at the Strand Palace party, her relief when Maxim di Corte at last put her into a taxi and sent her home to her aunt.

  Her hands clenched over the deck rail as she stood in the moonlight, watching the white wake of the ship that carried her away from what she loved into the unknown. Towards Venice, where Travilla had lived with her husband after a stage accident put an end to her dancing career.

  She had been born in Rome into a very poor family. Her mother was a laundress for theatrical people, and Travilla, then a child of eight, used to carry the washed and ironed linen to the actors and dancers at their lodgings. One of the dancers, Emilio Vanci, noticed her wild-bird grace and decided to become her ballet teacher.

  She was trained and taught by Vanci until she was ready for her debut. Emilio was years older; a brilliant teacher and technician, but addicted to wine. He loved Travilla! It was always a well-known fact, but she danced into the heart of distinguished Falcone di Corte, and went on dancing until the first night of The Maid of the Moon, a ballet created by Vanci, in which she sustained her injury ... her foot being caught in the ‘moving mountain’, a piece of spectacular scenery controlled off-stage by a lever. The ballet was withdrawn, and no other dancer had ever appeared in it. It was said to-be unlucky, for Travilla never danced again, and Vanci died not long afterwards from a fall down the long flight of stairs up which Travilla used to run in all her elfin grace, a homemade dress fluttering about the slim legs that were to carry her across all the famous stages of the world.

  Lauri drew a deep sigh, and then caught Lonza’s thoughtful gaze upon her. ‘Will you have a little supper with me before you go to your cabin?’ he asked.

  ‘But it must be very late,’ she said hesitantly.

  ‘What of that?’ His teeth flashed in a smile. ‘She who hesitates has no fun, and I know a steward who will bring us a midnight picnic up here on deck. Now stay here until I return—promise?’

  ‘I promise.’ She watched him stride away in search of the obliging steward, and it gave her the oddest feeling to remember the times she had studied Michael Lonza’s photographs on the wall of her bedroom at Downhollow. The lean, daredevil face, and the mane of dark hair above the Tartar eyes. Only minutes ago those same eyes had smiled into hers, and the god of the dance had become a human being to her.

  He returned carrying a tray on which stood a plate of sandwiches, a bottle of wine, and a pair of stemmed glasses. He arranged their picnic on the foot of a steamer-chair and pulled another over towards it. ‘Make yourself comfortable,’ he said to Lauri, who still felt rather shy of him. She sat down and watched him pour the wine.

  ‘May your future with the di Corte Company be long and successful.’ He clinked his glass against hers, and captivated by his charm, she relaxed and lifted her wine glass to her lips. The wine ran warm through her veins, and as she bit into a sandwich she caught the sparkle of Lonza’s eyes in the shadows.

  ‘You are not at all the prim schoolgirl I expected when I learned that we were to be joined by a pupil of a ballet school,’ he said. ‘I made sure you would giggle and have pimples. I did not dream that you would have a husky little laugh, and eyes almost the gold of saffron—the colour of magic and romance, like the wine we are drinking.’

  ‘What wine are we drinking?’ she asked, her breath taken away by him.

  ‘It is a Tokay, made to be enjoyed under the stars by a man and a girl. Do you find it heady?’

  ‘Yes,’ she gasped, tingling from the wine and the danger of being alone like this with a god of the dance, who was alternately gay and brooding. What would Maxim di Corte say if he could see them? Would he order her to her cabin, and remind her that dancers heeded their rest if they were to give of their best? He demanded the very best. The heart and soul out of a dancer ... not for himself but for the art he served, and the ambition that drove him in search of a dancer to follow in Travilla’s magical footsteps.

  Lauri finished her glass of wine and her sandwich, and then rose to her feet. ‘I must go to my cabin now,’ she said. ‘Otherwise when the ship docks tomorrow I shall still be asleep in my berth.’

  Michael rose too. ‘I should like to see you to your cabin—’

  ‘No,’ she shook her head quickly, for if other people saw them together it would somehow spoil the magic of their moonlit hour up here above the sea and the distant sound of music. ‘Thank you very much for the talk and the picnic, Mr. Lonza.’

  ‘Does it make you shy to call me Michael?’ He took a step that brought him near to her. ‘The picnics and the conversations need not end with the end of the voyage—I, for one, would like them to continue. Would you like that also, Lauri the lamb?’

  She smiled uncertainly, for he had barely looked at her during most of the voyage and she couldn’t help thinking that right now he was under the influence of the moon and the wine, and that in the morning he would lose interest in the reserved little English girl who was to dance in the corps de ballet.

  ‘We’ll see,’ she said, and was about to draw away from him when the sound of footsteps on the deck planking froze her into immobility. It could have been the steward returning for their tray, but instinct warned Lauri that these footsteps belonged to someone taller and far less amiable than that little steward.

  She turned her head and saw Maxim di Corte loom out of the shadows into the moonlight. His face was a chilly mask as he stood looking at Lauri, her dark head level with Michael Lonza’s shoulder. His voice was even and quiet, but there was an undertone of anger in it as he reminded her that it was past midnight and time she was in bed.

  His glance flicked the wine bottle and the glasses on the tray she had shared with Michael. ‘I don’t approve of my young dancers attending clandestine wine parties late at night,’ he said curtly. ‘And you, Lonza, should know better than to invite a mere child to one. I am aware that you are relaxing after a strenuous tour, but please remember in future that Miss Garner is not long out of the schoolroom, and that I expect her to commence learning our repertoire as soon as we are settled in at the palazzo. You yourself will be working with Bruno on the new ballet—there may, perhaps, be a part in it for Miss Garner.’

  ‘Ah,’ Michael drew in his breath. ‘I thought you had something up your Venetian sleeve from the moment I really got to know this young lady.’

  ‘Did you?’ Maxim di Corte looked enigmatic as he shot out a hand and grasped Lauri by the elbow. ‘To bed with you, signorina. Your eyes are swallowing your face.’

  He marched her away from Michael, who called out gaily: ‘Goodnight, Lauri the lamb.’

  She felt Maxim di Corte looking at her, and her smile was sheepish as they walked side by side down the flights of stairs to the cabin she shared with two of his corps de ballet. In the dimly lit passageway, before he released her from his daunting presence, he said to her: ‘Do you think of me as a taskmaster with a whip?’

  There was an ironical smile in his eyes as he gazed down at her, one hand resting in his pocket, the halflight outlining the proud contours of his head and his well-carried shoulders.

  ‘You don’t need a whip,’ she said, brushing a s
trand of dark hair back from her temple and revealing the tiny, velvety mole that clung to her white skin. Somehow it emphasized her fey look, her high cheekbones tapering to a soft, wide mouth; the gleam of gold through her black lashes.’

  ‘I am strict with my dancers for their own good, not to satisfy what you obviously think of as a dictatorial streak,’ he said crisply. ‘Ballet needs a rapier foot, flexibility, and senses always on the alert, and late nights blunt all three in anyone who is not a Tartar.’

  ‘We were talking and the time just seemed to slip away,’ she said in quick defence of the past hour with Michael. ‘I was feeling homesick and lonely, and I’m grateful to Mr. Lonza for making me feel less of a stranger.’

  The Director’s eyes narrowed and glittered. ‘The girls with whom you are sharing this cabin are very friendly. I told them to help you feel at home.’

  ‘Please,’ a look of alarm on their behalf sprang into her eyes, ‘you mustn’t blame Concha and Viola for my homesickness. They are pretty and popular, and relaxing also from a strenuous tour.’

  ‘You mean they prefer the company of the young men on the ship,’ he said dryly. ‘Ah well, I suppose it is human nature for women to seek comfort from men rather than from their own sex.’

  ‘Men do the same thing,’ Lauri rejoined, ‘I mean, they go to women to have their aches and pains soothed away.’

  ‘I am not denying it.’ Pie smiled in his enigmatic fashion. ‘Not one of us is as self-sufficient as he likes to think. Always there comes a time when we have to admit that Nature has the upper hand and we are at the mercy of her whims.’

  Lauri couldn’t imagine this proud, haughty man at the mercy of anyone ... unless he referred to the tie which bound Lydia Andreya to a man who refused to release her so she could marry again. Anyone who loved was no longer self-sufficient, and he was always with Andreya. Walking beside her, listening to her, wrapping her in her sable, coat when they went out on the deck to stand gazing at the sea; a striking couple whose eyes reflected a shared conflict.