Read Ellis Peters - George Felse 06 - Black Is The Colour Of My True Love's Heart for Free Online Page B

her arm out of his grasp, and instinctively gave up the attempt, knowing she could not do it by force and he would not let her go.
    “
I
don’t want to talk to
you
. Let go my arm.”
    “Liri, don’t be like this, I tell you I’ve
got
to talk to you…”
    “You did talk to me,” she said through her teeth, “just now. You talked and I answered, and I’ve said all I’ve got to say to you. Now get away from me.”
    “I don’t believe it! If that’s all you’ve got to say to me, why did you come here at all?”
    “Why shouldn’t I?” she demanded fiercely. “I came as a student, like anybody else…”
    “That’s a lie,” he said bluntly. “You came because you knew I should be here, you must have, you couldn’t have known the course was on at all without knowing I was part of it. You followed me here. Why, if you’ve got nothing to say to me now you’re here?”
    “You!” she said, suddenly rigid with quiet fury. “You think the world goes round you. You think you can play what tricks you like, and no one has the right to kick. You wouldn’t know what I have against you, would you? Oh, no! Listen just once more, and then I never want to see you or hear your voice again. I’m finished with you! I don’t know you, I don’t want to know you, you mean nothing to me, and you never will mean anything again. Now take your hands off me.”
    “The devil I will, till you listen to
me
…”
    Lucifer blazed, and the answering fires burned up in Liri’s eyes. She would have liked to swing her free palm and hit him resoundingly in the face, but in the quietness where they were, and sharp above the still ferocity of their voices, it would have brought the curious running as surely as a pistol-shot. There were other ways. She stooped her head suddenly, and closed her teeth in his wrist.
    He never made a sound, but his startled muscles jerked, and in the instant of surprise when his grip relaxed she tore herself free, eluding the recovering lunge he made after her, and slipped away from him up the staircase.
     
    By one of the coffee-tables in the small drawing-room – they were just getting used to applying the term to an apartment about as large as a tithe-barn – Dickie Meurice had gathered his court about him, and was exerting himself to be at once king and court-jester. He, at least, was having a successful evening. Things were shaping up very nicely. He didn’t miss Liri’s entry, or fail to hug himself with satisfaction at sight of her high colour and burning eyes; but he let her alone. So far from having anything against her personally, he was just beginning to find her interesting. She might be a tigress, but she had looks and style; she made most of the girls look like mass-produced dolls. There might be a bonus in it for him if he could make certain that her separation from Lucifer was permanent.
    Lucien Galt came into the room with his usual long, arrogant step, his head up, his brows drawn together into a forbidding line. He crossed to the coffee-table and helped himself without a word or a look for anyone, and then stood balancing the cup in his hand and looking round until he found Liri, in a group surrounding Professor Penrose, in the far corner of the room. He watched her frowningly, attentively, without a thought for all the curious, covert glances fixed on him. It was like him not to bother to dissemble for them; the most offensive thing about him was that he made no concessions to his public. In Meurice’s catalogue of sins that was blasphemy.
    And, damn him, here came the girls, just the same! He could stand there and look through them as though they didn’t exist, and they came edging in on him like cats, purring and rubbing themselves against his knees. The Cope kid among the first of them, of course; she’d got it badly. Pale as death, tight as a bow-string, swallowing her desperate shyness in still more desperate bravery.
    “Mr. Galt, you were wonderful! I know you must be