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‘Excuse me,’ he said to Beth quickly, walking towards the desk. Beth could hear the girl saying something to him in Czech—telling him what? she wondered, her curiosity aroused by the girl’s unexpectedly respectful manner towards him, rather as though she considered Alex to be someone important.
From what she had seen of them, Beth knew that the Czechs were a very polite and courteous nation, treating one another with courtly good manners which seemed to have gone rather out of fashion in other Western countries, but the clerk behind the desk wasn’t merely treating Alex courteously; whilst her behaviour wasn’t exactly obsequious, it was very definitely deferential.
Frowning a little over this perplexing insight into someone else’s opinion of Alex, Beth quickly warned herself against encouraging herself to see hitherto unnoticed good points about him. She had made that mistake with Julian Cox, determinedly supporting him and even defending him to her closest friends when they had tried gently to warn her what kind of man he was.
She had even ignored the fact that her own best friend, Kelly, had had to reject his advances at the same time that she was actually seeing him, letting Julian persuade her that Kelly was just jealous.
Beth could hardly bear now to reflect on her own wilful foolishness. She knew that Kelly and her friends, most especially those closest to her—Anna and Dee—all believed that Julian’s perfidy had broken her heart. And it was true that she had believed that he loved her, that she had allowed herself to be carried away by the fantasy he had created around them both, the romantic deception he had woven. She was, as Beth was the first to admit, someone who was inclined to be a little over-idealistic, to believe that all her geese were potential swans, so to speak. However, even whilst Julian had been pressuring her to make plans for an elaborate engagement party, even whilst he had been swearing undying love to her, a tiny part of her had been just that little bit concerned, just that little bit wary that he was rushing things too much, that she wasn’t being given time to assimilate her own feelings properly.
All her life there had been fond, loving people there to make her most important decisions for her, to relieve her of the burden of having to do so for herself. Her parents, her grandparents, even her friends, all of them loving and caring, all of them protective, all of them acting from the best possible motives. But Beth could see now that their love and their protection had taken from her the right to make her own decisions and her own mistakes. It wasn’t their fault. It was her own. She ought to have been more assertive, less passive, less eager to be the beloved, adored child and more eager to be the respected woman. Well, all that was behind her now. For practical reasons she needed the services of an interpreter and a guide, but that was all. There was no way she needed anyone else’s support or anyone else’s advice in deciding what she wanted to buy for her shop.
Alex was still speaking with the girl behind the reception desk. Beth came to a quick decision. Whilst he was busy she had the perfect opportunity to get away from him. Quickly she headed towards the lift, only realising how anxious she had been that he would come after her once she was safely inside it and it was moving.
She had the lift to herself. Briefly she closed her eyes, her face burning as, without meaning to, she suddenly found herself remembering what Alex had said to her about being in a lift with her the previous day.
Angry with herself for the wayward and highly personal nature of her thoughts, she told herself determinedly that she had far better and more important things to think about than Alex Andrews.
Once inside her room, she rang down to the reception desk and informed them that she didn’t want to be disturbed—under any circumstances or by anyone.
She doubted that Alex would genuinely be concerned at not being able to make contact with her. After all, she wasn’t his only woman ‘client’, was she?
Beth frowned as she tried to analyse the feelings tensing her body when she recalled the very elegant, if undeniably older woman she had seen him with the previous evening—the evening he had told her he intended to spend with his family. She hadn’t looked the sort of person who would be taken in by the attentions of a flirtatious interpreter, but then perhaps, like her, she’d recognised Alex for exactly what he was and had decided to... There had certainly been a good deal of intimacy in the closeness of their bodies as they had stood together.
Beth wrapped her arms protectively around her own body. The distasteful suspicions flooding her mind should surely have the effect of totally destroying the physical desire she had begun to feel for Alex, not feeding the unexpected jealousy she could actually feel.
Annoyed with herself, she paced the floor of her room. It was too early for her to go back to the Square, where she had seen the gypsy, and she felt too restless to remain here in her room—as well as much too aware of the growing danger of wanting to remain alone with her own seriously undermining, intimate thoughts.
Perhaps a guided tour of the city would help to pass some of the time. Besides which, she genuinely wanted to see more of the place which had such a wonderful reputation.
* * *
Three hours later, at the end of her chosen tour, Beth had to acknowledge that she hadn’t realised the breadth of Prague’s varied history. She had been shown the Jewish Cemetery, and had marvelled at its antiquity. She had stood on the hillside and looked down at Prague’s pretty rooftops, admiring their copper cupolas and the soft warm reds of its tiles and bricks. She had seen the castle, with its many courtyards, and wandered with the other eager members of her group along the narrow streets lined with tiny, fascinating gift shops.
Having thanked her guide for her stimulating talk, Beth excused herself, slowly making her way back towards Wenceslas Square, stopping at one point to order a sandwich and a pot of coffee at a small attractive café where she could sit outside and watch the world go by.
If anything the Square was even more crowded this evening than it had been the evening before when she had first visited it, Beth decided as she made her way through the groups of other sightseers thronging the large cobbled area. The armour-making stall, the fire-eater and the acrobats were all there, and familiar to her, barely meriting more than a second interested look as she hurried to the stall where she had met the gypsy. Not only was the Square more crowded with tourists, there also seemed to be more stalls as well, Beth recognised, and at first she thought that her stall wasn’t there.
Anxiously she searched for it, her attention momentarily caught by the pathetic sight of two young children huddled in a doorway clutching a grey-faced, ominously quiet baby. She had heard that sometimes the gypsy mothers, in order to pursue their begging more easily, sedated their children by whatever means they could, including the use of drink and—appallingly, to Beth’s mind—drugs.
Poor child, and poor mother too, Beth’s tender heart couldn’t help feeling. Whatever the rights and wrongs of their political situation—and Beth was the first to admit that she was in no position to be any judge of that—she couldn’t help but feel sad for the plight of her fellow humans.
Even though she knew she was probably doing the wrong thing, she couldn’t stop herself from giving the grubby child who approached her a handful of small change.
As she firmly shooed the children away, shaking her head to show that there was no more money, she saw the stall she had been looking for tucked away to one side of a larger one. Relieved, she hurried towards it.
The woman she had seen the previous evening recognised her immediately, beckoning her over with a wide smile.
‘I have here the glass for you to see,’ she told Beth in a conspiratorial whisper, drawing her into the canvas-covered rear of her stall.
Its canvas covering obscured the light and smelt strongly, causing Beth’s throat to close up uncomfortably. There was a heavy odor in the air that might have been incense, or perhaps something a little less innocuous. Beth really didn’t want to know.
‘See...here it is...’ the woman was telling Beth, touching her on the arm as she directed her attention to several pieces of glass she had placed on a makeshift table formed from an old box. Beth had to kneel down to see the glass properly, but once she did so she caught her breath in awed delight, instinctively reaching out to take hold of the beautifully crafted items the woman was showing her.
Only now, in the relief of having her judgement vindicated, was she able to admit to herself how very, very important it was to her to be able to tell Alex Andrews that she had managed to find her glassware without his help.
‘Oh, but these are wonderful, perfect,’ she told the woman huskily.
As she inspected them and held them, examining them carefully and holding them up to the light, despite the gypsy woman’s fierce protest and the way she shielded them from the sight of anyone else by standing in front of them, Beth found it hard to believe that they were not actually genuine antiques.
