Flower for a Bride (10 page)

She was trying to force herself to concentrate all her attention on a book when, much later that evening, a knock came on the door. She had barely called out to whoever it was to enter when the door opened, and Dom Julyan stood there looking at her.

Lois felt her heart give a kind of wild lurch as she promptly allowed her book to drop to the floor, and stood up to confront him. He was wearing a white dinner-jacket, and by contrast with it his face looked for the first time almost swarthy, and his eyes were deep, enigmatic pools of darkness. His hair seemed to be part of the shadowy background of the corridor.

“Forgive me if I’m intruding,” he said, waiting for her to invite him inside, “but I saw the light under the door, and realized you hadn’t gone to bed. May I speak to you for a few moments?”

“Of course,” she answered, so taken aback that she hardly knew how she answered. She had changed into a little grey dress before dinner, and although it was an afternoon frock it was fine and gauzy, and seemed to foam about her like grey mist. Out of it emerged a single row of small pearls that encircled her slender neck, her heartshaped face with very little color in it save the delicate glow of her lips, and her short fair curls that looked pale as floss-silk under the discreetly shaded lights.

Dom Julyan seemed to stare at her rather hard for a moment, and then although she hadn’t invited him to do so he stepped into the middle of the room. He looked about

him for a moment as if he was puzzled.

“But this isn’t your sitting-room,” he said.

“No. My own room is next door.”

“Your own room? Your bedroom, you mean?” “It is a bed-sitting-room, and very charming.” She was surprised to see him frown almost blackly.

“But that is quite contrary to my orders! I gave particular instructions that you were to have a sitting-room and a bedroom of your own. Naturally you cannot remain cooped up in a room in which you have to sleep. Where did you have your dinner?”

“In—in my own room,” she admitted.

He gnawed at his lower lip as if he was keeping down anger.

“In future I think it will be a good plan if you have all your meals downstairs in the main dining room. Jamie will have his supper up here, of course, but once he is in bed there is no reason at all why you should remain up here, certainly not to eat a lonely dinner.”

“But I enjoyed it,” she told him, untruthfully. “And what about Miss Mattie?”

“She has always preferred to be on her own—or, rather, simply with Jamie—but she is old, and her position is rather different.” Lois, with faintly widening eyes, couldn’t see there was very much difference for, after all, a governess was a governess; but her employer went on, with that dark frown knitting his brows: “You are very young, and it would be quite wrong to continue to isolate you in this manner. And I am particularly vexed about the arrangement of these rooms. May I see your room?”

“Why, of course,” she answered, and led him through the dimly-lighted night-nursery to her own room. He seemed displeased because it necessitated making their way through the bathroom, and altogether he seemed to think the arrangement rather worse than it had struck him at first. And although Lois thought the room where she was to sleep that night, for the first time under his roof, looked almost exquisite once the light was on, and the pale blue carpet reminded her of a carpet of pale blue moss, she could tell by his expression that he didn’t share her sentiments.

“It will do for the time being,” he said, “but as a

permanent arrangement it will most certainly not do. You must have two rooms of your own, and it would be better if you had them on the other side of the corridor, I think, near enough to Jamie, but not actually a part of his own apartments.” She was about to argue that since he was so young surely it was only right that their apartments should adjoin, when he looked down at her with a rather cooler expression on his face, and pointed out a little remotely: “Jamie is no longer a very small child, and he must be brought up as other boys are brought up in this country. He must begin to realize that he is growing up.”

“But he is only a baby!” she protested.

“Is he?” For an instant his eyes flickered with something which might have been amusement. “To you, perhaps, but not to me. He will be eight next birthday.”

“Eight?” she echoed. “But that is hardly any age at all!” “When I was only eight,” he informed her, “I was working with a tutor—not a governess!—and a year later I was sent away to school.”

“But I thought,” she said, standing looking up at him, “that Miss Mattie was your governess.”

“She was, until I was about six or seven, and then she concentrated on my sisters.”

“But you had a mother,” she reminded him, “and that means you had some sort of feminine influence in your life.” “Quite.” But once again his expression was remote. “I had a mother until quite recently, but Jamie’s mother died three years ago.”

Three years, Lois thought! And still looking up at him she wondered what kind of thoughts and recollections they were that flocked through his mind—that must flock through his mind—when he found himself forced to refer to the death of his wife. Judging by the complete impassivity of his face they were not exactly painful—but then impassivity was probably a sort of armor with which he cloaked his feelings so that they were almost unguessable. In fact, she was beginning to be fairly certain that it was.

“I hope everything else here is as you would wish it to be?” he enquired rather formally, as if anxious to change the subject. “If there is anything you require at any time you mustn’t hesitate to let either me or Miss Mattie know.”

“Thank you,” she murmured, walking back with him to the day nursery. “But at the moment there is nothing at all for which I need ask.”

She noticed that he paused for a moment at the foot of Jamie’s bed, and in the dim light that burned in the room she saw him smile at the childish figure lying spread-eagled beneath the thin coverlet. And then, when they returned to the big day nursery, a voice greeted them—or rather it greeted Dom Julyan.

“Is anything wrong?” the slightly husky, and very charming feminine voice enquired. “Is something the matter with the child, Julyan?

C H A P T E R E I G H T

For an instant Lois was reminded of the portrait of Donna Valerira in the library as she looked at the woman in the white dress, with a red rose tucked carelessly into the front of it, who was standing just inside the open doorway. And then she realized that it was merely a trick of the light—and possibly also the magnificence of the white satin evening gown—that had almost deceived her for a moment, and led her to a curious conviction that Donna Valerira was standing near to them.

And once the moment of confusion had passed she realized how absurd she had been, for Donna Colares was as unlike the late mistress of the quinta as she herself was. Or almost as unlike, for they shared the same curiously white skin, and Gloria Colares’s eyes looked darker than they were in daylight beneath the influence of shaded electric light. Darker, and with rather an odd expression in them as they peered upwards at the man in the white dinner-jacket.

“Anything the matter?” he echoed, looking faintly surprised. “Why, no! What made you suppose that there was?” Donna Colares appeared relieved.

“You disappeared, and I decided to come and look for you. After all, you do not normally desert your guests,” with just a touch of reproach in her look as it rested on him, “and I was a little anxious. And then I saw this door standing open, and I heard your voices. It occurred to me that Jamie might perhaps not be well, and as Miss Fairchild was new, and rather young, she might have summoned you because she thought it best.” “There is absolutely nothing the matter with Jamie,” Dom Julyan replied, and to Lois his voice sounded very quiet, although it was courteous as it always was. “He is sleeping very peacefully, and I merely came up here to have a few words with Miss Fairchild about him.”

“I see,” Gloria murmured, and she sent a brief, Mona-Lisa-ish smile in Lois’s direction. “But isn’t it a little late to discuss child-welfare with a new governess? And surely Miss Mattie could have passed on your instructions?”

“They were not instructions,” Dom Julyan said, and she bit her lip.

“Then they could have waited for the morning.” She flashed a much more brilliant smile at Lois. “You must have a little consideration for one who, only yesterday, was on holiday, and probably values a little free time, my dear Julyan. Even governesses like to feel safe from employers at this hour of the night, surely? And if you wanted to be kind you should have asked Miss Fairchild down to join the rest of us at dinner. It is a little lonely for her up here all by herself, surely?” she repeated, as if that was a termination she found gave emphasis to her words.

“I entirely agree with you,” Dom Julyan answered her this time, "and I have just suggested to Miss Fairchild that she has all her meals downstairs. It is a little barbaric to keep her cooped up here.”

“Very barbaric,” Donna Colares agreed. “If you want to keep her you’ll have to remember that she is not another Miss Mattie, and that young people need young society. I see that I’ll have to stand up for you, Miss Fairchild,” with the smile making her eyes look almost unnaturally brilliant, “and act as a kind of Trade Union for you. Dom Julyan is not accustomed to dealing with young Englishwomen, but I know that you’re used to freedom. You must come and have tea with me one afternoon, and I’ll set about finding you some useful acquaintances.”

“Useful acquaintances?” the man enquired, with one eyebrow raised. Lois was not certain whether it was a smile in his eyes, but his voice held that curious coolness. “Now, what exactly do you mean by useful acquaintances?”

Donna Colares made a little gesture with her artistic white hands, and appealed to Lois.

“... These fellow countrymen of mine! What do you think of them, Miss Fairchild? I, who have lived in America realize that they are about a hundred years behind the times! Why, the girl needs someone to escort her about occasionally, of

course!”

“I see.” Dom Julyan said almost blandly.

“Oh, but really . . .” Lois thought it time to protest. “I have only arrived here today, and there is absolutely no need for anyone to bother about me. I’m sure I am going to be very happy.”

“I said we would meet again, didn’t I?” the Portuguese woman reminded her, with a queer kind of gaiety in her voice. “And now that we have met again, and you’ve decided to take on this job I’m going to make myself responsible for your private life. Going to ensure that you have a private life, I mean.”

“Have you anyone in mind to whom you intend to introduce Miss Fairchild?” Dom Julyan enquired, as if he were genuinely interested.

“Oh, yes.” She flashed her provocative smile at him. “There is Rick Enderby, who is her own fellow countryman, and incidentally paints the most wonderful seascapes—I bought a couple last week. He is charming, and agreeable, and they speak the same tongue. And then there is my brother Duarte. He has been very naughty and consistently overspent his allowance while studying medicine in Rome, and my Papa is very angry with him. But for the time being he is at home, a little shamefaced, but dull—terribly dull. I think Miss Fairchild would find him amusing.”

“Your selection, in my opinion, leaves a little to be desired,” Lois’s employer remarked, with so much dryness that it was impossible to mistake it for anything else.

“Nonsense!” Gloria turned and slipped a hand inside his arm and patted it affectionately. She looked up at him under lids that seemed suddenly heavy and languorous. “That is because you do not approve of artists and you have never approved of Duarte. But I adore him, and I am so sorry for him just not, and I am very anxious to provide him with a little distraction. Miss Fairchild is so English that I feel she would have a very wholesome effect on him.”

“So long as Miss Fairchild has no objections to having a wholesome effect on a young man who ought by this time to be earning his own living, and so long as she remembers that my principal concern is that she shall take full charge of Jamie and recognize her responsibilities towards him, then what she does in her spare time is hardly any concern of mine,” Dom Julyan remarked, answering her arguments crisply, and he turned towards the door. “But now I think it is time we left

Miss Fairchild to her own devices.”

“Of course.” But under the heavy lids the tawny eyes pleaded with him like a child asking for forgiveness, and the red mouth formed a soft pout of anxiety. “I know you think it is a weakness of mine to interfere where perhaps it is not my province, but I do like people to be happy, and if my interference results in making them happy then surely I have a right to interfere?”

The argument was unassailable, if not quite logical, and he did the only thing a man of his chivalrous nature, who obviously admired her a great deal, could do under the circumstances, and capitulated at once. His eyes softened wonderfully as he looked down at her, and while Lois looked on he smiled and removed the white hand from his sleeve and carried it up to his lips. But he did not salute the back of it. He turned it gently round and pressed his mouth twice against the graceful inside of the wrist, where delicate blue veins showed up, and an eager pulse was probably pounding, and then lightly retained possession of the fingers that curled round his.

“You are impossible to argue with,” he told her. And then, with a brief smile at Lois: Donna Colares has been like this ever since I have known her, and it seems there is nothing we can do about it. She will have her way in the end.”

“Yes, of course I will have my way in the end,” Donna Colares murmured, smiling almost happily at Lois. “And you will come to tea as soon as I can arrange it, Miss Fairchild? There is no need to bring Jamie with you, for Miss Mattie will look after him.”

“You are very kind,” Lois replied, and thought that there was no difficulty apparently that Donna Colares was not capable of overcoming. “When it is decided I can have a free afternoon I shall be delighted to accept your invitation.”