Flower for a Bride (21 page)

Later he was summoned by his mother to perform some small errand for her, and promising to be back as quickly as he could he left her alone, seated on a kind of small granite boulder, and feeling slightly conspicuous.

Instantly she wished that he hadn’t had to leave, and almost instantly she decided that she could just sit there and await his return. A portable radio was dispensing soft music, which fitted in beautifully with the peaceful background of the night. Senor Fernandes and his particular friends were all grouped together and talking, the elderly ladies were talking also, while one or two of them actually knitted, and the young people had split up into twos and threes— more than one pair finding their way down on to the beach, or into the deeper shelter of the pines.

There appeared, at that moment, to be no one actually watching her, but Lois had the feeling that eyes were regarding her all the same, and since she had no idea where Dom Julyan was she began to feel extraordinarily uneasy. Suddenly she decided she could bear it no longer, and sprang up and took a side fork in amongst the trees. But even as she did so a voice, almost at her elbow, asked quietly: “Are you enjoying the picnic, Miss Fairchild?” Lois spun round, almost relieved now because she knew at last where he was, and because he sounded purely polite and pleasant—apart from the formality of the mode of

address.

“Yes, thank you—yes, thank you!” she repeated, and, even in her own ears, her voice sounded breathless.

“Good!” he exclaimed. She felt his fingers barely touch her arm, and gathered that it was his intention to propel her forward along the path, which seemed to lead right into the heart of the little wood. “And Duarte, as we have all observed, has been extremely attentive.”

She stiffened, without coming to a standstill, and answered with that quick resentment he had aroused in her lately:

“Were you hoping that he would bring me here, and then turn his attention to someone else?”

“But, of course not.” His voice was beautifully smooth. “No Portuguese with good blood in his veins would do such a thing as that!” A log had fallen across the path ahead of them, and he guided her round the obstruction with a slightly firmer touch on the arm. “Also Duarte is a nice enough lad, handled correctly, and I have a feeling that at least you do know how to handle him, and that—whether lastingly or not I couldn’t say at the moment!—you have laid a kind of spell on him. In a very short while, if you were not thinking of returning home to England, he might ask you to marry him!”

Lois licked her lips as if they had gone suddenly dry. Her heart was hammering painfully—in a way that actually seemed to interfere with her breathing —because of his nearness, but at the same time the trace of mockery in his voice brought her near to tears.

“I hardly think his father would approve of that,” she returned with unmistakable bitterness in her own voice. “An English governess with no background whatsoever, and one, moreover, who has failed to give satisfaction in her job! As my employer I feel sure you would think it only the right thing to drop a word of warning into the ear of Senhor Femandes senior if you honestly thought that such a disaster as that might occur!”

“Don’t talk such utter rubbish!” He sounded so fierce that he took her completely by surprise, and turning to glance up at him with the surprise stamped all over her face she inadvertently missed her footing, and the rather perilous high heel of her slender white sandal turned beneath her, giving a jar to the ankle she had sprained only a few weeks before.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, and there was pain in the small, faint word.

“What is it?” he asked immediately, his arm going round hear. “Is it your ankle? Did you twist it?”

“N—no . . . Yes! No,” she denied, almost in the same breath, but biting her lip because of the twinges that were running up and down her leg. “It’s nothing at all—it’s quite all right,” she assured him, but with so much haste, and in such a small voice still that he knew she was not speaking the truth.

The fallen log was only a yard or so behind them, and he insisted on helping her back to it so that she could sit down and give him an opportunity to examine her ankle himself. He knelt down on the rough path in front of her and bent his sleek dark head over the ridiculously tiny foot in the inadequate shoe, and she heard him mutter impatiently when he discovered what a menace to a none-too-strong ankle the stilt-like heel was.

“Why do you wear these things?” he demanded, at the same time gently probing the flesh above her slender instep with his long, firm fingers. “And, if you must wear them, surely common sense should have warned you that they were not suitable for a picnic—a moonlight picnic at that!”

She said nothing, and he looked up at her keenly, hit eyes full of concern, even in the dimness of the wood.

“Forgive me,” he said, almost softly, “but you have already sprained your ankle once since you arrived in Portugal, and you might very easily have done so again tonight. As it is, I think you have merely wrenched it, and it will probably cease to be painful in a few minutes. Shall we sit here until you feel like going on?”

“No.” As if a wave of panic actually rushed up over her she stood up, and he stood up also and confronted her, looking slightly amazed. “I really think we should rejoin the others, senhor,” she said a little incoherently, and was for taking another hasty and unwise step forward, but he prevented her with his hand firmly grasping her arm.

“There is absolutely no reason why we should

rejoin the others -------- ” he began, and then he seemed

to feel her quiver, and he looked down quickly to peer into her face, but she averted it. She felt his fingers tightening about her arm, almost digging themselves into the soft flesh above her elbow, and it seemed to her that he was silently compelling her to look round at him, but she knew that she daren’t. Her defences were temporarily down, and he must never know it.

“There is absolutely no reason why we should rejoin the others,” he repeated—“yet!”

“But, I—won’t they . . . ?”

“Won’t they—what?”

He felt her quiver yet again, and by sheer strength of will he forced her to look round, and up, at him. The wide eyes were panic-stricken, but there was something else in them—even in the faint, silvery light beneath the trees— that caused his own to light up suddenly in a strange way. He uttered something quite incomprehensible to her, and then in the soft voice that was the voice he sometimes used to her in her dreams, he breathed her name:

“Lois! . . . Little Lois! . . .”

She felt his arms go round her, and she was held tightly against a heart that seemed to be beating almost as wildly as her own. His fingers stroked her hair, and she knew that it was his lips that pressed themselves to the soft curls, and over and over again he whispered her name with so much exquisite tenderness, and such a silken caress in the single short word that she wondered whether she were indeed awake, or whether this were really no more than a dream.

“Lois! . . .” His arms strained her to him so that even if she had wished to do so she could not have escaped them without a violent struggle, and then his hand was beneath her chin, forcing her face up into the open so that he could look down into her eyes. His dark ones were blazing with a fire that set her own veins on fire, and delirious ecstasy took possession of her as his mouth came down upon hers.

She knew that she clung to him—that the kiss was a mutual exchange of passion, and longing, and a hunger that was almost unbearable. Or so it seemed to her in those moments when the world about her ceased to exist, and there was no Senhor Fernandes and his birthday picnic, no

Duarte almost certainly looking for her somewhere amongst the trees, and no dreadful tomorrow when she would come awake and discover that none of this was actually real. Only an extraordinary light-headed phase when the world had been laid at her feet!

“Oh, my darling—my little one! —my white flower! . . . ’ Julyan lifted his head at last, but his lips hovered close to hers, and he held her as if he was afraid she might make some attempt to get away from him, and he would frustrate that attempt at all costs. She put back her head and looked up at him, wonderingly, huge-eyed, and then because the temptation to do so was too strong, and she simply could not overcome it, she put up a shy hand and touched his cheek—a thing she had longed to do so many times in the past few weeks—and he caught the hand with a passionate gesture and carried it up against his lips.

“My beloved! . . .”

And then footsteps sounded in the quiet path, and they were quick, women’s footsteps, and a woman’s voice carried clearly to them, although still a good many feet away.

“Julyan! . . . Julyan, where are you? Are you anywhere along this path . . . ?”

Lois drew a kind of long, shuddering breath— although first her breath came as if petrified—and she knew that this was the moment of her awakening. But, even so, she wasn’t really prepared for the completeness of that awakening.

There was one moment when the man she loved above everything else on earth, and whose lips had devoured hers but a moment ago, held her crushed against him, so that she felt small and helpless and irrefutably claimed; and then there was a moment when those arms started to slacken, and finally fell away from her altogether. She had an impression, as she ventured to look up at him in the dim light, that his face was pale, and there was a queer, tense look round his mouth. But after a silence of several seconds he answered that demanding feminine voice that called to him.

“Here, Gloria!”

“Oh!” said Gloria Calores, when she emerged from the gloom and came upon them standing stiffly facing one another in the narrow path. “Oh! ...” Her eyebrows

ascended. “I hope I’m not interrupting something?”

“Of course not.” His voice sounded harsh to Lois, and cold. But all in a moment it regained its normal smoothness and politeness—at least when addressing Donna Colares. “Of course you’re not interrupting anything! Miss Fairchild and I were merely—having a little talk!”

“I see,” Gloria acknowledged the explanation, but she didn’t sound as if she saw at all, and her eyes were narrow and curiously searching as they looked towards Lois, whose control over her own facial expression was not very good just then. In fact, she actually looked a little stunned—stunned and bewildered.

“I’m sorry you had to come and look for me,” Julyan said. He moved a step nearer the new arrival on the scene, and his hand went out to her in a light, conciliatory gesture, and rested on her arm. “Is it that you wish to go home? Your papa is tired, and the party breaks up?”

“No, although the older folks will be going home very soon now. But I thought that you and I were to take a walk? It was all arranged. . . . And then you disappeared!” She looked up at him reproachfully, and all at once Lois seemed to return to life. The wildest embarrassment rushed up over her—a positive agony of embarrassment— and the only other thing she was conscious of was a passionate desire to escape. Without looking towards Dom Julyan, and not even looking in the direction of the formally dressed, graceful women who was standing so dose to him, she moved swiftly past them, formulating a jerky sentence as she did so:

“I am sorry to have kept you, senhor ...” she apologized. “I expect Duarte is looking for me. I’ll go and find him. . . ”

She thought that behind her her name was spoken sharply, commandingly, and that it was the man’s voice that uttered it, but she took absolutely no notice. She fairly ran along the path until it emerged into the clearing, and the first person she encountered was the Marquiz de Valerira. In fact, she almost hurtled into his arms.

“Why, little one! . . .” He steadied her with his hands. “What is wrong? Has something startled you?—frightened you. . . . ?”

He stopped and looked into her face in a concerned fashion, and she said the first thing that came into her head.

“No, but I—I twisted my ankle along the path, and it’s rather painful. Please, senhor Marquiz, do you think that I could go home now? Do you think there is someone who would take me home?”

“But of course, child.” His voice was very gentle, and almost soothing, and although she didn’t realize it his eyes were immensely shrewd. “My own car has just arrived to take me back to the quinta, and I have already said my goodnights. I think that you might be excused from saying yours—a little note of appreciation in the morning will do just as well—and you shall come back with me now, at once.”

His hand was inside her arm—a very comforting, plump white hand—and he guided her to the place where several cars were parked, and his own long black limousine, chauffeur-driven, was awaiting him. He helped her in, said something to the chauffeur that she took to be instruction to be as speedy as possible, and then climbed in beside her and, as it was turning a little cooler, put a light rug over her knees. After which he patted her hands beneath the rug, watched her turn her face away to the window, as if anxious to avoid any sort of a scrutiny, and subsided quietly on to the well-sprung back of the seat and said nothing at all until they reached the house.

Then he helped her out of the car in the same courteous manner that he had helped her in, and because she still looked pale and a little bemused kept his arm about her as they went up the steps. But once inside the softly lit hall, as she felt him guiding her towards the door of the big sala, she stopped short and for the first time resisted his kindly intentions.

“No, please, senhor, I would rather go straight upstairs to my room!”

“But you are upset,” he protested. “Just a little upset, shall we say, because no doubt your ankle is hurting you, and I think perhaps a glass of wine------”

“No, please, senhor!” She tried to smile up at him, but it was an unfortunate attempt, and his face grew grayer. “You are more than kind, and I have troubled you enough, but now I would like to go upstairs and—and change out of

these high-heeled sandals,” not knowing what else to say.

“And after you have changed out of them you will come downstairs again?” he suggested.