Flower for a Bride (22 page)

“No, I’d rather not,” and her shake of the head was so firm, and her anxiety to be alone as quickly as she could was so transparent that he said nothing more to persuade, only wished her goodnight in a way that actually warmed her heart a little. “Sleep well, little one!” he added, but he had very grave doubts about her sleeping well as he walked alone towards the door of the great sala.

Upstairs Lois shut her door and then turned the key in the lock—for a reason that was not altogether clear to her at the time—forgot about removing her sandals, and threw herself instead into her favorite armchair near the window.

Her ankle was paining her a little still, but she hardly felt it, and it was merely a nagging background to the wild confusion of her thoughts. She felt like someone who had been subjected to so much humiliation that she actually squirmed, and at the recollection of that moment when Donna Colares had stepped from amongst the trees and Julyan had let her go so abruptly, she dropped her face in her hands and bit back something that was almost a groan.

If Duarte had behaved like that—if Duarte had led her off amongst the trees and then made love to her, and tried to pretend that he had done nothing of the sort when they were unexpectedly discovered—she could have understood it! But in her heart she felt certain that Duarte would not have behaved like that! She might have formed a poor opinion of him when she first met him, but since then she had come to realize that he was a law unto himself, and he was not afraid of anyone knowing what he did. Also—and tonight she had been more or less certain of this also—he liked her, and it was because he liked her that he had refrained from making love to her.

But Dom Julyan, her employer—the man who set such high standards for himself and the people who lived under his roof!—had been so horribly embarrassed when Donna Colares burst out on them that he had hardly known what to do!

Not surprising, if he was planning to marry Donna Colares, as so many people seemed to think! . . .

She got up and started to pace about the room, even more heedless of that nagging pain in her ankle, and all she could think of was the wonder of those moments when Julyan had held her in his arms, and the rapture of that kiss they had exchanged. Although she had been quite unprepared for such bliss she had surrendered herself to it without a qualm, because it had seemed to her that their need of one another was as great in those moments as their need to continue their existence. There had been no difference in the tempest of their individual feelings—they had carried them along on a wild wave of ecstatic happiness that had been the shortest-lived thing she had ever known, and even now her lips seemed to burn as a result of that kiss.

And his whispered words: “My darling—my little one!—my white flower! . . .”

The silence of her bedroom—the whole silence of the quinta, that at that hour of the night was all pervading— seemed to echo those words and throw them back at her meaninglessly.

It couldn’t have been more than half an hour after she and the Marquiz returned to the quinta that the silence was broken by the sound of a car sweeping up to the front of the house, and with a wildly beating heart she returned to her chair and sat there, huddled, while, first, a car door slammed impatiently, and then footsteps crunched on the gravel, and voices reached up thinly to her from the hall.

The voices sounded to her sharp and hollow, and then they faded away as if a door had been securely fastened between her and them, and she could imagine the old Marquiz making polite rejoinders to his nephew’s enquiries as to whether Miss Fairchild was back.

For, after she had rushed away along the path he might have felt just a little bit anxious about her— concerned, very likely, lest she should indiscreetly reveal what had taken place in the heart of the little wood! Or he might be hoping vaguely that she would allow Duarte to bring her home at a late hour, in which case he could come over all critical and employerish again, and let her know that he disapproved.

But, as she dropped her head into her hands again, feeling lost and bewildered, one conviction began to take

root inside her.

No man—no man—could hold a woman in his arms in the way Dom Julyan had held her in his arms, and afterwards experience the spiteful wish to humiliate her deliberately!

That, at least, was not possible—or she would not believe it was possible.

But the fact that the last thing he had desired was that someone should steal upon them while she was in his arms was only too true! There were no excuses she could possibly think up that could alter that!

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Emotionally exhausted, and physically weary, she must have fallen asleep in her chair, the utter silence of the house acting as a kind of sedative, for when she awoke she was stiff and cold, and it was nearly four o’clock in the morning. She undressed without turning on her light, and crept into bed, too burdened by misery to believe that she would sleep any more that night. But she did sleep for another couple of hours, and when she awakened this time the sunlight was streaming into her room, between her undrawn curtains, and she realized dully that it was a new day.

But the dullness passed, and her mind became almost feverishly active as she took a shower and dressed. She selected a linen suit in which it was possible to make her appearance almost anywhere, and then emptied her drawers and wardrobe and packed everything away in the couple of suitcases she had brought with her from England. Her mind was made up, and the one thing she knew she had got to do was to leave the Quinta de Valerira without delay, and sever all connection with the man who had treated her in a way which she was utterly at a loss to account for.

For one thing, to go on living in his house while he evidently imagined he had the right to make casual love to her whenever the desire to do so overcame him—as on the night before—was impossible. Her dignity would not permit that. And to allow herself to stay just for the agony of remaining near him was a form of luxurious self-torture she would not permit herself to endure.

What she really hoped to do was to get away before the moment arrived when she would have to come face to face with him again, and with this objective in view she laid her plans. She would give Jamie his breakfast as she normally did, and have hers with him, and then she would send him down to Miss Mattie with a note. Josie would convey the note, and she would also escort Jamie to his old governess.

There would be no need to say very much to Miss Mattie, for she was immensely shrewd, and she had known that lately Lois was anything but happy. She had probably long ago expected that unhappiness to come upon her, and now all she would experience would be a sharp twinge of sympathy for her young fellow countrywoman, and secretly, Lois felt sure, would wish her well.

Once Jamie was disposed of she would order for herself the dust-colored car, and hope against hope that no one would see her leave in it for Alvora. In any case, if she left instructions for her heaviest suit case to be sent on after her, her leave-taking would not be very noticeable, and to the eyes of the servants it would appear that she was merely driving in to Alvora, possibly to do some shopping.

The worst moment arrived when she found she had to say goodbye to Jamie without letting him realize that it was goodbye, and as it was the warmth and impulsiveness of her farewell hug seemed to surprise her. He looked up to see tears in her eyes, but he said nothing. He had seen tears in her eyes before this, and had wondered about them in his childish mind, but it was not in his nature to comment on them.

“Be a good boy, darling,” Lois said, before she handed him over to Josie, and when she was left alone in the big day nursery after they had gone she felt as if something vital to her continued existence had vanished out of her life, and for a few moments she was appalled by the thought of the years of loneliness that lay ahead of her.

Years of living only in memories! . . .

Then she gave herself a determined shake, set her lips as if she was in physical pain but was exerting all her will to ignore it, took a last look round the familiar room, with its sunny balcony, and then walked towards the door.

She was hoping against hope that she would meet no one on the stairs, especially as she was carrying her lightest suitcase. She had waited for the moment when the house seemed very quiet, and Dom Julyan was likely to be occupied in his library, if he had not already gone forth on some business which might keep him away until lunch time, and if Ricardo was late with the car she could remain out of sight in some patch of shrubbery. Her plans were so vague at that moment that she hardly knew what she was going to do once she got to Alvora, save that Lisbon and an air passage to England was her ultimate objective. Fortunately she had spent very little of her salary, and she would be able to keep herself for a few weeks once she got home to England.

The important thing at the moment was to get well away from the quinta before she was in real danger of coming into contact with Dom Julyan.

This feeling that at all costs she must avoid him made her look rather like a hunted creature as she stole down the stairs, and by the time she had crossed the hall and actually reached the drive without being observed or intercepted by anyone her heart was knocking almost painfully.

To her infinite relief Ricardo and the dust-colored car slid up to the front of the house just as she reached the foot of the flight of steps, and without waiting for him to descend and hold open the rear door for her she wrenched at the handle and climbed in breathlessly. Ricardo, who was well trained, and very Portuguese, looked at her in faint surprise, but it was not part of his duty to do anything more than look surprised, and he contented himself with asking, with a lift of the eyebrow:

“The senhorita wishes me to drive her into Alvora?”

“Yes, please, Ricardo.” She smiled at him tremulously, and decided that she would reward him with a really handsome tip when he finally decanted her.

“And to wait for her and bring her back, yes?”

“No, Ricardo, I shall not be coming back.”

His eyes went to the suitcase on the seat beside her, but once again he said nothing, and she longed feverishly for him to turn the car and drive away down the drive. When at last they shot between the curly wrought-iron gates—for the last time, in her case, she told herself, with a kind of dull pain at her heart—she was so relieved that she actually swallowed convulsively and she was subsiding with a little sigh against the back of the seat instead of sitting bolt upright when she saw Dom Julyan sitting very still in his light blue car beside the tree-bordered road. He put out a hand and signalled to Ricardo

to pass him and stop, and then he climbed out from his seat at the wheel and approached Ricardo’s driving seat.

He did not even look at Lois as he said:

"You can take my car back into the garage, Ricardo, and I will drive Miss Fairchild.”

The chauffeur descended immediately, without betraying any surprise this time, and still without looking at Lois, Dom Julyan took his place at the wheel. Over his shoulder he enquired, with a kind of dangerous quietness:

“It was Alvora you wished to go to, Miss Fairchild?” “Yes.”

She barely breathed the word, but it just reached him from the back of the car.

He said nothing further, and started the car. They proceeded at a leisurely thirty miles an hour along the white, dusty road, with the sunlight lying across it a little blindingly where the foliage that bordered it was sparse, and overhead the sky was almost brazenly blue. Lois shut her eyes, partly because the glare seemed a little much for her just then, and partly because she was trying to stifle the sensation that almost anything could happen now. Almost

anything. . . . But what, in actual fact, was going to happen?

She opened her eyes as the car took a sudden swing off the main road, and it struck her immediately that they were no longer proceeding in the right direction. This road— unless her knowledge of her local surroundings left much to be desired, and she had not benefited at all from her stay in that part of the world for several weeks—would eventually lead them back to the quinta.

“Where—where are we going?” she heard herself asking, hollowly, and a trifle huskily, from the back of the car, because uncertainty was something she couldn’t stand just then.

“Back to the house,” Dom Julyan answered. “We have a good deal to discuss, and as we are not trippers it will be pleasanter if we discuss them—and more suitable, too—in surroundings where we are unlikely to be disturbed.”

Again she found it quite impossible to say anything further, and within a matter of minutes the car had come to

rest on exactly the same spot where she had clambered into it less than a quarter of an hour before. Her employer went round and held open the door for her to alight, and his hand made sure that she did alight steadily, and without once again injuring her ankle on the carefully tended drive. Then, ignoring her suitcase, he shut the door, and stood aside for her to precede him up the steps to the hall.

Once inside the hall, marvellously cool and welcoming after the blinding glare outside, she realized that he was close behind her, and he said curtly:

“This way!”

She wondered, when she found herself in the library, with the heavy oak door shut firmly behind her and him, how many times she had been in here before, and whether it was only two or three times that he had actually upbraided her, as soon as that door was securely shut, for something she had done that she should not have done. Today she was aware that she had behaved in a fashion of which he would not approve, and therefore condemnation would descend on her very quickly.

But a full minute elapsed after he had indicated a chair for her to sit down, and had taken up his favorite position near the window, where he could stare out at the greenness of the lawns, before he said anything at all. And then he asked her a question: “Can I take it that you left some sort of a note behind—or, possibly, a message—to explain your sudden decision to leave the quinta?”