The Young Nightingales (15 page)

He put her aside from him and stood up. For several seconds he walked about the room, studying the carpet with bent brows, keeping her eyes glued to him and her lips parted, as if she was half terrified of what he might be going to say. Then he spoke, and she couldn’t help noticing that his accent was stronger than usual because he was agitated
...
and she had never known him to be agitated before.

“I’m several years older than you, although not as old as Roger Bowman, whom you so nearly married. I hadn’t thought of marrying for some time yet—perhaps not ever. But fate decreed that I should share a taxi with you, and at that time I don’t mind admitting I thought you were rather a spoilt young woman who was going on holiday by herself and would hardly attract people by the charm of her manner. And then I met you a second time and I was shaken by the way you looked. I could see that even the young man at the reception desk was ready to eat out of your hand. But the third time I met you I received a shock. You were not on holiday, you were delightful to look at, and you were
antagonistic towards me ... I could feel it quite strongly.

“I couldn’t wait to meet you again, at Madame’s dinner-party, although you probably won’t believe me ... or you might not have believed me a fortnight ago,” smiling at her. “And it amazed me the way you melted towards me when I sought you out after dinner.”

“I think I amazed myself,” she confessed.

“We should neither of us have been amazed,” he told her very soberly. “We had fallen in love.”

“Yes,” she agreed, her rapturous eyes following his every movement, “we had fallen in love! And I think I was the first to realise it, for I knew it on the night of Madame’s dinner party. The sight of Mademoiselle d’Evremonde made me feel slightly ill. ... It was
she
who brought on that acute attack of depression after dinner
!”

He looked at her with slightly expressionless eyes.

“We will leave her out of it for the time being,” he said. “We will stick to our facts! I fell in love with you, and I acknowledged it to myself, but I was not prepared to consider marrying you because it seemed to me there was already one man who was very much in your life. You might deceive yourself about being no longer interested in him, but being feminine—very feminine!—you would change your mind again and marry him in the end. Anyway, I could not afford to take the chance. When I married I wanted there to be no doubts about it, and my future wife wholly mine.”

Her breath caught in her throat as he said it. Wholly
his ...
She was wholly his! He watched the lovely tide of colour as it rose in her cheeks, and his eyes kindled.

“But this afternoon I was nearly sure of you, and I knew you wanted me to be sure! However, my native caution asserted itself,” smiling with a faint twist, “and I decided the only safe thing to do was to wait.”

She caught her breath in a kind of agony. Was he going to insist that they wait?

“No.” He shook his head, his expression all tenderness again. “You have decided that for me. You came here tonight because you were driven to do so, and I accept it that you have made up your mind. But you must still understand that there are risks
...
where your happiness is concerned. This is a strange country, and if you marry me you will have to live here, and there will be no going back to England except for an occasional holiday. I am a busy man, and I shall not have as much time to devote to you as some other husbands
might ...
Roger Bowman, for instance. You may even find me impatient and difficult to live with at times, because I become very preoccupied. But that is only one side of the coin. There is the other
!”

“And that?” she whispered.

His slate-grey eyes did more than merely kindle. They blazed suddenly with a depth and intensity of feeling that shook her.

“I will care for you as Roger Bowman would never care for you—having met him I am absolutely certain of this!—and I will love you with every fibre of my being, and I shall go on loving you for the rest of your life, my sweet, adorable Jane.” He went towards her with his hands outstretched. “Will you marry me, my dear one? Will you?”

“Oh, yes, yes!”

Jane hurled herself at him, and he folded her closely in his arms, and their eager mouths came together again. It was rather more than ten minutes later when she found that she had enough breath to ask him about Mademoiselle d’Evremonde, and his reply was entirely satisfactory.

“I’ve known her—just as Roger Bowman knew you!—for years, my sweet, but unlike Roger I have never even contemplated marrying her or suspected myself of falling in love with her. A few months ago she was very ill, and since then she has become rather dependent on me, and her parents were anxious that I should keep my eye on her and divert her as much as possible. There was some sort of an unfortunate love affair which they frowned on, and until she has quite got over it they are not entirely happy about her.”

“I see,” Jane said.

He put his fingers under her chin and lifted it. “You may not believe it possible now, but you could probably help her ... later on. You could help her by being friends.”

“If you wish it,” Jane murmured.

“I do.” He kissed the lobe of her ear. “And what about Madame Bowman? Will she be disappointed, do you think?”

And Jane answered as if she was inspired. “No, I think she will be delighted. In fact, I know she will! She was reasonably certain that I was coming here tonight.”

“Then we’d better telephone her and let her know that you are here. Or better still, I will take you back to her now, and we will let her into our secret
...
shall
we?”

Jane’s radiant eyes answered for her.

“And what about this young brother of yours? When we are married would you like him to stay with us?”

“That will be wonderful,” she assured him. And then she remembered that Toby was lunching at the Villa Magnolia the following day, and she asked Jules shyly whether he would lunch with them, too. “Then you can meet Toby and the two of you can get acquainted.”

“And what shall I say to Roger?” he asked, his eyes suddenly amused. “Shall I tell him he can cancel his booking at the Continental because you’re going to marry me and there isn’t the slightest danger that you’ll change your mind?”

Jane withdrew from him a little. She spoke with a slight catch in the words:

“Yes, please tell him that. And please believe it yourself, because ... I love you! Oh, Jules,” in a breathless rush, “I love you so very much! I’d have died if you’d turned me away tonight
!”

He caught her back into his arms.

“Never fear, my darling ... I had never the slightest intention of letting you go ... not once I saw you here tonight! You had the courage to come, and I could hardly believe it. It was all the proof I needed!”