Flower for a Bride (16 page)

His words caused Lois, whose color had already started to rise, to blush as if she were conscious of actual guilt. But she nevertheless forced herself to meet Dom Julyan’s eyes across the width of the room, and received from him a distinctly foreign little inclination of the head that was more like a formal half-bow.

Then he looked away, and Donna Colares, supremely poised and apparently prepared to enjoy her evening, smiled recognition out of her brilliant, tawny eyes. The smile included both Lois and her escort, and suggested inner amusement and satisfaction.

Then she, too, averted her glance, and turned instead to Dom Julyan and said something to him, with the smile still clinging about her scarlet lips. And for the rest of the evening—or, at any rate, until she and Rick Enderby took their departure—Lois never once saw her employer look towards anything in her near vicinity.

“Let’s dance again!” Rick said, and she was almost glad to be out on the glistening floor once more because, unless she wished to disgrace her partner, she simply had to concentrate on her steps, and that left her with no opportunity to think about the party of six at the large round table.

They danced several dances after that, and it was when they returned to their own table after a tango that Duarte came across to them and insisted on saluting Lois in Portuguese manner, which meant that he lifted her hand up to his lips, but kissed the inside of her wrist instead.

The girl found the salutation a little embarrassing, but she recalled that she had once seen Dom Julyan treat Gloria Colares’s slender wrist in the same manner. Only he had kissed it more than once, and afterwards retained a light hold of her fingers.

“I wish I’d known you were coming here tonight,” Duarte said, “because I’d have made up a party which included you two, and let Gloria find someone else in my place.” There was no doubt about the admiration in his dark eyes as he looked down at Lois, taking in all her delicate fairness, and unlike the ease with which she met Rick’s appreciative dances, she found it well-nigh impossible to let Duarte’s gaze hold hers for long. His admiration was so unconcealed, and there was something about it she didn’t altogether like. “You’re lucky to be on your own,” he added, with a disparaging glance across at the table he had just left.

“I quite agree,” Rick returned, a little dryly. “And it’s because we like being on our own that we’re not members of a party.”

Duarte ignored the obvious hint, and turned again to Lois.

“Whenever I meet you you’ve been granted temporary freedom in order to gladden the life of Enderby here,” he remarked. “Why don’t I seize hold of opportunities with both hands as he does?”

“Because it obviously hadn’t occurred to you to do so,” Rick told him, and then added, even more dryly than before: “You’re neglecting the lady you were chosen to escort tonight.”

But Duarte was watching the light shining down on Lois’s pale silk hair.

“We’re having a moonlight picnic on my father’s birthday,” he said, "in about ten days’ time—and I’m going to see that Gloria sends you an invitation. Julyan, of course, won’t even require an invitation, and Enderby always finds his way into these things, so will you allow me to dance some attendance on you on that night?”

“I—I don’t really know whether it will be convenient for me to have the time off . . .” Lois replied, very hesitantly.

But Duarte smiled.

“My dear senhorita,” he reminded her, softly,

“small children go to bed quite early in the evening, and once they are in bed there is no need for a governess to sit and hold their hand. If Julyan raises any opposition I will see that it is pointed out to him that there is no possible justification for it.”

“I would far rather you didn’t ...” Lois began, but he waved an airy hand and indicated his table.

“I must go now—but I shall see you again quite soon,” he said, with deliberation, to the English girl, and then turned a beautifully tailored back and went back to his party.

Rick, Lois was not altogether surprised to discover, was frowning.

“It’s a pity he didn’t remain in Rome,” he remarked. And then he dismissed his frown and smiled at her. “Come on, let’s dance again!”

Lois couldn't truthfully have said that she enjoyed the remainder of that evening, and the sight of her employer dancing with a voluptuously graceful Gloria Colares detracted from what little enjoyment she did manage to extract from her hours of freedom. And when Rick suggested they take their departure she agreed at once, and felt glad to be outside on the coolness of the terrace, with the stars blazing overhead.

Rick guided her down to the car, and once she was in it she lay back with a relaxed sigh of fleeting pleasure. For this was more to her taste than the warmth and the slight confusion and the noise of the room they had left. She told herself that she probably wasn’t the type to enjoy a whole evening dancing with a personable male, or else she was tired after her visit to Lisbon. But this sweet-scented night that was all about her was something that anyone could enjoy, however tired.

As she lay back against the seat she felt the light breeze stir her hair, and in her ears was that lazy, murmurous slap of the sea piling gently on to the white beach below. The beach itself gleamed ghostlike in the gloom.

Rick smiled as he glanced at her before he started up the

car.

“Care for a little run?” he asked.

Although it was rather late she couldn’t resist the temptation to prolong this pleasure a little, and she answered softly:

“It would be rather nice.”

So they drove along the coast road for several miles, and saw the lighthouse winking beyond the point, and heard again the musical voice of the sea when they sat watching it for a few minutes in silence before returning by the way they had come. By this time Lois felt soothed and charmed, and it seemed to her that her evening had after all contained a good deal of pleasure. She thanked Rick impulsively, as once again he started up the car, and once again he turned and smiled at her as if she were someone very young who amused him just a little, and aroused in him a curious sentiment of something like tenderness as she lay against the seat.

“I think you’re feeling happier now, aren’t you?” he said.

“Happier?”

“Yes. Dom Julyan’s arrival on the scene rather spoiled things for you, and I’ve quite definitely decided that you don’t like Donna Colares.”

“But,” she assured him, hastily, “there’s absolutely no reason why I should dislike her. . . .”

“Isn’t there?” His sideways smile was gently skeptical. “No reason at all?”

She sat clasping her hands tightly together in her lap, and felt concerned because to him she was obviously very transparent indeed.

They swept between the open wrought-iron gates of the quinta, and Enderby helped her out of the car at the foot of the imposing flight of steps leading up to the front door. The moon had long since waned, but the starlight was brighter than any starlight Lois had ever known at home in England, and as she stood on the drive it silvered her dress and made her curls look as if they were literally entangled with starshine. Rick Enderby stood looking down at her from his superior height, and then he put out a hand and gently lifted her chin, looking into the wide grey-blue eyes.

“Happy dreams,” he said, “and if you feel like it we’ll repeat tonight’s performance.”

She was about to say something in answer, but he bent and lightly brushed her lips with his own, and they were cool, hard, pleasant masculine lips. And then, with a feather’s touch, the same lips skimmed over each of her eyes in turn, one long forefinger stroked her cheek, and he stepped back just as a big car came silently to rest behind them.

Lois saw, as if nothing that was happening was quite real, Dom Julyan get out of the car, and the only thing she was thankful for just then was that he was alone. To have glimpsed amusement in Donna Colares eyes would have been too much at that moment.

“Extracting the final shred of enjoyment from your evening, Miss Fairchild?” Dom Julyan remarked, and even Enderby looked amazed because of the icy coldness of his voice. “You disappeared an hour or more ago, so I imagined you were back in your room by now.”

“I’m sorry if you think I’ve kept her out rather too late,” Rick said, but his tone was affable and quite unruffled.

“Not at all.” Dom Julyan opened the door, and stood aside for Lois to enter. She waved a final good-night to Rick, and then found herself entering the hall timidly, half afraid of the golden gleams of the swinging hall lantern that would reveal to her the expression on her employer’s face.

But he merely said coldly:

“Goodnight, Miss Fairchild,” and she knew because he called her Miss Fairchild—and only a few hours before he had called her Lois! —that he was very displeased with her indeed.

CHAPTER TWELVE

THE following morning she sat on a seat in a very cloistered corner of the garden while Jamie tried to catch a butterfly that had more than once settled on the back of his hand.

It was quite early in the morning, and the garden was very peaceful, and very shady at that hour. A bank of mauve flowers behind her dripped petals on to the seat, and the carefully clipped green hedge confronting her had a wide arch cut in the middle of it through which she could see a round pool with a graceful piece of statuary rising out of the tiled basin that held the water. There were some bright fish in the water, and tiring of his pursuit of the butterfly that persistently evaded him Jamie went through the arch to have a word with the fish.

It was one of the things he enjoyed doing, trailing his hand in the water in a playful attempt to eaten one of them, and he always gave a little gurgle of delight when one leapt through his fingers.

Lois watched him carefully, and warned him not to bend too far over the basin, for there was always the danger that he might fall in, particularly when his balance was not too good. Even if he fell in he could do little harm to himself apart from getting his clothes thoroughly soaked, but since it was her job to make sure that no minor accident befell him Lois issued her warning more than once.

But she was feeling anything but happy this morning, and her voice sounded a little flat. Shortly after breakfast a note had been brought to her from the master of the house stating in a very few words that he wished to see her punctually at noon. The note also stated that at that hour he would be in the library.

Lois looked at her watch, and she realized that there was a full hour to go yet before she could present herself in the library. She knew that when twelve o’clock struck her heart would be knocking almost painfully, but the hour to be lived through seemed interminable, because it was her nature to get unpleasant things over and done with as quickly as possible. To let them ‘simmer’, as some people preferred, and ward off the evil moment, had the effect of making her a bundle of nerves, and in her imagination life got completely out of hand, and the situation was black from every angle.

On the present occasion she didn’t need her imagination to prepare her for an interview she would remember. Dom Julyan’s face the night before had warned her that the episode on the drive would not be overlooked, and that she would be asked some very pertinent questions.

It would be useless to say simply that she had been taken quite by surprise when Rick Enderby kissed her goodnight, and that in any case there was nothing in the least offensive in his kisses. They were the result, she felt sure, of aa sudden affectionate upsurge that was almost paternal, or brotherly. Perhaps an attempt to console her because she had looked unhappy.

But to offer such an explanation to Dom Julyan would be to see his black eyebrows ascend coldly, and he would almost certainly remind her that whatever the reason for the kisses the foot of his front doorsteps was not the place for them—not when she was employed as a governess, and the household in which she was employed was Portuguese.

She thought she heard a car turn in at the drive gates and proceed up the drive, and she wondered whether perhaps it was Dom Julyan returning from Alvora, or an early call on one of his many friends. She distinctly heard a car door open and close, and then for ten minutes there was complete silence—the drowsy silence that had hung over everything before—and Jamie gave up catching fish to return to a pursuit of his butterfly.

Lois was afraid she was hardly a very bright companion for him this morning, and she was just on the point of getting up and suggesting a short walk when a voice behind her caused her to turn, and round the bank of mauve flowers came a tall, slightly arrogant male figure.

‘‘Don’t move!” Duarte Fernandes requested her, standing still to admire her. She was wearing a white dress with some scarlet poppies on the skirt, and as the skirt was very full it was spread all over the seat. She removed it hastily as he came near to sit down, and he smiled oddly. “Anything less like a governess than you look this morning I have yet to meet,” he told her. “In this country governesses of your type are practically nonexistent, and even in England they must be rather rare.”

“You startled me,” she protested, deciding to ignore the rest of his speech.

“Did I?” His brown velvet eyes wandered over her soft curls, and then over the whole slender length of her in a way that brought a quick flush to her cheeks. “I felt I had to see you again this morning, and when I asked for you at the house Josie told me you were somewhere in the grounds with your charge. I’ve wasted several minutes looking for you, but to come upon you like this is a reward in itself.” “You—you asked for me at the house?” She was faintly aghast, for she was in trouble enough, and another male caller asking especially for her—even if he was Donna Colares’s brother—could do little to minimize that trouble.

“Of course. Why not?” He was obviously amused by her concern. “You’re not a servant to be forbidden ‘followers’— isn’t that the way you put it in England?—and Gloria was quite insistent that I should get to know you as quickly as possible. At first, as I confessed to you, I rather resented having you thrust at me, but now I could kick myself because I let that fellow Enderby make a date with you before I had a chance.”