Flower for a Bride (2 page)

“But ------- ”

“There are absolutely no ‘buts’ about it,” Aunt Harriet declared, with much greater impatience, and a good deal of irritability she could not control. “If my child doesn’t wish to marry a man because she realizes in time that he is not suited to her—as a matter of fact, I always thought he was too old for her, and being a widower with a child by his former marriage it very definitely was not an ideal match, and so I thought from the beginning!—then I’m the very last person to try and urge her to do so. I don’t mind admitting that financially she would have been very secure, and one day, as Dom Julyan is heir to the Marquiz de Valerira, she would have had a title also. But there are more important things in life than titles.”

“But, she was so in love!” This time Lois managed to get the words out in a little burst. “And she said nothing about any great difference in ages!”

“Well, a man of thirty-five, and a girl of twenty-four ... !” Mrs. Fairchild spread her hands as if more detailed explanation was not needed. “And Dom Julyan is a very serious thirty-five—a man with very cultured tastes, but far above the head of anyone so full of life and fond of gaiety as Jay! Also, I don’t think she could have stood the Portuguese way of life at all.”

“Why not?”

“Because it isn’t the least like our way of life—it’s narrow, and old-fashioned, and full of restrictions where women are concerned. Once married a woman can do little or nothing, unless her husband approves, and he is not merely head of the household, but he literally rules the roost. Such things as popping off to meet a friend in town, or going to a show with a masculine acquaintance, would be frowned upon. Jay discovered in time that she wouldn’t be able to bear it. . .

“Then why didn’t she wait a little while before becoming engaged?” Lois asked, in a very quiet voice.

Mrs. Fairchild shrugged as if the question was beyond her, but also a little absurd.

“You know how impulsive Jay is. . . .” And then her expression underwent a change, and she actually appealed to her niece. “Lois, now that you’ ve arrived you will help us, won’t you?” After all, I paid for your journey by air, and I’ve always been very good to you, haven’t I? Jay, too—she’s always let you have clothes when you wanted them, and she’s fond of you. We both are! And Jay is my only child!”

“Of course, if there’s something I can do—I’ll certainly do it.”

But Lois’s eyes were wide, and all at once they were a trifle wary. She didn’t like the way her aunt avoided looking directly at her, although she was so obviously upset. “But what is there I can do?” “You can go and see Dom Julyan and explain the whole thing to him. Get him to release her! You must, Lois, because I simply couldn’t do it, and Jay hasn’t the courage. It isn’t that she’s weak, but she knows how upset he’ll be!”

CHAPTER TWO

The afternoon sunlight was falling goldenly all about her, and the heat from it was still considerable, when Lois—with all her instincts strongly opposed to what she was doing—set off in a hired car for the Quinta de Valerira.

She had a confused impression of color on either hand, and a white road that wound between forests of cork trees and sloping, terrace-like vineyards. There were cottages beside the way, with gardens full of brilliant blooms, and occasionally shady trees met overhead, and the road was a delight because it was temporarily deliciously cool, and rather like a green tunnel of gloom. Then they emerged again to see more pretentious houses crowning a sudden ridge, and they were delicately tinted, with green tiled roofs, and the gardens glimpsed behind curly wrought-iron gateways looked exquisite and orderly. And on one hand there were frequent glimpses of the sea, with white yachts rocking at anchor, and queer shapes rather like prehistoric monsters that were actually rocks littering the dazzling strips of white beach.

It was all a little unreal and unbelievable to Lois, so newly out from England, and with memories of grey spring skies and slowly budding trees. To see so much prolific growth in a matter of hours after leaving those skies and that more hesitant growth behind was a little bewildering at first, but it would have been still more bewildering if she had been in a frame of mind to dwell upon the difference. As it was, she was so appalled by the task ahead of her that it occupied almost all her thoughts.

She had made vigorous attempts to escape it, even at the risk of permanently alienating the affections of her closest relatives. To her aunt she had stated bluntly that in her opinion there was only one thing Jay could do, having promised to marry a man, and gone so far with her preparations to marry him, and that was to tell him herself that she had made a mistake. But the sight of Mrs. Fairchild’s face, growing colder every moment, had convinced her that her arguments found little favor in that quarter. Mrs. Fairchild was too besotted where her only daughter was concerned to do anything other than support her; and when at last Lois came face to face with her cousin again after many weeks it was only to live through an extremely unpleasant half-hour.

Jay had been lounging in the one big chair the room contained and in order to put up a slight deception where the servants who had to wait on her were concerned she had been wearing an enchanting dressing-gown. But she had looked richly tanned and a little hostile, because of her enforced confinement, and as soon as she found out Lois’s reaction to the plan she and her mother had formed she had gone through every variety of mood to get her to change her mind.

She had been humble and penitent, pleading and disconsolate almost in the same breath, and then had shown her claws a little because Lois could not conceal how shocked she was, and how little she understood the other’s approach to responsibilities. It was true they had grown up together—and Lois had always had a great affection for her cousin, whose looks she admired enormously, but there were some things one just didn’t do, according to the poor relation’s code. And beneath the undisguised hostility of her two leading benefactors she had realized, perhaps for the first time, that to them she was nothing much more than a poor relation.

And because she had accepted benefits it was her duty to repay them when the opportunity arose! That was Aunt Harriet’s attitude, and Jay had looked contemptuously down her exquisitely straight nose and indicated by aloofness that she was rather more than bitterly disappointed. She had believed in the loyalty of a poor relation—particularly a warmhearted and appreciative one like Lois—and was amazed because she could let her down.

And then when she saw that displeasure wasn’t getting her very far she had burst all at once into extremely realistic tears, and declared that if Lois wouldn’t help her she didn’t know what she was going to do. She simply couldn’t face Dom Julyan de Valerira herself—it wasn’t that she was afraid of him, but she was afraid that he might try and persuade her to go on with the marriage, and where would that lead . . . ? To complete unhappiness for both of them! Surely even Lois could see that . . . ?

Lois did see it, and also found it quite impossible to ignore the appeal of those tears. Realizing that she was not only being lamentably weak, but aiding and abetting two people of her own blood who should have known better, she said that she would do whatever Jay wanted her to do, and was rewarded with hugs and smiles. She was instantly restored to favor, and even Aunt Harriet forgave her for causing her some extremely anxious moments, and by the time she set off in the car mother and daughter were putting their heads together to think up some more practical expression of their appreciation than the price of her air ticket to Portugal.

They had granted to Lois the right to say whatever she thought it was best to say to Dom Julyan, so long as Jay’s behavior was not made to look too black; but by the time she arrived at the quinta gates, and was whisked through them at a brisk pace on to a gravelled drive, she had no idea at all what she was going to say.

The Quinta de Valerira was like so many of those other lightly color-washed houses, save that it was bigger and more impressive when one drew close to it, and very definitely much more dignified. It looked like the small summer palace of a Portuguese noble, and the grounds were exquisitely laid out.

Lois could see them, through the car windows, dropping away on all sides of her—lawns like terraces, composed of emerald velvet instead of turf, clipped hedges, and graceful pieces of garden statuary. Before the car drew up, she had a swift glimpse of a blue-tiled pool in which a fountain played, and a solid bank of the white flowers she took to be white camellias and which rioted even in cottage gardens. Then the car was stationary at the foot of a flight of steps above which loomed the bulk of the rose-pink house, with its tilted eaves and tall windows opening on to little balconies.

Lois felt as if her mouth went dry with nervousness when she alighted from the car. A liveried manservant admitted her to the house, and when she said that she wished to see Dom Julyan she thought that surprise flickered across his face, but when she gave her name the surprise vanished.

The hall of the house was wide and cool, with a marble floor and a vaulted ceiling, and before she was shown into a tiny anteroom opening off it she paused to admire the graceful baroque staircase that wound its way into the upper regions, with portraits climbing the walls beside it. The walls of the anteroom were panelled and painted a soft and restful green, and there were some exquisite examples of birds and flowers executed upon them. The windows, with silk curtains looped back from them, overlooked a kind of interior courtyard where there was another typically Portuguese tiled fountain, and in this case the tiles reminded Lois of pale ochre.

She was looking with a little uprush of pleasure, which she could not deny, into the quiet peace of the courtyard, and thinking what a delight it would be to wander there in the cool of the evening, when the door behind her opened, and a man stood regarding her with a faintly puzzled frown between his infinitely black brows.

Lois had to summon up all her resolution to turn and confront him, and she was not in the least surprised at the note of interrogation in his voice.

“The Senhorita Fairchild?” he said, without moving. “Carlos said the Senhorita Lois Fairchild.”

“That is quite right, senhor.” Lois’s fingers fastened on the clasp of her handbag as if it were something to give her support, and she hoped ardently for his sake—that when the servant mentioned her name he had included the Christian part of it before mentioning the Fairchild. Otherwise he might have imagined, for a few moments which would be followed by disappointment, that it was Jay who had called on him. “I am—Lois Fairchild, Jay’s cousin.”

The words left her lips jerkily, but if he had suffered any disappointment recently there was absolutely no sign of it in his face. It was a curiously emotionless mask of a face, and the only thing about it that did not surprise her was the quality of his good looks. Jay had waxed lyrical about them in her letters, going so far as to mention the unusual length of his eyelashes, and the soft brilliance of his dark eyes. She had also mentioned the fact that he was of spare but athletic build, that he looked like an aristocrat who could never quite forget that he was an aristocrat, and that he was always dressed as if his tailor and shirtmaker and so forth not only loved their various tasks, but were richly recompensed for turning out faultless examples of their craft.

The thing, therefore which did surprise her about his appearance—apart from that strange lack of expression in any single one of his features—was that in some ways he was younger than she had imagined, while one or two faint silvery threads in the night blackness of his hair above the temples seemed determined to try and indicate that he was even older.

A young-oldness—a curiously attractive, if somewhat peculiar, young-oldness! A suggestion that experience, and a knowledge of Life in several distinct phases, had crowded upon shoulders a little too youthful for them, with the result that he was prematurely aged.

She had expected him to enquire immediately about Jay’s health—perhaps leaping to the conclusion that it was worse than he had been given to understand—but he did not do so. He studied her with a kind of quiet deliberation for several seconds, and then moved towards her with sinuous grace.

“I am delighted to meet a cousin of Jay’s,” he told her, in perfect if slightly stilted English—unless it was his manner of enunciating each word carefully—and offered her his hand. A brief, cool grip, and he drew forward a chair for her. “You will be seated, Senhorita?”

“Thank you.” It was a Louis Quinze chair, covered in pale rose-colored brocade that matched the pale rose of the curtains, and Lois had found time to admire it, as well as other items of furniture the room contained, before he entered. “I must apologize for taking you by surprise like this,” she began.

“Not at all,” Dom Julyan said smoothly. You are here, no doubt, for the wedding?”

“I—yes, I—That is. . . ”

“I seem to recall that Jay mentioned a cousin who would be acting as bridesmaid.” His eyes flickered over her as if he was looking for a likeness, but Lois was afraid he would be disappointed for such likeness as there was, was very faint indeed, and as Jay always wore clothes created especially for her, and Lois’s simple ice-blue linen had been bought straight off the peg, there was nothing at all to enhance it. “Lois,” he uttered her name softly, with his attractive Portuguese intonation. “Yes, of course, I have heard quite a lot about you. You are from London, and you work in an office? To me it is strange that a young woman like you should have to support herself.”

Lois’s eyes widened in surprise.

“Really?” she murmured. And she added more hurriedly: “I only arrived in Portugal yesterday, and Alvora today. I am staying at the Hotel Rosso with my aunt, and—and Jay, of course.”

“Of course,” he echoed, with that same smoothness. And then for the first time she saw his eyes lighten a little, and his well-cut lips part over excellent teeth in the merest suspicion of a smile. “And if Jay were a little more conventional—or a little less British, shall we say?—she would have brought you here herself this afternoon and presented you to me personally.”