Flower for a Bride (6 page)

He was rather a solemn boy, and Lois suspected that he was a highly intelligent one, with an eagerness amounting to hunger for absorbing information. And Lois had always had a very happy knack with young people, perhaps because they appealed to her very much indeed, and she broke off frequently during the conversation that took place to smile at him, and once to reach out with a purely instinctive movement and push back one of his curls from his forehead because it was tumbling into his eyes.

But the thing which interested her most about the afternoon—and which, she knew, surprised her—was the obvious fact that Dom Julyan was rather more than devoted to his son, and that for long moments at a time his eyes would linger on the boy, and while they did so the whole of his face was softened, and very gentle, and there was nothing in the least unreadable about his expression, and certainly nothing mask-like.

In fact, he unbent in rather a charming way to Lois herself, and to Miss Mattie he was affectionate and teasing, with no hint of the employer which he actually was.

On the way back to the Hotel Rosso in the car Lois was conscious of wanting to say something to him, but she found it difficult to phrase an opening sentence. It was Jay who had said to her that a first wife was different—and, judging by his affection for his son, he must have been very fond of his wife—but, even so, to have asked another woman to marry him and then been jilted by her was an experience many men would not have stood up to very well.

But he seemed to have stood up to it with remarkable composure and fortitude. In fact, it was an experience which seemed to have left hardly any scars at all—which was extraordinary, and quite beyond Lois to understand.

Unless no part of his heart had been involved! . . . But that was even more extraordinary!

“Senhor ------ ” she said suddenly, while he stared

at the road ahead.

“Yes?” He turned his head sideways for an instant, and she thought he was smiling rather strangely. “You have been silent for several minutes, and I realize there is something you wish to say. What is it?”

Thus assisted—although somewhat to her astonishment— Lois managed to utter the words she felt ought to be uttered.

“Senhor, I—I don't think I expressed to you my—my concern because—because things turned out the way they did! Jay is my cousin, and naturally I feel that her interests are much more my interests than—well, those of someone I hardly know! But even so, I know you were badly treated, and by my relative—and you have been very good about it. By asking me to your house this afternoon you have shown that you haven’t visited your wrath upon the whole of Jay’s family, and yet you must be upset—I mean, the wound is very recent.”

“So it is,” he agreed, quietly, but still with the faintest suspicion of a smile clinging to his lips as he stared through the windscreen. “That is to say, the disappointment is very recent—but I will be honest with you, Miss Lois, and admit that there is no wound. Your English mind will probably find that difficult to accept, but my family for generations have been collectors of beautiful pieces—if you had time to examine the contents of the quinta you would realize that— and Jay to me was a thing of beauty, and also, as I explained to you, I wished for a mother for my child. I should have known that that particular type of effervescent beauty is not the type to take kindly to the responsibilities thrust upon it. Jay wished to be the centre of the picture—and that is all!” “Then, you—you were not in love with her? Not really at all in love with her?”

He sent her another sideways glance, but this time his black eyes were unfathomable if faintly smiling pools.

“You are young enough to put a great deal of emphasis on love! Have you ever experienced it yourself, Miss Lois? Or is it that you feel that a marriage contract would scarcely be binding without it?”

She felt he was mocking her—gently—and she colored brilliantly. She colored right up to her slightly fly-away eyebrows, that were several shades darker than her honey-gold hair, and the slender column of her throat was dyed pink as well. But her grey-blue eyes ventured to meet his bravely.

“Whether or not I have ever been in love is nothing to do with—with your problem, is it, senhor?” She suggested. “But it seems to me that a marriage contract would definitely be more binding with it!”

“Touche” he exclaimed, and then his lips openly parted over his very white teeth. “You have probably got a great deal there, and in spite of your inexperience you must be very wise. For somehow, although you will not tell me the truth about yourself, I do not think you have ever been in love. There is something of unawareness about you— something completely unawakened! Will you forgive me if I tell you that?”

Lois pursed her lips a little primly, for she disliked this personal note the conversation had arrived at—for, of course, he was only quietly amusing himself at her expense—and her frown told him that she disliked it.

“You are angry with me?” he asked.

“No.” She shook her head. “You have been very kind, and—and I merely wished you to know that, although certain of my sympathies are with Jay, I was very much upset because I felt you were unfairly treated.”

“But you feel also that Jay has escaped something?” “Yes, I feel that you were no more fair to her than she was to you.”

“Then there is no reason why either of us should feel bitter?”

“No.”

“And the whole affair can be washed out and forgotten?”

“If it had happened to me I would wish very much to forget it. But it would never have happened to me.”

“Why not?” he enquired, as if he was interested.

“Because no man would wish to add me to his collection of museum pieces, and if I suspected that he did I would dislike and mistrust him extremely. I would look upon him as not quite human, and avoid linking my life with his. In that way we would both sidetrack certain unhappiness.”

“I see,” he said, and for a few moments she was convinced he was actually taken aback. And then, to her astonishment, he started to laugh, and his laughter sounded as if he were really enjoying himself. “You are a quaint little person, Miss Lois,” he told her, when they were just about to draw up in front of the hotel, “and even wiser than I thought. And you are completely right about one thing— no man would ever look upon you as a museum piece!”

And then he descended and held open her door for her, and she hardly knew whether to feel more affronted or confused, because although he had agreed with her that there was nothing about her to tempt anyone to cherish her for her ornamental qualities alone, there was something glinting and amused in his look as it roved over her, and that look was oddly disturbing. But he said goodbye to her casually enough, and although Miss Mattie had expressed a desire to see her again he did not suggest that she should pay another visit to the quinta. He didn’t even ask her how long her holiday was likely to last, and how soon

she would be returning to England.

He merely got back into his beautiful car and drove away, and as she watched him disappear before entering the hotel she had a strange, empty feeling inside her.

She also became acutely conscious of her dangling shoe buckle, and her crumpled dress, and decided that at least he should not catch her like that again.

C H AP T E R FI VE

Another couple of days passed surprisingly slowly for Lois, and although the color and the beauty were still there, catching her eye in whichever direction she turned it, she was conscious of something lacking that had not been lacking before. She began to feel the heat of the sun, and to be disinclined just to lie about on the beach; to wish that she had even a smattering of Portuguese so that she could sometimes talk to someone apart from the hotel receptionist, who spoke English perfectly; and in particular that she knew someone who would invite her to do something rather more exciting in the evenings than just sit and look at the stars peering at their reflection in the sea from the hotel balcony.

The nights had such a breathless quality of beauty, but she had discovered that young Portuguese women did not wander about alone on the sea front at night, and so she usually went to bed very early. And that brought the somewhat aimless days round too quickly. And on the third day after her second visit to the Quinta de Valerira she had the misfortune to sprain her ankle on the steep steps hewn out of rough stone that led down to the beach.

Someone helped her back to the hotel, and then a doctor told her that she would have to rest the ankle for a few days, and that meant incarceration in the hotel itself, and most of the time in her own hotel bedroom.

The first day it wasn't so bad because the pain made her content to lie about with her damaged foot on a foot-rest and read one of the books she had brought with her from England, but by evening the silence of her room was beginning to prey upon her nerves a little. The next day she managed to hobble down to the dining room for lunch, but she once again had her dinner upstairs on a tray. By this time her room felt like a well of loneliness, and she wondered why she was spending hard-earned money on a

holiday of this sort. She even thought longingly of the girls in her office, and wished that she had just one of them to pop in and cheer her up for a few moments, and express some sort of sympathy for her. For although everyone around her was very kind, much of their solicitude was lost on her when it was confined to words, and she had absolutely no idea what any of the words were attempting to convey.

And in spite of sleeping tablets here ankle nagged so much at night that she hardly slept at all, and on the third morning—which that she had actually been in Portugal for ten whole days! —she was feeling so wretched that the chambermaid found her near to tears when she brought her coffee at eleven o’clock. She was still sipping the coffee and deciding that the rich stream of Portuguese the pleasant-faced chambermaid had poured out over her was expressive of a good deal of sympathy, when the door opened again and the same girl returned with a curiously gratified light in her eyes and ushered in no less a person than Dom Julyan de Valerira.

Lois put down her coffee cup on the little table beside her and looked first amazed, and then wildly embarrassed. But the rush of embarrassed color to her face was not soon enough to prevent him noticing how peaked and pale her normal appearance had become, and she had even lost the light coating of golden tan she had acquired on the beach. There were heavy purple smudges under her eyes, and the eyes themselves looked wan and lack-lustre.

‘'Why didn’t you let me know that you had had an accident?” he asked, rather sternly—and crazily enough the thought that leapt through her mind was a recollection of something her aunt had said, immediately after her arrival from England, about a man of Dom Julyan’s status not attempting to enter a woman’s bedroom unless he was invited. He had certainly not entered Jay’s, and he had not been invited to do so. But she, Lois, hadn’t even been aware of his arrival in the hotel—and here he was!

The chambermaid had retreated, and the door was closed behind him, and he was looking down at her where she lay in her long rattan chair with an expression in his eyes that was as reproving as his voice.

‘ ‘How long have you been out of action like this?”

“Only three days.”

‘‘Three days?” He looked round the rather bare hotel room—for Aunt Harriet had been careful to book her one of the least expensive ones on the top floor—and his eyes narrowed a little. “And you’ve spent most of those three days up here?”

“Yes. But I’ve a wonderful view of the sea,” her eyes going to the tall window that was standing open on to the tiny balcony which wouldn’t accommodate a long chair. “And everyone has been very kind.”

He made a non-committal observation, and she invited him shyly to be seated. She couldn’t imagine why he had come to see her even now, or why he had troubled to come all the way up to her room—overcoming rigid Portuguese principles before permitting himself to do so, no doubt— and having arrived in the room looked extremely displeased about something.

“Mattie wanted me to collect you and ask you to have lunch with her,” he explained, refusing the chair she offered him, “and we though perhaps you might consider spending the rest of the day at the quinta. But when I asked for you at the reception desk they told me you were the victim of a sprained ankle, and that it would be an effort for you to come downstairs. So I hope you will forgive me for intruding upon you

m the way I have done, but there was no other means of finding out how you were, or having any conversation with you,” in a formal voice.

“I see,” she said, and suddenly she was so much touched that someone had thought of her—and that someone her own countrywoman who must have known what it was to feel lonely and cut off sometimes amongst people who didn’t naturally speak her own language—that the weak tears came to her eyes, and she had to blink her eyelids rapidly to prevent him from seeing them. “That was very kind of Miss Gregg—very kind of you both,” she told him. “Not at all.” He was frowning. “How did this accident happen?”

She told him, and his frown grew more noticeable.

“It is not a good thing for a girl of your age to be holidaying alone. And from the look of you it has not been a very enjoyable holiday so far. When do you propose to return to England?”

“I thought I would remain until the weekend,” she said. “That means you have only another couple of days.” He walked to the window and stood looking out at the sparkling sea. “Would it be too much to suggest that you come back with me to lunch now? If your ankle isn’t too painful I could wait outside for you until you are ready, and if necessary I can carry you to the lift, and outside to the car. It seems to me that this room is a little depressing, and a change would be good for you.”

“Oh!” she exclaimed, and suddenly the tears were back in her eyes. “That would be lovely! I mean,” she added hastily, as he turned and looked at her and she was quite unable to prevent one tear from rolling off her lashes and running quite noticeably down her cheek, “it would be lovely to see Miss Mattie again and your little boy Jamie! And it won’t be necessary for you to carry me to the