Love is for Ever (13 page)

But Dominic followed her into the big main salon into which she retreated, and just as she reached the archway admitting to the hall he came up behind her.

“Jacqueline!”

She turned and looked up at him, her heart knocking suddenly, although her eyes were merely surprised.

“You will be here when I—when I come back, won’t you?”

Her eyebrows ascended a little.

“That all depends how soon you expect to be back,” she answered, and in her own ears her voice sounded a little prim.

“I don’t really know at the moment, but I may be away a few weeks. I have—business of my own to attend to in Madrid.”

“I see,” she said, and waited for him to say something further he had to say.

Without looking directly at him she somehow knew that all at once he was looking a trifle pale—or some of that healthy olive-bronze of his complexion had faded just a little—and his eyes were dark, as if he was preoccupied with something that was causing him a certain amount of concern. Even his voice had a faintly agitated note in it.

“But you
will
be here?” he insisted.

She looked up at him then, and met his look fully. “I expect I shall be here on Sansegovia,” she told him. “Senor Montez has offered me a position as his secretary, and I may accept it. I couldn’t go on accepting your grandmother’s hospitality indefinitely, and if I decide against Senor Montez’s offer I shall go home to England fairly soon. But at the moment I don’t quite know what I shall do.”

This time it was he who said “I see,” and then he turned away from her and started to pace up and down over the cool black and white tiles of the hall with a restless stride, as if he was a curiously graceful and mentally perturbed panther who was trying to make up his mind about something. His black brows knitted, and his blue eyes looked darker than ever as he suddenly paused again and looked down at her in the light of the swinging hall lantern.

“There is no need for you to be a secretary to Senor Montez or to anyone else,” he told her, almost harshly. “My grandmother will be delighted for you to stay here.”

“But I couldn’t, as I have just pointed out to you, take advantage of your grandmother’s kindness.”

“Then you will accept the
senor’s
offer?”

“I—don’t know.”

He looked at her all at once as if she filled him with an acute feeling of impatience, and she thought that his teeth locked behind the close set of his lips. She looked very small and fragile, but very much on her dignity, as she stood there beneath the great lantern that was sending out golden rays all over the rich rugs surrounding her, and against the background of flowers and pieces of antique furniture and other evidences of a good deal of wealth and security she also looked very young and vulnerable and, in spite of her dignity, a little forlorn.

“But, at least, you will not go home to England? Jacqueline, I would like you to give me your word that you will not do that until I return!”

Suddenly they both heard Martine’s impatient voice calling

him.

“Dominic, I want a cigarette, and we have so much to discuss ...! What on earth are you talking to Miss Vaizey about?”

She even sounded as if she had risen in the verandah and was coming towards them.

Jacqueline turned and fled towards the stairs. She looked over her shoulder at Dominic.

“I hope you will have a good journey tomorrow,” she said, “and—and if I don’t see you again,
adios!”

CHAPTER NINE

The next few days seemed to Jacqueline to pass over her head in a curiously lifeless and purposeless manner, and all that she found to do was to wander aimlessly in an atmosphere of

sunshine and exotic flower scents and think of Dominic.

She knew that it was the worst thing she could do, to think about him to the exclusion of everything else. But that was the importance he had all at once assumed in her life—nothing else really mattered apart from him!

She knew that she should have despised herself when she at last acknowledged this to herself—she should have despised herself for giving her love, so easily, and after such a short time, where it so plainly wasn’t wanted. But having given it there didn’t seem there was much she could do about it, apart from wondering how on earth she was going to get through the rest of her life without the constant society of a man against whom two people had warned her, and no doubt several others would have done so if they had had the least suspicion how vulnerable she was, and what was happening to her.

Tia
Lola, even Senora Cortina ... But Senora Cortina had warned her by telling her plainly that in time it was hoped Dominic would marry a young woman called Carlotta—a young woman of good family, who was charming and pretty as a picture, and whom he had known for years—and naturally it hadn’t occurred to her that the young English girl she invited to her house and the island of Sansegovia would succumb in such a hopeless manner to the charms of her grandson.

And, of course, it was hopeless...

When Jacqueline thought of Martine, and Carlotta—and realized that they were only two out of quite possibly many women he had admired and conducted decorous flirtations with—the full realization of just how hopeless it was washed over her like a wave, and left her feeling mentally bruised and battered because this was something she could have avoided. If only she had ignored that invitation to Sansegovia, and old Mr. Maplethorpe hadn’t been quite so impressed with Dominic’s exquisite handwriting.

Then there were moments when all she could remember and dwell upon was the feel of his lips when he kissed her, and the way his arms had held her. She had struggled to be free, but it had seemed to her that he hadn’t the power to let her go—until he had to! She remembered, too, that look in his eyes—that strange, dark, strained look—on that last night when he had tried to get her to promise him that she would not go back to England until he returned from his visit to Spain. She could have felt almost certain that he was so seriously perturbed away down at the roots of his usually imperturbable being that when Martine interrupted them, and she, Jacqueline, fled towards the stairs, in order to make her escape, he was caught up in the grip of a temporary but almost violent frustration, and it had looked up at her out of his eyes as she so hurriedly bade him goodbye.

She hadn’t seen anything of him the following day, for he and Martine had left early, catching the morning clipper to the mainland; and once they had left the house seemed so empty, and so bereft, that Jacqueline was appalled by an urge to shed tears as she wandered about it forlornly, and tried not to let
Tia
Lola gather any idea of how she felt, and how she was secretly rebelling against the very desperation which threatened to overwhelm her.

To make matters worse, a few days after Dominic’s departure the weather changed, and a storm swept over the island, a storm so violent that it left a good deal of actual havoc in its train. Jacqueline was amazed that such a sunny isle could all at once be turned into a scene of darkened skies and threshing trees, with seas pounding wildly on the beaches instead of creeping in in a haze of summer blue. The wind blew with such velocity that even the Villa Cortina shuddered and shook, and many of the smaller houses and cottages were afterwards bereft of parts of their roofs, and shutters were actually torn away from their fastenings.

The shutters of the Villa Cortina held strongly, however, and inside nobody seemed to have the slightest fear that the house would be damaged in any way whatsoever—nobody, that is, except Jacqueline. She, who was not used to rain sluicing from an inky sky as if it would wash them away altogether, while thunder rolled and crashed continuously, and lightning found its way blindingly through the chinks in the shutters, felt certain that at any moment some disaster would occur, such as the house being struck by lightning or a giant tree fall across it.

She and
Tia
Lola sat together in the big main salon with electric light glowing, and every time the lights flickered Jacqueline felt herself flinching and waiting expectantly for worse to follow.
Tia
Lola, however, went on calmly with her embroidery work, and when she sensed that her companion was really nervous sought to reassure her.

“In a few hours,” she said, “all this will have blown itself out, and tomorrow the weather will be perfect again. We are used to storms like this on Sansegovia, and some are more violent than others.”

This one happened to be one of the more violent ones, and the next day, contrary to
Tia
Lola’s confident expectations, the clouds still hung about and rain still fell, although the wind had dropped considerably.

By early morning of the following day reports of how badly the villages and town had suffered came up to the house, and by afternoon there was a certain amount of perturbation inside the house because the Senora Cortina had been unexpectedly upset by the storm, and her health was causing a certain amount of anxiety.

Neville was sent for, and he came without any delay, driving his car over roads that on the lower part of the island were almost awash, and strewn with fallen timber. Luckily, where the Villa Cortina was situated, the water simply found its way downhill and the gardens dried out with astonishing quickness as soon as an unwilling sun appeared. The sun was shining wanly when Neville appeared, and Jacqueline, greedily gulping in a little air after her incarceration in the house, met him in the drive. He smiled at her.

“Were you frightened?” he asked. “I don’t suppose you’ve ever experienced anything quite like one of our own particular storms before, have you?”

“No,” she admitted. “I didn’t altogether like it—but nobody else seemed to mind.” She looked at him with sudden anxiety. “I’m afraid the Senora is very unwell.”

The doctor nodded.

“I’ll go in straight away and see her. She’s very old, you know.”

“Yes—I do know.” She twisted her fingers together. “And terribly fragile.”

“But, nevertheless, tough.” He smiled at her again. “Just like a very precious ornament that survives miraculously all sorts of doubtful handling.” But when he made his reappearance from the house, and found Jacqueline still standing on the drive and obviously waiting to intercept him, he was looking a little more grave. Jacqueline, afraid that the gravity meant something, hastened to meet him.

“How—is she?” she asked.

He made a slow shaking movement with his head. “Not so good.

The storm upset her—it’s her heart, of course, otherwise there’s

very little wrong

with her constitution. I’ve given her something, and if she can get a little rest and be quite undisturbed for a while she may pull round again and be quite all right for a few months.”

“Only a few months?”

“As I told you before, she’s very old.” Jacqueline felt shocked and disturbed, and she knew that if anything happened to the Senora Cortina she herself was going to be very badly upset. She had grown really fond of her hostess.

“Do you think I—do you think I could go and see her?” she

asked. “Or would that be bad for her?”

“I think it would be better if you kept away just now,” Neville answered.
“Tia
Lola is with her, and She must be kept absolutely quiet. But you can’t just hang about here with no one to talk to, and I’ve suggested your coming and having some tea with me, and
Tia
Lola has agreed. Do you agree, or does the idea bore you?”

He was looking at her with just a touch of quizzicalness in his blue eyes, and she answered at once: “Of course not! And I’d love to come.”

“Then go and get yourself a hat, and a mackintosh, too. You don’t want to risk a drenching if the rain starts again, and you can get drenched just walking from a car into the house.”

“Very well. I won’t keep you a minute.” And she flew off, relieved because Neville at least was someone to talk to, and he did more than merely talk her own language—he was her own fellow countryman.

Once more Jacqueline found herself in the main living room of the bungalow which had once been her father’s, having tea with the present incumbent. As she sipped her tea and looked towards the verandah beyond which Dominic had stopped his huge grey car on the only other occasion when she had visited the bungalow, and when he had surprised her by displaying annoyance because she had decided to visit the bungalow at all, she tried not to see him standing there, after alighting arrogantly from the car, looking almost breathtakingly handsome in his marvellously-tailored white silk suit, and with his dark head a little in the air, and his vividly blue eyes faintly hostile.

Neville watched her and smoked a cigarette. Somehow they weren’t talking a great deal, although he had said that she needed someone to talk to; and suddenly, a thought crossing her mind in connection with Dominic, she asked:

“If the Senora Cortina is really ill, oughtn’t Dominic to be informed?”

“I don’t think so—not yet,” he answered. “There would be little point in recalling him at the moment. But we’ll see how things go.”

“He’s very fond of her,” she said.

“I know.” He stared at the tip of his cigarette. “However, I don’t know what his plans are, and it would be a pity to interfere with his arrangements for nothing.”