Love is for Ever (16 page)

She looked up at him, a trifle amazed.

“I don’t find that very flattering,” she confessed; “but I also don’t feel in very great danger. There is no one I know who would be likely to want to marry me for my money.”

“No?” he said again.

She looked at him sharply.

“Do
you
know anyone?”

His smile was one of those extraordinarily sweet smiles which at the same time provided a mask for his thoughts.

“We will hope that there is no one of the type to stoop to take such a base advantage of you on Sansegovia,” he murmured smoothly.

But the conversation for some reason was very fresh in Jacqueline’s mind when next she met Neville Barr. This time Neville was showing her over the clinic, and it was the first time she had actually been shown over it since her return visit to Sansegovia. She was a little surprised that it was not as up-to-date and efficient as she had always imagined it, and Neville actually felt it necessary to apologize for the state of affairs.

“Of course,” he said, “in a place like this I always feel that there is much that a man with a certain amount of spare means of his own could do to improve things. But unfortunately I don’t happen to be blessed with any spare means.”

Jacqueline remembered his beautifully equipped bungalow, and asked him whether he had been responsible for that himself.

“Yes, but it’s bad enough to be dumped down on an island like this without having to do things in primitive style,” he defended his love of luxury with a faint smile at her. “I could never have gone on living here as your father did, with only the barest necessities around him. Why, do you know, when I first came out to join him he was using a packing case for an extra table, and he never slept on anything but a camp bed.”

“Yes, I do know,” Jacqueline told him. “The bungalow was very sparsely furnished when I stayed with him as a child.”

“But he didn’t know his daughter was going to become a wealthy woman one day.” His smile at her was more speculative, more alert to the possibilities of the situation, although it was also amused. “What are you going to do with yourself now that you’re completely independent?” he asked. “You won’t go on staying on Sansegovia, will you?”

“I shall as long as
Tia
Lola wants me—or until she’s recovered sufficiently from the shock of losing the Senora Cortina to make it possible for me to leave her,” she amended, remembering that there was after all a time limit to her stay on the island. And the time limit would be reached when Dominic brought home his future bride, or announced that he was bringing her home.

“Then I think that’s very self-sacrificing of you,” Neville told her. “You ought to be off adventuring, arid looking for romance.

Why don’t you go for a sea voyage?”

“Because I’m not particularly interested in sea voyages.”

She felt, rather than saw, him glance at her obliquely.

“Not
still interested in Dominic?” he asked. “Because it’s not much good, is it? He’s going to marry a girl in Madrid, you know.”

“How—how did you know?” she asked.

Neville shrugged slightly.

“Oh, one gets to know these things, and now that his grandmother’s death has occurred, and been a bit of a shock to him, he no doubt wants to settle down. It’ll do him good, too—the sort of marriage that probably appeals to him. Very little sentiment, and a good many people thoroughly well satisfied. Her people, and of course, his. And he’ll probably keep Martine in the background!”

“How
can
you say such a thing?” Jacqueline demanded, whirling upon him in disgust and fury which amazed him a little. “You must know Dominic is not like that! When he marries—” She was going to say ‘it will be for ever’, but Dominic had been referring to love when he said that—“he’ll know how to behave,” she concluded feebly, “and what is due to his wife.”

Neville smiled at her with genuine cynicism, but his voice was almost gentle as he said:

“What a nice little soul you are, aren’t you? And how I wish you hadn’t come into all that money so that I could have gone on pestering you to marry me!”

She said, a little stiffly:

“Money doesn’t enter into it when two people are in love and want to marry—but neither you nor I would ever seriously want to marry one another.”

“Speak for yourself, child,” he murmured softly; but before she could reply Dominic arrived at the foot of the verandah steps to take her home in the grey car. He had promised to call for her, but she knew he hadn’t altogether approved of her desire to visit the clinic, and he hardly looked approving as he cast a glance at the doctor, whose expression as always was full of veiled affability.

“You’re right on time, Errol,” the latter greeted the newcomer. He glanced at his watch. “But I think Miss Vaizey has seen all she wants to see.”

Dominic did not reply. He was already holding the car door open for Jacqueline.

“I have been trying to persuade Miss Vaizey to enjoy herself now that your grandmother has made it possible,” Neville said, with a curious glint in his eyes, as he noted Dominic’s straight back and rather rigid jaw-line. “After all, she’ll only be young once, and I suggested a sea voyage, or something of the sort, where she’ll meet other young people and perhaps run to earth a spot of romance. She’ll have to be careful that no one marries her for her money, but she is entitled to a good time, and Sansegovia’s a bit dull.”

Dominic started up the car very deliberately, his imperturbable mask of a face giving away nothing of what he was thinking or feeling. But just before he waved carelessly to the doctor, and the car disappeared down the short drive, he called back clearly to the doctor;

“I don’t think Miss Vaizey is looking either for a good time or romance.”

And when they were exactly-half-way home, and neither of them had uttered a word, he turned to the girl who sat so small and quiet beside him at the wheel and asked:

“Is that true? Was I right when I said what I did say to that fellow Barr?”

She pretended to look a little blank.

“I told him you were looking neither for a good time nor romance,” he reminded her distinctly.

Jacqueline sat very silent and stared ahead of her. Her heart felt heavy as lead within her as she answered at last:

“Yes, you’re right.” For what was the use of looking for romance when romance meant Dominic, and everything connected with him? And to look beyond Dominic would not mean romance!

Taking her completely by surprise he put out his hand and covered one of hers where it rested in her lap. She felt his strong, vital fingers close almost convulsively over hers.

“Good girl,” he said, softly. “I felt sure I was right.”

But when they arrived at the Villa Cortina a telephone message awaited him. Jacqueline saw his eyebrows lift, and an expression of faint amazement flit across his face as he read it, and then with very little expression in either his face or his voice he told her:

“Miss Howard is coming back tomorrow! ... It’s a little unexpected, but in any case she won’t be staying here.”

“No?” Jacqueline found herself saying rather foolishly.

“No.” He looked at her, and she wondered why his look was direct and almost searching, and why his dark blue eyes seemed to linger on the hot, revealing tide of color which flowed into her face. “She’ll be staying at the
albergue
in the town, and I shall go now and make arrangements. Perhaps you will explain to
Tia
Lola that she will not be called upon to act hostess at a time when I am sure she still does not feel up to it.”

“Of course,” Jacqueline said, but she was sure that she was speaking mechanically, and as she turned away she moved mechanically. Dominic followed her for a few steps across the hall. He said, speaking lightly:

“It must be that Martine is anxious not to miss our fiesta, or else her film is completed and she is in need of a rest. Perhaps if I invite her to dine with us tomorrow night you will act hostess in the place of my aunt?”

Jacqueline looked round at him in rather leaden amazement. “But I have no right to act hostess!”

“Nevertheless, I would be glad if you would do so.”

“Then, in that case—and if you really wish me to—?”

“I do,” and he was smiling at her in that sweet way that turned her heart over.

“Very well,” she said, and escaped hurriedly.

That night she was glad that
Tia
Lola, looking rather wan, made her appearance in the dining room, for she did not wish to dine alone with Dominic. But the following night she had no support,
Tia
Lola plainly shrinking from the thought of coming into contact with anyone she could not regard as either a member of the family, or a close contact of the family, such as Jacqueline; and when Martine arrived the only thing she could feel thankful for was that Dr. Barr had also been invited by Dominic to make the numbers of the party even.

Martine was as glamorous as ever, and added to her glamor was something which suggested she had had a certain amount of success in the film part she had just played. There was an air of complacency about her, in spite of the fact that whenever she looked at Jacqueline a slight coolness overspread her face. Jacqueline received the impression that she was surprised to find her still there, and towards the conclusion of the meal, after talking a great deal about herself and her film, the heat of Madrid and the marvellous manner in which she had survived it—and she certainly looked as if she thrived on heat—she suddenly spoke directly to Jacqueline, as if all at once her memory had been aroused.

“Oh, by the way,” she said, “I understand I ought to congratulate you! As a result of the Senora Cortina’s death you’ve become more or less independent!”

It was a crude way of putting it, and Jacqueline felt herself color uncomfortably, while Dominic, who had been smiling, looked suddenly quite expressionless.

“I wish I could develop a happy knack of getting round people,” Martine continued, a whimsical note in her voice, although her green eyes were hard and cold as they remained glued to Jacqueline’s face. “But somehow I don’t think I’ve got the right temperament, or else I don’t go down very well with my own sex. But I must try it next time I get the opportunity.”

The inference was that she had missed an opportunity which Jacqueline had seized hold of with both hands, and the English girl’s cheeks grew crimson with embarrassed color. Neville Barr, who shot Martine a look which might have been a warning look, and was certainly intended to be silencing, deliberately introduced a fresh topic of conversation, but shortly after the meal was over he was summoned away by telephone and Jacqueline was left to feel not only very much in the way where the other two were concerned, but still smarting under the suggestion that she had deliberately made up to the Senora Cortina in order to benefit under the terms of her will when she died.

She felt so upset by this suggestion—and by the disparaging gleam in Martine’s eyes when she made it—that she found it difficult to say anything at all after Neville had left, and far from acting the part of a hostess she simply sat silent and kept her eyes averted from the other two who occupied comfortable chairs in the verandah with her. Dominic made one or two definite attempts to include her in the conversation, and when the coffee arrived she had to dispense it in her position as deputy for
Tia
Lola, and Dominic’s eyes, she thought, were rather noticeably kind as he looked towards her and accepted his own cup from her hand.

Shortly before ten o’clock, feeling that she could not endure it any longer, she made a self-conscious move and announced that, if they would excuse her, she would like to go to bed; but Dominic circumvented this move by declaring in a lazy voice that it was quite early, and telling her to sit down again in the same pleasant voice.

“Besides, it’s a very warm night,” he said, “and you were telling me the other day that you find it difficult to sleep through our warm island nights.”

This was true, because the nights had lately become very warm indeed; but she could sense rather than see Martine, lying back very languidly and gracefully in her own chair, as if she was not the one who ought in any case to make a move, turn her red head slightly and look across the dividing space at Dominic and study the tip of his glowing cigarette, which indicated the spot where his sleek dark head was relaxed against the back of his chair, with her slender, plucked eyebrows arched a little.

“Do you find the island nights warm, Miss Vaizey?” she asked, in an exquisitely cool voice. “Because if so I can assure you you wouldn’t like Madrid—in fact, I don’t think you’d like Spain very much. You’re not the type, somehow—you’re English, and uncomplicated, and you belong to the climate that breeds such people.”

“Nevertheless, I’m quite sure Miss Vaizey has every intention of seeing Spain one day,” Dominic murmured.

“Have you?” Once again Martine was addressing Jacqueline deliberately. “I should have thought that, now you’ve come into so much money, you’d be anxious to get back to England and cut a dash amongst your old friends! I know I would—especially if I’d got a boy friend amongst them, which I’m quite sure you have! Only, don’t let him marry you for your money!”