Love is for Ever (23 page)

“Yes?” she barely breathed, her eyes fluttering open.

His arms strained her to him, and his blue gaze confounded her temporarily like the lightning.

“If I hadn’t found you I’d have gone mad!... Jacqueline, do you understand, I couldn’t have borne it if anything had happened to you? You’re my life, you’re the most precious thing in the world, and you were out there being buffeted by all that wind and rain! And there was a tree fallen near to you!”

“But it missed me,” she whispered, the contentment in her voice as great as if she was not soaked through to the skin, her body bruised and aching now that it was recovering from its numbness, and even her fingers bleeding because she had crawled over the rough ground.

Dominic said something fervently, but she was so weary that she failed to catch it. He poured her some neat spirit from the flask he carried in a pocket of the car, and insisted on her drinking some of it, and then he wrapped her in another blanket and started up the car. But before he actually turned the car he smiled at her with infinite tenderness, and kissed her with a kind of gentle yearning on the mouth.

“
Querida
,” he whispered, “
querida
,
mia
!”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Jacqueline lay lapped about with comfort and security, watched over by Juanita, with
Tia
Lola sitting often by her side. Outside, once again the storm had swept onwards, and left Sansegovia blue and golden and untroubled, with not quite so much havoc left behind this time, but a feeling of infinite relief because it might have been worse.

When Jacqueline turned her head there were dark red roses, in a crystal container, very close to her bed, and each day the roses were renewed, and their color was always the same deep and burning red, and although nobody said anything about them Jacqueline, when she gazed at them, felt her heart swell and threaten to burst through her body. For she did not need to be told who was responsible for the roses.

On the third morning Neville came in and greeted her cheerfully. He sat beside the bed after he had felt her pulse and looked at her critically, and then pronounced that there was no reason why she shouldn’t get up that day.

“You can get up this morning,” he said, “and sit by the window, and then, if you feel like it, go downstairs to lunch. How would you like that?”

“Oh, I’d love it,” Jacqueline answered. “I’m beginning to feel a bit of a fraud lying here.”

“All the same, you could have had a nasty bout of pneumonia after that lot, and you certainly collected some prize bruises and scratches.” He touched one of her hands, that was still neatly bandaged. “You’re lucky, Jacqueline! You might have had a tree fall on top of you! Why did you do it?” he asked, his eyes suddenly grave.

Jacqueline lay looking at him with just a touch of heightened color in her cheeks, and her eyes were suddenly clouded by remembrance.

“I was—unhappy!” she said, with a simplicity which made his eyes grow gentle and understanding, and this time his fingers closed rather tightly over her good hand.

“You
were
unhappy, Jacqueline—but you’re not now, are you?”

She made a slight movement with her dark head on the pillow. The color in her cheeks deepened, until it reminded him of the delicate flush inside a shell, and her eyes all at once looked like misty grey stars.

“I don’t think I could ever be really unhappy again.” she confessed, a little dreamily. “You see, it was—it was Dominic who found me—”

“I know.”

“And although I—I haven’t seen him since—”

“I’ve no doubt you will see him again before very long!” Neville smiled gently at her, although there was a faint shadow at the back of his own eyes. “You know he’s cancelled his arrangements to go to Madrid?”

“Y-yes,” she admitted. There was a touch of confusion in her eyes this time, and her color spread wildly.
“Tia
Lola told me.”

“And your roses—” looking directly across at them with a tiny, inscrutable smile just touching the corners of his lips— “must have told you a good deal more!”

Jacqueline remained silent, but she, too, looked at the roses, and looking at them she seemed to find it difficult to remember that he was still in the room with her.

Neville stifled something which might have been a sigh, and stood up.

“Ah, well—the most improbable fairy stories all had happy endings, and perhaps yours wasn’t an improbable story, even in the beginning! Perhaps it was one of those inevitable stories that can only have one ending.” As she looked up at him with concern for him lighting up her whole expression he shook his head. “Don’t worry about me—at best, I would have been offering you second-best, and I don’t think you really had anything at all to offer me! and one of these days—who knows ...?” Again he half sighed. “I’ve more or less made up my mind to leave Sansegovia and seek pastures new. I think it’s a good plan when you’re feeling a bit dissatisfied.” He bent over her and lightly touched her cheek. “But I’ll be here for a while yet—and I’ll be in to take that bandage off your hand tomorrow. And, in the meantime, enjoy your day!”

When he had gone Jacqueline was left alone for only a very few minutes, and then
Tia
Lola and Juanita arrived together to help her to dress.
Tia
Lola seemed to be almost excited, and it was she who went to the wardrobe and inspected Jacqueline’s row of dresses.

“Not a dressing gown,” she said. “Dr. Barr said you could join us for lunch, and that means that you must be properly clothed. Ah!” She pounced on the hedge-rose pink linen which Jacqueline had worn for the
fiesta,
and in which she had looked rather like a hedge-rose herself. “This will do excellently!”

She handed it over to Juanita, who beamed her approval, and when while Jacqueline watched them with faint amusement in her eyes the two of them set about overwhelming her with ministrations. While Juanita ran her bath for her
Tia
Lola collected her under garments and shoes and placed them all ready to put on, and then Juanita brushed her hair and helped her on with her dress. And because the aftereffects of the storm had caused the heat to abate a little she was persuaded to wear the little pink linen jacket which went with the dress, and which was actually more like a bolero. Then a deep chair was drawn near to the window, and she was placed in it carefully, with her feet on the wicker foot-rest, and a cushion stuffed in behind her blue-black curls.

The cushion was a rich petunia color, and it highlighted the curls while at the same time drawing attention to the flowerlike delicacy of her appearance after two days in bed and a shock from which she had not yet completely recovered.

Her attendants’ desire that she should look as attractive as possible filled Jacqueline with a certain amount of suspicion, and at the same time she began to feel rather like a doll who was being prepared for display.

Before she left her alone, with a pile of magazines on a little table beside her,
Tia
Lola caressingly touched her cheek and said:

“Juanita will bring you a glass of sherry, it will steady the nerves!”

And then, still noticeably fluttering a little, she vanished smilingly from the room.

The sherry was brought, and Jacqueline sipped at it, but she was much more concerned with the silence which descended once Juanita, also smiling expansively, had withdrawn and left her quite alone. It seemed to her to be almost like a waiting silence, and she began to be aware of her own heart-beats behaving in a manner which made it impossible to lie quietly back in a relaxed attitude. She did not feel in the least relaxed—she felt as if something momentous was about to happen, and the sooner it happened the sooner would this absurd nervous trembling which had seized her subside, and make it possible for her to breathe normally.

She looked at her dark red roses beside the bed, and a little touch of calmness returned to her. Dominic, when he had held her in his arms after her nightmare experience at the height of the storm, had taken away all her fear and her trembling, and she had felt utterly at peace. Now, just looking at the roses, a feeling of peace stole round her heart.

And then there came a light tap on the door, and her voice failed her as she tried to call out, for the door opened, and Dominic came in.

Across the width of the room they looked at one another. In the way one notices such things during moments of tension Jacqueline noticed that he was wearing a very light grey suit, marvellously cut, as were all his clothes, and that his tie was flowing rather carelessly, although it was knotted with meticulous exactitude. His linen was so immaculate that it was unbelievably crisp and fresh, and made his dark face appear darker than it really was, and the amazing golden streaks in his hair showed up in the sunshine. His eyes were so blue that she gasped.

He came across the room to her, swiftly. He knelt down beside her chair and took her hands, holding them strongly, but as if he feared to damage them by too ardent a pressure, and he looked searchingly, anxiously, into her face.

“Jacqueline!... You do understand why I haven’t been to see you before?”

There was anxiety in his voice, and it made it sound not particularly steady.

“I—I—” Jacqueline heard herself trying to stammer. And all the time she looked into his eyes and felt herself drowning in their blue depths.

“It wouldn’t have been fair to you, my darling—I wanted you to recover your strength and to rest without any disturbance of any kind! But I’ve never stopped thinking of you!” He kissed her hands, and held them up against his face. “Oh, Jacqueline, I love you so much!—
Querida,”
he whispered, “you look like a flower and I am terrified to touch you! But you are better, aren’t you?”

“Much better,” she whispered back. “In fact, I’m quite all right again now.”

She saw his blue eyes endeavoring to ascertain for himself whether she was speaking the truth, and then his mouth came near and she could feel his lips burying themselves in her hair.

“I am aching to hold you in my arms,
querida
! ” he told her. “Are you strong enough for that?—Are you strong enough to permit me to kiss you? Or shall I be very patient and wait a little longer?” There was a faint twinkle in his eyes as they looked down at her, and she felt the color rolling in a revealing tide over her cheeks and brow and throat as those eyes, at the same time, devoured her. Her own eyes were quite unable to conceal her longing, and her almost fierce desire to be in his arms. She heard him catch his breath, and the twinkle vanished as if it was nothing more than something she had imagined. “My little one,” he breathed, “I do not think it is possible for either of us to wait!”

And for the first time his lips were on hers in a lover’s kiss of tenderness, adoration, and passion that struggled like a live thing to be free of hampering bonds, and her hands went out and clutched at him, and then fastened themselves about his shoulders.

Later, when he was seated beside her in another of the deep basket chairs that he had drawn close to the window, he looked at her in a way that suggested he could go on doing just that, and nothing else, for a more or less indefinite period.

Her hand was fast in his. Her eyes found it just as impossible to look away from him.

“But, why,” she asked, softly, when his look became a little unbearable, and she had to lower her glance for a moment, why did you let me believe that—that—”

“That what, my dear one?”

“Well, first there was Martine...” She colored brilliantly in her confusion, and a sudden impish smile stole into his eyes and lighted them to her increased confusion.

“Martine was here when you came,” he reminded her, “and in any case she was only a guest. Oh, yes,” as he saw her looking at him doubtfully, “she was my guest—I brought her here because she was out of a job, and it seemed necessary that she should have a little break while some fresh means of earning a livelihood was found for her. It was through my influence that the film part was offered to her in Madrid—before that she had danced, she had sung, she had done a good many things, including a certain amount of acting, and she is so beautiful that I knew it was only a matter of time before a reasonable amount of success came her way. But it was never intended that she should remain here for long.”

“But you do admit that she is beautiful,” Jacqueline said a little wistfully, for she had not yet recovered a sufficient amount of strength to be capable of suppressing jealousy altogether. “And when I first came here you seemed to admire her a great deal.”

“When you first came here my heart leapt straight out of my body and almost rolled beneath your feet,” Dominic told her, as if he was stating nothing but the literal truth. “I admired Martine, and I do still admire her—her looks, that is—but you were the woman I had been waiting for all my

life, and I knew it as soon as I looked at you!”

“But you were bored by the thought of my coming?”

“I thought my grandmother was behaving with a little— well, unnecessary impulsiveness when she issued to you her invitation,” smiling to mitigate the effect of his words. “I did not realize at that time that to my grandmother’s impulsiveness, and her warmth of heart, I would owe my entire future happiness!”