One Coin in the Fountain

by Anita Charles

  One Coin in the Fountain

  by

  ANITA CHARLES

  Wishes do not always come true

  Rose's handsome guardian, Sir Laurence Melville, was jilted at the altar. In love with him herself, Rose silently cheered, but then Sir Laurence immediately left England.

  Not even the dashing prince Rose later met in Rome, where she'd gone as a companion, could erase Sir Laurence's image from her heart.

  Then Rose threw a coin in the fountain; miraculously, Sir Laurence appeared. Unfortunately, he was accompanied by the beautiful Signora Bardoli!

  Original hardcover edition published in 1957 by Wright & Brown Limited

  ISBN 0-373-01056-7 Harlequin edition published October 1966 Copyright © 1968,1957 by Mills & Boon Limited.

  Philippine copyright 1978. Australian copyright 1978.

  Printed in U.S.A.

  CHAPTER I

  IT was already dusk when the Paris plane touched down at London Airport. Rose Hereward stood shivering a little on the tarmac, feeling the keenness of the autumn wind after the pressurization and comfort of the interior of the aircraft, and she thought at first there was no one at all to meet her. And then she caught sight of Thatcher, her guardian’s chauffeur, and a feeling of relief welled over her.

  “Hello, Thatcher,” she greeted him eagerly. “How nice to see you again!”

  Thatcher’s carefully controlled mask of an expression slipped a little as he returned her greeting.

  “Nice to see you again, Miss Rose,” he told her. He held open the rear door of his employer’s sleek Bentley so that she could step in and make herself comfortable on the superbly sprung back seat, and escape the rawness of the wind; and then added more formally: “I trust you had a comfortable flight, miss?”

  “Oh, yes,” Rose relaxed with a faint sigh against the silver-grey upholstery. “Very comfortable, thank you, Thatcher.” And then, with a little rush: “Sir Laurence is quite—quite well, I hope?”

  “Very well, miss.” Thatcher arranged a light rug over her knees, and then adjusted both windows so that only the right amount of cool night air would reach her. “Wedding plans going forward at a great pace, of course,” shooting her a glance which puzzled her for a moment, until she realized that it contained a touch of apology. “Sir Laurence would have met you himself, only he

  hardly has a moment to call his own these days. What with all the new arrivals and Farnhurst Manor already packed to the doors, as you might say, and a great deal of entertaining, and so forth. And naturally, Miss Willoughby -------- ”

  “Oh, of course, Thatcher,” Rose reassured him at once, the colour rushing to her cheeks and burning them almost painfully. “Naturally, Miss Willoughby has prior claim these days, and I honestly didn’t expect my guardian would find time to meet me.”

  She sounded as if she was horrified that anyone should imagine even for an instant that it had ever occurred to her that Sir Laurence, under the changed conditions, would find time to meet her. But as the big car slid forward and she rested her head against the back of the seat, the blush in her cheeks died slowly. For during the whole of the last half-hour while she was airborne she had kept two of her fingers tightly crossed, and had hoped against hope that the familiar figure would be there waiting for her at the airport.

  It grew dark all at once, but by that time they were well away from London, following the course of the Great West Road. Rose wondered whether they were actually on their way to Dorset, and slid back the glass partition which separated her from the chauffeur and asked him what his instructions were.

  “Are you taking me straight to Farnhurst, Thatcher?”

  Thatched admitted that that was the plan.

  “It was Sir Laurence’s idea, Miss Rose. He thought you would prefer it to spending a night at the flat. And naturally he is in constant need of the car, and couldn’t spare me, either, for any length of time.”

  “No, of course not,” Rose agreed, like the expensively educated and well-disciplined young woman she was, and decided to ask no more questions.

  But she was tired and a little hungry, for only tea had been served during the flight, and it looked as if dinner was something that had been overlooked in her case. Which was unlike Sir Laurence, for even when immersed in his own concerns, and preoccupied as she had often known him to be to such an extent that he seemed unaware of what was going on around him, the concerns of other people were never quite out of his mind. Especially when they were people with some sort of a claim on him.

  She sighed as she watched the dark shapes of hedgerows sliding past the windows on either side of her in a slightly sinister fashion, and the occasional gleams in cottage windows as they sped through a village. The autumn-laden night air reached her through the narrow vent Thatcher had considered necessary; but although it cooled her cheeks, the sigh was repeated away down at the depths of her slender being. She wondered what Yvonne de Marsac, at whose parents’ house in Paris she had spent last night, would think if she could see her now. She and Yvonne had passed the whole of last year together in Lausanne, at an exclusive establishment overlooking the lake, where their education had received a final polish, and until the abrupt news of Sir Laurence’s engagement broke upon them Yvonne had been amusing herself with painting a picture of Rose’s future.

  “It will all work out quite romantically,” she had declared, in spite of the fact that she was French, the daughter of an impecunious vicomte, with hard-headed notions about her own future. “You will marry the guardian, who has been waiting for

  you all these years-----” But as Sir Laurence had

  been Rose’s guardian for only five years she could never quite rise to this—“and it will in a sense be the marriage of convenience, because you will act as his housekeeper, and bring the feminine touch to his home, and be the light of his life during his declining years! You will make up to him for all his goodness and generosity to you, and it will not greatly matter that he is so many years older than you because--------------”

  But here Rose had always interrupted hotly that her guardian was still in his early thirties, and that at that age a man was not old. Even by comparison with her own nineteen years he was not old! And, somehow, he had never struck her as old, but she did know he had been exceptionally generous to her. He had accepted the guardianship of her when he need have done nothing of the kind—when he must almost certainly have shrunk from the thought of having her thrust on him!—just because he had known and been very attached to her father, who had departed this world without leaving her a penny. All that she possessed today— every stitch of clothing belonging to her—was paid for out of the pockets of the man the world knew as a famous architect; a designer of so many lovely modern buildings that were the best of the age in which they sprang into being. Cathedrals, public buildings, blocks of palatial flats; even garden cities were linked with his name. He had received his knighthood two years before, while still on the sunny side of forty, and at the time Rose had felt so proud of him that her heart had actually seemed to swell inside her.

  Now that she was nineteen she was still proud of him—proud to be known as his ward, proud to think that she shared a very small part of his life. And although she had listened to Yvonne’s nonsense with an expression on her face which suggested she actually regarded it as arrant nonsense, Yvonne herself had not been deceived.

  “You like him,” she had declared, gleefully, more than once. “He is handsome—unless his photographs lie!—in a way that is more a distinguished kind of handsomeness than mere perfection of feature. Which means that his looks will not pall on you so easily!” She spoke as if she herself were twenty-nine, instead of not quite nineteen, and a woman of experience.
“Once you see a little more of him it will be a simple matter to fall in love, for where there is no hardness of the head the heart is easily overcome. And your head is not in the least hard, my little one! Always you will ask for so little . . . So long as there is love!”

  Her dark eyes glinted wickedly as Rose started to blush uncontrollably, although at the same time she insisted the other was talking absolute rubbish.

  “No, it is not rubbish,” Yvonne murmured softly, smoking a cigarette which was not allowed, but which had reached her in a parcel of confectionery dispatched by an obliging younger brother. “It is— how shall I say it in English?—a feeling I have, a touch of the clairvoyance. You will be Lady Melville, with a residence called Enderby—at which I will one day visit you, and stay for a very long while!— and as well as the all-important love,” eyes glinting even more wickedly, “you will have, as you would put it, the ‘extras’. The trimmings! You will have everything including the trimmings, and nothing could be more convenable. N’est-ce pas?”

  But when the announcement of Sir Laurence’s forth-coming marriage reached them even Yvonne felt slightly defrauded, as well as shocked. She had begun to believe in her own fairy story, and it was a distressing ending for a fairy story. Also neither of them knew anything at all about Miss Heather Willoughby, of Farnhurst Manor, in the county of Dorset, England.

  But The Times plainly stated that Sir Laurence Melville, of Enderby, Glos., was to make her his wife.

  And then began, in a whirlwind rush, all the plans for the wedding.

  Sir Laurence wrote to his ward:

  “I have talked to Heather about you, and she would very much like it if you would act as a bridesmaid at our wedding. Heather will be getting in touch with you herself about such things as measurements (no use expecting a mere man to obtain those correctly!) and any particular preference you have for colours. Also she is dying to meet you, and I am quite sure the two of you will get along excellently together. I have, I’m afraid, rather laid it on with a trowel about my nice, obedient little ward! . . .”

  Rose felt the first actual twinge of uneasiness seize hold of her as she read those words again— Nice, obedient little ward! . . . What sort of picture would they conjure up in a woman’s mind? For one thing, she, Rose, was not little—she was five feet five and a half inches in her stockinged feet, with all the grace and willowiness of the perfect model. Her hair flamed like russet leaves in the autumn, and her eyes—that she used to pretend to herself were hazel—were a clear, almost vivid, green! It was the colouring, as Yvonne had often told her, for a magazine cover, and there was nothing fake about it.

  If Heather Willoughby was small, petite and pastel-tinted, how would she react to such a lifesized opposite to a nice, obedient little ward?

  Rose thought uneasily that if it was no use expecting a mere man to obtain feminine measurements correctly, it was apparently just as little use to expect him to paint a portrait correctly— especially when he hadn’t seen the subject of it for more than a year!

  It was even possible he was in for a shock himself!

  They did stop for dinner on the journey, and Rose was pleasurably surprised to learn that her guardian had not overlooked her comfort, and that he had issued particular instructions that the journey should be broken for a meal.

  Thatcher was a little surprised when Rose put forward a shy plea for him to join her in the diningroom of the little inn where they eventually stopped, but having accepted the invitation he talked garrulously about the forthcoming wedding, and she learned many things she had not known previously. The honeymoon, for instance, was to be spent in Italy, and afterwards Sir Laurence was planning to take his bride to the Bahamas, where he would be working on plans for a new luxury hotel. It would be business combined with pleasure, and a kind of extended honeymoon until they returned to Enderby in the spring.

  Enderby in the spring, thought Rose, with a kind of wistful nostalgia, and a sudden lump rising up in her throat which successfully took away all her appetite. Enderby was lovely at any season, but in spring, with the rolling hills and woods around it a tender haze of green, daffodils starring the long drive, and wallflowers blooming under the sheltered south terrace, it was a dream of a place. A genuine Tudor house Sir Laurence had bought in a state of dilapidation and worked over lovingly himself until it was all, and more, than anyone could desire.

  Rose wished she was going straight to Enderby now, instead of a strange house packed with guests, not one of whom she knew.

  When they arrived, although another half-hour would usher in midnight, lights streamed from every window and down the rhododendron-lined drive. There were cars still lining the drive, too, which seemed to indicate that the evening had been marked by either a formal dinner-party or an informal dance. From the fact that music was also finding its way out into the night, Rose deduced the latter.

  She was admitted by an extremely correct-looking manservant, and a maid took her cases from Thatcher. Then the same maid conducted her upstairs to her room, which struck her as extremely luxurious after the spartan-like austerity of the room she had shared with Yvonne in Lausanne.

  “Miss Willoughby said you would probably want supper,” the maid said, once the cases were deposited on an oak rest at the foot of the bed. Rose had barely time to take in that the carpet was mushroom-pink, the satin bedspread and quilted bed-head mushroom-pink also, before she was expected to retrace her steps downstairs again, and admitted to a dining-room full of sombre magnificence where she discovered she was to be the only occupant.

  A corner of the table was laid with lace table-mats, some glittering glass and silverware, and a bowl of fruit, and hot soup was brought to her. It was followed by a portion of cold chicken which, however, she declined, and asked instead if she could have some coffee. When the coffee arrived she was left in peace and isolation to drink it slowly, and while she did so those softened strains of music reached her, as well as the gay murmur of distant voices.

  It was just as if around her the house was alive and vibrating eagerly, but the room in which she sat was a quiet pool of shadow, pierced by the flickering flames of tall, branching, Georgian candlesticks on the table in front of her. The table was massive old oak, and in its polished surface the candlelight was reflected like stars peering at their reflection in a still sheet of water. The enormous silver bowl of piled up peaches and grapes looked unreal and nebulous floating in the midst of such a sea.

  Rose decided that it was because she was tired, but she had a sensation of being cut off and forgotten, marooned in an isolation where no one would find her—where no one wished to find her! Her arrival had created as much impression as a pebble flung into the middle of the Atlantic would do, and so far as she was aware no one, apart from two members of the domestic staff, was even aware that she had arrived.

  She was wondering how she would ever find her way back to her room in this rambling house when voices immediately outside the stout oak door caused her to sit upright and tense herself. One of the voices was bubbling with a honeyed kind of merriment, although it also seemed to be expostulating at the same time, and the other was deep and masculine. As the door opened the masculine voice that caused Rose’s breath to remain suddenly stilled in her throat was saying:

  “It’s not too late to meet her, Heather! And, after all, I must say something to the child!”

  Rose stood up, feeling all in a moment more painfully self-conscious than she had ever felt in her life before. She turned to face the door, and behind her the candles flamed, and her glorious Titian hair seemed to be irradiated by them. She was wearing a simple but well-cut lime-green suit, and the exquisite slenderness of her figure was emphasized by it. She looked pale—a kind of magnolia pallor—and her eyes were enormous under their sweeping lashes.

  She didn’t know it, but she looked rare—rare and exotic, and utterly unlike a schoolgirl with no knowledge at all of the world. Already, and in spite of hours of travel, she had a shy poise, and a
gentle elegance. No one could possibly dismiss her as a nice, obedient little ward—and nothing more!

  Heather Willoughby, who looked like a fairy on the Christmas tree with her floating cloud of golden hair, her china blue eyes, and her white net dress—yards and yards of net billowing round her like a cloud—was conscious of a distinct sensation of shock. And it was not a pleasant shock.

  “But you can’t be Rose!” she exclaimed. “Not the little Rose who is to be my youngest bridesmaid?” Rose felt as if her tongue became animated all at once.

  “But you received my measurements,” she said gently. “They must have prepared you for the fact that I’m not really little.”

  “Little?” The fly-away eyebrows arched. “You’re a good many inches taller than I am! A good six inches, I should say! And I’ll admit I merely handed your measurements over to the dressmaker and told her to get on with your dress.”

  She laughed suddenly, looking up sideways at her fiance.

  “Well, haven’t you anything to say to your little ward, Lance?”

  Laurence Melville was standing with his hands in the pockets of his admirably-tailored dinner-jacket, looking at Rose. He was looking at her with something in his eyes that would have caused her to feel amused under other circumstances, for in addition to surprise there was a quizzical gleam, a faintly disbelieving gleam, in the cool grey glance she remembered. The past year had added a touch of frost to the dark-brown hair at his temples, but otherwise he was exactly as she remembered him — as she had thought of him so often — tall, and hard, and spare, with a masculine grace that was unusual.

  “As a matter of fact, Rose,” he admitted, “you have shot up rather alarmingly since I saw you last! Have you been sampling a bottle labelled ‘drink me?”

  Rose felt herself flushing almost guiltily as his eyes dwelt on her. The quizzical gleam disconcerted her.

  “I suppose I’ve just—just grown up,” she answered, and felt as if the animation had left her tongue, and she was fumbling for words.