lips . . . And he bent at once and touched those lips so tenderly with his own, with such an instantaneous response to the appeal in her eyes, that her arms lifted and clung about his neck.
He whispered like a man who had lived through too many kinds of emotion in the past few hours to be capable of any sort of dissimulation either: “Oh, Rose, Rose, Rose . . .!”
And then he kissed her mouth again, passion that he was striving hard to suppress because he felt it was so utterly unfair to her just then fighting frantically to break through to the surface, and fanning a feeble flame of passion in her that gradually grew stronger . . .
On the way to Zurich he sat with her on the back seat of the car, and held her in his arms so that the twists and turns of the road didn’t jar her. At the hospital, where it was discovered that nothing very serious was the matter with her shoulder and that all she really needed was a chance to rest and recover herself, with the assistance of a sedative to help overcome shock, she was treated rather like a heroine who had survived an experience which might so easily have proved fatal.
Amongst the other passengers there were no serious casualties, and even the mother with the baby was being permitted to fly home. Rose said good-bye to her and to the baby, and then Sir Laurence took her to an hotel where he forced her to eat a certain amount of lunch. She was looking a little more like herself, but the sight of her worried him acutely, especially the heavy mauve shadows under her eyes, although the eyes themselves smiled at him happily and reassuringly whenever she caught him watching her. He was anxious to get her back to Rome, but there was the question of the journey, and he was afraid she might shrink from the thought of flying.
But when he suggested to her that it would be quicker and less trying for her if she could face up to it, she answered at once that she could face up to anything with him. And she meant it. She slid her hand across the table to him, and he took it and squeezed it hard.
“And I’m not really afraid of air travel,” she assured him. “But for this—this disaster, if you can call it that—we might never have found out how much we mean to each other!”
“All the same,” he replied soberly, retaining her hand, “it’s something I would far rather you had been spared!”
He put through a telephone call to Mrs. Wilson-Plunkett in Rome, and the widow all but burst into tears of relief with the receiver in her hand when she heard that Rose was not so very much the worse for her experience. She agreed that it was wise to keep her in Zurich for that night, and sent loving messages to Rose and the assurance that she was longing to see her again, and that the instant she arrived back at the hotel she would be put to bed and made a great fuss of.
The tears once more rolled down Rose’s cheeks when Sir Laurence passed on these messages to her, and she knew that she had been absolutely right about Mrs. Wilson-Plunkett from the beginning. She was kindness and generosity itself, and apparently she bore Rose no ill-will for leaving her with so little consideration for the shock and anxiety her departure might cause her. On the contrary, Rose felt certain that she quite understood why she had left as she did, and would never reproach her for it. She might even have done the same thing under similar circumstances!
Rose went to bed that night with a dose of the sedative mixture that had been made up for her, and Sir Laurence sat beside her bed and held her hand until she fell asleep. It didn’t strike her as at all strange and unorthodox that he should be sitting there, and she felt absolutely safe and contented knowing that he was near her. Just before she fell asleep he bent over her and kissed her gently, her eyes, her brow and her lips, and then let his hand rest on the red flame of hair that was curling so brightly on the pillow.
And long after she was asleep and breathing tranquilly he still sat beside the bed, anxious least some sort of a nightmare resulting from her experiences might wake her, and she would be terrified to find herself alone.
The following morning, when they boarded the airliner for Rome, she could sense his anxiety for her in the way he held her hand during the takeoff, and not even when their seat-belts were unfastened and the moment of tension was passed did he let go her hand. She could feel his fingers clasping hers, so vitally and so strongly, that they would have given her courage under any circumstances, and she looked round and up at him with a little smile of purest adoration in her eyes.
He caught his breath as he looked into those eyes, and although there was an air hostess in the aisle, carrying magazines and twists of barley-sugar to passengers, he slipped his arm behind her and drew her head to rest against his shoulder.
“Rose,” he told her, his lips moving close to her ear, “I want us to be married almost immediately—within a few days! I shan’t rest until you belong to me, and I can really look after you. So will a few days be long enough for you to get used to the idea of becoming my wife?”
“Of course,” she answered, and repeated, “of course!” with her eyes still looking straight into his.
“I’m afraid there won’t be any white wedding for you, my darling,” he murmured regretfully, inhaling the scent of her hair and wishing more ardently that he had wished for anything in his life that they were alone, so that he could bury his lips in it. “For one thing, there won’t be time
—and even if there was . . .” And then he broke off. “But if it’s what you would really like, dearest—and you’re so young and lovely that you oughtn’t to be deprived of anything!—I will wait for you! Mrs. Wilson-Plunkett would fix things up—”
“No, no!” she breathed, and clutched convulsively at his hand. “It isn’t what I like. I—at least, if I’d like it, I wouldn’t let you go through that again! . . . Oh, Lance,” looking at him reproachfully, “you don’t imagine I’m as self-centred as all that?”
“No, Rose.” He smiled at her tenderly. “But I’m not self-centred either, and I have no fears that you would keep me waiting!” Nevertheless, the almost convulsive pressure of his arm against her convinced her that he would never quite forget his experiences that sunny October day in far-away Farnhurst church. “But listen, darling”—his voice was suddenly urgent and entreating—“the thing I want is you, and although we may have to put up with a Civil Marriage we can always have a church service specially said for us afterwards when we get back to Enderby. You’d
like that, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes,” she whispered, “I would!” Her eyes smiled at him because he understood so well. “And when will we go back to Enderby?” with sudden eagerness.
“Quite soon, if that’s what you wish.” He explained: “I cancelled, of course, my plans to go to America when—well, when you flew away from me so suddenly,” with the first hint of real reproach in his eyes as well as his voice. “But there’s no reason why we shouldn’t have a honeymoon in the Bahamas. What would you like to do, Rose?”
She thought for a moment.
“What would you like to do?” she asked.
She felt his breath stirring her hair, and the air hostess seemed to be keeping very discreetly out of their way—perhaps because she knew that Rose had been one of the passengers in the aircraft that had crashed over the Alps—dazzling white peaks they were flying over now—and she understood the anxiety of the man beside her, who was almost certainly someone very near and dear to her indeed. His efforts to keep her completely diverted seemed to be working very well.
“I don’t mind what we do, sweetheart,” he told her, “so long as we do it together! One place is as good as another when all you want is one particular woman for your wife!” so low that the words all but missed her.
But he knew they didn’t, because her fingers turned and clung to his.
“Lance—Lance,” she said after a moment, during which she seemed to be thinking again, “had you really intended to leave Rome so suddenly, or was it because of—because of me?”
“The answer is that it was because of you,” with a wry twist of his lips.
She looked up at him with a
return of the shadowed look.
“But you do understand that I came there to the flat that day—that last day when you were packing!— because Signora Bardoli said . . .”
“What did Lola say?” one eyebrow ascending.
Rose flushed deliciously.
“She said—she seemed to think that—that I could do something to prevent you going!” She played agitatedly with his fingers. “You see, Lance,” her eyes very clear, and young, and honest, “she knew that I— that I was in love with you—and so, for that matter, did Heather . . .!”
The wry expression deepened round his mouth.
“Everyone, apparently, but me knew the one thing I could never be certain about! Why was I so blind?”
“I really can’t think.” She sounded so much ashamed of herself. “I must have been terribly transparent. Horribly transparent,” looking upwards at him in confusion.
“But I had to wait to be certain until Mrs. Wilson-Plunkett told me on the day you left your farewell note!” His fingers imprisoned her wrist, feeling the shy pulse bounding. “Do you know what she said to me, Rose? She was so angry at what had happened to you, and my wilful blindness, as she called it, that she delivered me a lecture I’m hardly likely to forget! She pointed out to me the one thing that should have been clear to me from the beginning, and that was that you and I were born into this world specially for one another, and for absolutely no one else! She accused me of confusing the issues, as she put it, and all but driving you into the arms of another man—by whom I think she must have meant Prince Paul de Lippi! Or did she imagine you liked Camillo best?”
“She knew I wouldn’t marry either of them,” Rose answered.
“And you were never once tempted?” looking at the top of her head.
“Of course not,” almost indignantly. “But I did actually like Camillo best—he’s rather a dear, and in spite of the fact that I told him I hadn’t any money he did ask me to marry him!” anxious to defend him from the accusation which Sir Laurence himself had once brought against him, and that was that he was
out to marry an heiress.
“Good for Camillo!” Sir Laurence answered approvingly. “But then, of course, no man in his senses wouldn’t want to marry you, Rose,” he concluded, touching her soft cheek adoringly, and she refrained from making the obvious answer.
They looked at each other for a very long moment with all their hearts in their eyes, and then the man remarked appreciatively:
“So Lola Bardoli thought you could stop me from leaving Rome! She too, seems to have had a great deal of perception!”
“She said that it was the wrong time for you to leave Rome, and that you were engaged on work that would suffer if you went away so suddenly. And that’s why it’s occurred to me, Lance,” with sudden adorable shyness, “that from your point of view a honeymoon is going to mean an interruption to that work, isn’t it? Whereas if we didn’t have the honeymoon—at least, not yet—and stayed on in Rome ... ”
“At the flat, you mean?”
“Yes.” She could feel her heart pounding while she waited for him to express his own views, and when he did so there was tremendous tenderness in his eyes.
“Rose, my own darling, do you seriously mean that you would forego a honeymoon and go straight back to the flat with me after you had become Lady Laurence Melville? A bride content to watch a husband work?”
“Well,” leaning against him so that he could feel the warmth of her slender body and craved once more to be alone with her, “you wouldn’t be working all the time, and I loved the flat! And I do want you to finish what you began in Rome!”
The expression in his eyes was inexplicable, but once again she felt his breath stirring her hair.
“It would only take a few weeks,” he admitted.
“And there’s quite a lot we could still find to do in Rome. And before we returned to England we could have a week or so at some little coastal fishing village.
That would give you a coating of tan, and set you up for the winter.” He looked down at her thoughtfully. “And in the autumn we could return to Enderby!” He heard her catch her breath. “A year, Rose—a whole year out of your life, and you’ll be twenty by the time you return—twenty and a wife! My wife!”
“And I love Enderby in the autumn,” she whispered, not merely because it was true, but because his words had set her trembling inwardly—deep, deep down inside her—and for a few minutes she could hardly bear to meet his eyes.
The aeroplane was climbing steeply into a world of blue. The ice-cold peaks dropped away below them, and soon they were no longer flying over mountains at all, but travelling smoothly across a shimmer of blue sea in the direction of Rome.
Rose lay back, completely relaxed, against her seat and beside her Sir Laurence, relaxed also. She was no longer afraid, he knew—although there had been one or two moments of fear at the beginning of the flight— and she was completely happy. And so for that matter was he.
CHAPTER XVIII
Much later that day Mrs. Wilson-Plunkett lifted her glass in a toast.
“To you both!” she said. “To all the happiness you both deserve, although I think you, Sir Laurence deserve it a little less than Rose, for at least she always knew her own mind, whereas you were inclined to complicate matters!”
But Sir Laurence smiled at her with complete affability above the rim of his own glass, and in his heart he knew that he could do nothing less than agree with her.
Dinner had been served to them in Mrs. Wilson-Plunkett’s own suite, for she had decided against permitting Rose the excitement and possible exhaustion of going down to the dining-room, and the pleasant little sitting-room that Rose had never expected to see again looked gay with flowers. The table sparkled with more flowers, silver and glass. Rose was wearing her little black cocktail dress, and it had a tiny upstanding collar that framed her face, and there was a single row of pearls about the slender white column of her throat. There was much less exhaustion in her face, and her eyes looked like green stars whenever they encountered Sir Laurence’s direct gaze.
“Leave everything to me,” Mrs. Wilson-Plunkett said when the waiter had departed after bringing in coffee and liqueurs. “I’ll see to it that Rose is all ready for you by the end of the week, Sir Laurence. You must at least give her a week. And although I don’t really approve of this idea of taking her straight to your flat—well, if that’s what you both want to do I won’t try and make you change your minds. But you needn’t bother about fishing villages after that. My sister has a
Palazzo in Venice—one of those huge, rather mouldering places where you could, nevertheless, be extremely comfortable if I give instructions for a corner of it to be got ready for you. And there are maids left behind who will look after you. You’ll be able to sun yourselves on the Lido, drift in the evenings in a gondola on one of the canals—and the gondolier will serenade you, Rose, because you’re just the type to be serenaded by a gondolier!—and when you go back at night you’ll have your balcony to sit on, and the moon, the palaces on the farther bank—all the romance of Venice!”
Rose smiled at her—loving her for her enthusiasm, for her eagerness to be of help to them, and also secretly more than thrilled by the picture she painted. Sir Laurence looked at Rose and saw that the girl’s eyes were wide and becoming a trifle bemused. He thought she had had about enough for one day.
“Just as you say, Mrs. Wilson-Plunkett,” he agreed. “If Rose would like Venice, then I haven’t any objections at all, and so long as your mouldering palace doesn’t fall down on us I’m sure we’ll be delightfully happy—and very much in your debt!” Then he reached out a hand to Rose. “But you’re tired, my darling—I really do think you ought to go to bed, you know!”
Mrs. Wilson-Plunkett was nothing if not tactful. She drained the remains of some champagne in her glass, decided that she didn’t want any coffee, and stood up.
“I promised Lady Bailey I’d play bridge with her tonight,”
she announced, “and I’m already rather late. Once Sir Laurence has left, Rose, I’ll pop up and make sure that you’re comfortably settled in bed, and the chambermaid will be coming in to help you if you want any help with your undressing.” She beamed at them both, and then looked directly at Sir Laurence. “No protracted
good nights, but you can come in and see her as early as you like in the morning. We’ll even welcome you for breakfast!”
Once she had left the room, her black velvet and her diamonds bustling away along the corridor, Sir Laurence stood up and went round the table until he stood behind Rose’s chair. He put his hands on her shoulders and drew her out of the chair, turning her round to face him as soon as she was on her feet.
“Rose!” he whispered. “My Rose! . . .”
He drew her into his arms and held her closely, and yet more closely. She knew now that he really was striving to keep passion in check, but her own longing for him was greater than anything she had ever felt in her life before. She wound her slim arms upwards about his neck and held him tightly, dreading the moment when she had to let him go. Once more her lips pleaded for his kisses.
He gave them to her, long, hungry kisses that claimed her, and set every sensitive nerve in her body responding wildly. When at last he let her go they were both a little pale, and he was full of remorse.
“Mrs. Wilson-Plunkett wouldn’t approve of this at all, Rose!” he told her. “She said ‘no protracted good nights’— And I ought to have more sense! But I love you so much!
. . . Oh, darling, I love you so much!”
“And I,” Rose told him truthfully, “have loved you ever since I was fourteen. Not in the way I love you now, but . . .” She sighed as she leaned against him. “It’s been a long time loving you, and when you decided to marry Heather I nearly broke my heart! The night before the wedding ceremony was to have taken place I think it actually did crack a little bit, because I almost died of misery!”
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