“‘’Tis Miss Sybil!’ I cries. ‘My own dear baby that was!’
“And then I takes another look at the child and feels my legs begin to shake.
“‘And who be you?’ I asks.”
Elvina gave a little laugh.
They had all heard the story a dozen times, but it seemed as if none of them could hear it too often.
“‘I am – Elvina,’ I said, did I not, Nanny?”
“That’s what you said,” the old woman answered with tears in her eyes. “And you added, ‘my mother was called Sybil’.”
“Oh, Grandmama! It was exciting, was it not?” Elvina said. “When Nanny brought me in here and you were sitting by the fireside with Grandpapa opposite you and you looked up in surprise – and Nanny started saying who I was and showing you the locket.”
“And the ring,” Nanny interposed. “The ring that Miss Sybil had worn since her twelfth birthday! I remembers her Ladyship giving it to her. She was that excited it might have been made of diamonds.”
“It has meant far more to me than if it had been made of all the most precious stones in the world,” Elvina said. “That and the locket were all I had of Mama’s for so many years and now you have given me – so many things of hers.”
“You shall have many more, my darling,” Lady Clanwarren promised.
Elvina wiped a tear from her eye.
“You are making me cry and I must not cry because I want to look so nice for you. Have you noticed that the last roughness has gone from my skin? I really am white at last. When I look in the mirror I can hardly recognise myself.”
“You are very pretty, my dear,” Lord Clanwarren enthused.
“That is what I wanted you to say,” Elvina said with a twinkle in her eyes.
Then her smile faded.
“Do you really think I look pretty, Grandpapa? Really and truly?”
“But, of course,” he answered. “Are you vain enough to want me to repeat it?”
“I just wanted to make sure,” Elvina explained, “that – a man would think so.”
Lady Clanwarren met her husband’s eyes across Elvina’s head.
“Dearest,” she said, “will you do something for me?”
“But, of course. Grandmama. Anything you wish.”
“Then, as we have a visitor this afternoon, would you be kind enough to cut me some roses for the vase on my writing desk? I know many of them are over, but there are still one or two white blooms at the very end of the Rose Garden by the water lily pond.”
“But of course, Grandmama. I will go and get them at once.”
“That would be very kind, my dear.”
“Come on, Nanny. Come and help me,” Elvina replied.
“No, indeed, miss! I have other things to do. Your gown to finish for tonight for one.”
“That new one of white gauze? Oh, I am longing to wear it. Will it really be finished?”
“There is only the hem to be turned up,” Nanny answered.
Elvina raised herself on tiptoe and kissed the old woman’s cheek.
“I can never thank you enough for making me look like myself again,” she said. “At times I felt I could hardly bear the pain of the herbs and lotions that you rubbed on my skin to take the dye away. But now when I look in a mirror I want to shout for joy!”
Before Nanny could answer she had run from the room and for a moment it seemed to the three people watching her go that the sunshine had gone with her.
“Must we lose her to some damned fellow so soon after we have found her?” Lord Clanwarren asked.
“She loves him,” his wife replied and he heard the pain in her voice. “She seems gay and happy when she is with us, but Nanny tells me that night after night she cries into her pillow and often, when she thinks we don’t see, she sits staring into space, her thoughts only of him, her whole being yearning for him.”
“Suppose he is not the man she believes him to be?” Lord Clanwarren asked fiercely.
“We can only pray,” his wife replied.
“She has more chance than her mother had,” Nanny said, her voice breaking in on them almost harshly. “Child she may be in some ways, but she is old in others. She has been through a great deal and she would not be taken in by a bad man, as my poor baby was.”
“If he is not a decent sort, I swear to you that I will not stand by and see her suffer,” Lord Clanwarren vowed harshly. “I will turn the fellow out of this house neck and crop. After all he is not the only man in the world.”
The door was flung open and the butler announced,
“Lord Wye, my Lady!”
They all turned to see who had come into the room. In silence they watched him walk towards them, a tall, broad-shouldered, handsome young man dressed in the height of fashion.
Yet there was something singularly unfashionable about the way that he moved, hurriedly and purposefully, as if time was of importance and he could not bear to linger.
Nanny moved respectfully into the background as Lord Wye reached Lady Clanwarren and bowed over her hand.
“Your Ladyship must accept my apologies for being earlier than was intended,” he said in a deep attractive voice. “I know that in your most kind invitation you asked me for four o’clock. But I could not wait, I had to hear what it was you wished to impart to me.”
“You are welcome at any hour, my Lord,” Lady Clanwarren smiled politely. “I don’t think you have met my husband.”
“Your father was a friend of mine,” Lord Clanwarren added, holding out his hand.
“I often heard him speak of you, my Lord,” Lord Wye replied. “I have, in fact, myself long regretted that, although we are comparatively close neighbours, I have not availed myself of the opportunity of making your acquaintance.”
“It is remedied now,” Lady Clanwarren said with a smile. “Will not your Lordship be seated?”
“You will forgive me if I seem importunate,” Lord Wye said. “But in your note your Ladyship said you had something to impart to me.”
Looking up into his face, Lady Clanwarren was struck by the eagerness in his eyes and the whole feeling of tension about him. She realised that here was no soft-lived hanger-on at Court, as she had been half-afraid.
There was wiriness and a hardness about Lord Wye that belied the fashionable cut of his clothes.
There was a sharpness about his features as if he had been driving himself hard these past weeks and there were lines under his eyes as if he had lost a great deal of sleep.
“I have indeed something to show you that may well be of interest to you,” she said quietly.
She moved across the room to seat herself in a high-backed chair beside the fireplace. Lord Clanwarren followed her, but, although he too sat down and indicated with his hand that another chair was available, Lord Wye still stood.
“Perhaps your Ladyship has some idea of what I am seeking,” he said, and she knew by the impatient note in his voice that the polite preliminaries were irksome for him.
“I am afraid my husband and I live very much out of the world,” Lady Clanwarren said. “It would be kind if your Lordship would explain.”
“It is a girl who is lost,” Lord Wye said, “or rather a child. I brought her home to England from Portugal, and incidentally, she saved my life, but when we arrived in London, she left my house early one morning and has not been seen again.”
“You have tried to find her?” Lord Clanwarren asked, his eyes from under his bristling eyebrows searching Lord Wye’s face.
“I have scoured the length and breadth of England for her,” Lord Wye answered. “She told me that her sister was married to a Captain Thompson of the English Army. I have been through every record at the War Office. I have visited dozens of Thompsons, but not one of them was married to a Portuguese wife. I have had the Bow Street Runners out. I have even offered a reward for information as to her whereabouts.”
“A reward!” Lord Clanwarren exclaimed. “And how much did you consider a reasonable
sum for the finding of this, er, this child?”
“Twenty thousand pounds,” Lord Wye replied.
“Twenty thousand pounds!”
The sum seemed to take Lord Clanwarren’s breath away. He could only repeat the words while Lady Clanwarren clasped her blue-veined hands together.
“She must – mean very – much to you, my Lord,” she faltered.
“She means everything in the world,” Lord Wye answered. “Everything! I have to find her. Can you understand? I have to find her. And I am growing desperate.”
“You have no clue as to her whereabouts?” Lord Clanwarren enquired.
“None,” Lord Wye answered. “I have been everywhere, I have done everything that was humanly possible. But she has vanished! Vanished! And now, unless you can help me, I am a defeated man.”
Lady Clanwarren looked towards her husband and drew in her breath. And then, before she could open her lips, there was the sound of footsteps and Elvina came running through the French windows.
The sunshine was behind her, making her hair a halo of gold around her head.
Her small, slender graceful body was silhouetted against the light showing the new rounded maturity coming to her figure. Her eyes were shining and her lips parted with the speed at which she had come.
“Grandmama!” she cried. “Are these the roses you wanted me to pick?”
She came rushing towards them across the room, two perfect white blooms in her hand.
Then, only as she reached the hearthrug, only as she held the roses out to her grandmother, did she see that someone else stood there.
She raised her eyes and then, with a little gasp, she stood still, her head thrown back a little, her eyes looking up into Lord Wye’s face.
No one said anything.
At Elvina’s entrance Lord Wye had glanced at her quite casually and then the blood had drained away from his face.
Now he stood staring at her, it seemed to those watching, turned to stone. There was complete silence.
Two young people looked into each other’s eyes and no one seemed capable of moving.
“Elvina!”
The words came hardly above a whisper from between Lord Wye’s lips.
It was a tortured almost inarticulate sound and then suddenly he had put out his hands towards her, the roses had fallen to the floor and her fingers were in his.
“Elvina! Where did you come from? Where have you been? Why are you here?”
His questions tumbled over each other and yet she did not seem to hear them.
She was gazing at him with such a wonder and a glory in her face that her grandmother felt the tears start in her eyes.
“Why are you here?” Lord Wye managed to say again.
He was breathing deeply like a man who has swum against a tempestuous sea or climbed a steep mountainside.
“This is my granddaughter, Lord Wye,” Lady Clanwarren said gently.
He did not take his eyes from Elvina’s face.
“And your sister?” he questioned.
“Forgive me, it was a – lie,” she answered, her voice very soft and sweet. “I have no sister – only a grandmother and grandfather. I should have told you the truth, but I was afraid lest they would not take me in.”
“Why did you go away?”
“Because I could not stay as I was. I wanted to – to look different, to look like – myself.”
“To look different?” he said wonderingly, as if the idea had never struck him. “But how?”
“Do you not see? Do you not see any difference?” she asked.
He looked down at her in a bemused fashion, his eyes glancing hastily at her ivory white neck and shoulders, at her little shell-like ears, her quivering mouth and then back again to her eyes.
“I don’t see very much difference,” he said.
Elvina gave a little laugh that was almost a sob.
“My – skin.”
He looked at her again as if forcing himself to concentrate on what she was saying.
“It is whiter. Oh, you mean you are not Portuguese?”
“No, I am English.”
“English!” he exclaimed. “And you live here? These are your grandparents? Then all my plans, all the things I have been thinking – ”
“What were they?” she asked softly.
“I have been planning to send you to school.”
“As Lady Cleone wished to do?”
“No, no, of course not,” he said almost irritably. “Lady Cleone’s ideas were ridiculous. No! To the best, the finest school in the land. To have you educated there while I waited for you.”
“Waited – for – me?”
The question was like the sudden song of a lark rising into the sky. It was impossible for him to look anywhere save at her eyes.
They neither of them noticed that Lady Clanwarren had risen and, taking her husband’s arm, had drawn him from the room.
They were alone, but they did not know it.
They could see nothing and nobody save each other.
“Why were you – waiting?” Elvina asked.
“Until you should grow up,” he answered.
He felt her fingers quiver in his.
“But – why?”
She could hardly breathe the words and yet somehow they came from between her lips.
“I did not mean to tell you,” he said, “but I have to. I have to make you understand. You must marry me! I love you, Elvina!”
She closed her eyes for a moment. The glory of it was too much to be borne. And then suddenly something snapped in him and he swept her into his arms.
“I love you! I love you!” he cried wildly. “All those days and nights when we were struggling to keep alive, that time together taught me that I cannot do without you. I want you! I need you! You belong to me!”
He looked down at her face and his voice deepened.
“I think I knew that we were meant for each other that moment when you looked across the table in the yacht and pleaded with me to let you stay. You are mine, Elvina! Mine! And I cannot let you go!”
She could feel his heart beating beneath her cheek and now she raised her head and looked up at him.
“Is it true?” she asked. “Really true that you are saying this to me? I am not dreaming?”
“You are awake, my little love. But we have to be sensible. I cannot marry a child.”
“How long must we – wait?” she whispered.
“Do you suppose I have not been asking that question day after day while I have been looking for you?” he asked. “I suppose until you are seventeen. It will be hard, but we must do it.”
“Seventeen!” she echoed, and then with a hint of laughter in her voice asked, “You are quite – sure that you do – want me?”
“Want you!” he answered. “Do you know what tortures you have put me through these last three weeks? I thought I should go mad when day after day went by and there was no sign of you. God knows what I imagined had happened! I used to walk my room at night thinking of you alone and unprotected in London. I used to try to send my thoughts towards you, believing that somehow, wherever you were, they would reach you.”
“I think they – did,” she said softly.
“And yet you did not come back to me.”
“I had to wait, I had to make myself attractive – so that I could compete,” she answered.
“Compete with whom?” he asked roughly. “There is no other woman in my life and never has been. You look to me as you have always looked, the most wonderful, the most adorable person I have ever known, the only woman I have ever loved.”
He gave a sudden groan and held her tighter still.
“Oh, Elvina, grow up quickly!”
“I have,” she answered him. “I have grown up. Do you not understand?”
He cupped his hand round her chin and raised her little face towards his.
“What are you saying to me?” he asked. “It’s difficult to understand. I am just so happy
that you are here.”
“I am telling you that there is no need to – wait,” she replied.
“Why? I may be very dense, but I don’t understand.”
She freed herself of his arms with a little twist of her body.
“Look at me,” she insisted. “Look at me properly.”
“You are lovely!” he exclaimed. “But you always were. Every night I would think of your little nose etched against the darkness, as it was that night in the tool shed. Do you remember?”
“Look at me,” Elvina repeated.
“Why is your hair so gold?” he asked. “I thought it was dark, but somehow I cannot remember. I am so bemused. You always seemed like sunshine and light and laughter and happiness to me, Elvina.”
She swayed at the passion and the longing in his voice.
Still she did not go to him.
“Look again,” she persisted.
“You are not so thin. You have put on a little weight.”
“Is that all?”
He looked at her again.
“Perhaps you look older. The new way you are doing your hair. It is that gown, or – ” a sudden thought struck him. “Is that what you are trying to tell me? You are older? Was that another of your lies? Oh, Elvina, I always said that you were an imp of mischief!”
“Yes, it was another of my lies.”
“Then how old are you?”
She heard the sudden tremble in his voice, the sudden yearning as a man who sees his goal ahead and yet is half-afraid it is a mirage.
“I am seventeen,” she said softly.
He gave a shout of sheer unbridled triumph and then she was in his arms and he was kissing her wildly, not tenderly as a man kisses a child, but hungrily as a man kisses a woman whom he desires beyond all else in the world.
“I love you!” he cried. “Oh, Elvina, stop me. I shall frighten you. I shall drive you away again. But I want you so utterly. You are mine, as I told you. Mine alone! I don’t have to wait. I can take you, make you my wife! Oh, my darling, say it is true, that this too is not a dream!”
She put up her arms and drew his head close down to hers.
“If it is a – dream,” she whispered passionately, “let’s go on – dreaming!”
OTHER BOOKS IN THIS SERIES
Love Under Fire Page 21
