Escape to Happiness

by Mary Whistler

  He looked at her for a second or so as if she hadn’t even spoken, and then he put a hand up over his eyes and asked her to leave him alone.

  “Please, Rose! I don’t feel like discussing things just now.”

  She looked at him, his bent brown head with the sunlight pouring over it, the shapely hand that hid his eyes, and suddenly her heart contracted.

  “You’re afraid,” she said quietly. She felt a yearning pity for him. “I’m very much afraid you’re a coward, but I suppose you can’t help it.”

  He removed the hand from his eyes and looked at her dully.

  “No, I’m not a coward, Rose ... And I’m not afraid. But, if she comes back, don’t tell her you won’t marry me. You won’t do that, will you?”

  For an instant Rose saw humour in the situation. It made her smile a little.

  “I wonder what you’ll ask of me next,” she said. “It’s becoming quite a habit for you to depend on me, isn’t it?” But there was no laughter in his dark blue eyes as they gazed info hers.

  “Yes, I’m afraid it is,” he admitted.

  As she gazed back at him, half-compassionate, half-resentful, she remembered what it was like to feel his arms about her, and his lips on hers. And the remembrance, rushing over her like the rising of a tide, filled her with a bewildering sensation of helplessness and inevitability. She knew that whatever he asked of her she could never let him down. It was just not in her to fail him...

  “All right,” she said, and moved blindly towards the door. “I’ll do whatever you want me to do for as long as you think it’s necessary.”

  “Thank you, Rose,” he answered quietly, and watched her leave the room.

  Later - in time for afternoon tea in front of the fire in the library - Mrs. Cavendish returned to Tregony’s Choice, and this time she requested that her suitcases be removed from the boot of her car, and carried into the house. She removed her gloves in a purposeful manner, cast her hat down once more on the oak side table in the hall, and remarked smilingly as she entered the library that that was that. The cottage was in a deplorable condition, and it would take at least a week to put it into some sort of order.

  “But I felt absolutely certain I’d be welcome here,” she added, with a particularly brilliant smile directed at Guy Wakeford. “I knew you wouldn’t want me to face up to the horrors of the Sailor’s Rest. Bad cooking, and very little hot water, and nightly concerts in the public bar! Just imagine it! ... Right underneath my horrid Victorian bedroom!”

  She glanced about her with obvious satisfaction, and then she curled herself up on a leather-covered settee right beside the fire. Rose did the honours with a huge silver teapot, and the firelight played on a silver chafing dish that held the lavishly buttered crumpets.

  “This is cosy,” the widow declared. “Very cosy! And it’s such an opportunity to get to know one another ... You and I, Guy dear, all over again, and Rose and I for the first time. And I want to make myself so very useful. You must neither of you hesitate to make the maximum possible use of me.” But Rose, as she ignored the contents of the chafing dish, and took some hurried sips at her tea, knew that she was listening to the voice of mockery only thinly camouflaged. And she knew that Guy knew it too.

  His expression was such as she had never seen it before. Almost masklike ... And under his tan he was still pale. As if he was only slowly recovering from a shock.

  CHAPTER XII

  The next night Dr. Carter came to dinner. It was Carmella who invited him over the telephone.

  “I think you owe it to him,” she said to Guy. “A little hospitality in return for not giving you away when you first arrived here! He knew who you were at once, and he could have got in touch with the unhappy bride. ... Or her father! And if he’d said anything at all about Rose it would have looked terribly odd.”

  But for once Guy spoke with cool emphasis.

  “A doctor doesn’t normally give away a patient. And if he does, he runs the risk of the patient having a relapse. And besides, I was a patient! There was never any doubt about that blow on the head.”

  “Poor darling,” Carmella murmured, and moved towards him. She touched the plaster that was still above his right eye, and her touch was exceedingly gentle. “Does it still hurt?” she inquired. “It was mean of me to tease you, when you’ve so obviously been in the wars, and Bruce wouldn’t give away anyone. He isn’t the type! And that’s why I want you to ask him to dinner ... a little gesture because I’m here, and because we were once quite close friends. I repeat, friends,” she emphasized.

  Guy regarded her with weary cynicalness.

  “I wonder whether you ever had a man friend in your life, Carmella?” he said, as if he was turning the possibility over in his mind, and found it difficult to reconcile himself to the notion.

  She smiled her slow, seductive smile at him.

  “I was very friendly with Roger, my husband,” she replied. “We were very good friends. And there was a time when you and I were very friendly too, Guy! Do you remember?”

  But he turned away, and she went back to the telephone and put through her call to the doctor. He replied that he would be delighted to have dinner at Tregony’s Choice.

  When he arrived that night he was looking very spruce in a well cut dinner jacket, and although his eyes went to Carmella and dwelt on her admiringly - she was wearing an evening gown of silvery brocade, and although it was a little over-elaborate for such an occasion it made the most of the willowy lines of her figure - it was on Rose that his look finally came to rest, and betrayed a desire to linger. Quite an obvious desire to linger.

  She had only the navy blue tie silk dress to change into in the evenings, but dark colours drew attention to the fairness of her skin, and the soft brightness of her hair was something to be admired at any time, and whatever she was wearing. The brown eyes, too, were remarkable for the steady way in which they gazed out from under the delicately marked brows, and to a man of Bruce Carter’s uncomplicated disposition that steadiness had a particular attraction.

  He believed that she had been unfairly used by the man who was now acting as his host, and if he hadn’t had a sneaking sympathy with him because of an unfortunate episode in his past life he might have been less amiable to him than he actually was. But they had both suffered in the same fire - and both recovered from the effects of the fire? - and the mutual experience was a kind of bond between them. The doctor might despise Guy Wakeford, but he could not be utterly condemnatory where he was concerned.

  He was not, however, prepared to hear that Guy Wakeford and the slender young woman with the brown eyes that so attracted him were engaged to be married.

  “This is by way of being a celebration,” Carmella observed, with the eternal dulcet mockery in her voice, when the drinks had been handed round. “Guy and Miss Arden are going to be married! I am in charge of all the wedding arrangements, and it’s to take place immediately... Or practically immediately!”

  Bruce Carter stared.

  “In Paris,” the widow added. “That is my idea, and don’t you think it’s an excellent one?”

  “Why Paris?” the doctor asked, when he had recovered from his surprise.

  Carmella looked at him in feigned surprise from under her long eyelashes.

  “Why not? Paris is an experience in any young woman’s life, and I take it our little Rose here has never been there. In fact, she’s a Yorkshire rose, really...” putting her head on one side and regarding Rose with amusement. “And in view of the recent, slightly unwholesome, publicity in which Guy has been involved...”

  “Yes, I see,” the doctor said shortly, and turned away and swallowed the remains of his drink before he looked at Rose with more than a suggestion of disappointment in his eyes.

  She wondered whether it was because she was marrying Guy - or because he thought she was marrying Guy! - or whether the disappointment had some less easily understandable reason behind it.

  The dinner passed off quit
e pleasantly, and afterwards they drank coffee in the library, and Carmella presided behind the coffee table because Rose couldn’t bear to have them all three watching her while she filled the fragile cups. And Carmella looked so absolutely right enacting the role of hostess that it struck Rose it was a thousand pities she had failed Guy those six unrecoverable years ago. For, whatever happened now, he would never be able to believe in her as he had believed in her then, and nothing would blot out the bitterness of the years without her.

  He must have suffered acutely when she first married someone else, and even now when he watched her his eyes were haunted by past memories. Rose was certain that, every time he looked at the lovely scarlet mouth, he recaptured moments when it was his to kiss; and the sight of the white shoulders escaping from the silvery brocade of her dress must have tormented him with his knowledge of the supple feel of them to an eager touch, an ardent mouth. The coolness and the delicate fragrance of them ... The fragrance of the dark hair, and the rose-tipped fingers that fluttered above his coffee cup when she handed it to him.

  Rose felt as if she was hypnotizing herself into a state of suffering with Guy as the evening dragged itself out, and she became surer than ever that the six intervening years had done nothing at all to lessen the intensity of his feeling for the strangely attractive widow. The fact that she was a widow, and that she was willing to throw herself once more at his head, must have excited him secretly, even if he wanted Rose to believe that the affair was dead and done with. Smouldering fires so easily burst into life. Rose was so certain of it that she felt a little sick as she watched Carmella using all her blandishments to attract him afresh ... being quite brazen about it, in spite of his announcement (and her insistence on celebrating that announcement!) that he was engaged to be married.

  Less than a fortnight ago he had been engaged to another girl who had since become a wife, and no doubt Carmella could see Rose vanishing over the horizon before very long. All that talk of a wedding in Paris was just something that amused her...

  “Come and have a look at the moon,” Dr. Carter said suddenly, quietly, in Rose’s ear, while the other couple continued a discussion Carmella had advanced on the possibilities of Tregony’s Choice, and her own willingness to redecorate the place entirely, if Guy would only say the word. He need have no doubt of her capabilities ... she was an acknowledged expert on such matters, and that, at least, he knew to be true.

  As Rose allowed herself to be led away to the far end of the room she was straining her ears to catch Guy’s reply, but she was glad she couldn’t see the look on his face as he answered the appeal in Carmella’s eyes. Huge, dark Spanish eyes ... full of a strange witchery.

  “There!” Bruce Carter exclaimed, as he parted the curtains, and they looked out over a moon-bathed sea. “A new moon, hanging above the sea, and like a brooch in the sky. It’s a sight that never fails to quicken the pulses, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Rose agreed, and knew that her own pulses had never been quite so sluggish.

  Bruce looked down at her.

  “You ought to make a wish,” he said. “Or do you feel that there is nothing left for you to wish for?”

  She caught hold of the edge of the curtains, and her fingers were trembling. Her eyes were a trifle blind as they gazed out at that exquisite crescent poised above the sea.

  “There is always something to wish for, isn’t there?” she answered, as if the words failed to come easily.

  “Not when you’re newly engaged ... Or I wouldn’t have said so! But then I’ve never been newly engaged myself, and I don’t know what the sensations are.” There was silence between them for several seconds, and then he asked quietly: “May I call you Rose?”

  “Of course.” She put back her fair head quickly to look up at him, and the expression in the brown eyes was suddenly warm and friendly. “I’d like you to.”

  “Then, Rose, there’s something I’d like to verify, if you don’t mind. You really did have nothing whatsoever to do with Wakeford’s failure to marry that other girl? That ... Miss Vaizey, I think her name was?”

  “I didn’t even know Guy then,” she admitted.

  “No? Then how...?”

  They looked towards the opposite end of the room, where the other two were still deep in a discussion that seemed to exclude everything else ... even a slender fiancée with moon-touched hair, and a pathetically vulnerable look about her, and a tall, distinguished man whose shrewd eyes were capable of softening every time he looked at her. And Rose found herself revealing the whole truth of her meeting with the millionaire bridegroom for the first time, and their long drive through the night to isolated Tregony’s Choice. She cast no blame on Wakeford, but she unconsciously revealed an overwhelming sympathy with him from the moment of their meeting. And - more than that - disclosed that she had been reading a newspaper that reported his activities, and published his photograph, before that moment of meeting. Carter looked down at her thoughtfully as she made the admission, and he thought there was no misreading that softness that stole round her mouth, and the faintly wistful gleam that appeared in her eyes, as she allowed herself to dwell on the events of a fortnight before.

  Only a fortnight! ... And now she was proposing to marry the man herself!

  “Rose, don’t you think it’s rather a - short time - to know a man, and then get engaged to him?”

  Rose longed to tell him that there was nothing in the least serious about the engagement, but because she had given her word she couldn’t do so.

  “No, not really.”

  “You don’t think it’s taking rather a risk?”

  “Not a bigger risk than most people take when they contemplate getting married.”

  “But you hardly know the man. I mean” - he cast another glance at that end of the room where the other two were still absorbed - “the little you do know of him is not precisely reassuring, is it? He was on the very verge of getting married, and - a blow on the head altered his entire plans for him!”

  She felt suddenly indignant.

  “But you can’t blame him for that!” she protested. “It was not his fault. It might have happened to anyone.”

  “Might it?” But the gentle doubt in his tone caused her to grow hot under her delicate skin. She felt as if she was blushing for Guy, and unable to exonerate him completely ... ardently though she wanted to do so. “I’ve an idea it would take a pretty serious blow on the head to affect my plans once they were well and truly made ... especially if I was contemplating matrimony! Right on its doorstep, as you might say!”

  Rose looked away, but she kept her eyes averted from the end of the book-lined room.

  “You do realize that Wakeford is a ... millionaire, don’t you?” the doctor inquired softly, bringing her gaze round to him again.

  This time she flushed with indignation.

  “But that has nothing to do with my ... my promise to marry him!”

  “Of course not, Rose,” he agreed with the same softness. “But it could mean a lot to a young woman like you, couldn’t it? Just the same! I mean, a rich husband is an asset. Other women have thought so too ... about Guy,” and his eyes went deliberately to the graceful reclining figure in the rich brocade.

  Rose felt as if all her pulses started drumming wildly in her ears.

  “Then why did she let him down?” she inquired, as if her throat hurt her at last.

  Dr. Carter shrugged.

  “It’s difficult to account for the whims of a woman. A certain type of woman ... And she has come back, hasn’t she? She’s very much in the picture tonight.”

  “Guy isn’t weak,” Rose felt forced to defend him. “He didn’t invite her here.”

  “But she is here, and you’ll find it difficult to dislodge her ... unless you fall in with her plans. She seems to be very anxious to take over your wedding arrangements. Are you really very eager to get married so quickly?”

  “I—” But Rose found it difficult to answer this time. “I -
I haven’t really thought about it. I mean, we haven’t discussed it.”

  “Mrs. Cavendish is determined to discuss it!”

  “Yes.” Rose felt the same sort of doubt invading her eyes that she knew was in his mind. “She wants us to go back with her to Paris. She suggests that I stay at her flat.”

  “That would be strategic,” Carter remarked oddly, and then realized that Guy was approaching them from that far end of the room.

  “You two seem to have quite a lot to talk about,” Guy observed, regarding them with alert blue eyes. “And it’s cold at this end of the room.” He put an arm about Rose’s shoulders, and there was something noticeably possessive in his touch. “Come back to the fire, my dear, before you catch a chill. I’m surprised the doctor hasn’t recognized that this is an uncomfortably draughty house.”

  “But you have a superb view of the sea from this window,” Bruce Carter returned almost suavely.

  Guy looked at him as if he was seeing him for the first time.

  “And the moon,” a voice called softly, with an undercurrent of humour, from the deep couch beside the fire. “It’s always a very significant sign when one becomes interested in the various phases of the moon!”

  For the next few days Mrs. Cavendish talked of Paris, and all the things they would do when they got there, and went backwards and forwards to her cottage on the edge of a precipitous cliff and got it into some sort of order. Rose helped her, and Mrs. Bewes washed curtains and cushion-covers. Guy declined to approach the cottage for some reason, and Carmella looked downwards under her white eyelids and slightly coarse black eyelashes when Rose remarked innocently that it was a very attractive cottage, and that he ought to see it and approve of it himself.