by Isobel Chace
“Nobody,” declared Rupert, “but a blithering idiot would have left clothing out on the line on a night like this!”
Rosamund dropped her broom in the water and stooped hastily to pick it up again. Not for anything would she have let him see that she had been expecting a very different greeting. So much for Menena’s predictions! she thought.
Rupert appeared in the doorway, his arms full of wet clothes. “I should have thought you would have had more sense,” he began. “Do you suppose anyone within a radius of at least ten miles—Good heavens! Whatever’s all this?”
Rosamund leaned on her broom and smiled at him sweetly. “This is the result of a leaking pipe in the kitchen,” she told him. “But it’s all right, I’ve turned it off at the mains and Menena’s husband is going to find a plumber. As for the washing—”
Rupert strode past her and dumped his armful of clothing on the kitchen table.
“Have you seen the yard?” he demanded. “How on earth am I expected to get the car into the garage?”
Rosamund giggled, and he glared at her.
“Don’t just stand there, woman! Come and help me get the stuff in!”
Rosamund giggled again.
“But I’m not sure I want to go out into the rain again,” she said.
“There’s my hair to consider! Besides, it was so exhausting getting it all out there, I really don’t think I could face struggling with it all again.”
Rupert took the broom away from her and placed it against the wall.
“Struggle is the word!” he said grimly. “And since when did you consider your hair?” He reached out and felt her hair, grasping her by the nape of the neck. “I suppose it’s Félicité’s washing,” he added resignedly. “I might have known!”
Rosamund wriggled free of his hand, a little shaken by how much she liked it there.
“I suppose I should have looked to see if she had brought it in,” she said with a sigh.
“Yes, you jolly well should have done! We shall probably have her here doing it all over again now!”
Rosamund put a hand up to her neck. She could still feel where the pressure of his fingers had been and she wanted to preserve it for a little bit longer.
“My" hair is so wet anyway—” she began meekly.
“Your hair!” he scoffed. “I’ve never seen it wet,” he went on in a quite different tone. “Is it the same glorious colour?”
She went into the cloakroom to find her shoes.
“I don’t know,” she said distractedly. “Why don’t you take a look?” She found her shoes and put them on hastily, a little shocked with herself for trying to flirt with Rupert. She went past him, without looking at him, and hurried out into the chaos of the yard.
The wind had tied the clothes in knots, winding them round and round the clothes-line, or blowing them right down into some dark corner beside the garage or the far wall. It wasn’t easy to free them while they flapped wetly in one’s face, one minute just damp and inert and the next with a mad life of their own that sent them whirling over one’s head and practically out of reach.
Rosamund worked her way down one line while Rupert tackled the other. She was very conscious of his strong, dark figure working away beside her and she wondered what he was thinking as he fought with Félicité’s underwear in the driving rain. It was too bad that he should have to do it and she wished she had thought about it earlier and brought it all in herself. She picked up as much as she could carry and took it through to the kitchen, sorting the clothing out into piles so that the coloureds wouldn’t have any further chance of staining the whites. Rupert came in too and dropped his collection down beside her.
"I could wring her silly neck!” he said crossly. “And is it my imagination, or is the water getting deeper in here?”
Rosamund glanced at him with soft eyes. His wet shirt was clinging to his body and she couldn’t help thinking how fine he looked.
“Perhaps the plumber has come and turned it on again,” she suggested.
“Fat lot of good that will do!” he snorted. “How much more of this stuff is there?”
“A good deal,” she said almost apologetically. “There’s a skirt, I know, though I don’t remember seeing it anywhere. We’ll have to look for it, though.”
Rupert gave her a desperate look.
“What an evening!” he groaned, and disappeared out into the yard again.
Rosamund went on sorting the clothes until the doorbell went and then she went and let the plumber in. It took some time to explain to him where the pipe was leaking because he didn’t understand very much French, and Rupert had brought in yet another bundle by the time she had finished.
“There’s still more!” he said flatly.
Rosamund laughed.
“I’m sorry,” she said. "But it is rather funny, don’t you think? Nothing more could possibly happen to us tonight!”
“Don’t you believe it!” he said coldly. “You’d better come and help look for this skirt, because I don’t believe it’s there at all.”
“But it must be!” she exclaimed. “I remember hanging it out!” She forgot for a moment that the other pile of clothing needed sorting. “I’ll go and look!”
Rupert held out his hand to her and she took it because she didn’t much care for the dark shadows in the yard and the way the rain kept changing direction, taking her by surprise. She held his hand very tightly and he changed his grasp so that it was he that was holding on to her, and she liked that even better.
They searched the yard from one end to the other, but there was no skirt to be seen.
“You ought to go and see what the plumber is doing,” she said once, but she was glad when he didn’t. She didn’t want to be left alone in the yard.
“Perhaps it’s blown on to the roof of the garage?” she suggested a few minutes later.
Rupert flashed his torch upwards, but without result.
“I refuse to look for it for an instant longer!” he said defiantly. “We’ll take this last lot in and that’s our lot!”
There wasn’t very much left to bring in, and they could manage it easily between them. Rupert went first up the steps to the back door, and hardly had he reached it than the lights went out with dramatic suddenness.
“Who said that nothing more could happen to us tonight?” he asked her mockingly.
Rosamund came up close behind him, pushing him in the back with her bundle.
“I think it’s rather apt,” she said with amusement. “It gives an air of authenticity to the proceedings!”
He gave a little yelp of laughter.
“If I could get the torch to work I might think so too!” He took a step forward, entered the patio, and tripped over one of the pots that, quite unaccountably, had not been put back against the wall after Rosamund and Yamina had finished scrubbing the floor.
Rosamund dropped her bundle of clothing on to the floor and plunged into the darkness towards him.
“Oh darling! Darling, are you hurt?”
She searched for him with her hands and felt his strong arms pulling her down beside him.
“What did you call me?” he demanded.
She strove vainly to get free.
“The plumber—” she stammered.
“Damn the plumber! What did you call me?”
She subsided in a heap beside him, gasping as she realised that they were, both sitting in a pool of water.
“Darling,” she said. “Rupert, the water’s cold!”
His arms held her closer still.
“I thought you were never going to say it,” he said on a note of triumph. “Darling, darling, darling!”
Rosamund clutched at his sodden shirt.
“Wh-what do you mean?” she asked him.
“What on earth do you think I mean?” he retorted, and kissed her, hard.
“Well, really!” said Rosamund.
It was really more comfortable than she would ever have expected. Once Rupert had
removed the flowerpot, tossing it over to the other end of the patio where it landed with a tinkling splash and broke into pieces, and once she had got used to the cold sensation of the water all around them.
“Darling, please kiss me again,” she begged.
He did, and it was better than the first time because she wasn’t so surprised. She had never felt so happy in her life before.
“Darling, the plumber!” she said.
He chuckled.
“All right," he said reluctantly. “I’ll cope with him while you go upstairs and change. You’re soaking wet, do you know that?”
She smiled, allowing him to pull her up on to her feet.
“So are you,” she whispered.
He kissed her softly on the cheek.
“If you wait a second, I’ll light you a lamp to take with you.” He left her standing where she was and felt his way into the kitchen. She could hear the plumber indignantly asking how he could possibly work in the dark, and Rupert’s soothing reply. She hoped he would be able to find some dry matches, but she couldn’t remember herself on which shelf she had put them, and she was quite content to wait. She would have waited all night, if he had asked her to.
Actually he was very quick. She could see the yellow flash of light as the match flared into life and a few seconds later he was beside her again, swinging a hurricane lamp in one hand. She took it from him, shy of him in the light it cast on them both. He looked terribly handsome with his features thrown into such strong relief, and she was suddenly unreasonably glad of her own beauty because she couldn’t see that she had anything else much to offer him.
“Jacob will be in soon,” she reminded him.
He grinned.
“He may be a little late,” he said, completely unashamed. “I gave him rather a lot of work to do!”
She found herself smiling too.
“Oh, Rupert, how odious of you!” she exclaimed.
The plumber appeared out of the kitchen and started to complain again.
“Yes, wasn’t it?” Rupert agreed cheerfully, and went into the kitchen with the plumber, making some laughing suggestion to him in Arabic.
So he had been planning something like this all along, she thought as she went upstairs, and the knowledge warmed her. She ran up the stairs to her room and stripped off her dripping clothing, rubbing herself dry with enthusiasm. She hesitated when it came to choosing what to wear, though. Something that she had made herself wouldn’t do on this occasion, and she hadn’t many “bought” frocks. In the end she chose a russet-coloured one whose autumnal colouring suited her and in which she knew she looked her very best, and she tied her damp hair behind her with a narrow black velvet ribbon. It made her look very young and defenceless, but she couldn’t help that. Rupert would just have to accept her as she was.
She went into the salon to wait for him in an agony of impatience. It seemed a long time before she heard him showing the plumber out. He went out too and she knew he was putting the car away. A few seconds later he came up the stairs, his arms laden with the flowers they had bought at the market. He looked at her with appreciation.
“These will make just the right background for you,” he said with satisfaction, and disappeared again to change.
She pretended to herself that she was arranging the flowers for him, but she knew really she was only doing it to give her hands something to do while he was gone. They looked very fine, though, against the stark white walls and the blue paintwork, and of course the fragile light from the lamp was being very kind to everything.
She was still playing with the flowers when he came back.
“No ear-rings?” he asked her as he came in behind her.
She blushed and shook her head mutely.
“It’s funny, you know,” he said, “but whenever I really want to say something to you, I become curiously tongue-tied.”
The idea was so fantastic that she turned round quickly to see if he was serious. His eyes when she met them were stern.
“I wanted to thank you for what you did at Tabarka,” he went on, “but the words wouldn’t come. I do thank you, though. It took courage to hold that hose the way you did.”
Tears came flooding up into her eyes, blurring her vision.
“I—I was proud—” she began helplessly. Her voice caught and she started again. “I wanted to do something to help,” she said.
He smiled suddenly.
“Do you think we could sit down?” he suggested. “There’s a lot more to come.”
She sat down abruptly on one of the spindly wire chairs.
“You—you don’t have to say anything, if you don’t want to,” she said earnestly. “In fact I’d rather you didn’t—”
“Because you have a soft heart and think this is a chore to me?” he asked her mockingly. “Actually I’m rather enjoying giving you your full pound of flesh!”
“Oh!” She remembered vividly the morning when she had accused him of always demanding that for himself. She began to wonder what other accusations she could have hurled at him, accusations that she had thought just at the time, but wasn’t so sure about now.
He grinned at her.
“Do you know why I asked you and your stepfather to come and live here?” he asked her.
“I suppose it was more convenient,” she said. “You didn’t like me much,” she added, surprised that the knowledge could still hurt her.
“No, I didn’t,” he admitted. “I was far too outraged by what you were doing to my feelings! That beauty of yours has a wicked effect until one gets to know you, yourself, underneath!”
“I know,” she said. “I can’t help it.” She smiled slowly. “I do try sometimes, you know, but I’ve never been very successful! Not even you would allow that my looks were exclusively my own business!”
He took a firm grasp of her hand.
“I’d like to make them my business, if I may?” he said quietly. “Dear heart, will you marry me?”
She came to her feet beside him, her eyes full of warmth. “I’d love to, if you’re sure you really want me.” She took a tiny step forward into his arms. “Darling!” she said.
It was some time before she thought again about Félicité. “I thought you were going to marry her,” she told Rupert. “Everybody did! It made me quite miserable.”
He grinned.
“What about that Louis of yours?”
“Louis?” she repeated. “There was never anything between me and Louis! He has a girl in France. Didn’t you know? She sounds nice, and I think he was missing her a little.”
Rupert gave her a wry smile.
“I could have borne it if someone had thought to tell me that!” he said.
She looked at him in delighted surprise.
“Rupert! You were jealous!” she accused him.
He laughed.
“I hoped at first that he wouldn’t be suitable, or married already, or something, but nothing of the sort! Of course I was jealous!”
He looked pretty confident all the time, she thought. It gave her a comfortable feeling to know how adept he was at getting his own way, especially as he wanted her!
“And Félicité?” she prompted him gently.
He kissed her.
“I had met her husband when I first came out here. Naturally I felt I had to be kind to her.”
“But you kissed her!” she insisted.
“I did?”
Rosamund buried her face in his shirt. That was one of the things she most liked about him, that his clothes and everything else about him were always so delightfully clean.
“Perhaps I leapt to conclusions,” she admitted. “But she looked kissed when I came upstairs yesterday, and she was putting on some lipstick, in the way women do! Oh, you know what I mean!”
Rupert laughed.
“I do indeed,” he agreed. His arms tightened about her. “But she certainly hadn’t been kissed by me. I’m not saying that she wouldn’t have liked me to—”
> “Oh, I know that!” she interrupted him.
He looked amused.
“But I was otherwise engaged,” he went on, unperturbed. “I was far too busy planning how to get on kissing terms with you. Even taking a mean advantage of you when you were asleep wasn’t beneath me!”
She laughed and blushed.
“I wish I’d known!” she sighed. “I was so miserable.”
They heard the door being pushed open downstairs and Jacob’s step as he came inside. He came straight up the stairs, flashing a torch before him, and stopped dead just inside the salon.
“I don’t believe you two have been watching the storm at all," he remarked casually. He turned his back on them and stared out of the window. “I’ve never seen lightning like it! Never! Just like a giant stage set!”
Rosamund slipped out of Rupert’s arms and went to stand beside him.
“Jacob dear—” she began.
His eyes were very affectionate as he put an arm around her shoulders.
“I know, I know!” he said. “When is the wedding to be?”
