Harlequin Omnibus: Take Me with You, Choose What You Will, Meant for Each Other

by Mary Burchell

  Now Leoni was nearing the time when even this extension would be at an end, and the "serious talk '* that she had just had with matron touched on the future as well as the dazzling present.

  / believe— thought Leoni, pausing in the writing of her letter of thanks to Mrs. Vandeem —/ believe matron was almost nervous about my going on this visit.

  "I don't want to exaggerate the position, Leoni," matron had said, "but I ought to remina you that all the young people you will meet on this visit will be very differently situated from you. You will be, I think, independent, self-rehant and able to hold up your head in any company. But your way will be entirely of your own making. Probably all these other young people come from wealthy homes, and their standards and expectations will be q^uite different from yours. There is no need for you to be either depressed or humiliated by this. It is merely a fact to be fitted into your philosophy of life. But I don't want you to get a wrong set of values, or to imagine that life outside the orphanage is all on the rather lavish and dazzling scale that I expect it will be at the Vandeems this weekend. Remember—"matron had

  paused and smiled in that shrewd way of hers "—that what you will be seeing on your visit is the sugar on the best plum cake. And life for people like you and me is mostly bread and butter, with an occasional piece of plain cake thrown in, ifwe're lucky."'

  Leoni had been so much impressed by "people like you and me" that she had almost lost the rest of the discourse. Never, in her most exalted moments, had she thought of herself as being a person like matron. The bare suggestion of it made her feel more solemn and grown-up than all the rest.

  But she had said, "Yes, I'll remember," at all the right

  f)laces. And now she was free to hug to herself the delicious act that the longed-for permission had been granted, and the whole arrangement was sealed by the polite but rapturous letter of thanks, which she had now finished.

  By the admirable arrangement of Mrs. Vandeem, Leoni was to accompany Julia home from school on the Friday evening and enjoy all the last-minute arrangements for the party on Saturday. And then, as in Mrs. Vandeem's estimation one always "required at least one day to get over a party worthy of the name," Leoni was to complete her visit by remaining with the Vandeems for Sunday, returning to school with Julia on Monday morning. To Leoni, as she set out to school from the orphanage on Friday morning, carrying a small and unpretentious suitcase borrowed from matron for the occasion, it seemed that life held almost too much happiness.

  Julia, however, had no such fanciful notions. She thought it only right and proper that life should provide all the thrills and pleasures that one could cram into twenty-four hours out of twenty-four. Anything else she regarded as merely an interruption to the naturalcourse of events.

  "I do hope you'll like the dress Mother got for you," she said at least three times to Leoni on the way home. "It's rather youthful and ingenuous, but of course one's parents always do have unsophisticated ideas about how one should dress. Mother just insisted on my having white, though I was panting for scarlet or sea green. What's the use of having vivid coloring like mine if you don't wear the colors that other people look washed out in?"

  Leoni correctly interpreted this last question as being

  purely rhetorical and simply said how kind it was of Mrs. Vandeem to provide her with any sort of dress.

  "Nonsense,** declared Julia briskly. "It's only kind when you provide people with what they want. But, anyway, I think you'll like it You shall try it on the moment we*ve had tea."

  So the moment tea was over, Julia dashed off upstairs, followed only one degree more decorously by Leoni, to inspect the delicate hyacinth blue lace confection spread out on the bed in the room that was to be Leoni *s for a whole weekend.

  "Julia!" Leoni stood before it, actually pale with excitement. "Julia!"

  "Yes. Say something else," Julia said with kindly impatience, though she was really greatly enjoying the expression on her friend *s face.

  Leoni wordlessly shook her head, as she lovingly fingered a fold of the flaring skirt.

  "Goodness!" Julia exclaimed, really impressed. "I've read about people being speechless with excitement, but I've never known it to really happen before. Try the dress on, Leoni."

  So Leoni pulled off her school outfit and Julia said, "Gosh! those won't do," when she saw the "serviceable underwear" provided by the orphanage for its charges. And she ran into her own room, to return a couple of minutes later, triumphantly waving what looked to Leoni like a handful of blue crepe de chine with a lot of lace attached.

  "Oh, Julia, there—there doesn't seem much of that," Leoni murmured protestingly.

  "There isn't," Julia assured her. "You don't buy undies for the amount there is, but for the amount there isn '/."

  There was no resisting Julia in this positive mood. So, although Leoni felt only slightly removed from the nude by the time her friend pronounced her ready to put on the blue dress, she submitted without further protest. Besides, there was something reprehensibly delicious in wearing anything so unspeakably novel.

  Then Julia caught up the dress—energetically but with skill—and slipped it over Leoni's head. She hooked the tight little bodice, spread out the folds of the full skirt and said,

  "There!'* as triumphantly as though she had just finished making the dress by hand herself.

  Leoni turned almost nervously to look at herself in the mirror—and caught her breath with an emotion that was something between delight and a sort of lovely fright. Her first absurd impression was that she had never seen so much of herself before—and the next that she had never realized what a difference clothes (or the lack of them) could make. If Mrs. Vandeem had chosen the dress, then of course it was all right, but it was amazing to think that one could go downstairs tomorrow evening with so much of one's neck and shoulders and arms showmg—and that it would be "all right."

  "You know, you're really a very nice-lookmg girl," Julia was saymg with an air of friendly criticism. "We ought to do somethmg about your hair, though."

  "My hair?" Leoni felt bewilderedly that she would not be specially surprised if Julia proposed to dye it black or cut it offfor the occasion.

  But it seemed that no such drastic action was contemplated.

  "You can't wear it just scraped back and all schoolgirl-ish," Julia explained. "It's a marvelous color, really. You don't often see such real gold except out of a bottle." She walked around Leoni, viewing it from all angles. "I tell you what. You want it brushed up the back from the nape of your neck—it's quite long enough, thank the Lord—and then piled on the top in curls."

  "But I don't thinK I could do it that way," Leoni objected.

  "No, 70W couldn't," Julia said. "But Borrow will. Mother's maid, you know. She can do anything with hair." And Julia made vague passes with her hands, indicative of the extraordinary things that Borrow could do with hair in general and Leoni's in particular.

  "But—will she mina?" Leoni asked doubtfully, feeling that to command the services of a personal maid on top of everything else would be going beyond the limits matron had mdicated.

  "Mind? No, of course not," declared Julia, who could not conceive of anyone minding anything that she herself wanted. "I'll see to it tomorrow. Now I'd get out of the dress again, if I were you, and we'll have a cozy gossip."

  So while Leoni shed her finery and once more donned her everyday things, they discussed the possibilities, probabilities and certainties of the next day's party.

  *'rm really rather nervous about it, as well as everything else," Leoni confessed.

  "Nervous! '* Julia turned the unfamiliar word around her tongue. "What on earth for?"

  "Well, I've never been to a party before—except a Christmas * treat'—and I've never dressed like this before, and I've never had to carry on a conversation with a man before."

  "Oh, thaCs all right," Julia assured her easily. "All the men who're coming are nice and manageable, and I'll see that someone especially unders
tanding and well behaved takes charge of you to begin with. Let me see." She assumed an expression of deep concentration suitable to the occasion. "Roy or Larry or—No, I know who! I'll get Norman Conby to look after you. He's very good-looking, but doesn't seem to know it, which shows how marvelously unusual he is, and he knows all there is to know about seeing that a girl enjoys herself "

  Leoni thought her pleasure would be very well catered for by such a paragon, and said so.

  "Well, yes, he is about the nicest of quite a nice bunch," Julia agreed. "But you don't need to be nervous about any of them, Leoni. There's only one who needs squashing periodically and he probably won't be coming, anyway. That's my cousin, Lucas Morrion. But I bet anythmg he won't turn up, because he's years older than I am—even older than Archie," she added, touching the limits of antiquity by the mention of her twenty-eight-year-old brother. "He probably thinks himself too good for a 'kid's party'. That's what he'd think about it. He's always had too much money," Julia finished irrelevantly.

  "Did that spoil him?" Leoni inquired with interest.

  "I expect so. At least, daddy says so. But parents are so funny about money, aren't they? They don't think you should have any except from them until you're almost too old to enjoy it. But Lucas inherited quite a fortune from an uncle or aunt or something when he was under twenty. And, as he's an only son, I suppose he'll get a whole lot more from Uncle Henry when he dies. I mean when Uncle Henry

  dies—though I hope he doesn't for a long while, poor old pet, because he's quite sweet as uncles go."

  " Is he your mother's brother or your father's? "

  "Oh, neither. Lucas's mother is a sister of mother's. She's quite sweet, too," explained Julia, who was apt to repeat herself when it came to a choice of adjectives. '*Only not so sweet as mother, and even sillier.''

  Leoni knew that this comment was affectionate rather than disparaging, so she let it pass without protest. And presently the two girls went downstairs to have dinner with Mr. and Mrs. Vandeem, whom Julia treated with more than usual kindness and tolerance since they were doing their full parental duty with regard to her birthday party.

  Rather shyly Leoni thanked Mrs. Vanaeem for the dress and managed to tell her how beautiful it was.

  "I'm so glad, dear, and I hope you have a splendid time in it," Mrs. Vandeem said heartily.

  "Oh, she will," Julia asserted "And can Borrow dress her hair, mother—because everything else is beautifully settled. I've lent her panties and things. And you needn t shake your head and look sideways at daddy because he knows perfectly well what they are, and I don't see that they're any more unmentionable than pants. Can Borrow dress Leoni's hair, mother, when she s done yours and mine?"

  Mrs. Vandeem said yes, of course. And so the final detail was settled, and by the time Leoni went to bed that night she felt that Julia herself could not derive more pleasure from the birthday party than she.

  The ordered bustle and activity which hummed through the house next day was indescribably amusing and interesting to Leoni. She discovered that, with all her vagueness and helplessness, Mrs. Vandeem was in reality an excellent organizer, and there was no smallest detail that escaped her notice. Also—which was perhaps even more remarxable— she preserved her equable good temper throughout the day, and although she declared by the time it was necessary to dress that she was fit for nothing but "a slab in the mortuary," Leoni could not see any visible signs of stress and strain on her smiling face.

  And Julia said briskly, "Nonsense, darling. You knoy^ you don't want anything as undecorative as a slab, any-

  where. Lilies and a velvet pall if you like, but not a slab, mother!*'

  "Go along and get dressed, *' was all her mother said, and the two girls retired to perform this all-important office.

  As star performer, Julia naturally had first claim on Borrow's services, and while she was being arrayed for the great occasion, Leoni bathed in Julia's lovely green and silver bathroom, indulging (at Julia's express command) in a lavish use of wickedly expensive-looking bath salts and dusting powder, in spite of a guilty certainty that matron would regard these as strictly outside the "bread-and-butter" existence which would be Leoni's natural portion.

  Then she changed into the luxuriously inadequate * undies' and carefully slipped the blue dress over her nead. She thought she had never felt anything more delicious than the cool taffeta foundation as it slid over her bare arms and then settled with a perfection of fit to the lines of her slim young figure.

  Julia was rights she thought with innocent pleasure, /*m quite a nice-looking girl.

  With a sigh of satisfaction Leoni knew suddenly that she was pretty. But because she was inexperienced she missed the one thing that raised her from mere prettiness to a touch of loveliness, and that was the shape of her face. It was wide across the forehead, with an admirable sweep of eyebrow over her well-set eyes; still unexpectedly wide across the cheekbones and then narrowing, with a lovely suggestion of laughter hollows in her cheeks, to a softly rounded chin. Leoni's coloring was pleasing, but it was that cheek line which raised her out of^the ordmary.

  She had hardly drawn back from the eager contemplation of herself before the door into Julia's room opened, and Julia herself came in—charming and vivid in the white on which her mother had insisted—followed by Borrow, who had a light, voluminous wrap over her arm and an air of purpose on her rather grim face.

  At Julia's bidding. Borrow put the wrap around Leoni, completely covering the blue dress and, making her sit down before the mirror, proceeded to perform the promised miracle with Leoni's fair hair. Julia kept up a running fire of instructions all the time, to which Borrow paid not the slightest attention. And then suddenly noticing the little

  clock on the dressing table, Julia uttered a small scream and asked did Borrow think she could finish without her?

  Borrow said, "Yes, Miss Julia," in the manner of a Christian martyr being asked for a candid opinion on the subject of lions, and Julia whisked out of the room.

  Two seconds later she popped her head in again to say, "Don't worry about coming down alone, Leoni. I'll tell Norman to wait for you at the bottom of the stairs. You'll recognize him at once—he's so good-looking."

  Then she rushed off again, leaving Leoni faintly apprehensive about the lone entry into society, which she was apparently going to have to make.

  "Do you like it that way, miss?"

  Borrow had finished her work while Leoni was meditating on social pitfalls, and she stood back now to view her own completed handiwork. Leoni looked up quickly, and she, too, studied Borrow's work in the mirror.

  "Oh, it's lovely. Borrow!" she exclaimed, yith a little laugh of sheer pleasure. Then she blushed and added hastily, "I mean it's lovely work."

  "It's nice hair, miss," Borrow said sedately. "And you can stand it brushed up the back like that, leaving your ears showing. Some ladies' ears are best hidden," she added grimly.

  Leoni, feeling that Borrow must be an authority on the subject, said that no doubt that was so. Then she stood up, letting Borrow take the wrap from her, and said, "Thank you so much. I've never been to a party before, and I'd no idea anyone could make me look so nice."

  Borrow's face relaxed into something approximating a smile.

  "You're welcome, miss, I'm sure. And I hope you enjoy yourself," she said.

  "I'm a bit nervous," Leoni confided to her suddenly. "Going down alone."

  "You don't need to be, miss. And you won't be alone long," Borrow assured her sapiently.

  And with this fillip to her courage, Leoni went out of the room and along the upstairs corridor.

  From below came the hum of conversation and laughter. Evidently some of the guests had already arrived, and Leoni

  peeped over the banisters before she actually turned the corner to come down the stairs.

  Then she saw that there was only one man in the hall-standing just then with his back to her—so that there was not going to be any difficulty in ide
ntifying Norman Conby after all. Scatterbrained though she was, Julia could be relied on to look after the interests of her friend. Leoni*s flutter of nervousness subsided, and her breath was no longer coming in those quick little gasps that made her dress feel tight across the bodice. Quite unconscious of timing a perfect entrance, Leoni put her hand on the banister and came slowly down the long flight of stairs.

  As she did so, the man in the hall below turned and came to the foot of the stairs. He put his arm on the scroll at the end of the banister and smiled straight up at her, with a mixture of surprise, amusement and admiration.

  And Leoni saw that Norman Conby was indeed good-looking, as Julia had said. Not only that. He was the boy she had kissed through the orphanage gate nine years ago. ^

  CHAPTER TWO

  Leoni caught her breath in pleasure and surprise, and instinctively she halted a few steps above him on the stairs. "I... didn't know it was going to be ... you.'*

  "Didn't you?"

  Those rather bold dark eyes laughed up at her. And, suddenly realizing the foolishness of her greeting, she blushed and said hastily, "I'm sorry. I—"

  "For what?" he wanted to know. "Not for finding me here, I hope."

  "No. Oh, no," she assured him rather naively. "I expected you to be here. Julia said you would be. Only, I didn 't know it would be—you.''

  His obvious admiration took on a hint of puzzled amusement then, and as he drew his brows together she noticed how dark and strongly marked they were.

  "I'm being very stupid, no doubt, but I still haven't got this straight," he confessed. "You expected me—and yet you didn't expect me. Won't you come down and explain?" And he held out his hand to her with a smile.

  She came slowly down the last few steps then and put her hand into his, and as she did so nine years melted away, and for a moment he was the careless, handsome, arrogant young man she remembered so well, and she failed to notice that time and experience had hardened the line of his mouth and added a certain cool cynicism to his eyes.