'Lack of inspiration?'
He shrugged, 'Something like that.'
'Cliff.' She vas sitting beside him on the garden seat, and she put out a hand to turn his face towards her, her eyes curious and a little suspicious. 'What's really been happening while I've been gone?'
He turned his head, reluctantly, she felt, and kissed the palm of her hand against his face. 'Nothing really,' he said. 'I guess I've just seen the light.'
'Seen the light?'
He nodded. 'At least, I've met Philip half-way. I've been with him a couple of times to the office, just to see
what it's like.'
'Oh, I see.' Tara felt chill suddenly. Not so much because he had gone back on his plans to follow his artistic bent to the bitter end, or because he had allowed Philip to persuade him at last, but because Philip had given her no hint that he had at last managed to press his brother into joining the firm while she was out of the way.
She had accused him of being glad of her absence so that he could bring pressure to bear, but she had never in her heart believed he would actually do it. Now she could see just how wrong she had been, and it was not a pleasant sensation at all.
'Darling, I know you think I should stick to my guns,' Clifford said earnestly, holding tightly to her hands as if he half feared she might get up and walk away from him. 'But - well, you know how it is.'
'I know how it is,' she agreed bitterly. 'I've been gone only three days, less than three days, and already you've let Philip bully you into going his way.'
Clifford was looking more sheepish than she would have believed possible and she suddenly felt a surge of impatience at his weakness. 'It doesn't matter, really, darling,' he told her. 'I know you rather fancied having an artist for a boy-friend, but - well, I'm sorry.'
'For heaven's sake. Cliff!' she cried despairingly. 'It isn't for me I care, it's for you! You wanted to paint and I thought you meant to go on with it, no matter what inducements Philip offered. Now you've just -capitulated, just as Philip guessed you would! Just as he planned you would,' she added bitterly.
'But he didn't browbeat me into it,' ClifTord denied, somewhat uneasily.
Tara looked at him unbelievingly. 'No?'
'No, darling. I decided off my own bat to go and see what it would be like in big business.'
'Why?' She resolutely refused to believe that the change of attitude was of his own choosing.
He shrugged his shoulders, and looked down at the hands he held in his own. 'I don't know. I just thought it couldn't do any harm to meet him half-way, and I was - well, I was feeling so damned guilty about you and the crash and everything. I couldn't really expect you to live on a pittance as a hippy.'
'I see.' She nodded understanding at last. 'So he didn't need to use bullying methods, he just played on your conscience instead.'
'Not exactly,' he denied, but it was evident, to Tara at least, that something of the sort had happened. 'You - you won't say anything to him about it, will you?' he begged.
'About you allowing yourself to be shanghaied into a job you'll hate?' she said. 'How can I help myself, Cliff?'
'But it'll all be all right, darling,' he told her. 'I can still paint, I'll have plenty of time, and it means I can stay on here at Fairwinds.'
'Which is also what Philip wants,' she reminded him.
'But I love the old place, you know I do. I don't really want to leave it, especially now I've come back and we're here like we were before, like old times.'
'Except that in old times I wasn't here,' Tara said softly. 'That's bound to make a difference, Cliff. It won't be just you and Philip now, unless—' She looked up at him, seeking an answer she was half afraid of hearing. 'Unless you want me to leave, really bring things back to what they were.'
'Darling!' He gripped her hands anxiously, his eyes searching her face for some sign that she was teasing him, but there was no trace of laughter in her expression, and he pulled her close and held her tightly in his arms. 'You know I don't mean that,' he told her, his voice muffled against her hair. 'I want you to stay too, with me.'
'Even after we're married?'
He was silent for a long minute while Tara closed her eyes against the reason for his hesitation. 'Of course, after we're married,' he said at last, in a quiet voice that reminded her of Philip. 'Why not?'
Why not indeed? Tara thought hazily. Except that she could not imagine a situation more fraught with dangers than living at Fairwinds with Philip always in close proximity. He was disturbing enough in the present situaticHi, the idea of spending the rest of their lives on the edge of uncertainty did not bear thinking about.
She raised her head and looked steadily at the top button of his shirt while she spoke. 'I don't think that's an idea that would work very well. Cliff,' she told him quietly.
'Don't you like it here?'
'Yes, I like it here.' She sought for the right words.
'But it just wouldn't work with the three of us under the one roof for the rest of our lives, Clifford. I for one am not prepared to risk it, and I'm sure Philip won't either.' ^
'He wants me here, and if he has me he has you as well,' Clifford informed her stubbornly. 'And you're wrong about his reaction to the idea, darling, I'm sure he'll welcome it.'
'Cliff-'
He kissed her firmly on her mouth and stemmed the argument before it was formed. 'No more ifs and buts,' he told her. 'You're doing poor old Philip an injustice, you know. He likes you.'
'Yes,' Tara said, with a catch in her voice that she hoped he wouldn't notice. 'He likes me.'
CHAPTER SEVEN
It was more than a week since Tara had left the hospital, and things were rather different than before the accident. For one thing CUfford had kept up his recently acquired habit of going with Philip to the office most mornings, and she saw far less of him.
With only herself and Madame Hautain in the house during the mornings, she spent a great deal more time in the old lady's company than she had ever expected to. Not that she disliked the old lady, but it was not quite as she had visualized herself spending her time when she came to Fairwinds for the summer.
She missed being with Clifford, even though she had spent most of their time together simply sitting with him while he painted. Now that he had, for the moment, abandoned that in favour of going to the office with Philip she felt she had lost touch with him in some way.
With both of them involved in planning him a future apart from his family she had felt as if she belonged at Fairwinds as part of him, now she wzis not so sure. She spent time in the gardens, chattered to the old lady and, as now, cut and arranged the flowers from the garden. A job Mrs. Evans claimed no talent for and willingly surrendered.
She was not bored by any means, for she liked a quiet life, but she had the feeling sometimes that the
Hautain family had become a unit again, and that she was an interloper, and it had crossed her mind more than once to wonder if Clifford would really miss her so very much if she went back to town.
Several times she had considered putting the idea to him during the past week, but for some inexplicable reason she had refrained from mentioning it. It could be, she thought uneasily, that she was afraid he might agree with her going and she did not want to leave Fairwinds.
She liked being there, despite various discomfiting events, and moments when she felt superfluous. Something told her, perhaps rather optimistically, that all three of them would show a great deal of surprise at the suggestion, for as far as she could see her presence was taken for granted.
Spending so much more time with her, she had become almost fond of Madame Hautain, come to understand her, although she was not in the least like the traditional, cosy granny figure.
The old lady had been watching her for some minutes now, in a steady, unnerving way that reminded Tara of her elder grandson, and she felt herself bound to look up at her at last, smiling a little warily.
'You fit very well into this household,' Madam
e Hautain informed her graciously and unexpectedly.
'Do I?' Tara laughed uneasily, especially in view of her thoughts only a moment since.
Madame Hautain nodded firmly. 'You have been a very pleasant surprise to me, Tara Villiers.'
She always used both names whenever she ad-
dressed her, an idiosyncrasy that annoyed Clifford because he said she did it only to be unfriendly, but Tara herself found it rather quaintly formal, and did not mind in the least.
Tara smiled, partly in relief she admitted, for she had taken the steady gaze for one of disapproval. 'Thank you, Madame Hautain,' she said, using the French pronunciation as she most often did now.
'You are such a womanly woman,' the old lady went on, enlarging on the reason for her approval. 'That is a dying art, but one which men appreciate, as I'm sure you are clever enough to know.'
Tara shook her head, unsure just which way this conversation was likely to go. 'I don't know that I'm clever, madame^ she told her. 'Or why you should think I'm any other than - a perfectly ordinary woman.' She shrugged in a way that she had perhaps unconsciously adopted from her host and the old lady she was speaking to. 'Isn't every woman womanly?'
'You know quite well what I mean, child,' Madame Hautain told her impatiently. 'The way you carry yourself, your manners, even the way you are arranging those blooms. You have none of that hideous masculinity that so many of your contemporaries affect.'
'Oh, I see.' Tara shortened the thorny stem of a rose and held it for a moment under her nose to inhale the perfume of it.
'I am pleased for Philippe's sake,' the old lady told her.
'Philip?' Tara looked startled, staring at her for a
moment, with the rose she held clutched tightly in her clenched fingers.
Madame Hautain smiled archly. 'I mean, of course, Clifford,' she amended. Tara said nothing, but after a second or two pushed the bloom firmly in among its companions. 'When is the wedding to be?' the old lady asked then, for what must be the hundredth time, Tara felt sure.
She determinedly gave her attention to the flowers she was arranging, and smiled patiently. 'We haven't fixed a definite date yet,' she told her.
'That is what you always say!' Madame Hautain said tartly, and Tara smiled, daring to be more definite, although her answer was purely speculation.
'Perhaps next spring,' she said.
'Next spring?' Finely arched brows expressed more than words. 'So long? Clifford is not a very ardent lover, I think.'
'Madame Hautain!'
The old lady chuckled. 'You are shocked, child?'
'Not exactly shocked,' Tara denied. 'But—' she looked up, her dark eyes glistening with mischief, much less over-awed by her than Clifford was. 'I just can't imagine my own grandmother being quite so - frank, that's all, Madame Hautain.'
'Ah, but she is not irked by such a stupide petit-fils, n'est-ce pas?' Madame Hautain retorted sharply, lapsing into her o\ti tongue, something she seldom did when she was conversing with anyone in English.
'I think you're calling Cliff stupid,' Tara said quietly. 'And I can't agree with you, madame'
'No?' The sharp black eyes regarded her steadily, and Tara felt bound to respond.
'No,' she insisted. 'Cliff may not see eye to eye with Philip on everything, but he isn't stupid.'
Her defence of Clifford, far from offending the old lady, merely induced another of those rather mahcious chuckles, and Tara put on a determinedly serious face to dissociate herself with anything that belittled Clifford.
He was, after all, with Philip at the office at this very moment, doing exactly what both the old lady and Philip wanted him to do, so it was hardly fair to make unkind remarks about him behind his back.
'He has more or less given up his ambition to be an artist, no?'
Tara nodded, reluctantly. 'It seems so for the time being,' she agreed. 'But you can't despise him for that, it's what you wanted him to do, isn't it? You and Philip.'
'It is what I hoped he would do eventually,' the old lady agreed. 'But I would have had more respect for him if he had kept to his chosen path, and told us to go to—' An eloquent hand completed the sentence. 'Philippe would have done so in his place.'
'That's hardly fair,' Tara objected, resisting the temptation to argue furiously about the comparison. 'Poor Cliff, he doesn't seem to be able to please anyone, no matter what he does. But it still doesn't make him stupid, as you said.'
'He is stupid if he does not recognize the danger of his position,' Madame Hautain insisted, and Tara
looked at her curiously.
'I don't understand,' she said.
The shrewd black eyes looked at her steadily for several minutes, then she nodded her head, as if satisfied about something. 'You find Philippe attractive, do you not?' she asked.
Tara, caught completely unawares by the question, felt her face colouring furiously and her fingers trembling as she pushed another rose, with clumsy haste, into the vase. 'Philip's a very attractive man,' she allowed, finding her voice at last, but wishing it sounded more cool and matter-of-fact, instead of husky and uncertain.
'He has kissed you?'
Again Tara started in surprise, and then frowned discouragingly, although she should have known it would have no effect on the indomitable old lady in the chair. 'I don't see—' she began, and Madame Hautain nodded again, apparently satisfied that she had her answer.
'He has,' she said. 'I have seen the way he looks at you, at your mouth, when he speaks he speaks to you. He has kissed you in that - certain way.' She used her hands to even more devastating effect than her words, and Tara felt herself curl up inwardly.
'Madame Hautain, you have no right to speak like that.'
It was a feeble protest and the old lady dismissed it with an airy hand. 'Why be ashamed to admit it?' she said. 'You admit yourself that you find him attractive.'
'I admit he's an attractive man,' Tara argued desperately, trying to extricate herself from an embarrassing situation. 'That's not quite the same thing, madame. And I'm engaged to Cliff, not Philip, in case you've forgotten that.'
'You are for the moment,' the old lady allowed tartly. 'But he is not in very much hurry to marry you, is he?'
'Neither of us is in a hurry to marry,' Tara corrected her shortly. 'And I fail to see that Philip comes into it at all. I'm quite sure that if he was in any hurry to marry, he'd have married Mrs. Owen-Bragg by now.'
A short, scornful laugh greeted that suggestion, and the old lady's upper lip curled derisively. 'Philippe would never marry a - femme d'occasionV she declared with certainty. 'He has too much regard for his family's name.'
Tara had no idea what the scornful adjective meant exactly, but she felt pretty certain that it was something Elwyn Owen-Bragg would find unpalatable. And so, probably, would Philip. She smiled wryly, almost ashamed to admit that in this instance she appreciated the old lady's malice.
'Philip,' she told her dryly, 'will marry just anybody he pleases, if I know Philip.'
Madame Hautain caught her eye again, her own twinkling maliciously. 'Then Clifford had better make haste,' she declared with a chuckle.
Tara shook her head, daring to be more familiar with the old lad/ than she had so far ventured to be, and now only because some strange rapport seemed to
exist between them suddenly, bringing her closer to the old French woman.
'You're a wicked old lady,' she told her, and Madame Hautain nodded agreement, seemingly pleased with the charge.
'Perhaps,' she allowed.
'You shouldn't talk about your grandsons in that way to a - a stranger.'
'But you are not a stranger,' Madame Hautain argued. 'You are soon to be an Hautain, n'est-ce pas? Also—' the black eyes twinkled wickedly, 'I like you, Tara Villiers.'
Tara smiled at her, relieved she had not taken offence at her familiarity. 'I'm glad you do,' she told her softly. 'I never could understand why Clifford found you so fearsome.'
'Teh! He is a fo
ol, that boy,' his grandmother decreed, yet again.
'No, he isn't,' Tara argued gently. 'He's just different from Philip, that's all, and you don't understand him as well, because he isn't as much like you.'
'That is true,' Madame Hautain agreed. 'He is not at all Uke his poor papa, that one. He is Welsli, like his mother - a real sauvage !'
'He's not that either,' Tara told her, feeling that she was indeed treading on new ground today, and so far without mishap.
The shrewd black eyes studied her carefully for several moments, then a hand reached out for her to come closer, and Tara went, touching the hand that invited her closer.
'You are very staunch in his defence,' she was told.
'Didn't you expect me to be?' Tara asked, and the old lady shrugged.
'Do you love him?'
Tara looked down at their two hands, side by side on the arm of the chair. 'Of course.'
'Not of course,' Madame Hautain corrected her gently. 'He is a very eligible young man, my grandson. A very wealthy man as well as a good-looking one.'
'Madame Hautain!'
Tara's look of hurt was genuine, for she hated to think that the old lady thought so badly of her. But a gentle hand soothed her feelings, kindly. 'I did not intend to hurt you, child.'
'I know, madame.' She did not find it easy to be angry with the old lady, but she wished there was some way of changing the subject. It was unlikely that Madame Hautain would be willing to abandon it, however, having become so involved.
The shrewd black eyes watched Tara narrowly for a moment. 'You have had some doubts lately - hmm?' she asked, and Tara looked startled to have her innermost thoughts so accurately pinpointed.
'I - I have wondered lately if, now that he's so involved with the firm, Clifford would really miss me very much if I wasn't here,' she confessed cautiously, and Madame Hautain nodded, but it was obviously not what was uppermost in her mind.
A bony finger lifted Tara's chin until she was obliged to raise her eyes too, and meet the ones that studied her
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