The Youngest Bridesmaid

by Sara Seale

  “I—I don’t know you very well yet,” she temporised warily. “We’re—only acquaintances still, aren’t we?”

  His arm tightened about her waist.

  “Yes, my honest Lou, we’re only acquaintances. We must remedy that, musn’t we?” he said.

  “I don’t always know how,” she said simply, so afraid that she might be found wanting, and he looked up at her with an expression of tender apology.

  “No, of course you don’t,” he said. “It should be my job to break down barriers.”

  “Some went today, don’t you think?”

  “Yes, I think so. But you make me feel ashamed that such treats can please you. I shall so enjoy taking you on a real shopping spree—buying you diamonds, furs—all the extravagant fripperies that women dream about. That’s the only real pleasure money brings.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever coveted diamonds, and I have furs, although they weren’t really meant for me,” she replied with her usual considered truthfulness, and he laughed.

  “Melissa’s cast-offs have rankled, haven’t they?”

  “Not really—besides, they’re all new and terribly expensive. It’s just that—well, I felt I wasn’t me any more.”

  “Poor Cinderella—that was thoughtless of me, wasn’t it? Never mind, that can all be put right later. In the meantime you can wear those rather fetching slacks and whatnot we found today and discover yourself again. Kiss me, Lou. I don’t think you ever have of your own accord.”

  “You don’t do much kissing yourself, come to that,” she observed prosaically, but she leaned over him obediently, and as her lips touched his she experienced an unselfconscious desire to explore, and dropped light caresses on his eyelids, his cheekbones, the sharp ridge of his nose, until he pulled her down into his arms and held her close.

  She lay there contentedly after her pulses had ceased to race so wildly, and stared drowsily over his shoulder to the darkness outside the uncurtained windows. The familiar lights from the harbor cottages showed palely, a brighter, moving beam flashed on the water, and she caught the faint sound of an engine.

  “There’s a launch putting in to the harbor,” she said idly.

  “Extra supplies of booze in case the weather turns nasty, most likely,” he replied, and relinquished her reluctantly as she remembered her forgotten flowers and struggled out of his arms.

  Presently he left her to it and repaired to his study for an hour’s paper work before dinner. Tomorrow, he thought with a smile, that bed should be moved to where it properly belonged, and tonight—well, a dividing door without a lock presented no difficulties.

  Lou, finishing the last of her flower arrangements, was startled by the clamour of the ship’s bell which hung by the front door. So seldom was it rung, since no one visited the island, that she experienced an irrational moment of superstitious dread. It was no ghost, however, tolling for admission. Tibby’s footsteps could be heard, the rush of wind as the door opened, and the sound of voices. Presently confused steps returned across the hall, then Tibby’s voice, harsh and somehow triumphant, announced from the doorway: “A visitor for ‘ee, missis. I’d best prepare one of the guest rooms.”

  She stood aside, and Lou stared in disbelief at the newcomer who pushed confidently past the old servant.

  “Melissa! What on earth are you doing here?” she exclaimed, and her cousin, stepping delicately across the room, bringing with her the familiar expensive little waft of her favorite scent, offered an unaccustomed embrace and observed with characteristic candor:

  “God, what an outlandish dump! You must be quite crackers, Lou, to agree to such an uncivilized honeymoon, but perhaps you weren’t asked. No, in view of everything, I suppose you hadn’t much choice. Darling, I know it’s madly tactless of me to I come at such a time, but you will give me sanctuary won’t you? I’m in dire trouble—but dire, my dear.”

  Lou, too taken by surprise to formulate any coherent ideas, simply stared at her and murmured “Of course...: in a vague, uncomprehending tone of voice, but Tibby, who had remained listening and watching, came forward now and looked Melissa over with a slow, careful air of assessment.

  “You’m like your mother. You might even be Miss Blanche as I used to know her,” she said, and Lou heard the slightly malicious pleasure in her voice, and knew with a sinking heart that despite her aversion to any feminine competition in the house she would be subservient to Melissa, if only to use her as a whipping-post.

  “I’d best tell the master,” she said with a sly, satisfied look at Lou, but at that moment Piers came into the room.

  “Who rang the bell?” he asked, and as his eyes fell on Melissa, his whole frame stiffened visibly and his face froze into hardness.

  “Well...” he said softly, and Lou knew that however she had dreamed the day would end, she was right back where she had started.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Afterwards Lou did not know quite what she had expected. Piers said with blunt inhospitality:

  “What are you doing here?”

  Melissa replied with equal bluntness. “Blanche has turned me out.”

  “Blanche? But haven’t you a husband now—or at least protector?” Lou stammered, at the same time feeling foolish.

  “What an old-fashioned expression,” Piers interjected absently.

  “No,” Melissa said and, most uncharacteristically, began to cry.

  Lou could not remember having seen her cousin in tears before, and the sight unnerved her. Melissa, of course, wept beautifully and without disfigurement, but her tears seemed real enough and she did not, as might have been expected, turn to Piers for comfort, but to Lou.

  “Darling, be generous,” she sobbed. “You have so much, and I—well, I’ve been a fool.”

  “What’s happened?” asked Lou, bewildered, and unsure of the right approach with Piers and Tibby standing there watching them both with such odd expressions.

  “It’s a long story and not very edifying—but don’t turn me away, Lou. I’ve nowhere else to go,” Melissa said, and Lou replied gravely.

  “It’s Piers’ house, but I’m sure if you’re in trouble—”

  “Why should he care any more?” Melissa interrupted bitterly, “He married you, didn’t he, without turning a hair? Tell him to go away, Lou, while I try to make you understand. You should feel sorry for me—and grateful, too, as things have turned out.”

  “Just like Miss Blanche all over again,” Tibby murmured from the doorway, and Piers threw her an angry look.

  “Get back to the kitchen, Tibby, and don’t trade on old privileges,” he snapped, but although the old woman turned obediently to leave the room, her smile was undefeated by sharp words.

  “I’d best prepare one of the bedrooms first. Whatever your feelings, Mr. Piers, you can’t send the young lady back before morning,” she said, and went away.

  Piers turned back into the room and stood for a moment regarding both girls with frowning impatience, his head thrust forward, his hands plunged in his pockets. A lamp flared in the draught of the closing door, lending his features a predatory look, and Lou shivered.

  “I can do no less than offer you hospitality for the night, I suppose,” he said at last, turning to Melissa. “And your story had better be good.”

  “Piers—” said Lou quickly, aware that the tender companion of the afternoon had vanished and that although he spoke harshly, his eyes rested on Melissa with that familiar look of speculation and appraisal.

  “Yes?” For a moment his attention was diverted back to her, but his voice held only cool politeness as if it was she who was the stranger.

  “Let me talk to Melissa alone. I don’t think—well, I’m not sure—” Lou stumbled over the words and broke off a little helplessly, and he gave her a dark, rather cynical look.

  “You’re not sure of anything, my poor Cinderella, are you?” he said, and went out of the room.”

  Melissa dabbed at her wet lashes and then smiled her familiar dazzl
ing smile.

  “Is that what he calls you? And, of course, it’s true, isn’t it?” she said, but did not quite regain her composure under her cousin’s grave, direct gaze.

  “Quite true,” Lou replied quietly, “but you have only yourself to thank. As you’ve already pointed out, I should be grateful to you, and generous, so let’s hear your story.”

  Melissa gave her a puzzled glance, but she altered her tone as if she appreciated that their positions were reversed, that by her own folly she had become the suppliant and not the careless dispenser of favors. Her story when told was, Lou supposed, common enough, but not the sort of situation in which the Melissas of this world might expect to find themselves. That old affair which Cousin Blanche had thought forgotten had it seemed, been kept alive by sheer perversity on Melissa’s part. It had relieved boredom when the first novelty of her engagement had worn off, she said; she had never meant things to go so far, but then the man had threatened disclosure, hinted at suicide, and she had lost her head.

  “Did you believe him?” Lou asked, who found it hard to visualize her hard-boiled cousin either losing her head or being taken in, and Melissa began to cry again.

  “I don’t know—but it was flattering and—and I think I wanted to shake Piers up.”

  “Then you did care?”

  “Yes, I suppose I did.”

  “And yet you ran away with someone else! Didn’t you mean to marry him then—this other man?”

  “Of course not!”

  “Then why did you do it?”

  “I did it for kicks.”

  “For kicks?”

  “Don’t sound so outraged, darling, one does so many things for kicks. Life becomes boring when everything’s too cut and dried. I thought I could show Piers that he wasn’t getting me so easily. He’s spoilt, you know. I naturally never thought he wouldn’t try to find me—that he would marry just any little ninny to save his face.”

  Melissa’s moist blue eyes were wide and disingenuous, and held quite honest outrage, but that careless definition hurt.

  “I don’t think you assessed his possible reactions very well,” Lou said, feeling rather shocked. “Men, I imagine, can do as crazy things as women on the spur of the moment if they’ve been made fools of.”

  “Yes, that was it, of course,” Melissa said, sounding complacent, then her eyes narrowed.

  “If you knew that much, Lou, you should have known better than to steal him,” she said with hard deliberation, “for that’s what you did, didn’t you?”

  “I don’t think so. It was you who threw him over, after all.”

  “And you had such little pride that you snapped up my leavings before he could change his mind. Shy, unsophisticated Miss Mouse—how we’ve all underrated you.”

  Lou turned away and, to control her own not easily aroused temper, busied herself with drawing the curtains across the windows. The cottage lights still winked in the darkness, but the water was black and empty of any craft and the wind was rising.

  “You aren’t making it very easy for me to make you welcome here, Melissa,” she said then, and her cousin came quickly across the room and put a conciliatory hand on her shoulder.

  “Sorry, darling,” she said, “I was just being bitchy. My nerves are all shot to pieces. You—you won’t let Piers turn me out, will you?”

  “You heard him say you can stop till tomorrow.”

  “But you’ll persuade him to a little longer, won’t you—just to get my bearings again?”

  “I don’t understand why you came in the first place. Had you ideas of getting Piers back?”

  “Now who’s being bitchy? I told you, Blanche turned me out.”

  “Why? Cousin Blanche got what she wanted from Piers. She made it very plain to me so long as she wasn’t dunned for the money she couldn’t care less which bride he chose.”

  “Darling, how hard you sound—not a bit like little Lou Parsons,” she said plaintively. “Has Piers succeeded so quickly in changing you?”

  “Piers and you and Cousin Blanche have all changed me, perhaps,” Lou replied soberly. “I’m not, you see, little Lou Parsons any more.”

  Melissa bit her lip, unsure, for the first time, of the right reply. With marriage the little cousin of no importance seemed to have grown another skin.

  “And is the honeymoon coming up to expectations?” she asked, prompted by genuine curiosity, but Lou’s newly acquired armour was not yet proof against careless probings. Melissa saw her flinch before she replied briefly: “Naturally,” and her charming mouth curved in a slow, satisfied smile, but she made no comment except to ask to see her room.

  “I don’t know where Tibby will have put you,” Lou said, aware that it could not be long before Melissa would see for herself how low she rated in Tibby’s eyes.

  “Is that the old scarecrow who let me in?” Melissa asked, following her cousin across the hall and up the stairs, observing with shuddering distaste the ascetic bareness of Piers’ home.

  “She used to be Piers’ nanny—a rather difficult old lady, so go carefully,” Lou answered.

  “Oh, yes, I’ve heard Blanche mention her. I believe she was rather devoted to my mama. We should get on nicely,” Melissa said complacently, and Lou had no doubt they would, if for no other reason than that Tibby would enjoy making unflattering comparisons. Oh, well, she thought, it was only until tomorrow; she could afford to allow Melissa her accustomed homage until then.

  They opened bedroom doors, hunting for a room which had been prepared for the guest, and Melissa, uninvited, looked into Lou’s room.

  “This must be it,” she said. “I will say it looks a bit more civilized than the rest of this morgue-like house.”

  “No, this is my room,” Lou said, and felt herself coloring as her cousin’s eyes dwelt pointedly on the single bed.

  “My poor Lou!” Melissa said with laughter bubbling up through the tones of commiseration. “No wonder you shied away from my innocent cracks about the honeymoon. How long is it now—two weeks, three?”

  “Piers sleeps in there,” Lou said stiffly, jerking her head towards the dressing room. “It’s—it’s quite usual these days to have separate rooms.”

  “Oh, quite—but hardly on a honeymoon.” Melissa poked her head round the door of the adjoining room, discovered that the beds were a pair and j enquired with amusement.

  “Who had the bed moved in there—you or Piers?”

  “That,” said Lou, the knowledge sweeping over her that the day’s delicate approach to the night must, perforce, be already doomed to sterility, “is a rather impertinent question, don’t you think? We’d better find your own room.”

  The room was, it transpired, directly across the passage from hers and she wondered if Tibby had deliberately chosen it. A fire had been lighted and Melissa’s cases unpacked, and the bowl of flowers Lou had so painstakingly arranged for Tibby’s pleasure had been brought up from the kitchen.

  The rejected offering hurt her unreasonably. Tibby could have taken any one of the many flower arrangements which filled all the rooms. It would seem to be a quite deliberate snub on her part.

  “What a lot of luggage you brought,” Lou said, surveying the several suitcases piled in a corner. “It was hardly worth unpacking everything for one night.”

  “It might be for longer if Piers is handled tactfully,” Melissa said, and Lou turned on her cousin, her patience snapping at last.

  “Really, Melissa! Even you wouldn’t force yourself on a couple wanting privacy at a time like this,” she exclaimed, but Melissa only smiled that slow, impervious smile that could be proof against any insult.

  “I should have thought in the circumstances you might have found it a relief. It can’t be much fun living in splendid isolation on a dreary island with a tardy lover,” she said with a slight drawl, and Lou experienced a most unusual desire to slap her cousin hard across her charming face.

  “That was unforgivable,” she said. “I’m going down now to
see that Piers makes arrangements in good time for the launch to take you across to the mainland in the morning. You’d better start packing again tonight.”

  II

  But when morning came Piers said it was too rough to cross with any comfort. The wind had risen alarmingly during the night, but Lou knew instinctively that the weather was not, as yet, too bad to deter him had he wished to make the trip. She had no means of guessing what had transpired after she had gone up to bed last night—for Melissa had deliberately outsat her hostess—and Piers, morose and silent for most of the evening, had made no move to second her suggestion that their guest might like to go to her room. Lou had left them by the dying fire and it had seemed a long time before she heard Piers moving about next door. She had known that her dream of the day’s ending was lost to her, but he did not even look in for the customary goodnight, and long after the line of lamplight under the dividing door had been doused to darkness she lay, tossing uneasily, listening to the wind and the sound of the breakers, praying that the storm would hold off long enough to allow the passage of a launch to the mainland in the morning.

  Piers took himself off soon after breakfast and would be gone all day, Tibby said, dealing with the business of the island, checking stores, sharing his midday meal with the islanders to save time.

  “Best stay indoors, missis, ‘bis getting rough,” Tibby said, and Lou asked quickly and without due thought:

  “But not too rough yet for the launch?”

  Tibby smiled.

  “Not if Mr. Piers had a mind to chance it. Been across to the mainland in worse weather than this, but like as not he’s no taste for the trip.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What I say, missis. The young lady makes pleasant company, and, after all, she was his rightful bride, wasn’t she?”

  Lou made no reply, used by now to the old woman’s strange delight in causing embarrassment, but she wondered unhappily what, indeed, had made Piers change his mind overnight. Melissa, when at last she put in an appearance downstairs, gave no hint, neither could Lou ask her, but the older girl had about her the settled air of a guest on an indefinite visit, and for that day at least showed a visitor’s polite deference to the wishes of her hostess. They spent the hours of daylight chatting inconsequently over a roaring fire, and Lou, relaxing against her will, realized that this must be the first occasion when she and her cousin had shared such length of intimacy together. It was, she realized, however, no guide to her cousin’s makeup. Melissa was merely being smart and amusing at her friends’ expense; the slick little clichés, the brittle catch-words, were all part of a familiar gambit designed to impress, and Lou wondered why Melissa should have thought her worth the effort. Her cousin’s incessant chatter to the accompaniment of the transistor set she had brought with her began to have no meaning, and Lou, feeling drained, longed for Piers’ return, knowing at the same time that once he was with them, Melissa’s interest would be immediately switched.