The Youngest Bridesmaid

by Sara Seale

  “But she only spoke the truth. It’s what everyone must be saying.”

  “Then we must prove everyone wrong, Cinderella. After tomorrow we’ll begin again.”

  “Do you think she’ll be well enough to travel?”

  “I don’t see why not. A slight tummy upset is hardly a lingering complaint.”

  Lou, reassured, was grateful to him for a brief return of the Piers she had been beginning to know, and even Tibby, appearing with her familiar unexpected suddenness to observe in passing that such matters were decided for us by those above, failed to dampen her hopes. But it was Tibby, who, an hour or so later, came downstairs to inform them that Melissa had been very sick again and would certainly not be fit to leave in the morning.

  “She was all right at tea time,” Piers said sharply. “Have you been dosing, her with your unspeakable j concoctions again?”

  He did not wait for a reply, but went upstairs to see for himself how bad Melissa might be, but Lou, watching the old servant’s retreating back as she went to the kitchen, was certain in her own mind now that Tibby’s potions were the main cause of the trouble. For her own reasons she wanted Melissa to stay, and, thought Lou, it was by no means beyond the bounds of possibility that her home-brewed remedies could contain some harmless irritant that would cause vomiting.

  She said as much to Piers when he came downstairs again, but he was no longer receptive.

  “Nonsense!” he exclaimed irritably. “You’ll be suggesting next that the poor old girl cooks up poison in her spare time.”

  “Not poison—just something harmless to cause sickness,” Lou said, and a small note of distraction came into her voice. “Can’t you see, Piers? Tibby’s done her best to drive a wedge between us ever since you brought me here. She must know perfectly well that our marriage isn’t—isn’t normal, and she’s taken a fancy to Melissa. She wants to get me out and Melissa in.”

  She stopped speaking abruptly as she felt the sudden chill in Pier’s regard.

  “You’re talking a great deal of rubbish,” he said coldly. “The speculations of a rather ignorant old servant should hardly concern you, and whatever Tibby thinks you have largely yourself to blame. You give so much away.”

  “How can I help it when you made it so clear at the beginning—separate rooms and—and everything? It was you who gave too much away, not me?”

  “At least I didn’t confide your apprehensions to Melissa.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know very well, my, dear. You begged her to remain in the first place as a possible distraction, and now you’re stuck with her you have second thoughts.”

  “You know that’s not true! If Melissa told you I had confided in her she did it for her own ends, and one needn’t look very far for them.”

  “Indeed?”

  “Yes, indeed! You called her bluff, you see, by marrying me instead of chasing after her, and now she has regrets.”

  “Possibly we all have regrets,” he said, sounding suddenly very angry, “but whatever yours may happen to be, don’t imagine that you can use your decorative cousin as a red herring. We’ll see if you’re so pleased to be rid of a convenient excuse when I send her home tomorrow.”

  “Oh, Piers, we’re quarrelling...” Lou said inadequately, valiantly resisting a sudden desire to cry. She could not know that to give way to tears then might have broken down his resistance, for she had none of Melissa’s instinctive knowledge of the right and the wrong moment for exercising feminine wiles, so she merely sounded petulant and childish.

  “Hardly a quarrel,” he replied crushingly. “The whole thing’s a storm in a teacup and not worth any loss of temper. You’re carrying your make-believe a little far, Cinderella, when it comes to turning Tibby and Melissa into a witch and the wicked fairy respectively. You must learn to grow up.”

  “One can’t,” said Lou, listening to an ominous rise in the wind which could mean that the storm would break before morning, “grow up if one’s treated as a child. You have, I think, a very limited experience of women, Piers.”

  He looked at her with surprise, hearing, too, with slight uneasiness, the change in the weather. She could be right at that in her assessment, he thought a little ruefully, remembering the brief, sophisticated affairs which had punctuated his life. There had been scant reality in any of them, and there was something very real, and a shade disturbing, about this child he had married so inconsequently. Hadad Melissa not arrived to interrupt his tardy wooing, he might, by now, have found that simple felicity which had always eluded him, and which he had instinctively felt could be fostered on this island cut off from the tedious obligations of wealth.

  “You’re probably right,” he said. “It’s even possible that you can teach me more than I can teach you. Forget my impatience, Lou, if you will. Tibby’s potions, whether they were responsible or not, shall be poured down the drain in future, and we’ll have Melissa headed on her homeward journey tomorrow. Will that satisfy you?”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  But the storm broke in the night. Lou had lain listening to the violence and fury of wind and rain and known that their last chance was lost. Inexperienced in matters of west country weather, she had thought the last couple of days wild enough, but, looking from her window in the morning at the heaving sea, and the giant waves turning the little harbor into a cauldron, she knew that departure from the island now would be impossible.

  “How long will it last?” she asked Tibby.

  “Days—could be weeks,” the old woman answered, but there was, oddly enough, no triumph in her voice, only indifference. Having got what she wanted, Lou realized, she could afford to withdraw her spite, or perhaps she was merely sitting back and waiting.

  Melissa, Lou found, had recovered sufficiently to leave her bed and devote time and care to her face. Tibby had unpacked again for her, and when Lou looked in to enquire, she was making a leisurely and dissatisfied selection from the mass of clothes she had brought.

  “Not a rag to wear! You’ve got away with the best of my wardrobe, darling,” she said, fingering yet another rejected garment in a heap on the floor. “Really, I do think Blanche was a bit high handed, even if there wasn’t time to fit you out. The mink and the more glossy numbers weren’t exactly suitable for this dump, or for you if it comes to that.”

  “Cousin Blanche didn’t know, “any more than I did, that we were coming here,” Lou replied, and was reminded of the many cautions for reticence she had received and ignored when she observed her cousin’s amused smile.

  “You can take back anything you want,” she added hastily. “I’ve worn hardly any of them.”

  “Can I really? Even the mink?” Melissa’s disgruntled expression changed promptly to one of charming excitement. “Let’s go and make selections at once, shall we?”

  She ran across the passage to Lou’s bedroom without waiting to be asked, and Lou stood watching while her cousin pulled clothes from their hangers, trying them on, tearing them off, admiring herself from every angle, picking what she wanted without troubling to enquire what could be spared.

  “After all, they were meant for me, weren’t they?” she said, finally wrapping herself in the mink coat with sensuous delight, preening complacently over the rich fur held against her throat, fully aware that such a coat could do for her what it never would for Lou.

  Neither of the cousins were conscious of Piers until he spoke from the doorway of the dressing room.

  “What the hell’s going on?” he demanded. “This room looks a shambles.”

  “I’m only taking back some of my possessions,” Melissa said, posing deliberately for him to admire and approve.

  “Your possessions?”

  “Well, they were bought for me, darling. Lou has very sweetly said I can have them back.”

  “As I understand I’m responsible for the bills, the decision hardly rests with Lou,” Piers said, and there was a dangerous softness in his voice which would have warned Lo
u but was lost on her cousin.

  “Well, even so, sweetie-pie, you’d hardly grudge me some of the spoils, would you? Look at all I’ve lost by flirting with temptation, which is all it really was. Besides, Lou isn’t the type for sophisticated glamour and you can well afford to buy her a demure little trousseau of her own. After all, what girl wants to take on another girl’s leavings?” Melissa had probably spoken at random, and was referring to the clothes, but Lou caught her breath, and Piers heard.

  “So you’ve been complaining again, complaining and confiding?” he said to her, quite pleasantly, but his expression was not pleasant as he watched the betraying color creep under her skin.

  “Melissa, you know I never mentioned—” Lou began, but Melissa’s fine blue eyes had narrowed and her slow smile was politely apologetic.

  “Well, darling, perhaps you sometimes are a little naive with your confidences, but I understand, of course,” she said. “Piers, you mustn’t expect too much of your little bride. Our Louise is devastatingly truthful, you see. If she feels disappointed—or—or—cheated, she makes no bones about it.”

  “And do you feel cheated, Cinderella?” The mocking bite was back in Piers’ voice and he flung the nickname at her with none of the accustomed gentle humor.

  “I don’t think our private affairs can have much interest for Melissa,” said Lou, striving for dignity, but before he could comment Melissa broke in with drawling amusement:

  “On the contrary, my sweet. You forget that Piers and I were once engaged, and anything affecting his love life interests me profoundly. Darling Piers, can’t I even keep the minky?”

  “No,” said Piers harshly, aware with a distaste in himself that when she chose to cajole him with her old practised guile, she could still stir his senses, if not his reason.

  “Oh, let her have it,” Lou said wearily. “I’m not all that way about mink, anyhow.”

  “Shut up, the pair of you!” Piers exclaimed rudely, and went back to his dressing room, slamming the door behind him.

  “Poor sweet! Between us we’ve really got him rattled,” Melissa remarked, her head on one side, and Lou, driven at last beyond the polite bounds of hospitality, rounded on her cousin.

  “Melissa, we’d better come to an understanding,” she said. “I’m stuck with you, thanks to Tibby’s efforts and this blasted weather, but if you came here to make mischief you’d better have second thoughts, so no more hints and half-truths about confidences I’ve never made. Leave Piers alone—understand?”

  It never failed to surprise Melissa when her mousy little cousin suddenly turned. She had not learned, as Piers was beginning to, that under that artlessness lay a simple honesty that could be disconcerting.

  “Why, darling—” she began in injured protest, then her curiosity got the better of her. “What do you mean by Tibby’s efforts?”

  “Those doses she made you swallow. They had something in them to make you sick, hadn’t they? I believe you knew it, too.”

  For a moment Melissa looked surprised, then she laughed.

  “Really, Lou, I begin to think Piers is right when he says you live in a world of make-believe and are no flesh and blood wife.”

  “Did Piers say that?” Even as she spoke, Lou despised herself for asking the question, and Melissa seized her advantage. Lou might be hard to fool over certain things, but on the subject of Piers she was vulnerable.

  “That was the kindest of his criticisms,” she retorted. “You really shouldn’t have jumped into marriage with a man of his type and expect to hold him at arm’s length. Can I keep the mink, darling?”

  Lou had gone a little white, but she managed to speak calmly.

  “If Piers agrees. He’s paying for it.”

  “Oh, he’ll agree if you talk him round nicely.

  “All right, we’ll make a bargain,” Lou said, suddenly shedding the first of her too sensitive skins. “You want that coat badly, don’t you? If you behave yourself while you’re here you shall have it, if not, you won’t.”

  Melissa hugged the coat around her and gazed reproachfully over the soft, rich collar.

  “Honestly, darling, I don’t know what you’re getting at,” she protested, and Lou turned away and began putting clothes back on their hangers, conscious that her hands were trembling.

  “I think you do,” she said. “Now help me tidy up the room, please, and first I’ll have the coat back.” Melissa took it off reluctantly, then flung it on the floor with sudden petulance.

  “It sounds suspiciously like blackmail to me,” she said, and Lou unexpectedly grinned.

  “What’s a little blackmail between cousins?” she replied with airy unconcern, aware, to her own amazement, that it was surprisingly easy to call her cousin’s bluff, once you knew how. Melissa, judging by the way her jaw dropped, was equally amazed. For once she had no slick comeback, and began, quite meekly, to pick up clothes and put them away.

  But it was not so easy, Lou discovered, to maintain that advantage when Piers was present. Melissa gave a good enough impersonation of the untimely guest who had unwittingly outstayed her welcome to make him frown at Lou’s lack of response.

  “You’re hardly helping the situation,” he told her. “Melissa’s sudden arrival was unfortunate, if altogether typical, but at least she’s behaving herself. Why can’t you play ball?”

  Because, thought Lou wretchedly, you could never win playing ball with Melissa, but she could hardly tell him so.

  “I’m afraid I don’t know the rules,” she temporised and he gave her a sharp look.

  “I only meant make an effort to be more natural—more of a hostess,” he replied mildly. “There’s only the one accepted rule for polite hospitality, surely?”

  “Do you think I’m being rude, then?” she asked, sounding anxious and bewildered again, and he made a small gesture of impatience.

  “Good grief! How literal can you get?” he ‘exclaimed. “Of course you’re not rude—it’s only—oh, well, if you don’t get my meaning, I can’t explain. Forget it.”

  She got his meaning all right, she thought, but doubted whether he himself was as clear. He was being made to feel ill at ease by the situation, and whatever he had felt for Melissa during their engagement could surely not, Lou thought, be forgotten so soon.

  She tried, after that, to be more social and attentive when the three of them were together, but it was not easy to forget that she had once been the Chailey’s poor relation, expected to be grateful for the crumbs, and Melissa although she was too clever to openly disregard her cousin’s new status, had subtle ways of reminding her that make-believe was no foundation for security.

  “Cinderella!” she would say with a giggle. “Is that Piers’ charming nickname for you?” Lou had ceased to find it charming and she knew Melissa knew it, too. “But, darling, what could be more romantic? The press fairly went to town on the story—or don’t you read the gossip columns?”

  “We don’t get papers here—at least—”

  “Of course you do! They come over by launch with the mail; Tibby’s kept the lot. Really, Lou, you have no sense of occasion—or does Piers keep the sordid details from his Cinderella bride?”

  “What was sordid about it?” Lou asked with innocent surprise, and flushed as she realized how ingenuous she must sound.

  “That was a figure of speech, you clot!” her cousin retorted, starting her familiar aimless perambulations round the room. “You really will have to take a pull on yourself, sweetie, if you’re not to bore Piers to death. As a novelty for a jaded appetite he may find you refreshing, but he’s got to spend the rest of his life with you—or has he?”

  “And what do you mean by that?”

  “Well, these days marriage isn’t the ghastly till-death-do-us-part affair it used to be. Divorce has become respectable—and very fashionable.”

  Lou controlled herself with an effort. She knew that she laid herself open to ridicule by her ignorance of the easy standards of the rich which
made her say stupid things, but at least she could deny her cousin the satisfaction of getting a rise every time, so she held her tongue and merely blinked back. All the same, it became only too clear to her that Piers, who had seen so much of the world, and been so shamelessly run after, might very soon suffer the boredom of the rich and spoilt.

  “Cheer up!” said Melissa who, having planted the seed, could afford to be good-natured. “You don’t need to take my warnings too literally. Piers has probably reached the age when glamour begins to pall and the prospect of a wholesome dutiful little wife is rather restful after so much, racketing around, only do make some effort, darling. Doll yourself up in the evenings, even if you are stuck on a desert island. Even if Piers does like to lounge about in flannels and old sweaters, he’s always liked his women soignee.”

  “I always do change into another frock,” Lou said, but did not add that another woman’s elegant trousseau, very little of which suited her, scarcely made for self-conceit.

  Two days went by with the storm still raging, and it became difficult to fill the long hours between meals. Piers was out of doors a great deal, helping the islanders with their livestock, and the makeshift repairs to their homes, but the two cousins had to make do with each other’s company and the small transistor set Melissa had brought with her. Lou missed her daily rambles on the island and her shy exchanges with the fishermen and their wives. She would have welcomed an opportunity of helping Tibby about the house had she been wanted, but the old servant did not mellow with their enforced captivity and refused all Lou’s tentative offers. It was all the more galling, therefore, to find Melissa perched on the kitchen table at odd moments, drinking tea and smoking her Turkish cigarettes, while Tibby ironed or baked, apparently unresentful of interruption.

  As often as not Sam would be there, too, eyeing Melissa with undisguised admiration, while she, well aware of his good looks and her own effect on the opposite sex, encouraged him idly under Tibby’s indulgent eye. On these occasions they would all stop talking and look at Lou with polite enquiry as if it was she who was the intruder and not her cousin, and she would go away thinking humbly of Melissa’s ease with strangers.