But Dominic merely continued to smile thoughtfully at the tip of his cigarette.
“Tell me exactly how you've spent your day?” Miss Howard demanded, still addressing Jacqueline, and lying back in her chair as if she was bored in any case, but could stand just a
little bit more boredom. Jacqueline complied with the request.
“I visited the Senora Cortina this morning—”
“Oh! I thought she was ill!”
“She’s better today—much better.”
“But I should have thought visitors were a bit of a strain. How long did you stay?”
Jacqueline looked surprised, but answered truthfully:
“About an hour—perhaps a little longer. I can't be certain."
She saw Martine’s green eyes grow coldly surprised.
“On the only occasion when I was invited to visit the Senora I was asked to sit down for a bare few minutes,” she said, “and then the Senora appeared exhausted, so I was politely requested to terminate my visit.”
She looked at Dominic almost accusingly.
“My grandmother tires easily,” he murmured smoothly.
“But not, apparently, on the occasions when Miss Vaizey visits her!”
“Miss Vaizey is rather different—” he glanced at Jacqueline as if trying to decide where the main difference lay—“and, in any case, she is not a stranger to our island. Her father lived here for years, and that I think gives her the right to be considered as an islander herself!”
His smile at the English girl was the nicest, she decided, she had yet received from him. And then he rather spoiled the impression of shared friendliness and warmth by informing Martine with a dry note in his voice:
“Miss Vaizey had tea with Dr. Barr this afternoon, and that was undoubtedly the highlight of her day!”
“Oh, really?” Martine exclaimed, and the expression on her face altered instantly. A kind of sparkling amusement appeared in her eyes, and her voice, too, grew dry with amusement—backed by something which might have been an unacknowledged relief. “So you find him as attractive as all that, do you?” looking across at the younger girl. “Personally, I think he is very attractive—but, then, doctors usually are, aren’t they? And in this case he must seem more like an old friend of your family ...”
It was plain, as she went on studying the embarrassed and faintly annoyed Jacqueline, that her amusement was growing, as well as for some reason her satisfaction. And then she added that if that was the way the wind was likely to blow they must get Dr. Barr to join them on bathing picnics, and other outings, and Dominic must make a point of inviting him to dinner fairly often—much more often than he had hitherto done.
“In fact, you haven’t been terribly kind to poor Dr. Barr, not since I arrived here, anyway,” with the pettish note returned to her voice, and sliding her green eyes round at him reproachfully. “But as Miss Vaizey’s interests must be studied, and he is an old friend of her father’s, you’ll have to revise some of your ideas and be a little more hospitable to one of her own fellow countrymen.”
“Then in that case you’ll be glad to hear that he’s accepted an invitation to dine with us tomorrow night,” Dominic informed her rather curtly.
“Tomorrow night?” Martine actually started to smile. “Why, that’s wonderful—for Miss Vaizey, I mean!” including Jacqueline in the curiously seductive smile.
As Dominic appeared suddenly a little grim—his perfectly chiselled features could lose all expression when he chose, and a kind of inscrutable cold hauteur stamp them instead—Jacqueline was glad that Tia Lola chose to enter the room at that moment, and after that they all moved out to the big grey car. As if she recognized that it was her right Martine accepted the seat beside Dominic at the wheel, and Jacqueline and Tia Lola sat side by side on the back seat. But when they arrived at Senor Montez’s low white house, which was even more luxurious and rather more spaciously planned than the Cortina one, Dominic helped her out with a kind of gentle care which caused her to smile up at him naturally for a moment. He said, with only a hint of dryness in his voice:
“There’s just a possibility that Barr will be dining tonight. He’s quite a close friend of Senor Montez.”
But if the doctor had been invited he had not accepted the invitation, and although there were several other guests he was not amongst them.
After dinner, which was a lengthy affair of several courses in a decidedly impressive dining room, Senor Montez insisted on showing Jacqueline his library, where not only his prized collection of books was on display, but his valuable collection of china and many other objets d ’art. Jacqueline enchanted the senor with her appearance in a gauzy grey dress, fine as a moth’s wing, which made the most of her typically English fair skin and soft dark curls, and with Spanish gallantry when he led her back to the main salon he informed the assembled company that he had made up his mind that at all costs they must keep the Senorita Vaizey on Sansegovia, and not let her return to England, and if necessary he must find someone to marry her!
“What a chance for our bachelors!” he exclaimed, as he looked round him, beaming, and although his eye lighted upon his nephew that young man appeared quite unmoved. Dominic, whom Jacqueline found herself looking at in the midst of her acute embarrassment, developed all at once a faint curl to his lips, and as his eyes looked back at her she thought they were attempting to mock her again. She felt strangely disappointed.
And when later she saw him disappearing into the darkness of the garden with Martine her disappointment was even more pronounced. She knew she was quite ridiculous, but it was disappointment.
CHAPTER SIX
A week later she found herself resting after a bathe on one of the golden beaches with Martine and Dominic. It was a very warm morning, but there was a faint haze over the sea, and the island inland was rather hazy, too. Later the haze would vanish, and it would be very hot, Dominic warned.
Martine was wearing an enormous shady hat to protect her complexion, which she preferred matt and pale, from the harmful effect of the sun, and a rather startling beach suit which made Jacqueline’s neat white shorts and pale yellow silk shirt look very ordinary by contrast. But, nevertheless, when Jacqueline bestirred herself after gazing dreamily out over the sea, and looked round at the others, it was to find Dominic watching her with that curious, strangely absorbed look of interest which she had discovered more than once in his eyes during the past week, although his behavior apart from that was simply that of an extremely polite host, and any real attentions he had to devote to anyone were devoted to Martine.
Jacqueline felt herself flushing rather absurdly under his look—a delicious, pale pink flush which looked enchanting rising suddenly under the light tan she had acquired—and she stood up rather abruptly.
“If you’ll excuse me,” she said, “I want to go and find a hairdresser who’ll cut my hair really short for me. It feels far too long for this climate,” and she shook out the dark curls impatiently.
Martine looked up at her with a kind of sleepy interest.
“Juanita will do that for you,” she told her. “She’s marvellous at trimming and setting hair, and I wouldn’t allow anyone else on this island to touch mine.”
“Ah; but yours is—well, it's very wonderful hair, isn’t it?” looking at it with genuine admiration. “You simply couldn’t take risks. But mine is just ordinary, and I don’t think I ought to trouble Juanita.” She thought secretly that with Martine an apparently long-staying guest in the Cortina household Juanita had more than enough to do acting lady’s maid to her, as well as her other duties, and she had no desire to impose on the Catalan girl’s good nature. “And, besides, I want to buy some stamps, so I’ll go now if you don’t mind.”
She was quite sure they would both be secretly delighted when she had taken her departure, but perhaps because the spontaneous tribute she had just received to the quality and beauty of her hair had slightly touched Martine—or appealed to her vanity—the latt
er smiled regretfully, if languidly, and Dominic said quite firmly:
“I can provide you with all the stamps you need, Miss Vaizey. There’s no need to climb up to the town in this heat, and Juanita can do all that is necessary to your hair.”
But as he looked deliberately at it his look suggested that in his opinion it was very well as it was.
“Thank you, but I do want to look at the shops.” She smiled at him gratefully nevertheless, and then turned to the natural stairway of rock which led up to the waterfront and put her foot on the first step. “adios,” she said smilingly, addressing them both.
“Wait! I’ll drive you,” he exclaimed. His car was standing on the waterfront and he looked up at it, and then a little doubtfully down at Martine. “You don’t mind being left alone for a few minutes, Martine—?”
“Of course I do!” Martine answered immediately. “And I’m quite sure Miss Vaizey agrees with me that there’s no need for you to drive her. If she insists on doing shopping on a morning of sweltering heat ...”
"Quite right,” Jacqueline called back, as she ran lightly and quickly up the steps, and then she waved a careless hand down at them before she vanished.
“But how will you get back?” Dominic called.
She had the feeling that he stood watching her for some little while before she really vanished, although she did not look back, and that Martine said something rather sharply to him before his attention finally returned to her.
Then Jacqueline started climbing up the steep rise which led to the town, and she decided that as it was so warm she would pick up a taxi when she had completed her shopping to take her back to the Cortina villa. But in the meantime there was the strange lure of the little town ahead of her, with its square and its shops overlooking the harbor, and its atmosphere of believing strongly in the past. Most of the houses which surrounded the square had curly wrought-iron balconies painted bright green against a white or color-washed background, and there were low arches and little alleyways which provided glimpses of gay gardens behind, almost always enclosed by a high stucco wall. The shops had a good deal of variety about them, and in the window of one, which was a chemist's, there were some huge carboys full of red, green and yellow water which presented a wonderful sight at night, when lit from behind. Another was a flower shop, and another sold rich pastries and served coffees and fruit drinks as well, under an awning in front of it.
Jacqueline paused for an orange squash, and then made the discovery that the hairdresser’s was closed for the day, and decided that she would have to keep her too-long locks a little longer. She bought stamps at the post office, paused to admire a vivid poster in a travel agents’ window, and then decided to explore some of the narrow lanes which looked so shadow-filled and enticing.
The shadows cut across the narrow streets like knives now that the mist was lifting, and the power of the sun was growing stronger. There was a delicious cool, earthy sweetness which came at Jacqueline like a welcome caress, and an old woman in a cottage doorway bunching yellow roses nodded and beamed at her as she passed by.
She stood before a house which looked tall, and shut-in and secret, with a coat-of-arms over the impressive entrance porch, and many balconies dripping with ivy geraniums. There were one or two other houses not unlike it, giving the impression of a street where knights-at-arms had once lived, and perhaps ridden their horses over the rough cobbles, with their squires in attendance, while their ladies had peeped at them from the high balconies and narrow windows of the houses. And in the silence and emptiness of such a secluded thoroughfare Jacqueline had the feeling that their ghosts peeped at her, and that womenfolk still watched from behind narrow grilles and cascades of blossom.
She plunged into other lanes like this, into a labyrinth where the houses were not so well preserved, and the atmosphere was a little more sinister, and given up to neglect; and when she finally emerged she found herself back in the main square of the town she knew that she had thoroughly enjoyed her experience.
But a familiar car was occupying a prominent position in the very centre of the square, and beside it a tall man in immaculate flannels, with a silk scarf wound about a bronzed column of a throat under an open-necked shirt, and hair that glinted both black and bronze in the sunshine, stood looking about him with noticeably frowning brows. When he caught sight of Jacqueline, in her white shorts and yellow blouse, the frown instantly vanished, but there was a highly displeased look in his blue eyes as he moved to meet her.
“Where have you been?” he demanded. “I’ve been waiting here nearly twenty minutes,” consulting the watch on his wrist, “and the woman in the cafe said she was sure you hadn’t left the square. And I knew I hadn’t passed you on the road. I couldn’t think what on earth had happened to you.”
"But why should anything happen to me?" she demanded in return. “I’ve merely been exploring. And why are you here, anyway, apparently waiting for me?”
“I am waiting for you. I’ve told you I’ve been waiting twenty minutes. And it is not a good thing to go exploring on your own.” She smiled at him with real amusement. “Rubbish! ” she dismissed this. "On an island like Sansegovia? I’ve been discovering some delicious old houses, and those by-ways are cool as tunnels. They’re also quite medieval.”
“They are,” Dominic agreed; "but if you wanted to inspect them you should have asked me to accompany you. It is not at all the thing for a young woman of your age, dressed as you are, to wander about streets like that alone. I hope you won't do it again,” with so much severity that she thought at first it was merely assumed. “Give me your word that in future you will be more circumspect, and let me know when you desire a little sightseeing.”
“But—” she began; and then his eyes told her that he was quite serious. She looked down at her inoffensive shorts and blouse. "I can’t see that there’s anything wrong with the way I’m dressed.”
“There isn’t—for the beach,” he said.
“I see.” She looked up at him as if he interested her. “You mean that the ladies of Spain wouldn’t go about in public places looking as I’m looking—nor even the ladies of Sansegovia? Well,” her eyes crinkling a little in the harsh glare, and twinkling at the same time. “I feel quite respectable—and, in any case, I’m English!”
“Meaning that in England you go about as you please, and there is no one to interfere with what you do? Quite!” his voice still very curt. “But I wasn’t only thinking of your appearance, respectable or otherwise, and while you are my grandmother's guest you will not behave as if you were still in England. You will allow me to know what you propose to do, in order that an eye can be kept on you.”
“But you have Martine to keep an eye on!” She didn’t quite know why she said it as she did, with a faintly dry, faintly amused note in her voice, and she saw his expression grow really cold, as if she had presumed where he had not dreamt she would presume. “And how can you possibly keep an eye on us both?”
“Martine is not likely to cause me the kind of anxiety you are likely to cause me,” he told her, leaving her with the feeling that there was something inexplicable and unsatisfactory about such an answer. And then he turned and walked back to the car. “In any case, Martine doesn’t come under discussion at the moment,” opening the car door for her, “and she is safely at home with a headache. I drove her back because the headache came on suddenly on the beach. And then I came to look for you.”
“I see.” She settled herself on the comfortably sprung seat, clasping tanned hands about her slim bare knees. She only just prevented herself from adding: “While the cat’s away the mice will play!” with a little smirk which she felt sure would annoy him.
“I wonder just what you do see?” he replied, and climbed into his seat and started up the car without once looking towards her.
Jacqueline sat very silent for a few minutes, and then she murmured:
“It was very kind of you to come and meet me.” “Not at all. And, in any cas
e, my intention was not merely to meet
you. We had a good hour and a quarter before lunch, and I thought there would be time for me to drive you to San Agariu in order that you could visit your father’s grave, and leave perhaps a few flowers there. I all but purchased the flowers while I was waiting for you.”
“Oh!” Jacqueline exclaimed. And then, in a voice that was really soft with gratitude: "How—how kind of you to think of it! But,” she added, “I could hardly have gone there dressed like this, could I?”
“No, perhaps not.” His eyes were on the road ahead, and he still would not look round at her.
“Perhaps another time—” she began diffidently. He looked round at her then, and his eyes smiled all at once. The vividness of that smile actually warmed her like the sunshine, and she found the way his white teeth flashed as his lips parted over them most attractive.
“Of course! This afternoon, if you are an extremely good girl, and promise never to make me endure another twenty minutes of waiting for you such as I endured this morning? I really had the feeling that you had been swallowed up by an ogre or abducted, or something of the sort.”
“But twenty minutes is not really a very great length of time. And I might have been having my hair cut.”
“The hairdresser was closed,” he remarked.
“Oh, so you found that out?”
“Yes; and I also found out that you had been simply prowling round, and then all at once you disappeared.”
“Oh, dear!” she exclaimed. “In England I disappear so often, when the mood takes me, that it would give some of these people a heart attack.”
“Including me?”
“I can’t think why you should have a heart attack on my account.”
“Can't you?” swerving to avoid a car that swept past them on the road. “Well, I’ ll tell you something—I don’t like the thought of the kind of life you live in England! I don’t like the thought of it at all! In fact, I disapprove of it most strongly!”
Love is for Ever Page 6
