by Susan Barrie
“It’s going to be a wonderful day!”
“It is.” He looked down at her, and his eyes had come to life, too, and were very darkly blue and gleaming ... and smiling a little. “And you and I are going to spend it together!” He was dragging aside the long white garage doors, and inside she saw a row of cars, and his low-slung white Jaguar amongst them. He opened the door and put her into it. “Do you think we’ll find somewhere where they’ll give us breakfast?”
“If you’re hungry?”
“I am ... now!” He got in beside her and closed the door on his side. He took her hands and looked at them, in particular the slim white finger that had so often been adorned by his opal ring, and he shook his head at her and then carried her hands up to his face and kissed them. “You little idiot, Carole ... You little idiot!”
And then he literally snatched her into his arms and lowered his cheek to her hair. He kissed it in a slightly frenzied fashion for several seconds, after which he put a slightly unsteady finger beneath her chin and lifted it and looked into her radiant eyes.
“Are you really as stupid as you sometimes seem, Carole?” he demanded, but she felt as if she was being engulfed by the tenderness in his eyes. “Don’t you know when a man’s in love with you?”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THEY drove for several miles before they finally found somewhere that would provide them with breakfast, and by that time the sun was high up and there were no longer any wispy, trailing dawn mists clinging about the skirts of the meadows, or shrouding the tops of the trees. The fields, the woods and the distant moors were brilliant with golden light, and every hedgerow was a thing of beauty, and every flower triumphant after having survived the darkness.
The hotel where they were eventually served breakfast was a tiny moorland hotel, quite famous for honeymooners. But even so the hall porter looked at them somewhat askance when they drove up, and James asked for bacon and eggs and a very large pot of coffee. He took Carole by the aim and led her into the breakfast-room while the porter said he would see whether there was anybody awake who could perform the all-important function in the kitchen, and when he left them alone together James selected a table in the window and drew Carole down on to the window-seat beside him.
Carole knew that for the rest of her life she would remember this room, with its antique mirror above the fireplace and its pot plants, and the tables all carefully laid for breakfast with bright cloths and sparkling silver.
She was aware that she probably looked a little dishevelled by this time, and she wanted to do something about it, but James, as he sat devouring her with his eyes, said she looked perfectly all right to him ... In fact, she looked wonderful.
Carole met his eyes without any of the confusion she had always imagined a girl in love—and who now knew herself loved—would feel. Before they had got as far as this James had stopped the car, and she had received ample reassurance that she had, indeed, been the blind one ... the one who had not really had the power to see beyond the tip of her small nose.
Sitting beside him in the car, watching his strong brown hands gripping the wheel, she had felt hardly able to believe it even after all that reassurance, for James was James ... and she was Carole Sterne, with very little to commend her to a man like James apart from her golden blaze of hair, her delicate skin and her eyes.
“Let’s take it from the beginning,” James had said. “I was bored, I was dissatisfied. Life was acquiring too much monotony. You mustn’t forget that I’d always had everything ... well, most things,” correcting himself as her hand lay in his and he felt the urge to carry it up to his cheek once more, and hold it there. His blue eyes binned into hers. “I’d never had a Carole Sterne, who looked when I first met her as if she might hold me in contempt for the rest of my life, and was so enchanting and so desirable that I could hardly believe my good fortune.”
Carole shook her head at him.
“I’m not enchanting, and I’m not desirable ... At least,” flushing because of the amusement in his eyes, “I never suspected before I met you that someone might be deluded into thinking so one of these days. And when I first met you—when Marty introduced us, and you gave us dinner that night, and the Comte de Sarterre joined us—you acted as if you were horribly bored, and I’m quite certain you never really saw me at that stage.”
“I assure you that I did. But I couldn’t quite believe you were one hundred per cent genuine, and I was turning the matter over in my mind when Armand turned up and you seemed to fall immediately under the spell of those bright brown eyes of his. The two of you talked so much about ruined cities, and long-lost civilisations, that it occurred to me I had little to offer if that was what you wanted, for although I like Armand I don’t share his tastes or his interests. By comparison with Armand I’m not really an admirable character—you might as well know that before it’s too late for you to change your mind!—but I do know what I want when I see it for the first time. And I told Marty that I wanted you!”
Carole flushed deliciously.
“Was she—was she very surprised?”
“I think, at first, she was amazed. And then my enthusiasm seemed to catch on, and she was eager to help me. She seemed to think you might prove difficult, because material things weren’t so very important to you, and you’d led a life that was almost nun-like in its simplicity. That in itself attracted me about you. I thought you were almost certain to turn out to be too good to be true, but I’m thankful to know now that I was wrong. The way you reacted when I tossed your case in the lake proved that. You let even your possessions go without raising any violent protest because it was I who tossed them into the lake ... and that meant I was more important to you than your possessions. I took heart from that.”
Carole smiled at him, in the way that had enchanted the Comte de Sarterre when he first saw her smile in such a way.
“I suppose I fell in love with you at sight,” she admitted, with a sigh in the words ... for the knowledge that she could be as honest with him as she pleased now provided her with a blissful sensation in itself. “But it never even occurred to me that you would even notice me. Marty—Marty had told me so much about you, and the way women ran after you, and the kind of gay, exciting life you led, that right from the outset I thought of you as inhabiting a different kind of world from the world I lived in. And then—on that very first evening!—I saw you and Madame St. Clair together. She seemed to me utterly lovely, and it never even occurred to me that you could resist her even if you wanted to. And it was obvious, from the way in which she greeted you, that you were very good friends.”
James smiled a little ruefully. He had had his arm along the back of the seat, and he had been gently playing with the ends of her hair, while his other hand retained her small fingers and kept them up against his face. But now all at once he released her and sat up rather stiffly behind the chromium-plated wheel.
“You might as well get everything really clear from the very beginning,” he said, a little grimly. “I don’t wish you to be deceived about anything ... not even my relationship with Chantal.” He paused a moment and lighted a cigarette, and then exhaled smoke rather jerkily. “Chantal is the sort of woman any man would admire, and she attached herself to me. Oh, I knew very well that she intended to marry me one day ... very largely for my money! Her first husband left her quite well off, but not well off enough, and she was always almost fanatically interested in my career and my possessions. She was yearning to see Ferne Abbey, but I never invited her there.”
“But you did—rather lead her to believe that you admired her quite a lot?” Carole put in, rather a soft, small voice. And although there was no criticism in her eyes he looked faintly guilty for a moment. Then he made a little gesture.
“If I did, it was because I couldn’t summon up the energy to be really blunt with her. Or perhaps I didn’t want to hurt her. I don’t know.” He shrugged. “When you lead the sort of life I was leading in Paris you see a lot of pretty women, and you
adopt a kind of attitude towards them. You flatter when you don’t mean to flatter, and you talk a language which is all flattery and could be very easily misunderstood. Besides, in a way I admired Chantal, and I liked to be seen about with her. I know Lady Bream thought I was going to marry her one day, and so did a lot of other people ... But,” and he once more turned to face Carole, and his blue eyes made no attempt to fall before hers, “I give you my word it was never my intention to marry her. Darling, darling Carole,” taking possession of both her hands and gripping them strongly, “you’ve got to believe me. Chantal is a woman who can take care of herself, an experienced woman of the world who has had many affairs, and who makes no secret of the fact that she is looking for a rich husband. If Armand was a trifle richer I think she would have turned her attention to him before this.”
Carole, with her fingers growing numb in his hold, could feel the beating of his heart as he held them strained against his chest, smiled at him again and spoke still more softly.
“You don’t have to say any more, James,” she told him—and added, with a strange little quirk of a smile, “at least, not for the moment! Not on the subject of Madame St. Clair. I’m perfectly ready to accept it that, at the time when you met me and—thought that you were going to like me—you were also being rather embarrassed by Madame St. Clair, and when Marty suggested something in the nature of an engagement between you and myself you thought it would have the effect of convincing Madame St. Clair that you really were not seriously interested in her, as well as—well, giving you a chance to get to know me.”
“Exactly.”
“And you bought me the ring because ... You did intend me to keep it? I mean, you intended it to be a real engagement ring?”
“Yes.”
“And the good times you gave me, and the presents you bought me... they were all part of something serious?”
“Very, very serious, my darling.”
He would have taken her in his arms at this point, but she held him away from her. There were two things she had to know, and unless she heard the truth about them now there would always be a shadow of doubt between, and the possibility of unhappiness in the future.
“James—” Eye to eye, within a few inches of his face, she spoke—“that night when Lady Bream and Marty sent me to look for you, and I burst in on you in the library of the Breams’ house, and you and Madame St. Clair—”
He made it unnecessary for her to finish the sentence.
“Appeared to be indulging in an ardent embrace?”
“Yes.” She flushed.
“We were in fact taking a tender farewell of one another—or she was taking a tender farewell of me, because I’d made it quite clear to her that I was going to marry you—yes; even if you refused to have me I was going to make you Mrs. James Pentallon somehow or other! I was simple, I suppose, and I thought Chantal was going to be sensible after all. At the moment that you entered the room she was wishing me well, and we were about to part friends with a quick kiss, but she made it a much more voluptuous affair when she saw who it was who was standing in the doorway. I’m sorry about that, Carole. I was quite livid at the time!”
Carole dismissed the matter. That was something she need never refer to again.
“But what about last night?” she asked. “You kissed her again!” with emphasis. “You must have kissed her in the garden, after you told her she was the most beautiful woman you had ever seen!”
He shook his head.
“I told her she was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen in a vain attempt to make you jealous, but I did not kiss her. I swear it! She must have smudged her lipstick on the way back to the house.”
Carole sighed in a luxurious fashion with luxurious relief, and then she allowed him to draw her close to him, but she still declined to allow him to kiss her.
“Last night,” she breathed, looking up at him, “what did you say to Chantal after dinner? You took her out in the car, didn’t you? And you must have talked about something.”
“I made it clear to her that she must leave Ferne Abbey. She agreed, and is probably packing up at this very minute. I was furious about the way in which she talked to you yesterday, and I told her I wouldn’t see her again before she left ... And after that I sat up all night because Marty warned me that you might be going to do something stupid, and I had to prevent you doing it. So, when we came face to face this morning, and I tossed that case of yours in the lake, I had been out in the grounds for hours, watching in case you attempted to slip away. And when you came dragging your small feet so dejectedly down the drive I was so unutterably thankful that I’d stationed myself where I did that I forgot I’d been getting chillier and chillier, and was growing heartily sick of the grounds of Ferne Abbey.”
“Oh, you poor thing!” Carole exclaimed, every truly feminine instinct she possessed bruised and wounded by this admission. “If only I’d known I would have slipped out of the house earlier!”
And then she allowed his arms to close round her, and she put back her head and looked up at him eagerly, inviting, at long last, his kiss. And when the world had steadied, the floor of the car had ceased rocking beneath her feet, and James’s heart was thundering in unison with her own, she breathed remorsefully:
“If only I hadn’t been so stupid when you asked me to marry you. It never even occurred to me that you could be serious.”
James made a slight face.
“So much for my powers of convincing a girl I’m in love with her,” he murmured.
“And when you kissed me, and I smacked your face...” Suddenly she looked at him with worried eyes. “Marty said you would never forgive me!”
James smiled. “Marty doesn’t know everything. But she is looking forward to having you for a sister-in-law, and as soon as we get back to the Abbey we’ll tell her. She was rather afraid that last night you suspected her of abandoning your cause.”
“I did,” Carole admitted.
“But what with having to cope with Chantal and settle things for you, too, she was getting a bit desperate. She couldn’t think of a way out, so she warned me I would have to act swiftly. And when I saw that pile of presents on the library table I knew I would have to act swiftly.” He kissed her rather more violently, her eyes, her hair, her cheeks, her throat, and her mouth. And when he lifted his head he astonished her by introducing the subject of the White Suite.
“We’ll have it done out in some other colour,” he said, “or Marty can have it when she comes to stay with us, or we’ll put visitors in it whom we dislike. But never, never again will you sleep in it, my precious little love, my wife to be!”
“But it’s very beautiful,” Carole murmured, from the shelter of his arms, “and I understand your father intended it for a bridal suite.”
“One very excellent reason why we should get rid of it,” James told her, surprising her because of the sudden look of resentment in his expressive blue eyes. “I always adored my mother, and I never wanted my father to marry again. When we’re married we’ll have our own bridal suite ... but it won’t be the White Suite.”
Carole thought dreamily that all this must be happening to her in a dream—this talk of bridal suites, and the feel of James’s arms round her. And then James remembered that they had both of them had a somewhat exhausting night, and there was a hollow feeling deep down inside him which reminded him that something had been overlooked.
“Breakfast,” he said. “I may not be equipped for it,” recollecting that he was still wearing the clothes that he had donned the night before, “but at least now I can enjoy it.” He took her face between his hands, and he looked at her tenderly. “We’ve got a whole lifetime of breakfasts and lunches and dinners before us, my darling ... at the same table! In England we’ll eat bacon and eggs, in Italy, where I suggest we spend our honeymoon...”
“You’ll have to get me another passport, darling, before we eat pasta in Italy together,” she reminded him, with a happy, bubbling litt
le laugh. “Mine is at the bottom of the Abbey lake!”
