by Sara Seale
“I’m sorry,” she said breathlessly. “There wasn’t a space big enough nearer. Would you rather not come in?”
“How can I buy you a present if I don’t come in?” he asked with wry humor. “Give me your arm, Emily, and don’t bump me into strangers.”
It was the first time she could remember that he had allowed her to act as his guide and she piloted him carefully along the crowded pavement, the pressure of his hand on her arm a proud reminder of his dependence on her, but once inside the shop she was racked with doubt. Was she to make her own choice, she wondered nervously, and if so, what priced gift must she select?
Dane, however, gave her no time to hesitate.
“Pearls, I think,” he said to the assistant. “A single string, well matched, for my wife. You will have to advise her, I’m afraid. I’m blind.”
The assistant fetched the manager, who took over the task of advising with reverent enthusiasm. The string he selected felt cool and smooth against Emily’s throat but the price dismayed her.
“Are they a good color?” Dane asked, waving her protests aside.
“A beautiful color, and perfectly matched,” the man replied. “Small, you understand, but perfectly matched, and the clasp is a single sapphire—very lovely.”
“Very well, we’ll take them,” Dane said!
Emily filled in the amount on his cheque form with a trembling hand, then guided his for the signature, reminded poignantly of that day in the Registrar’s Office.
Back in the car she stammered unhappily:
“I don’t know what to say ... real pearls for me ... and such a terrible lot of money...”
“Don’t let it upset you, Emily,” he said with a faintly bitter smile. “After all, I owe you a wedding present, don’t I—just as I owe you a wedding breakfast? Drive on to the Grand.”
The luncheon was very different from that of her wedding day. Waiters were obsequious, and attentive, and Emily, in her new elegance and with Dane’s pearls shining at her throat, knew that she would be recognized by none of them. She watched Dane anxiously, anticipating his every want in the unfamiliar arrangement of cutlery. He seemed taut and a little ill-at-ease, eating his meal in the public eye for the first time for years, and Emily knew a great rush of tenderness for him, not so much for the handsome gift he had just made her, but because she knew he had broken a rigorous habit in order to please her.
“Thank you,” she whispered across the table. “Thank you for coming more than half-way to meet me...”
He smiled. Behind the dark glasses she could not tell whether he was looking at her or not.
“Perhaps, after all, you’ll be able to prise me out of my shell,” he said. “We must do this again.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
AT Alice’s half-term, Emily went down to the school to take her out for the day. It was the first time she had been away from Pennyleat since she had come there before Christmas, and she realized with surprise how quickly the time had slipped away unnoticed. It was pleasant to travel comfortably in a first-class carriage and know that someone awaited her return in the evening, pleasant, too, to be welcomed sedately by Alice as one of the family.
“We must do something for her in the holidays,” she told Dane on her return.
“Do what?” he asked, listening to the fresh, eager note in her voice.
“Give her some treats and a proper playroom of her own. There must be children somewhere round here who she could get to know.”
“You think I’m a bad guardian?”
“Oh, no! You’re very good to her, Dane, but children need young companionship. Alice is far too staid and old-fashioned for her age.”
“Well, now she has you. You’re young enough to play. You even climb trees.”
Emily sighed. He had, she thought, very little understanding of a child’s needs.
“No, Emily, not as bone-headed as you think,” he said with one of his strange flashes of insight. “Perhaps Alice’s life at Pennyleat isn’t all it should be, but that’s why I sent her to school. She shall, however, have what treats you can devise and, of course, her own playroom. Take the matter up with Mrs. Pride, will you?”
Emily wished Dane would give such orders himself. Mrs. Pride did not take kindly to innovations suggested by the mistress of the house and the matter of Alice’s playroom was no exception.
“There’s always been Mr. Carey’s dressing-room,” she sniffed, “The child can sit in there when she wants.”
“But it isn’t the same as having your own room, with toys and books and a right to make a mess if you want, is it, Mrs. Pride?”
“Miss Alice was never that sort of child. Mr. Carey brought her up right and Mr. Merritt’s doing the same. It would be a pity if you put silly ideas in her head—ma’am.”
“Mr. Merritt is entirely in agreement over the playroom,” said Emily a little sharply. “Will you please decide which room you consider most suitable?”
In the end she and Mrs. Meeker prepared the room between them. Emily made a clean sweep of the existing pictures and bought gay, charming prints to hang on the walls, bright cretonnes for the windows and a stack of the latest books for children. She even bought a doll and a woolly, black-faced lamb because it took her fancy.
When she described these treasures to Dane his smile was a little cryptic.
“It sounds to me as though you’ve been shopping for your own pleasure,” he said. “I only hope Alice’s reactions won’t disappoint you.”
“But she couldn’t fail to be pleased!” Emily exclaimed. “That lamb alone ... I wish you could see it, Dane—it gambols with the very breath of spring.”
“I can see it through your eyes,” he told her gently. “You’re very sweet, Emily.”
He touched her cheek softly, his fingers exploring the clean, firm lines of her jaw and throat.
“Do you want children of your own?” he asked suddenly, and felt the warmth of her skin as the color crept under it.
“I’ve never thought about it,” she said, drawing away. She saw the muscles round his mouth tighten and he pressed his fingers against his eyelids, a habit he had when he was tired or irritable.
“Louisa and I between us—” he said.
Emily wanted to comfort him, to tell him that all their lives were ahead of them and she was content, but his blindness placed a barrier between them, the very barrier which had made this strange marriage possible.
“Shall I take Bella out for her evening run?” she asked prosaically.
That night, long after she had dropped to sleep, she heard him call. She struggled into her dressing-gown with feverish haste and ran into his room.
“What is it?” she asked with quickening alarm. “Are you all right, Dane?”
“Quite all right,” he answered from the bed. “My water carafe’s given out, that’s all.”
Relief made her want to laugh at an excuse which had been made by every child down the ages. She filled the carafe from another on the washstand and poured him out a glass of water.
“Can’t you sleep?” she asked, standing beside the bed as he drank.
“No, but that’s not unusual. The blind frequently suffer from insomnia.”
“I didn’t know.”
“Too little difference between night and day, I suppose. Perpetual darkness has no distinctions.”
“Would you like me to stay and talk to you?” She asked the question diffidently, remembering how he had snapped at her for watching him, but he moved his feet to one side and made way for her on the end of the bed.
“That would be a kindness,” he replied rather formally. “I’m afraid I woke you.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said, reflecting that it was unlike him to call to her for such a trivial matter as a glass of water.
She curled up at the foot of the bed, aware that the room was cold. The fire was nearly out and only the barest glimmer of light revealed his outline propped up against the pillows, his hands clasped behind
his head.
“Shall I say verses to you?” she asked.
“Verses?”
“It’s like sheep jumping through a gap in the hedge—monotonous, you know.”
“Is it? Say the verses of that song, then. How did it go? ‘Black is the color of my true love’s hair...’ ”
“ ‘... His face is like some rosy fair ...’ ” she went on in a soft little voice. “ ‘The prettiest face and the neatest hands. I love the ground whereon he stands.’ ”
“A strange description for a man,” he observed.
“Do you think so?” said Emily gravely.
“I love my love and well he knows
I love the ground whereon he goes.
If you no more on earth I see,
I can’t serve you as you have me”
He sighed sharply and, conscious herself of the melancholy induced by the sad little stanzas, she hurried on.
“The winter’s passed and the leaves are green,
The time is passed we have seen,
But still I hope the time will come,
When you and I shall be as one...”.
She stopped abruptly and shivered, aware of the room’s harsh chill and her own strange thoughts. He spoke suddenly, making her jump.
“You’re cold,” he said. “Come under the eiderdown beside me.”
She hesitated only because he had taken her by surprise, and this odd intimacy of the night was new and unlooked for, but he said impatiently: “There’s nothing improper about keeping warm under your husband’s eiderdown. Come on.”
She slipped under the quilt beside him and felt him make room for her. He slid an arm round her for greater comfort and her face was against his shoulder. She could feel the hard ridge of his collar-bone under her cheek and the rise and fall of his steady breathing.
“Go on with your verses,” he said, but she shook her head.
“No, they’re sad.”
“Tell me, what you were like as a child. Did you snuggle up to your father like this if you were unhappy—or did you, perhaps, bring comfort to him and not he to you?”
“Neither,” she said. “Father only wanted my mother—even long after she was dead.”
“The lovely Seraphina, h’m? Beauty can do strange things to a man, Emily. He is often blinded by it, I think. Perhaps one’s eyes are not always the blessing one imagines.”
He was thinking of Vanessa, she knew, Vanessa, whose vivid beauty had at one time blotted out all else for him.
She sighed.
“No. I suppose one never forgets,” she said.
“But the image alters with the years.”
“Does it?”’
“Oh, yes. The mind’s eyes dims or falsely .exaggerates. Nothing stands still.”
“No,” she said a little forlornly. “Nothing stands still.”
The house was very quiet. One, two, three o’clock in the morning, perhaps, and a gentle rain was pattering against the windows. Quite suddenly Dane moved beside her. His free hand felt for her face and his mouth found hers in the darkness.
Emily lay quite still. It was the first kiss he had ever given her, a kiss, hard, urgent and so totally unexpected that she could make no response.
He took his arm from beneath her shoulders and moved away.
“You’d better go,” he said.
She struggled to a sitting position.
“Dane” she said uncertainly. “I—I didn’t mind.”
“Didn’t you, Emily? That’s very accommodating of you.” The old irony was back in his voice.
“I mean—well, that day in the drawing-room when I first sang you that song, I tried—”
“You tried to make it clear that you were prepared to exceed the terms of our bargain? The point was taken, my dear.”
“I haven’t changed,” she said.
“I’m sure you haven’t. Loving and giving—it’s second nature, isn’t it? Go back to bed, Emily. It’s scarcely fair to take advantage for the sake of a sleepless night, is it?”
She slid off the bed and stood there, shivering, drawing her dressing-gown closely around her. She was acutely conscious of her own inexperience in such matters, of the right words that persistently eluded her.
“Another time I’ll be ready,” she began, and he replied with sudden gentleness:
“Another time we’ll approach things differently. Goodnight, Emily—or rather, good-morning.”
She went back to her room, dismayed that she had, perhaps, failed him, but with a spark of hope for the future coaxed to life in her breast.
The next day, Vanessa returned to Torcroft.
II
She walked in on them that evening, demanding cocktail. She brought with her charming oddments of feminine frivolity as presents for Emily and a bottle of old liqueur brandy for Dane.
“Very, very special,” she told him gaily. “You see, I’ve remembered your penchant for good brandy. I bet old Ben Carey had nothing like this in his cellar.”
Her eyes suddenly went to Emily’s pearls. “Heavens! Are those real? Emily, you lucky little beast! I’ve, never owned anything more valuable than cultured in my life. Let me see them.”
Emily undid the clasp and handed them over. Vanessa examined the necklace minutely, her fingers caressing each pearl with avid yearning, then she clasped them quickly around her own throat and her proud, revealing expression said plainly that here was beauty appropriately matched.
“You’ve already started to spoil her, I see,” she said to Dane. “They’re too lovely—I’m filled with envy and malice.”
She was vibrant with life, sitting in the library, sipping her cocktail, Emily’s pearls displayed so magnificently on her creamy flesh. The tawny hair glowed like a flame, the flawless skin was a challenge to the hard glare of electricity.
Emily knew a brief spurt of anger. Had Dane’s mind been filled with Vanessa when he had turned to her so strangely in the darkness? Could one invest somebody one had never seen with the remembered beauty of another? She became so silent that Dane asked once if she was still there.
“Yes.” she said, without guarding her words. “But I can go. I’ll take Bella for her run, if you would like me to. It’s about her time.”
Dane raised his eyebrows but made no reply and Vanessa made naughty little grimace of understanding. “We’ve been rude, darling,” she said, “I’ve been chattering too much. You and Emily must have acquired the matrimonial habit of silence when you’re alone, I think.”
“Too much chatter can become tiring,” Dane said. It could have been taken as a snub, but Vanessa only blew him a kiss which he could not see.
“You’ve grown stodgy,” she told him with charming impudence. “There was a time when my chatter didn’t tire you.”
“There is a time in all our lives when our better judgment is blunted,” Dane retorted, and this time she did not look so pleased.
“That’s rather rude, darling,” she pouted. Specially when I’ve just brought you that beautiful brandy.”
“I’m sorry,” he said with a grin. “Mix yourself another cocktail if you’re ready. Are you here again indefinitely?”
Vanessa laughed.
"How well you know me, darling! Yes, after my London excesses, I have to rusticate with poor old Aunt Gertrude to recoup, as usual. How maddening it is to be broke! That expensive trifle of Emily’s would keep me in luxury for six months.”
“You haven’t changed, have you? Champagne tastes on a beer income.”
“Isn’t that most people’s trouble—unless, like you, they come into a fortune?”
“Hardly a fortune, my dear, and when I had a beer income, I, at least, could manage on it.”
If his observation had point for her she merely shrugged her shoulders and began mixing herself a cocktail.
“More sherry?” she asked Emily carelessly, as if, indeed, she was the hostess. “No? Well, perhaps you should take Bella out, darling. She’s looking rather menacingly at my ankles.
”
“She wouldn’t touch you unless she thought you were going to attack Dane,” said Emily gravely, and Vanessa laughed.
“Really, Emily, as if I would,” she said contemptuously. “I don’t think she likes me, though.”
“She knows you don’t like her.”
“Well, I can’t help it. I’ve always been led to believe Alsatians are treacherous. Don’t look so indignant, darling. Take her out for her run.”
Emily called the bitch and went out of the room, feeling rather like a child dismissed from its elders’ more important affairs. When she had gone, Dane observed quietly:
“That was rather unkind.”
“Because I can’t pretend a liking for your watch-dog?”
“No, because you made it so obvious that you wanted to be alone with me.”
She went and sat on the arm of his chair and he caught a waft of the perfume she always used, and the familiar scent of her hair.
“Well, darling,” she said with the impudent honesty he remembered, “I’m no good at pretending this either. I did want you to myself. Emily’s a sweet thing, but she can’t enter into our old jokes and reminiscences, and I think she’s a teeny bit disapproving.”
“You can hardly expect her to be very interested in things which happened more than five years ago,” he retorted dryly. “She was barely fifteen then.”
“What a terrifying thought! Five years doesn’t seem so long to me, does it to you?”
He moved a little impatiently in his chair, away from the intimate pressure of her shoulder.
“You and I led rather different lives during those five years,” he pointed out. “They were long to me, yes, and I’m a very different person.”
“Is that a warning?” she asked.
“Do you need a warning, Vanessa?” he countered, and felt her slight withdrawal.
