by Anne Weale
“Yes, I’d love to, but—”
“I must go, Ray. I don’t want to be late even though I am leaving the store. ’Bye—see you at two.”
And, snatching up her scarf and bag from the other twin bed, Carola whisked out of the bedroom.
After she had gone, Rachel sank back against the pillows and reached for a slice of buttered toast. It was not until half an hour later, when she was dressing, that she realized that, in the confusion of the moment, she had taken too much for granted. Carola was engaged to Peter Brooke—but that did not mean that Daniel had not also asked her to marry him.
Suzy—who was spending the day with a school friend who lived on the other side of Branford—had already left the house when Rachel went, downstairs. But Miss Burney, to whom Carola had also broken her news, was in a twitter of excitement and speculation.
It was about eleven o’clock, and Rachel was alone in the kitchen, shelling peas, when someone tapped at the back door. It was Daniel Elliot.
“May I come in?” he enquired, opening the door for himself before Rachel had recovered from her amazement at seeing his tall figure outside the window.
CHAPTER NINE
THE next moment, Daniel had drawn up a chair and was helping to shell the peas. “I’m hoping I'm in time for a cup of coffee,” he said pleasantly. “Or have you had your elevenses?”
He was still there at half-past eleven, having drunk two cups of coffee, smoked a cigarette, and generally behaved as if popping in for a chat was a regular custom.
Then, quite without warning, as Rachel was washing their cups, he said coolly, “When are you going to face it, Rachel?”
She turned from the sink to stare at him. “Face what?”
“That you can’t go through with this mad engagement to Harvey.”
A saucer slid out of her hands and splashed back into the water. Without knowing what she was doing, she reached for the tin of Vim and shook some into the bowl.
“In fact I’ll prove it to you,” Daniel said quietly.
He crushed out his second cigarette, rose, moved round the table and faced her. The next thing she knew was that his arms were holding her fast and he was about to kiss her.
He would certainly have done so—for Rachel gave no resistance—but a loud exclamation from the hall caused them both to turn round.
“Ah, Mrs. Harvey, good morning,” Daniel said smoothly, removing his arm from Rachel’s waist.
But Mrs. Harvey did not even glance at him. She was glaring at Rachel, her face and neck crimson with outrage.
“So this is what goes on behind Edward’s back, is it?” she exclaimed malevolently. “Just as I suspected! You wicked, shameless girl! And what, pray, is the explanation this time?”
“This time?” Daniel said mildly. “What have you been up to, Rachel?”
Mrs. Harvey ignored him. “Well?” she demanded. “Have you nothing to say for yourself? Oh, of all the disgraceful—”
Daniel cut her short. “Perhaps I’d better clarify the situation, Mrs. Harvey,” he said coolly, no longer looking amused. “What happened just now was entirely my fault.”
This time Mrs. Harvey did not ignore him. “Your chivalry does you credit, Mr. Elliot,” she said more calmly, “but it’s quite apparent where the blame lies, thank you. If my poor son had been guided by my advice, he would have broken off his engagement some time ago.”
“Indeed. Why?” Daniel asked bluntly.
Mrs. Harvey’s thin lips compressed in a grim line and she shot a malicious glance at Rachel.
“In the circumstances, I may as well be absolutely frank with you, Mr. Elliot,” she said coldly. “Whether or not you are aware of it yourself, it’s common knowledge that Rachel has been setting her cap at you.”
Daniel’s eyebrows shot up and he looked at Rachel’s stricken face, his blue eyes glinting.
“Really?” he said dryly. “Oh, surely not. Is this true, Rachel?”
Rachel gave him a look of concentrated venom. “Mrs. Harvey, please—” she began distractedly.
“It’s no use trying to wriggle out of it again, my girl,” the older woman said shortly. “I intend to tell Edward exactly what I’ve seen the moment he gets home. And don’t think he will accept your version of the matter this time.”
“But you don’t understand,” Rachel protested.
“I understand one thing,” snapped Mrs. Harvey. “And so will you before the day is out, my girl. No son of mine is going to marry such a flighty, unfeeling—”
“Will you listen, Mrs. Harvey!” Rachel burst out violently. And then, as her tone dammed the older woman’s flow of denunciation for a moment, “Edward isn’t going to marry me. We broke our engagement several days ago.”
“What?” Mrs. Harvey was aghast. “I don’t believe it,” she said suspiciously. “How can you have done? Eddie would have told me.”
“Perhaps he doesn’t want to discuss it yet,” Rachel suggested wearily. “I haven’t told anyone either.”
“Well ... well, really!” For once in her life, Mrs. Harvey seemed at a loss for words.
It was at this point that Daniel intervened again. “You’ve had quite a shock, Mrs. Harvey,” he said blandly. “Perhaps you ought to take a little brandy to steady your nerves. I daresay there is some in the house, isn’t there, Rachel?”
Mrs. Harvey recoiled. “Certainly not, young man. Far from being shocked, I’m inexpressibly relieved. If you ask me, Edward has had a most fortunate escape.” She flashed another spiteful glance at Rachel. “In fact, if you want to know the truth, I was against the engagement from the start. Oh, I didn’t say anything because Eddie was so set on it—my poor deceived boy. But he wasn’t deceived for long, was he? And nor will anyone else be, once this gets round, my fine madam.”
“And off she goes to make sure it does get round,” Daniel murmured sardonically, after Mrs. Harvey had flounced down the hall and slammed the front door behind her.
Rachel shrugged her shoulders. “Does it matter?” she said listlessly.
Daniel watched for a moment. “So you’ve been free for several days?” he remarked thoughtfully. “Tell me, is there an obligatory interval between breaking one engagement and announcing the next? Or can I ask you to marry me right away?”
His tone was so casual, even flippant, and she thought he must be joking. Her chin came up, but she had to tense every muscle in her body to still the violent trembling that threatened to possess her.
“You must be mad!” she said, through set teeth. “I wouldn’t marry you if you were the last man on earth. Not if you begged me. Goodbye, Mr. Elliot!”
She was almost at the door when he said softly, “Not even if I told you how much I loved you?” With her fingers on the handle, she froze, not believing what she had seemed to hear and yet feeling all breath squeezed from her lungs. She had no idea how long she stood there, incapable of moving. Then she, heard him cross the room, and his voice was close behind her when he said, “You little fool, don’t you know yet what it is between us?” She waited, not daring to turn, incredulous. And then his hands gripped her above the elbows and he whirled her round to face him.
“I love you,” he said violently. “Anyone less mule-headed would have known it weeks ago. Now, for Peter’s sake, stop salving your damn fool pride and tell me you feel the same.”
Rachel looked dazedly up into the fierce blue eyes. She tried to speak, but no words came until, finally, she managed to whisper his name. The next instant she was crushed against his chest with a force that was both painful and ecstatic. For some time, he seemed content to hold her, but eventually he pushed her a little away from him and said huskily, “Thank God this sort of thing only happens once in a lifetime.” His mouth curved. “So you’ve finally given in. How does it feel?”
Rachel expelled a long shaky breath. “Confusing,” she said dimly.
He laughed and drew her over to a chair, pulling her on to his knees. “Now for some explanations, my girl,” h
e said firmly. “Did you really not know how I felt about you?”
“How could I?” she protested. “You were always so horrid.”
He grinned. “Self-defence, my sweet., You didn’t exactly encourage a warmer relationship, you know. And then there was Harvey to consider. I suppose it was very caddish and un-British of me to fall in love with you in the circumstances.”
A slow color began to creep up from her throat and she looked at the lean brown hands enclosing her own smaller and paler ones.
“Do you really, Daniel?” she asked shyly.
“Do I really what?” he teased. Then, in a different tone, “D’you want me to show you?”
She did not answer, her heart thundering against her ribs as his hands slid up her arms to her shoulders. But when he tipped up her chin and bent his head, his lips were gentle. For a moment she submitted to the caress without daring to respond and then suddenly a wonderful sense of relief and delight welled up inside her, and slipping her arms round his neck, she returned the kiss with all the fervor so long denied.
Some time later, Daniel straightened, smiling at her tumbled hair and starry eyes.
“Late—but very satisfactory,” he said, settling her into the curve of his shoulder. “When are you going to marry me? Next week?”
“Oh, I can’t,” she said anxiously. “People would have a fit.”
“To the devil with people,” he said carelessly. “All the same, perhaps we will allow a decent interval to elapse. I rather fancy being engaged to you, Miss Burney.”
Rachel smiled and blushed. “I can’t believe it,” she said softly. “Being here ... like this.”
Daniel’s arm tightened. “High time, too,” he said. “If I’d had my way, we’d have been here a couple of months ago. Now, suppose you tell me why we had to wait so long.”
“Well, I couldn’t know how you felt until you told me, could I?” she objected.
His eyes glinted. “No, being rather slow-witted, my pet, I suppose you couldn’t,” he said gravely. “How did you work it out? That I was making passes at you to keep my hand in? Or didn’t you even realize that I was making passes?”
“Yes, I thought you might be,” she admitted. “But you seemed to be making them at a lot of people.”
He frowned. “Where did you get that idea?”
“I—I saw you,” she said in a low voice. “The night you gave that party.”
“Hm, the night I very nearly kissed you in the study,” he said, reminiscently. “A pity I didn’t. It would have saved that tomfool engagement to poor old Edward. I don’t remember having designs on anyone else, though. Or did you misconstrue my gallantry to Mrs. Bell?”
“Don’t laugh about it, Daniel,” she said pleadingly, remembering how bitterly she had hated him for kissing Carola. Even now the recollection cast a shadow over her happiness.
He saw the pain in her eyes and grew serious. “Now look, what is this, Rachel?”
She tried to draw free but he held her back.
“Oh, I know it really didn’t mean anything to you,” she said wretchedly. “But I wish you hadn’t.”
“For Peter’s sake—hadn’t what?” he demanded.
She swallowed, hating to have to put it into words. “Hadn’t kissed Carola,” she said, very low.
“Kissed Carola!” His eyebrows shot up in astonishment. “My dear girl, I’ve never kissed Carola in my life.”
“But you must have!” she expostulated. “I almost saw it.”
“Aha—almost,” he said quietly. “Now, let’s have this out from the beginning.”
And so, reluctantly, she was forced to tell him what she had witnessed on the terrace and the conclusions she had drawn during the time when he had taken Carola out with him.
“Hm—all of which demonstrates that women make their lives unnecessarily complicated by jumping to the wrong conclusions on insufficient evidence,” Daniel said dryly. “You may not believe me, since you appear to regard Carola as such a femme fatale, but I certainly didn’t kiss her on the terrace or at any other time. For one thing, she’s not my type and, for another, she’d probably have screamed the house down if I’d laid a finger on her. That air of sophistication goes about as deep as her make-up.”
“Yes, that’s what Daddy said,” Rachel said hopefully. “But I didn’t really believe him.”
“You seem to have a very poor opinion of my morals,” Daniel said with mock severity. “Did you really think I couldn’t resist her?”
“Well, she is terribly attractive,” Rachel said reasonably.
“I daresay she is, to boys of her own age,” Daniel said ungallantly. “But I draw the line at girls under twenty-four.” He smiled at her with great tenderness. “Is that why you jumped into your engagement to Edward and wrote me that unpleasant little note to cancel our dinner date?”
“Yes, I suppose it was,” Rachel said, shamefaced. “I didn’t realize it was. I didn’t mean to make use of him, you know. I really thought I loved him and that the way I felt about you was something rather shameful and degrading. You see, I didn’t know anything about love then.”
“That’s been all too obvious, my sweet idiot,” Daniel said with irony. “In fact, if I were the bashful type, we should never have reached this point at all. When did you discover the full depths of your degradation, may I ask?”
“The day of the storm,” Rachel said. “We danced in the hall and I—I thought you were going to kiss me. The awful part was that, afterwards, I wished you had.” She hesitated. “Daniel, when did you know?”
“That I loved you?” he asked.
She nodded.
“The first day,” he said quietly. “The first time I saw you.”
“Oh, you couldn’t,” she protested. “You didn’t even know me.”
He took her hands and kissed them. “I’ve known you for a long time, Rachel,” he said softly. “The difficulty was to find you, my darling.”
Her eyes filled with tears and she buried her face against his shoulder. “Oh, Daniel, if you hadn’t come,” she whispered, clinging to him.
“I know,” he said, stroking her hair. “It was a pretty long chance. That’s why I had to wake you up before you married the wrong man. My God, when I thought of him making love to you, I nearly went crazy.”
“Daniel ... there’s just one thing I don’t understand. When you drove Carola home one night last week, she was very upset. She even cried.”
“Oh, that—that was nothing serious,” he said easily. “She may have kept it dark from you, but I fancy she’s fairly seriously involved with some boy in Branford. My guess is that they had one heck of a row and, in a rash mood, she thought she’d boost her morale by trying to vamp me. I guess I was pretty sarcastic and that made her even madder.”
“Well, apparently it’s all come out in the wash, because she’s just announced that she’s engaged to him.” Rachel grinned suddenly. “Poor Dad, he will have some shocks when he comes home!”
The trees were tinged with russet, but the air was as warm as midsummer on the golden September morning of Rachel’s wedding day.
She was married to Daniel Elliot at twenty minutes past ten in the flower-decked village church—the service being held rather earlier than most in order that the bride and groom should not have to hurry away from the reception too soon. They were due to leave for London at two o’clock, on the first stage of their honeymoon journey to Malta.
“A penny for your thoughts, pet,” said Peter Brooke, coming up behind Carola as she stood sipping champagne and looking momentarily pensive among the chattering groups of guests in the Burney’s garden at noon.
She smiled at him. “I suppose I was feeling envious,” she said wryly, her glance returning to the place under the mulberry tree where the white mist of her sister’s veil was visible among a cluster of people.
Peter slid his hand under her elbow and pressed it gently. “Rachel makes a lovely bride—but you’ll be breath-taking. How about a date with
the best man tonight?”
She smiled again, but the wistfulness lingered in her eyes. She had been attending the London model school for only two weeks, but already there was an added gloss, a new poise about her. Peter felt certain that—with any luck at all—she would soon be a new star in a profession that was noted for meteoric successes.
He was so sure of it that there were moments when he felt he must have been crazy to insist that they did not think of marriage until she had spent one full year in the model game. It was not that he doubted her love for him. If she had had her way, they would have got married immediately. Nor was he afraid that the passage of a year—much of it spent apart—would lessen that love. But he knew that success, once achieved, was very hard to sacrifice, At the end of the year, Carola might love him just as deeply, but she might also have the world at her feet. It would not be easy to toss the world over her shoulder and settle for provincial obscurity.
Now, as she stood beside him in her lovely aquamarine bridesmaid’s dress—her vivid hair was bound by a narrow gold fillet, and she was wearing a pearl and aquamarine bracelet, a gift from the groom, on one slender wrist—Peter felt an overwhelming impulse to say: “I love you. I need you— now. Let’s change our plans and get married at once.”
But, just then, someone came over to speak to them. And by the time they were alone again, he had mastered the passing weakness. This might be the hardest way, but it was also the wise, the best way. When they were married—and he must not think ‘if’ any more—Carola would not feel that she had sacrificed her chance of success; their happiness would never be undermined by suppressed but destructive regrets for what might have been.
“Look, here’s your father. He looks a bit depressed. Worrying about the bills for all this, maybe. Or feeling low at losing two daughters in one month,” Peter said. “Let’s go and cheer him up.”
At a quarter past one, Carola made her way towards the bridal couple to warn her sister that it was time to change into her going-away clothes. Before she could catch Rachel’s eye, Daniel turned from the man he had been talking to, and said, “Hello, sister-in-law. Time to be off?”
