by Isobel Chace
‘Lucasta!’ Marion breathed for the third time. ‘I can’t see him again this evening, whatever you say. I have—I have a terrible headache, and he ought to go to bed anyway. He drove all through the night, and you know what the roads were like this afternoon, and—’
‘Coward,’ said Lucasta with good-natured contempt. ‘You no more have a headache than I have. Well, you can play ducks and drakes with your own future, but I’m not going to allow you to muck up mine! Gaston will be here in a minute and you’re not going until after he’s spoken to Gregory if I have to hold you down in that chair myself! And don’t think I can’t,’ she added, laughing. ‘I’m much bigger than you are!’
‘It isn’t fair that he should have to cope with everything now!’ Marion blurted out ‘Why can’t Gaston speak to him next week?’
‘We’ve been through that before,’ Lucasta answered. ‘Don’t worry so, Marion dear, Gregory can look after himself.’
Even so, the men were a long time joining them. Marion made a pretence of doing her usual round of the ikons, but not even they could soothe her ruffled temper. As soon as she could, she vowed, she would make her escape to her own room and beg Zein to bring her her meal there. By morning Gregory might have forgotten Lucasta’s ill-considered remarks and she could avoid him anyway by burying herself in her work, but tonight she simply could not face any more —from anyone!
Gaston came into the study first. He went straight over to Lucasta and took her into his arms.
‘It is all arranged, mon petit chou. Your uncle is only too pleased to be rid of you as soon as you are eighteen.’
‘But, Gaston, I wanted to speak to him myself! I want to marry you as soon as possible, the moment I’m eighteen! I simply can’t wait any longer than that!’
‘You must do as he tells you, petite. He is fond of you, no? And you of him—’
‘Nothing will induce me to go back to school!’ Lucasta declared, a new fear arising in her mind. ‘You did tell him that, didn’t you?’
Gaston laughed softly in the back of his, throat. ‘He told me. He thinks school is not a good place for a grown-up betrothed lady to be and he particularly wishes you to be here with him for the next few weeks. So, all is well?’
‘Oh yes, Gaston! But where is he? I want to see him for myself!’
Gaston laughed again. ‘Give the man a chance! He was in the bath when I left him—’
‘When he knew we were waiting for him here?’ Lucasta said reproachfully. ‘I do think men are beastly!’ She turned to Marion, apologetic because she had forgotten all about her. ‘They arrange everything without us, without the least idea as to whether it will suit us. They could at least consult us, couldn’t they?’
Marion stuttered out an answer that meant nothing at all. Happily, it was covered by Gaston’s teasing laughter. ‘Could you have arranged everything to much better?’ he demanded, pretending to box Lucasta’s ears. ‘I think not! You have a man to look after you now, and that you like very much, isn’t it so?’
Lucasta blushed. ‘Yes, I do like it,’ she admitted. ‘There’s never been anyone around before. My parents are away more often than not and, although Gregory would always have me in the holidays, I wasn’t absolutely certain he always wanted me. But it’s different with you. I come first with you, don’t I?’
Marion almost prayed that the young Frenchman would say the right thing, now of all times, and she could have kissed him when he did.
‘You will always be first and last with me,’ he said.
Marion stretched herself and cleared her throat. ‘You won’t want me here any longer,’ she murmured. ‘I’m feeling rather tired, actually—’
‘Marion, you have to wait for Gregory!’ Lucasta rebuked her.
‘No, no, he won’t want to speak to me now.’ She bit her lip and held out her hand to Gaston. ‘I hope you have a good trip back to Beirut. We’ll see you again next week-end?’
‘I’m flying up with Denise,’ Gaston told her. ‘The weather is clearing, thank goodness, and we should make good time. I’ll bring the Land Cruiser down next time I come.’ He grinned reflectively. ‘That was some scene with Denise, wasn’t it? But I think she might have known that there was no hope for her when Mr. Randall reclaimed his Mercedes and went rushing off into the night. If I owned a Mercedes like that, it would be like my doppelganger, my other self, and I should be very careful of the company it kept!’
‘But it’s only a car!’ Lucasta objected.
‘They cost as much as a house does in France,’ Gaston told her wryly. ‘And that one is custom-built, with all sorts of special features. Mr. Randall must be a very rich man to afford that. I wonder if he allowed Denise to drive it.’
‘He wouldn’t let me,’ Marion said in a small voice. ‘Goodnight, everybody, I’m going to bed!’
‘You can’t!’ Lucasta cried out.
But Marion was determined. She said goodnight all over again and made a rush towards the door, coming up short against Gregory’s large, hard body as he came in. He was dressed in casual clothes that accentuated his tan and he smelt of a mixture of soap and hot water and his after-shave lotion. He put out his hands to cushion the collision and drew her close against his chest.
‘You’re in a great hurry,’ he said.
‘I want to go to bed!’
He looked down at his watch and raised his eyebrows. His mouth was not so much disapproving as masterful. ‘At this hour? Not even you can choose to go to bed at five o’clock, my ridiculous love.’
If she wanted to, she didn’t see why she shouldn’t. She made an ineffectual attempt to loose his clasp round her waist. ‘Lucasta will want you to herself!’ she told him.
‘Then Lucasta will have to wait,’ he retorted. ‘If anyone goes to bed early, it had better be her!’
‘Don’t be silly!’
‘Really, Marion,’ he reproved her, ‘I refuse to be called silly! We have to see our guests off and, even if you are not, I am extremely hungry after all our adventures. And then—’ He smiled straight into her eyes, depriving her of all breath. Worse still, he knew it. She could tell by the knowing gleam of amusement in his eyes and the tightening of his hands round her waist. A more formal mode of dress would have been more suitable after all, she thought, for his touch disturbed her badly, sending her heart rocketing off into a new rhythm that he had to be able to feel for himself. ‘And then, little Marion, you and I are going to have a talk with nothing and no one to disturb us!’
She stared up at him, unable to wrest her gaze from his. ‘They’re not my guests—’
He flicked her nose with his fingers, taking a firm grasp of her hand in his. ‘I have no other hostess.’ She would have reminded him that he had Lucasta, but he turned away from her, putting her hand with his in his pocket without so much as a by your leave, and threw some car keys across the room to Gaston.
‘If there’s any trouble speak to Monsieur Dain himself,’ he instructed him. ‘He has less taste for dramatics than his daughter.’
‘I feel sorry for Denise,’ Marion put in in a high, clear voice.
‘You need not,’ he replied. ‘Denise has always had several strings to her bow.’
‘She was upset,’ Marion contradicted him, wondering a little at her obvious attempt to annoy him. Why on earth should she want to make him angry? ‘Should she be flying that plane of hers in the circumstances?’ She felt Lucasta’s look of surprise like a body-blow and blushed. ‘I only meant—’
‘Shut up, Marion,’ Gregory advised her, smiling. ‘Denise is the last person to want your sympathy. She doesn’t really want to marry me.’
‘That’s what you say!’ she exploded. ‘You’ll be telling me next that what she really wanted was your Mercedes like—like Gaston seems to think! Well, I don’t believe it! Who wants a Mercedes?’
His smile grew broader. ‘Well, Papa Dam did refuse to buy her me. He said her aeroplane and her Renault would have to do her.’
Was it poss
ible that his Mercedes was as expensive as Gaston had said it was? Marion studied him covertly, noting that while his clothes were casual they were undoubtedly expensive. His collection of ikons too would be way beyond the average man’s pocket. Yet nobody ever talked about his money, not as they did about Denise’s father, or the Hartleys, or—Her hand trembled in his and he gave it a friendly squeeze. If he were rich, it was even less likely that he would want to marry someone as ordinary and as penniless as herself. Perhaps that was what he wanted to talk about. Perhaps he was going to offer her something quite other than marriage. Marion had always thought of herself as a high-principled person who would never settle for less than a ring and a man’s name, but quite suddenly she wasn’t sure about herself at all. It was rather a lowering feeling to think that there was very little she wouldn’t do if Gregory were to ask it of her. That against him she had no defences at all, and didn’t particularly want to build any. It was almost as though she had never known herself at all—any more than she had known her mother would have liked living in the country surrounded by animals and keeping house for a virtual stranger.
‘Well, I’d better be off,’ Gaston said at last. He hugged Lucasta to him, planting a kiss on her ear and bidding her to behave herself as well as she was able. She snuggled her face against his neck and sighed in despair at the thought of spending a few days without him.
Marion turned her eyes away, a little envious of their unselfconscious expression of their feelings. She tugged at her hand and, winning it free from Gregory’s clasp, held it tightly with her other one against her breast. If she made her escape now, she thought, no one would miss her they were all so intent on their own affairs. She tip-toed towards the door and almost had her hand on the door-handle when Gregory scooped her casually back to his side.
‘I shouldn’t, if I were you,’ he warned her.
‘But I don’t want to see Denise again,’ she whispered. ‘I’ll come back as soon as she’s gone.’
‘Promise?’
She nodded, crossing her fingers behind her back. Nothing would induce her to leave the sanctuary of her room once she had gained it!
She felt little better than a traitor when he opened the door for her and stood in the doorway watching her as she fled away from him as fast as her feet would take her. It was surely better this way, though, she comforted herself. He and Lucasta would surely find her de trop while they discussed plans for Lucasta’s wedding and decided how her parents should be told of her forthcoming marriage, they were family, and she—? She wasn’t anything in particular to either of them!
She stood in the centre of her bedroom and her eyes went straight to the little painted houri on the wall. It was her imagination, of course, but the houri’s timidity seemed to hide a blaze of happiness that she had never noticed before. Nor was she looking at the approaching troops, not that she ever had, she was looking in the opposite direction, towards the door. How strange that Marion had never noticed that before either.
How long she stood there, rooted to the spot, she didn’t know, but she was still there when a slight noise at the door made her turn her head and Gregory walked in.
‘Did you knock?’ she demanded.
‘Did you expect me to?’ He came and stood beside her. ‘I knew you both would be waiting for me,’ he went on in a tone of voice she had never heard before. ‘Is it my imagination, or is your image looking distinctly less timid?’
‘I thought so too,’ she admitted. The funny thing was that she felt less shy herself, considerably so, she was even beginning to feel decidedly pleased with herself. ‘I thought it was because I was beginning to get to know her better. I can see the whole fresco from my bed.’
His mouth curved into a smile. ‘I know. Before you came I used to sleep in here myself.’
That destroyed her new-found confidence at a blow.
‘Did you? But you couldn’t see much of her before I cleaned her up.’
‘No?’
She swallowed down the doubt that he was teasing her. ‘Could you?’
‘I liked to know she was there. I talked to her quite a lot, at night just before I went to sleep, and in the morning.’
Marion attempted a small smile. ‘Did she answer you back?’
‘I was never sure whether she would or not. I had to wait until I met the original girl to find out.’
‘Me?’
He nodded gravely. ‘You, Miss Marion Shirley. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw you in that classroom—’
‘You shouldn’t have been there. You sat there, looking disapproving and making me nervous, and I didn’t like you at all!’
‘I didn’t like you either—’
‘I knew that!’ she declared, tossing her head. ‘You weren’t at all friendly! As long as I cleaned your frescoes for you, you didn’t care at all about me! But I have feelings too, you know! It hurt very much that you didn’t like me. People usually find me quite tolerable—I don’t remember anyone disliking me before! And I tried hard to make you think I wasn’t as bad as you thought—’
‘I think you’re beautiful, darling,’ he said, ‘but I didn’t want you for a friend.’ He put his arms round her and drew her close. ‘Didn’t you ever guess, my little houri, that I am in love with you?’
‘There was Denise,’ she pointed out. ‘And Judith. And your sister was very firm about my not being good enough for you!’
He looked amused. ‘Did she tell you so? I’m surprised she dared! If she had seen you in action just now with Denise, sailing into action like a pocket battleship, she would have thought twice before she took you on!’
It was very comfortable leaning against his chest and she put her hands over his, holding them closely against her in case he should step away from her.
‘You looked so tired,’ she murmured. ‘When we stopped for lunch, I thought I had never seen anyone look so tired.’
‘My trip to Petra hadn’t been quite as rewarding as I had hoped,’ he said gently. ‘You were worried about Lucasta and you weren’t thinking of me at all.’
‘Did you really come all that way to be with me?’ Marion stirred, burying her face in his shoulder. ‘I wouldn’t let myself believe it in case—in case you had had another reason for coming. You should have told me! All you ever said was that you wouldn’t be my friend, and you wouldn’t take me to Petra yourself, and I was afraid to let myself hope it might be anything more, that you might have wanted to be with me too.’
‘My dear girl, the thought of your face lighting up when you saw me kept me going through every natural disaster that could befall me on that journey. I hadn’t anticipated that you would draw the curtains and shut me out in the dark!’
‘I’ve never been more glad to see anyone!’ she blurted out. ‘I thought you knew and that you were trying to let me down gently. It was a terribly lonely feeling.’
‘But now you know better? That you have me at your feet and I love only you? Marion, my darling, how could you think that once I had found my own houri to keep me happy throughout eternity, I should want any other?’
‘You mean, you didn’t know?’ She raised her face to his, her eyes wide with wonder. ‘Lucasta knew. Everyone knew!’
He kissed her very gently on the lips. ‘Knew what?’ He kissed her again.
‘That I love you. I love you very much. I think I always have, only when I saw you that day in London, I didn’t know it was you. I got all your books out of the library and it grew inside me as though the seed had always been there, but it was only now growing to its full potential. It’s part of me, like the colour of my hair and—’
‘Your regrettable lack of inches?’ he suggested.
She looked up at him through her eyelashes. ‘It has certain advantages,’ she said. He raised his eyebrows in mute enquiry, his grey eyes gleaming with laughter. ‘I like it when you hold me tight and I can’t get free. I liked it very much in Petra.’
‘You didn’t look as though you did. You looked s
cared to death.’
She chuckled. ‘I daresay you’re right and I need practice,’ she said, smilingly abandoning herself to the pressure of his hands. ‘I’m a very slow learner,’ she added, blushing a little at the way he was looking at her. Was she taking too much for granted? ‘I wouldn’t be scared now,’ she added.
‘Are you sure?’
She veiled her eyes with her lashes, peeping up at him through them. ‘I’m almost sure,’ she amended.
If his first kiss was experimental, as though he were testing the ground, the second one was much less inhibited. Her mouth parted beneath his and she clutched at the collar of his shirt for support as he swept her almost off her feet.
‘Marry me, sweetheart?’ he murmured against her lips. ‘Marry me very soon and we’ll share this room and talk to my little houri together. Will you be my delightful reward for the rest of our lives? I think you must, because I don’t know how I should live without you.’
She pulled back out of his arms, her face flushed with happiness. ‘I’d stay anyway, if you wanted me to,’ she confessed, ‘but if you don’t mind very much I’d rather marry you. I’d like the whole world to know I belong to you—’
He smiled and she thought she had never seen him look better or more handsome than he did at that moment.
