And Be Thy Love (21 page)

It was on the drive back that a little of the pleasure began to fade, and a feeling like apprehension began to seize hold of Caroline. She knew that she was beginning to feel secretly convinced that when the moment which should bring this day Armand—for some reason of his own—had devoted to her to an end, should be actually on top of her, some vital part of her was going to be barely able to stand up to it. For, just as he had taken it into his head to invite her out to-day, he might never invite her out again, and next week, in any case, they were going home to England. Only the day before Lady Pen had started talking about Cook’s, and getting them to make the necessary reservations; and now, when she recalled that conversation, Caroline’s hands went cold and damp inside her thin nylon gloves.

Cook’s...! Cook’s and the reservations, packing up all

their luggage, vacating their hotel rooms-----------Boarding a

Channel steamer that would take her away from France almost certainly for good....For a long time, at any rate....

She began to feel as if something inside her was like a piece of tightly stretched wire, and it couldn’t stand very much more. The least bit of unsuspected pressure and it would snap.

She watched Armand’s hands on the wheel of the car, so calm and confident. He lay back in his corner of the car, behind the wheel, driving with an ease that suggested he had been doing it since his cradle, and that his mind was completely unperturbed. Stealing side glances at him she decided that he was unperturbed...! He had been very gentle and pleasantly attentive to her all afternoon, telling her lots of things that guide books could not have told her, suggesting that she must see Fontainbleau in the autumn, when there was all that blaze of colour in the woods—just as there would be a blaze of colour in the de Marsac woods before very long!—and remarking that it was a pity she hadn’t had her holiday with Marthe Giraud.

“But perhaps, when Marthe comes out of hospital you’ll be able to see her somehow,” he said. “She ought to have a holiday... ! Shall I insist that she takes a holiday in England, and comes to see you?”

Caroline felt as if something had risen up in her throat and was about to choke her. She swallowed, and managed to speak.

“I-----Of course, I’ll always be glad to see her...”

“How soon do you return to England?” he asked, casually. “I don’t suppose Lady Pen will stay on in Paris much longer, will she? And that nephew of hers will be going back to East Africa one of these days, or so I imagine.”

“West Africa,” Caroline corrected him, although she could not think why she did so, since it was not important.

“West Africa, then....” He sent her an odd, amused sideways glance under the brim of his soft hat. “Since you’re so specific about his eventual destination you’re not thinking of going back

with him, are you?”

She bit her lip.

“You’re joking.”

“I’m not! He was looking at you as if he could eat you last night, and you’ve admitted he’s been taking you about a lot since you arrived in Paris. I shouldn’t be at all surprised if Lady Pen hasn’t got that in mind—that you’d make a nice little wife for Christopher! And, come to think of it, you would...! In a few years he’ll be terribly straight-laced, taking his job so seriously that he’ll almost certainly get whatever promotion there is to be got in that particular service these days, and with you beside him he might get almost anywhere! You’re loyal, and faithful, and upright, and moral, and you’re probably single-minded, too! You’d conceive it your duty to do everything you could to help him, whether it was in West Africa, or Central Africa, or one of the plague spots—if there are any that haven’t been cleaned up in this highly civilised age! And think how pleasant it would be for Christopher to have you with him all the time!”

Caroline didn’t bite her lip this time, but she knew that, a slow tear was welling into one of her eyes, and that it would spill over before very long. She could hardly believe that he was deliberately mocking at her—her whom he had admitted he loved! But, then, of course, the love had died, because she had probably killed it—just as he had said she would kill all the happiness that could ever be between them!

She widened her eyes, so that the tear wouldn’t spill over— but it was no good, it dropped on to her hand.

But he was staring at the road winding on interminably, as it now seemed, ahead of them.

“You must think of it, Caroline,” he advised. “Think of marrying Christopher...! It would solve all your problems! You wouldn’t have to go back to that nasty little room of yours, and you wouldn’t have to be dependent on Lady Pen’s affectionate charity! You’d be your own mistress, with a home of your own, and a husband who’d never let you down—for Christopher is

made that way!”

So much bitterness flooded through her that she started to shake a little. He was jibing at her now—at her state of insecurity, at her need to accept charity from others. But she wouldn’t—she needn’t! When she got back to England she would cut loose from them all, and go back to her little room. She would probably be lucky and get her job back, and if not she could get herself another....

“You know very well that you’re only talking like that in order to be—horrible!” she said, her lips shaking now as well as that traitorous thing inside her that was appalled because he had recovered so completely from what was now proved to have been nothing but a very passing infatuation. “When I get back to England,” she added, with sudden concentrated fierceness, “I hope I never see or hear of you again!”

“Oh, come now, Carol!” he protested, lightly. “We had a very pleasant fortnight together!”

“It was a fortnight I’d rather forget!”

He shrugged.

“It is a pity to forget some things, because they provide us with the memories that are often pleasant to recall long after the event is over. When you and I are both married, with families growing up around us, we’ll probably think often of these days—or, rather, the days at Le Fontaine, when we thought we’d found something rather magical, and it all happened because Marthe broke her ankle. We’ll be very grateful to Marthe for breaking her ankle because she gave us something to look back upon....”

“I shan’t look back!”

He sighed.

“You are difficult to please. Almost,” on a note of dryness, “one would think you wish to have your cake and eat it, too! But this sort of cake either has to be eaten or rejected altogether, and I have made up my mind in the interest of us both that it is best to reject it altogether! One day you will agree with me that it was a wise decision!”

The car sped on, and she felt as if misery pressed upon her like a live thing. But she kept her face averted so that he should not even guess at her distress.

“Are you flying back to London?” he asked, at last, as if he was mildly interested. “I know Lady Pen is a little allergic to air travel, and she usually prefers to go by sea. With you, of course, she might feel different, and then there is Christopher to give her a feeling of solid British support! If you do go by air I’d like to see you off at the airport.... I’m not so fond of railway stations....” He caught a curious little sound above the smooth running of his engine, and the very next instant the car had started to slow, and finally it had come to rest beneath a gigantic, towering chestnut tree that spread its branches right across the road. He switched off his engine, and there was absolute silence on all sides of them— silence, that is, except for that vague little gasping noise, like someone or something unable any longer to cope with such an unbearable weight of loneliness and desolation that the tears were falling fast—and as the road was completely empty, and there was nothing but woods, and fields and a cottage or two in the distance to witness what he was doing, he reached out and drew her passionately close to him.

“Carol...! You beloved, foolish little thing...! Don’t you know I’ve only been trying to punish you?” He pressed her head against him, and his own fingers were shaking now. “Oh, my darling, you hurt me so much by your lack of faith, and I was brute enough to want to hurt you back...! And now I can’t forgive myself!”

She put back her head and looked up at him, and although her eyes were swimming with tears, there was the wonder of a new hope in them.

“You mean...? Oh, Armand..! She clutched at him. “You mean it isn’t all over between us?”

“Not while we’ve life and breath, and I can prevent it!”

He held her so tightly that her breath was very nearly squeezed out of her, and she could feel the thundering of his heart against her. He dropped frantic kisses on her hair, and she closed her eyes and the bright drops rolled off her lashes and splashed down on to his hand. An anguished note entered his voice as he added: “Darling, don’t you know that we belong to one another?— And we belonged from the beginning! As if I’d let you go! As if I’d let you go!”

“But, you said--------” her voice was more muffled, and

she was nestling against him, feeling like someone who had been washed up by a storm into a safe place at last—“you said that our love would be in ruins in a short time if—if we stayed together! That I’d interfere with your work, and we’d bitterly regret it! But, oh, Armand,” stealing up a hand to touch his face, “oh, my dearest, my darling Armand! If I can’t be with you I don’t know what I’m going to do!” and her voice quivered abjectly, just as her whole slender body quivered in his clasp.

He looked down at her with a tenderness that she remembered all the rest of her life, and he put the tumbled hair back from her brow with a tender hand.

“When I said that I was beside myself with wretchedness,” he told her, “and also, as I’ve told you, I wanted to hurt you! I felt that you despised me, and I couldn’t bear it! I felt you’d never trust me, and that nearly drove me demented! All my life I’ve cared nothing for the opinions of other people, and then, when I met you, I cared so much for your opinion that I started off by telling you lies! But it was only because I loved you so much— right from the beginning!—and because I knew you were the only woman I ever could love! Sweetheart,” he implored, bending to her lips, “say you believe me now!”

She wound her arms about his neck and held him with a touch of mother-love, as well as the fierce possessiveness of her woman’s adoration.

“I believe you, Armand, my darling!—I’ll always believe you,” with passionate earnestness, “whether it’s important or unimportant that I should do so!”

“And you’ll marry me?”

“If—her soft lips trembling beneath his—if you really want me to!”

“I really want you to!” He crushed her to him. “Carol, there are still moments when I could shake you...! When it seems to me that you are positively stupid! You, the loveliest, sweetest, most adorable woman who has ever entered my life, and you raise a query as to whether or not I want to marry you!” He put his fingers beneath her chin and looked long and earnestly into her eyes. “I want you to marry me so much that it’s an obsession with me! To-day I fully meant to beg you to marry me, even if you still showed signs of disdaining me a little, and I told Lady Pen when I telephoned her this morning that I would bring you back when you had agreed to become my wife, and not before!” “You—you did?” She could hardly believe the evidence of her ears, and her eyes were radiant. “Oh, Armand what did she say?” She thought it was a splendid idea, and congratulated me in advance.”

“Then, she thought ------- ?”

“I think she did—yes,” he said, gently. “Apparently where she was concerned, at least, you wore your heart on your sleeve!”

She leaned her head against him, and sighed.

“Lady Pen is terribly shrewd, and I don’t think it needed a very shrewd woman to tell I was in love with you! Helen Mansfield probably knew it, Christopher certainly knew it, and

your Diane ----------------------- ”

“Not my Diane, darling,” with slightly upraised brows. “We have been good friends for years, but nothing more— that much I can solemnly and truthfully reassure you about! I could have done so before, but I wasn’t so certain you merited the reassurance, since you seemed so eager to think badly of me. But now that I have your word that there are to be no more doubts” “No more doubts, my beloved!”

He kissed her lingeringly.

“It is true that I have been no saint, but even I have a code. In future I shall be a model husband, and the world will take a new view of Armand de Marsac.”

She closed her eyes and rested her cheek against his. “And I will be a model wife!”

“And we will have lots of children, and the first one will be a girl with violet eyes!”

Although she blushed vividly at this she couldn’t resist disputing the statement a little.

“No; a boy with brown eyes...! I love your eyes, Armand,” touching them gently, caressingly, with her finger-tip. “I have dreamed about them night after night for so many nights now, and last night I was so unhappy...”

“And I could have picked Christopher Markham up by the scruff of the neck and thrown him out on to the pavement when I saw you with him last night. To think that the two of you have been seeing Paris together...!”

“But you could have telephoned me earlier,” she reminded him, demurely.

He looked at her with the old Puckish impishness in his eyes.

“But I was inflicting my punishment...! I couldn’t cut it short too soon!”

“Your punishment made me the unhappiest woman in the world just now,” she said soberly, sitting upright

beside him. “I was so unhappy, I----------------”” She reached

out a hand to him, and looked at him imploringly. “Oh, Armand, never punish me again, will you?” she begged.

And only a car travelling towards them at speed prevented him from sweeping her back into his arms and assuring her, with more than words, that he would never punish her again.

At last they were on their way once more to Paris, and he told her that he was taking her back to his flat for dinner.

“I told Lady Pen that she would be lucky if she saw you again before midnight, but she knows you will be safe with me.” He touched her knee gently as they moved noiselessly along one of the broad avenues, and drew nearer to his flat. “And you are safe with me, little one! I mean to make you my wife in as short a time as possible, and Lady Pen has agreed to stay on in Paris and chaperone you until everything can be arranged. But in the meantime you will be as safe with me as with Lady Pen,” and he drew her hand inside his arm and kept it there until they drew up outside the gleaming block of flats Caroline had seen for the first time that morning.