Flower for a Bride (9 page)

“He is obviously fond of Donna Colares.”

“He hardly knows her,” with a slight frown, “and in any case, she has, like you, a way with children. But I doubt whether she would make as good a constant companion for a child as you would.”

She looked at him as if she was attempting to puzzle out something. And she remembered that Donna Colares had said that she had a feeling that they would meet again. Was she, then, in this, too? Had Dom Julyan discussed the matter with her during the afternoon, and perhaps brought her over for tea in order that she could, in a sense, vet Lois? Perhaps the heir to the Marquis de Valerira had said: “There is a young English girl who would be ideal for Jamie, and as Mattie is getting so old I’ll have to do something about him soon. For a year or so she could cope with him until he is sent to school. . . . I know her family, and they’re quite respectable (would he be likely to mention that he had been prepared to make a member of it his wife, or did Donna Colares already know that?). And the girl herself hasn’t much of a job in England, and she likes it out here, and it would be a kindness to her. . .”

But although a few weeks back Lois would have regarded the offer of such a job as one to be grasped at eagerly, she had the vague feeling that the offer that had been made to her wasn’t real, and even if it was real she didn’t even know whether she wanted to accept it. Perhaps if it had been made to her yesterday, before she had heard anything about Donna Colares, and before Miss Mattie had told her what she had told her. . . . Before she met Donna Colares. . . .

• And why hadn’t Miss Mattie let her know what was g
  
• So that explained why he spoke English without any
  

And why hadn’t Miss Mattie let her know what was going to be offered to her? Miss Mattie liked her she felt sure, and there had been something wistful in her expression when they said goodbye. . . . And she was very shrewd and far-seeing. Perhaps she was too far-seeing! ...

“Well?” Dom Julyan enquired, and he sounded just a little surprised because Lois was sitting beside him and saying nothing.

“I—I. . . . You have taken me very much by surprise,” Lois admitted.

He smiled in the way that revealed a naturally kindly disposition.

“I had rather hoped it would be a pleasant surprise. You expressed yourself so much in love with our scenery, and you don’t strike me as the type of young woman to thrive in a dull London office. Here you would be provided with a home as well as a job, you would have freedom and very little supervision, and your salary would be yours to do with as you will, not to expend on lodgings, and so forth. Aren’t you tempted at all?”

“I—”

She stared down at her hands.

“Perhaps you have friends in London whom you would dislike not to see again for a long time,” he suggested, with sudden coldness.

“I have friends, of course. . . .”

“One friend in particular?”

She looked up at him, and then away.

“No, I have no particular friend,” realizing what he meant by a ‘particular friend.’

“Then you will stay?”

“No.” She shook her head suddenly, and very definitely. “No, Dom Julyan, thank you very much, but I would rather say no to your offer.”

For one instant she felt that his surprise was almost acute, and that was followed by another instant when she knew he was displeased. And then with a “Very well,” and no attempted persuasions whatsoever, he started up the car and turned it so that once again they were heading towards Alvora.

But by the time they reached the hotel a feeling of panic had come upon her—because, having refused his offer, this was probably the last time she would ever see him, and the thought was suddenly more than she could bear. She knew that the real reason why she had said she wouldn’t stay was because she knew—and Miss Mattie knew! —what had happened to her, and the only way to avoid laying up a whole stock of future unhappiness for herself was to catch that afternoon plane the following day, and get back to her typewriter in London.

But when the car slid up outside the hotel entrance, and Dom Julyan alighted and went round in his customary punctilious manner to help her alight also, a feeling that at all costs she had to make known an altered decision rushed over her. Her ankle was hurting her a little, and Dom Julyan helped her very gently from the car, but he was frowning down at her with a far colder frown than she had ever thought possible on his dark, handsome face, and she felt that she was actually enveloped by his displeasure.

“Shall I carry you to the lift?” he asked. “Or perhaps it would be as well if we had a drink first in the lounge. You look a little pale and tired,” surveying her critically, as they stood together before the hotel.

“No, thank you, I --------- ” And then she swallowed.

“Dom Julyan, may I change my mind?”

Instantly his dark eyes lightened, and the cold frown vanished as if it had never been.

“You mean that you wish to be Jamie’s governess after all?”

“Yes, please.”

She felt weak, and not at all happy because she had changed her mind, but to see him smiling again was a reward in itself.

“That is excellent,” he said softly, taking her arm to lead her up the steps. “And I think this certainly calls for a drink.”

But she told herself miserably that today’s celebration was tomorrow’s disillusionment. Even Miss Mattie had known that she mustn’t take this job, and she was taking it!

CHAPTER SEVEN

But having changed her mind, and decided that, looked at from a purely practical point of view, she was most fortunate to be offered such congenial employment in a country where she had secretly longed to stay, Lois also decided to forget about uneasy convictions that she was doing the wrong thing, and to accept her good fortune with gratitude. And having notified her employer in London that she would not be returning, and offered to compensate him with a month’s wages in lieu of the notice she was not in a position to give, she packed up her things and settled her hotel bill and waited for the car that was to convey her to the Quinta de Valerira.

When the car arrived—a powerful dust-colored car driven by Dom Julyan’s own personal chauffeur, Ricardo— she climbed into it with a light heart, and felt happy because in future her lot would lie in pleasant places, and a small boy with a pointed face and enormous fawn-like eyes was going to fill her with so much more satisfaction than banging a typewriter had ever done. She had absolutely no doubts at all about her ability to manage Dom Julyan’s motherless, curly-headed son, or about the way in which they would get on together, and in fact now that she knew she was going to be given full charge of him an eagerness to take over that charge was the most predominant amongst all her emotions.

A second predominant emotion was the desire that she and Miss Mattie would get on well together, but she needn’t have worried about that. Miss Mattie welcomed her with a firm handclasp and a look that spoke volumes, but was also affectionate. She said, simply:

“I think you know I had my doubts, but I'm glad now that you’ve come! You’re right for Jamie, I feel sure, and it will be very pleasant having you in the house. And I know

you didn’t want to go back to London.”

“I didn’t,” Lois admitted.

In the short time that had elapsed between her acceptance of her new position, and her arrival at the quinta, changes had been made in the nursery quarters to be occupied by Lois and her small charge.

“Dom Julyan thought that I might like to have a little more privacy now that I’m going to be virtually retired,” Miss Mattie explained, with a slightly wry smile, “and he has given me a sitting room and bedroom on the ground floor, so that my old legs won’t feel the strain of the stairs, and you and Jamie are to have quarters upstairs.” She opened the door of a charming day nursery as she spoke, having risked the ascent of the stairs for once, and then passed on into the night nursery which opened off it. Opening off the night nursery was a luxuriously appointed bathroom, and on the far side of the bathroom was Lois’s own combined bedroom and sitting room.

Lois felt her breath catch with sheer pleasure when she stood in the middle of it for the first time. It was not merely a very comfortable room, with one of the brightest of aspects, but at a glance it appeared to be equipped with everything she could possibly need in order to ensure the absolute maximum of comfort. The color scheme was a soft blue, and the walls and paint work were a pale ivory. There were some delightful English chintzes on the armchairs, and the little writing desk looked like English Chippendale. There was an ivory telephone beside the bed, and the bed itself was a modern divan.

Lois caught sight of a delicious arrangement of yellow and pink roses on a little table near the window, and they too looked so very English that her heart leaped suddenly. For the room had obviously been planned in order that she should not feel too strange, and the roses were a final inspired touch.

She wondered whether they were Miss Mattie’s thought, but hadn’ t the courage to enquire.

That first day slipped away very quietly, with Jamie and Lois taking their meals upstairs in their new quarters. Jamie was thrilled with his bedroom, which was much more a boy’s bedroom than the one he had had downstairs. He spent a good deal of time arranging all his personal possessions, his books and his collection of animal photographs, many of which he wanted displayed at vantage points about the room. He was also a collector of model airplanes, but these had to go on show in the day-nursery, as also did a procession of glass elephants, and some weird and wonderful painted wooden dolls.

By the time Lois had unpacked her own things and put them away in the over-abundant amount of wardrobe and drawer space with which she had been provided, it was early evening, and time for Jamie’s bath. A rosy-cheeked middle-aged woman called Josie came up to attend to this, but Lois gave Jamie his supper, seating him in his dressing-gown at a small table reserved exclusively for the purpose, and thinking how adorable he looked with his pyjamas showing below the dressing-gown, and his curls a little damp after his bath.

There was no doubt about it, she thought, Jamie had the power to arouse a good deal of affection in her, and since he was a very affectionate child it would be easy to completely ruin him by yielding to a desire to spoil him. And as she knew little about boys, but understood that they had to be toughened up a little in order to meet the exigencies of life later on, and his father already did a lot of spoiling, in Jamie’s own interests it might be a good thing to introduce a more comradely note into their relationship right from the beginning.

But when she saw him limping off to bed, and reserving for herself the pleasure of tucking him up saw what a wasted little foot it was that had to be supported by a brace in the daytime, her heart ached for him. She sat beside his bed for a long time, telling him stories, and answering sleepy questions about England—a subject of which he never seemed to tire. But when she saw his eyelids growing heavy, and his long eyelashes begin to flutter down on to his cheeks, she bent over him and kissed him, and rubbed her cheek against his.

“I like you,” he told her drowsily, just before she moved away from the bed. “You smell nice, and your hair’s soft and tickles my face. You will stay for a long while, won’t you?”

“As long as your father wants me to stay,” she answered, smiling down at him.

“No,” Jamie said wickedly, his eyes opening very wide and glinting up at her, “as long as I want you to stay!”

“Don't you think your father will want me to stay for very long, then?” she asked.

Jamie lay and surveyed her thoughtfully.

“I don’t know,” he admitted, at last. “But perhaps you’ll be like Miss Mattie and never go away from here!”

But to Lois that was a depressing thought with the dusk creeping down. For to be old and dependent as Miss Mattie was today, even though safe and revered, after so many years passed in one spot, was hardly a goal to strive for. In fact, the thought of herself in a similar position years hence turned something warm inside her a little cold.

Her evening meal was brought to her in her own room, but as she sat toying with the excellent food the depression that had begun beside Jamie’s bed seemed to take a firmer hold of her. She could smell the evening scents creeping in through the open window, and the roses that decorated her own table added their incense to the slightly intoxicating mixture of perfumes. But they were disturbing perfumes, and she felt restless.

Miss Mattie, with whom she had enjoyed a little talk before the meal was served, had told her that Dom Julyan was giving a small dinner-party that night, and that it was very likely he wouldn’t find time to visit Jamie and say goodnight. He didn’t always do so, but he did whenever it was convenient, and the child liked to see his father before he went to sleep.

Lois, with such a capricious appetite that she wondered what the maid was going to think when she took away her tray, felt a little indignant when she thought of Jamie’s disappointment, for surely it was the duty of a parent— particularly when he was the only parent a child had—to say goodnight every night to an only child while he still had him under his own roof?

After all, the boy had no mother to make a fuss of him! . . .

And then she sighed, and decided that perhaps it was not always easy for a man in Dom Julyan’s position to remember little domestic details like kissing a child goodnight. She tried to picture what was going on downstairs in the sumptuous quinta, and thought that she heard the sound of cars drawing up on the gravel sweep before the front of the house. She had never seen Dom Julyan in evening dress, but she could imagine him welcoming his guests, and no doubt he would look quite devastating, fresh from the hands of a competent valet.

Once when she stole out into the corridor she heard the unmistakable trill of feminine laughter, and that sent her scuttling back into her own quarters as if she had heard something she ought not to hear. But, as she settled herself in the big day-nursery, because she felt less lonely and isolated there amongst the many evidences of Jamie’s youthful interests, she attempted to analyse that laughter, and she decided that, yes, she definitely had heard it before. It was the laughter which bubbled up spontaneously in Donna Colares’s throat, and which she had thought strangely infectious when she heard it first.