Love is for Ever (9 page)

“Oh!” Jacqueline exclaimed. And then, in a voice that was really soft with gratitude: "How—how kind of you to think of it! But,” she added, “I could hardly have gone there dressed like this, could I?”

“No, perhaps not.” His eyes were on the road ahead, and he still would not look round at her.

“Perhaps another time—” she began diffidently. He looked round at her then, and his eyes smiled all at once. The vividness of that smile actually warmed her like the sunshine, and she found the way his white teeth flashed as his lips parted over them most attractive.

“Of course! This afternoon, if you are an extremely good girl, and promise never to make me endure another twenty minutes of waiting for you such as I endured this morning? I really had the feeling that you had been swallowed up by an ogre or abducted, or something of the sort.”

“But twenty minutes is not really a very great length of time. And I might have been having my hair cut.”

“The hairdresser was closed,” he remarked.

“Oh, so you found that out?”

“Yes; and I also found out that you had been simply prowling round, and then all at once you disappeared.”

“Oh, dear!” she exclaimed. “In England I disappear so often, when the mood takes me, that it would give some of these people a heart attack.”

“Including me?”

“I can’t think why you should have a heart attack on my account.”

“Can't you?” swerving to avoid a car that swept past them on the road. “Well, I’ ll tell you something—I don’t like the thought of the kind of life you live in England! I don’t like the thought of it at all! In fact, I disapprove of it most strongly!”

Jacqueline once again said nothing for several minutes; and then she returned to a subject they were discussing earlier.

“You said that you would take me—this afternoon—to San Agariu?”

“Yes; after tea, when it is a little cooler. Will that suit you?”

“It will suit me excellently. But, what about—what about Martine—?”

“Martine?” he echoed, and now it was his voice that was very dry, while all at once a curious kind of taunting smile visited the corners of his shapely mouth. “Martine is going to submit herself to the hands of Juanita after tea. She wishes to gild the lily a little—and in her case any attempt at beautifying herself is gilding the lily, don’t you agree?—because we are going out for the evening. You, and Dr. Barr, are going out for the evening, too. We are all four going together to a certain rather popular local night-spot, where we shall dine, watch a cabaret, perhaps, and dance—that is, of course, if you care for dancing?”

“I haven’t danced very much since my schooldays,” Jacqueline admitted.

“But you enjoy it?”

“Oh, yes, I enjoy it.” And then, all at once, a tiny glow of pleasure appeared in her face, not so much because of the thought of the evening ahead of her, but because an evening of the type he had planned was an extremely rare thing in her life—in fact, she had never actually enjoyed such an evening. An odd young man had taken her to the theatre occasionally, and even out to dinner—but not dinner at a restaurant where one watched a cabaret, and then danced. “I think,” she said, with a sudden, impulsive note of enthusiasm in her voice, “that it will be very nice!”

“Because you will be able to dance with Dr. Barr?”

She looked at him sideways, and her look was heavy with disapproval.

“
Touche
.” he exclaimed, and then laughed softly, and she laughed back, and all at once it seemed that they were on excellent and quite understanding terms with one another.

When they got back to the Villa Cortina they were both amazed to make the discovery that the Senora Cortina, dressed in one of her stiffest gowns, with jet bracelets on her wrists and brooches pinned to the front of her dress, and her best lace mantilla hiding her silvery hair, was ensconced in the patio in one of the deep wicker chairs, with
Tia
Lola beside her doing some complicated drawn-thread work.

Jacqueline, once Dominic had helped her from the car, went forward at once to say how delighted she was to the little old lady, and the Senora Cortina smiled at her as if she found her a very pleasant sight, in spite of her very modern dress, and patted her

hands with pleasure.

“This is one of my very good days,” she said, “and so I decided to emerge from my room and drink an aperitif with you all before lunch.”

“But this is marvellous!” Jacqueline exclaimed.
“Maravillosa
!” she added, in Spanish.

Dominic bent over his grandmother’s tiny, frail figure and kissed her with a kind of exquisite gentleness. Jacqueline was quite touched by the way in which he did it, and by the instant clinging response of the old lady’s beringed fingers. She looked up at him as if she adored him.

“Provide me with a drink, Dominico,
mi querido
,” she said softly, pushing him from her at last. “A little of that very dry sherry which I can sometimes take.”

He hastened to obey her request, and Jacqueline sat down on the grass at her hostess’s feet, and accepted a glass of sherry also. The Senora Cortina looked a little surprised.

“But where is the so beautiful Miss Howard?” she asked. “Was I misinformed when I was told that you had all gone to the beach together?”

Dominic explained. Miss Howard was in her room, resting. If she didn’t appear at lunch something would have to be sent to her on a tray, for she suffered very badly from migraine, and the heat had brought on one of her bad heads. In fact—and he summoned Juanita, who was waiting on them—it might be as well if an enquiry was made at once, and Juanita was despatched to the house to find out the latest intelligence concerning Miss Howard; and when she returned it was with the information that Miss Howard would not be appearing at lunch, but that her headache was better. However, she thought she would keep her room for the rest of the afternoon.

The same thought must have passed through the Senora Cortina’s mind that passed through Jacqueline’s—and that was that a lover’s quarrel might have resulted in a certain amount of temporary tension—for they looked at one another with the same silent and not too discreetly veiled question in their eyes, and the
senora’s
eyes even twinkled a little, as if the vagaries of youth amused her. But Jacqueline was wondering whether perhaps Martine’s sudden indisposition had anything to do with Dominic’s offer to drive her, Jacqueline, into the town that morning from the beach.

“Ah, well,” the Senora Cortina observed, “it would seem that I am not to have both my guests and my family around me at the same time; but at least it is very pleasant to set eyes on you again, my dear child,” she told Jacqueline. “You look like a pretty boy in that dress, and when I was your age it would have caused something worse than consternation if I had appeared in even twice as much clothing. But times change, and we must all adjust ourselves,” with a little sigh.

Jacqueline felt herself flushing faintly because Dominic’s eyes were on her, and she realized that they were smiling a little mockingly and saying to her:

“What did I tell you! ... At least my grandmother does not know that you have been anywhere other than the beach dressed like that! And with me to protect you if the need arose!”

“Perhaps,” she suggested, attempting to get to her feet, “I ought to go in and change ...?”

“No, no, my dear!” Her hostess prevented her with a hand on her shoulder. “It is so pleasant here in the sunshine, with you and my grandson and Lola, and soon I shall have to go in, and then you can change if you wish.”

She sighed as she lay back in her chair, obviously supremely content. Jacqueline felt strangely touched by her inclusion in that little speech
—“with you and my grandson and Lola!”
It had sounded as if she belonged, somehow—as if she had a right to be included.

She looked away across the patio, with its beds of colorful flowers, it scents of lemon and verbena and orange blossom imprisoned by the high white walls, the long shadows falling across the grass, that was short and sweet and thick and heady with a perfume all its own, and suddenly a kind of wistfulness dropped upon her like a cloak. For before very long she would have to leave all this behind—say goodbye to it for ever!—and it was Martine who should have been included in the
senora’s
little speech.

She stole a look at Dominic, and he was lying back in his chair, looking curiously relaxed and happier almost than she had seen him before, with a faint smile on the mouth that was so perfectly shaped—so perfectly shaped that Jacqueline felt her heart do something extremely odd inside her as she looked at it; for one moment her heart seemed to expand with admiration, with a sudden upward rush of approval. And when she looked at his eyes, with their smoky screens of eyelashes—the lazy blue gleam that appeared beneath the eyelashes as he caught her watching him—her heart started to contract.

For he was far, far too handsome, too wealthy, too assured— too much belonging to another world— to mean anything at all in her life.

She wasn’t a Martine, who had appeared in films, and wore gorgeous, slinky dresses—she was just Jacqueline Vaizey, at the moment without a job, and with no one of her own to return to when she went back to England.

Her small face looked suddenly clouded and overcast.

Dominic looked at her keenly for a moment, and then as she ventured to glance at him again he lifted ids glass to her.

“To you, Miss Vaizey, and your stay on Sansegovia!”

“Why do you call the little one Miss Vaizey?” Senora Cortina demanded of her grandson. “She is the daughter of my dear old friend Dr. Vaizey, and her name is Jacqueline. It is too formal to call her Miss Vaizey.”

Dominic smiled.

“To you, then, Jacqueline! It is a French name, and pretty, and suits you very well indeed. My grandmother is right—Miss Vaizey is
much
too formal!”

Jacqueline felt that sudden, revealing color, over which she always had such little control, rising up in her cheeks, and it made her look young, and shy, and embarrassed. The Senora Cortina touched her cheek almost tenderly with a gnarled finger, and at the same time she looked across at her grandson. She looked at him and her quiet old eyes looked suddenly wise and knowledgeable.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Jacqueline dressed that night with a feeling of excitement and pleasurable anticipation she found it impossible to deny. She put on a misty blue chiffon dress with a very full, ballerina-length skirt, and with it she wore silver-gilt sandals and a stole that matched the dress. When she was finally ready she decided that there was not much wrong with her appearance, and that was an opinion heartily endorsed by Juanita when she arrived hastily after lending a great deal of assistance in the room next door.

Juanita looked a trifle flushed, and even put out, which was unusual with her.

“That one!” she exclaimed, spreading her hands dramatically, and rolling her eyes a little. “That Senorita Howard!... Tonight I fail to please her!
Eso no es possible
!” Her hands continued to wave, and her plump shoulders to lift. “First it is the hair that is not right, and then the dress—the fastenings are all wrong! I alter the fastenings, and what then—? The hem itself is wrong!”

She uttered a sigh of exasperation, and turned away to Jacqueline’s dressing-table and proceeded automatically to straighten the articles on the top of it.

Jacqueline sat down in a chair and ran a buffer over her pearly-pink nails, which she never varnished.

“I wouldn’t worry,” she said soothingly. “But have you any idea how soon Miss Howard will be ready?”

Juanita shrugged her shoulders again.

“It might be any time,
senorita.”
And then, her conscience pricking her because she had done so little for Jacqueline: “I will fetch you a glass of sherry and a biscuit to partake of while you are waiting?
Si?”

“No, thank you, Juanita.” Jacqueline dismissed her, and told her not to get too agitated, and went on with her gentle burnishing of her nails. She could picture the scene in the next room, with Martine in one of the moods which caused her green eyes to flash dangerously, and as she had been more or less imprisoned since morning—as a result of some whim of her own—her mood was probably almost explosive.

Juanita had reported that she had, however, completely recovered from her headache, and as there was nothing Jacqueline could do she decided to sit there patiently until word was received that Martine was about to emerge from her room.

She herself had enjoyed her afternoon, although there had been moments when it had been weighted with a considerable amount of sadness. That was when Dominic drove her to the little English cemetery at San Agariu, and she had left flowers on her father’s grave.

Dominic had waited for her outside the gates of the cemetery, adjoining the pink walled English church, obviously deciding that she would prefer to be alone while she laid her tribute of creamy-white roses on the grave. The roses had been selected for her beforehand by Dominic, and she felt grateful because he had obviously instructed one of the gardeners at the villa to cut them for her.