The Young Nightingales (12 page)

“Well? Are you very anxious to return to the Villa Magnolia and be of assistance to Florence
?
”

Of course not. I mean—I like helping her, and she really has had a lot to do since Freda stopped coming to us daily. But if she only has to prepare lunch for Madame
...
”

“You will consider my invitation?”

Her wide blue eyes met his fully, and a curious excitement stirred in her. For the first time she realised that he had changed out of his dark professional suit and was more casually dressed in a lighter suit, and for some reason he actually appeared
younger ...
not as he had looked when she first met him, when there was something hard and resistant and slightly ruthless about him, and his age was more or less indeterminate. Now, with a silk scarf tucked inside his shirt instead of a formal collar and tie, and his beautifully brushed dark hair gleaming in the solitary bar of sunlight that found its way into his charming room round an edge of one of the green sun-blinds, he could even be described as looking distinctly boyish and rather eager.

She stood up quickly and the colour rose in her face.

“Oh, it’s very nice of you to ask me, Doctor, and I really would love to accept,” she got out in a little rush, “but—”

“You are so full of ‘buts’,” he chided her.

“Well, what about Madame’s tablets, and
...
What about you? I thought you were very busy—”

“It is a long time since I had a whole day off,” he explained, “and I have consulted with my secretary and she sees no reason why I shouldn’t absent myself today.” He smiled whimsically. “She is not so determined to keep my nose glued to the grindstone as you apparently are. And as for Madame s tablets, she is not waiting for them, having a sufficient supply to last her for several days yet; and it will be quite in order if you hand them over to her when you return to the villa. Now, are there any other objections that you would like to raise?”

She shook her head.

“None whatsoever.”

“Good!”

He took her by the arm and led her towards the door. But at the door he paused. “You have been sitting here for some time, and you probably feel that the facilities of a bathroom would be desirable.” He was gazing at her in such a way that the strange excitement she had experienced before seemed to rise higher in her throat, and although he was also smiling it wasn’t the smile that affected her. “Your nose doesn’t look to me as if it needs powdering, but you probably think that it does. There is a cloakroom at the end of the corridor. I will wait for you here in the hall.”

She smiled back at him gratefully.

“I won’t be long.”

CHAPTER TEN

WHEN she set out immediately after breakfast that morning to do some personal shopping Jane had no idea that such a day was in store for her. If she had known it might have spoiled some of the pure pleasure of it.

She was glad of the opportunity to wash her hands and re-do her face in the beautifully fitted cloakroom to which she was directed; and when she rejoined Jules Delacroix in the hall she was looking fresh as a flower, and even the ribbon in her hair had been re-tied. He bowed to her ceremoniously in acknowledgement of the efforts she had made.

“You are charming, Mademoiselle Jane
...
no; I will go further than that. You are completely beautiful in a very English way!”

“Thank you.” She smiled at him. “Of course, if I’d known I was going out to lunch I would have worn something different from this,” touching the skirt of the striped dress apologetically. “I would have dressed for the occasion.”

“Then I’m glad you didn’t know. You are rather more than satisfactory as you are,” and there was a look in his strange grey eyes that were so blackly and thickly lashed as he spoke that brought her up short as if she had stumbled.

For one moment she looked back into his eyes, and then she looked quickly away. Never in the whole of her life had the moment seemed so rare and full of promise
...
and yet there was no reason why it should. He was merely being kind. She must remember that he was merely being kind because she had made a fool of herself the other night, and very nearly wept all over
him.

As they walked out to his car she received the distinct impression that eyes watched them, and when she looked round at the window of what was obviously his consulting-room his secretary smiled at her over the net curtains that screened the lower half of the window.

She felt surprised. So even his secretary approved of him taking her out and neglecting his patients in order to do so!

Although she was absolutely certain they wouldn’t be neglected. Dr. Delacroix was not that sort of man.

It was after twelve o’clock when they set out, and they drove straight up the winding white road that led to the lower foothills of the mountains that reared their heads above them. Very soon St. Vaizey with its lake shore and its bright gardens, its white houses and its tourists and five-star hotels, was left behind, and they were claimed by a dim green world of whispering trees.

The white road went on and
o
n, dipping in and out of pine woods and emerging into occasional patches of strong sunlight, and meandering through villages where the steep roofs of the chalet-style houses overhung the balconies that were a blaze of flowers. The Bentley nosed its way effortlessly between these wooden dwellings, and Swiss housewives watched them as they disappeared in a faint cloud of dust round the next bend in the road, while overhead the blue sky was entirely without sign of cloud and the snows whispered on the high peaks ahead of them.

Jane realised that they were climbing steadily, and the very thought excited her. She had so often lifted her eyes to the summits of the mountains and wished that by some magic process she could be transported at least half-way up them. And now, although she was not half-way up them, she was at least leaving the foothills behind.

They stopped
for lunch about half-past one at a small mountain inn that looked both homely and attractive, and Dr. Delacroix—who apparently knew it well—promised her a lunch that was well worth driving so far for. It was not the kind of lunch that would have been served to her at the Continental, and there was no white-coated waiter in attendance; but the woman of the house who looked after them wore a specklessly clean apron, her smiles were welcoming, her cooking was superb, and the coffee that was served to them later on a table overlooking the whole of the wide valley tasted like nectar and ambrosia to Jane.

Her companion insisted that she drank a small liqueur with the coffee, and although she didn’t normally drink liqueurs—especially after sharing half a bottle of wine with her host—she found it very difficult to say ‘No’ to such a strong personality as Jules Delacroix. When he decided that something was good for her, or her reason for refusing something was not sufficiently convincing, he simply smiled and ordered her to be served with it over her head, as it were.

After lunch they proceeded for a short distance higher up the mountain, and then, as it was very hot, Dr. Delacroix brought the car to rest
in
the shade of
a
belt of
conifers.

Jane had been feeling very sleepy in her
corner
of the car, and the welcome coolness of the wood and the scent of the pine needles delighted and revived her for a short while. She left the car when the doctor held open the door for her and ran ahead of him between the
slim
_;
straight trunks of the trees until she found a spot where the short, sweet grass was like a tempting couch, and threw herself down on it. She had no intention of closing her eyes, let alone going to sleep, but when the doctor insisted on providing her with his coat for a pillow, folding it up and placing it beneath her head, such a sensation of dreamy content overtook her that she decided to allow her eyelids to droop for a half-second or so.

Jules Delacroix had walked away from her and was leaning on a fence and gazing out across that wonderful panorama of sloping meadows that eventually became lost in the slight haze in the valley. He was smoking a cigarette thoughtfully, and the aroma of it drifted back to Jane where she lay.

She made a tremendous effort and forced her eyes open. She couldn’t be so rude as to fall asleep. That would be an appalling thing while her host betrayed no signs of wishing to emulate her example, despite the fact that it was warm even in the shade of the trees, and he had been driving since they left St. Vaizey, and had an excellent lunch like herself.

She raised herself on one elbow and watched him. The conversation at lunch had been confined to the view and the general aspect of life in the mountains, and she had been prepared to listen rather than join in. Now, she felt—if only to express her gratitude for this wonderful day that had been granted her after so many weeks of depression and doubt and acute uncertainty about the future—this wonderful day of peace and relaxation and no cares at all (at least, none that she was prepared to dwell on)—she ought to bestir herself to say something, to give voice to her gratitude, to try and be as entertaining as possible in return for so much undemanding kindness.

And then, even as Delacroix turned towards her and smiled at her whimsically, the fatal
thin
g happened, and her eyelashes fluttered and her eyes closed.

By the time the doctor was standing beside her and looking down at her she was fast asleep, her pose unconsciously graceful, her silken dark hair a trifle damp and clinging to her pale forehead in slight, rebellious, plastered curls,
slim
breasts heaving gently under the brightly striped silk that covered them.

Jules knelt down very gently and regarded her for a long time while she slept, then he rolled over on to his side—his face still towards her— and smoked cigarette after cigarette until some slight sound disturbed her, and she awakened.

She sat up and looked about her as if she was badly startled.

“I can’t—I can’t have been asleep
!”
she said.

“I’m afraid you have,” he answered.

Jane whipped round until she faced him. He was smiling lazily, indulgently.

“But that was frightful
!”
she exclaimed. “It was so rude
!”

“It was not in the least rude, and you must have been very tired, for you’ve slept for nearly an hour. I’m surprised that Madame Bowman works you so very hard that on your first day of freedom you collapse with sheer fatigue.”

She laughed, realising that he was joking, and that he knew Madame Bowman sufficiently well to be aware that she was quite incapable of working anyone very hard. The fact that Florence strove to toil as hard as she did was her own fault, for she refused to have another domestic living in the house.

“It was the after-effects of the wonderful lunch we had,” Jane declared, stretching herself luxuriously, for he seemed disinclined to rise, and the fact that she had slept away an hour of the afternoon didn’t apparently matter
...
He was in no hurry. “And the wine and the liqueur. I’m usually very abstemious,” she added modestly.

He sat up and looked down at her, and then leaned towards her.

“The fact that you enjoyed your lunch is the only important thing,” he said. “Did you?”

“You know I did. And I’m enjoying this blissfully lazy method of spending an afternoon.”

“On the way back we will stop for some tea,” he promised. “The English cannot exist without their afternoon tea.”

“Um,” she agreed, “we are rather like that
...
and Madame Bowman certainly is. She couldn’t exist without her China tea.”

“I’m afraid you won’t get China tea up in the mountains,” he replied. “But I’m sure you’ll settle for Indian.”

“Of course.” She was slightly embarrassed because he was staring directly down at her, and every movement she made, every expression that came and went in her face both could not, and did not, escape him. “I must thank you,” she added hurriedly, “for a marvellous day, Doctor—”

He waved an impatient hand.

“Please do stop addressing me as Doctor all the time,” he said shortly. “My name is Jules.”

“But—” She half rose on one elbow, flushing noticeably. “Would—would Mademoiselle d’Evremonde—?”

“And forget Mademoiselle d’Evremonde.”

Her slim eyebrows went up.

“But I thought—”

“It doesn’t matter what you thought.” He put out a finger and touched her cheek, where the velvety flush was staining the creamy beauty of her skin. “You are a very attractive and, I believe, a very intelligent young woman, but you assume a lot. It is true I assumed a lot about you when we first met, but now I have learned to marvel at you, and—not to be sure
!”

“
Sure about what?” she whispered, as she looked up at him.

He frowned.

“In a few weeks or months you will wish to go back to England, won’t you?” he said.
“
Won
’
t you, Jane?” with a kind of urgency.

“I
...
don’t know. No, I don’t think I will.” She wrenched her gaze away from his and looked about her at the sweet dimness of the pine wood, and on the very gentlest of breezes the tinkling music of cow-bells was carried to her ears. She was entranced by it, and she was entranced by the glimpse of deep blue sky above their heads, and the whiteness of the snows across the valley. She thought of the inn where they had had lunch, the friendliness of the woman who ran it, the balcony on which they had sat and the table with the check cloth from which they had surveyed the whole of the valley ... a valley that in winter would be white with snow. The very thought was like a foretaste of something exciting.

And then she lifted her eyes again to his face, and wild excitement fluttered like a bird in her throat. For she was quite incapable of deceiving herself, and she had known from the first that there was something—something about him ... and now she knew that it was a something that caught at her very heart-strings and twisted them agonizingly whenever she thought of Chantal d’Evremonde
...
Chantal, the golden beauty, who had clung to his arm.

Her eyes widened as she made the profoundest discovery of her life, and even her lips fell a little apart. She gazed at him wonderingly, not even realising that she hadn’t yet answered his question in a way that satisfied him, and that he was waiting for some amplification of her uncertain, “No ... No, I don’t think I will
!
”

“I don’t want to go home,” she said, while his long forefinger still caressed her cheek. “But then,” she added, “I no longer have a home in England.”

“The ties of your family are strong,” he said, as if the thought displeased him. “And then there is Roger Bowman. His aunt is quite certain you will marry him one day
!”

She shook her head, as she lay with it against the short, sweet grass.

“Nothing—nothing,” she told him, “would induce me to marry Roger.”

“Because you quarrelled?”

Another shake of the head.

“Because he disappointed you?”

“He disappointed me, but he also opened my eyes. You see, I’ve known him all my life, and I grew up with the knowledge that he was always there. My family encouraged me to think of
him
as my property, and he was always very kind ... rather sweet to me. But after my father’s death I suddenly discovered that he was not in love with me and I was not in love with him, and when I got over the slight shock of it it was a wonderful relief. For, for the first time in my life, the future did not just mean Roger. I was free, and although I was desperately unhappy I was glad of that.”

“Were you desperately unhappy because of your father’s death, or because of Roger?” He was watching her shrewdly. “How can you be certain which of those two it was?”

She smiled with a hint of triumph.

“I can be, and I am certain. My father’s death shattered me. Roger had nothing to do with it. Nothing, nothing at all!”

His sombre, slate-grey eyes gazed into hers. She thought it
would be wonderful just to drown in the curious, exciting depths of his eyes
...
and all at once the look in her blue eyes seemed to have a galvanising effect on him, for he bent and he laid his lips to her hairline, and then his mouth travelled downwards until it found her mouth, and with a gasp of pure ecstasy she surrendered it.