by Averil Ives
She walked to the side of the bed and switched on the bedside light, and when she saw that Felicity was sitting up in bed her lips curled.
“I felt fairly certain you were not asleep,” she said, as she draped herself gracefully on the side of the bed. “For one thing, accomplished musician though he may be, our host’s playing is a little inconsiderate at this hour, and it would be difficult to get to sleep while he kept it up.” She produced a cigarette-case and matching lighter from the pocket of her housecoat. “Mind if I smoke?” she enquired curtly.
“No, of course not.” But Felicity felt forced to defend her host. “Piano playing is usually soothing,” she remarked.
Cassandra eyed her over the flame of the lighter, and her strange eyes gleamed.
“It depends rather on who’s playing the piano, don’t you think?” she observed. “And just how interested you are in everything else they do—in fact, everything about them!”
Felicity said nothing. She was wearing a pale pink nylon nightdress that she had made herself. The tiny tucks and the film of lace in some way emphasized the pastel-tinted delicacy of her whole personality. She had the pleasing perfection of an English hedge-rose against the satin head board of her bed, and although her dark curls were tumbled they were most attractive in their disarray. Cassandra suggested exquisite things, like alabaster and jade, but Felicity had warmth and humanity, and a loveliness there was no disputing.
Cassandra’s eyes narrowed.
“I meant it, you know,” she said, rather abruptly. “My announcement that could go home. I wasn’t just saying something idly, and I didn’t invent your migraine for nothing. I have made up my mind that you must go home, and if it can be before the next steamer arrives the better. Uncle James and Aunt Millicent will probably arrive in some sort of a chartered craft—Uncle James knowing all about these waters, and probably in touch with all sorts of people who wouldn’t keep him waiting over there in Kingston. And whatever means they make use of to get here you can take advantage of to get back to the mainland. Is that clear?”
“It is clear,” Felicity said, after a moment when a genuine spurt of anger took possession of her and made her shake, “that for some reason which I don’t in the least understand you are anxious to get rid of me. But don’t you think our long association merits that I should be told why you want to get rid of me, and why you should turn me into an invalid to suit some whim of your own?”
“Oh, don’t be silly!” Cassandra sounded impatient “Of course I shall miss you, and you're a great help to me in many ways ... And when I get back to England of course there’ll always be a job for you again. In fact, I’ll pay your wages until I do rejoin you or you rejoin me. But in the meantime—just for the present, I don’t want you around.”
“Why not?”
“Oh, darling, don’t be simple!” Cassandra tried to appear as if she really thought her very simple. “I’ve found something here that I want, and it’s pure luck that Uncle James is arriving to give me the necessary time in which to get it! For I won’t fail, I promise you! But you—you could make it just a little bit more difficult for me to get it, and I don’t intend that there shall be any difficulty whatsoever! I mean to have a clear field, and that’s why I want you out of the way!” Felicity stared at her in the soft pink rays of her bedside lamp.
“Are you suggesting?” she began, when Cassandra interrupted her even more impatiently.
“I’m not suggesting anything, but I refuse to compete with a girl who hasn’t a quarter of my looks for a man we’ve both fallen in love with. Yes! ... Whether you realize it or not, you are in love—or well on the road to it—with Paul Halloran, and although I happen to know that you haven’t a chance I refuse to have you around when I want him to myself! I mean to have him to myself, and if you think Uncle James and Aunt Millicent will get in the way, then I can assure you that it won’t matter in the slightest, because it will be a different sort of getting in the way! But you—well, my dear old school friend Felicity, you’re going!”
“Of course I’ll go if that’s the way you feel.”
“You won’t have any option.”
Cassandra stood up.
“You’d better get your things packed tomorrow, and be ready. I’ve already explained why you’re going, and nobody will think it at all strange—not even Paul Halloran! When I’m married I’ll let you know, and we can get together again. But until then—”
“When you’re married?”
“Yes—nothing less this time! Funny how the desire for matrimony overcomes one in time, isn’t it?” And she smiled almost languorously. “It will you one day, when you meet the right man!”
Then, without giving Felicity a chance to say anything more, she swept out of the room, and the girl in the bed was left staring at the closed door wondering whether all this was actually happening. Or whether, perhaps, she was just dreaming..,
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE following morning Felicity knew she was not dreaming. Cassandra wrote out a cheque and gave it to her even before they went down to breakfast, looking at her very meaningly as she did so.
“That will keep you going for a few months,” she said. “I don’t want you to suffer as a result of this change of plan. After those few months are up, if you haven’t landed a job you must let me know. Actually, I’d prefer it if you didn’t look for another job, because I’m going to need you sooner or later.”
“Thank you,” Felicity returned, and handed back the cheque. Cassandra’s coolness was inclined to take her breath away, but enough remained for her to remember her own dignity. “I can manage to keep myself for the next few months,” she observed, “and you’ve already paid my salary up-to-date. I don’t take what I don’t earn,” Felicity said stiffly.
“Don’t be silly,” Cassandra protested. “There’s your fare back to England, and that is my concern. If you won’t take the bonus—and why shouldn’t you look upon it as a ‘bonus’?—you must accept the cheque in order to cover your expenses.”
“Thank you, but I can manage those, too,” Felicity told her, and although it was not her intention to introduce a note of any particular significance into her voice, the significance was there as she added: “And, in any case, the steamer isn’t here yet!”
Cassandra sent her a long, hard, shrewd look.
“I’ve told you that Uncle James isn’t the type to wait for a steamer! He may be here any day—perhaps even this afternoon—and whatever it is that brings him can take you back. As far as Kingston, anyway. After that you’ll have to arrange to fly, or go by sea, as you wish.”
Felicity turned away.
Cassandra said: “That’s why I recommend that you start packing almost immediately!”
They went down to breakfast, and the shady corner of the veranda, to find that Harry Whitelaw was already drinking coffee at the table. He looked up apologetically at Felicity—and this was unusual, because almost always his eyes went straight to Cassandra when the two girls were together. But this morning Cassandra, in her lime green and white, with the perilously high-heeled sandals and that matched the outfit making her willowy height seem more noticeable than ever, seemed to be completely overlooked by him.
“I’m sorry about yesterday, Miss Harding,” the young man said earnestly. “I’d no idea I was putting you through a gruelling experience, and if I’d known about your headaches—”
“Forget them,” Felicity said, gently.
Harry sprang up to pull out a chair for her at the table.
“But you had to go to bed early last night, and it was all my fault.” He sounded really distressed. “And if I’d only had the sense to use Mr. Halloran’s car...”
“But I pointed out to you that it might be needed,” Cassandra cut in sweetly, as she selected her own chair with considerable care. She helped herself to a smooth skinned peach and inspected it gravely. “Have you forgotten that?”
“No, I haven’t forgotten it,” Harry returned shortly. She
looked at him with slim eyebrows raised.
“Then why are you reproaching yourself? It wasn’t your fault, you know—we do have to consider our host, and you your employer! And if we’d deprived him of his only means of transport that would not have been very considerate, would it?”
Harry returned her look a little wonderingly.
“He hardly ever uses it. It’s nearly always in the garage.”
“But he might have wanted to use it!”
“Yes, he might,” Harry agreed, a little slowly, as if he was trying to make her out. Then he turned to Felicity, whose fair-skinned face was bent above a slice of melon, while there was very little evidence that, in spite of her weariness the night before, the climate of the island didn’t suit her. On the contrary, that delicate skin was already overlaid by a light coating of tan, and in the clearness of her eyes when she lifted them he saw natural health and resilience. “You don’t feel as if you are bruised all over this morning?” he asked ruefully. “I know a jeep isn’t the most comfortable method of getting about the island, but it takes to bad roads like a duck to water, and I thought you were keen to see as much as possible. I’m afraid I spun things out and showed you a little too much.”
“I enjoyed every minute of it,” Felicity assured him, because he looked so anxious. “And I’m feeling fine this morning!”
“You are? Then that’s splendid!” He studied her with open intentness for a few moments, and for the first time she read admiration in his eyes as they gazed at her. Then he grinned boyishly. “Perhaps you won’t have to go home after all—not yet awhile, anyway! I wouldn’t like that to happen!”
Cassandra drew in her lower lip, and refused melon when it was offered to her.
“You mustn’t be misled by appearances, Mr. Whitelaw,” she said. “And Felicity is going home.”
“She is?” He sat forward, and the match he had applied to the end of his cigarette burnt itself out.
“Then Mr. Halloran will hold me responsible! He was simply furious with me last night,” with a still more rueful expression crossing his tanned island face than that which had appeared on it before. “I’ve never known him quite so furious. He’s normally pretty even-tempered, but he let me have it last night. In future, Miss Harding, if you want to be taken anywhere, I’ve got to see to it that you’re comfortably ensconced in the back of his car. The back, not the front!” with a white-toothed grin appearing slowly. “If the weather was cold he’d no doubt order a hot-water bottle and rugs!”
Cassandra pushed away her only partly drunk cup of coffee, and then rose and walked to the opposite end of the veranda. Harry looked after her curiously, realizing that she was annoyed, and she couldn’t conceal the fact. He crinkled up his dark eyes a trifle.
“Your employer is a little difficult to understand sometimes,” he remarked to Felicity.
Later that morning Felicity ran into Paul Halloran when he was emerging from a room that she knew to be his own private sanctum, and she was amazed to see the surprise that appeared on his face.
“But you shouldn’t be up!” he exclaimed. “I told Florence that under no circumstances were you to be permitted to get up until lunch time.”
For no reason at all Felicity felt suddenly almost light-hearted as his blue eyes gazed at her, and she dimpled suddenly, and rather deliciously.
“I’m afraid I was up before Florence thought it was safe even to look into my room! And there’s no reason at all why I should stay in bed.”
“Isn’t there?” His eyes seemed to be searching her smooth, laughing face. “But what about your headache?—and that gruelling drive yesterday?”
“The drive provided me with a few bruises—the hardness of the seat!” she laughed. “But my headache’s completely gone!”
“And you’re not afraid it will come back if you don’t test?”
“Of course not.” For a few moments she completely forgot that she was supposed to be a victim of a peculiarly vicious form of migraine. “I’m not subject to headaches! It was just a touch of sun! I mean...” She put up a hand to her mouth as she realized what she had said, and Paul Halloran’s eyes grew bright and alert.
“Then what Miss Wood said last night was not strictly true?”
“No—”
“Can you think of any reason why she should say such a thing?”
“I ... No, I...”
“Perhaps you are anxious to return home? Is that it?”
“No.” She shook her head quite violently. “How could one wish to leave all this behind?” Looking out through the open french window at the veranda, bathed in sunshine, and beyond it the rich emerald of the lawns, with the cool gloom of the plantation beyond that.
“If you really suffered from very bad headaches I think you might justifiably make them an excuse,” he said, in the same gentle tone he had used to her the night before. “But if you don’t suffer from headaches, and you like it here, then there is no reason why you shouldn’t remain Miss Harding!” He touched her arm,
“Yes?” She was just a little startled, and looked up at him. They were standing very close together, and she discovered that be was exactly a head taller than she was.
“Miss Harding, I want to talk to you ... It is the sort of talk I don’t wish interrupted, and as Michael is waiting for me to go through some household accounts with him this is hardly the time! But this evening, before dinner, might be a very good time ... Do you think you could come here to my study about half an hour after the dressing-gong has sounded tonight? As you know, we don’t usually hurry for dinner, and Miss Wood likes plenty of time to dress. You could probably get changed quite quickly ...?”
“Oh, yes,” she agreed, rather breathlessly. “I never take long over changing.”
“I’ve already gathered that.” He smiled at her, his white teeth dazzling her a little because they were so beautiful, while the tinge of blue-black in his hair made her think of a blackbird’s plumage. His eyes she was prepared to lose herself in, as if they were twin blue pools that could tempt her to dive into them, and then be dragged down into unplumbed depths. The thought made her inclined to gasp. “And yet you always look so enchanting!”
“D-do I?”
“I shall always remember you as I saw you that first morning,” he told her, “when you appeared suddenly on the lawn out there!” He indicated the lawn, with a shady tree overhanging it, beneath which Bruno was lying asleep. “One moment I was thinking of business matters, and then I looked up and saw a deliciously demure feminine creature standing there in a blue linen dress! I remember being surprised by the darkness of your hair in contrast with the fairness of your skin, and when you came close and I saw that your eyes were brown instead of blue—as, of course, they ought to be!—I knew that although you were unmistakably English you were the most unusual Englishwoman I’d ever met! And you weren’t even afraid of Bruno!”
“Although he growled at me!”
“Yes—but you put out your hand and touched him. And when you thought I was still blind you wanted so badly to help me, didn’t you? I could feel your anxiety to be some sort of assistance to me even before you told me your name.”
“Could you?”
Her heart was thumping wildly, and she no longer dared to meet his eyes.
“Tonight at about seven? You won’t forget?”
And as she shook her head, so that the dark curls bobbed against her neck, he picked up one of her hands and carried it to his lips.
“Tonight at seven!” he repeated.
CHAPTER NINE
IT was a night such as Felicity knew she would remember, for the rest of her life.
Caribbean stars are always bright, but tonight they seemed to have discovered an extra brilliance, and the sky in which they appeared to hang suspended, like jewels, might have been made of royal purple velvet The light had died out of it more slowly than usual, and while Felicity was putting the finishing touches to her dressing, in front of her dressing table mirror, a war
m glow lingered on the tall tops of the trees in the plantation; it was still there, gilding those feathery tops, when she went out on to her balcony to enjoy a little coolness and calmness from the still sweetness of the night air.
She felt the gentle, zephyr-like breeze touching her cheeks like a caress, and just for an instant the excited flush in them died. Then, when she put her fingers up to them and touched them, the flush was back, hot beneath the tips of her slim fingers as the blood pounded eagerly through her veins. She knew there was little point in deceiving herself. She had no idea what Paul Halloran wanted to talk to her about in his room at seven o’clock, but she did know that the fact that he wanted to talk to her was all-important.
So important that she needed to clutch at her balcony rail as she stood there in the darkness, with something inside her persisting in behaving like the imprisoned bird beating its wings against a cage.
She had been terrified, while she was dressing, that Cassandra would open the door of her room and curl herself up in one of her graceful attitudes in a chair, or on the foot of her bed, as an indication that she wanted to talk. But so far there had been no intrusion, and it needed only a few minutes to seven o’clock. Her ears preternaturally sharpened, she was listening for the mellow chimes of the grandfather-clock in the hall, and as soon as she heard them she felt that it would be safe to go down.