Perhaps she was merely under a spell, but so long as the spell lasted she could belong only to herself. That much she recognised.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
When Bruce call for her the next evening she was wearing a filmy grey dress with a short, full skirt that swirled about her, and she looked so insubstantial and gossamer that he thought even the meeting of their hands was a little rough and crude. Her hair was silken and shining, her eyes very deeply grey and thoughtful, and her mouth had a quiet look about it as if she had formed some sort of resolution.
She didn’t explain to him that her bag was packed, and that she was catching an early morning train to Storr. She didn’t explain, either, that she felt the need to run away—from entanglements, and the danger of entanglements, that were a little alarming to her just then—and behind the red-brick facade of the Red Lion she need not be available to anyone. She could have a good quiet think about her future until Jennifer joined her.
At the theatre she felt too distraite to really enjoy the play, but Bruce was such an attentive escort that she forced herself to smile at him occasionally as if she was finding the evening particularly pleasant. During the first interval he bought her a drink in the bar, and while she was sipping it she suddenly caught sight of Mrs. Freer, in ice blue lame and a sable stole, enjoying a lively conversation with an elderly man close up to the bar. And with them was her daughter, Rosalie, and with Rosalie was the man she hoped to marry before many weeks were out.
Afterwards Susan wondered why she hadn’t felt his eyes watching her long before she looked up and encountered that strange, dark, moody stare fixed on her face. And no sooner did she encounter it than she flushed wildly—a most revealing blush if anyone apart from Justin had been studying her closely.
But Rosalie was wearing a bored and faintly dissatisfied air, and the only things that interested her, apparently, were the gleaming tips of her fingers, which she studied as if she was thoroughly well satisfied with her manicure, at least; and with each movement of her slender left hand the outsize diamond on her third finger caught every ray of light in the bar, and blazed like a thousand eyes.
She wore a dress of apricot-yellow net, that made her look like an apricot-yellow rose, and the stole about her shoulders was white mink. Her curls had never looked quite so blue-black before as they did under the theatre lights, and her mouth was an arresting splash of scarlet, but set in distinctly sullen lines.
Justin’s expression underwent a change as Susan’s blush spread uncontrollably, and he made her a little, half-mocking bow. He was in white tie and tails, and the party were obviously going on somewhere after the theatre. Possibly it was to be quite an evening.
He came across and said something casually to Bruce, and then looked hard at Susan.
“Thoroughly enjoying the play, I’m sure?” he murmured. “You and Bruce seem to keep one another company quite a lot nowadays!”
Mrs. Freer had turned and waved at Bruce—she could never resist a good-looking man, and liked to have a few words with one if she knew him—and he went across and spoke to her, and was introduced to her companion, and Rosalie was suddenly accosted by an extremely tall, fair young man who would look well in the uniform of one of the Guards regiments.
For a brief space of time Susan and Justin were alone in the midst of a crush of people.
“It’s a good play, I think,” she answered him, the colour receding from her face as she put back her small head to look up at him. She declined to attempt any explanation of the reason why she and Bruce saw so much of one another.
He smiled derisively.
“You’re becoming quite a little west-end night-bird, aren’t you, my sweet?” His voice grated on her ear more than it had ever done before. “But you look delightful in that grey dress!”
She bit her lip.
“Your fiancee is looking for you, I think. ...”
“Forget my fiancee!” There was something definitely ugly in his voice this time. “Forget that I possess such a thing! And answer me one question! . . . Why did you refuse to see me when I called at the Red Lion in Storr?” She tried to look everywhere but into his eyes, but some strange compulsion—some deliberate magnetism which he seemed to be exerting—forced her in the end to meet that dark, brackish, sinister gaze which, tonight, seemed to be sullenly angry as well. And the pulse in her throat started to flutter like a frightened bird, and all at once she was aware of a strange drumming in her ears, as if the blood in her veins had become a kind of impulsive torrent that was too eager to make the circuit of her body, and made her feel a little dizzy as well.
“Why did I have to see you?” she counter-questioned. “What—what reason was there?”
“Reason?” The darkness of his eyes seemed to engulf her, to wrap her about like a sable mantle, and at the same time she was aware that behind the darkness there was a flame that was getting out of hand. “Reason! Don’t talk like a stupid schoolgirl, Susan! The reason why you and I have to see one another is the age-old reason why men and women have been seeing one another since time began! . . .” His voice now was a little thick, and a little unsteady. “Susan, I’ve got to talk to you! ...”
Behind them Mrs. Freer could be heard saying gaily to someone who had asked her a question:
“Oh, yes, the Bahamas! . . . Justin has a friend who is willing to place his home at their disposal—for a time you know!—and then they’ll probably go on somewhere else. . . . Such exciting things, honeymoons! ...”
Susan wondered whether all this was happening to her in a dream, and if it was a dream it might have some unexpected ending. But it wasn’t a dream!
“Susan, we’ve got to get right away from everyone and have a talk!. . . ”
There was a rush for the doors as the word went round that the curtain was rising, and Bruce reappeared at Susan’s elbow and grasped her arm. He nodded casually at Justin.
“See you in the second interval. If not, we’re bound to meet sometime!”
Susan had no idea what happened during the second act of the play, and by the time the second interval arrived she was still trying to think up an excuse that would prevent her leaving her seat, but Bruce said smilingly:
“Come on, stretch your legs!”
And feeling as if this was all part of something quite inescapable she went with him, and there was Justin— quite happy, apparently, to know that his fiancee was talking and laughing gaily with the fair-haired young Guardsman—waiting just inside the heavy plush curtains, almost nervously smoking a cigarette. To Susan his face looked colourless rather than swarthy, as she had always thought it, and his eyes were glittering with determination.
“When are you going down to the Dower House, Susan?” he asked.
She met the odd, compelling glitter in his eyes, and heard herself telling him the truth.
“As a matter of fact, I’ve made up my mind to go down to-morrow. I’m catching the early morning train!” “Then, in that case, I can drive you down,” he answered, discarding the cigarette as if he no longer needed it, although it was only partly smoked. “I plan to get away about midnight, if that’s not too soon for you?” “Midnight?” Rosalie came over to them, and her voice was high. “What in the world are you talking about, Justin?” she demanded. “You know very well that we’re all going on to the Bevingtons’ party once this thing is over! I told Lady Bevington that we might be a little late but she understood, because Mummy was so keen to see the play! And we have no plans for going down to Storr for another week yet!”
“You may not have, but I’m leaving just after midnight, as I said.” He glanced at her coldly. “Mr. Grant-Withers can escort you to the Bevingtons’ (apparently it hadn’t occurred to him that the fair young man might not have received an invitation) and you must make my excuses to Lady Bevington. Tell her I’ve urgent business at Storr.”
“But, what urgent business can you possibly have that I don’t know about?” She flung out her hands with a mixture of helplessne
ss and mounting exasperation. “Justin, I think you must have gone slightly mad! And I also think you’re behaving abominably!”
“Because I don’t discuss all my business with you?” And Susan had the feeling that he, too, was getting perilously close to the thin crust of his patience, and if he penetrated that crust he would be behaving in a very ungentlemanly manner indeed, but it wouldn’t seriously perturb him at that moment.
Rosalie bit her lip, and looked rather bewildered.
“If it’s urgent business, I naturally expect you to let me know what it is!”
“Well, in this particular instance I don’t intend to let you know what it is!”
Mrs. Freer came forward, suddenly very agitated, but even in the midst of her agitation more tactful than her daughter.
“Darling, if Justin really can’t come on with us to the Bevingtons. . .” She looked at Justin, and tried to smile brightly, understandingly, even archly. “The one thing you mustn’t do, my dear, once you’re married, is rob your man of all his secrets! Or attempt to! I learned that when I married your father, and we got on wonderfully together until the day he died.” She touched Justin’s sleeve lightly, a placating feathers’ touch. “If something has cropped up, my dear, of course you must go down to Storr. . . .”
His face looked grave and withdrawn.
“I shall be back in a few days.”
Rosalie—for the second time since Susan had known her—turned absolutely white with rage, and swung round on a perilous high heel.
“I don’t care if you never come back!” she said, making for the exit, and her mother looked suddenly as if she might burst into tears.
Over the heads of all the other people who began to move towards the exit Justin looked at Susan. He stood quite still, and just looked at her.
“I will be outside your flat at midnight!” he said. “If that isn’t enough time for you to pack a suit-case and be ready, I’ll wait!”
“My suit-case is already packed,” she heard herself answer, and even although she violently disapproved of the answer she knew that it was the only reply she could make to him.
Bruce once more took her arm, but he sounded thoroughly annoyed as he protested on the way back to their seats.
“My dear girl, you don’t have to go with him, you know! Justin was never renowned for exemplary conduct, but I think he overstepped the bounds a bit tonight. I don’t blame Rosalie for looking so undisguisedly upset! I thought he talked to her like a boor.”
Susan was silent. Justin had once talked to her like a boor, but to-night she had allowed him to impose his will on her will, and they were driving down to Storr together in a little more than another couple of hours.
“And it’s such a ridiculous thing to do,” Bruce went on protesting. “You’ll be driving all night, and you won’t get any sleep!”
“It will save me catching the train to-morrow morning,” Susan said, as if that was an argument that should satisfy him.
Bruce frowned, and his frown grew blacker. She was afraid he was almost as annoyed with her as Rosalie was—temporarily—with Justin.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Barely had the local church clock chimed the hour of midnight than Susan heard a car horn hoot outside the block of flats. It was repeated, a little more impatiently, after an interval of a few seconds, and she gathered up her handbag and suit-case and stole out without the knowledge of anyone inside the flats, so far as she was aware.
She had left a note for Jennifer, which she would read in the morning. Jennifer had gone to bed early with a book, and once asleep it was most difficult to rouse her. Susan had no desire to rouse her, for the very last thing she wanted to be seen doing was driving away with Justin Storr at that hour of the night. The fact that she was merely accepting a lift didn’t make her any the less anxious to escape notice, for she knew very well that for someone who had often professed a profound dislike of Sir Justin it was an odd thing to slip away out of London with him on the stroke of midnight—or just after it—in order to arrive at a lonely village inn where she wasn’t even expected.
She had intended to send a telegram, but now she would just arrive. Not that it mattered very much, but she wished she had been strong-minded enough to insist on catching the morning train.
Justin looked at her silently as she crossed the pavement to the car. It was a long sleek Jaguar, and one that she had seen him drive often before, and as he stowed away her suit-case in the boot, and then slipped into the driving-seat beside her, she felt for a moment that wildly excitable pulse hammering away at the base of her throat. He had changed out of his evening things and was wearing a tweed suit and a high-necked sweater, and his dark head was uncovered. Susan saw the starshine silver the edge of the one crisp wave in his hair, and his profile was dark and strong and only just a little arrogant.
“You didn’t keep me waiting, Susan,” he said approvingly, lightly touching her knee. “You’re a good girl.”
“I don’t know why I agreed to come with you at all,” Susan answered.
“Don’t you?” He glanced at her half smilingly in the dim light. “Well, you’re here, and that’s the important thing, and I’m really very, very grateful. Rosalie will tell you that I’m seldom grateful for anything, but that’s not true. To you I could be eternally grateful!” Once again he glanced at her, before they slid out into the main thoroughfare, and a pulse didn’t merely leap in her throat this time; her whole heart gave a kind of tumultuous quiver in her breast. She remembered how white, and somehow ravaged and fiercely concentrated he had struck her in the theatre bar, and now that he was beside her, and they were alone in the spreading silence of the night, she didn’t have any sensation of guilt—even although he had just mentioned Rosalie’s name—but instead felt a curious sensation of tranquillity, and a queer longing to let him know how happy she was to be beside him.
“I’m afraid Miss Freer was very—annoyed with you,” she heard herself say, realising even as she did so that that was putting it a little mildly, to say the least.
He was silent for perhaps half a minute, and then he said very quietly:
“Let’s forget Rosalie for the time being, shall we? Let’s forget everything.”
“Everything?”
“Everything that doesn’t concern ourselves! Are you quite comfortable? Do you feel the draught from this window? If so, I’ll shut it up.”
“No, I’m perfectly warm.”
She snuggled down against the well-sprung seat, and he reached for a rug on the seat behind them, and told her to wrap it around her knees.
“Can’t have you catching cold,” he said. “And in an hour or so there’ll be a definite chill in the air. If you feel sleepy, just shut your eyes and take a nap.”
“How soon do you think we’ll be there?” she asked.
“There’s no hurry,” he answered, and beyond that refused to commit himself.
But her tranquil mood was taking firmer and firmer possession of her with every mile that slipped beneath the wheels of the powerful car, and she felt no inclination to argue the point, and was even in entire agreement with him. There was no hurry! . . . The road was beautifully free from traffic, and it was a clear, cool, starry night— or, rather, early morning—and presently the late moon rose, and hung a little lopsidedly above some woods on their right. The road unwound before them, like a coiled ribbon, snaking through villages and little towns, running beside a river that was as placid as Susan’s quiescent mood, climbing to the tops of high hills, and then plunging once more into the valleys.
Susan watched the dark shapes of trees rushing towards them, the ghostly white arms of signposts pointing the way. But Justin had no need of signposts. He was used to this road, had journeyed over it constantly since his earliest youth, and, as he told the girl snuggled down in the seat beside him, for him it always led to home.
“Then you do look upon Storr as your home?” she said drowsily, struggling against the desire to close her eyes. Sh
e sounded faintly surprised. “Your real home?”
“Of course.” For an instant his eyes left the road ahead, and flickered a glance at her. “Everyone has to have a home—a ‘real’ home, as you phrase it!”
“But, I thought. . . .” Her eyelids felt weighted, heavy with sleep, and it required a great effort to keep them open. “I know Storr is beautiful, but, somehow I thought ... I’ve never known whether you even liked it! In the beginning I had the idea that it was only the force of circumstances that. . . .”
“Dragged me back to it? Such things as the death of my mother, and old Uncle Adrian’s death?”
“Yes—yes!”
“And the appalling bad taste of Uncle Adrian, when he included you in his will in the way he did?” One hand left the wheel and closed warmly over both of hers. “That was enough to drag any man back! I was never so incensed in my life!”
“And now?”
“Now I’m not incensed, but embroiled and a little inclined to wonder what’s hit me! For something has hit me!” His fingers tightened before they let hers go. “And now go to sleep, little one, and rest assured that I love Storr, and always will!”
She closed her eyes, and somehow it made her strangely happy to know that he loved Storr—as much as
Sir Adrian had loved it—and that he was no longer incensed because she had come into his life. Only embroiled . . . Whatever that might mean!
And within a matter of seconds she was fast asleep, and when the fact that the car was suddenly stationary brought her awake again it was still quite dark, although there was the greyness of a dove’s wings flittering amongst the trees that were the centuries-old trees in the park at Storr. There was also a faint primrose light low down on the horizon which she couldn’t see as she stumbled from the car, and already a bevy of cocks were crowing in some tucked away garden, or farmyard. And there was a low, vibrant murmur of birdsong.
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