He let out a long sigh, and his eyes started to glisten. They reminded Rose of the blue gleam of metal when it attracts to itself some sort of extra brilliance.
“Let’s celebrate,” he said quietly. “Tonight we’ll have a special dinner, and Bewes can go down into the cellars and search amongst all the empty bottles for a few bottles of champagne that I’m quite certain are still there, and bring one up. We’ll drink to the fact that I’m no longer a man on the run, Rose ... a hunted, haunted man, who, try as he would, couldn’t stifle his conscience!” He passed a hand across his eyes. “Whew! It’s unbelievable!”
“Is Mr. Neville Richmond the man she was in love with?” Rose asked quietly.
“Yes, that’s the fellow. They’ll live on bread and cheese and kisses, and perhaps it’ll do her good. Perhaps it’ll make a real live woman out of her after all!”
“But her parents consented.”
“Yes. I think they’ll be intensely relieved to get my letter. At least I shall be able to improve on the bread and cheese diet. For a short while it may even be a champagne diet!”
Rose walked away from him. She felt strangely moved.
Bread and cheese and kisses ... and champagne! It sounded a wonderful diet to her.
That night she wore the slim, navy blue tie silk dress chosen for her by Mrs. Bewes, and she spent a lot of time over her hair. She had washed it during the afternoon, and the pale primrose colour of it instantly drew Guy’s eyes when she entered the library. It was incredibly soft and silky hair, and he wanted to put out a hand and touch it when she joined him on the well-worn rug before the fire.
Mrs. Bewes always built up a fine log fire in the wide fireplace after tea, when the thin October sunlight had ceased to provide any warmth, and the sea grew tempestuous down below on the beach. Rose liked to listen to that rather threatening voice of the sea - warning of dark and stormy days to come, when the whole house would shake because of its impact, and the windows rattle as the wind sprang suddenly to hurricane force and sought to wrest away the panes of glass - and watch the firelight on the faded bindings on the bookshelves.
The old gentleman above the fireplace - he who had dressed his lady in smuggled silk, and drunk a nightly toast in brandy to the “gentlemen” who defied the law to bring it to him - had such a rubicund look at that hour of the day, and the whole room had an atmosphere of snugness and security. No matter how loudly the sea roared, or the wind howled, the library at Tregony’s Choice had been built to withstand intrusive elements, and Rose sometimes thought that she would think of this room always as the most delightful room in the whole wide world - And that in spite of its shabbiness.
Tonight there was a table with a tray of drinks standing close to the fire, and Guy put a drink in Rose’s hand, and then held his own aloft.
“The toast is freedom!” he said. His eyes sparkled at her. “Freedom, Rose!”
“And what will you do with it?” she asked.
“Do with my freedom?” He smiled between thick black eyelashes that drew together at the corners. “I shall be careful not to throw it away this time, my dear. You can be sure of that!”
Mrs. Bewes brought in the first course of a beautifully prepared meal, and Guy put Rose into her chair at the table. It was at his right hand, for the table was far too vast for them to face one another at opposing ends, and when he talked to her he could turn and look right into her eyes and smile at her. He did so when he filled her champagne glass, and when he suggested another toast.
“To you, Rose! You’ve been so wonderful to me that I shall never forget it! And I shall never forget that night when I caught you working late in your office.”
“Why?” she asked, staring at the champagne bubbles.
“Because - in spite of the fact that I was so woozy in the head, and nothing seemed to register as it should do - it struck me as entirely wrong that you were where you were. That big, empty room, with everyone gone, and only you creeping about like a pale, golden-haired ghost! And you looked even paler once you saw that gash over my eye. There was a moment when I thought you might faint too!”
She laughed a trifle unnaturally. “But you didn’t faint.”
“No; neither did you. And you performed a wonderful first-aid job on me. Rose!” He touched her hand. “Has it ever occurred to you that the reason why you stayed late that night was because it was ordained? It was something that had to be!”
She wondered whether it was the champagne, but the extraordinary blueness of his eyes confused her. She wanted to look away from him, but she couldn’t. He was forcing her to look at him.
Mrs. Bewes had been in and removed the remains of the final course, and she had left them with their coffee. They were drinking it at the table, and the light from the handsome chandelier above their heads shone directly down on them. It made a blaze of the white cloth, the silver, and the spiky crimson dahlias in a bowl on the table, and it made Rose’s hair look like a golden cloud, and brought out the burnished gleams in the man’s satin-smooth dark brown hair.
His thin brown hand, refusing to let hers go, looked vital and shapely to Rose. It was not the hand of a man who was incapable of shaping his own life.
“Come over here,” he said suddenly, and drew her away from the table. He put his hands on her shoulders and looked at her very earnestly. “You know that the time has come for me to let you go, don’t you, Rose?” he said quietly. “I have no longer any excuse for keeping you here.”
She wondered whether her eyes dilated a little, or whether he realized that she blenched inwardly. Only the night before, when Dr. Carter had made a similar observation - indeed, he had been much more forthright about it! - she had rushed across the room and seized hold of Guy’s arm and declared that she couldn’t leave him, and later he had kissed her hand and seemed very much moved. Now he was telling her she had to go!
She felt stunned. Not because she hadn’t known she must go - not because she hadn’t been prepared to go - but because he was the one who now made it clear to her that her days at Tregony’s Choice were numbered. She was superfluous, now that things had worked out for him in a way that was unexpectedly satisfactory, and he no longer needed someone to boost his morale, or make a painful period of waiting bearable. The waiting was over and he was free, and she - Rose Arden - was free too to go back to London and her job.
She could say nothing ... nothing at all. And he gave her shoulders a shake and commanded, as he had done once before:
“Rose, don’t look at me like that!”
She managed to smile - although disappointment and dismay were like a deathly sickness deep at the heart of her - and she freed herself from his hands and stood back quite determinedly as she answered at last:
“How am I looking at you? You mustn’t let your imagination run away with you, Mr. Wakeford, for of course I know I’ve got to go back to London. Haven’t I a job to go back to, and a whole lot of excuses to make to my employer? If I was looking a trifle - taken aback - just now, it was because the realization suddenly swept over me that I’ve got to make those excuses, and I dislike very much deceiving Mr. Mancroft.”
“You don’t have to deceive him. I’ll write to him if you like.”
Her expression grew wry.
“If you do that he’ll think I’m not merely easily prevailed upon, but a moral coward as well. No, I’d rather do my own explaining.”
“You wouldn’t like me to find you another job?”
She shook her head very firmly.
“No, thank you very much!”
“A job with me? Perhaps, after all, I do need a secretary—”
She shook her head mutely.
He regarded her in a way in which he had never regarded her before, and suddenly he said slowly:
“Rose! You know very well that you’re not going back to London ... not to the job you left anyway! I can’t let you go! I don’t know why I can’t, but I ... can’t!”
“Don’t be absurd,” she said
mechanically.
He frowned at her.
“It’s not absurd.” And then slowly he smiled. “It’s not a bit absurd ... brown eyes!” He took her face between his hands and looked at it closely, with mounting interest. “I wonder whether you realize that you have the most beautiful eyes in the world? Clear as a mountain torrent ... but uncertain sometimes, like a doe’s. Are you afraid of life, Rose? Have you the least idea what you want - really want! - from life?”
She stared up into his eyes as if their blueness mesmerized her, and the smile on his lips became very gentle, and rather tender. He drew her into his arms and his lips pressed down on hers in a way that set the chandelier swinging and the whole room revolving round her, and when at last he lifted his head and regarded her almost with curiosity she was fighting a wild impulse to cling to him, and an even wilder one to break away.
But he prevented the latter by refusing to let her go as soon as she started to struggle, and he said softly:
“Don’t be silly, Rose. There are some things that are as inevitable as the crack of doom - and that kiss was one of them! I’ve been dying to kiss you ever since we entered this house, and you must have known it. You have the sort of mouth that was created solely for the purpose of being kissed, and you can’t blame me for being tempted by it.” He allowed his mouth to rest on it again with a sort of wondering, experimental pleasure, and then with a deeper satisfaction. Such a very deep satisfaction that, when he lifted his head this time, there was a distinctly strange look in his eyes. “Oh, Rose!” he said, as if she had him nonplussed.
She broke away from him determinedly, freeing even her hands that he sought to cling on to.
“You hadn’t any right to do that,” she told him. “Absolutely no right at all!”
“No, I hadn’t, had I?” he agreed, and sat down on the arm of a chair. He brought out his cigarette case and regarded it with surprise. “But I suppose I could be provided with a right, couldn’t I? You could, for instance, marry me.”
“Marry you?”
Rose wondered whether the moderate amount of champagne he had consumed with his dinner had been too much for him in his present slightly lowered condition of health. The doctor had said he was perfectly fit again, but he had gone through rather a lot in the past few days, and there had been a great deal of mental anxiety.
The tremendous relief that had been revealed by his expression when he learned that he was no longer in the slightest danger of having to marry Carol-Ann Vaizey was a clear indication that he had been living under strain.
And now he was proposing to throw away his hard-won freedom!
“Why not?” he said quietly, and he rose and moved towards her again, an unlighted cigarette in his hand. “It’s an idea, Rose. This time it would be different for me. I wouldn’t be marrying to provide myself with a housekeeper, a hostess for my parties ... An ornament, if you care to put it that way, for my home. And I wouldn’t be marrying for - the reason I wanted to marry for - a few years ago!”
Rose winced without betraying the fact that she did. Just how carelessly brutal could a man be? she wondered ... A man who hadn’t any intention of being brutal at all, and had just kissed her into a state of awareness of all that life could offer!
“Then what would you be marrying for?” she asked, withdrawing a step as he moved nearer still.
He smiled, the faintly whimsical smile she had so often seen on his face.
“To keep you with me, Rose, I suppose. It seems a good enough reason to me! There’s nothing about it that frightens me ... nothing to make me feel I’d be sticking my head into a noose! On the contrary, I see no reason why we shouldn’t be quite happy together. I could do a lot for you ... Take you away from old Mancroft’s office, make it unnecessary for you to earn your living ever again, Rose.”
“I have never disliked earning my living,” Rose replied in rather a tight little voice. “It’s a good thing to be independent.”
“But not when you’re twenty.” He smiled at her coaxingly. “And someone needs you.”
“It depends upon the - quality of the need,” she said slowly. “You needed Carmella very badly, didn’t you?”
He nodded, and she saw his eyes darken and his mouth grow stern.
“Yes.”
“But you had no real need of Carol-Ann?”
“No need at all,” he admitted.
“Then I come in between the two, don’t I?” she suggested. “You can do without me, but you think it might be pleasant to make me part of your life.” She paused. “I’m flattered that you think I’m worth the loss of your freedom. We’ve just been celebrating your freedom!”
CHAPTER X
The following morning, just before noon, a small bright blue car turned in at the gates of Tregony’s Choice and tunnelled its way up the drive.
Mrs. Bewes was in the kitchen when the summons came at the front door. She was making a fruit tart for lunch, and she paused and slipped it into the oven before wiping her hands on her apron and going through into the hall where the visitor was standing at the foot of the carved staircase and looking about her.
She smiled at Mrs. Bewes.
“You must forgive me walking in, Bewsie, but the door was standing open. How are you after all this long time?”
For once Mrs. Bewes was bereft of words. So often in the past she had been impressed by that wonderfully attractive smile, by the blanched-almond whiteness of the even teeth the red lips curved over, and the brilliance of the huge dark eyes. The eyes had often mocked at her a little, and it seemed to her they were jibing gently at her now, and the full mouth had a slightly amused twist.
“I have taken you aback, haven’t I, Bewsie?” she murmured, and removed the olive green hat that exactly matched her shoes, suit and gloves, and cast it down carelessly on an oak side table. She shook out her dark hair that was beautifully styled, and made a little gesture of weariness. “I’ve been driving since breakfast, Bewsie, and I could do with some coffee if you have some. I’m on my way to my cottage - it has been let for the last two years, and I’m perfectly certain it’s in a frightful mess! - and I thought I’d look in here first. I do hope it’s not an inconvenient moment, or the surprise too great?”
Mrs. Bewes found her voice at last.
“Of course not, Miss ... I beg your pardon, Mrs. Cavendish!” she corrected herself. “But you’re the very last person I expected to find standing here in the hall like this ... In fact, I can hardly believe my eyes!”
“Then you don’t think I’ve altered a great deal?”
“Hardly at all, miss... I’m terribly sorry, madam! I want to keep saying Miss Tracy,” she admitted, with a faintly flurried look. “It comes natural, somehow.”
“Well, that’s perfectly understandable,” the other woman drawled. “And you can call me Miss Tracy if you like, for I’m a widow now, and using my maiden name again. For professional purposes I never dropped it, as a matter of fact.”
“You’re a - widow...?”
But the sinuous figure was moving gracefully in the direction of the open library door, and once inside the room she looked about her as if she was not in the least surprised to discover that nothing was different. She even laughed in her throat, a warm, attractive sound that nevertheless seemed to startle Mrs. Bewes, for she moved quickly forward to her elbow and played agitatedly with her apron while the visitor put back her head and gazed up at the faded splendour of the ceiling.
“So Guy still doesn’t spend much of his money on this place. I used to think that, considering it was left to him by his grandmother, he might have cared for it a little better than he does. But he was beginning to have plans for it a few years ago, wasn’t he?”
Mrs. Bewes said nothing, and the visitor’s black eyes grew blank and mysterious, like blank, mysterious tarns in the very heart of a deep wood.
“He’s here, isn’t he?”
The caretaker nodded.
“But I think he’s planning to leave again
quite soon.”
“Oh, Bewsie,” Mrs. Cavendish said, in her rich, amused voice, “you were always touchingly devoted to your Mr. Guy, but you don’t have to throw up a smoke screen around his movements because I’ve suddenly reappeared on the scene! I’ve never been entirely out of touch, and I do read the newspapers, you know! And naturally I’m interested when an old friend fails to turn up for his own much publicized wedding!”
“Mr. Guy had an accident,” Mrs. Bewes said gruffly. “He wasn’t fit to be married.”
“But the let-down bride couldn’t wait for him to recover from the accident, and has married someone else. Didn’t you know that, Bewsie?”
“It’s none of my business,” the caretaker answered. “I’d better get you that coffee, Miss Carmella.”
“Ah, that sounds more like old times! But before you go do tell me something about this young woman who accompanied him to Cornwall. Is she really the secretary type, or do you think she had something to do with the shattered marriage plans?”
“I know nothing whatsoever about Miss Arden,” Mrs. Bewes replied this time, with a firmness Carmella Cavendish had seldom encountered in the past.
“Pretty?”
“She’s a very pleasant young woman.”
“Clever?”
“I wouldn’t know, miss,” with a definite tightening of the lips.
“All right, Bewsie,” very softly. “But,” laying a slim hand with dusky pink nails that were quite flawlessly perfect on the worn cardigan sleeve that was close to her, “you were never a fool, and I’m quite sure you can recognize a husband-hunter when you see one. Particularly a rich husband-hunter!”
“Then Miss Arden is nothing of the sort,” Mrs. Bewes assured her.
Carmella let out something that sounded like a sigh.
“All right. Get me the coffee. They’re out on the cliff, aren’t they? I saw Guy and a young woman making for the cliff edge just before I turned in at the drive gates. I’ll wait here on the couch while you fetch the tray.”
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