“Rose, if anything had happened to you I - I—”
“But it didn’t,” she said softly. She reached out and touched him gently. “I assure you I’m quite all right, and there’s no need at all to take me to a hospital. And there was a very angry gendarme back there who will probably report you for rushing off with me like this before he could do anything himself! And I can’t think why you practically pushed Carmella out of the car...”
“She wanted to come with us,” he said, with curious stoniness, “and I didn’t want her.”
Rose was silent.
“Why did you do it, Rose?” he asked at last.
“Why did I do what?”
“Turn and run back like that, as soon as you caught sight of my car? I’ve gathered you wanted to avoid me, but if you knew what I feel like when – when...” He wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. “There was one moment when I thought you’d been killed, Rose!” and he swallowed. “In years to come, whenever I think of that moment, I shall feel just as I did when I first saw you lying in the road!”
“Oh, Guy, I’m ... sorry,” she said, and her brown eyes were liquid pools of understanding sympathy. “I honestly don’t quite know why I ran away as I did.”
“I do,” he said quietly, “but I’m not going to worry you about it now. We won’t talk about it.” He removed one hand from the wheel and clasped one of hers tightly. “Darling, if you’re quite sure you don’t need to go to hospital we’ll drive straight to my hotel, and you can get cleaned up in my suite. That poor little outfit of yours is probably ruined, but it doesn’t matter, we’ll soon get some things over for you from Carmella’s. In fact, we’ll get all your stuff away from Carmella’s with as little delay as possible.”
“Then ... aren’t I going back there again?” she inquired faintly.
“Not this side of our being married,” he replied, with an unmistakable touch of grimness. “Whether we go there afterwards depends upon quite a lot of things.”
“Carmella has been very kind to me, Guy,” she said, as if she felt she had to say it.
He squeezed her hand, and smiled at her gently.
“I love you, Rose,” he said simply. “Please believe that!”
When they drew up outside his impressive hotel he insisted on lifting Rose out of the car, and carrying her inside. She felt that all eyes were on her as he bore her to the lift, and the liftman lost no time in carrying them to Guy’s floor. Guy’s suite, which she had only seen once before, and which was one of the most luxurious in the entire hotel, received them, and a waiter came hurrying with brandy and various other restoratives, and a large proportion of the feminine side of the hotel staff seemed to flock into the sitting-room to assist Rose to get rid of the mud of the road and her ruined outer garments. They bore the latter away, and turned on a bath for her, and then brought her a selection of garments to change into, but in the end it was a pair of Guy’s own pyjamas, and one of his voluminous dressing-gowns, that she wore to reappear in the sitting-room. By this time the staff had disappeared, and they were alone in the somewhat grandiose room with its elegant furniture and its countless bowls of flowers. Guy took her face between his hands and looked at it keenly, searching for a bruise or a laceration as a result of its hitting the road. But there was none.
“You’re quite sure you feel all right, darling?” he inquired, a slight tremble in his voice. “You don’t think we ought to get a doctor?”
She shook her head.
“I’m perfectly all right.”
“Sure?”
She smiled at him.
“Sure.”
He drew her into his arms, and she nestled against him with a tired sigh. Then he picked her up and carried her over to a settee.
“You said that you loved me, Guy,” she reminded him, as he knelt down beside her. “Did you ... Did you really mean that?”
“I did. And what’s more, I’ve loved you from the moment I first set eyes on you. That’s the absolute truth!”
Her big brown eyes looked incredulous.
“But ... why did you never tell me?”
“Perhaps because I was afraid.” He regarded her broodingly. “I was afraid to believe in the extent of my love myself! After that other experience I had learned to be cautious, wary. And I knew so little about you. To me you seemed composed of sweetness and delight - all the things a man needs to find in a woman who can make him happy! - but there was just a possibility that I didn’t appeal to you in the same way, and I happen to be a rich man. You might have been tempted by my possessions, and not me. Not really me at all!”
“But I loved you, too, from the beginning,” she told him with utter simplicity. “Yes, even before you appeared that night in Mr. Mancroft’s office, I fell in love with your photograph!”
He regarded her searchingly.
“Are you quite sure it wasn’t the romantic story the press had woven about me? All those tales of my possessions ... my yacht and so forth? And I do happen to have a great many possessions, little Rose!”
She shook her head almost violently.
“If that had any influence at all when I was reading about you at first ... As soon as I saw you I knew that I thought Carol-Ann Vaizey the luckiest young woman in the world! Even if you hadn’t a penny to your name she would still be lucky! And then, when you failed to turn up for your wedding, I wondered how she could possibly survive it ... losing you in that way.”
“But you refused to accompany me down to Cornwall. I had to force you!”
Only because I knew I’d never be the same again once you had no further need of me. And,” her eyes growing unconsciously wistful, “it was nine chances to one against that you ever would have any further need of me once I had served my purpose.”
“Don’t you believe it, sweetheart!” He drew her back into his arms, and she could feel his heart labouring almost wildly against her own. “Once these little hands had so tenderly bound up my wounds ... or rather, wound,” smiling at her tenderly, and kissing each of the hands in question, “and your beautiful eyes had told me how concerned for me you felt, then Guy Wakeford was at your feet ... As he’d never been at any woman’s feet before. Not even Carmella’s!”
“But you - loved Carmella!” as if the words were wrung out of her.
“I loved a woman who was nothing more than an illusion, but never as I now love you! If I needed any proof of that myself I had it when Carmella re-appeared that morning at Tregony’s Choice, and I knew she was out to make mischief!”
“You mean ... It wasn’t all revived? All that you ever felt for her, I mean?”
“Of course it wasn’t! All that was as dead as a doornail, and I’m pretty sure it’s been dead for years. But I knew my Carmella to be quite without scruple when she wanted something, and I hope you won’t think me conceited if I confess that I had no doubts whatsoever that, having been left a widow, she wanted me again. Or she fancied she wanted me! And she’d come all the way down to Cornwall to get me, having read in the newspapers that I was once more free and available. And that was why I implored you to become engaged to me!”
“Not to protect yourself from Carmella?”
“Little idiot,” he said, stroking the soft hair back from her brow. “To protect the thing I wanted - you! To ensure that, having reached the age of common sense and dear thinking, I would never again risk the whole of my future happiness by asking a woman to marry me just because I needed a wife. To ensure for myself the greatest happiness a man can have, a wife he adores! And oh, my darling, my darling,” pressing eager lips to her hair, “I do adore you so much!”
“And would you have told me all about it ... after we were married?”
His eyes blazed into hers.
“I was hoping you were beginning to understand. And I didn’t want to frighten you ... Not until I was absolutely sure of you! But, once I was sure of you...” His eyes pleaded with her. “Kiss me, Rose!”
But she held him gentl
y away from her.
“And last night? When I caught you and Carmella ... together?”
“My darling child,” he said simply and a little reprovingly, “you ought not to have been taken in by that for a single moment! Certainly not after that little exhibition of the afternoon. Carmella wanted to separate us, and she was using the tools that came handiest. My grandmother would never have thought her the ideal wife for me, and certainly she wouldn’t have looked to Carmella to lift me to the heights! But if she’d known you, Rose, she might have believed I would scale them one day!”
“Oh!” Rose exclaimed, and buried her head against him. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “I ought not to have been so easily taken in.”
He lifted her chin and looked at her gravely “If you’d loved me, Rose - and believed in me! - you wouldn’t have been taken in.”
“But I do love you. I love you with the whole of my heart and soul, and—”
But it was impossible to utter another sound, for he had snatched her triumphantly back into his arms and lowered his mouth to hers. For the first time their kisses filled them with equal joy, and no doubts whatsoever. For the first time Rose knew she was utterly safe and secure in his arms, and Guy’s blue eyes blazed with so many passionate messages that she wondered whether she was light-headed at the same time.
Only last night she had been plunged in the depths of unhappiness, and now...!
And then she remembered Bruce Carter, and her promise to have dinner with him that night, and while she was still wondering how she could soften the lack of faith she had had in Guy in her confession to him concerning it, the telephone rang, and when Guy lifted the receiver Carmella spoke to him.
“Bruce Carter is here,” she said. “He and I are going to have dinner together, but we want to know how Rose is.”
“Rose is all right,” Guy answered. “And she will be married from here, the day after tomorrow.”
“Then you won’t be bringing her back to me?”
“No.” Guy’s voice was firm. “But you and Bruce can come to our wedding if you like.”
There was a moment’s pause, then Carmella said: “Thank you. We shall be there.”
Guy put down the receiver. Rose looked at him. Was there any need to tell him about Bruce? But suddenly he shook his head at her.
“You’ve had your doubts, Rose, and I’ve had mine. Carmella never tired of telling me that Bruce Carter would make you an ideal husband, and that but for my superior financial attractions you might be drawn to him. But I never believed her, Rose ... And although you rushed to him today for advice, would you have acted on it?”
She shook her head.
“It was because I knew I could act on no one’s advice that I was running away tonight! From him ... And from you.”
He held wide his arms to her, and she rushed into them.
Against her mouth he whispered, “You’ll never run away from me again, will you, Rose my darling?”
“Never, never,” she promised. And then she looked up at him shyly. “Are we really being married the day after tomorrow?”
“We are. And until then I’ll have to fix you up with a separate suite. Carmella was a rather more than adequate chaperone - she never let us get near one another! - but now that we haven’t got Carmella...”
She felt her blood begin to pound wildly through her veins as he looked at her.
“Will you feel very lonely in a separate suite, Rose? It’s only for a very short while, and ... I love you very much!”
Escape to Happiness Page 15