If This Is Love

by Anne Weale

  David took her to a small but exclusive Knightsbridge boutique, and there, as if she were a schoolgirl being kitted out for her first term at boarding school, he selected a complete basic wardrobe for her. Some of the clothes needed alterations and would be delivered later, but Jane left the shop wearing a vivid turquoise tweed suit with a matching Italian silk sweater. The things she had on when she arrived were left behind, to be thrown away.

  Next, they went to a shoe shop, and David chose eight pairs of shoes, after which they had a brief coffee break.

  “Well, from the neck down, you’re emerging from the chrysalis very satisfactorily,” he said, as they sat at a table by the window in a quiet side-street restaurant.

  It was now early February, but the sun was shining and there was a hint of approaching spring in the bright, fresh morning.

  “What next?” Jane asked, flexing her toes inside the expensive glace kid shoes which replaced the serviceable flat-heeled pair in which she had come out.

  “You need some bags, and we’ll go to Fior in Burlington Gardens and pick out a few pieces of costume jewellery.” David glanced at his watch. “There won’t be time for lunch before your hair appointment, but you can have a salad while you’re under the drier. I’ll come and pick you up about three.”

  She watched him while he glanced through an appointments diary. In an entirely masculine way, he was looking rather special himself today, she thought. His suit was superbly made, and he wore a boldly grey-striped shirt and a plain black knitted silk tie. His bowler and furled umbrella hung on the coat-rack by the cash desk.

  “It seems odd a man knowing so much about women’s clothes,” she said reflectively.

  A gleam of humor lit his slate-grey eyes.

  “Does it also seem faintly effeminate?” he asked dryly.

  “Oh, no, I didn’t mean that,” Jane said hastily, terrified that she might have offended him. “Heavens; you’re not the least bit effeminate.”

  “Thank you,” David said gravely. Then he laughed and pinched her cheek. “You haven’t entirely overcome your habit of blushing, I see.”

  “I’m sorry. I can’t help it sometimes,” she said, becoming even more embarrassed.

  “Don’t apologize. It’s rather appealing. It isn’t part of my plan to change everything about you, you know,” he said, with the sudden unexpected gentleness which almost made her heart turn over inside her.

  In the taxi to a Bond Street bag shop, Jane stretched out her legs to admire her new shoes again. She was five feet eight in her nylons, and had always worn flat shoes because, in heels, she had felt such a beanpole. In these shoes she was as tall as the average man, and taller than many. But it did not bother her because David was over six foot and, beside him, she always felt quite small.

  “Very pretty,” he said suddenly, turning from the window to look at her.

  “Yes, aren’t they?” she agreed.

  “I meant your legs,” he said teasingly.

  She resisted the urge to tuck them quickly out of sight and, for once, managed not to color vividly.

  “Oh, thank you,” she said composedly. David turned back to the window. He obviously had no idea of the effect his casual compliment had had on her.

  Remembering their conversation in the restaurant, she smiled to herself at the thought of anyone suspecting him of having an effeminate streak because he knew so much about fashion. She could not remember ever having met anyone who was so palpably, disturbingly masculine. Even when, as now, he wore the discreet conventional uniform of the well-dressed man about town, one was conscious of the unpadded breadth of shoulder, the disciplined muscular physique beneath the expensive tailoring. And Heather had once said to her that David only specialized in fashion photography because he liked his bread well-buttered. To please himself he photographed wild life or seascapes or the wrinkled, life-worn faces of old peasant folk.

  With a new bag, and a bold coral and gilt pin on the collar of her turquoise suit, Jane was delivered into the hands of a famous hair stylist to whom David gave precise instructions about what was to be done with her.

  Jane did not hear these in detail because she was shepherded to a cloakroom where her suit and sweater were put on a hanger. Then, with a nylon robe over her slip, she was given a conditioning shampoo before the stylist thinned and wet-cut her hair. Three hours later, she looked at herself in the glass and saw ... a stranger, a girl who was Jane and yet not Jane.

  A smooth, slightly up-curling bell of palest honey-gold hair swung silkily round her head. The shape of her naturally dark eyebrows had been slightly and very skilfully altered so as to give a rather elfin fly-away line which accentuated the high slant of her cheekbones. Her lips and nails were painted a vivid coral, and turquoise eye make-up and false but unexaggerated extra lashes had been expertly applied by the salon’s beauty consultant. Somehow the new pale color of her hair not only made her brown eyes look much darker and larger, but lent her already fine-textured complexion a luminous porcelain delicacy.

  “You are pleased, Miss Baron?” the stylist asked her, smiling.

  “Oh, yes! It’s ... incredible,” Jane breathed wonderingly.

  “Not incredible. The potential was there all the time. We have merely developed it.”

  Jane was sitting by the reception desk when David returned. She rose from the couch, her lips parting in a rather tremulous smile, her pulses quickening in excited anticipation of his reaction. When, after several moments, he had not said anything, she asked huskily, “Well, aren’t you pleased?”

  He took out his wallet and gave some notes to the receptionist. “Yes, they’re followed my instructions to the letter. That hair color is excellent on you,” he said briskly.

  Jane flinched as if he had struck her. All her happy expectations died away. She felt as if something lovely and precious had been roughly snatched out of her hands and shattered with a single brutal stroke. Her throat tightened, and swift hot tears blurred her vision.

  Mercifully David was speaking to the receptionist and did not see her blink them back. When he turned to look at her again, she had controlled herself and gave no sign of how cruelly he had hurt her.

  “You’ll be glad to stretch your legs, I expect. We’ll walk round to Claridges and have tea there,” David said. His eyes fell on a display of expensive French scents, and he said to the receptionist, “May I have a bottle of Arpège, please. Don’t bother to wrap it. Miss Baron will put it in her bag.” Then, to Jane, “Arpège is one of the classics. It should suit you.”

  “Thank you very much,” Jane said tonelessly.

  She knew he was not buying the scent to give her pleasure. It was merely the finishing touch to her new professional personality. She was not a girl to him. She was a creation, an investment.

  “When we get outside, I want you to walk a little way in front of me,” David said. “I’ll catch you up before we reach Claridges, but I want to see what impact—if any—you have on the people in the street.”

  He held open the door of the salon for her and, without a glance at him, Jane swept past and turned swiftly along the street.

  She was angry now, fiercely, burningly angry.

  Her eyes sparkled and her pace quickened. At that moment, she hated David Ransome.

  It was a long low whistle from a youth passing by on a bicycle which first distracted her from her rage at the man behind her. Slowing down a little, she became aware that people were staring at her admiringly. But although it was a new experience to cause pairs of girls to nudge each other and men to turn and stare after her, it did not give her any great satisfaction.

  As she reached Brook Street, a man came shooting round the corner to hail a passing taxi. Before Jane could dodge out of the way, he had cannoned into her. Fortunately he instinctively grabbed her arm, so she did not lose her balance and fall. But her new bag shot out of her hand, and the contents spilled over the pavement.

  “I am so sorry. Have I hurt you? Please forgive such
clumsiness, mademoiselle. I was not looking where I was going. I hope nothing is broken.”

  Before Jane had recovered from the shock of the collision, the man had gathered up her things and replaced them in her bag.

  “You must examine everything. If there is any damage...” His voice died away, and he stared at her.

  In his anxiety to retrieve her scattered belongings, he had not looked at her before. Now there was an expression on his face which was exactly the way she had hoped that David would look at her. It was the arrested, faintly stunned gaze of a man who has seen a girl who takes his breath away.

  “Please don’t worry about it,” she said, smiling. “I’m not hurt, and nothing in my bag has broken.”

  “You are certain? Perhaps we should go into a shop and you can sit down and recover yourself.”

  “Oh, nonsense, it was only a bump. I’m all right. Truly I am,” she assured him.

  “You are too generous, mademoiselle. It was much much more than a bump. I am sure I must have hurt you quite severely. How can I begin to apologize to you? I should be shot for my clumsiness.” Then his contrite expression changed to a charming and rather wicked grin. “No, perhaps I am a little too severe with myself. It is very harsh to shoot a man at the moment when his future has suddenly become so infinitely more promising.”

  His blue eyes glinted with mischief, and there was no mistaking what he meant.

  Jane laughed. “The taxi is waiting and you are obviously in a hurry, monsieur. Please don’t let me delay you,” she answered demurely.

  “Do you know, I have forgotten where I was going. I am sure it was not on a matter of any great importance. Let me escort you wherever you are going, mademoiselle. It is the least I can do, in the circumstances.”

  Jane wondered what David would do if he saw her getting into a taxi with a stranger, and she was tempted to accept the Frenchman’s offer. His accent was so slight that if he had not called her “mademoiselle” she would not have known which country he came from. As far as she could judge, he was about the same age as David and, although he was not at all handsome, most women would find him very attractive with his fair hair, blue eyes and boyish yet rather dissipated face.

  However, before she could act on her impulse to accept his suggestion, David came up and took her arm.

  “Ransome! How are you, mon vieux! What extraordinary good fortune that you should be acquainted with this ravishing young lady. You can introduce us,” the Frenchman said delightedly.

  David was looking grim, and his introduction could scarcely have been more terse.

  “This is Monsieur St. Cyr, Jane,” he said coldly. “Yves, Miss Baron.”

  “Enchanté, Miss Baron.” The Frenchman bowed over her hand. “Now I feel sure you would be glad of some refreshment after the fright I gave you. My hotel is only a step down this street. Let us all go there and have some good English tea.”

  “I’m afraid that’s impossible today, Yves. Jane and I have an appointment in fifteen minutes. Excuse us, will you,”

  Gripping Jane’s elbow, David put her into the taxi which the Frenchman had hailed and climbed in after her. But he did not tell the driver to take them to Claridges—which was obviously the hotel where the Frenchman was staying—but gave the address of Heather’s flat.

  Jane smiled at Yves St. Cyr through the window as the taxi moved forward. He spread his hands in a gesture of profound desolation, then , grinned and blew her a kiss.

  “Why on earth were you so rude to him,” she asked David, as they drove towards Grosvenor Square.

  He did not look at her, but she could see that his mouth was still set in a hard angry line.

  “Because he is not a suitable person for you to know,” he said curtly.

  They drove the rest of the way in silence, and when he dropped her at the flat, David said offhandedly that she could have the following day free. The day after that she was to go to his studio to be photographed.

  After Heather had left for work the next morning, Jane pottered about the flat wondering what I to do with her day of leisure. Presently she decided to go and look round the National Gallery.

  When she had put on her make-up and the same clothes she had worn the day before, she locked up the flat with the latch-key Heather had had cut for her, and ran downstairs.

  She was pausing on the pavement, wondering whether to go by Underground or take a bus, when a sleek white Alpha-Romeo slid up to the curb alongside her.

  “Good morning, Miss Baron. Where are you going? May I give you a lift?” Yves St. Cyr enquired, smiling at her.

  “Monsieur St. Cyr! What are you doing here?” she asked in astonishment.

  “I have been watching your front door since nine o’clock. I was beginning to fear I had missed you. Don’t tell me my long vigil must go unrewarded. At least allow me the pleasure of driving you as far as your present destination.”

  Jane hesitated. She had no idea why David considered that Yves was not a suitable person for her to know, and at the moment, David’s opinions did not carry much weight with her. She decided to act on her own instinct—and her instinct was to get into the car and see what followed.

  “Thank you very much. I’d be glad of a lift,” she said pleasantly.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “WHERE do you wish me to take you, mademoiselle?” Yves enquired, after he had handed her into the passenger seat and returned to his place behind the wheel

  “Well, today is a holiday for me, so I was going to look at the pictures in the National Gallery,” Jane explained. “You see, I’ve only lived in London for a week or two and, so far, there hasn’t been an opportunity to see any of the sights.”

  “In that case I think your first visit should be to London’s famous Hyde Park. It is too nice a morning to be wasted in an art gallery. Let us drive through the park and study the beauties of Nature,” he suggested.

  “I don’t think Nature is very beautiful in February,” Jane said, smiling.

  “No, perhaps you are right. But we shall undoubtedly benefit from the fresh air, and it will give us an opportunity to become acquainted.”

  She laughed. “Very well ... to Hyde Park. Do you know the way, monsieur?”

  “Oh, yes, I am almost as familiar with London as with Paris. I come here often.”

  “How did you find out my address?” she asked, intrigued.

  “I followed you yesterday afternoon. Fortunately there was another taxi at hand and I instructed the driver to pursue you. After I had seen you go into your house I had to return to my hotel to meet some friends, but at least I knew where you lived.”

  So he must have seen David drop her, and guessed that the mythical appointment had been a pretext to shake him off, Jane thought.

  “But with your looks and your connection with Ransome it was clear that you were a mannequin,” Yves went on. “So if I had not been able to follow you, I would soon have traced you.”

  “I doubt it, monsieur. As I told you, I’m a newcomer to London, I am training to be a fashion model, but I’m not one at the moment.”

  “Then it is fortunate that I am a man of great initiative, is it not?” Yves said, taking his eyes off the road for a second to give her a disarmingly boyish grin. “It would have been very sad if, after destiny had brought us together, we had immediately been swept apart again. Do you believe in destiny, Miss Baron?”

  “I’ve never really thought about it much,” Jane said lightly.

  “I do,” Yves told her firmly. “I am convinced it was our fate to meet as we did. The moment I looked into your eyes—such beautiful eyes, if I may say so—I knew at once that we had been destined to find each other some day.”

  Jane burst out laughing, and Yves put on a face of aggrieved dismay.

  “You don’t think so? Our meeting was not of importance to you? You did not feel—oh, how can I express it?—that it was a decisive moment for you?”

  “I did feel something,” Jane conceded.

 
“Ah, you admit it. I was sure you had felt it, too,” he exclaimed triumphantly.

  “Yes, I felt as if all the breath had been knocked out of me,” she went on. “But that was before I looked into your eyes, Monsieur St. Cyr.”

  “Oh, now you are laughing at me again,” he said, in a disconsolate tone. “You are beautiful—but you are cruel. What is that English poem about ‘La belle dame sans merci’ ... no doubt you are as heartless as she was.”

  “ ‘Oh, what can ail thee, knight-at-arms, alone and palely loitering ... so haggard and so woebegone ...’ ” Jane quoted. “Somehow I can’t see you in such a state, monsieur.”

  They stopped at some traffic lights and Yves put on the handbrake and turned to her. “You have raised my hopes, Miss Baron. If you are fond of poetry, there must be a place for romance in your life.”

  “I have to learn that poem at school. It’s a standard piece which almost everyone knows,” Jane informed him matter-of-factly. “The only other poem I know is ‘Cauld blaws the wind frae east to west, the drift is driving sairly.’ ”

  Yves pulled another face. “What extraordinary language. What does it mean?”

  “It’s Scots, by a man called Robert Burns. Would you like me to recite it to you?”

  “Thank you, but no. I would prefer you to tell me about yourself. Where did you live before you came to London? Not in Scotland, I am certain. I have met people from the north. The women have faces red from the wind, and they walk like men and have the hairs of their dogs on them. One shudders at the thought of making love to them,” Yves said, with a gesture of abhorrence.

  “I don’t think you can have met a very representative group,” Jane said, mildly. “The lights have changed,” she pointed out, feeling a blush coming on as Yves continued to gaze at her admiringly.

  A few minutes later they reached Hyde Park. He found a place to park, and switched off the engine.

  “Ah, now we can talk without being disturbed,” he said, offering his cigarette case.