Flower for a Bride

by Barbara Rowan

  The amusement in his eyes caused Lois to flush— largely because she realized that he read her mind with ease—and she was glad when Jamie appealed to her to prepare the huge Alcobaca peach on his plate. Jamie was very fond of peaches, and he watched with a pink tongue eagerly moistening his lips while her slender fingers carefully pared the fruit, and when he started on a section of it and the juice ran down his chin on to his white blouse—his napkin having slipped a little—she went to the rescue with a completely natural expression of concern that brought quite a different look into the eyes studying her across the table.

  “Oh, dear!” she said. “And there’s nothing very much we can do about it!”

  She scrubbed at the front of his blouse with her own small handkerchief, and then Dom Julyan handed over his fine linen one.

  “You’d better keep it,” he said, when the operation was concluded, “in case you need it again,” and she tucked it away in her handbag with the feeling that she was tucking something precious away.

  “I’ll see that it’s laundered and returned to you,” the murmured, but he said nothing. He was intent on the expression on her face as she closed her handbag.

  After lunch they drove out to Belem to see the astonishing collection of coaches at the Belem Riding School. This was one of the things Dom Julyan had had in mind when they left that morning, and it was with the idea of entertaining Jamie that the visit to the school was paid. But Dais was so fascinated by the collection that her eyes grew quite as round and appreciative as Jamie’s.

  The way lay beside the Tagus, with pink palaces and villas on the fringe of it. The palaces were not nowadays occupied as palaces, but most of them had a history, and Dom Julyan talked to her about the families that had lived in them. He told her about the family of Bragancas that was a family of dwarfs, and about the beautiful Comtesse d’Ega who had had a love affair with Marshal Junot, one of Napoleon’s generals, and afterwards returned with him to Paris. In the loveliness of the afternoon, and with the beauty of those sugar-loaf edifices before her eves, Lois thought it must have been a romantic affair that was lived through those many years ago

  Jamie wasn’t interested in palaces, although his great-uncle still managed to live in one not very far from Lisbon, and one day it would be his father’s property. But he was interested in golden coaches, being young enough to think highly of fairy tales And there were golden coaches in rows in the Belem Riding School.

  They walked down the rows in the great painted hall, nine or ten coaches to each row. There was the red velvet coach of King Philip III of Spain, and the magnificent Coronation coach of Dom Joao V of Portugal, that was all scarlet and gold, and had a roof glittering with golden crowns. There were carriages with golden wheels, and carriages lined with white satin, beautifully painted carriages, and carriages that must have looked like museum pieces even in the days when they travelled upon the roads. Carriages of all periods from all over the world, collected together in one place; and if after examining them one by one Jamie was a little confused in his mind as to the type of coach that carried Cinderella to the ball, at least his eyes were shining and awed.

  He was not so interested in the exhibits upstairs, the saddles and saddle-clothes, stirrups and harness, displayed in glass cases. And when Lois realized that he was flagging, and obviously becoming a little bored, she suggested to Dom Julyan that they took their departure. He agreed at once, but insisted, as it was within a few hundred yards, that they had a look at the Abbey of Belem. Built of blinding white limestone in the Manoelino style it struck Lois as more like an Indian temple than a Gothic abbey, but the Tower of Belem, a little further on, built out into the Tagus at the point from which all voyagers set sail, was something she knew she would never forget. It, too, was of white limestone, and had the look of a mosque with its little cupolas and balconies on which a muezzin might appear at any moment; but it was also a landmark, bold and striking, to which eyes might turn and cling for a hungry last glimpse before ships bore them away across the seas.

  Lois knew that whatever happened to her in after days the tower of Belem, or any mention of it, would always mean for her one untroubled day in Lisbon with Dom Julyan and his son.

  They returned to the hotel where they had had lunch for tea, and then set out on the homeward journey to Alvora.

  But it was still quite early in the afternoon, and the glimpses of the sea looked very cool and tempting whenever they were afforded them, and especially the little stretches of placid beach. Lois saw Jamie’s intent eyes watching boats bobbing at anchor, and occasional forests of masts, and asked suddenly:

  “Don’t you ever allow Jamie to visit the beach?”

  Dom Julyan took his eyes off the road ahead for an instant and looked round at her with a somewhat enigmatic smile.

  “Does that mean that you would like to visit the beach?”

  Lois protested at once, although she colored faintly:

  “I was thinking that it is natural for a small boy to wish to paddle sometimes, or at any rate dig in the sand.”

  “Well, I don’t think that we’ve time for either paddling or digging in the sand, but we can go down on to the beach for a few minutes if you would like to do so.”

  Lois was instantly conscious of a sensation of gratitude—not so much because she was craving to go down on to the beach, but because this would spin out the afternoon for her. Although she was going out to dinner that night she was dreading the moment when they returned to the quinta and Dom. Julyan would become once again an unapproachable employer. He had been so very approachable all day that she felt she would like to hang on to the illusion of comradeship that they shared at the moment.

  Jamie was delighted when his father lifted him out of the car, and in spite of the support on his foot he was the first down to the beach. Lois watched him anxiously as he hastened like a small human grasshopper down roughly-hewn steps to the sand, but as she made to run after him her employer caught her by her slim bare arm and held her back.

  “Let him go!” he said quietly. “He’s quite all right, and it doesn’t do to fuss over him too much.”

  “But he might fall . . .”

  “Not him! He’s as sure-footed, in some ways, at a mountain goat. And, in any case, he won’t always have someone to pick him up when he falls, you know.”

  She looked up at him with wide, reproachful, and faintly distressed eyes as he helped her down the steps, taking care that she, at least, did not turn her ankle as she had done once before because her shoes had too high heels.

  “Will he always be like that?" she asked, her breath catching on the words. “Can’t something be done for him while he is still young? Or will something, perhaps, be done for him later on?”

  Dom Julyan shook his head.

  “The ankle might strengthen, but he will always need a support. “Why,” he asked, looking down at her keenly, “does his deformity distress you?”

  She nodded, blinking quick tears from her eyes. “Of course it distresses me!”

  Dom Julyan’s fingers gripped her arm a little more tightly, and an expression crossed his face that she thought was rather extraordinary. Then he said very gently:

  “You are extremely feminine, aren’t you, in spite of the fact that you are filled with an English desire to be independent? And in spite of the fact that you insist on clinging to your English rights and traditions—the right to go where you please without questions being asked, and to make friends where you please, also without questions being asked—you are, I should say, extremely vulnerable?"

  “W—what do you mean?” she queried.

  Jamie was streaking like lightning across the soft sand, entranced by the sight of the sickle-shaped fishing-boat putting in to land, and a woman in bright scarlet petticoats striding to meet it. As he reached a dump of rocks the woman paused and patted his head, said something to him that caused him to smile up at her, and then as if in obedience to a suggestion she made, turn and return by the way he ha
d come. But within a few feet of his father and Lois his quick eye caught sight of something diverting in the sand, and he sat down to investigate it.

  Dom Julyan patted one of the sun-warmed rocks and said to Lois:

  “Sit here, and don’t be afraid that your frock will be marked. These rocks are perfectly dry, and washed clean and swept by every high tide.”

  But Lois wouldn’t have cared how badly her frock was marked under such conditions, and it was only the fact that he had not yet replied to her query that caused her to look slightly confused as she seated herself. He threw himself down carelessly on to the sand at her feet, and Jamie plunged both small fists into the sand in search of further discoveries such as the one that had just come to light. Although he was near his small ears were shut to anything in the nature of conversation that was going on in his neighborhood.

  “Why do I think you are vulnerable?” Lois’s employer looked up at the delicately tinted face beneath the shady hat, and his dark eyes grew inscrutable as they met the gaze of unusually transparent blue-grey ones. “Tell me how you are settling down?" he asked, rather more curtly. “Although you have admitted that outside interests are important, have you yet made up your mind whether you will like living here? Will the dullness of it in time be too much for you, do you think?”

  “The—dullness?”

  He shrugged his shoulders slightly, and made a distinctly foreign movement with his hands.

  “The day-to-day routine—the monotony, shall we say? Donna Colares pointed out on the first night of your filling this new position of yours that you are English, and that unless I allowed you a certain amount of freedom you would not be likely to stay. In the days when Miss Mattie came here even English women were not as intrepid as they are today, but she settled down happily enough. Can you envisage yourself settling down as she has done?”

  “For the remainder of my life, senhor?” she asked, a little dryly, recalling that his son had made a similar remark about her settling down as Miss Mattie had done. “Surely you are not anticipating adding another pensioner to your list?”

  His black brows drew together in the frown she was beginning to know very well.

  “That,” he told her, “is hardly an intelligent reply from an intelligent young woman. Apart from the fact that I should be very old when—and if—you remained here long enough to become a pensioner like Miss Mattie, and perhaps not even in this world at all, there is so little likelihood of your following the path Miss Mattie has trod that we need not even discuss it. You are young and extremely attractive, and you will marry before long. But in the meantime I would like to feel that you are happy here.”

  “I would be very unreasonable, and altogether too demanding, if I was not happy in the comfortable position you have found for me,” she replied, digging at a limpet on the rock.

  “Which means that you are settling down?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “And even the restrictions imposed by life in a Portuguese household are not too irksome?”

  “Irksome?” This time there was nothing but surprise in her eyes as she looked at him. “There is nothing irksome about life in your household! And if you are holding it against me that I accepted Donna Colares invitation to tea with her parents on Sunday I hope you will be honest enough to admit that I did not seek it! I had only just arrived, and it seemed strange to me that she should bother about my private life at all! As for you, senhor—so long as I give satisfaction, surely that is all you need concern yourself about? Employees are rarely human beings in the eyes of those that employ them.”

  “Has that been your experience? he asked, lying looking up at her gravely.

  She sighed suddenly.

  “Up till now, I have merely been a cog in a wheel—and a very insignificant cog at that! It is strange for me to have a day like today included in the midst of my normal working days, and I feel that I ought to thank you for making me, as well as Jamie, part of the outing today. I am sure that you could have managed him easily enough on your own, and it was kind of you to—well, to decide against leaving me behind.”

  His eyes were suddenly inscrutable again.

  “Has it been a very pleasant day?”

  “A very pleasant day,” with another sigh of pure contentment in the words as she looked at the sparkling sea.

  “Already, I believe, you are fond of Jamie?” he

  said.

  “I love him,” she answered, and it wasn’t until she had uttered the words and realized how much impulsive warmth they contained that she flushed.

  He said nothing for several seconds, but he collected a handful of sand and watched it as it trickled through his shapely fingers.

  “It is important for Jamie to be loved,” he told her, at last. “I love him, and Miss Mattie is fond of him, but that is all the love he has had in his life. And children need a great deal of love.”

  “All human creatures need to be loved,” Lois replied, and then could have bitten out her tongue because too late she recollected that he himself had told her that not only was he prepared to marry where he had little or no proof that there was no love in it for him, but he had not even desired any love in return. Therefore it was strange that he should

  desire it for his son! “At least ------------- ” she sought to

  amend her statement.

  “At least?” looking at her a trifle obliquely. “It is desirable,” she muttered awkwardly, “but not perhaps absolutely necessary.”

  “What is necessary, I think,” he replied, standing up and dusting the sand from his white silk suit, and showing her his handsome mask of a face, “is that all human creatures should have someone to love. Even more than having it bestowed on one, bestowing it on someone else gives on a curious feeling of satisfaction.”

  He held out his hand to help her up from the rock, and as she put hers into it she was conscious of the strength and virility of his clasp. But as soon as she was on her feet he released her, and the crisp way in which he said:

  “Well, now we will get on our way again!” filled her with the conviction that all at once other thoughts were occupying his mind; and as they made their way back to the car, with Jamie gambolling between them, she wondered with a kind of dull misery that had been borne with his sudden detachment:

  Was he thinking of Gloria Colares? Was it she who had taught him, after so nearly making a grave mistake and taking Jay for a wife, that he loved the woman who had become widowed a year ago? That she was free for him to pour his love out over if he chose?

  C H AP T ER E L E V E N

  They got back in good time for Lois to have a few words with Miss Mattie and give her a brief account of their day, before starting to dress. Then Josie saw to Jamie’s supper and put him to bed, healthily tired and sunburnt after so many hours in the open air, and Lois tried to make up her mind what she would wear for the evening.

  It wasn’t really much of a problem, because there was so little choice, but she had given the matter little or no thought all day, and when the time arrived to dress she found herself dangerously near to being flummoxed. Then she caught sight of the clover-pink dress she was to have worn as a bridesmaid hanging on its hanger, and decided that was the most festive article of wearing apparel she possessed, and as it had been designed to wear as an evening dress after the event it was quite suitable. She shook it out on its hanger and grew very thoughtful as she looked at it, for if everything had gone ‘according to plan’ Jay, by this time, would be Dom Julyan’s wife, and she herself would not have been visiting Lisbon in the capacity of his son’s governess today, and in his company.

  The thoughtfulness gave place to a feeling of restlessness and an inability to concentrate, and she wished she were not being collected in a short time and taken out for the evening. She would far rather have sat quietly on the window-seat in her room and gone over all the details of the day in her mind, and dwelt upon the ones that gave her most

  pleasure.

&nb
sp; But as it was she had the feeling that Rick Enderby was the type to be very punctual, and she hadn’t much time to dress. When she was ready she extracted a little brocade evening-bag from her drawer, and opened the white handbag she had used during the day in order to remove her one and only compact and place it in the brocade bag. During this process of interchange her fingers touched Dom Julyan’s fine linen handkerchief, folded carefully away at the bottom of the white bag, and she brought it reverently to light.

  It still bore the stains of Jamie’s peach, but she knew it would be a long time before she sent it away to be laundered. She placed it carefully right at the back of her drawer, and hoped—and felt happier because she was certain it was the last thing he ever would do—she would never be requested to return it.

  She was right about Rick, and when Josie came to tell her that he was waiting in the hall she was only just ready. She felt slightly flustered for a moment, because evenings of the kind this was likely to turn out to be were strange to her, and she wasn’t at all sure that her appearance was all that it ought to be. Then she turned and caught Josie’s bright brown eyes looking at her, and was reassured, at least about her appearance.

  “The senhorita is looking forward to a happy evening?” Josie said softly. “A successful evening?”

  Lois was not sure what she meant by that, but she was grateful for that gleam of appreciation in the other’s eyes.

  “Just going out to dinner,” she answered, rather awkwardly. “It—it will be a change.”

  “It will be a most pleasant change for the senhorita,” Josie expressed it as her opinion, and with the recollection of the tall, fair, faultlessly-dressed Englishman, with his intriguing golden beard, waiting on the marble tiles of the hall, at the back of her mind, she nodded her head vigorously in a pleased fashion. “A very pleasant change!” she added.

  Lois peeped in at Jamie before leaving, but he was fast asleep, and she decided that she mustn’t risk waking him by dropping a kiss on his hair. She went downstairs to the hall to meet her escort, and for the first time in her life a man’s eyes told her that she was completely charming.