Flower for a Bride

by Barbara Rowan

  And, as a matter of fact, she could hardly have looked more attractive, for the clover-pink dress was cut on Grecian lines, and it flowed gracefully from a tiny waistline. The color was so soft that it emphasized the natural delicacy of her own coloring, and beneath the hemline silver sandals peeped, and she wore a light, gauzy stole that was scattered like star-dust with silver sequins. Her hair, that had grown almost to shoulder-length since her arrival in Portugal, turned inwards like the petals of a flower on the nape of her neck, and in the dimness of the hall it looked fairer than it actually was.

  Lois had never thought beards becoming before, but turning her eyes upwards to Enderby as he towered above her she knew he would not be right without his. It emphasized his masculine vigor and sheer physical perfection, and it was beautifully trimmed and neat.

  Once again, as she looked at him, she thought of him in the prow of a wooden ship plunging towards England, in the days when Englishmen certainly didn’t wear dinner-jackets. And she could picture his eyes sparkling in the sunshine of a mad March day, and the gleam of his teeth as he smiled with all the satisfaction in the world at the task that lay ahead.

  He was smiling now, as he looked down at her, and he told her:

  “I don’t suppose you need me to inform you that you look enchanting? Something between a Dresden figurine and a creature of faerie.”

  Lois was glad when they were outside the house and in his comfortable but not highly expensive car, and whisking away down the drive. For the last thing she had wanted, in spite of the fact that she was looking at her best, was that Dom Julyan should emerge from his library and see her as she set off in the company of Enderby. For although it really was nothing whatsoever to do with her employer how she spend her free evenings, she had a pretty shrewd idea that he had been very far indeed from approving of her acceptance of this invitation.

  It was not yet quite dark, and a lovely light lay over the sea as they drove along beside it. Later the stars would shine forth like jewels above that same slumberously heaving expanse of indigo-blue water, with the lemon flush low down on the horizon where the sun’s path had been intercepted by the dusk. A crescent moon, too, would climb into the blue, and hang like a slice of melon above the white and pink- walled villas inland. Palms and spreading pine-tops would etch themselves against the radiant backcloth, and scents of tropical flowers, as well as the more ordinary varieties, would hang like a benison in

  the warm night air.

  Alvora boasted one or two really first-class hotels, but it was not to an hotel that Enderby took Lois, but to a charming villa of two storeys, surrounded by gardens like hanging skirts finding their way down the hillside, that had been built about the middle of the eighteenth-century, and opened recently as a haunt for the fashionable.

  There was a delightfully elevated terrace on which drinks could be sipped before dinner, and inside the rooms were wide and cool and tastefully decorated. Rather a modern style of decoration, but restful as a background. Lois found that her escort had reserved a table near one of the windows which opened on to the terrace, and while she listened to his pleasant-voiced conversation she could divide her attention between the couples who danced on the cleared space in the middle of the room and the stars as they appeared in that great void above the placidly dreaming sea.

  It was all a little unreal to her, who for the past two weeks had led a very cloistered existence, and at first she was not very responsive to her host’s attempts to entertain her. She wanted to listen to the soft thrumming of guitars in the orchestra, the popping of champagne corks, against the background of surging sea, and it was not until they danced their first dance between one of the courses that a little of the excitement of being a part of such a festive gathering attacked her.

  She discovered that, although she had danced so little in the past, and was apprehensive of being inveigled into the latest steps, that she could move like a feather in the breeze when experienced arms held her and piloted her. And Rick Enderby was not merely an experienced dancer, he was a born dancer. And he had all the grace and sinuous ease of movement of a tall man with well-exercised limbs.

  Lois looked up at him when that first dance was near its end, and although at first there had been little enthusiasm in her eyes, they were now wide and sparkling a little, like the bubbles in the pink champagne he had insisted on ordering with the meal.

  “That’s better!” Rick exclaimed, softly, holding her a little closer. “When I first called for you tonight I thought you looked a little—well, deflated, somehow, in spite of the fact that you also looked quite lovely. I wondered whether perhaps today had been ‘one of those days’, as we phrase it. Whether, perhaps, everything hadn’t gone quite right?”

  "Oh, no!” She shook her head at once, although, as a matter of fact, a ‘deflated’ feeling had been hers ever since she and Dom Julyan and Jamie had said goodbye to the beach on their way home from Lisbon.

  “I’ve had a very pleasant day, actually doing a little sightseeing, and thoroughly enjoying the experience.”

  “Oh, yes?”

  He looked at her for an explanation, and she did explain that as Jamie’s governess she had accompanied him when his father took him into Lisbon. She thought his eyebrows ascended for a moment in surprise, and then the surprise gave way to a suggestion of amusement, and he said:

  “Well, well! I’ve always understood Dom Julyan was a devoted father, but I never knew him to take his infant about very much before. The Portuguese don’t do that, you know—not when they employ nurses and governesses, and so forth. But perhaps, as you’re a very new English governess, and he wants you to settle down, he thought a little break would be good for you and your charge, particularly as he didn’t seem to be too keen on your having this break tonight.”

  Lois sent a rather questioning sideways glance at him as they walked back to their table, wondering what he was really thinking, and why, whatever his thoughts were about, they caused him to smile a little. The smile was in his eyes, and on his lips, as they resumed their seats at the table, and he looked across the scarlet, trumpet-shaped flowers at her.

  “When permission was granted to you to take this evening off, did you also gather that your employer was not too pleased?”

  Lois looked down at the lace table mats, and frowned a little.

  “I think that was simply because I am new here, and— well, Dom Julyan has struck me as being very conscientious about the people he employs, and he looks after most of them very well indeed. Look at Miss Gregg—how lucky she is to be so well looked after, when quite a lot of people would have told her she would have to go long ago! And as I only met you last Sunday. . .”

  “He thought you were rushing things a bit?”

  “Well, yes, probably,” flushing rather delightfully under the amusement in his eyes. “Portuguese young women don’t accept invitations after such a brief acquaintance!”

  “So Dom Julyan told you that, did he?”

  The flush deepened.

  “He mentioned it. And I’ve no doubt it’s true.”

  “Oh, it’s true enough. But, then, you’re not Portuguese—

  you’re English. And I’m English! It was natural that we should get together.”

  “I pointed that out to Dom Julyan,” she admitted.

  Rick laughed suddenly.

  “What a lot of pointing out my invitation to you has caused!” And then suddenly he sobered and studied her with a rather acute look of interest. “Tell me about yourself,” he requested. “The sort of things you do in England, how close you are to that cousin who might have been wife to a Marquis one day, and why you came rushing out here to be her bridesmaid. Were you disappointed when the wedding didn’t come off?”

  She told him all there was to tell about herself— much as she had once told Dom Julyan—and when there was nothing more to tell he gave a most emphatic shake of his head, and told her:

  “Well, you mustn’t go back to that sort of thing! Poun
ding a typewriter is not the life for you, and somehow or other we’ve got to keep you here in Portugal.”

  “Well, at the moment I’ve a very nice job,” she pointed out, “and I’m very grateful because I was lucky enough to get it.”

  “Yes, but that won’t last forever. Jamie will be sent to school one day, and then where will you be?”

  “I don’t know.” She looked a trifle disturbed. “But by that time I’ll have picked up a certain amount of Portuguese, and there might be other jobs offered to me. Or I can try and find one.”

  “Young women who look like pieces of Dresden china oughtn’t to have to find jobs.” They had reached the coffee and liqueur stage of the meal, and he offered her a cigarette. “But there is another eventuality, you know.”

  “Yes?” she asked, looking across at him questioningly.

  “Dom Julyan might marry again—quite soon! And if you didn’t like his wife, would you stay on as his son’s governess?”

  “I ----- ” Lois opened her mouth, but found no

  words would come.

  Rick held his lighter to the tip of her cigarette, and in the little spurt of flame she could see his shrewd eyes looking into hers. From the very beginning she had had the feeling that, although admiration looked at her out of his eyes, and he said pleasing and flattering things to her, he was not interested in her in the way a man often is when he asks an attractive woman to dine with him. There was a cool detachment about his look which convinced her that he was not the type of man many women could sweep off his feet, even if they tried very hard. He had both feet firmly planted on the ground, and Lois seemed to have aroused in him a keen but friendly interest, and nothing more.

  Perhaps that was why she was able to stare back at him with her own eyes very wide, and to ask as soon as she could formulate the words:

  “Have you any reason to believe that he might marry again—soon?”

  “I see no reason why he shouldn’t,” he answered. "He wants a wife—we all know that! A wife at the head of his table, and to run his house, and so forth, and to take an interest in his child. At least, when he contemplated marrying your cousin Jay, that was all he wanted. But since then Gloria Colares has returned to Alvora, and most of us suspect that she could provide him with a great deal more than that! We also suspect that she’s very ready to do so!”

  "I—see,” Lois said, and once more she stared down at the table.

  “You’ve met Donna Colares,” Rick murmured, carelessly flicking ash into an ash tray. “It was at her parents’ house last Sunday that I met you for the first time. How do you like her?”

  Lois suddenly put back her head. She recalled that at that same Sunday afternoon tea-party there had been a curious interchange of glances between the Englishman and the Portuguese widow, and at the time the glance had vaguely intrigued her. It had been so very far from a normal glance—not even a particularly friendly glance. And there had been something behind it—something mocking and meaning.

  “How do you like her?” she heard herself asking, rather bluntly.

  One side of his mouth seemed to twist a little, and although he smiled, it was a smile she remembered for a long time.

  “I used to like her very much indeed—will that suffice?” he asked.

  “Oh!” Lois exclaimed, and she felt a sudden rush of pity for him, and thought that she understood him a great deal

  better than she had done. “You mean that?”

  Rick nodded, his lips tightening a little.

  “But that was all some while ago, and she married— and, of course, that was the end of it so far as I was concerned! But now she’s free again—and I think she’ll marry Julyan. She’ll marry him because his position is excellent—because his future position will be even better, and because her people desire it. He’ll marry her because she’s quite unlike his wife, and quite unlike your cousin Jay. In short, she’s got something, and it’s far more potent than mere good looks!”

  Lois never quite knew what it was that caused her to look up suddenly, and turn her head slightly so that a party of people who had just arrived and taken their seats at a flower-decked table near the centre of the room, came into the focus of her eyes. Rick saw her give a little start, but looking round he was not altogether surprised by what he saw—certainly not as surprised as she was.

  Dom Julyan and Donna Colares, as if conjured up out of nothing as a result of the recent conversation, were the two most arresting members of the newly arrived party. Dom Julyan was looking urbane, and handsome, and more vital than any man Lois had ever met or dreamed of meeting, and in the lapel of his dinner-jacket he wore a white gardenia. Donna Colares wore s dress of rose-colored net, that foamed about her like a rose-colored mist, and there were diamonds in her black hair, and sparkling on her rounded throat and bare arms. Her brother was amongst the party, looking a little bored until he caught sight of Lois— who instantly looked away—and there were a couple of handsome young women who were obviously Portuguese, and wore dresses that simply shrieked ‘Paris’ in every line, and another man who helped to make up the complement of six.

  “I’m afraid you’ll have to look round again and smile politely at your employer,” Rick told Lois, sensing that she had been plunged into a kind of wild embarrassment, “because he’s looking this way. And you don’t have to feel awkward, either, because you’ve a perfect right to be here.”

  His words caused Lois, whose color had already started to rise, to blush as if she were conscious of actual guilt. But she nevertheless forced herself to meet Dom Julyan’s eyes across the width of the room, and received from him a distinctly foreign little inclination of the head that was more like a formal half-bow.

  Then he looked away, and Donna Colares, supremely poised and apparently prepared to enjoy her evening, smiled recognition out of her brilliant, tawny eyes. The smile included both Lois and her escort, and suggested inner amusement and satisfaction.

  Then she, too, averted her glance, and turned instead to Dom Julyan and said something to him, with the smile still clinging about her scarlet lips. And for the rest of the evening—or, at any rate, until she and Rick Enderby took their departure—Lois never once saw her employer look towards anything in her near vicinity.

  “Let’s dance again!” Rick said, and she was almost glad to be out on the glistening floor once more because, unless she wished to disgrace her partner, she simply had to concentrate on her steps, and that left her with no opportunity to think about the party of six at the large round table.

  They danced several dances after that, and it was when they returned to their own table after a tango that Duarte came across to them and insisted on saluting Lois in Portuguese manner, which meant that he lifted her hand up to his lips, but kissed the inside of her wrist instead.

  The girl found the salutation a little embarrassing, but she recalled that she had once seen Dom Julyan treat Gloria Colares’s slender wrist in the same manner. Only he had kissed it more than once, and afterwards retained a light hold of her fingers.

  “I wish I’d known you were coming here tonight,” Duarte said, “because I’d have made up a party which included you two, and let Gloria find someone else in my place.” There was no doubt about the admiration in his dark eyes as he looked down at Lois, taking in all her delicate fairness, and unlike the ease with which she met Rick’s appreciative dances, she found it well-nigh impossible to let Duarte’s gaze hold hers for long. His admiration was so unconcealed, and there was something about it she didn’t altogether like. “You’re lucky to be on your own,” he added, with a disparaging glance across at the table he had just left.

  “I quite agree,” Rick returned, a little dryly. “And it’s because we like being on our own that we’re not members of a party.”

  Duarte ignored the obvious hint, and turned again to Lois.

  “Whenever I meet you you’ve been granted temporary freedom in order to gladden the life of Enderby here,” he remarked. “Why don’t I sei
ze hold of opportunities with both hands as he does?”

  “Because it obviously hadn’t occurred to you to do so,” Rick told him, and then added, even more dryly than before: “You’re neglecting the lady you were chosen to escort tonight.”

  But Duarte was watching the light shining down on Lois’s pale silk hair.

  “We’re having a moonlight picnic on my father’s birthday,” he said, "in about ten days’ time—and I’m going to see that Gloria sends you an invitation. Julyan, of course, won’t even require an invitation, and Enderby always finds his way into these things, so will you allow me to dance some attendance on you on that night?”

  “I—I don’t really know whether it will be convenient for me to have the time off . . .” Lois replied, very hesitantly.

  But Duarte smiled.

  “My dear senhorita,” he reminded her, softly,

  “small children go to bed quite early in the evening, and once they are in bed there is no need for a governess to sit and hold their hand. If Julyan raises any opposition I will see that it is pointed out to him that there is no possible justification for it.”

  “I would far rather you didn’t ...” Lois began, but he waved an airy hand and indicated his table.

  “I must go now—but I shall see you again quite soon,” he said, with deliberation, to the English girl, and then turned a beautifully tailored back and went back to his party.

  Rick, Lois was not altogether surprised to discover, was frowning.

  “It’s a pity he didn’t remain in Rome,” he remarked. And then he dismissed his frown and smiled at her. “Come on, let’s dance again!”

  Lois couldn't truthfully have said that she enjoyed the remainder of that evening, and the sight of her employer dancing with a voluptuously graceful Gloria Colares detracted from what little enjoyment she did manage to extract from her hours of freedom. And when Rick suggested they take their departure she agreed at once, and felt glad to be outside on the coolness of the terrace, with the stars blazing overhead.