"Okay. I'll save you some breakfast." Diana went dancing down the circular stairway, a gay little song of
happiness on her lips. Fern walked into her patient's room with a rather wistful smile on her lips. Edwina knew from Delilah that Fern had arrived home the previous night in Ross's company and she was naturally curious to hear how this had come about. Fern obligingly related her adventure while she gave Edwina a blanket-bath, Dr. Lands having ordered her complete confinement to bed for several weeks.
"So Ross came gallantly to your rescue like a knight in shining armour, eh?" Edwina sat against her comfortably plumped pillows, looking rosy and refreshed in a pink nightdress and matching bedjacket, a fragrant cloud of expensive talcum-powder floating around her.
Fern rang for Edwina's breakfast, smiling a little at the description. "I was tremendously relieved to see him," she said. "I hadn't a clue to my whereabouts and I'd just made Curtis terribly angry." She set about tidying the room, a slight flush on her cheeks from her exertions and a truant lock of glinting hair dancing above her eyes. Edwina watched her. She was a lovely child, but such loveliness brought unavoidable complications in its wake; the kind which rarely touched the lives of girls who were less well-favoured. It was honey to which men were naturally attracted, and the girl herself didn't like this. She wanted love and protection, not the hunger of honey-seeking young bears like Curtis Wayne.
She wanted love... it was there in her lavender eyes like a cry of the heart!
Edwina said, abruptly: "Ross was extremely kind to you last night, but there's something I think you ought to know about him, my dear. From my mother's side of the family he has inherited rather more than his share of touchy pride, and it was pride that broke up his romance with Laraine Davies. Her father was a very rich and influential man at one time, and she wanted Ross, but not as a journalist. She wanted him to accept a directorship on the board of her father's car-assembly business, but Ross wasn't interested. A newspaper had just given him a big writing assignment in Europe, and when Laraine flatly told him that the time had come
for him to choose between her and his darned journalism, he chose the latter. He informed her just as fiady that a wife's place was beside her husband in whatever sphere he chose to make his living, and she obviously thought of a husband in terms of a pet poodle on a lead. He was not a pet poodle, not on her diamond-studded lead or any other kind !"
Edwina shrugged her heavy shoulders. "I'm not saying he wasn't justified in going his own way, but he and Laraine were teenage sweethearts. They went everywhere together. Partnered one another at tennis, competed as a team in the local yachting regattas, and she was the only girl who ever wore his college fraternity pin. All of which should have hauled down his haughty flag of pride two years ago when Laraine's father went bankrupt, but it didn't. He stayed on in Europe, but neither of them has married. .." Edwina's eyes dwelt on Fern's, steadily and frankly. "Neither Laraine nor Ross has married, and this probably means they still care for one another."
"And after last night you don't want me to go getting any foolish ideas, is that it, Miss Kingdom?" Fern's slender figure was drawn up very straight beside the fourposter and the pretty flush had died out of her cheeks.
"Hogwash!" Edwina looked indignant that Fern should have misunderstood her. "I don't want that haughty, handsome devil using you as a sort of shield for his darn pride, for Laraine will now try to win him back. Jenny said as much when she received Ross's letter saying he was on his way home, and proud men aren't scrupulous about the weapons they use to uphold their front. So you be careful of him, my girl!"
The door swung open and Delilah came in with a breakfast tray. Fern, looking thoughtful, made her way downstairs to the patio. She could hear Diana laughing and chatting with someone before she stepped through the fretted stone archway that led out to the patio, where large velvety bees hummed in the many flowers and the hot sun distilled their fragrances with a lavish
generosity. Facing Diana across a circular ironwork table was the bronze-haired nephew, his short-sleeved green shirt and biscuit-coloured slacks revealing him as a much younger man than he had looked last night. The electric lights of the drawing-room had shown up his scar with too much clarity and there had been lines of travel fatigue about his mouth, but this morning, when he rose from the table to greet Fern, she saw how refreshed he was looking after a good night's rest.
"Hullo there." His teeth glinted in a friendly smile, but those little flecks of gold made his eyes rather inscrutable, Fern noticed, like sunlight flickering on lake water. She returned his greeting and approached the table, feeling quite tiny beside his tall, well-proportioned figure. He drew out a chair for her and she sat down, very aware that his appearance, his engaging manners, her remembrance of his kindness to her last night, all combined to make her warmly disposed towards him despite his aunt's warning. It was nice to have one's coffee poured out so attentively, and her eggs and kidneys tasted delicious.
Diana spread golden honey thickly on a piece of toast. She bit into the toast, her glance resting on Ross's scarred temple. "You might have been killed!" she suddenly exclaimed.
Fern glanced up enquiringly from her plate. Ross was applying a light to a slender cheroot and the aromatic smoke drifted against her cheek. "Honey, you could get killed crossing a road these days," he lazily drawled. "I'd say the Hollywood Freeway presents almost as many dangers as other places I could name."
"Where were you injured, Mr. Kingdom?" Fern asked.
"I'd rather like it if you would call me Ross." He smiled at her through his cheroot smoke, thinking how cool and pretty she looked in her white uniform. "I received this memento above my eye while I was out in the Middle East. I was covering a border riot story, unaware that some Arabs were covering me, and field surgery isn't as neat as it might be, I guess."
Fern's professional glance rested on his scar. A bullet would not have caused such extensive damage, therefore his injury had been caused by a mortar shell, she decided.
"What were you thinking of, Ross, exposing yourself to that kind of danger!" Diana touched a finger to his scarred temple, and he laughed a little at his sister's stepdaughter, a mere schoolgirl when he had last been in Gap Flamingo.
"You've grown into a regular little sugar-bun, haven't you, Di?" he said, looking her over. "Have you got all the local boys on a string?"
"Of course not, only one or two." Her young face sparkled into a big smile and she forgot to ask him questions. Sugar-bun! Ross turned the funny little endearment into a caress, and now Diana was old enough to see him as a man, instead of the dashing hero of her schooldays, she realized just how exciting he was and that he also looked rather arrogant. Even as he lounged in his chair, the sun brazen on his hair, warm on his strong throat and arms, he emanated the same leashed danger that makes men put bars around sleepy tigers in the sun. Right now he was purring and despite the scar above his eye he still possessed a magnificent appearance, but he would not be an easy person to get close to ... though lots of women must have wanted to be close to him, Diana thought, her glance flickering inquisitively towards Fern.
"Mist' Ross," Delilah came out of the house and across the patio, beaming all over her dusky face at the delightful picture the two girls made, one dark-haired the other so fair, seated either side of Edwina's nephew. He had been a great favourite of Delilah's right from a boy and she was delighted that he was back under the family roof again. "If you's done eatin' breakfast, Mist' Ross," she said, "Miss Winna would sure enough like to speak with you."
"I'd sure enough like to speak with her, Lila." He smilingly lounged to his feet and planted a kiss on the old negress's cheek. She chuckled and held a hand to
her cheek as though to imprison the kiss. "You's a devil like your pa was and, lordy, I sure don't know what Miss Winna is gonna have to say 'bout that there scar spoilin' your fine looks."
"I'm not a southern belle, Delilah." He was still laughing rather cynically to himself as he mounted the e
legant stairway to his aunt's room. The house was looking bright and fresh, with the usual great pots of bold azaleas and golden mimosa here and there, a clean smell of well-waxed furniture hanging on the air and that atmosphere of well-bred prosperity he remembered so well from his boyhood, when he and Jenifer had been brought here to live after their mother's death. Jenifer, working on the final scenes of her latest film, had been obliged to be at the studios at almost the crack of dawn, so he hadn't yet seen her.
In Edwina's room, after their preliminary embrace, his aunt's critical glance swept him from head to foot. "You're thinner," she grunted, "and you look like the devil himself with that scar above your eye. How did you come by it?"
He sat on the foot of her bed and told her no more than he had told Diana and Fern. He seemed not to want to talk about himself, and very soon he had his aunt talking about her peptic ulcer, then about Jenifer and the mutual friends they had in various parts of Los Angeles. "Jenny must throw a party for you and we'll invite them all," Edwina said, adding: "Laraine still comes to the house quite a lot."
His cheroot smoke veiled his eyes for a moment. "I'm surprised she hasn't married," he rejoined. "She was always a fascinating creature."
"I maybe wondered if you'd come home to marry her." Edwina took a cracker from a plate on her bedside table and bit into it. He watched her with an enigmatical smile.
"I've no notion to marry, Aunt. Least of all a woman with Laraine's streak of selfishness." "Once you were crazy about her." "Once I was a boy, now I'm a man," he drawled.
"Is that supposed to be an answer?"
"I'd say so. Boys like things that glitter and dazzle. Beach quartz. Rainbows and goldfish. Raven hair that reflects back the sun. But when boys grow into men they see that the quartz is not pirate gold, nor are their rainbows quite so extravagant."
"Stop drowning me in words!" Edwina ordered. "Why have you come home, then?"
He rested his bronze head against one of the carved bed-posts. "I've written a book," he said, "and I've come home for its publication, which is in August. Does that answer satisfy your curiosity?"
"Not particularly, though it interests me. How did you find the time ... you international correspondents are forever on the move round the globe, aren't you?"
Now he walked to one of the open windows and carefully flicked his cheroot ash into the air. "I was in hospital for a while," he said. "That's how I found the time."
Edwina regarded his wide back with a frown, heard him laugh a little to himself as he gazed down towards the patio. "Being in hospital isn't a joke," she snapped.
He turned from the window. "No, I was watching Diana and your pretty nurse, playing like a couple of infants with a black French poodle. A pet of Jenny's, I imagine. She always had a weakness for those absurd, long-legged creatures, didn't she?"
He was trying again to swing the conversation from himself, but this time Edwina wasn't going to let him get away with it. "Just how long were you hospitalized?" she demanded.
"Oh—seven weeks." He shrugged his shoulders. "And you're not to tell Jenny. She'll go off the deep end."
"Was it out in the Middle East?"
"No, in England. At the Atkinson Morley Hospital at Wimbledon."
"So you underwent neuro-surgery?" his aunt exclaimed.
He reluctantly inclined his head, then touched a hand to his scarred temple. "This began to play me up about three months ago, but I didn't take a lot of notice, hop-
ing, you know, that the pain and giddiness would eventually wear off. Then I collapsed at a Press luncheon and woke up to find myself in hospital. My head wound was X-rayed, a shell splinter showed up and I was taken to the Atkinson Morley Hospital for its removal. I'm okay now... touch wood." He touched the oaken window frame, then smiling crookedly he strolled towards the door. "That's a swell idea about a welcome-home party, Aunt. It's ages since I saw all the old gang—and don't you forget to extend an invitation to that little nurse of yours."
"I should hope this is a democratic household," his aunt grunted, but she was rather more concerned for him than she cared to admit and she added : "You really are fit, Ross? You're not hiding anything from me?"
"Sure I'm fit apart from an occasional blue-devil of a headache. My surgeon, Axel Wright, said I'd still get one now and again. Now I'm going to drive into Hollywood to see if I can kidnap Jenny for lunch at the Copper Skillet. I'll see you later, Aunt Winna."
Edwina sat frowning at the closed door. The boy (she still thought of him as one despite his thirty-two years) had changed. Yes, he had certainly changed. He had left America six years ago a fiery, restless young devil, straining at a leash all the time. He had returned with quiet, inscrutable eyes which were no longer ready to blaze temper, passion or devilry at a word or a mere glance, and Edwina knew herself troubled.
That afternoon a messenger boy arrived at the house with a big box of pink, white and crimson carnations nestling upon a bed of fern. "Flowers for Miss Heath-erly," the messenger boy told the maid who came to the front door. The maid carried them upstairs to Fern, who regarded them in astounded surprise ... surprise mingled with exasperation when she read the little card that was attached to them. They were from Curtis Wayne and the card carried his profuse apologies for his behaviour the previous evening. He wanted her forgiveness more than he could say and he hoped she'd let him make up for a spoiled evening by going out with him some other
time. He was planning to give a dance on the Silver Moth and he would be inviting her along with Diana and Jeff Lane.
Fern crumpled the card in her hand and told herself she had no intention of going out with him again or of attending a dance on his yacht. But the carnations were undeniably gorgeous and she ran down to the kitchen with them, intending to ask Delilah for a couple of vases to put them in. A little to her embarrassment Ross Kingdom was sitting on a corner of the kitchen table, eating the big green peas which Delilah was shelling for the evening meal and talking to her about his boyhood days at the house.
His eybrows lifted at the mass of carnations in Fern's arms, while Delilah let the cat out of the bag by saying mischievously: "Are you gonna tell us, honey, who's been sending you them hothouse flowers?"
Fern glanced quickly away from Ross's amused eyes. "Oh.. . just someone I know, Delilah," she replied evasively. "I need a couple of vases for them. I thought Miss Kingdom might like some in her room."
Delilah brought a pair of vases out of a cupboard, and Fern was conscious of Ross Kingdom's eyes upon her as she arranged the flowers. A few sprays of fern suddenly slipped from her hands' to the floor, and when he retrieved and handed them to her, their fingers lightly brushed for a second. Her heart gave a startled little skip at that momentary contact, then he said to her : "I hope you're none the worse for your tumble last night?"
"My nylon stockings suffered more damage than I,", she smiled, her dimple showing deep beside her mouth. This man was quick-witted. He had guessed that Curtis Wayne had sent her the carnations.
"Mist' Ross, I ain't gonna have a single pea left to serve up tonight!" Delilah gave his marauding hand a slap. "Now you just leave off doin' that. If you's hungry, there's a lemon pie in the ice-box."
He brought out the pie, so many delicious layers of fluffy pastry and lemon meringue. "Care to join me in a piece of pie, Fern ?" he invited. "I don't like eating alone."
The pie looked irresistible, so after taking the vases of carnations upstairs and putting one in her own room and the other in Edwina's (who was sleeping soundly as a baby), Fern joined Ross on the veranda, where they lazed in long cane chairs and tucked into wedges of pie and limeades in long frosted glasses. The brilliant sunshine made Fern feel indolently at ease, and she didn't protest when Ross plucked off her cap and dropped it on to a nearby table.
"It's a crime to hide real platinum hair," he drawled, and now she noticed how deeply warm and southern his voice was despite the number of years he had lived in California and travelled through Europe and other parts
of the world. They drifted into conversation about his travels, and Fern listened absorbedly to interesting anecdotes about the customs of the different nationalities he had met. He had written a book about them, he told her, and illustrated it with his own pen drawings.
It occurred to Fern that evening, while she showered and dressed for dinner, that she and her patient's nephew had become friends with a startling suddenness. The thought vaguely troubled her when she recalled what his aunt had said . . . yet there couldn't be any harm in being friendly with him ... he could surely have no ulterior motive in conversing so entertainingly with her that afternoon?
She walked down to dinner with Diana, who had been downtown all the afternoon modelling cashmere twin-sets for a fashion magazine called Youth. "I'm pooped," she informed Fern, "so join me in a sherry-cobbler before dinner." She threw open the drawing-room door, then gave a whoop of half-embarrassed laughter. "Excuse us !" she exclaimed.
Over Diana's shoulder Fern saw Laraine Davies, dressed in an exciting shade of kingfisher-blue, withdraw her bare white arms from around Ross Kingdom's neck. Then coolly, but not quite looking at the two girls in the doorway, he took a handkerchief out of his dinner-jacket pocket and wiped Laraine's vivid red lipstick from his mouth.
"Ross and I were just saying hullo to one another," Laraine remarked with a smile. She strolled to a mirror that hung above the mantelpiece and examined her own mouth; a fascinating creature who compelled the eyes with her sleek Egyptian-coin head, provocative gestures and tilting sloe-dark eyes. That she was top model at Celestine's was quite understandable, Fern reflected.
Diana went behind the cocktail bar and began mixing a couple of sherry-cobblers, a drink composed of sherry, lemon juice and broken ice. Fern joined her at the bar and they sipped their drinks through straws. "I like your gown, Laraine. It's real dreamy," Diana said.
Laraine was now perched elegantly on the arm of a chair, the soft panels of her gown floating around her like blue clouds. Ross handed her one of the dry martinis he had already mixed, and Fern saw Laraine scan his imperturbable face with her seductively made up eyes. "Do you like my gown, Ross?" she murmured.
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