by Susan Barrie
“The old lady said I was to take you to Farthing Hall, in Little Corsham, but you said on the telephone I was to take you to the station...”
“You are to take me to the station.” Frederica was quite firm about it, but she felt like a felon, and slightly hunted, as they turned left, instead of right, outside the main gates. There was a car parked under a spreading chestnut tree at one side of the road, and she recognised it instantly—and felt a sense of wild panic, and her pulses leapt in a terrifying manner, as Humphrey Lestrode left the driving-seat and stepped into the road right in the path of her taxi, at the same time signalling to her driver to stop.
He put his head in through the car window, and addressed the taxi-man.
“I’ll take over your fare,” he said. “But I wouldn’t like you to be out of pocket, so grab hold of this!” And he thrust a note into his hand.
The taxi-man protested:
“But it wouldn’t have been all that, sir!”
“Never mind.” Lestrode was looking more grimly at Frederica, and he held open the car door for her.
“Get out,” he ordered curtly, “and get into my car. And you needn’t think you’re driving, because you’re not. I’m taking over in a big way, and the sooner you realise it the better! This all the luggage you’ve got?” seizing upon her suitcase.
“You know it is,” she returned huskily, as she followed him across the tree-lined road.
“You’d have found yourself rather short of clothes when you got to London, wouldn’t you,” he said affably, as he held open the door of the passenger seat beside the wheel of his car.
“I’d have managed,” she declared in the same husky voice. And then her dark green, bewildered eyes gazed at him a little resentfully—but only a very little resentfully. “I suppose Lady Dillinger phoned you about my leaving?” she said.
He nodded, slamming the car door on his side and subsiding into the seat near her.
“I warned her to keep me posted if you behaved oddly,” he told her casually.
Frederica yielded blissfully to the feel of the comfortable seat. He was taking her back to Farthing Hall, and she found that she didn’t mind. She was even, deep at the heart of her being, conscious of profound relief, and a quite extraordinary sensation like contentment ... and as a result of it her eyes misted over with the acuteness of her relief, and she even sniffed a little.
Lestrode put a handkerchief into her hand.
“Have a good blow!” he advised. “And if you feel like a good cry get it out of your system. I don’t mind.”
“Dear Lady Dillinger,” she gulped.
“Dear idiot!” Abruptly he stopped the car, and although they were still on the main road, and one or two cars had already passed them, he reached over and pulled her into his arms and advised her to rest her head on his shoulder.
“There are black smudges under your eyes as if you haven’t slept well lately,” he told her, “and although I find them infinitely touching they do indicate that you’ve been under some sort of stress recently. Did you think I’d forgotten you because I didn’t come and see how you were getting on at the Manor? Or did you think I was too busy advancing my plans for marrying your sister to have any time or thought to spare for you?”
She glanced up at him sharply, as if the suggestion had revived some of her most miserable moments; but he put his fingers under her chin, tilted her face into the open, and shook his head over the anxiety that frankly peeped at him from under her long eyelashes.
“I said you were stupid the last time I saw you,” he murmured softly, “and I’m bound to confess you do strike me as very stupid indeed! For a young woman with such an infinitely attractive pair of large green eyes that sometimes make me think of rock-pools, to say nothing of your soft gold hair and most determined little chin that is as round and soft as a baby doe’s nose, your confidence in yourself and your ability to charm appears to be strictly limited. In fact, you have no confidence in yourself, and I believe you actually go out of your way to make the very least of your appearance sometimes because the knowledge that, on those occasions, no one can mistake you for a glamour-girl, gives you a kind of perverted satisfaction. Your mother has frequently complained that you cover yourself in grease when you’re performing a simple job on a car, and it has often seemed to me that you enjoy covering yourself with grease!”
She wriggled her chin out of the palm of his hand, and shook her head resentfully.
“You seem to forget that grubbing about in the interior of a car is a greasy job,” she protested. “Naturally I don’t enjoy looking a mess!”
“Then why did you ever decide to become a chauffeur?”
“It was the only thing I could do, and Lady Allerdale was always so kind to me that it didn’t seem a hard job.”
“But I have never been kind to you... ?”
“I wouldn’t say that!”
He caught hold of her chin again, and thrust her face into the hollow of his shoulder.
“Silly child,” he accused her. He rubbed a finger against the satin softness of her skin, which seemed to fascinate him, and resulted in him looking slightly bemused. “Silly baby! ...” He sighed. “And what an infant you are! Not fit to be let loose in an adult world. Did you really and truly believe I wanted to marry your sister?”
“You said so—”
“I said nothing of the kind! I flattered her to the skies, and I think I indicated on one or two occasions that she had more sense than you, because she is so truly feminine, and knows perfectly well that in the marriage market she has one very important asset— her looks! You heard me talking to her one night about marriage, honeymoons, and so forth. You possibly even heard her mention South America and returning to England to live in a house which you instantly decided must be the Dower House. The truth is that Rosaleen would look quite horrified if I suggested she should live in the Dower House, because Farthing Hall is much more up her street than a simple and rather derelict house which might one day be turned into something very habitable, because even if it was rendered habitable it wouldn’t have the same cachet as living at Farthing Hall. For Rosaleen, I mean ... and fortunately for her she has a young man friend whom I don’t think you’ve yet met—or else you’ve forgotten all about him—who has a house in Sussex that is very much more impressive than Farthing Hall, although at the moment it isn’t legally his. But his uncle has said that if and when he marries he can live there until he actually becomes its owner, on the death of that particular uncle; and in the meantime he’s found himself a job in South America. He’s an enterprising youth, and in my opinion he might well do very well for himself!”
“Roger Maitland,” Frederica exclaimed in an amazed tone.
“Yes, Roger Maitland. So you have heard of him? But your mother unfortunately doesn’t approve, or she didn’t approve until I had a good talk to her last night. And now she is quite willing to take on Roger as a son-in-law, and I’m afraid you’ll have to accept him as a brother-in-law instead of me!”
Waves of blissful relief and wonder were welling over Frederica, but under the amused scrutiny of his eyes she felt foolish in the extreme. Her cheeks turned fierily scarlet, and his caressing fingers felt the warmth of them.
“Of course I remember Roger...” Her green eyes were shy and abashed before the extraordinary revelation of increasing ardour in his. “Rosaleen met him in Switzerland at least two years ago, and I thought she had forgotten all about him.”
“Well, she hasn’t ... and with your mother’s consent and blessing she’s going to marry him!”
“Because you intervened on Rosaleen’s behalf?”
“You can put it that way.”
“But my mother’s heart was so set on—”
“My marrying one of her two lovely daughters? Well, all that has been satisfactorily taken care of, because no one has snatched you up as yet, and that leaves you for me.” He lowered his mouth until it touched her cheek. “Does that horrify you? Or did I rea
d too much into that kiss we exchanged the other day?”
Frederica nuzzled her face into his shoulder. He drew her closer, and then closer still, and stroked her hair gently.
“I always thought of you as a kind of prickly pear,” he informed her, while his lips moved against the back of her head, and an end of her hair got into his eyes. “Or I did until you fell asleep in the wood that afternoon after you’d had little or no lunch—and I thought you were having a jolly good one in the care of the Dillingers’ faithful retainers. But after that I knew the prickliness was just a shield, and underneath you were more vulnerable than most young women of your age. You simply couldn’t stand up for your rights, and if things went wrong with you you just crept away in secret and hid your hurts like an abashed animal. It apparently has never occurred to you that there’s something special about you. The other afternoon, for instance, after I’d kissed you—you took it for granted that it was all the result of a whim! It never apparently even occurred to you that I love you!”
Her head went back on its slender stem, and she gazed right into his eyes in disbelief.
“Oh, no!”
“Oh, yes! And I suppose the truth of it is that I fell in love with you immediately ... from the moment I found you driving my car, and expecting me to believe that a reputable London agency had sent you to me and expected me to continue to employ you. I’ll admit, the very last thing I intended to do at the outset was to permit you to go on driving me and threatening the lives of my cars ... and even after Bob Rawlinson intervened on your behalf, and your mother looked like proving awkward when she knew she had the support of Rawlinson, I still thought I’d have to find someone else to drive me, and put you in charge of the flower garden, or something like that, at the Hall. Until I found my affection for my cars had diminished, and without you at the wheel of one or other of them even a drive into Greater Corsham was a dull thing indeed. So you see it was pretty early in our acquaintance that I knew you were the one woman I could ever get around to thinking of marrying, and Lady Dillinger took such a fancy to you when she, too, met you for the first time that the excellent opinion I had formed of you, despite your refusal to become really friendly, seemed to become consolidated. I told Lady Dillinger I was going to marry you, and she was delighted ... and Sir Adrian wanted to open a bottle of champagne and celebrate. I’ve no doubt that’s what he’s doing at this precise moment, for with the kind connivance of Lady Dillinger I was on hand when you swept through the gates of the manor just now in a decrepit local taxi, and I shall shortly give myself the pleasure of telephoning the Manor and shouting the glad news of my betrothal to a prickly pear over the wires!”
Frederica made a strange, inarticulate sound. “And you can have a word with Lady Dillinger ... tell her you’ve made up your mind to marry me although you’re not at all sure I’ll make a good husband!”
Frederica shut her eyes. Held close in his arms she had not the slightest doubt he would make the kind of husband she had occasionally allowed herself to dream about, but had never believed she would ever possess.,
“Oh, Humphrey,” she sighed blissfully, “I’m not at all sure I’m awake.” In horror she gazed at him. “Am I dreaming?”
He smiled at her tenderly.
“Not so that you’d notice, my darling. In any case, if you’ll allow me to kiss you again we’ll find out. If it’s a nightmare you can smack my face, as I believe you very nearly did the other day; but if it’s not a nightmare ... well, we’ll put it to the test, shall we?”
They put it to the test, and Frederica sighed blissfully again at the end of it. She was certainly not asleep, and she was not enduring a nightmare ... and in actual fact she seemed to have come up out of the depths of misery and found herself in heaven.
But it was still very difficult to believe in that heaven.
“Say you love me,” he urged, with a show of the old impatience, against her lips.
She had grown very much accustomed to obeying him, and she satisfied him immediately.
“I love you. But of course,” with a tremendous sigh that relieved her of all tensions, “like you I actually fell in love at our first meeting. I didn’t know it, of course ... not then. But it’s true. That, I suppose, is why I felt so absolutely awful and depressed when you found me sitting on the platform at the railway station after you’d given me a cheque for my wages, and sent me packing in such an inconsiderate manner. I’d fallen in love with you, and you were so hateful ... because I’m afraid I did think so at the time! Which is a bit of a paradox, isn’t it?”
“I was in love with you, and I thought you were an infliction. That is an even greater paradox, isn’t it?” he asked.
Ten minutes later, after at least two cars had slowed as they passed to enable their drivers to gaze at them with interest, Frederica asked the question that concerned Electra.
“And my mother didn’t mind when you made it absolutely clear to her that it was me and not Rosaleen you wanted to marry?”
He smiled at her in some amusement and continued toying with her hair.
“She didn’t mind,” he assured her. “In fact, I think she suddenly discovered that you were her favourite daughter after all ... and you’re so easily led and biddable she’ll visit us whenever she feels like it at the Dower House. Because, my darling, I’m afraid I’ve already sold Farthing Hall. Your new stepfather has bought it, and your mother is going to live there with him. And she’ll be such a handy neighbour she’ll be bound to look in at the Dower House pretty often. We won’t say too often!” It was all too much for Frederica.
“Don’t tell me I’ve acquired a stepfather and a—a prospective husband all in one day?” she gasped.
He kissed her complacently for a moment or two, and then he kissed her again violently.
“Not a prospective husband, my sweet,” he corrected her a trifle huskily. “An affianced husband! We are now officially engaged to be married!”
THE END