Roberta Leigh - Too Young To Love

by Roberta Leigh

  "Worried?" Sara looked at Jane through the mirror.

  "By how young you were and his fear that he was rushing you. He felt he should give you a chance to see more life and to meet other men nearer to your age."

  "I've never loved anyone but Gavin." Sara put down the brush with hands that shook. "Admittedly when I met him in Paris I hadn't known anyone else, but in the last few years I've met so many men, I've lost count." She swung round. "But none of them meant anything to me. It's always been Gavin."

  "What a pity you wasted so much time. Not you," Jane added hastily. "You're still very young, but my darling brother was fast becoming a crusty bachelor!"

  "He had plenty of admirers on Balinda."

  "But they meant nothing to him. When he stopped off here - which he always did en route to England - we'd introduce him to some stunning women. But he never took any notice of them. I'm glad he finally decided to seek you out again."

  "He didn't," Sara said. "I went to Balinda to see someone. That was how I met him."

  "Strange," Jane mused. "Gavin has always fought for what he wanted. I always believed that once he'd given you a couple of years to grow up, he would come after you."

  Sara drew a deep breath. "Our parting in Paris wasn't an amicable one. We quarrelled badly and I ran away. As I'm running now."

  "But this time you're running back."

  "Yes." Sara rested her head on her hands. "I wish to heaven I'd done it four years ago!"

  "Perhaps you were too young then." Jane came over to Sara. "If I hadn't been so caught up in my own affairs at that time, I might have been able to help you."

  Sara shook her head, knowing how impossible it would have been for her to have told Jane why she and Gavin had quarrelled. "You were so happily pregnant," she said quickly, "that it never entered my head to confide my miseries to you."

  "Happily pregnant." Jane smiled reminiscently. "That goes to show how wrong people can be! I was more unhappy then than at any time in my life." She squared her shoulders. "Mike and I were going through a pretty bad patch, and even though I was pregnant I was toying with the idea of leaving him."

  Sara stared at her in astonishment and Jane gave a rueful smile.

  "I suppose I can tell you about it now that it's all over - particularly since your father has parted from your stepmother. It was Helen, you see. Mike made a fool of himself over her while I was in Yorkshire. When I came back I knew immediately that something was wrong, but he was afraid to tell me."

  "How did you find out?"

  "Eventually he did tell me. When everything was over and there was no earthly reason for him to confess, he told me the whole story." Even though Jane was speaking of the past her voice was vibrant, as if the scene was being re-enacted, as perhaps it was for her. "Mike said he couldn't live with me unless there was complete truth between us. He wanted to explain why Helen had bowled him over. There's no point going into the reasons," she said, "except that they made sense to me, and from then on our marriage has never looked back. In fact, until I saw you tonight, I hadn't given Helen a thought."

  "I wonder if I could be so forgiving," Sara said softly.

  "If you love someone enough it isn't hard to forgive." She gave a wide smile. "Gavin will tell you the whole story. Poor darling, he was involved in it up to his neck."

  "Was he?" Sara asked in a choked voice.

  Jane nodded. "If you'd been older he would probably have told you about it at the time, but I guess the poor darling was as anxious to protect you as he was to protect me. He loathed Helen from the moment he met her, but he couldn't tell you, of course, because she was your stepmother." Jane paused. "Where was I? Oh yes - Mike. Well, Mike wrote her a love letter and Gavin set out to get it back. Apparently he went charging up to her bedroom one night to force her to give it to him."

  Jane went on talking, but Sara did not hear her, too overwhelmed by remorse to absorb anything beyond the fact that she had to return to Gavin as quickly as possible.

  "Can Mike help me to get a flight?" She cut across Jane, who was still speaking. "I've got to get back to Gavin!"

  "Let's go and ask him now," Jane said gently. "I was hoping to have a couple of days' gossip with you, but I see my brother's attraction is greater than mine."

  Mike, reacting to Jane's insistent pressure, used all his influence to help Sara, and after endless telephone calls her passage was confirmed and, in the early hours of the following day, she was once more boarding an aeroplane.

  She had cabled Aunt Grace of her return but had deliberately not told Gavin, wanting to see his delighted surprise when she walked in on him.

  "What caused the change of heart?" Grace Rickards said as she greeted Sara at Pango Airport in the late afternoon.

  "I came to my senses an hour out from Nairobi," Sara said wryly. "I would have come back yesterday except that I couldn't get a flight. If it hadn't been for Mike, I wouldn't be back yet. Gavin's brother-in-law," she explained, seeing the older woman's quizzical look.

  "Of course." Grace Rickards remembered who he was and where he fitted into the story. "I take it you didn't tell them why you'd quarrelled with Gavin?"

  "There was no need. I'd already made up my mind." Sara drew a deep breath. "Jane talked about Paris, though. She confirmed what Gavin had said and that made me feel even worse."

  "I take it you're going to see him?"

  ''Nothing can keep me away. I'll go back to the bungalow and freshen up, and then I'd like to borrow your car."

  "If I said no, would you be prepared to walk?"

  "I would crawl to him on my hands and knees if necessary," Sara said huskily, and remembered this as, an hour later, she drove into the courtyard of the Governor's Residence. By not telephoning him, she was running the risk of not finding him there or, worse still, of finding him with Lydia. But no matter if he was. She was convinced he loved her and that his indifferent attitude in the restaurant had been a pretence.

  Parking the car, she ran up the shallow steps. The sentry recognised her and stepped back to let her pass. She entered the hall and the Balinda butler smiled a greeting.

  "Is the Governor at home?" she asked in a shaky voice.

  "In the library, Miss Claremont." He went forward to announce her, but she motioned him to remain where he was and sped across to the library door. She hesitated, then turned the handle and went in.

  Gavin was at his desk and, as he looked up and saw her, he rose.

  "I've been expecting you, Sara."

  Halfway towards him she stopped. "You mean you knew I would come back?"

  "Jane telephoned me."

  "Oh dear," Sara said. "I begged Mike not to let you know because I wanted it to be a surprise, but I never thought of telling Jane to keep quiet."

  "More's the pity," Gavin said. "Had you done so it might not have spoiled your plans." He came round the side of the desk, but it was the side furthest from her, and he went to stand by the window which took him even further away. "Go on," he said harshly. "Say what you've come to say. You obviously won't leave until you do."

  "I have no intention of leaving." Her voice was husky and she cleared her throat. "I've come back to you."

  "And now you can please me by going."

  Puzzled, she stared at him, trying and failing to read an expression in the hard profile he had turned to her. "Don't you understand me, Gavin? I've come back to you. I realise I was wrong. I should never have doubted you."

  "Your faith in me is astonishing," he said coldly. "But unfortunately it's come too late."

  The fear that had been rising in her since coming into this room and seeing his cold withdrawn face was so strong that it was threatening to eradicate all reason. Gavin could not be sending her away. For four years he had gone on loving her; he couldn't have changed in a couple of days. Not even Lydia could make him do that.

  "You love me, Gavin," she said, throwing pride to the wind. "I know you're angry with me - hurt even - but you do love me. That's why you've got t
o forgive me." She ran over and put her hand on his arm. He did not push it away so much as withdraw himself.

  "I do forgive you," he said quietly, "and I do love you, heaven help me, but I have no intention of marrying you."

  "Why not?"

  "Because I can't stand any more scenes like this!"

  "There wouldn't be any more scenes like this."

  "Do you expect me to believe that?" he grated. "I'm not a callow youth, Sara, I'm a man of thirty-five and I know that people don't change. I thought you might as you grew older, but I realised a couple of days ago that you hadn't."

  "I have!" she cried. "That's why I came back. I haven't let four years go by this time. Not even four days!"

  "Because you met Mike and Jane," he bit out. "I know what she said to you. She told me over the phone."

  Sara cast her mind back to last night - it seemed so long ago - and remembered Jane telling her of Mike's confession. "Jane had nothing to do with my coming back," she cried.

  He flung her a look of disbelief and went over to a tray of drinks which stood on a bamboo trolley next to the settee. She heard the gurgle of liquid and the splash of a soda syphon and watched him take his drink at a gulp. It said much for his disturbed state of mind that he did not offer her one, and the knowledge gave her the courage to run across to him.

  "Gavin, look at me. I won't leave you until you look me in the face and tell me to go."

  Slowly he pivoted round and stared at her fully. His face was colourless beneath his tan and his eyes were as opaque as those of a blind man's. "Please get out of my life, Sara. I'll manage to make something of it without you. I'll even find some semblance of happiness, given enough time. But I have no intention of making my life with you."

  Sara felt her vitality seep away like sand in an hourglass. Never had she believed that Gavin would say this.

  "Why?" she cried brokenly, uncaring that the tears were pouring down her face. "Why are you so cruel?"

  "I've told you." His voice was so soft that she had to strain to hear it, and she knew that the anger that had given him the impetus to speak to her so brutally had left him as drained of energy as she was herself. "It's no use, Sara. Without trust we'll never have a moment's happiness. I'll always be afraid that you'll doubt me, and you will always be afraid that I'll let you down. At the moment you don't believe I was Helen's lover, but how will you feel a month from now, or in six months? What will happen when you see me talking to a pretty woman - and I have to talk to many pretty ones in the course of my duties - won't you start suspecting me all over again?"

  ''Of course not," she cried. "I'll never doubt you."

  "Fine words," he scoffed.

  "I proved them with actions," she said. "I came back, didn't I?"

  "Only because Jane made you realise what a fool you'd been."

  "I tell you my coming back had nothing to do with your sister. She doesn't even know why we quarrelled."

  "She still told you about Mike and Helen." Gavin's hands gripped her shoulders. "That's why you came back. Don't lie to me, Sara!"

  "I'm not lying." She felt his hold tighten and winced with the pain. "I made up my mind to come back before I landed at Nairobi. If I could have turned the plane round in mid-air I would have done so 1"

  "You expect me to believe that!" he stormed.

  "It's true. I was already on a stand-by flight to return here before I even met Mike. If you don't believe me, ring him up and ask him."

  Gavin went on looking at her and slowly the opaqueness left his eyes. Their blue intensified and deepened as he allowed them to focus on her, and she had the feeling that he was drawing the sight of her into the very depths of his being.

  "Sara," he said brokenly, and pulled her into his arms, running his hands across her body as if to make sure she was really there. "Sara," he said again, and pressed his cheek to hers.

  She felt the trembling of his body, a trembling which increased as he went on holding her and murmuring soft endearments that held no rhyme or reason yet were infinitely satisfying. With a sob she turned her face up to his.

  "Kiss me," she whispered. "Make me come alive."

  It was a long time before reason returned enough for them to speak rationally, and by then they were sitting together in an armchair, her slender body curled up in his lap, his hand caressing her silky hair.

  "It was believing that Mike and Jane had made you change your mind that made it impossible for me to accept your return," he explained. "I've never considered myself a proud man, but thinking you had to have other people restore your faith in me was more than I could take."

  "My heart was winging its way back to you before I set eyes on Mike," she repeated. "And believe me, darling, I didn't encourage Jane to talk about Paris." She tilted her head to look into his eyes. "I wasn't even aware that Jane knew the truth about Mike. You never told me."

  "You're right," he said, and tenderly caressed her neck. "Did you tell Jane why you ran away from Paris?"

  "I was too ashamed," Sara confessed. "If Jane could forgive Mike for what actually happened, how could I tell her I'd made you suffer for four years for something that never happened?"

  His answer was to gather her closer, but it did not lessen her guilt. "I don't think I'll ever forgive myself for that," she whispered. "I'll do everything in my power to make it up to you."

  "You've done that by coming back to me today. And there'll be no more parting for us," he went on thickly. "Our future is together."

  "What a wonderful thought! Can we begin the togetherness now?"

  "You're a temptress," he warned.

  "And are you tempted?"

  "What do you think?" he replied, and not waiting for her to answer, kissed her deeply on the mouth. Held close, Sara knew she had at last come home.