Love is for Ever

by Barbara Rowan

  Both men were in the big main salon when she entered it, and both looked particularly distinguished in evening dress. Neville, with the Englishman’s ability to wear evening clothes with an air of ease and casualness in spite of the fact that he probably loathed the formality of them, actually warmed her heart for a moment because he looked so utterly spruce and even handsome, and Dominic, as always, was absolutely correct in every detail of his appearance.

  Dominic, she so often thought, had no right to be so much more than merely handsome—so disturbingly handsome, was perhaps a better way of putting it.

  Neville’s eyes quite lighted up at first sight of Jacqueline, and he paid her a very forthright compliment as soon as she gave him her hand.

  “You look delightful,” he told her. “Absolutely delightful!”

  “Oh!—Th-thank you.” Jacqueline looked a little taken aback. Dominic sent her a glance across the room which was a little cool and distant, considering the friendliness of their attitude to one another during the afternoon, and he did nothing to enlarge her ego still further by endorsing the doctor’s expressed opinion. “It’s my dress,” she said, modestly. “I rather like it myself.”

  “I don’t know whether it’s your dress or yourself—but the combination of both is a little staggering!” Neville assured her, smiling down into her eyes.

  And then Martine entered the room, and as always she became the cynosure of the various pairs of eyes in the room.

  Her efforts to make the most of herself, in spite of the fraying of Juanita’s temper, and her inability to control her own temper during the actual process of dressing, had been well worth it. Her skin looked rather like a paper-white rose, and her hair positively flamed. Jacqueline blinked a little, because she thought it the most beautiful hair she had ever seen in her life. And Martine’s lovely white body was not so much clothed as shrouded in a mantle of darkness created out of drifting black net, and there were jade earrings in her ears, and a jade necklace about her white throat.

  Jacqueline realized that the reaction of both men was instantaneous. They both stood, for a moment, and stared, and then Martine smiled at them languidly. It was plain that she was still hugging about herself a kind of cloak of reserve, but that was only where Dominic was concerned. Her smile for the doctor was full of seductive, green-eyed allure.

  “Well,” she said, looking almost indifferently at Dominic, “do we go?”

  They all four piled into Dominic’s car, and Dominic drove. The distance was short, for it was not much more than ten minutes later that they alighted in the square where Dominic had waited for Jacqueline that morning, and leaving the car entered the mouth of one of the narrow lanes which Jacqueline had also explored that morning. But tonight her elbow was held firmly by Dominic, while Martine was similarly guided by Neville, and there was no danger of her high heels catching in one of the ruts between the cobbles, or of her missing the curb when they came to it, for Dominic’s secure hold would not have permitted that, and his quiet voice told her where to place her feet.

  They arrived at a high door set in a white wall, and once they had passed through Jacqueline found that they were in the usual kind of enclosed patio. Although it was dark, and the moon had not yet risen, she could see flowers gleaming palely in the shadowy gloom, and there was a sound like the plashing of a fountain near at hand. There was also the monotonous surge of the sea, and she realized that they were very close to it here.

  A door with a softly gleaming ornamental lantern above it was opened to them, and inside they might have been in a luxurious private villa, which was what the place had actually once been, although it was now turned into a kind of club. The girls left their wraps in a cloakroom, and then rejoined their escorts in a big room where the tables were all discreetly arranged and softly lighted, and a clear place in the centre was plainly intended for dancing. There was also a kind of raised dais at the far end that was banked with flowers, and an orchestra was already playing softly when they entered, the low throbbing of guitars sending a kind of shivering pleasure through Jacqueline as soon as she heard it.

  For her the evening passed in a kind of dream of unreality, for from the outset it became plain that Martine had by no means completely relented towards Dominic following upon what must have been quite a serious quarrel during the morning; and no doubt because she thought it would hurt him badly—perhaps drive home to him the extent of her displeasure—she remained cool and indifferent towards him throughout the entire evening. And Dr. Barr, who had been invited—so Jacqueline had believed—to provide her with someone to talk and dance with, became the recipient of all the exquisite red-head’s carefully calculated smiles, and it was on him that she turned the full battery of her charms and conversation.

  While they dined, the conversation was more or less general, and Neville allowed his eyes to rest fairly often upon Jacqueline, in spite of Martine’s deliberate attempts to ensnare every glance from them for herself. But once couples started dancing it became obvious that Martine was having the effect upon him which was almost inevitable and Jacqueline’s claims to attention receded farther and farther into the background.

  Jacqueline and Dominic sat watching them as they circled the floor, the most finished pair of dancers moving in the softened rays of amber light. Martine drifted with the ease and grace of a professional, and somewhat to Jacqueline’s surprise Neville was quite obviously a highly accomplished dancer.

  She thought of her father, and his years at the clinic during which he had never danced, and it struck her not for the first time that Neville, stepping into his shoes, was as unlike him as it was possible to imagine, and really quite a fresh pair of shoes altogether.

  She became aware that Dominic was not watching the

  others, but was looking at her.

  “Would you like to dance?” he asked.

  She looked back at him almost in panic.

  “I told you I’ve danced so little! I—I’m not at all sure I won’t disgrace you!...”

  “Don’t worry,” he told her, smiling in the way she liked to see him smile best—gently, and as if she was something very young and rather rare—“I wouldn’t really mind if you did, but I’m quite sure you won’t!”

  Following upon which reassuring pronouncement she found herself in his arms, and gliding like the others over the polished floor.

  She became aware of a rising bubble of excitement and pleasure inside her. The moment his arm had actually slipped about her, and he had taken her hand, she had felt as if the breath caught and remained suspended for a few moments in her throat. And then, when she started to breathe again, she could actually feel the blood tingling in her veins as it coursed through them, and there was an excited quickening of her pulses.

  She discovered, to her infinite relief, that she could follow his steps perfectly, and in fact there was nothing at all difficult about dancing with him. She just happened to be a naturally good dancer herself, although she had never had a partner before who had caused her to realize that she was—and, in fact, there were few men, she was sure, who danced like Dominic.

  She had decided that Neville moved effortlessly, but Dominic was partly a Latin, and his Latin temperament supplied all the little differences that made his performance on a dance floor something which no one would have dreamed of comparing with Dr. Barr’s. Dancing with Dominic, Jacqueline recognized, it would be well-nigh impossible to miss even a single step, let alone to falter and feel unsure of oneself. Moving together in utter harmony their two bodies seemed to merge and become one, and she found herself actually dreading the moment when the music would cease.

  Dominic looked down at her out of strangely veiled eyes, and he told her:

  “You dance like a dream? ... Or a feather in the breeze!... ” After that they danced a tango together, and then Martine began to display symptoms of wishing to have Dominic for a partner— she didn’t appear to have relented very much towards him, but Jacqueline had not been unaware of th
e fact that her eyes had watched through narrowed lids while she was circling the floor in the host’s arms, and the glint of green under the heavy white lids had filled her with a feeling almost like foreboding. But when the exchange of partners took place Martine was smiling languorously, and Neville looked at Jacqueline with a faint gleam of amusement in his eyes.

  “I seem to remember issuing a warning to you,” he said. “I hope very much that you haven’t decided to ignore it?”

  “Meaning—?” Jacqueline enquired, feeling a tiny spurt of annoyance as she looked up at him. She knew very well what he meant, but she felt that his own capitulation where Martine was concerned, and which had been very obviously displayed while he was dancing with her, left him with no room at all to complain of anyone else. And Dominic, she was sure, had intended him for her partner, during that evening at least.

  “Dominic,” he replied, quietly. He looked down at her rather searchingly, while he held her as if he found dancing with her a pleasure, but nothing more than that. “I can’ t help feeling a little bit responsible for you, you know, as a result of working in close contact with your father, and I do honestly feel you’ll have to be a little bit careful.”

  She looked up at him with a tiny hint of derision in her eyes. “What about you and Martine?” she asked. “I suppose you realize that at the moment she and Dominic are not—well, relations between them are a little strained, for some reason I know nothing about—and therefore for this evening she’s concentrating on you! I wouldn’t let it go to your head, either, if I were you!”

  “There’s no danger of that,” Neville replied, but she thought his tone was a little bleak, and there was a suggestion of bitterness round his attractive mouth. “I happen to know Martine.”

  Jacqueline felt suddenly faintly ashamed of herself for yielding to a spiteful urge, and she said softly:

  “I’m terribly sorry—if that’s the way you feel about Martine!” He gave her an impulsive little squeeze.

  “I do—but not all the time! I’ve got too much sound common sense for that. And you’ve got to develop a little sound common sense, too! Dominic is charming, but he could mean a good deal of unhappiness for you in your future life if—well, if you’re not very level-headed!”

  “I think I am—reasonably level-headed,” Jacqueline replied to that, a trifle hesitantly; but she was looking over her partner’s shoulder at the time, and she could see Dominic with Martine in his arms, and the pair of them dancing superbly, and she felt as if some important part of her internal mechanism collapsed like a pricked balloon, and that was the reason for the hesitation.

  “It’s not enough to be reasonably level-headed,” Neville told her bluntly. “With the Martines and the Dominics of this world you have to protect yourself with armor plating!”

  And then, as Jacqueline’s small face looked a trifle concerned—even, suddenly, completely overcast—he looked down at her and smiled encouragingly.

  “Forget it,” he advised, “and enjoy your evening.”

  Later they watched a floor show, and while the lights were lowered, and only a spotlight concentrated on a girl in Spanish costume who performed a whirlwind Spanish dance, Jacqueline tried to forget her companions and to be interested only in the spectacle before her. She realized that she had never seen anything like it before, and that she ought to give it all her attention, but with Dominic seated on her left hand, and rather close to her, it was not very easy. When the dancer was replaced by a man who sang yearningly to the soft strumming of a guitar the quality of the singing quickened her blood, and she was conscious of feeling vaguely excited by it; but at the same time she was aware of Dominic, with his face turned slightly towards her, watching her— not the floor show.

  She realized that he had looked at her rather closely when she returned to their table after dancing with Neville, and she wondered whether it was the overcast look on her face, resulting from Neville’s only too timely repetition of his warning, that had attracted his notice, and that he was wondering about it. She had also noticed that his attitude towards the doctor became after that a little curt.

  She began to long for the lights to go up, and the floor show to end, for in that intimate half-light the fact that if she turned her head she would be looking straight into Dominic’s eyes, merely inches away from her own, and that hers might be very revealing, began to fill her with a kind of panic. She was not falling in love with Dominic—that would be too ridiculous under the circumstances! —but she was quiveringly aware of him when he was as near to her as this, and she had to make every effort to conceal the fact.

  But when the lights went up at last Dominic was not looking at her, and she realized that she might possibly have imagined that concentrated regard of his while the cabaret artistes were going through their turns. But as soon as the orchestra recommenced he did take her arm and lead her out on to the floor, and barely had they started dancing before he suggested that the atmosphere was growing a little stuffy, and that she might enjoy a breath of air outside.

  Without giving her time to reply he piloted her firmly towards an archway beyond which lay an ante-room, beyond which lay the patio, open only to the stars.

  Jacqueline suddenly realized that she had been very warm, and that she was glad to be outside.

  “If you like,” Dominic said, in rather a carefully controlled voice, “I’ll take you home now. If you’ve had enough?”

  “But—what about the others?” she asked. “Won’t they think it odd?”

  He shrugged his shoulders slightly.

  “Oh, I don’t think they’ll think it very odd. And they seem to be getting on very well together.” She couldn’t tell from his tone whether this disturbed him or not. “I can come back and collect them later on.”

  “But I’ll have to get my wrap.”

  “Very well,” he replied. “I’ll wait for you here.”

  When she returned he was waiting for her on the flagged path, and the starshine was silvering his hair, and making him seem very tall. As yet the late rising moon was only struggling into the velvety purple sky, and in the enclosed patio it cast little light. Dominic took her bare arm and guided her along the path, leading her past the unseen fountain that played in a marble basin and saturated the air with coolness, while the eternal perfume of flowers seemed sweeter than ever because of the coolness. And when they reached the door in the high stucco wall he opened it and they passed through into the tunnel of darkness that was the cobbled street beyond.

  Jacqueline found herself pausing instinctively when they reached the street again. This was the third time that day she had stood there, and this time the shivering silence of the night was rent by someone singing softly to the throbbing accompaniment of a guitar away down at the end of the tunnel of darkness. Jacqueline looked towards the sound and exclaimed in a kind of hushed voice:

  “Oh, listen! There’s someone singing!...”

  “Probably beneath a window,” Dominic told her, still retaining possession of her arm. “Someone serenading a loved one!”

  Jacqueline looked round at him, slowly, a little wonderingly, and just at that moment the moon climbed above the house tops and sent a silvery shaft of light down upon her and her upturned face.

  “Serenading—?” she echoed.

  And then she realized that Dominic was looking directly down at her, and now that she could see his face clearly it struck her as a little strange. It might have been a silver mask, with eyes that glowed a little with appreciation, especially as her lips had parted a little, and her own eyes were wide. She gazed back at him for a moment, and then looked away quickly, and took an impulsive step forward. But the step was too impulsive, and her high heel slithered over the cobbles, and she would certainly have fallen but for the fact that Dominic’s arms prevented anything of the sort happening to her.

  He caught her up quickly and held her close—so close that she could feel the pounding of his heart against her, and the muscles of his arms seeme
d made of steel as he kept her securely locked against him.

  Jacqueline put back her head again, and her eyes looked up at him half fearfully, half wonderingly. To her his eyes seemed now to be actually blazing a little.

  “You’re so small,” he whispered, as if the realization of just how small she was astonished him. “So small, and sweet, and— Jacqueline!”

  His mouth came down upon hers, and for the first time she knew what it was to experience a kind of frightening ecstasy. One moment she was caught up on to a level with the stars, or so it seemed to her, because his lips were cool and hard and sweet and only gradually warmed into a kind of demanding passion that shook her to the very heart of her being, and then an unreasoning panic seized her and she struggled to be free.

  But Dominic refused to release her mouth, and his arms declined to let her go. Her struggles became more fierce, and she beat at him with her small, clenched fists; but just as at last he lifted his head, and she could see that his eyes were black in the light of the moon, the door behind them opened, and Martine and Neville made their appearance in the lane.

  Martine said, in a perilously sweet voice:

  “Oh, so here you are!... We had an idea you might be slipping out to the car, and as I’ve decided that I want to go home, too, we came after you.” Her eyes, brilliantly green and cold and hard in the white light, looked directly at Jacqueline. “Were you feeling a little tired, Miss Vaizey?”

  “Miss Vaizey stumbled on the cobbles just now,” Dominic explained, so coolly that Jacqueline could hardly believe her ears, “and I managed to prevent her from falling. But if you’re all ready to leave now we’ll go home together.”

  He led the way to the car, this time offering to guide Martine, and Jacqueline found herself placed in the back of the car with Neville, while Martine was given her usual place of honor in the seat beside Dominic at the wheel. Dominic started up the car with precision and care, and the powerful headlights cut across the silent, sleeping square, while the voice of the unseen man singing love songs beneath some unknown woman’s window carried clearly on the gentle zephyr of a night wind to the ears of all four in the car.