by Abor, Jane
All the same her curiosity drove her to leading up to the subject of Elyot's proposal by asking Wilmot what, when she returned to England, she could tell her father about the future of Louvet.
'You must tell him that I see no more success for it in the immediate future than it has had for a long time,' Wilmot replied unhelpfully.
'But you wouldn't consider its being put up for sale?'
'On the open market—definitely no. In any case, it would have little value there in its present condition.'
'Though Bran says Mr Vance would be willing to buy it from you at any time as it stands,' Donna ventured.
'Vance, yes.' As Wilmot showed no sign of enlarging on that Donna tried again.
'Has he said anything directly to you about it?' she asked.
She got no answer to that. Wilmot said, 'Is Bran about? If so, call him, will you? I haven't spoken to him yet about this matter, but you should both hear it now.'
Bran came. 'Breakthrough at last? Dad has decided to sell to Elyot privately? Well, what d'you know? And what price now fill your virtuous dudgeon over our scheme to get him to do just that, young Donna?' he had said to Donna's hasty summons. But the shape which Elyot's proposition had taken was a surprise to them both.
Wilmot said stiltedly, 'You'll have realised of course that as soon as I recovered, I asked my doctor to carry my thanks to Elyot Vance for his help on the night of my accident. And when he asked to see me we found ourselves on—er—tolerable terms. He congratulated me on my escape; I thanked him again for giving Donna and myself such prompt and expert help. He made light of it—said he was only standing in for you, Bran, and that you would have done as much.'
'I doubt if I'd have, rumbled snakebite as surely as he did,' put in Bran modestly.
Yes, well, that's as may be,' Wilmot allowed. 'But from there he and I chatted a little, and in the course of talking it came out that he has the ear of the Government on certain of its plans, and that he had volunteered to sound me about them.'
'Plans, Uncle? Plans for what?' asked Donna.
Wilmot's rare smile lifted one corner of his mouth as he turned to her. 'Oddly,' he said, 'for a long-cherished ambition of my' own—the laying out of a natural park of .Caribbean flora and silviculture on a suitable area of the rain-forest. The Legislative Council, Vance said, would appreciate my advice as to the best site for such a scheme and would be prepared to ask me to draw up plans for it and, once it was in being, to act as its curator.'
'Oh, Uncle, how marvellous for you! And you could? You would?' urged Donna.
`Plan it? Of course. I've had my own ideas and plans for such a reserve for a very long time, as I think I've told you. Soubion would be the ideal area, and Vance agreed.'
`And the Council would allow you to plan it to be as wild and rambling as you like?'
'I have no intention,' said Wilmot loftily, 'of cooperating on anything which would approximate to a
municipal park. They can accept my plans, or they must employ someone else.'
Bran nodded. `No bandstand, no clock golf, no miniature lake, no Teas. Sounds just what the doctor ordered for you, Dad. I suppose the Council would put up all the cash, the labour and so on?'
'I understand so. As a tourist attraction they would see the cost as well spent.'
'And the curator bit? Would you take on that?'
There was a moment's silence. Then Wilmot said, 'Provided I weren't also saddled with the trouble and worry of Louvet, yes.'
Both Bran and Donna suppressed gasps. 'You would consider selling it, then?' asked Bran.
'If I took the job as curator of the reserve, I should make Louvet the responsibility of the Company, to deal with as they think best. If they wish to sell, that must be their decision. Or if they decide to buy me out of my share in it, that's their affair too.' Wilmot fixed his son with a steely glance. 'You realise, I daresay, that there may be no place for you in the Council's nature reserve scheme?'
'Is that a threat or a promise? Either way, it's O.K. with me,' returned Bran gaily. 'You go cosset your trees and your flowers, Dad, and leave me free, without a bad conscience, to do my own thing. In fact, I'm thinking of asking the bank for a loan to set up my own car-hire and guide firm any day now.'
'Leaving the Allamanda and going into competition with Margot le Conte?' asked Donna, surprised. 'She won't like that, will she?'
'And am I harrowed by Margot's troubles? Anyway, she's too big a fish, with too many irons in the fire, to worry about the competition of small fry like me—if I may mix my metaphors,' Bran retorted, and turned to his father as Wilmot was about to leave. 'Thanks for
putting us in the picture, Dad. And keep us posted from here out, won't, you?' he said.
Wilmot nodded. 'Anything I learn or decide myself, you shall both hear all in good time,' he promised, and paused. 'It occurs to me, niece,' he added, addressing Donna, 'that it might make for goodwill and show good manners if we invited Elyot Vance to dine with us sometime. Perhaps you would see to it, would you?'
When he had gone, Bran and Donna looked at each other, shook their heads in bewilderment and laughed aloud.
Bran exploded, `He won't sell 'to Elyot, but the Company can, if it likes! Of all the arrant side-stepping get-outs I ever saw-!'
And Donna said, 'Bless him for saving his face as gracefully as he managed to. He's a polished diplomat, that's what. And do you think he really meant what he said about welcoming Elyot to dinner?'
'Perhaps you'd better invite Elyot and see,' advised Bran.
CHAPTER TEN
IT seemed to Donna that Wilmot's hatchet-burying overture should properly come as a man-to-man invitation from him to Elyot—a casual, 'Drop by for drinks and take a bite with us one evening' approach. But when Wilmot declined to be a party to anything so informal she realised such hail-fellow terms were beneath his dignity. Elyot's summons to dine at Louvet had all the makings of a royal command and as such, must be issued by its hostess, if not by gilt-edge card marked R.S.V.P., at least for a definite date and time at due notice to all concerned.
But when Donna, cooperative but diffident, telephoned Marquise to suggest an evening, it was to hear that Elyot was in Barbados on business, and before the day when Choc expected his return, Irma Hue, that human gossip column, came over from Mousquetaire with some astonishing news, of which even Bran knew nothing. Margot le Conte had sold the Allamanda to an American syndicate and was in process of buying an even more de-luxe hotel in Barbados!
Barbados? Donna suffered a jealous pang. suppose that's why Elyot Vance is. down there now?' she hazarded.
'Is he?' queried Irma, interested. 'Well, so is Margot too, one hears. So it could be more than coincidence—they both being there, I mean. Though I did understand—and from an entirely reliable source—that the new venture was solely Margot's own baby. She'll be moving to Barbados to run it, of course; which would make any kind of partnership with Elyot rather diffi-
cult, as obviously he won't be leaving Marquise. No, I think you can take it there's nothing like that between them. Elyot isn't the man to take on any deal in which he didn't own fifty-one per cent of the shares, and Margot's not the woman to be content with forty-nine,' Irma decided to her own evident satisfaction, though without convincing Donna, who demurred,
'But they do have some kind of a business relationship now. I've heard them refer to it. And doesn't everyone suppose they are going to marry some time? And if that isn't going into partnership together, what is?'
Irma smiled indulgently and patted Donna's hand. 'You have ideals, child, and rightly so. But with two sophisticates like Margot le Conte and Elyot Vance, it is a different story. When they marry—if, after all this time of keeping us guessing, they ever come to terms agreeable to them both—it could well he no more than a business affair, with the shares arranged as I have said.'
Needing to turn the knife in her own wound, Donna said, 'So Bran told me about them a long time ago—when I'd only met Elyot once, and
Margot not at all. "Two of a kind", he called them, and it seems he was right.'
`And the truth makes you sad for them? For Margot most? Or for ,Elyot?'
Donna felt her colour rise. 'For—for the kind of marriage it sounds as if it would be,' she evaded. 'Cold-blooded. Mercenary.'
`I-I'm,' said Irma noncommittally, and changed the subject to ask if it were true that Wilmot was to free himself of Louvet without loss of face.
It was both refreshing and revealing to tell Irma something she didn't already know and to follow her train of thought at the news.
She basked visibly. 'Once free of that millstone, you will see the difference in him,' she claimed happily. 'He will lose ten years of his age, gain a new outlook. Saddled with Louvet, naturally as a man of honour he has not felt himself free to consider marriage again. He has been too modest for too long. But now one can hope he will realise that, without loss of loyalty to a first wife, it is good and intended for a man to share his life with a second—a helpmate for what need be no more than his middle years. Yes indeed, he should begin to see the worth of a wife to him,' she nodded in conclusion, and departed, leaving Donna to speculate on how far Wilmot's change of circumstances might persuade him towards marriage, or whether Irma, faint but pursuing, might have to propose to him herself.
Donna did not see her nor hear from her again until she rang up with an invitation to join her for dinner that evening. It would be a cold meal, as she had given her couple the night off. So Irma would .be alone and would appreciate Donna's company for a chat. So much was happening to people within their circle lately that it was both amusing and important to keep abreast of what was going on, was it not? Say seven o'clock, then? That would suit Donna, yes? Donna said it would, provided Wilmot would lend his car, and Irma said 'Good. I shall expect you, dear,' and rang off.
Donna was punctual. She parked the car, expecting to find Irma awaiting her on the back verandah of the house, but though drinks were ready there and the table in the dining-room was set with places for two, Irma was nowhere in the house, nor in the garden, which Donna searched, singing out news of her arrival.
Puzzled, she wandered back to the house. Irma had meant this evening, hadn't she? And the welcoming drinks and set table bore this out. So where was she? The vintage tourer was not in the car-port which
served it as garage, so Irma must have taken it somewhere, though Donna would have expected her to leave a message, telling her guest where.
Then Donna saw the note. White envelope against white-painted verandah table, it had escaped her notice until now. It seemed to have been penned in a hurry and was only vaguely explanatory.
'So sorry, cherie. Called away. A sick friend—you know how one is obliged to answer such appeals. If I am not back to greet you, promise me to wait just half an hour for me, will you? There are drinks ready, and if you feel inclined to wait longer and need your dinner, the meal I planned is in the refrigerator. If nothing happens-and I don't get back, still allow me that half-hour of grace, won't you?'
Not much enlightened as to whether Irma hoped to get back reasonably soon or not, Donna re-read the message after dropping ice into a tumbler and pouring herself a lime squash.
'If nothing happens?' Why, what should? Irma must surely have meant to write `If something happens'—to prevent her return before Donna left. Then that repeated plea for half an hour's grace—why so definite a period? And did Irma really expect her guest to plunder the larder and munch through a meal alone, just because her hostess had been called away?
Giving it up, Donna glanced at her watch and stretched out on a sun-lounger to enjoy her drink and watch the scarlet ball of the sun go-down.
At the sound of a car climbing the long drive to the house, she sat up abruptly and scrambled to her feet, ready to greet Irma when she arrived, ,well within the promised half-hour. But Irma would have brought her car straight into the car-port; this car had stopped on the front drive. as a visitor's might, and after a minute or two, round the side of the house came its driver-
Elyot.
Donna stared at him. 'Oh—I thought you were in Barbados,' she said. 'Did you want to see Madame Hue? I'm afraid she's out. Was she expecting you?'
He nodded. 'In a manner of speaking, yes. Seven-fifteen precisely, she said, and not after seven-thirty at my peril. But I knew she wasn't to be here.' He eyed the array of glasses, ice-tub and bottles. `Do you suppose she would have offered me a drink? I see you have one. What do you recommend?!
Donna ignored this appeal as she worked on the enigma of the rest. 'I don't understand,' she said. 'Why should Irma have invited you at an exact time for dinner, if she knew she wouldn't be at home? Besides, she couldn't have known. She had to leave a note for me—'
Intent on mixing a punch, Elyot said, 'I wasn't invited for dinner, specifically.'
`Then for what, if, as you say, you didn't expect to find Irma here?' Donna demanded.
He used a swizzle-stick and laid it aside. `Ah, but Irma had promised that though she wouldn't be here herself, someone would be,' he said.
Donna's heart thudded. 'Someone? Who?'
'You,' he said. And then gently, indulgently, 'As if you couldn't guess
Her protests came staccato, a little shrill. 'I couldn't! I didn't! Irma said in her note ! Anyhow, why?'
He left his own drink on the table, came over to her, took her glass from her nerveless fingers and urged her into a chair, drawing up one beside her.
`Because—want to know?—we've been saying no to each other for too long, and it's taken a Meddlesome Mattie of an Irma Hue to put us in the way of saying Yes and yes and again yes,' he told her.
'What do you mean—yes?'
,
His hand, which somehow was holding one of hers, shook it gently. 'Come,' he said. 'According to Irma, though she could be wrong, you've been saying it to me for quite some time. And I, without needing her to tell me so, for a lot longer than that.'
'You've been saying Yes to what?'
'To the inevitable. To a truth I couldn't believe at first—that I'd fallen for you, my lovely, prickles and thin-skinned dudgeon and all. That I wanted you, want you, shall always want you. That I needed to tell you so; must tell you some time, or better still, show you—Almost got around to it more than once. But always, always you dodged away, kept me at arm's length, flaunted your affair with Melford Drinan at me, and finally laid about me with a barbed tongue, the night of that foursome at Marquise with Irma and Brandon. Though oddly,' he paused to play with the fingers of the hand he held, 'it took Irma to give me a ray of hope that same night, after you'd swept out, that you might be saying yes to me too. Were you? Had you already? Was Irma right?'
Donna answered that indirectly. 'You say Irma—knew? How?'
'Women's topsy-turvy reasoning, I guess. She said that only a girl who was deeply in love, only to believe she had discovered her idol's feet of clay, could possibly scourge a man with words as you did me. It was your disillusion talking, Irma said; your betrayed faith, your caring—' He stopped short, his grip on Donna's hand tightening. 'You said—just now—I mean, you asked me how Irma knew ! Then it is true? No, don't look away. Face me. There was something for Irma to know, and the something was—?'
She faced him. 'The same as for you, I think,' she said.
'That you do love me? Since when?'
'I—don't know. It just sort of dawned.'
'For me too.'
'But I had to deny it—because of Margot.'
'Margot! After you had happened along?' He shook his head. 'No way. Though if you hadn't happened, I might have considered Margot. And a huge mistake that would have been, if I'd taken any alliance with her to the point of marriage.'
'But why me?' Donna marvelled. 'I'm plain—' 'You're beautiful.'
'And ordinary.
'Unique.'
'And touchy and thin-skinned—you said so yourself.'
'And honest. And plain-speaking. And loyal to a fault. And essen
tially good. And sweet and loving with children—'
'How do you know?'
'One has only to see you with them,' as I did once with my girls' piccanins at the store. I looked at you that afternoon and thought, What I'd give to see some of her own and of my own at her knee! Wishful thinking then; reaching for the moon. But now—' He turned to her and took her in his arms. His voice coming thickly, he murmured, 'There are other ways than words, my love, to tell you how I worship you. This way, for one—And Answer me, if you can. Show me—'
They clung together, allowing touch and smile to express their wonder and gratitude and promise. At first Elyot's kisses were shyly exploratory—the merest brushing of his lips on Donna's cheek and brow and throat, and she was tense within his arms, not quite trusting the miracle ...
If rumour about him were true, this must have happened for him many times before—propinquity with a
girl, solitude for them, a romantic tropical dusk, flirtation. And yet .... and yet—in these modest kisses there was supplication, there was worship. He was asking, not demanding her response as his right..Content to wait for it, he was showing her that she was special to him; not any girl, but his girl, his one-and-only—and then, when at last his lips sought hers in passion her response came alive and leaped to answer him in an excitement and desire which matched his.
Now she too was demanding, seeking, sharing delight with him on a mounting tide which engulfed their senses until it broke with Elyot's sudden release of her and his muttered; !That Was too dangerous--the ache of it, the wanting. I had to let you go, or—But you understand?'
'Yes.' She knew what he meant, and treasured the knowing for what it told of die depth of his feeling for her. With any other girl----! She allowed hint to draw her down beside him on a wicker seat for two where he said ruefully, I'll have to content myself with looking at you, marvelling, wondering why the heck I took so long about it; why I never chanced my arm before.'