by Betty Neels
‘Oh, Taro, why didn’t you? There was I waiting to fall into your arms like an apple off a tree…’
He kissed the top of her wet head. ‘My darling, is not the expression an overripe plum? Though as you resemble neither, it can be of no consequence.’ He laughed a little and tilted up her chin to kiss her, and neither of them noticed the rain, coming down in good earnest now.
‘Why are you here?’ asked Alexandra when she had her breath back.
‘Aunty has been telephoning me each day—yesterday she told me that you were on the point of accepting a job in Western Australia; so I came at once.’
She thought for a minute, then asked a trifle peevishly: ‘Why did you leave me alone so long? Why didn’t you come sooner?’
He kissed her with such thoroughness that it really didn’t matter if he answered her or not, but he did. ‘Work, my dearest, work I couldn’t leave for anyone else. When I went to your home I handed everything over to my registrar, but he could only manage for forty-eight hours. I had to go back—I ought never to have come, but I had to know even though I knew that Penny was lying.’
‘You were furious,’ she reminded him.
‘Naturally—what further proof could you want of my love?’
It was a point she hadn’t thought of and it struck her, standing there in the shelter of his arms, as most satisfactory. She sighed and smiled up at him.
‘I must look a perfect fright,’ she observed, and indeed she was by now very wet, her hair plastered round her ears. Miss Thrums’ Burberry, although still stoutly waterproof, did nothing to improve her appearance either.
Taro studied her face. ‘You’re beautiful,’ he told her, and she knew that he meant it, ‘and you always will be.’
It seemed only kind to express her appreciation of this remark, but presently she asked: ‘You don’t have to go back at once, do you?’
‘This evening—and you are coming with me, Alexandra, for we have to see about getting married as soon as possible—you’ll come?’
‘Yes, of course, Taro.’
He threw an arm round her shoulders and began to walk back to the cottage. The rain and wind, she saw, didn’t bother him in the slightest—it didn’t bother her either, she suspected that both of them secretly enjoyed that kind of weather. They would probably have a family of tough, healthy little boys who wouldn’t mind wind or bad weather or muddy canals, just like their father. She chuckled at the thought and Taro stopped to look down at her. ‘Why did you do that?’ he wanted to know.
‘Oh, I was just thinking. I’ll tell you one day. It was something nice.’
A smile hovered round his mouth. ‘I’m a patient man, but not all that patient.’
‘Little boys in Wellington boots,’ she told him seriously, and his smile widened into a grin as he picked her up and swung her round, then set her gently on her feet again to kiss her once more. Presently they went on again, the wind, quite ferocious now, bowling them along until they reached the kitchen door.
Alexandra took a last look at the grey, windswept landscape. ‘What a lovely morning, Taro,’ she observed in great content.
ISBN: 978-1-4592-3933-3
COBWEB MORNING
Copyright © 1975 by Betty Neels.
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