by Peggy Gaddis
Marise studied her for a long moment, and then she made a genuine effort to be pleasant and friendly.
“Alison, dear, you’ve gone overboard about this rural living,” she said gently. “And believe me, dear, you won’t like it. Oakhill will bore you stiff in a day or so, after we leave. It’s been fun and a novelty and amusing, as a novelty usually is. But believe me, the novelty will wear off the minute we leave you here alone. It’d be much better for you to come with us.”
“Thanks, Marise,” Alison said over her shoulder, busily packing. “But I don’t intend to stay at Oakhill. If Sam’s friend wants me as a companion for his mother—”
“A companion for his mother? Heavenly days, Alison, you’re not planning to be a companion to some old dodo; read aloud to her, take her pug dog walking, order the groceries, manage the house—Alison, dear, you’d go out of your mind!” Marise protested sharply.
Alison did not answer, and after a moment Marise’s effort to be pleasant vanished.
“And after all, Alison, I need you! You know I couldn’t manage without you.” But Alison turned her head, and the look in her eyes stopped the words on Marise’s lips and turned her sullen and sulky, as she finished, “Well, if you’ve your mind made up, I suppose there’s nothing more I can say, and it wouldn’t do any good anyway.”
“I have, Marise, and it wouldn’t,” Alison told her briefly.
Marise jumped to her feet and snapped, “Well, we’re leaving right after lunch, so if you change your mind, you can still come with us.”
She went out and banged the door violently behind her. Once she had gone, Alison dropped into a chair and put her hands over her face and sat very still.
It had been an unpleasant scene, for all its brevity; and she was momentarily uneasy because she was cutting herself adrift from all that she had previously known.
Finally she drew a long, shuddering breath, pulled herself to her feet and returned to the packing, just as there was a light tap at the door and it opened to admit Judy, carrying a laden tray.
“You didn’t come down for lunch, Alison, so I brought you some,” she announced as she put the tray down. “I’m sorry you’re all leaving, Alison.”
Alison smiled warmly at her as she tucked another bit of fragile lingerie into its place in the big suitcase.
“I’m not leaving, Judy. The others are, but I’m staying,” she announced. She added hastily, “Oh, I don’t mean here at Oakhill. Sam thinks he can help me find a job, so I’ll go in town and get a room somewhere.”
“You’ll do no such thing,” Judy protested. “You’ll stay right here at Oakhill. We’ll love having you. And Oakhill is very nice in the summer, Alison. You know what a besotted critter I am about Oakhill, so to me it’s always nice. But I think you’d enjoy it in the summer especially.”
“I’m sure I would, and you’re a sweetie-pie to be willing for me to stay—”
“Willing? Who’s willing? I’d be tickled pink if you’d stay. We could have a lot of fun, you and Sam and Bix and I. Please do, Alison!”
“Thanks, Judy. But Sam thinks he may be able to find me a job.”
“Well, gosh, yes, of course. But you’ll stay here until he does,” Judy said in a tone that suggested there was no point in arguing the matter. “I’m sorry Marise worked up such a lather. But when she found she couldn’t have Bix after all, there was no further point in her staying. For she’s been bored stiff ever since she got here.”
She laughed softly. As she managed to coax Alison to settle down to the waiting lunch, she went on, “It’s funny, isn’t it?”
“Funny? You mean that she can’t have Bix?”
“Golly, no. And I don’t mean ‘funny, ha, ha.’ I mean funny, peculiar’ that Bix finally remembered me and the fact that we used to be in love with each other. And now that he’s remembered, he loves me. I think that’s pretty wonderful, don’t you?”
“The most wonderful thing in the world, Judy dear. I couldn’t be happier for you both. Bix is quite a lad. I worried about him a bit, because I was afraid he was getting all misty-eyed about Marise,” Alison admitted frankly. “But then he’d never been with her for as long as he has been down here, and he’d never really gotten to know her before.”
Judy nodded soberly.
“When she first arrived, I was blindly furious,” she answered slowly. “I thought I’d never seen such an unattractive set of people in my life, all except you and Roger. The others, including Marise, I couldn’t abide. But now I’m glad she came, so that Bix could see what she was really like.”
“She’s not the easiest person in the world to understand or to get along with,” Alison admitted ruefully.
Judy laughed. “Now that’s the understatement of this or any other year,” she mocked. “What kind of a job do you want, Alison?”
Alison grimaced. “I’m afraid, with my lack of business training, I don’t have much choice. Sam thinks that a Mrs. Abbott would be glad to have me come and live with her as a companion.”
“Andy’s mother? Oh, you’ll like her, Alison. She’s a lamb, a real old-fashioned Southern gentlewoman. Much as I hate to admit it, those are in rather short supply these days.”
“I just hope she will like me and that the job is still open,” Alison said.
“Oh, she’ll like you. How could she help it? And Andy took a shine to you that day in town, remember? He wanted to come calling that very night,” Judy reminded her.
“I liked him, too, as much as you can like a man you’ve barely met,” Alison agreed. “Sam is telephoning to see if Mrs. Abbott will see me this afternoon. If she will, then maybe—oh, just maybe—”
“She’ll like you, and you’ll adore her,” Judy insisted. “And anyway, you’ll stay here until Sam and I find a job we think is suitable for you.”
She turned toward the door and paused to say lightly, “And it may be very difficult for us to decide that a job is suitable for you, because until we do, you’re going to stay right here with us!”
Alison tried to thank her, but Judy said gaily, “Oh, shush, and eat your lunch. Mam’ Chloe is fit to be tied, because she wasn’t warned in advance that the guests weren’t staying on. I’d hate to think what her reaction would be if I took that tray back down to her and you hadn’t eaten every single bite.”
Alison looked down at the tray and then back at Judy and laughed, her heart lighter than it had been in a long, long time.
“Strangely enough, I find I’m practically famished.” She laughed. “And we wouldn’t want to upset Mam’ Chloe, would we?”
“It’s not advisable! She can be a regular terror when she gets upset. See you later, Alison. And I’m so very glad you’re staying,” Judy told her. “I can say goodbye to the others easily, but I’d hate to have to say goodbye to you. And, of course, I’ll miss Roger, too. He’s been very nice.”
“He likes you,” Alison said quietly.
A faint tinge of color touched Judy’s cheek, and she said lightly, “Well, that’s nice. I like him, too.”
With her hand on the doorknob, Judy hesitated a moment, and then she asked, “Did you know he’s not really pursuing Marise? He’s really a sort of bodyguard hired by her trust company and guardian to see she doesn’t get kidnapped and held for ransom.”
Startled, Alison said, “Why, yes, I’ve known that for a long time. But how did you find it out?”
“He told me,” Judy answered. “I don’t know why, but he just came out with it and said I was to keep it confidential. And I have until this moment. But since you aren’t going away with her and her gang, I let it slip. She doesn’t know, does she?”
“Heavenly days, no! I’d hate to think of the towering rage she would be in if she ever discovered the truth. She thinks he’s madly in love with her, and I think she might even consider marrying him one of these days if she’s bored enough. A very brief marriage, of course.”
Judy’s brows went up.
“He’s much too nice for such a
fate as that,” she protested, and added, “I have to run along now. But I’ll see you downstairs after the others have gone. We’ll celebrate! I’ll call Sam and ask him to trot along, too.”
“That sounds wonderful,” Alison said happily.
She drew a long breath when the door had closed behind Judy and sat for a moment deep in the happy thought of a future that seemed to be opening out for her in ways she had scarcely dared to dream could ever come to be.
The cars were in the drive an hour later, luggage being loaded aboard following Marise’s carping orders. Tony and Mimi were already in the sedan, with Jerry dozing in the rear.
Roger came swiftly down the stairs and discovered Judy, who was just emerging from the drawing room.
“Well, hello, there,” he greeted her, his voice quite curt, his eyes faintly hostile. “I’ve already congratulated Bix and offered to fight him a duel for your hand. But I know it wouldn’t do me any good. So now all that’s left for me is to offer you my sincere best wishes, even if you are a very lovely liar.”
Judy blinked at him, astonished and resentful.
“How did I lie to you?” she protested hotly.
“By letting me believe you were unattached and fancy-free; how else? What did you want? Did you want me to go on making a fool of myself by being in love with you and hoping that by some miracle you might someday discover that you liked having me around enough to make it a permanent thing?”
“I tried to tell you it was no use.”
“Sure, sure, sure.” His tone threw that back in her face. “But you also told me there was no one else who had a prior claim.”
“There wasn’t—not then.” She was flushed and bright-eyed but could not quite meet his eyes.
“Mean to tell me that all this was so sudden; that you and Bix just looked at each other, and whoosh! That was that!” His tone was mocking, but the look in his eyes was not.
Judy said softly, “I’m terribly sorry, Roger. I didn’t mean to mislead you.”
“You did a beautiful job of it, just the same.”
She looked up at him, very serious, apologetic, anxious to make him understand.
“I’ve been in love with Bix just about all my life,” she told him earnestly, with a little girl’s honesty that he found oddly convincing. “But I had given up hope that he would love me, especially after Marise came and he seemed so taken with her. That was why I told you I wasn’t engaged. I wasn’t then. And I didn’t have much hope I would be, because I knew if it couldn’t be Bix, it wouldn’t be anybody. And I did try to tell you. Only you didn’t seem to want to listen or to believe me.”
He nodded, and his eyes on her flushed, bright-eyed face were tender.
“I know. I’m the world’s prize fool,” he admitted wryly. “I should have known that a girl like you would have been taken long before I came on the scene. But then that’s the way of prize fools. We just keep on hoping and hoping, until we get kicked in the teeth by facts we can no longer ignore.”
From the verandah, Marise called sharply, shrewishly, “Come on, Roger. It’s late.”
Roger’s mouth twisted, and he said half under his breath, “My employer’s voice!”
“If you don’t like looking after her, Roger, why don’t you quit?”
His brows went up slightly, and his smile was bitter and thin.
“Because I told you I was a fool, remember?” he said mockingly.
And then, so unexpectedly that she had no inkling of his intention in time to avoid it, he bent and kissed her firmly. The next moment he strode out of the house, and, standing there, she heard the sound of the car door slam.
A few minutes later Bix came into the house, looking relieved and happier than Judy had seen him since he had held her in his arms and asked her to marry him. He grinned at her, dusting his palms together as though removing the residue of an arduous task.
“And so we speed the parting guests,” he announced happily. “And I’m not even going to scold you for letting Roger kiss you goodbye.”
Her eyes flew wide as, startled, she demanded, “How did you know that he did?”
“Oh, a little bird told me,” he teased her. “You have the look of a girl who has just been kissed, and he came out looking like the cat that has just licked the cream off the family’s morning milk. So I just put two and two together.”
He drew her close and said firmly, “Only it’s not to become a habit, you hear? Letting other men kiss you, I mean.”
She gave herself to his embrace and said joyously, “You won’t ever have to worry about that, darling. I promise.”
He kissed her, sighed happily, looked about the old house and said softly, “Isn’t it quiet and peaceful?”
She looked up at him anxiously.
“Too quiet? Too peaceful?” she asked.
“Just quiet and peaceful enough, the way Oakhill should be; and the way it’s going to be from now on,” he answered happily.
Chapter Twelve
It was late that afternoon when Sam came up the drive from his cottage and found Alison waiting for him on the wide, colonnaded verandah. She was watching for him eagerly, but one look at his face told her that his news was not good even before he spoke.
“I’m sorry as the dickens, Alison,” he told her. “Andy’s mother has decided to spend the summer with her daughter in New England and is leaving almost immediately. She was so sorry she did not know that you were available, but there’s a brand-new grandchild whom she is naturally very anxious to see.”
Alison managed a smile and said quickly, “Well, of course. Anybody could understand that.”
Sam went on, his eyes holding hers, “I’m very sorry I talked you into staying on, Alison.”
Her head went up.
“I’m not, Sam,” she told him swiftly. “I’m so glad that you helped me find the courage I should have dredged up for myself a long time ago.”
“There’s still time for you to join Marise and the others if you want to,” he pointed out.
She shook her head. “There’s nothing I want less, but thanks a lot. Judy said I could stay on here for a while. Wasn’t that kind of her?”
“For my part, I wish you’d stay on here forever.” Sam spoke so quickly that his words seemed to startle him almost as much as they did Alison, whose color deepened, though her eyes still met his steadily.
“So I could be a burden on the Ramseys and the Bullards instead of on Marise?” She shook her head. “At least I earned my way with Marise, and I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do here to justify my existence. However, I’ll try. And maybe eventually somebody else might feel the need of a companion. I could go back to New York and find something, I’m sure.”
“Oh, I’m sure we’ll find something here for you,” Sam told her. “That is, if you don’t find living down here too dull to appeal to you after all the excitement and entertainment you’re accustomed to.”
Alison laughed and looked out over the rolling sweep of lawn, dotted by its ancient trees; the long, curving drive with its border of blossoming azaleas. The whole lovely, peaceful scene made her breathe deeply with a warm appreciation of all she could see.
“How could living possibly be dull amid all this beauty and peace and quiet?” she wondered aloud.
Sam’s grin indicated his relief at her words.
“I’m so glad you feel that way,” he admitted. “I was a bit uneasy this morning after I realized that I had talked you into a revolt.”
“Which was long overdue. I’m very grateful to you, because I probably would never have had the courage to do it if you hadn’t.”
“Oh, yes, you would,” Sam protested, a warmth in his eyes that made her heart jerk like a puppet on a string. “You have an enormous amount of courage, along with a lot of other fine qualities.”
There was a mist in her eyes and her lips were tremulous as she said shakily, “You’re very kind. And I don’t seem to be geared to kindness. It sort of makes me come apart at t
he seams! But thank you very much.”
“For promising you something I couldn’t deliver?” Sam asked, touched by her emotion but sensing that she did not want him to mention or even notice it.
“For being kind enough to want to promise me something, whether you could deliver it or not,” Alison insisted, and now she had herself under better control. “Maybe Mrs. Abbott wouldn’t have liked me, anyway.”
“Oh, she’d have liked you!” Sam seemed unshakably positive about that. “Andy was practically in tears when he learned that you were available for a job with his mother. But of course, a brand-new grandchild takes precedence over even a home Mrs. Abbott loves as much as she does her own.”
“Well, of course. What grandmother wouldn’t be willing to close up her home and travel around the world, if need be, to welcome a grandchild?”
Sam seemed very relieved by her acceptance of his news. After a moment, he went on, “Andy wants to come calling on you.”
Startled, Alison said quickly, “Oh, but I don’t think so.”
“You didn’t find him attractive and want to get to know him better?”
“Well, goodness, I barely met him. How could I know?”
There was a twinkle in Sam’s eyes.
“I got the impression from him that that was the main reason he wanted to come calling,” he told her, slightly amused by her reaction.
“Well, that’s very kind of him, but while I’m a guest here at Oakhill, I don’t think it would be very polite to have callers, do you?”
“Oh, I don’t think the Ramseys would mind.”
“Well, I would!” She was flushed now, faintly defensive, and would no longer meet his eyes. “And I’d much rather not have callers except the ones they invite.”
“They’re very hospitable people,” Sam told her, “and entertained a lot until the Old Gentleman became ill.”