“He talked my ear off,” Louisa cried. “About did I think there was a chance for him … and then you seemed to soften up quite a bit at Mère Catherine’s on the Butte. So I thought, and so did he, that perhaps on the Riviera, which is certainly a spot where even the most resistant women are prone to be pushovers for romance, you might very well capitulate. So he booked a flight for the day after our own, and …”
“Yes, I know. I know everything.”
“Then will you kindly explain how you know, and how you happened to be with him when you phoned me. I am struggling for composure, Iris, and if you don’t tell me at once from the beginning, I shall explode.”
“Please don’t explode. M. Marchand will be here at seven, and it’s after six-thirty now.”
She ran a hand through her hair, “And I have to bathe and dress in less than half an hour!”
“M. Marchand?” Louisa looked absolutely bewildered.
“The man who put me on the right track. He’s having dinner with us. Paul and I and you and M. Marchand. It’s a celebration.”
“A celebration?”
“Oh, please don’t repeat everything I say! Look at the time!”
“What kind of a celebration?”
“Like an engagement party. For Paul and me.”
“Engagement party?”
“Yes, and you might say you’re happy for me.”
“Iris …”
“Yes, it’s true, Aunt Louisa. I’m going to marry him. For as long as we both shall live, he said.”
Unaccountably she burst into tears.
“Iris …”
And then, just as suddenly, Louisa’s eyes filmed over.
In the next moment they were in each other’s arms until Iris pulled away. “I’m so happy I don’t know what to do,” she sobbed. “And look at the time!”
“Oh, Iris …”
“You’re glad for me too, aren’t you, Auntie?”
“Glad? I’m ecstatic! Dry your tears and sit right down and tell me from the start. I’m so at sea about the whole thing. Tell me everything.”
“I will, but not now. I have to get dressed. He’ll be here at seven, you see. But Paul’s downstairs in the lounge, and when Claude Marchand arrives he can join Paul there.”
“Who is this Claude Marchand?”
“I told you. He’s the one who — ”
She broke off. “Aunt Louisa, you simply must pull yourself together,” she said firmly. “Because I’ll never be ready by seven o’clock. You’ll have to do the honors along with Paul. M. Marchand is a very fine gentleman and I know we’ll have a perfectly super evening.”
She gave her aunt an assessing look. Louisa, who was wearing one of her most beautiful dresses, in a heavenly shade of peacock blue, looked her very best. Her hair shone, her heart-shaped face was radiant with joy, curiosity and excitement, and her eyes were dewy with her recent tears.
“You look lovely,” Iris said softly. “Perfectly lovely. Will you listen for the phone, which will probably ring in my room. It will be M. Marchand, so please ask him to go to the second floor lounge and ask for Paul’s table.”
She headed for her bedroom. “And now I simply must do something about myself,” she said. “I’ll hurry just as fast as I can, but I’m depending on you, Aunt Louisa, to keep Paul and M. Marchand company until I can join you.”
“But Iris …”
“Just listen for my phone, okay?”
She left her aunt standing in the middle of the room with her mouth slightly open and in her shower heard the shrilling telephone, and then her aunt’s voice.
As she was drying herself there was a knock at the bathroom door.
“Iris?”
“Yes?”
“He’s here.”
“M. Marchand?”
“Yes.”
“Did you tell him to go to the — ”
“I told him to go to the lounge and ask for Paul’s table.”
“Good girl. Now you go down too, and I promise I won’t be long.”
“No, I’ll wait for you.”
“You will not,” Iris said, opening the door. She stood there wrapped in one of the enormous hotel towels. “I can’t hurry if I’m not alone. And I do want to look decent tonight.”
“You look pretty smashing as you are now.”
“Ha ha. Hurry, now. It would be rude to keep him waiting. Oh, do go down and all of you have a drink. And let me get dressed!”
“A complete stranger,” Louisa grumbled.
“He won’t be for long. He talks a blue streak.”
“Well, all right. But please, Iris, do hurry, won’t you?”
“The sooner you go, the faster I can hurry.”
At last she was by herself and free to slip into undies, hose, and then do something to her face. The tan helped, and there was really only a light lipstick and eye makeup to be applied. A quick brush of her hair and she was ready to put on her dress.
She didn’t have to decide. She had one really good designer dress, for very special occasions. She slipped it over her head and stood looking at herself in the long pier glass.
“You are beautiful,” he had said. “Very beautiful.”
And tonight even Iris was able to concede that she would do. Pretty she had been born, and pretty she was, and thankful for it.
But beautiful?
If she was beautiful in Paul’s eyes, then she was beautiful. It didn’t matter what she thought … only what he did.
She quickly emptied the personal things from her tote bag and transferred them to a dressy one, then looked at the bag affectionately. That tote bag … that tote bag had introduced her to Paul Chandon, as it had introduced her to Claude Marchand. That idiotic tote bag had changed her life.
You dear thing, she said to it. I will never throw you away, never.
Then she let herself out, locked the door and walked quickly down the two flights of stairs and came almost face to face with Paul.
He was standing a few paces down the hall from the door of the lounge.
He put a quick finger to his lips and shook his head. Then he lifted a finger and beckoned to her.
She walked over to him cautiously. He was clearly indicating that she should be silent.
“What?” she whispered.
“Look inside,” he whispered back.
From where they stood, she could see inside the room. There was Marcel at his bar, busy with bottles and glasses. Past the bar, a lot of people were sitting at the tables, and the room hummed with the sound of voices.
At one of the tables, and not very far away, sat Louisa and Claude Marchand.
Louisa, in her peacock-blue dress, a drink in front of her and a cigarette in her hand, was listening intently. M. Marchand, sans beret and clothed in a charcoal-gray suit with a discreet pin stripe, was a study in sartorial splendor. His thick hair, streaked with gray, was as neat as a schoolboy’s.
He was speaking animatedly, with occasional expressive gestures of his hands — typically Gallic gestures — and was apparently relating some anecdote that seemed to fascinate his companion.
Whatever it was, the ending of it must have been amusing, because, as Iris watched, her aunt broke into delighted laughter.
“They appear to be enjoying each other’s company,” Paul said in a low voice and, putting a hand on Iris’s arm, drew her farther down the hall.
“I made an excuse to leave for a few minutes,” he told her. “They hit it off right away. Really, it was because Marchand has such an easy manner. He has a way of taking charge, hasn’t he?”
“Do you like him?”
“Oh yes, very much indeed.”
“So do I. And it looks as if my aunt does. Paul, it won’t hurt for them to know each other. And then let come what may. Oh, I know you think I’m trying to — ”
“Yes, I think you are trying to bring two people together. I am not critical, chérie. You are sweet. You want everyone to be happy.”
“Because
I’m happy.”
“And so am I. Oh, am I! Anyway, I excused myself, saying there was a call I had to make. That would give them some time, I thought, to become friends, so that we would have a really enjoyable evening together.”
“Aren’t you nice.”
“Am I?”
“Yes. I think you’re wonderful.”
“You do?”
“Unreservedly.”
“Anyway,” he said. “I did make a call. I tried to switch my flight to Nice for tomorrow, in order to be on your plane.”
He made a long face, and shrugged.
“Oh. You couldn’t do it. The flight was filled?”
“You are disappointed?”
“A little.”
“Don’t be,” he said. “I was successful. I leave on the same flight as yours.”
“Oh, Paul! I thought …”
“Just teasing,” he said, and looked around quickly.
The corridor was empty, and he turned her so that her back was to the wall.
“Now,” he said, “I have you in my power, Mademoiselle.”
“I can always scream for help.”
“I can always shut you up.”
“How?” she started to say, but then his mouth came down on hers, and in a flash they were like one person, body to body, mouth to mouth, and whether it was his heart or her own Iris felt throbbing with such wild intensity, she couldn’t have said if her life depended on it.
She knew only that never, at any moment of her life, had she imagined such joy and passion, such rapture and bliss … ecstasy that was almost like pain.
Whatever she had known of love … or thought she had known, paled into insignificance in the face of this overwhelming surge of exaltation … this transport of glory … this yearning, burning passion.
He let her go finally, and held her gently for a moment until both were able to speak again.
“Come, we must go,” Iris said breathlessly. “They’ll think we’ve been kidnapped.”
“Yes, we must go,” he agreed, settling his tie. “Anyway, we should conserve our energies. For those one hundred and ninety kisses on the steps down from the Butte.”
“If they’re anything like that one,” she said, as they went into the lounge, “I’ll end up in the hospital. I think you just broke three of my ribs.”
“Well, there you are at last,” Louisa said gaily, and a genial Claude Marchand stood up at their approach.
“Bon soir, Iris Easton,” he said warmly.
“Bon soir, Claude Marchand.”
“So I was wrong in my conjectures,” he said, and shrugged. “But as you Americans say, you can’t win them all.”
“You were wrong, but you were right,” she said. “Half right and half wrong.”
“Yet it doesn’t really matter, does it,” he remarked. “As long as the ending came out all right.”
“Forgive me for contradicting you, M. Marchand,” Paul said. “But it is not the ending. It is only the beginning.”
This edition published by
Crimson Romance
an imprint of F+W Media, Inc.
10151 Carver Road, Suite 200
Blue Ash, Ohio 45242
www.crimsonromance.com
Copyright © 1979 by Dorothy Fletcher
ISBN 10: 1-4405-7190-2
ISBN 13: 978-1-4405-7190-9
eISBN 10: 1-4405-7189-9
eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-7189-3
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author's imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.
Cover art © 123rf.com; istockphoto.com/EHStock
Meeting in Madrid
Dorothy Fletcher
Avon, Massachusetts
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
CHAPTER 1
The girl in the ITA uniform walked briskly through the main waiting room at Kennedy Field, stopped at a newsstand to buy an evening paper, paid for it, closed up her purse again, then ran lightly down the stairs and opened a door that read Flight Operations. The briefing room was on a lower level and she was, out of training and habit, on time. It was a minute or two before six-thirty when she entered the busy room: report time was an hour and a half before take-off.
Her name was Kelly Jones. She had been flying for ITA for four years and had recently graduated to the status of chief stewardess, or purser. The flight was a 707. She would return on one of the 747’s. But on this trip she was top dog and when she entered the room she moved up to the front, making a last adjustment to her cap and tucking her flight bag under her arm.
There were four other stewardesses present; the fifth walked in quickly at exactly half past six. The briefing began promptly and was the usual thing. There were no new campaigns, happily, such as “No white lipstick on this flight.” Yes, of course, it could be as petty as that, Even after all these years you had the feeling that you were sized up like a hunk of meat, like a bunny in a Playboy Club. There was still that sense of losing your own individuality. You belonged to the airline and to the hundred odd passengers you were about to service.
But to be fair, you were paid more, per flight time, than you could earn in almost any other field of endeavor. So you stood and suffered the inspection and pretended not to mind.
“Check your coffee makers,” Mrs. Tree (who was the briefing instructor) advised. “We’re trying a new kind.”
A little later she said, “You have two infants.”
Groans were stifled.
The only saving grace about night flights (what with all the other draggy circumstances they entailed) was that babes in arms were generally absent. Sensible adults transported babies in the daytime. Two infants meant tears and wails and a good deal of extra service. And as if that weren’t enough, Mrs. Tree added, “You have an unaccompanied minor.”
Well, Kelly thought. It was going to be a rough flight.
“A child of ten. Male.”
Um. Old enough to go to the john himself, Kelly thought. At least there was that.
“Relatives will meet him in Madrid.”
Relatives would meet him in Madrid. Meanwhile, it’s I who will have to wipe his nose, Kelly reflected, without a change in expression. We will deal with these problems in due time, she told herself; you took it step by step.
“No exceptional passengers otherwise,” Mrs. Tree said, in her dry voice. Which meant no movie stars. I didn’t expect any, Kelly thought, bored. Night flights were for people who were loath to lose time on travel. The poor bastards counted every penny and started out, practically sleepless, sightseeing on the double.
“Have a good trip,” Mrs. Tree concluded and then the Captain, who had spent the last half hour studying the flight plan in the Dispatch Room, walked in for his innings.
It was Norm Robertson, one of the old-timers; Kelly knew him well. A nice guy, one you could depend on. He saw her smile and grinned back.
He greeted them nicely; his voice had warm southern overtones. He was tall, nearly six feet; he had a broad eye-span and sun-tanned skin. He had intelligent, land eyes. He also had six children and he didn’t sleep around.
Most of the Captains got Kelly aside and told her in detail how they wanted their roast beef done before they got down to cases. Captain Robertson, however, was one of the seasoned ones, no nonsense and no gall. He quietly put the girls through their paces: “Tell me h
ow to open the door and put the slide down …”
Some of the new ones, after establishing that they wanted their ribs bloody rare and a double portion of the mousse au chocolat, got carried away with it, shooting rapid-fire questions at the girls, coldeyed and mean. But Norman Robertson, who had been doing this for years and years, knew enough to leave it to the cabin crew. He was experienced enough to be sure that the stewardesses were as cautious as he was, that they watched for a grease-fire in the galley or a cigarette thrown by a careless passenger in the waste disposal. The main concern was fire and an airline hostess was as keenly aware of the danger as the cockpit crew.
The routine questions were answered to the point and to the Captain’s satisfaction. I wonder, Kelly thought, if passengers had any idea that occasional stewardesses were found wanting and dismissed and a new crew called in. It had happened … and in her time.
The Captain was giving the flight plan now. When that was done he asked who the purser was. Kelly stepped forward.
“Hi,” he said. “Seems like I’ve seen you before.”
“Seems as if.”
He took her aside and laid down the rules. It was okay; this was one of the old pros. The new crop, the brash, temperamental ones, got in her hair with their insolent assumption of superiority. They could be infuriating with their barked commands: “I don’t want you sitting in the lounge. You know the rules, girls.”
Sure they knew the rules. A lot of them had more flight time than the captains.
“Looks like it will be choppy about an hour out,” Captain Robertson said. “Keep that in mind, honey. You’re a pretty girl … Everyone tells you that, right?”
“Always grateful for a kind word. I hear you have a newcomer to the family.”
“Three months old now,” he said, and got out some color snaps of the newest Robertson. “Smart as a button. Am I boring you, honey?”
“No. Good luck to all of you,” she said, sincerely.
But time was passing. “Got your girls assigned to the slides?” he asked, looking at his watch. “If so, I guess we’re all set.” He turned and saluted, with a pleasant grin, the rest of the girls. “Let’s have a good trip,” he drawled, and left the room.
Classic Love: 7 Vintage Romances Page 48