‘You can, Tessa.’ He leaned back, his face serious. ‘I believe,’ there was the briefest hesitation, ‘you are quite fond of me, Tessa.’
Startled, she cried, ‘Am I so transparent?’
The mobile lips quirked, but the smile was tender.
‘In some ways, yes. It’s part of your charm.’
‘Charm!’ She twisted away. ‘Don’t play with me, Nicholas. I can’t take any more.’
‘So it’s true!’ She scarcely heard the whispered words as he caught her arm and pulled her close. She had a brief glimpse of grey eyes before the lashes dropped and screened them, and his lips sought her own. For a moment she tried to draw back, and his grip tightened.
‘No, darling,’ he murmured against her lips.
Long moments later, he raised his head. She traced the line of his mouth with a wondering finger, feeling an instant caressing response, and for the first time she knew the emotion of a man’s heart thudding against her breast.
‘Are you sure, little Tessa?’
She turned away, with the slightest movement of her head, still uncertain of him. He sat back on the edge of the desk in the old familiar stance.
‘I meant to do it in the traditional manner.’ He spread his hands with a whimsical gesture. ‘Flowers, a romantic setting, and so on. But not until you were away from Meads again, and my constant influence.’ Nicholas paused, regarding her thoughtfully. He went on, ‘I knew you had a certain affection for me, but it seemed that Gerard was rapidly gaining a great deal of your interest, and I wasn’t prepared to face another let-down through rushing you.’
A soft cry escaped her and she flung herself into his arms in the old uninhibited way.
‘But, I’ve always loved you, Nicholas. As a child, and now.’ She broke off, hiding starry eyes, and added in a whisper: ‘Isn’t it obvious? After all,’ she was unable to resist the temptation to add, ‘I’m very transparent.’
He stroked the soft hair and said wryly, ‘I suppose I deserve that.’
With secret delight at the immortal question, she murmured, ‘When, Nicholas?’
‘Quite a long time ago. Perhaps from the day Jackie and Susan came—after the pool episode. Or perhaps from the night you decided to play your great seduction scene.’ His mouth quivered.
So Jane’s idea had helped! She drew back and looked up soberly into his face. ‘Then why didn’t you...?’ and left the rest of the question unspoken.
‘I couldn’t, darling. Not in the circumstances. With you living under my roof.’
‘But Florence was here.’
He knew she thought only of the conventions, and pulled her close again. ‘You’re very sweet and very innocent, my darling, but you must understand.’ He bent to her lips, taking them for the first time as a lover.
A strange sweet fire raced through Tessa’s entire being, leaping to meet the urgency she sensed in him. With a sigh she yielded herself to the soaring ecstasy of the moment.
Suddenly he broke the kiss, his breathing rapid as he held her head against his shoulder and said huskily:
‘Now do you understand? I dared not awaken you, Tessa. Both of us here, having our meals together, seeing each other every day. Your talcum powder and feminine fripperies in the bathroom. Having to mark time until Angie came home before we could go ahead with our plans. No, Tessa. I had to wait, and risk losing you to Gerard, or any other man who might come along.’
He sighed. ‘Looking back, I don’t know which was the lesser of the two evils.’
Once again he pushed her gently away.
‘Yes, but, Nicholas, I still don’t understand why—’ She bent her head and reached absently to straighten some papers on the desk. ‘Why were you so beastly that night if...? I thought you despised me,’ she added in a low voice.
‘Did you?’ He took the restless hand and imprisoned it between his own. ‘It wasn’t easy for me,’ he said gently, ‘for the reason I’ve already explained. And—you won’t like this,’ he interjected warningly, ‘I suddenly thought I was about to be given the benefit of some of Gerard’s tutorage.’ He smiled ruefully at her expression of shocked horror. ‘Do you blame me? I know Gerard quite well. But when I realized my mistake it was too late—and I didn’t dare risk a showdown with you. Forgive me?’
‘But why didn’t you—?’
Nicholas began to laugh. ‘There’s another day coming for explanations. Look at that clock!’
‘I don’t want to look at that clock,’ she returned pertly.
‘I’m afraid you’re going to. It’s long past your bedtime.’
‘Yes, Nicholas.’ She looked down demurely. But I know I’ll never sleep. I might wake up and find it’s all a dream.’
‘It’s no dream, minx.’ Despite his good intentions Nicholas could not resist proving reality, to Tessa’s entire satisfaction. ‘Now as one of us must be sensible,’ he told her firmly, ‘and you obviously have no intention of trying to be, I suppose it’ll have to be me.’
She put her head on his shoulder and reached up to ruffle his hair.
‘If you persist much longer I will make love to you,’ he warned with a threatening expression.
She glanced at him slyly. ‘I trust you, Nicholas.’
‘No doubt,’ he said dryly. ‘But I’m afraid I can’t return the compliment. Away you go.’ He dealt her a sharp slap on her behind. ‘For one so young you’re uncommonly brazen.’
A last darting kiss and she fled, almost going headlong as her foot caught in the folds of her dressing gown.
Nicholas watched her go, his smile fading and a worried frown replacing it. Not for worlds would he at that moment voice the doubts which would have stifled the blithe laughter now echoing from the stairs. Tessa, in her happiness, had overlooked one thing.
He set the guard in place before the fire and stared down into the dying embers, unable to shake off the foreboding that Angie and her precipitate marriage might yet prove a disastrous barrier in the path of Tessa’s and his own happiness.
Nicholas switched off the lights and sighed.
Angie and the unknown Martin Jeyebell constituted a disturbing factor that could not lightly be set aside.
Tessa raced downstairs the following morning.
She pushed open the door of the dining room and the happiness radiating her face dimmed to disappointment.
‘Nicholas?’ She whirled round. ‘Where are you?’
She felt the cooling coffee pot, noting that though he had partaken of coffee, and a stubbed-out cigarette lay in the ashtray, he had not breakfasted. Remembering that Florence was still presumably snowbound at her sister’s place, Tessa began to prepare breakfast. Soon she had porridge simmering on the hotplate while she trimmed bacon and put plates to warm. His step sounded in the hall and a moment later he appeared, bringing an icy waft of the cold outside.
‘Morning, sweetheart.’ He rubbed a cold cheek against Tessa’s warm face and laughed as she ducked protestingly.
‘I’m starving,’ he announced, rubbing his hands and watching her dish up crisp bacon and creamy eggs. ‘I’ve just been down to see if the snow-ploughs are out.’
Later, drinking their second cups, Tessa’s expression grew wistful.
‘Wishful thinking?’ he probed.
She smiled. ‘I wish time would stand still. I’m so happy.’
‘And we sit here for ever, drinking endless cups of coffee.’ Nicholas indulged her mood, keeping his face straight with an effort.
‘Like the Mad Hatter’s tea party.’ She giggled.
‘Running out of clean cups—come on’ he pushed back his chair—‘it’s time to rescue the car.’
When they reached the car the ploughs had passed, leaving mounds of upturned snow at the front and rear of the vehicle. Working quickly, Tessa and Nicholas soon cleared a patch large enough to enable Nicholas to reverse and pull out into the road. The sun came out as they entered the drive. Meads sparkled under its canopy of white, and Tessa’s heart warmed as she
gazed at the lovely old house.
Nicholas stopped the car under the clump of trees at the top of the drive and turned to her.
‘Home again, Tessa.’
At the simple words she went into his arms. When he raised his head she stayed still, her face against the rough warm tweed of his jacket, reflecting on the different occasions in the past when she had travelled in this same passenger seat.
‘Nicholas, why were you so beastly the night I came back from Yorkshire—when the train was late?’
‘Inquest number one,’ he remarked, sighing. ‘Don’t you know, darling?’
She shook her head, surrendering to the old sweet magic of lovers’ first recapitulation.
‘Sheer unadulterated jealousy. I could have cheerfully consigned Gerard to the deepest pit that night. I was convinced he was going to win. Next question, please.’
Tessa hesitated, uncertain how to allude to the incident which had caused her so much heartache. She said, ‘When I rang you from Jane’s and Christine answered the phone, were you still terribly in love with her?’
Nicholas’s mouth was grim. ‘I wondered when that one was coming. Looking back now I realize that I made the old mistake of confusing physical attraction with the real thing. But that evening was long after I finally knew that her spell could no longer hold me.’
‘She’s very lovely,’ Tessa said softly in the pause.
‘Your coming to Meads made me realize that her beauty was not enough.’
‘You spoke to me as though I was an encumbrant child.’
‘I didn’t intend to. As a matter of fact I was wondering what impression she’d given you before I was able to get to the phone.’
‘The only impression she ever conveyed—as far as you re concerned,’ Tessa said tartly, recalling Nicholas’s own words the evening the Sapphire Caprice opened.
He watched the guileless face, accurately reading the unspoken fear. He touched her hand. ‘I didn’t Tessa, if that’s what’s worrying you.’
Startled, she looked into the intent grey eyes as he continued:
‘I’m sufficiently old-fashioned to believe that some things are still sacred to marriage.’
She reached up to draw down his head, and for a while they were silent. Suddenly sensing a change in his mood, she said anxiously, ‘What’s the matter Nicholas?’
‘Has it occurred to you that Angie will have to give her consent to our marriage?’
It had not, and Tessa registered her alarm all too clearly as she cried: ‘But she couldn’t possibly refuse—why, we’d have to be engaged for—for two years and four months. Oh, I couldn’t bear it!’
‘You may have no alternative.’ Nicholas frowned.
‘But it couldn’t have worked out better,’ Tessa protested. ‘She’ll start her own marriage without a grown-up third party.’
‘She may not look at it that way.’ Nicholas sounded doubtful. ‘Remember, you have a new stepfather whom neither of us has met. The unknown quantity.’
Her face troubled, Tessa got out of the car and waited until Nicholas drove it into the garage. Hand in hand they walked back to the front of the house to see a plump figure hurrying up the drive.
Tessa broke into a run, leaving Nicholas to follow more slowly, and hugged Florence Reyne. Something in Tessa’s glowing young face brought a smile and a softening expression to the older woman’s eyes as she turned from Tessa’s exuberance to the slightly enigmatic expression with which Nicholas was endeavouring to conceal his amusement and his own personal emotion.
‘Don’t keep Florence in suspense,’ he exhorted. ‘Or I shall tell her first.’
So Florence was told the wonderful secret and made no effort to restrain her delight and complete approval. But the brief interlude of privacy was soon over. They had barely got lunch cleared from the table before Nicholas called:
‘They’re here!’
With a stifled scream, Tessa tore off her apron and rushed to the front door. Florence hurried after her, hastily drying her hands on the tea towel she still held.
The big American sedan exuded opulence, occupying almost the entire length of the forecourt as it came to a standstill Florence, behind Nicholas, shook her head as Tessa, in thin slippers, ran down the snow-covered steps, her hair flying in the wind.
A radiant figure, snuggled deep into a gloriously luxuriant mink, emerged and opened wide, embracing arms. From the far side of the car a stranger came. Not much taller than Angie, he conveyed bigness and power in his heavy travelling coat and black homburg. He glanced briefly at the house as he joined his wife and stepdaughter.
From the doorway Nicholas watched, his face remote, as the big man smiled down at Tessa, taking her hands between his gloved ones and drawing her towards the house.
CHAPTER XV
‘No!’
The determined finality of the word and the force with which it was uttered brought silence to the group of people gathered in the lounge later that same day.
The initial confusion and excitement caused by the arrival of Angie and Martin had subsided. Nicholas had automatically invited them to remain at overnight before they returned to London where they planned to spend a couple of days before they sailed from Southampton on a honeymoon cruise to the Canaries.
Martin Jeyebell moved uneasily, watching his wife’s implacable expression as she dropped her bombshell. His gaze moved to Nicholas’s grim face before it rested, with compassion in its depths, on the white, mutinous countenance of his new stepdaughter.
‘Tessa is hardly out of the schoolroom. She hasn’t had enough experience to know her own mind,’ Angie said in a tone which blatantly defied opposition.
Tessa looked at Nicholas, whose eyes said plainly: I told you, darling, and back to her mother.
‘Oh, dear.’ Angie spread her hands helplessly. ‘I’m not doing this very well.’ She sighed. ‘Listen, darling. It isn’t Nicholas I object to. It’s your youth. I just don’t want you to make a mistake. I want you to have the opportunity of meeting people and playing at life before you begin living it seriously.’
The golden head tilted to one side and the blue eyes were appealing. ‘Be sensible, darling. At last I can give you these opportunities—with Martin’s help.’
Tessa broke the uncomfortable silence that followed Angie’s speech.
‘Very well, Mother,’ she said quietly. ‘You’ve made your decision. Now I’ll make mine.’
Angie said sharply, ‘When you come of age is the time to talk so seriously of making your own decisions.’
Tessa, stood her ground, refusing to be intimidated by the force of her mother’s personality. ‘You may be able to stop me from marrying Nicholas, but you can’t force me to live in the States. I won’t!’
‘Tessa!’
The shocked exclamation brought a warning pressure to Tessa from Nicholas’s hand, but she brushed it away and said firmly:
‘I will not put the width of the Atlantic between Nicholas and myself. I believe that the law allows that I can choose my own place of residence provided that I can support myself in a suitable way.’ She took a deep, quivering breath and went on steadily, ‘I believe I can do that. If I can’t, then my expensive education has been rather a waste of money. Also,’ a note of triumph entered Tessa’s voice, ‘you’ve forgotten my father’s interest in the gallery. It still bears the name Rogerlees and Maythorne. That interest is legally mine. If Nicholas is willing, I propose to take steps to have my capital reinvested in a new, active partnership. I don’t think I shall starve,’ she concluded coolly.
Martin leaned forward to speak, but Angie forestalled him with an imperious wave of her hand. She turned angrily to Nicholas, who had been unable to conceal his surprise at Tessa’s outburst, and cried:
‘Are you responsible for these crazy notions my daughter has got into her head?’
‘No!’ Tessa interrupted. ‘Don’t blame Nicholas. If it’s any consolation to you he foresaw your attitude—that’s why I planned a
ccordingly—in case.’
‘So you had doubts.’ Angie looked at Nicholas, interpreting this as vindication of her own conviction.
‘And remember this,’ Tessa interrupted. ‘You were the person who decided that Nicholas was a fit person to entrust me to. Why should he not be my husband?’
Angie put her face in her hands, then looked up at Martin and gave a little bewildered shake of her head, as if to say, this can’t be happening to me. But Martin ignored her plea and crossed to Tessa’s side. He put a hand on her shoulder and said:
‘Come, honey, you’re not fighting a courtroom battle yet. We only want to ensure your happiness, little girl. Surely you can wait a while and see how things work out.’
The unexpected sympathy in his tone brought Tessa to the verge of tears. She said brokenly, ‘Nicholas is my happiness. He always has been and always will be. Oh, if only my father were still here,’ she added despairingly. ‘He would have understood.’
Angie gave her a long, appraising look and her expression hardened. She sat down and composed her hands in her lap with deliberate movements. ‘I think the time has come to tell you the truth, Tessa,’ she began. ‘Then perhaps you’ll understand my objections to early marriages.’
‘Will I?’ Tessa asked. ‘Knowing that you married at eighteen and had no regrets—if you had, you concealed them very successfully.’
‘It was before that.’ Angie voice modulated and became lower in tone. ‘I was playing in my first show, as an obscure young dancer. At a party I met a film technician who made no secret of the fact he was a rake. I fell headlong in love with him, and no one was more surprised than myself when he asked me to marry him.’
An intent hush stilled the listeners. Only Nicholas, his face suddenly becoming a mask of chilled horror, made an almost threatening movement towards Angie before he put his arm protectively round Tessa’s shoulders.
Angie said flatly, ‘She has to know some time. I married this man in spite of all opposition. When I was three months pregnant he was killed in a car smash and I learned the appalling truth. He was leaving me. There was another woman—always had been. I had been friendly with John Rogerlees for some time and knew that he loved me. He was a scholar, remote from my world, and I considered him dull and much too quiet to spend my life with.’
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