by Susan Barrie
“Do you want me to tell you the truth?” she asked, looking upward through the boughs above her head. “That I’d never even been kissed—properly, that is,” blushing under cover of the dark—“until this afternoon. I am what you could describe as a positive amateur.”
“Thank goodness for that,” Peter breathed at her side.
She turned and looked at him a little critically.
“At least we can’t say the same thing about you,” she reminded him, astounded by the feeling of jealousy that possessed her when she thought of him with Miss Islesworth in his arms. “For even if you were never in love with Georgina you must have kissed her many times!”
“Duty kisses,” he responded, freeing one of his hands in order to light himself a cigarette.
She frowned.
“And was Georgina content with them?”
He shrugged.
“If she wasn’t content she never reproached me. I think we both accepted that passionate lovemaking was out— where we two were concerned, at any rate. Naturally, as I’ve said before, I admire her, and it wasn’t exactly unpleasant making a form of light love to her. . . .”
Victoria bit her lip.
“Could you do it again?” she demanded. “After-after kissing me?”
“Making violent love to you, you mean.” He reached out and snatched her into his arms, and for one moment she forgot everything while his mouth covered hers and his arms held her. The knowledge that she could turn her head toward him and nestle it into his shoulder was sheer bliss ... and even while discussing with him the relative merits of lovemaking that was inspired by nothing more than a desire to be cooperative and lovemaking that was purely and simply the result of deep compulsion, she was only too happy to avail herself of the advantages bestowed upon her by her new status.
Sir Peter stroked her hair a little reproachfully. “No, I couldn’t kiss her again.”
“And you’re quite—quite sure about—us?”
He put his fingers beneath her chin and lifted it, and the moonlight poured into her eyes as it broke free from a cloud.
She felt his long fingers gently massaging her throat.
“If I was not sure,” he demanded huskily, “would I be here with you now?”
The hours passed, and the moon climbed high in the sky. The nightingale inhabiting the nearby thicket started tuning up about eleven o’clock, and a quarter of an hour later was distilling magic and scattering it on the otherwise absolute stillness and quiet of the night, as if it was some sort of commodity reserved for the delectation of those fortunates dwelling in such a place.
Victoria, who had listened to it often, was bemused by it tonight. The concert lasted for about half an hour, and then silence settled down over the cottage and the garden. Peter said regretfully that he must tear himself away and allow her to go to bed, but when the actual moment of separation came Victoria realized that they still hadn’t made any plans for the future. They had sat enthralled by their surroundings and murmured to one another occasionally, but that was all they had done. And as soon as she was alone the various omissions occurred to her, and she tried to reassure herself about them because, after all, until a few hours before she had never expected to be engaged to marry Sir Peter ... and he, up until twenty-four hours before, had been engaged to someone else.
So she could hardly expect him to free his mind of all previous entanglements so suddenly and start off on an entirely new track making plans for their joint future.
In any case—and once she was alone to fully realize her happiness—she knew she had more than enough to occupy her for the present without bothering about the future, not even the immediate future.
Sir Peter had said he would be with her the following day, and that was as far as they had gone in the matter of looking ahead.
Once she had said good-night to him, and as on the night before he had waited outside the door of the cottage until she locked and bolted it, she went straight upstairs to her room and curled herself up in an armchair beside the window, for she was far too excited and emotionally “lit up” to go to bed. Johnny, in the next room, slumbered peacefully, and the cottage was very quiet. With her arms about her drawn-up knees and her eyes on the starry firmament that spread itself above the tangled boughs outside her window, she relived every moment of the evening just passed, as well as a good many moments during the day ... and the dawn light was invading the sky when she finally went to bed.
She wondered whether Peter, not so far away at Wycherley Park, was doing the same thing at around about the same hour. Or whether, being a man, he was more practical and had long since gone to bed and was probably fast asleep—and, she could only hope, dreaming of her when she at last slid between the sheets.
The next morning, despite the hour at which her head touched the pillow, she was up early and had the breakfast table laid and the grill switched on ready for making toast shortly after half past seven. Every instinct she possessed warned her that Sir Peter would arrive at any moment, and he would certainly want breakfast, and, equally certainly, a substantial one.
As for herself, she couldn’t do more than swallow a cup of coffee, and even the piece of toast she buttered for herself was left untasted.
Johnny came down about eight o’clock, looking very suntanned as a result of his long day in the open the day before. He took his place at the table and looked at the extra set of cutlery that had been laid out on the snowy cloth, but he offered no comment, although his eyes went somewhat searchingly to Victoria’s face.
“I heard you moving about in the night,” he said. “Didn’t you go to bed?”
Victoria reassured him, ruffling his hair lightly as she passed behind his chair.
“Oh, yes, I went to bed. But you’d been asleep a long time when I did,” she told him, smiling at him.
Johnny looked as if he was recollecting something of importance.
“You couldn’t sleep,” he accused her.
Victoria agreed with him complacently.
“No, I couldn’t,” she admitted. “But I’m fresh as a daisy this morning,” she added.
Johnny’s eyes were unable to detect any harrowing effects of her sleepless night. On the contrary, her eyes were as bright and her skin was as radiant as the early morning itself. She was wearing a dress he hadn’t seen before—a crisp print she had made herself, and because it had a lot of blue in it was entirely right for her—and her golden hair was caught up in a ponytail by means of a light blue ribbon.
With a small apron round her middle and an immaculate frying pan in her hands, she looked, he thought, almost good enough to eat herself.
Victoria buttered him some toast, cooked his egg and placed it in front of him, and then stood behind her own chair with her eyes wandering constantly in the direction of the window. And Johnny immediately remembered what he simply couldn’t understand he hadn’t remembered earlier.
“Sir Peter!” he exclaimed, waving the marmalade spoon. “You’re expecting him for breakfast! You’re going to marry him and he’s going to spend a lot of time with us here at the cottage .... Until you do marry him, I mean!”
Victoria didn’t deny the imputation, but she urged him to get on with his breakfast.
“And then you can give Sir Peter’s car a rub with one of my brand new dusters,” she told him.
Johnny’s eyes gleamed at this—he was going through a phase when cars of all kinds (but preferably smart new expensive ones!) were an obsession with him. As soon as he had disposed of his last mouthful of toast he went out into the garden and stationed himself at the gate to watch for Sir Peter. It wasn’t quite such a bright and brilliant morning, but it was fine enough, full of the right amount of promise.
Johnny, in a clean T-shirt and very short shorts, hung over the garden gate and strained his eyes to catch the very earliest possible glimpse he could catch of Sir Peter and the Bentley; but he was still doing the same thing when an hour had passed, and by that time Victoria had
joined him at the gate.
She was still keeping the top of the stove hot, but she had washed up her own and Johnny’s breakfast things, and the chimes of the village church clock—which reached them on a still morning—informed her that it was now nine o’clock.
If Peter was coming to breakfast something must have held him up.
When the church clock chimed ten they were still leaning on the garden gate, but Johnny was growing restless. Victoria dismissed him from his post and urged him to go and dig in the garden, or do something to divert himself. Mrs. Wavertree arrived and removed the immaculate cloth from the kitchen table, and Victoria was forced to face up to the knowledge that Peter would not now require breakfast when he arrived.
Mrs. Wavertree was in a very chatty mood, and Victoria followed her indoors and discussed local affairs with her. She wished to appear as normal as possible, and she had already cautioned Johnny that he must say nothing at all of what had occurred the day before.
For the moment, at any rate, the happenings of the day before were a secret between herself, Sir Peter and Johnny.
Johnny seemed to think this a little odd, but he was ever ready to oblige. If a secret had to be kept he was the very one to keep it, and he went round making mysterious observations about the table being cleared, and hinting very broadly to Mrs. Wavertree that they would probably have a visitor to lunch.
But eleven o’clock came, and twelve o’clock, and there was still no Sir Peter. The butcher’s boy brought chops for lunch, and Mrs. Wavertree sliced the beans and did the potatoes. Victoria went outside into the kitchen garden and picked the last of the loganberries, and afterwards she made them into a tart and made absolutely certain there was cream in the fridge to go with them.
“If there isn’t, I can go to the village and get some,”
Johnny offered. But it wasn’t necessary; There was cream.
Mrs. Wavertree departed at half-past twelve, and by that time Victoria was feeling unreasonably desperate. Why didn’t Peter come? And since he hadn’t come, what was keeping him? When he departed the night before he had said quite distinctly, “See you tomorrow morning.” And now it was no longer morning. It was afternoon.
Victoria cooked the lunch and served it at the usual time, feeling, while she dished up the vegetables, as if she could cry into the vegetable water that drained from the colander. This, she knew, was absurd, because anything could have kept Peter, and the fact that her hands were shaking and she fumbled with everything she did was a sign of unreasonable nervous tension she was ashamed of, but which she couldn’t combat.
For a moment she thought of telephoning to Wycherley Park—until the thought that she might be suspected of running after him stopped her.
By three o’clock in the afternoon she was quite sure that Sir Peter had been involved in an accident, and when teatime came without him putting in an appearance she was absolutely convinced of it. Nevertheless, she did her best to prevent this dire feeling communicating itself to Johnny. As he was restless after tea and wandered about with his hands in the pockets of his shorts, kicking up stones and scowling at the paved walk, she decided that the two of them would have to go for a brief walk, and when they returned perhaps they would find Peter leaning on the gate and waiting for them.
This picture comforted her all the way along an abandoned car track and over a muddy field; and it was still bright and offering her a good deal of consolation even after she and Johnny had wandered in their favorite beech wood and collected several varieties of ferns to take back to the cottage. But before the white garden gate came in sight she knew Peter was not at the cottage.
For there was no sign of his car in the lane.
Johnny went to bed at six o’clock, and Victoria went outside again to do some determined gardening, and grubbed about in the earth until her hands were badly stained, since she had neglected to put on gardening gloves, and one or two thorns had been driven into her fingers and she had been badly stung by nettles.
Then, when it was growing dusk, she went indoors and switched on the radio and the desk lamp, then sat down and stared in a defeated fashion at the farther wall.
Peter was not coming. Something had gone wrong, or else he had forgotten that he had promised to come, and that in its way was even more serious than something going wrong.
Not that she wanted anything to happen to the man who was now her whole life and future existence. But it was dreadful to think that he might, after all, have forgotten his first serious promise to her, and when she saw him again he would simply say casually that he had forgotten.
She put her hands up to her face and clutched at it in anguish as she sat there torturing herself.
She knew she was torturing herself, but what else could she do, alone there in the cottage?
The fact that Johnny was upstairs asleep was no real comfort. She adored Johnny, and she wanted him to have a restful night, but if only he was older—and preferably a woman of experience—and she could have talked to him. Johnny was in many ways so shrewd and practical. He might have issued her some sound advice if she had taken him into her confidence before he went upstairs to his room ... and as a result of that advice she might now be feeling more comforted.
There were even moments during that long, long evening when she actually made for the foot of the stairs in order to wake Johnny and take him into her confidence. But common sense, and her paramount desire not to disturb him, prevailed in the end, and she retained her seat before the hearth, on which instead of coals a vase of flowers lit up the cavernous space, and the scent of them filled the room.
At ten o’clock she went outside and walked desperately up and down the garden path in fitful moonlight for about half an hour ... and then she turned to go back indoors again, for there was not even a nightingale singing in the wood to divert her tonight.
But there was the sound of a car coming along the lane.
She fairly raced to the gate to welcome Peter, all her fears and thoughts scattered to the winds, her eyes shining like the brightest of bright stars in the heavens above her.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Georgina stepped from the car with a grace that betokened a natural assurance and ease; but there was no hostility in her face as she approached the gate.
Victoria could have cried aloud with disappointment when she saw that the car that stopped at the gate was not the familiar, sleek gray Bentley, but a gleaming affair of almost startling white. Against the background of shadows crowding close in the lane it seemed to her to have an almost unearthly pallor. Georgina said sympathetically: “Poor Miss Wood! Are you still hoping against hope that Sir Peter will turn up?”
Victoria stared without making any answer. Georgina opened the gate herself and stood on the flagged path beside Victoria looking critically and a trifle contemptuously around the sleeping garden of the cottage. The light from the sitting-room window streamed out across the lawn, and it all looked very serene and peaceful and a trifle unreal against the setting of darkness.
Victoria managed to find her voice.
“Is—is anything wrong?” In her own ears her voice sounded husky to the point of being barely audible. “With— with Sir Peter?”
Georgina smiled at her with just a touch of open contempt.
“Not a thing, my dear! Why should there be? Things don’t happen easily to a man like Sir Peter Wycherley. He’s rich enough to combat most of the evils of life, and he’s always been extraordinarily fortunate so far as I know. No; there’s nothing wrong. It’s simply that he sent me to see you.”
“Why?”
Georgina shrugged. She was wearing a thin silk coat over a pale silk dress—wild silk, since Georgina preferred it to any other variety—and although the night drained the color out of it Victoria would have been prepared to swear that it was wild-rose pink, or possibly lilac. However, she was not in any mood to swear to anything just then, and she merely noted the details of the outfit out of the corner of her eye. And Georgina�
��s beguiling darkness and bewitching, flawless skin awakened a purely temporary feeling of admiration that she was not aware of herself. Georgina advanced toward the cottage.
“Can’t we go inside?” she suggested. “I didn’t exactly contemplate having a kind of heart-to-heart with you in the open.”
Victoria acquiesced without saying a word. She knew that something was worse than wrong ... not, apparently, with Sir Peter Wycherley, but with her world. In the next few seconds it was going to collapse in ruins about her ears. And in order that she shouldn’t betray her abject vulnerability and the sickening disappointment and bewilderment that was already turning her completely cold inside, she maintained her silence until she had closed the door on the two of them and switched on another wall light to add to the revealing illumination.
Then, and then only, did Georgina turn and look at her.
“You must believe me when I tell you that I’m sorry for you,” she said. “But you ought to have had more sense from the beginning. You shouldn’t have expected such a lot from any man. Least of all Peter! He’s a charmer, and I adore him, but I understand perfectly his greatest weakness.”
Victoria licked her lips.
“What is that?”
“Kindness, a desire to be generous all the time. He simply can’t bear to see anyone frustrated or in need of pity or sympathy, and in the case of the boy Johnny I understood perfectly why he wanted to do things for him. The child was rendered fatherless and he hasn’t any mother, so why shouldn’t he adopt him? It was the logical thing for him to do according to his lights. Then there was you. . . .”
Once more Victoria licked her lips.
“What about me?”
“You’re such a pathetic little thing, and you made it so obvious that you fell for him right from the outset.” She was pacing up and down in the living room of the cottage, lifting ornaments and examining them idly, picking up books and discarding them. She came to the new transistor radio and smiled as she touched it. “A present for Johnny?”
The other girl nodded. She was very white under the lights, and in an extraordinary, detached manner she was forcing herself to accept the discovery that Miss Islesworth’s coat and dress were actually pale lavender, and not lilac or pink. It was almost a bluish lavender, in fact.