Flight to the Stars

by Pamela Kent

  And, looking at him, Melanie wondered what it would be like to marry and stay married to Rick. To encounter that half-derisive smile every morning at the breakfast table, ‘and see those strange eyes that had a sort of fluid darkness about them melting her bones with occasional tenderness. Melting her bones...? Her bones! ... What on earth was she thinking, and why had she got on to such a curious train of thought?

  She felt the color begin to rise slowly beneath her smooth skin as he continued to smile curiously at her, and he asked with that noticeable twist to one side of his mouth:

  “Does that sound too much like a life sentence to you, Melanie?”

  “Of course not.” But she had to look away hurriedly, and she changed the subject by telling him that his father wanted her to be included amongst the guests who would be joining them at their seaside home for the week-end.

  Once again his black eyebrows arched in surprise.

  “You have made an impression, my dear Melanie! Normally the old man thinks only of golf, and simply doesn’t bother his head about who will, or will not, be enjoying his hospitality over the week-end. But it’s quite obvious there’s much more to you than is apparent on the surface ... Or shall we say at first meeting, except to those with vision?” His eyes grew quizzical. “My father must possess vision.”

  The head waiter approached to know whether the service had been entirely satisfactory, and once again Melanie was glad of an interruption. Rick seemed to grow casual once the meal was over, and it was plain that any temporary interest she had aroused in him had evaporated. He even looked a little bored.

  “You’d better take the rest of today off,” he said. “I was planning to take you with me when I drive to the beach tomorrow, and you can be ready about ten o’clock. And when I say ten o’clock I mean ten o’clock!”

  She was quite sure of it. He was full of nervous impatience again, like an over-bred horse, and although outside he offered to drive her back to the hotel she declined. She was certain he wanted to be alone, and very certain that he wanted to be rid of her, and she took a taxi back to the hotel. He made no attempt to prevent her.

  Yet the next morning he was gay and smiling, in irresistible holiday mood. Irresistible because it made his eyes glint humorously, and his teeth flashed like blanched almonds every time his thin, hard lips parted over them.

  He drove at reckless speed, yet with a competence there was no doubting. The cream car with its scarlet leather lining was superbly comfortable, and as there was no one in the back of it there was no one to impose a feeling of restraint. Jake, who disliked the low-slung sports type vehicle, was accompanying Mr. Vandraaton in his super Cadillac.

  Melanie was wearing pale blue linen with white accessories. She had chosen the outfit with care, not because she hoped to impress—how could she when she would be the least important of all a millionaire’s guests? (And, more frightening than anything, a millionaire’s wife’s guests!)—but because as a representative of her country she didn’t want to appear at too great a disadvantage.

  Rick told her she looked charming and English. He said it with that casual look of appreciation—faintly surprised appreciation—in his eyes, and for no reason at all her heart raced.

  It was beginning to race so often nowadays that she was beginning to wonder what was the matter with it. After beating very regularly for twenty-three years it was surprisingly jumpy and uncertain, addicted to painful acceleration at the oddest moments, so that she frequently felt a little breathless. As, for instance, when she noticed how attractive a pair of slim, brown, masculine hands looked against a chromium-plated wheel, and how lean and virile were the wrists emerging from snowy shirt-cuffs.

  And Long Island skies were so blue. The seas were bluer than anything she had ever seen before, and the beaches were white like bleached bones. There were houses that would have looked well in English parkland looking towards the long line of tumbling surf, and gardens ablaze with every sort of flower. The perfume of the flowers mingled with the salt breath of the sea, and from that brilliantly clear heaven the sunlight streamed goldenly, as if it would transmute everything it touched to gold also.

  New York, with its rush and its roar and its stifling heat, seemed far, far away. This was like a corner of the Bahamas, beautiful, enticing, promising magic.

  The magic that the stars had promised her?

  The car swept between a pair of handsome gates and travelled at the same dangerous rate of speed up a well-kept drive—magnificently-kept drive would be a better description. There were rhododendrons bordering it that would be a riot in the spring, and just now great trees formed a cool green canopy meeting overhead. Through it tiny bits of the incredibly blue sky were still visible.

  They stopped before a low white house that had probably been built early in the nineteenth century. There was a dignified porch, and close to it a tulip tree scattered perfume much as a comet scatters fire. Melanie saw weeping willows bending above a river that ran through the grounds, towering chestnuts, slender poplars, and delicate Swiss pines. She saw brilliant rock-gardens and emerald lawns, and a congregation of the most expensive-looking cars all standing on the broad sweep before the house. She also saw an elegant female figure, with a light lavender rinse to silvery hair, standing in the porch as if, looking out for them. Her heart didn’t merely sink, it plummeted right down into the depths of her stomach. Rick’s hand closed over hers, and she actually allowed her fingers to cling tightly to it.

  “It’s all right,” Rick said, in an amused voice. “My mother won’t eat you! Remember, no one can do more than slightly shrivel you with a glance, if you’re the type to be shrivelled!”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  But Mrs. Lucas Vandraaton was far too well-bred to shrivel anyone with a glance. She merely ignored Melanie, and embraced her son with maternal fervor.

  “Darling, it’s so good to have you back again!” she said. “And last night you spent so much time with your father that I had no opportunity to really talk to you at all. Now you can tell me everything!”

  By “everything” Melanie wondered whether she meant news of Diane.

  An elderly lady with violently dyed hair, who hobbled along with the aid of a stick, and was later introduced to Melanie as his Aunt Octavia, made her appearance next, from the cool depths of the hall, and also embraced Rick. He was obviously a favorite with his womenfolk, whatever his menfolk thought of him.

  Aunt Octavia tapped her stick on the marble flags, and then looked keenly at Melanie. Her eyes were shrewd, and absurdly made-up, but they were quite kindly eyes, Melanie thought.

  “So you’re from England?” she said. “I used to know England quite well. I went to school there, and I had my first love affair there. He was one of your terribly correct Englishmen, and we never got very far. But you’ve got red hair, and you don’t strike me as particularly English. You look as if you could let yourself go!”

  Melanie felt Rick’s eyes on her, almost speculatively, and she knew that she colored. His eyes danced.

  “Have you ever really let yourself go, Melanie? I never thought about it before, but with that colorful hair, and those cool sort of frocks you wear, you do suggest fire and ice!”

  His aunt drew him away with a hand inside his arm.

  “Leave her alone, Rick. It isn’t fair to tease a young woman secretary who doesn’t feel free to tease back. And besides, I want to hear about that young woman of yours in England ... A duke’s daughter they tell me that she is, or a duke’s granddaughter, or something.”

  “A duke’s goddaughter,” Rick corrected her lazily. “And that’s slightly different, but impressive if you’re fond of dukes.”

  “Well, aren’t we all?” Aunt Octavia said. “Especially as they’re a dying race!”

  Tea was being served inside, in a magnificent room that was a mixture of modern comfort and period elegance. A manservant, wearing tails and immaculate linen, had just wheeled in a tea-equipage, and Aunt Octavia demanded hers wit
h lemon. There seemed to Melanie to be a solid press of people, wearing relaxed clothes, most of whom ignored the tea-trolley, and accepted long glasses that tinkled with ice instead. One of these was Rick’s sister, Candy, who was as dark as he was, but as vividly beautiful as an exotic flower. She seemed to be having an affair with two young men who wanted to appropriate her, but neither of them made her look particularly happy. Her smile at Melanie was as fleeting and perfunctory as that of her mother, but her eyes lingered longer than her mother’s had done. And therefore they saw more.

  Melanie heard Mrs. Vandraaton inquiring in a thin, remote voice like the tinkling of Japanese windmills whether she would take cream and sugar with her tea, and when she said that she would the reply came even more distantly:

  “I somehow thought you would!” As if it was an offence.

  A young housemaid with a froth of organdie frilling on her hair, and an apron to match conducted her up to her room, and Melanie was glad to be alone once more. The house was as thickly carpeted and as lush as a silent pool, and the silk curtains were deliciously stirred by the whirring electric fans. Melanie’s curtains were ice-blue, and her carpet was off-white. The bathroom adjoining had a sunken bath that was also ice-blue, and the towels were all rosily pink like a concentration of flamingoes.

  Melanie had no idea what time dinner would be served and the house was too much of a hive of activity to make her feel justified in ringing the bell for the maid. She imagined there would be several favored female guests who would insist upon the attentions of the domestic staff.

  So she bathed and changed, and then went out on to her balcony to watch the night close down over the sea.

  It was a breathtaking metamorphosis, that closing down of the night on brilliant Long Island. One moment there was enough light to make out clearly the velvety lawns, and the dark shape of a cedar tree; and then the stars were shining forth, and the sea was luminous with phosphorescence, and as slumbrously disturbed as a beautiful woman awaking from sleep induced by enervating heat.

  Melanie had bought herself a little black cocktail dress before she left London, and she went downstairs in it. She had also bought herself a fairly expensive evening dress, but wasn’t at all sure what the others would wear. She realized afterwards that she might have known they would one and all look like the invited guests of a millionaire. The women floated in nylon net, and rustled with taffeta, and dripped lace and diamonds and pearls, and without exception the men wore white dinner-jackets. Rick’s had a creamily-pink rosebud inserted negligently in the lapel, and a scarlet silk handkerchief was tucked carelessly up his sleeve.

  Rick’s eyes tonight were more slanting than ever, and as black and brilliant as coals between his thick black eyelashes. His hair was smooth, and shone beneath the lights. His mouth twisted mockingly as he surveyed his mother’s guests ... And it was she who had invited practically every one of them.

  Only Melanie was an outsider. She felt an outsider, overlooked and forgotten; when she saw Rick claimed by a sophisticated woman with much darker red hair than her own, and a bewitching smile, who not only sat beside him at dinner, but afterwards disappeared with him into the garden. They were absent for a full hour, and more.

  Jake Crompton had arrived late with Lucas Vandraaton, and it was he who took pity on Melanie. He showed her the great library, with its chrome leather chairs and Bokhara rugs, and collection of rare bindings. And afterwards they, too, disappeared into the garden, and watched a late moon rise and hang like a lopsided lantern above the shimmering sea.

  On the way back to the house, through a night that was heady with scent and full of the rustling , of leaves and murmur of surf, they caught sight of a couple standing together in the entrance to a grove of ilex. The woman had bright hair, and an upturned smile that was bewitching in the moonbeams, and the man had a wilting rosebud in his buttonhole, and a very sleek dark head.

  She was laughing, and protesting, softly.

  “Oh, Rick! Has anyone ever taken you seriously?”

  “No one,” he assured her, and bent a little nearer.

  Melanie looked away quickly, before a pair of scarlet-tipped hands closed about the white sleeves of his dinner-jacket, and the woman stopped laughing and protesting. She thought of the girl at London Airport—the girl who was goddaughter to a duke—and wondered what manner of man Rick Vandraaton really was.

  Jake Crompton enlightened her.

  “Rick likes variety. And variety, they say, lends a spice to life!” But there was a cold sort of malice in his voice.

  Before they said good night, and Melanie withdrew to her sumptuous bedroom, Jake made a suggestion:

  “Why not get up early tomorrow morning and go down to the beach and have a swim with me? You do bathe, even if you don’t swim?”

  “Oh yes. I do swim in fact. And I brought a bathing suit with me.”

  “Splendid! Is it a bikini?”

  She laughed, and denied that she was daring enough to own a bikini.

  “Well, whatever it is—even if it’s one of those Victorian things with long, frilly legs—I’m sure you’ll look enchanting in it,” he told her. There was a note in his voice that was highly flattering—even more flattering than his choice of words. “Meet me on the main sweep in front of the house about half an hour after sunrise—not later. It’s delightfully cool then, and we’ll have the sea to ourselves.”

  “And if I oversleep?”

  “I’ll throw gravel up at your window.”

  But she didn’t need gravel flung against her window to induce her to rise early the following morning. Perhaps it was the almost oppressive luxury of her bed, or the fact that the house was so sensuously silent after New York—or merely the fact that her mind was disturbed, though she wasn’t at all clear what about—but she had been watching the sky lightening for a full hour when the sun eventually rose. She heard footsteps below her window, and picked up one of the big pink bath-towels with which she was so lavishly provided, and her swimsuit, and made her way down to join Jake.

  He was wearing slacks and an open-necked silk shirt, and had a pair of bathing trunks underneath his arm.

  “There are some huts on the beach,” he said. “We’ll change in those.”

  They swam right out to sea in the splendor of the early morning. Melanie was quite a strong swimmer, and the blue water felt not only warm and buoyant, but perversely cool and silken at the same time. She had never known such a tonic effect as swimming in such exhilarating and gently encroaching seas provided, and Jake, who was also a strong swimmer, applauded the way she clove a fearless path ahead of him. But for him she might have remained in the water too long, and developed a touch of cramp, but he had her out when she was still feeling the urge to strike out for the edge of the world—or, at any rate, the distant horizon.

  “Enough,” he told her, when they were treading water, “is as good as a feast.”

  Her swimsuit was pale daffodil yellow, and her cap was white. Once she had removed the cap and her bright beech-brown hair surrounded her small, shapely head in a delightfully shining tangle, Jake’s eyes revealed a good deal of quite unconcealed admiration.

  “Why in the world didn’t I notice you before?” he wondered again aloud. “Really notice you, I mean!”

  “Before Mr. Vandraaton picked upon me to accompany him out here?” she inquired demurely.

  “Yes. And since he insists on your calling him Rick to his face, you might as well call him Rick to me.” They stopped before the row of bathing huts. The white beach—more than ever like bleached bones in the strong, clear light of early morning, with a riot of color in the sky, and a high blue dome overhead—was utterly deserted save for their two selves, and the waves lapped softly. “Want any help with drying that hair of yours?” he asked, also softly. “A strong hand with a towel?”

  Melanie shook her head, and the sunlight glinted on the deep, rich waves of her hair.

  “No, thank you. It’ll dry itself,” giving it a shake
.

  He put out a hand and touched it, then ran the same hand down the curve of her cheek and the side of her neck and smooth shoulder.

  “We must do this again tomorrow morning,” he said, but he was concentrating on the lovely warm color in her face and the slightness of her figure in the yellow swimsuit. Because she hadn’t had much opportunity to bathe that summer so far her limbs were delectably white—rather like the whiteness of a paper-white rose. Jake thought delightedly that he had never seen eyes—as grey as wood-smoke—so engagingly embarrassed because he was looking at her with all the admiration of a man who, as well, apparently, as Rick, was something of a connoisseur where appealing womanhood was concerned.

  “We’d better be getting back, hadn’t we?” she said hastily, turning away. “They might miss us.”

  “No one will miss us for hours yet,” he assured her. “Most of them will have breakfast in their rooms, and you and I are the only really intrepid ones.”

  And with a laugh he caught at her arm as she made for her bathing hut and drew her into a fierce possessive embrace.

  Melanie felt his cool, hard, masculine mouth pressing firmly upon hers, and when she resisted it pressed still more firmly, and became infinitely less cool. She had never felt quite so revolted in her life, and resisted so unmistakably that he had to let her go. But he was smiling with a queer sort of satisfaction as he stood there looking at her.

  “That was pleasant,” he said. “Very pleasant!”

  “But I’d advise you not to repeat it unless the lady is also of the same mind!” Rick’s voice came clearly, with an edge like that on an ice-floe. He had stepped from behind one of the huts, and his long cream car was waiting for him on the highroad. “And somehow I got the impression that Miss Blake was not of the same mind—just then, at any rate!”