by Pamela Kent
“Would yours?” he wanted to know. “If the man you bestowed it on failed you?”
She shook the bright head.
“No ... No, it wouldn’t.”
“Oh, Melanie!” he exclaimed, softly. “Melanie Blake! I was quite sure it wouldn’t!”
She found that she had to look at him, and in the strange, diffused light that was so curiously restful, so concealing, and yet, at the same time, so strangely revealing, she thought that his face looked thin and tired and drawn, as if the scene of the morning had left him far from unscathed. As if deep down inside him he was more embittered than he had perhaps ever been in his life before.
And yet, as his eyes met hers—really met hers, and looked deep and long into hers—there was a new kind of gentleness that seemed to reach out and caress her; a sweetness—and even a tenderness—that melted her bones. And his fingers relaxed their cruel grip and merely held hers strongly.
“Go to sleep, little one,” he advised, still speaking very softly, “and we’ll discuss all this in the morning. We’ve both had a brute of a day, and this isn’t the hour for baring one’s soul to anyone. Tomorrow we’ll be back at the Nonpareil, and you shall talk to me very seriously. Very, very seriously indeed! ... And, moreover, I promise to listen!”
“But I’m not going back to the Nonpareil,” she heard herself say regretfully, remembering how firmly she had made up her mind that she would never return to the hotel.
“Oh, yes, you are,” he assured her. “I’m going back, and you’re going back ... At least until we’ve got a few things sorted out! You’re going if I have to drag you by the fiery red tresses attached to that delicate scalp of yours, which you’ve sworn shall never hang at my belt!”
Because of the gentle jibing in his voice she had to look away again, but she didn’t reiterate that her scalp would never in any circumstances hang at his belt. She knew that it was already hanging there, wanted or unwanted.
Just before her eyelids began to droop, and she was certain—although she didn’t dare turn her head—that he was already asleep, he whispered an inquiry very close to her ear.
“Do you still find night flying exciting, Melanie?”
She looked out at the stars, lying on the sable floor of the sky, and with her hand fast in his and her whole future completely uncertain she still had to admit that for her night flying was something more than merely exciting. For her it seemed a temporary suspension of normal things—ordinary things...
All things, under such circumstances, were possible!
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
But in the morning, when they arrived at London Airport, she felt very differently.
Unlike the arrival at Idlewild there was no greyness about their greeting, and even a kind of gay promise in the brilliance of the sunrise. But Rick’s air and attitude were neither gay or promising, and once more his unshaven chin looked grim, and his mouth forbidding. She had seen him look like this before, but now there was an extra tautness, an extra aloofness which chilled her.
It even seemed to her that he was hardly aware of her once they were back on her native soil, and coupled with his admission in the aircraft that he loved Diane she felt as if everything closed up inside her. She made up her mind to take a taxi and spare him the necessity of seeing her back to London, but his car was waiting—the famous black Jaguar that had been left behind—and he held open the door beside the driving seat for her, and looked round in surprise when she hung back.
“I—I was going to take a taxi. In any case, I don’t really think it’s necessary for me to go back to the Nonpareil. I—I told your father I wouldn’t go back.”
He looked at her with unreadable night-dark eyes.
“Get in,” was all he said.
She obeyed him, and although it was such a brilliant morning there was an autumnal nip in the air which chilled her and brought home to her afresh the fact that she had left America for good, and would never again feel the warmth of the Long Island sun.
When they reached the Nonpareil everything seemed exactly the same as when she saw it last, and she told herself that it was like putting back the clock. Within a very short time now she would have stepped right back into a state of complete insignificance, and would be rather less than a mere cog in the wheel so far as the Nonpareil was concerned. For she had no intention of remaining there. She had told Lucas Vandraaton that she didn’t want to be employed by the Vandraatons any longer, and she would abide by that decision.
On the way up in the lift she thought she had better begin to recede into her appropriate background, and made to step out on to the floor where a large number of the staff bedrooms were situated, and where her own had been located; but once again Rick seemed to rouse himself from some remote inner reverie in time to prevent her. With his hand under her elbow he held her back and signalled to the liftman, by means of a slight inclination of the head; that he was to proceed upwards to his penthouse flat.
Once inside the flat the memory of the many hours she had spent there working at top speed came crowding upon Melanie, and although they had been such hard and exacting hours she could almost have wept because she knew she would never work there again. Not with Rick, because even if she stayed Rick was cutting himself adrift...
The servant showed her to a bathroom, where she was able to attend to the slight ravages to her appearance, and to her surprise she found she was to be given breakfast. They had already breakfasted on the plane, but in her case it had been nothing more than a cup of coffee and a thin finger of toast, and now she discovered that Rick was determined she should eat something—really eat something.
A table was laid beside the wide wall of glass in the sitting room, and it looked very attractive with its sparkling silver and flowers and colorful breakfast-cloth and china. From the covered dishes she was served with crisp curls of bacon and eggs as only the English seem to know how to fry them, grilled kidneys and mushrooms, and although she protested that she couldn’t possible eat them, she did eat them. Rick, who otherwise talked very little, saw to that. And he also insisted that she dispose of a whole slice of toast and marmalade before he admitted that she had made a fair breakfast, and permitted her to leave the table.
She wandered away from the bright oasis near the window and sat down uncomfortably on the extreme edge of one of the silver-grey settees. Rick, who still seemed miles away from her in thought—although whenever she turned away her head his eye watched her—took up his position in front of the fireplace and smoked a cigarette in an aloof, contained manner.
The silence between them persisted for about a full minute—such a long-drawn-out minute that Melanie was wondering whether she might request permission to leave the flat altogether. And then he asked in almost a conversational tone—a casual conversational tone at that:
“If you’ve made up your mind not to continue working here at the Nonpareil, what will you do next, Melanie?”
She answered quietly but immediately, as if there was no question of what she would do next. “Find another job, of course.”
He stared down at her.
“A secretarial job?”
“It’s the only job I can do.”
He watched her lacing and interlacing her fingers in her, lap, and as if the restless movements fascinated him he went on watching them as he said a little drawlingly—the soft American drawl he could assume at times:
“There is another thing you could do, you know, and I’ve an idea you’d fill the vacancy admirably—probably better than any other woman in the world. Certainly better than any other woman I know.”
“Wh-what is that?” Her heart leapt, and then seemed to miss a beat because of the slight peculiarity of his tone.
“You could marry me. You could become Mrs. Rick Vandraaton.”
She found herself' clutching at the cushions on either side of her.
“Of course, if I make up my mind not to go back to Father and accept his humble apologies, we won’t have very much to live on, but
I’ve no doubt we’d manage somehow.” The drawl that had overtaken his speech struck her as smooth and unpleasant. “You wouldn’t be nearly as expensive as Diane, and I could always work, couldn’t I? Really work, I mean! Bring you home a wage packet that would help us to maintain a humble love nest!”
She got to her feet, and although she had started to shake a little in every limb, and her face had suddenly gone very white, her voice vibrated with indignation.
“How dare you?” she demanded. “Oh, how dare you!” and looked round her wildly, as if seeking a way of escape.
Rick’s face was suddenly rather colorless, too, and his eyes were ruthless between his thick black eyelashes.
“I see!” he exclaimed. “You would like to be every bit as expensive as Diane, and the idea of a humble love-nest doesn’t appeal to you? You don’t want me without my money! A millionaire’s son is one thing, but a man who is next door to a pauper is a different proposition altogether! Even little girls like Melanie Blake have their price, is that it?”
She, whirled on him, and her face was so deathly white that it startled him.
“You—you’re detestable!” she exclaimed. “Even in the beginning I knew you were arrogant and conceited and self-sufficient, but now I know you’re insufferable, too! You and your revolting money! How dare you propose to me in that casual manner, with or without money, when only last night you admitted that you were in love with Miss Fairchild? When everyone expected you to marry her because you went out of your way to pay her every possible attention, and—and—” She broke off, trembling like an aspen. “And I’m glad she treated you as she did! I’m glad she let you down!...”
He came so close that she could feel his breath on her cheek, and his fingers dug cruelly into her slim shoulders as he seized them and made it impossible for her to move. She thought for one second that he was going to shake her.
“Oh, you are, are you?” His voice was thick with a rage that frightened her, it was so sudden and primitive and violent. “Then let me tell you...” The dark blood rose in a tide to his swarthy skin, and his eyes glittered. His fingers tightened their hold, and she felt a little sick with the pain. “You once accused me of looking like a North American Indian. Well, Indians beat their squaws, and I’d like to beat you!”
“Only I’m not your squaw!” between her teeth.
“If you were!...”
He really did start to shake her, and the agony in her shoulders overcame her defiance and she heard herself whimpering, begging him to release her.
“Please, Rick! ... You’re hurting me terribly! Please!...”
She was white to the lips, and she crumpled against him, aware only of the searing agony in her shoulders, and a desperate sickness at heart. His dark face blurred before her eyes as she tried to look up at him, and when he finally released her two great tears were rolling down her cheeks, and one of them splashed on to his hand as he swung her up into his arms and carried her over to the settee. He flung himself down on his knees beside her, and his face was grey and distracted as he implored her to forgive him, the words coming in a strange, choked fashion that was utterly unlike any voice she had ever heard from him before. He put his arms round her and held her with a kind of fierce protectiveness, and then buried his mouth in her small, cold hands and covered them with kisses.
“Oh, Melanie!” he exclaimed in a kind of agony—every bit as acute as the physical agony he had inflicted upon her. “Oh, Melanie, my darling! My little, little love!” The thin, hard mouth was quivering with concern, and his dark eyes blazed tenderness and desperate remorse. “Melanie, I’m an utter beast, but I don’t quite know what came over me—except that I can be a beast at times! Something gets the better of me, and it’s just as if a devil had risen up in me! ... And this time it was because I love you so much, and your stupidity drove me wild! Oh, darling, don’t you realize how much I love you? ... You, and only you, out of all the women on the face of this earth! And I’ve loved you, I think, since the night we flew to New York, and you looked as if a whole wide world of wonder was opening up before you!”
“Oh, Rick!” Her voice trembled and caught, and she buried her face against him. “Oh, Rick, I—I can hardly believe it!”
“There you go again!” But his face was suffused with tenderness, and his hand as it stroked her hair was not particularly steady. “Just a beloved little idiot who doesn’t know how adorable she really is!”
He tilted her chin and looked into her grey eyes—looked into them hungrily, as if he was searching for something—and the responsive light in them softened his harsh features still further.
“Who hasn’t the faintest idea how adorable she really is!” he repeated, a trifle thickly.
“Oh, Rick!” she breathed. “Oh, darling!...”
And then they were holding one another passionately close, and their mouths were clinging together, and his lips were no longer simply demanding, but they communicated to her a need and a longing that were so close to desperation that they blotted from her mind forever the memory of his sudden brutality. And when at last they drew apart he looked at her with a kind of humble gratitude in the dark depths of his, eyes—something she had never expected to see in the arrogant eyes of Rick—and confessed:
“I wanted so badly to be sure of you, Melanie, little sweet! ... I had to be absolutely sure of you. Especially after Diane, who I always knew was as mercenary as they come!”
“But—but, Rick!...” Once again, she turned her face against him. “There always was Diane. You did say you loved her!”
“Only to annoy you,” speaking into her hair, and inhaling the delicate fragrance of it with half-closed eyes. “And because you seemed to me to be so critical. Because I thought you were against me!”
“Oh, darling! I was never against you! Not even when you treated me as if I was a piece of office furniture!”
He said musingly:
“I’ve known for a long time about Diane and Jake; but I also knew that if she couldn’t get Jake with the Nonpareil she would be happy to marry me. Not as happy as she would be with Jake, but reasonably happy. But, however doubtful a person you may once have thought me—and I may be!—I’ve always known I would marry for nothing but love. And when you came along I was certain I would marry for nothing but love!” He put his fingers under her chin and lifted it again, and once more gazed into her eyes. “How blind can a man be, do you think, dear one? Almost wilfully blind, one would say. You were here in this hotel for weeks and months before we went to New York, yet the only thing I ever noticed about you was your red hair ... And the only thing that impressed me about you was that your typing was rather above average! Yet my father took to you immediately, and would probably have fallen in love with you if he’d been about thirty years younger!”
Her eyes looked up into his appealingly.
“Rick ... About your father?”
“What do you want me to do?” he asked, smoothing the soft skin of her cheek with his long forefinger.
“Go back, if you feel you can bear to do so! He’s a sick man, Rick,” she pleaded, “and he’s really very proud of you ... very proud of you at heart. And he’s been very generous in the past. You must admit that. And you owe him quite, a lot!”
“And you’d rather be the wife of a rich man?”
She shook her head.
“No, darling. As a matter of fact I think I’d be happier if you were a poor man, because I’ve never been used to wealth and too much of it rather frightens me,” she confessed.
“My little sweet!” he exclaimed, with melting tenderness, and caught her so close that once more he hurt her a little. “If you’ll marry me at once I’ll promise you that nothing in life will ever frighten you again! I’ll guard and protect you as you’ve never been guarded and protected since you were a helpless toddler! And in order to prove to you that I’m not as stubborn as a mule, and that I’m’ really very fond of my father, I’ll take you back as soon as we’re married and p
resent you to the old boy as the one daughter-in-law he would have chosen if he’d been free to do so. And I know that because he actually told me so himself.”
“Oh!” Her eyes glowed with pleasure. “Did he really?” And then suddenly she remembered Mrs. Vandraaton, and the disappointment she was due to sustain over Candy when she married. “But ... your mother? Oh, Rick, what about your mother?”
“Don’t worry about Mother, darling,” he reassured her. “I know that you found her difficult to get on with, and all that, and almost a painful social climber, but she’ll accept you because I’ll see to it that she does. Although she’ll be disappointed at first about missing that big white wedding she planned, she’ll get over it in time. And if you really feel you can be happy here in the Nonpareil we’ll make a success of it somehow together. Or continue its present success! And as I’ve no doubt at all we’ll have it made over to us as a wedding present, it will be very much in our own interests to continue its present success!”
Melanie’s eyes looked big and bemused and unbelieving as she gazed up at him, and he kissed them very, very gently.
“And we mustn’t forget that you’ve got a mother, my sweet! And two sisters who intrigued my father although he had never met them! Do you think if we pay them a visit tomorrow they’ll look kindly upon the thought of me as a brother-in-law? And do you think your mother will trust you to me?”
Melanie found it difficult to articulate.
“Of course! Oh, Rick, of course!”
He looked at her almost broodingly.
“But I’ll be taking you away from them—and for good! Once married to me you’ll be mine, Melanie, and mine only! I’ll never agree to share you with anyone—anyone, do you understand? You’ll find I’m jealous and possessive—dangerously jealous if I think I’ve any reason for jealousy!—and as I think I once told you, to me marriage is important, and once contracted it has to last! While life lasts, and beyond, I hope. It’s a sentence for all eternity, Melanie, so you’d better think again before you finally agree to marry me. Do you want to think again?”