He didn’t answer for a moment. Then he said rather coldly, ‘Just as you like.’
Glancing at him, she saw that his face was oddly expressionless.
Then she remembered.
She was a fool! Of course-Rosalie’s ring had been a diamond.
‘Or perhaps an emerald,’ she said quickly, blushing over her unfortunate slip.
He watched her while she tried on one or two with hands that trembled a little.
‘May I make a suggestion?’ Julian said, as the assistant turned away.
‘Of course.’
Then I should choose this one.’
He picked out a single blush-pink pearl of most exquisite sheen.
‘Would you?’ Alison slipped it on. It’s perfectly beautiful, of course. Why would you choose it?’
‘Because it is like you yourself.’
‘Like me?’ She looked up at him in surprise. ‘Why, how do you mean?’
‘It’s the same creamy pink as your cheeks, just where your lashes sweep them when you look down.’
‘Julian!’
She coloured deeply, and he laughed and said:
‘Oh, no. Now they don’t match at all.’
Alison was silent, overwhelmed by a wave of sweet yet painful emotion.
‘I’ll have this ring, please,’ she said at last in a voice that shook slightly.
And so it was settled.
Outside in the car again, she gave him back his signet ring. She hadn’t thought she could bear to part with it, but now the wrench scarcely hurt at all, because of what he had said about the one she had in its place.
Then he took her to lunch at some exclusive little place like nothing she had ever seen before. She left the choosing of the meal to him, and was pleased to find he either knew or guessed her tastes exceedingly well.
Over coffee he began to discuss their wedding, but so calmly that Alison found herself much more at ease about it.
She explained that her uncle was in favour of a church wedding with a certain amount of publicity, and, to her surprise, Julian agreed.
‘Most certainly,’ he said. ‘A very quiet wedding would be a mistake.’
‘Why?’ Alison couldn’t help asking.
‘Because, in the circumstances, the uncharitable might read almost anything into it,’ he told her drily.And, on reflection, Alison supposed, a little uncomfortably, that was true.
Afterwards, he drove her back to the house, and left her there with a promise to call for her at a quarter to eight that evening.
As Alison came into the hall, her aunt came out of her study.
‘Have you been shopping, Alison?’ she asked, without much show of interest in whatever Alison had been doing.
‘Yes’ At least, we-we went to buy my engagement ring. Do you like it?’
She held out her hand a little timidly for her aunt’s inspection.
‘Very nice,’ commented Aunt Lydia, as though it had come out of a Christmas cracker. ‘You’re not superstitious, then?’
‘Why?’
‘Oh, nothing. Only some people think pearls are very unlucky.’
‘She would say something like that,’ thought Alison indignantly.
But, without giving her a chance to reply, her aunt went on, ‘Have you made any arrangements about your trousseau?’
‘Well, yes. At least, a friend of Julian’s is going to help me choose it, as you are too-too busy.’
‘Really? What friend of Julian’s?’ Aunt Lydia seemed surprised.
‘Someone called Jennifer Langtoft. She’s the sister-’
‘Jennifer Langtoft!’ Her aunt made a significant little face. ‘And Julian suggested her?’
‘Yes.’
‘How exactly like a man. They really are the most blind and tactless creatures.’
‘Why? What is the matter with Jennifer Langtoft?’ Alison spoke a little apprehensively.
‘There’s nothing the matter with her, exactly,’ Aunt Lydia said. ‘Except that she’s always been extremely sweet on Julian herself. I believe Rosalie had quite a lot of trouble putting her in her place. I should have imagined that she would be the one to snap him up the moment he was free. However, of course, it’s a little late to say anything now.’
And with that she went back into her study and shut the door.
CHAPTER V
FOR a moment Alison stood staring after her aunt until the door closed. Then she turned away and slowly began to mount the stairs.
Was it just tactlessness or real malice that made Aunt Lydia say these things? she wondered.
There hadn’t been the smallest reason to make such a comment, quite apart from the fact that it was very unfair to the unknown Jennifer.
‘She just wanted to make me feel uneasy and miserable,’ Alison thought. And then: ‘Well, I won’t give her that satisfaction. It’s all too petty and absurd to worry any sane person.’
But of course, she couldn’t dismiss it entirely from her mind like that. Instead, she remembered the interest in Julian’s voice when he had said, ‘Oh, Jennifer is good-looking-very.’
‘And what about it?’ Alison asked herself fiercely. Hadn’t he also said that he had known her and her brother for years? And, in that case, if he had been going to fall for her, he would have done so long ago.
She tried not to listen to the little voice which said that there had always been Rosalie before to occupy his thoughts. Now there was no Rosalie-only the other half of ‘a business proposition’.
Alison sighed impatiently as she tossed down her hat on her bed. She had better go and find something to do if being unoccupied meant having these ridiculous fancies’
She went down again to her aunt’s study, and put her head in.
‘Can I do anything for you, Aunt Lydia?’
She managed to make that sound quite pleasant, although her feelings towards her aunt were not cordial.
‘Yes, Alison, you certainly can. I have been wondering how I was to get through all this.’ Aunt Lydia fingered a not very formidable pile of correspondence. ‘It’s most awkward having you so much occupied just now.’
Alison forbore to ask if she would have found it any less awkward at any other time.
‘I’ll do them for you, shall I?’ she offered.
‘I wish you would.’ Her aunt immediately gave up her thin pretence of examining them herself. Then, after a pause, she added, ‘I suppose I mustn’t expect much help from you, now that you don’t feel it necessary to study me any longer.’
‘How she does judge other people by herself,’ thought Alison. ‘No wonder Uncle Theodore despises her.’
But aloud she said, ‘I don’t imagine I shall be so busy as all that, Aunt Lydia. I’ll still do what I can to help you, of course.’
Her aunt appeared satisfied with that, although she didn’t seem to think that any thanks were called for.
Presently Alison looked up and said, ‘Do you think Audrey would like to be my bridesmaid?’
‘I suppose so.’ Her aunt sounded completely indifferent. ‘I don’t see that it matters much in any case. The whole thing is rather a farce, isn’t it?’
Alison bit her lip angrily.
‘You don’t expect me to agree with that, I suppose?’ she said curtly, without looking up.
‘Well, I don’t know what else one can think. Everyone knows that until eight o’clock yesterday evening Julian was infatuatedly in love with Rosalie. By nine he appears to have proposed to you-or you to him, I really can’t imagine which-and we’re all asked to regard the affair as perfectly normal.’
Alison was completely silent, her pen motionless in her hand. Put like that, in her aunt’s tone of slightly plaintive ridicule, the whole thing sounded absurd and hollow.
Was that how it was going to seem to Julian when he had had time to cool down and regard the whole situation calmly?
She stared unseeingly at the sheet of notepaper in front of her. And then, quite a long time afterwards, when it seemed th
at her aunt had nothing to add to her crushing analysis, Alison slowly went on writing. But she was not very sure what she was writing about.
It took more than an hour of patient work to finish all that Aunt Lydia wanted done, and then Alison went upstairs to her own room once more.
Sitting on the side of the bed, she tried to review the whole situation quite dispassionately.
In the first impulse of that crazy proposal they had both agreed that they had nothing to lose. She saw now that that was not strictly true. To refuse to take dangerous chances always meant that you retained a certain negative sense of safety and peace of mind.
The moment you embarked on anything like this fantastic arrangement you said good-bye to any security. Just now she was feeling like someone who had started to cross a raging torrent by means of a single-plank bridge. She had lost her nerve half-way, and now she didn’t know which was more impossible-to go forward or to go back.
Alison sighed and ruffled up her hair worriedly.
‘If only Aunt Lydia wouldn’t frighten me so much,’ she murmured.
That evening, she dressed with the greatest care, for she had an odd, proud little feeling that she must not let Julian down in front of his sophisticated friends. After all, it was the first time he was showing her off.
She put on the amber frock which had already seen her through such extraordinary adventures, and she brushed her hair until it looked like a gold silk cap.
Then she looked in the mirror, and saw that there was no need to put even the slightest touch of colour on her lips. They were soft and red and faintly damp like a child’s; and her eyes, wide and dark and velvety, were rather like a child’s too.
She was ready when Julian arrived, which seemed to amuse him a little.
‘You are a model of punctuality, Alison,’ he remarked. And she remembered that probably Rosalie considered it good policy to keep a man waiting indefinitely.
‘Well, I hate having to wait myself,’ Alison said candidly, ‘so I always take it that other people hate it too.’
‘A very proper and Victorian point of view,’ commented Julian, smiling, and he glanced at the amber dress as though he certainly had not seen it last night.
Alison’s small reserve of security deserted her.
‘Do you mean I look too Victorian in this?’ she asked nervously.
‘You look sweet,’ he told her carelessly. And, putting her evening coat round her, he took her out to the car.
To her surprise, there was a chauffeur to drive, that evening.
I didn’t know you had a chauffeur,’ she said involuntarily.
‘No? I have him mostly for long-distance driving. But sometimes in the evening, if I don’t want to be bothered with the car, he comes along. Why?’
‘Oh, nothing. I just wondered. Julian?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you very-I mean, do we have to keep up a good deal of social style when we-when we are married?’
He looked surprised.
‘I’m a pretty rich man, if that’s what you mean. I don’t know that I keep up very much style, as you call it, here. But of course out there there will be a big house to run, and a good many servants to look after, and a lot of entertaining to do. It’s just the natural thing there; part of the life, you know.’ And he smiled a little, as though the thought of it gave him pleasure.
‘And you really love the life, and want to get back?’
‘Of course, Alison.’ He sounded a trifle impatient, ‘That’s the sole reason for my side of this arrangement, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, of course.’
She spoke quickly, and hoped he didn’t notice how her colour had risen.
He might have noticed her colour and her silence, but just then the car drew up outside the floodlit portico of the Mirabelle, and he handed her out without comment.
There were a good many people in the spacious lounge, with its warm golden walls and its concealed lighting, but Simon and Jennifer Langtoft were not easy to overlook. They came forward at once, Jennifer in a frock of geranium red which owed nothing of its effect to ornament and everything to perfection of cut.
‘She’s the most finished person I’ve ever seen,’ thought Alison, and hoped that she herself didn’t look too much like a schoolgirl out for a treat.
But it didn’t seem to be any part of Jennifer’s social technique to make other people uncomfortable. She shook hands quite warmly and said:
‘I thought Julian told me you wanted advice about choosing your trousseau. But it looks to me as though you know all about what suits you already.’
‘She doesn’t want advice. She wants moral support.’ That was Simon Langtoft, speaking in a rather slow, lazy voice. ‘Then when she presents the bills to her father, or whatever poor wretch has the privilege of paying, she can justify everything by saying, "Well, Jennifer Langtoft says it’s absolutely necessary." Am I right?’ And he smiled straight into Alison’s eyes before he bent his head and lightly kissed her hand.
Alison had never had anyone kiss her hand before, and she found it rather thrilling and quite astonishingly gratifying. It would have seemed theatrical from most men, she supposed, but it was quite right as Simon did it.
‘No, I wasn’t really arguing it that way,’ she told him with a smile. ‘It’s only that I’ve never had to choose a big wardrobe before, and if Miss Langtoft doesn’t mind-’
‘I don’t mind in the least,’ Jennifer assured her. ‘I think the next best thing to buying expensive clothes yourself is to watch someone else being extravagant.’
‘No getting her into bad ways, Jennifer,’ warned Julian. ‘Don’t forget that I shall be the husband and universal provider afterwards.’
‘I shall not forget,’ Jennifer said.
She spoke banteringly, just as the two men had, but for some reason the way she said those words-’I shall not forget-reminded Alison forcibly of what Aunt Lydia had said. And for a moment she felt extremely uncomfortable.
As they came into the more brilliantly lighted restaurant, Alison had a better opportunity of studying the brother and sister. She had thought at first they had no single feature in common, but now she saw that they were alike in one thing -their extraordinarily dark eyes, which were not merely dark brown, but an absolutely genuine black. Their intensity gave a tremendous arresting character’ to both faces.
In Jennifer, the eyes were bright and sparkling. They matched the smooth black hair which was moulded to her admirably shaped head in one sweep, except for where it turned back one side towards the crown of her head in a long curve of extreme severity.
‘She has hair like a classical statue,’ thought Alison. ‘I wonder how on earth it’s done.’
Her face, a trifle too thin for youthful beauty, was rather like that of a statue too, and her figure was faultless.
No wonder Julian had described her as good-looking.
And of Simon he had said that he was the sort women always ran after but never caught.
Yes, Alison could imagine that was true.
His eyes were much more dangerous than Jennifer’s- opaque and quite unfathomable, with a glance that was extraordinarily direct, but all the more disconcerting for that You could look straight into his eyes, but you would never read what was hidden there.
In sharp contrast, his hair was almost fair, with a rather ingenuous wave in it; his mouth was firm, but his chin quite unmistakably cleft.
Alison thought she had heard once that a man with a cleft chin was invariably charming but unreliable, and wondered if there were anything in it.
He was an extraordinary man, she thought, but undeniably attractive.
Then Jennifer wanted to discuss the important matter of the trousseau, and the men talked business together for a while. But, although Alison thought her mind was entirely on what Jennifer was saying, she really noticed, too, how curiously Simon’s voice changed when he discussed business matters. It became decided, abrupt and entirely different from when he was
speaking to her.
‘Of course, it complicates things, your going to the other side of the world, and having summer in the winter and that sort of thing,’ Jennifer was saying. ‘But we’ll manage all right’
‘I think Jennifer has been reading up Buenos Aires in the Encyclopaedia Britannica all day,’ said Simon, turning to Alison again. ‘She knows all about the climate, products, and population by now.’
‘Don’t be silly. I knew before,’ Jennifer said.
‘Did you really? How revoltingly learned of you,’ Simon. observed.
‘Nonsense. I just happened to read it up some time ago,’ his sister explained.
‘Most eccentric. Whatever made you do that?’
Jennifer suddenly looked rather put out.
‘Oh, I-I don’t know. I’ve forgotten.’
‘And yet you remember the climate, products, and population. Extraordinary girl,’ said her brother.
Jennifer laughed, but Alison thought she was a little vexed, and when Julian said, ‘Would you like to dance, Alison?’ she agreed eagerly.
‘Settled everything satisfactorily?’ he asked when they were alone.
‘Yes. Jennifer is coming with me to-morrow morning. She is very kind and helpful.’
‘I knew she would be,’ Julian nodded. ‘She’ll take on anything in an emergency, and she always does the job well.’
Alison supposed it was ridiculous to wonder whether- given time-he would have asked Jennifer to help him out of the major emergency which had come upon him.
There was no doubt about it, she would have ‘done the job well.’
When they came back to their table, Simon asked her to come and dance with him. She couldn’t very well refuse, of course, but she had an odd reluctance to be alone with him, and perhaps be subjected to his half-bantering remarks once more.
But she need have had no fear. Nothing could have been more considerate and charming than his air towards her. He danced well, but he didn’t talk much, and what he said was interesting.
In the car on the way home, Julian asked, ‘Did you enjoy yourself?’
‘Very much indeed. I liked them both.’
He nodded.
They are an interesting couple.’
There was a moment’s silence. And then:
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