‘You do indeed surprise me,’ he murmured, watching her every change of expression. ‘I thought schoolteachers wore their hair in buns, and were addicted to flat-heeled sensible shoes,’ lowering his glance to her high-heeled, impractical but extremely smart white sandals.
Laurel attempted to shrug nonchalantly. ‘You’re a little behind the times, Mr. Barrington,’ she commented. ‘Those hallmarks went out with the industrial revolution.’
Ned pretended to shrink. ‘Break it down, infant Steve’s not that old!’
He was not old at all, Laurel realized, probably in his early thirties, and the light tropical suit he wore so accentuated his tan and masculine attraction that it increased her antagonism in some strange way.
It was Pepita who saved the situation, appearing diffidently in the doorway to enquire whether the Senhor Stephen would be joining them for tea.
Ned sent him an enquiring glance. ‘What about it, Steve? Will you join us?’
Laurel was quite sure that he was on the point of refusing, but her anticipatory look must have attracted his glance, for he smiled at her charmingly and said he would love to stay to tea.
‘I actually came over in order to let you know that Anthea has arranged a rather sudden dinner-party for tonight,’ he explained to Ned, ‘and we hope very much that you’ll accept an invitation. Naturally, since Miss Shannon is now a member of your household, we’d like her to come along with you.’
Ned glanced at his sister.
‘What do you say, brat?’
She shrugged again.
‘It’s up to you to decide, Ned...’
‘Perhaps, if you’re too tired...?’ Barrington began mockingly.
But Ned scoffed at the idea.
‘Tired? Laurel? She hardly looks it, does she? And, by the way,’ he continued, as he passed the visitor the cake, ‘if you’re going to keep on calling her Miss Shannon it’s likely to lead to complications. She’ll probably mistake you for a member of her class and treat you accordingly. Better make it Laurel, and she can call you Steve.’
The idea of Stephen Barrington being mistaken, even in a moment of mental aberration, for anything other than what he was brought a faint smile of disbelief to Laurel’s lips. But at the same time she realized that he was waiting for her acceptance or otherwise of his invitation, and she was not entirely bereft of good manners. She smiled at him politely and said sweetly that she would love to dine with him and Anthea that night. She had no idea who Anthea was, but it sounded a very charming name.
Later she sat in front of her dressing-table mirror and thoughtfully contemplated the somewhat intriguing problem of Stephen Barrington ... whom she had permission to call Steve.
It was quite clear to her that she disliked him, but for some extraordinary reason she found herself quite unable to stop thinking about him. Beryl had been right when she said he did not leave a person long in doubt of the way in which he affected them; but even when a decision had been taken to dislike him thoroughly there were still reservations. Or perhaps not so much reservations as an irritating ability he had of intruding his mental image on one’s thoughts. It interfered completely with one’s capacity for clear-thinking on any other subject, which was in itself infuriating.
A soft tap at her door interrupted her musing, and she swung round to call ‘Come in’ to her brother.
Ned entered looking surprisingly elegant in his dinner-jacket, which was of tropical white, and with his hair sleeked back and his chin close-shaved.
At the sight of her he pursed his lips in a silent wolf whistle.
‘Well, well!’ he exclaimed. His expression said volumes as he wandered round her, taking in every detail of her appearance. ‘Well!’ he exclaimed again, as if that one word constituted the sum total of his appreciative vocabulary.
‘Holes with water in them,’ Laurel replied with a gleaming smile.
Ned shook his head. ‘No ... You can’t possibly be a schoolteacher—not in that dress!’
Laurel directed at him a warning look.
‘One of these days I’ll give you a demonstration of what a peace-keeping martinet I can really be,’ she promised him. ‘You’ll be surprised!’ Then a warm smile flashed up into her eyes. ‘But I haven’t thanked you yet for giving me such a darling of a room, Ned,’ she said. ‘Not only is it a very feminine room, but the colour schemes are perfect. I had no idea you were so knowledgeable on such subjects.’
‘As a matter of fact,’ Ned admitted, ‘it was Anthea who helped me choose the curtains, and that sort of thing. In fact, she chose everything, and put all the finishing touches to the room.’
Instantly Laurel’s interest was alerted. ‘Anthea?’ she echoed. ‘And who is Anthea?
‘Anthea Barrington.’
Something slightly discordant jangled at the base of Laurel’s spine.
‘You mean Stephen Barrington’s wife?’
Ned shook his head and grinned in amusement at her mistake.
‘His sister. Steve isn’t married, and so far as I know not even contemplating marriage. He’s the island’s prize bachelor.’
Laurel made a disdainful sound.
‘I pity the girl he eventually marries,’ she declared with a venom that was unlike her. ‘She’ll probably find that he’s not much of a prize after all.’
‘Oh, I don’t know.’ Ned looked vaguely surprised. ‘Steve’s not a bad sort.’
‘A girl would be unable to call her life her own married to him.’
Ned shook his head with such emphasis that it was Laurel’s turn to feel surprise. She had not expected the practical Ned to champion another man so fervently.
‘When old Steve falls for somebody he’ll do it pretty hard and she’ll probably be able to do just what she likes with him,’ he predicted. ‘At any rate, up to a point,’ he added more dubiously, recollecting the other man’s inflexible character.
‘I doubt if he would ever fall in love,’ Laurel mused. ‘He wouldn’t allow that insufferable assurance of his to be dented in any way, and even to acknowledge himself in love would be a sign of weakness on his part. Anyway,’ giving her head a slight shake, ‘why do we allow him to monopolize our conversation? There are other things to talk about ... his sister, for instance. What’s she like?’
Ned walked to the window and stared out into the softly scented night world of the garden. Although he didn’t actually say anything to create the impression, Laurel suddenly conceived the idea that he was embarrassed.
‘You’ll see her for yourself tonight.’
‘Is she as uncompromising as her brother?’
‘Not a bit.’
‘Is she nice?’
‘I think she is.’ He turned from the window, and pretended to be startled because it was later than he had supposed. ‘Come on, we’d better get moving—’
‘You like her, don’t you, Ned?’ Suddenly his sister was standing in front of him, and she was frankly curious because he had revealed so much. ‘You like her very much?’
‘Nonsense!’
‘It isn’t nonsense, because my sixth sense tells me it’s true. Does she like you? ... Is she in love with you?’
‘Of course not.’ He would have put her almost roughly aside, but she clung on to his arm.
‘Tell me the truth, Ned.’ She was half laughing, half insistent.
Impatiently he glared at her, and then he bowed his head before her superior will.
‘Oh, well, if you must know the truth, I do rather like her. But Anthea is a flirt and there are lots of other fellows who like her as well. I’ve had the good sense not to let my feelings carry me away, and I long ago decided that I’d be mad if I asked her to marry me.’
‘Why? Because of her flirtatious tendencies?’
He made an impatient movement.
‘No, because she’s Anthea Barrington.’
‘What difference does that make?’ But she was beginning to understand, and she didn’t really need him to underline her sudden knowle
dge for her.
‘What difference?’ He gazed at her incredulously. ‘Stephen is the richest man on the island, as I’ve already made it clear to you, and Anthea is not merely his sister, she has an income of her own, and her way of life is very different from mine. I suppose you’d call her spoiled ... but she isn’t really. It’s just that she has everything.’
Laurel allowed the matter to drop, but this little sidelight did not improve her attitude towards Stephen Barrington. If his sister was such a snob that she did not think a Shannon was good enough for her—and that was what it boiled down to, of course!—then Stephen was probably ten times more of a snob, and in any case she wished she wasn’t going to his house to dine tonight. But she was, and Ned was impatient to hustle her out to the car, and whether it was because he couldn’t wait to see Anthea or because he was alarmed at the thought of offending his host she couldn’t decide ... but she did think it was an awful pity the Barringtons had had to take over on this first night of hers on the island.
The car left the cottage and they proceeded along the bumpy road that still raised clouds of dust despite the fact it was night-time now, and the heat of the day was over. Ned explained to her, when they turned on to a much better kept road that branched off into the interior, that Stephen Barrington maintained this road because it also led to his main plantation, and Laurel thought that it was very like him to look after his own and neglect that which involved other people.
They slid smoothly along this better-kept road, between the tall shapes of trees, and eventually turned on to a private drive that wound between orderly borders of flowers and surprisingly fresh green lawns until it eventually brought them to rest before the entrance to a patio and a large Portuguese-style house. Lights streamed from the many windows of the house, spilling on to various arches and scrolled columns entwined with flowering vines, and when they had alighted and ascended the steps they found themselves in an inner patio where coloured lights were strung between the shrubs, and there was a striking impression of fairyland.
‘Beautiful place, even in the dark, isn’t it?’ Ned commented, and Laurel agreed with him, because she couldn’t very well do anything else.
Ned explained: ‘We’re very near to the coast of Portuguese East Africa here, and although it’s a British island the atmosphere, you’ll discover, is very frequently Portuguese. I believe the chap who first built this place—somewhere back in the seventeen hundreds—was a Portuguese. That’s probably where Steve gets his darkness from.’
‘I thought he was English. With a name like Barrington he should be.’
Ned grinned down at her.
‘Oh, he’s English all right, but there’s more than a dash of Portuguese blood somewhere in his veins. The original founder of the place sold out to an Englishman and also married his daughter off to the new owner. That brought the Barrington name to the island. It’s been British ever since.’
He had no chance to say any more, for Stephen himself came out to meet them, bending his black head in courtly greeting, and with little or nothing of the afternoon’s mockery interfering with the natural gravity of his expression. Laurel nevertheless studied him with a kind of biased interest, deciding that his thick black hair was undoubtedly Portuguese, but his aquiline features were those of a buccaneer, and his piercing dark grey eyes and unusual height represented the English part of him.
He led them into the house and an impressive room where there appeared to be a lot of other people gathered, and Laurel tried hard to remember their names when she was introduced to each one of them, in order that she could place them later on. The one person she was not introduced to was her hostess, and Stephen stopped a pleasant, brown-faced young man who was just entering the room from the garden to ask:
‘Have you seen Anthea, Bob?’
The young man jerked his head towards the open French window.
‘When last seen she was heading in that direction,’ he replied with a grin.
‘Alone?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Brat,’ Stephen said good-naturedly, and turned back to Laurel, who had been listening to the exchange with a faint curl of distaste on her lips.
‘Anthea should be back fairly soon. Meanwhile, would you like a glass of sherry?’
His tone was that of the conventional host, but she gathered that he had seen the expression on her face, and was faintly amused by it. Ned declined anything to drink and wandered over to the window, from which he was able to view the starlit garden, and Laurel felt vaguely alarmed because she had been left to the tender mercies of her host. He surveyed her with a look of appreciation—her shining brown hair, slight figure in floating green chiffon and silver sandalled feet—and somewhat embarrassingly expressed his approval.
‘You look very nice,’ he said. ‘They didn’t make schoolteachers like you in my day.’
She glanced up at him with a provocative gleam in her eye.
‘Ah, but that was quite a long time ago, wasn’t it, Mr. Barrington?’ she said.
That infuriating dark eyebrow of his jerked up.
‘You have a waspish tongue, little one,’ he murmured. Then he repeated his offer of a glass of sherry.
‘Medium or dry?’
‘Dry, please.’
He brought it to her and sat beside her on an elegant satin-covered couch. He studied her deliberately.
‘You’re a prickly little thing, aren’t you?’ he remarked. ‘Are you always on the defensive, or is it that you’ve simply taken a dislike to me?’
‘I wouldn’t have the temerity to take a dislike to you, Mr. Barrington,’ she replied, sipping her sherry, and peeping at him at the same time demurely.
‘I thought we’d decided to drop the Mr. Barrington.’
She shrugged. ‘As you wish. It’s not really important, is it?’
‘Isn’t it? I take back what I said about schoolteachers ... In another few years you’ll probably be more intimidating than most. Already it seems to me you have the forked tongue of a serpent.’
‘You called it waspish just now,’ she reminded him.
An unwilling smile chased itself across his face, and then she followed the direction of his glance as something attracted his attention, and she saw it was a young girl who had come in through the open door to the garden and, evading Ned, who would have pounced on her, made directly for her brother and the guest who had not yet been introduced to her.
‘Sorry I wasn’t here when you arrived,’ she apologized lightly, ‘but I see Steve is entertaining you.’
Laurel felt an upsurge of admiration. Anthea Barrington was as fair as her brother was dark, her long gleaming hair loose on richly tanned shoulders, her eyes sparklingly blue and alight with laughter. The dress that clothed her exquisite figure was a masterpiece of white cloudiness that must have cost a small fortune, but it was only a means of enhancing the glowing beauty of the girl herself.
Stephen looked up at her leisurely, and almost indolently.
‘Hullo, brat,’ he said. ‘You certainly have a happy knack of absenting yourself when you know perfectly well you have duties to attend to. I haven’t been presuming to entertain Miss Shannon, but at least I was on hand to welcome her this afternoon...’ He glanced with the old mockery in his eyes at Laurel, and she felt grateful that their téte-a-téte was to end. It was difficult dealing with a man like this for any length of time, and just a little exhausting, perhaps because she had never met anyone like him before, and conversing with him was rather like taking part in mental sword-play.
‘Run along, Stephen,’ his sister ordered him gaily. ‘You’ve served your purpose, but there are other people here to whom you can be just as charming—or do you have the opposite effect on some people?’ with a knowledgeable gleam in her eyes. ‘And I want to talk to Laurel. Ned has told me so much about her that I feel I know her already. Besides, we girls can’t really have a cosy chat with a mere man hanging around!’
The mere man took his dismi
ssal with an amiable smile in his eyes. But he warned Anthea before he departed: ‘Better be careful of Laurel. She’s a schoolmistress with an acid tongue, and you mustn’t be deceived by the innocuous quality of her looks. They’re not really innocuous at all!’
Anthea subsided beside Laurel on the settee, and the two girls exchanged a few sentences. Then Anthea produced a small gold compact from her evening bag and inspected herself in it, after which she said she thought she ought to go upstairs to her room and tidy her hair ... the night wind had blown it about, and she glanced a little mischievously across the room at Ned, who appeared to be sulking resolutely.
‘Would you like to come upstairs with me?’ Anthea asked. ‘We can have a talk in my room.’
Laurel accompanied her hostess from the room, wondering whether the ruffled-hair incident had been a deliberate means of provoking Ned, or whether Anthea really had been engaged in some amorous incident in a corner of the garden. However, once outside in the hall she was too impressed by the house to dwell upon very much else. The hall was wide and superbly proportioned, with elegant columns supporting the ornate ceiling and a wide staircase that swept down from the upper regions like a breaking wave. Everything was on a large, lofty scale, but the evidence of wealth was tasteful and unobtrusive.
Anthea’s bedroom was a revelation that took Laurel’s breath away. The gleaming wood floor was strewn with valuable rugs, the dressing-table stood in a petticoat of satin, the giant built-in wardrobes had their doors standing open revealing rows and rows of dresses, and a handsome painted dressing-chest had one of its drawers pulled out to its farthest extent, and from it cascaded feminine underwear.
Anthea carelessly bundled a torrent of creamy lace and chiffon back into the drawer and slammed it shut, picked up a comb from her dressing-table and sat down in front of it to deal with her hair. And over her shoulder she said to Laurel:
‘It’s a pretty good line you’ve adopted with Stephen, and as he’s not used to that sort of thing it might work.’
Laurel stared at the younger girl’s reflection in the mirror.
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