Teachers Must Learn

by Nerina Hilliard

  He bent and pulled her upwards out of her chair. ‘I want Laurel to myself in order to show her her engagement ring,’ he said, displaying a remarkable aptitude for invention, and his fingers closed tightly around her arm as he led her to the door. ‘Come along, darling,’ he murmured suavely, to defeat at source any desire she might have to rebel. ‘I’m sure the others will excuse us under the circumstances.’

  Laurel, however, had no desire at all to resist accompanying him. This thing had gone on long enough, she thought, and the sooner they were alone together to have it out the better. So meekly she allowed him to lead her out of the room and along a corridor to a room she had not so far visited. It was Stephen’s own private sanctum, and only when they were safely inside it and he had taken the precaution of locking the door on the inside did he release her hand.

  Laurel rubbed the mark on her wrist that his hard fingers had caused, and looked about his room with a flickering of interest. It was handsome and book-lined, and much as she would have expected Stephen’s private retreat to be like, but apart from that it had no interest for her. Certainly not at the moment.

  Stephen thrust her down into one of the deep leather armchairs, offered her a cigarette which she declined, and astounded her by asking grimly:

  ‘Now, would you mind telling me what all this is about?’

  ‘Would I mind telling you...?’ she began indignantly. ‘I was just about to ask you that question!’

  He made a slight movement of his hand. ‘All right, don’t fly off the handle. I just wondered. I might have known it was completely Anthea’s handiwork.’

  Laurel nodded, feeling some relief that at least she was exonerated from any complicity. It helped matters to know that he did not blame her. For once his mocking amusement had completely disappeared, and it was not to be wondered at. His dark, pirate face was serious and even slightly grim.

  ‘Why on earth didn’t you deny it?’ she asked without thinking.

  ‘And make the lot of us look like a pack of idiots?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ she admitted reluctantly. ‘I can’t think what made Anthea say such a crazy thing.’

  ‘Can’t you?’ Stephen said with a shade of grimness. ‘I think I can. The problem is, what are we going to do about it?’

  Laurel felt that she had nothing whatsoever to contribute, so she remained silent, in case she merely said something stupid, because she could see no way out of the tangle save that of admitting to everyone that the engagement had been in Anthea’s mind alone.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Couldn’t we pass it off as a joke?’ she suggested tentatively.

  ‘Too late now.’ He shook his head decisively. ‘I doubt whether it would have smoothed things over even at the time.’ He became silent for a moment, then straightened up off the desk. ‘Only one thing for it—we’ll have to go on with it.’

  ‘What?’

  A shade of his old mocking grin returned as he looked down at her completely incredulous expression.

  ‘Don’t start getting scared. I meant we only have to keep it up for a short time. I don’t imagine you really want to marry me.’

  ‘About as much as you want to marry me,’ Laurel retorted. She saw one dark brow jerk up in the too familiar fashion and added hastily, ‘How long would it have to go on for?’

  ‘Just long enough for you to get tired of me and seek fresh pastures.’

  ‘And how long does it take for a girl like me to grow tired of a man like you?’ she asked, with her tobacco-brown head a little on one side as she looked up at him.

  He answered coolly.

  ‘I can’t answer that, because I’ve never known a girl like you before.’

  ‘Oh!’ She gave him a curious glance. ‘You’re not afraid I might try and hang on to you instead of letting you go. Sue you for breach of promise?’

  His face looked suddenly almost deadly.

  ‘Try it,’ he said.

  She looked away from him. He actually made her shiver inwardly.

  ‘Well, it’s a situation that could be fraught with danger for you,’ she insisted on pointing out. ‘The rich and eligible Stephen Barrington supposedly engaged to a schoolteacher.’

  He smiled very faintly.

  ‘I’m not afraid,’ he admitted.

  ‘Well,’ she sat back in her chair, ‘what do we do now? Go back to the others?’

  ‘I suppose so.’ Unexpectedly he bent and lifted her chin with his thumb and finger. ‘Think you can pretend to be in love with me?’

  By the warmth of her cheeks she knew that she blushed. ‘I can only try,’ she countered.

  ‘And you’d better make a good job of it,’ he warned, his expression strangely serious. ‘If I think you’re not trying hard enough I shall kiss you in front of everybody. Understood?’

  ‘Understood,’ she echoed, obviously recoiling before the threat.

  Before they left the room he remembered the reason why they were alone.

  ‘I almost forgot,’ he said. ‘I brought you here to show you your ring!’

  He produced a small key from his pocket, and went across to a picture that hung on the wall and pushed it aside to reveal a safe. Laurel watched fascinatedly as he unlocked the safe, thrust in his hand, and then turned round to her again with a small jewel case in his hand. He snapped back the lid to reveal a large, square emerald set between two small diamonds, sending out shafts of green fire from a bed of velvet. He reached for her hand, but she drew back.

  ‘Stephen! Am I supposed to wear that?’

  ‘Well, I don’t exactly intend to wear it myself.’ He gave her an inquiring glance. ‘What’s the matter? Don’t you like it? We can have a look for something else if you’d rather.’

  He was already turning back towards the safe, but impulsively she caught at his arm.

  ‘It’s beautiful, but I can’t wear it,’ she protested. ‘I should be afraid of losing it.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

  Before she could protest any further he slid the ring on to her finger, where it sparkled expensively, quite unlike the sort of ring she had visualized herself wearing if she ever did get engaged to be married. Then, with his hand beneath her elbow, they passed out of the room and back along to the corridor to the room where all his friends, and his sister, were awaiting them.

  Laurel had to submit to having her hand examined and the ring admired, and all the time she tried to look like a happily engaged young woman who had no reservations whatsoever about the man she was to marry. And somehow she managed to pull it off in a way that surprised her more than anything else had ever surprised her in life, and Stephen actually applauded her in an approving whisper at one stage.

  ‘You’re doing splendidly! Keep it up!’

  The carpet was rolled back and they danced as they had danced on her first visit to Castelanto, and Laurel felt she was moving in a dream as she danced with her brand-new fiancé. She tried to get Anthea alone when they both went to renew their make-up in a corner of the powder-room in between one of the dances, but Miss Barrington was exceptionally wily tonight and succeeded in evading her when one of the other women from the yacht came in.

  They all descended the wonderful sweeping staircase to the dance room, and that was the last opportunity Laurel had that night to have a highly necessary word with Anthea.

  She danced several dances with Stephen, and once again he congratulated her on the wonderful show she was putting up.

  ‘At this rate you’ll even convince me that I’m engaged to be married!’

  They circled the floor, and he held her very tightly—quite plainly in order to keep up the deception. She was feeling a little light-headed, as if the champagne cocktails before dinner and the excellent Portuguese wine that had been served with dinner had gone to her head.

  ‘Yes, it was pretty good, wasn’t it?’ she acknowledged, peeping at him under her lashes. ‘But with such a threat hanging over my head I had to make an effort,’ she added.
<
br />   He laughed softly, understanding that she was referring to his threat to kiss her.

  ‘Touché, my child,’ he murmured, and held her away from him and looked down at her with a slightly quizzical expression. ‘Was it such a dire threat?’

  ‘Well, the last occasion was not exactly pleasant,’ she countered, and wondered why they were on such apparently good terms now when she knew very well of what he was capable if provoked. Every time she glanced at him she was provoking him, and unless she was very careful something she said would recoil on her.

  ‘You asked for it,’ Stephen’s voice broke into her thoughts. ‘I suppose it would be too much to ask just what did make you behave like a prickly cactus that evening?’

  ‘Poison ivy,’ Laurel corrected, resorting to evasion. After all, the reason for her behaviour that night was Ned’s secret and not hers to give away. She had half a hope that he might leave the matter there, but it quickly died when he spoke, as she would have known had she thought about it for any length of time.

  ‘Poison ivy, then,’ he conceded. ‘Now, out with it. Just what did cause the prickles?’

  ‘Prickles—now we’re back to cactus,’ she evaded yet again, because she did not have the faintest idea what to say. It was, of course, quite impossible to tell him the real reason and just as impossible to think up anything else that would sound reasonable and not too insulting. She did not want to quarrel with him and it was not just because such a situation would only make it more difficult to act out the pretence they were caught up in. It was a definite knowledge in her mind, stemming from the same source that gave rise to the other odd feelings she had acknowledged only a short time ago. It hurt quite sharply, she found, to see his dark face close up, as he recognized her second evasion.

  ‘All right, my child, I won’t beat it out of you.’

  Impulsively her hand tightened on his shoulder. ‘Stephen...’

  ‘Yes?’

  His voice was noncommittal and faintly withdrawn. She wished she could see his face, but he was looking over her shoulder with apparent disinterest in what she had to say, although she guessed he was probably still wearing an appropriate expression for the rest of the room to see.

  Again on impulse, before she could think about it and decide otherwise, she moved slightly and lifted her head, so that she could look up into his face. Under those circumstances he had no choice but to bring his glance round to her and a faint, amused smile twitched his lips as he saw the seriousness of her expression.

  ‘Is it as bad as that?’

  ‘It’s something ... you see, it doesn’t only concern me,’ she said haltingly. ‘I managed to get quite a wrong idea into my head and I intended to be deliberately unpleasant,’ she added with a frankness that was engaging, only she did not realize it, only wondered what caused his smile to change in such a subtle way that she could not exactly define the difference. ‘I can’t tell you what it was, but I do really feel sorry for being such ... such a piece of poison ivy,’ she concluded with a smile ... and I want to apologize.’

  ‘I suppose, in that case, I shall also have to apologize for my retaliatory actions,’ Stephen commented.

  ‘And so you should,’ his make-believe fiancée retorted. ‘If I have to be kissed I don’t see why I shouldn’t enjoy it.’

  Laurel felt quite astounded as she heard the words pass her lips, especially as she was sure he could twist it whichever way he pleased if he happened to mercurially change to one of his mocking, dangerous moods. It was like sailing a tiny ship into rather turbulent waters, knowing that the waves could swamp it, or playing with fire and daring the flame. To counter the menace, there was a peculiar, bubbling recklessness in her that had started to grow from the moment she came back into the room with Stephen’s ring on her finger and met Roberta’s jewel-green eyes; and if this rather dangerous sparring had the effect of causing Mrs. Fransom, who was one of his oldest friends, to think that Stephen and herself were thoroughly absorbed in each other, all the better.

  ‘I can do much better, you know,’ Stephen said, accepting the challenge of her words, just as she had known he would, and the music finished at that moment, giving her no chance to reply, since Barbie, who had been dancing with Manoel, was right at their side.

  There was a short interval that taxed her ingenuity while people asked Stephen and herself their plans for the future. She was repeatedly amazed at his easy command of the extremely difficult situation, at the smooth evasions with which he turned a too pertinent inquiry aside; then there was a slight respite as she found herself dancing with Manoel. The young Portuguese was a smooth, graceful dancer and so quietly attractive that, as Anthea had done earlier, she decided he and Stephen made the other men in the room look mere background, apart from the Viking-fair man who was so magnificently tall. He had been too glibly courteous and charming when he had been introduced to her and offered congratulations on her coming marriage. Ned, of course, she put in a different class from all of them, although even she had to admit that his sun-browned, good-natured face could not compete with the pirate mockery of Stephen’s aquiline features or Manoel’s dark attraction.

  At the thought of him, she turned her head slightly to look for Stephen and found him dancing with Roberta. A quick coldness stabbed at her heart and a premonition of danger, although she was not at all sure what form it would take.

  She shivered faintly and Manoel looked down at her in quick, courteous concern.

  ‘You are cold?’

  Laurel shook her head instantly, wondering how he could imagine anybody would be cold in the pleasant, scented warmth of the island night.

  ‘No, I’m not cold.’ She smiled and added, ‘Just an odd shiver ... like a ghost walking over my grave.’

  He nodded gravely, quite as if he was acquainted with some of the more novel expressions of the English language.

  ‘Yes, they are strange sometimes, these premonitions. They can be so certain.’

  Did he himself have a premonition? Laurel wondered. She saw Barbie dancing in the arms of the tall, fair man. What was his name—Paul Brenton? Did Manoel have some doubt as he looked at them? Barbie’s expression was animated and yet shy at the same time. Laurel, although she had met the younger girl only a short time, had come to know her quite well. She had never seen her look quite like this before, but she knew what it was. It was in just this way that some of the infatuated men who followed the butterfly Anthea around looked when they had danced with her.

  Laurel knew a quick sensation of dismay. Barbie had been a tomboy and she still struggled to escape the bonds of a social life, but there had always been latent femininity under the derisive remarks about romance and men in general, a warm heart that waited for the man who would take no notice of such remarks and awaken in her the love that she scorned. Paul Brenton was not that man. He must not be that man.

  Knowing so little about him, Laurel still felt that her swift decision was the correct one. Barbie was too inexperienced to recognize the deliberate charm of a man who sought only the light philandery of a passing whim. Laurel knew herself to be little better than Barbie when it came to knowledge of men, but at least she could recognize the type that Paul Brenton represented. Easy and shallow, he would glide through life, hurting those who believed.in him and never being hurt himself.

  Quite a character reading, Miss Laurel Shannon, she told herself with some amusement.

  Her glance went to them again and she saw the man smiling down at the young girl in his arms. His expression was easy to read, while Laurel was gripped by the queerly analytic mood that had descended on her. He was bored with the sophisticated women he knew so well and who played the dangerous game of love as well as he did himself. They knew all the rules and all the answers. He could predict their actions and there was now no longer any interest. Barbie, with her total inexperience, intrigued him.

  She did not know that Manoel had followed the direction of her glance until he spoke.

  ‘You have
known Barbie for long?’

  Laurel brought her attention back to him and shook her head, realizing with a sense of shock that it was only this morning she had met Barbie for the first time,

  ‘I only met her this morning,’ she admitted.

  ‘But you are friends?’

  ‘I think so. I hope so anyway,’ she added.

  ‘She is so very much without ceremony.’

  Laurel flashed him a quick glance, then her eyes went to the couple who were at the other end of the room by now.

  Was he thinking of all those times he had encountered the looks of those who wished to attract him and comparing them with Barbie’s transparent uninterest in catching any man for a husband—and had he also read correctly the signs of dawning infatuation on Barbie’s young face?

  She did not know that her glance had returned to him with quite open speculation until his voice brought a quick rush of colour to her face.

  ‘So you have guessed, senhorita?’

  Laurel bit her lips in some confusion. ‘I ... I don’t...’ she began, but Manoel shook his head with a faint smile.

  ‘I have no hesitation in admitting it, especially to you who have felt the same thing.’

  She wondered for a moment what he was talking about and then remembered that she was supposed to have fallen in love with Stephen the first day she met him—when instead she had just about hated the sight of him.

  ‘Well, I did wonder,’ she said after a moment, then gave him a very candid glance. ‘Barbie doesn’t have much time for men, you know—in a romantic way, I mean.’

  Manoel nodded. ‘That I had guessed already.’ He smiled again in his boyish, charming manner, ‘It is perhaps a warning for me to ... to step lightly.’

  In that moment Laurel felt she could quite understand Anthea’s penchant for matchmaking—even though her thoughts about that young lady were at the moment rather on the grim side. Manoel was so very likeable and that creature Paul Brenton, with his synthetic smile that seemed to convey the impression that Barbie was the one girl he was looking for, was just the opposite. With it becoming quite obvious to her that Barbie was fast falling from her self-set standard of disdaining men and coming under the spell of that air of worldly charm, whatever failings it might conceal—and there were probably quite a few—she felt a definite desire to interfere herself. Anthea probably would not be able to resist the desire to do so somehow or the other to prevent Barbie from making a fool of herself with a man who was only amusing himself—unless the rashness of her latest escapade—and that was really a very mild word for what she had done—subdued that ebullient spirit of hers, although for the moment, at least on the surface, it did not seem to have had any effect. All the evening she was like a spark of gaiety, but Laurel noticed that never once did she dance with her brother, a manoeuvre that Stephen appeared to make no effort to circumvent. He probably was saving everything he had to say to Anthea for the moment when they were completely alone. She felt quite glad she was not in Anthea’s shoes at the moment.