Love is for Ever (3 page)

She had not, for instance, expected anyone quite like Martine Howard to be staying as a fellow guest in the house, and she had expected on arrival to be welcomed by her hostess. Somehow it had not occurred to her that the Senora Cortina, after a lapse of ten years, might indeed be very frail.

Which meant that it was all the more kind of her to have issued her invitation at all.

And Dominic Errol was not in the least as she had imagined he would be. He was far, far too handsome, and she felt certain he was aware of it, and that in his manner there was a certain amount of condescension because she was so unimportant, and he had been faintly bored by even the thought of her arrival in response to his grandmother’s somewhat impulsive invitation.

Otherwise, she was certain, he would have met her when she came off the clipper. He was too well brought up, and too conscious of the dignity of the Cortinas, to show discourtesy to a favored guest. Good manners were as much inbred in him as pride of family, but a young woman from England about whom he knew nothing—or practically nothing—and who had simply jumped at the opportunity to enjoy a free holiday, might very well not be looked upon by him as a favored guest.

She was just a guest he was forced to entertain.

C H A P T E R T H R E E

Juanita was overwhelming in her attentiveness, and Jacqueline had never had so much done for her since she was a child. Her bath run for her, clothes unpacked, the dress she was to wear that evening pressed and returned to her before she needed to put it on.

It was the black cocktail dress, because having no idea how much or how little the other people in the house dressed up for the latter part of the day, she had decided that it was the least likely to let her down when she was making her first appearance at a formal meal.

Once she was dressed, with an extra touch of lipstick and even a smear of eye-shadow, but very little powder, she realized that she was looking her best. Juanita beamed approval, and extracted a scarlet flower from a vase on the dressing table and tucked it into the belt of the dress. Then she stood back and clapped her hands.

The stiff black taffeta had a very full skirt, while the bodice hugged Jacqueline’s slight shape closely, and a tiny upstanding collar acted as a frame for her face. She wore her mother’s pearls, but they were her only adornment. The flower provided the necessary touch of color.

Juanita, who had insisted on brushing her hair vigorously, and then polished the blue-black curls with a silk handkerchief until they shone, told her in Spanish, which Jacqueline understood:

“The
senorita
is charming! Her appearance is delightful!
Bueno!”

And Jacqueline wondered whether, if she assisted Miss Howard with her dressing, she had paid her even more extravagant compliments, because they would certainly be merited.

She wandered out on to the balcony outside her room, since Juanita gave her to understand that she had plenty of time, and watched the soft closing down of the night over the world of color and perfume without. One moment the color was glowing and palpitating like a flame, and then the shadows were creeping across the grass and the carefully tended flower beds, and the arch in the high white wall facing her was a mysterious patch of shadow beyond which lay deeper mysteries.

Behind her the lights glowed softly in her bedroom, amber-shaded lights which made the room appear at its best. Jacqueline had experienced a little thrill of unalloyed pleasure when she had made her first acquaintance with it, for such a bedroom had never before been placed at her disposal in her life. It contained luxuries hitherto associated in her mind with people like film stars—people like Martine Howard, who was probably occupying an even more sumptuous apartment—and linked therefore with stage-sets.

Such luxuries as quilted satin bed-heads, an ivory telephone beside the bed, a dressing-table that appeared to be wrought entirely of beaten silver, and had a lovely Florentine mirror on the wall above it. And adjoining the bedroom there was a bathroom that was a blaze of chromium and turquoise-blue tiles, with masses of monogrammed towels the color of early primroses on the towel rails.

Jacqueline’s clothes had been stowed away in capacious wardrobes, and she knew that they were lost in the amount of space that was there at her disposal, just as she herself felt suddenly rather lost and out of her element as she stood there on the balcony overlooking the now dimly seen garden, with unaccustomed warmth lapping her almost sensuously about, for when she left England it was still only early spring, with typical early spring weather.

She felt a lump rise in her throat as she recalled that other spring when she had come to the island, and been taken straight to the bungalow which was now occupied by a stranger—a pleasant stranger, and one who had known her father well, but nevertheless, a stranger.

She felt the lump begin to hurt her throat as she tried to swallow. Before she left England it had seemed to her that Sansegovia was a paradise she must visit again, but now she was not so sure. Somewhere on Sansegovia her father lay buried, and she would have to get someone to drive her to see his grave—or perhaps, when she got to know her way about a bit, she could visit it for herself, and stand beside it in a little silence that would give him back to her for a moment, and leave a little tribute behind her of island flowers.

It seemed strange to think that her father, after so many years of working for the islanders, wrapped up in their affairs, and with few interests apart from them, should have died here on this flower-scented isle, within sound of the blue seas that piled on the beaches.

And yet, probably, that was the way he would have chosen it if he had been consulted.

If only someone, apart from Dr. Barr, who probably genuinely regretted his demise, had said a few words to her about him when she arrived—said how much he had been appreciated during his lifetime, and that his memory meant something and would linger on in the island. The Senora Cortina would probably have uttered a little speech that would have warmed Jacqueline’s heart, if her frailty had not kept her confined to her room, because she belonged to an old order to whom such little correctnesses were still considered important. But her grandson had had other things to preoccupy him, and it had probably not occurred to him.

As she looked downwards over the balcony rail she thought she caught a glimpse of a light frock in the gloom, and then voices reached her from the flagged path below her window. She realized that two people—a man and a woman—were returning to the house after strolling in that shadowy purple darkness, and following a gay trill of feminine laughter she recognized Martine’s attractive American accent. Martine was saying:

“I really must go and get dressed, Dominic! You know there are people coming to dinner, and it always takes me ages to change.”

Dominic answered, in rather a lazy voice, speaking in English

because Martine, no doubt, had little or no Spanish:

“Only old Senor Montez and his nephew. Rather dull for you, I’m afraid, but I thought it best to invite them.”

“Because otherwise we should be in the ratio of three to one? Three women to one man!” with an appreciative laugh. “Oh, Dominic, darling, how appalling for you!”

“Well, it wasn’t what I was thinking about,” he replied. “As a matter of fact—” And then they moved on, and their voices faded away with them, and Martine’s laugh as it floated back this time sounded soft and satisfied like the cooing of pigeons, and after that all that reached Jacqueline was the pleasing fragrance of cigarette-smoke which drifted upwards to her through the already fragrant night.

When she went downstairs at last, after sitting for half-an-hour in her room because she hated the idea of being the first to make her appearance in public, especially when guests who were unknown to her were expected, the Senora Cortina’s companion, who was also Dominic’s aunt, was in the huge main salon, or reception room, to welcome her. She was a middle-aged, spinsterish-looking woman of nevertheless pleasant appearance, who answered to the denomination of
Tia
Lola, and she put out both her hands and took Jacqueline’s, and apologized for not having received her when she arrived.

“But you will understand that it was one of the
senora’s
bad days, and I could not very well leave her,” she explained. “But I am quite sure Dominic deputized for me very well. He saw to it that you were made comfortable, and had everything you required?”

“Oh, yes, thank you,” Jacqueline assured her, and out of the corner of her eye she saw Dominic come into the room, wearing a beautifully cut white shell jacket and cummerbund, which made him look almost startlingly handsome; and as he sent a look across at her where she stood talking with his aunt she saw a sudden, faint flash of interest appear in his dark face. “But I do hope the Senora Cortina is not—is not very unwell?” she added. “If so, perhaps it was a little inconvenient that I should arrive today?”

“It was not in the least inconvenient,” Aunt Lola reassured her with emphasis, laying a gentle white hand on her arm. “And tomorrow, if her strength has returned to her, our grandmother will be delighted to have you sit with her for a while, and get to know

you.”

She had to pass on because the dinner guests had arrived, and there was a great deal of anxious enquiry about the head of the household. The large room was bathed in pleasantly diffused golden light, which picked out the beauties in choice rugs and elegant pieces of furniture, and every corner of it seemed massed with flowers, so that the general effect was most pleasing. Jacqueline sat down on a damask-covered settee and waited to be introduced to her fellow guests, and as she did so Dominic came across to her, the urbane and polished host, and asked whether she would like something to drink.

“No, thank you,” she answered, and barely looked at him.

"Not even a very small glass of sherry?”

"No, thank you very much.”

One of his dark eyebrows lifted a little, and his mouth twisted in what she was later to discover was a typical smile of his—a little crooked, only barely amused, rather cool and aloof.

“Nevertheless, after a day devoted largely to travelling, I think a little something is necessary,” he said, and left her and returned with a glass of sherry in his hand, which he set down on a little occasional table at her elbow.

Jacqueline ignored it. She looked up at him with an accusing expression in her wide grey eyes.

"Why didn’t you tell me that your grandmother was really ill today?” she asked, on a note of reproof. Dominic looked mildly surprised.

“Perhaps because she so often has these bad days, and we are used to them,” he explained. “Not,” he added, with unmistakable seriousness, “that they do not distress us. We are always very much distressed when her strength appears likely to fail her, and with each attack nowadays an additional weakness is left behind. But, considering that you were a visitor from England, I don't think I really thought—”

“That it was any concern of mine?” quietly.

Again his eyebrow lifted.

"I am quite certain that that aspect of the matter did not strike me. But there was very little point in distressing you, too.”

“You are very considerate,
senor.”

He smiled rather oddly, and took the vacant place beside her.

“I am half English,” he reminded her—“the paternal half at that! —so don’t you think you could look upon me as a fellow

countryman?”

“You don’t strike me as being—very English,” she told him.

"No?” This time, as he offered her a cigarette which she refused, and then selected one himself from his monogrammed thin gold case, and lighted it, there was no doubt about his amusement. It even flickered in his eyes for a moment as the flame of his lighter lit up his face. “And you, if you will permit me to say so, strike me as being extremely English—in spite of those blue-black shadows in your hair which might so easily belong to one of our Spanish women!”

She peeped at him under her long eyelashes and she thought it was quite true—he
was
un-English! Although there were burnished gleams in his hair, and his eyes were blue, and there was nothing very striking about the darkness of his complexion, yet no one, even in England, would believe that there was very much Saxon blood flowing in his veins. His manners had the suavity of a foreigner, and there was nothing revealing about his expression—it was an armor of inscrutability behind which he might think anything even while he was looking at her and assessing her own various qualities and potentialities, and perhaps laughing at her a little, thinking she was extremely transparent and ordinary.

She was trying to think of something to say which would interrupt his amused study of her for a moment, when Martine entered the room, wearing a glittering golden gown which made the most of her lovely red-gold hair and greenish eyes, and instantly every pair of eyes in the room, including Dominic’s, seemed to become concentrated on her. Dominic looked towards her at first thoughtfully, and then with a slow deepening of admiration under his thick black eyelashes, and Martine swept towards him and the settee on which he was seated with Jacqueline.

Dominic stood up, his effortless good manners those of the highly educated Spaniard of excellent family who still looks upon the female of the species as something to be treated with consideration and respect, and handled with more-or-less exaggerated care.