Flower for a Bride

BARBARA ROWAN

When the aristocratic Dom Julyan was jilted by Lois’s cousin, he seemed concerned only that he had lost a future stepmother for his small son, Jamie. Julyan’s unemotional reaction surprised Lois, who finally agreed to remain in Portugal and be the boy’s governess. But she soon found she had lost her heart not only to Jamie, but to his father as well!

Yet how could she compete with the beautiful Gloria who now laid claim to Julyan?

CHAPTER ONE

Lois stood looking out across the balcony of her room to the blue sea beyond.

It was not the sort of blue English seas ever achieved— not even Cornish seas, when they came sweeping in to fill the golden floor of a secret sandy cove. Instead of reminding her of a blaze of larkspur in a well-tended herbaceous border, she thought of gardens of coral and weeds, and magnificently bright fish swimming in and out of the long streamers of succulent growth. There were patches of indigo where the hidden gardens might well have their being, and all around a translucent splendor of turquoise that broke into a flurry of white where the long waves hit the shore. And in this case the shore was not golden, but white like bleached bones.

To Lois that bleached look spelled heat—and ever more violent heat as the season advanced. At the moment it was not much more than late spring, but already the gardens of the villas climbing the slopes inland were full of color that made the eyes ache. Beneath the vivid arch of the sky there was the brilliance of Bougainvillaea and jacaranda, the white and scarlet of camellias, the pinkness of oleanders, as well as the lemon-yellow of a triumphant flowering shrub that cast its petals like butterflies’ wings with every wayward gust of wind.

After such an assault upon the eyeballs it was almost a relief to look at the blue-black of umbrella pines, and the rather drab green of palms, rising above the villas.

Lois turned as her Aunt Harriet came hastening in from the adjoining bedroom, looking as if she had a great deal more on her mind than the beauties of a Portuguese coastal village.

Aunt Harriet had seemed so agitated during lunch that her niece had been inclined to wonder whether it was her own imagination that was playing her tricks. She was still feeling a little bemused after her journey from Lisbon, following almost immediately upon a flight from England, and it was completely unlike Aunt Harriet to be agitated about anything. She was one of those attractively middle-aged women who always looked beautifully calm, with a smooth, matt make-up, and a lavender rinse to her prematurely white hair. She wore—although she could not afford them—superbly cut clothes, and a good deal of jewellery which was good, if a trifle old-fashioned. She smelled delicately of Bond Street perfumeries, and her favorite maxim was that women could never afford to be really put out, because it ruined their appearance.

Lois had been brought up by her from the age of two, and she thought she knew Harriet Fairchild rather better than most people. But, expecting to find her radiant, because of the near approach of her daughter’s marriage—her only daughter at that—she had found her in a quite inexplicable humor.

It was unlike Aunt Harriet to fuss, or to be anything but benign to waiters and underlings. But downstairs in the huge dining room of the hotel, with its gilt and its palms and its mirrors, she had actually done much more than fuss. While they were waiting for a fresh course to be brought to their table, which was in one of the wide bay windows, and most pleasantly situated, she had toyed so absent-mindedly with the salt cellar that she had upset it; and making frantic gestures to propitiate whoever it was most people attempted to propitiate when such an accident occurred, had knocked the flower-vase endways with her elbow, and a stream of water had descended into her own lap. When the waiter dabbed at her ineffectually with a napkin she had accused him in a high tone of anger of ruining her expensive silk suit, and finally announced that she loathed Portuguese food, and had dismissed the fish course with so much disdain that Lois had been horrified by the sight of the waiter’s face. When the management arrived on the scene Aunt Harriet had calmed herself a little, but there was no doubt about it, the luncheon was a complete fiasco, and as it was Lois’s first meal in the hotel she felt as if she were letting down fellow-countrymen by being unable to interfere in such a display.

Also she had been thoroughly enjoying the Portuguese dishes, and the sight of an untasted one being borne away back to the kitchen regions had caused her a strong feeling of regret.

But Aunt Harriet had needed soothing words—she must be suffering from pre-wedding nerves, her niece decided— and she had uttered them.

“It’s all the strain of the wedding preparations,” she had murmured, in an understanding voice. “It’s all been such a

rush, and you must have had a hectic time. ...”

“A hectic time?” her aunt had caught her up, and laughed hollowly. “I don’t mind hectic times, but I do like to know that my efforts are not misplaced, or likely to be wasted. I like to feel that my energies are being expended to some purpose.”

Lois had looked at her in perplexity.

“But you do know that Jay is terribly grateful for all that you’ve done for her.”

“Is she?” Ignoring the uncomfortably damp condition of her lap Mrs. Fairchild had extracted a cigarette from her tortoiseshell case and inserted it in a holder. "Shall I tell you something, Lois?” Her gold lighter had refused to work, and she had been forced to accept as graciously as she could manage a proffered light from the waiter. ‘There have been moments since I came to Portugal when I would have given anything if Jay had made up her mind and married that tepid bank clerk we met while we were on holiday in Bournemouth last year!”

“But you thoroughly disapproved of the bank clerk,” Lois reminded her.

“Of course I did,” with a good deal of impatience. “I’d disapprove of any man who asked Jay to marry him and had an income of less than a thousand a year.

And even on a thousand a year, can you imagine Jay making ends meet comfortably, and not running up a few bills on the side?”

“I—but she won't have to do so now, will she?”

Lois replied a little lamely. “The man she’s marrying is very rich.”

Harriet forgot that she had only just lighted her cigarette, and stubbed it out in the ash tray at her elbow. She put the holder in her handbag and rose.

“We’re coming that,” she said. “But I can’t be rushed, Lois. Let’s go upstairs where I can change out of this dress, and then we’ll have a talk.”

Lois, feeling completely mystified, accompanied her in the lift. One thing that struck her as distinctly strange was that she had not so far seen her cousin, who was recovering from some sort of an indisposition in her own room. Aunt Harriet had said that it had not necessitated calling in a doctor, but that the attack was sharp while it lasted, and Jay was a little disinclined to talk very much just yet. The sight of a well-loaded luncheon-tray being borne to her in her room had first roused Lois’s suspicions, but she allayed them by telling herself that Jay was probably suffering from nervousness—the same sort of nervousness that had attacked her mother, or was it ... ?

Jay was hardly the type to develop nerves, and obviously there was nothing much wrong with her appetite. In which case her incarceration in her room was a little mysterious.

And she had written such glowing accounts to Lois of the man she was to marry. He was not merely a handsome but an extremely wealthy Portuguese, a man of excellent family, and from the from the very beginning not only Jay but her mother had thought it an excellent match. Jay had some, as if it was something to be proud of that she was ‘madly in love’ for the first time,’ and the only slight snag appeared to be that she was marrying a widower with a small child. But even that snag had failed to deter Jay, despite the fact that she was not very fond of children—certainly not other people’s children. Her letters had breathed a kind of delirium of happiness and contentment, and Lois had sent her heartiest congratulations, and looked forward to attending the wedding.

It was Aunt Harriet who had plainly developed doubts, which was strange considering her early enthusiasm for the marriage. The widow of a clergyman who had possessed a small income of his own, which he had passed on to her when he died, she had never found it easy to bring up a lovely, glamorous creature like Jay—and, to Lois, Jay was the very essence of glamor and charm—and there must have been relief in the thought of a rich husband taking her off her hands.

For despite difficulties Jay had always had everything— or practically everything. Expensive schools and finishing schools, the right sort of clothes, holidays on the Continent in order that her circle of acquaintances should broaden and provide her with opportunities she might otherwise miss. And Lois had always known that, at the back of her aunt’s mind, there had been the hope that—one day! . . .

Not a bank clerk for Jay, or even a bank manager —but a man of substance and, if possible, excellent family as well, who could provide the perfect frame for the perfect picture;

who would make Aunt Harriet’s many sacrifices worthwhile.

And a holiday in Portugal, at the right season of the year—the spring of the year, when there were no vulgar crowds cluttering up hotels, and very little competition, except purely local competition—had apparently done the trick. At least, Jay had found her rich man, she was going to marry him. She had all but commanded Lois, working in a London office, to be her bridesmaid, and had graciously offered to pay for her dress, while Aunt Harriet had found the money from somewhere to defray the cost of her air fare. Her hotel expenses, she had been given to understand, would be her own affair; but as she had a little money saved she had willingly drawn upon it in order that she could be near Jay at such an important phase of her life.

And unlike Jay she had never spent a holiday on the Continent, although she had always secretly longed to do so. She had never even crossed the Channel to France, because Mrs. Fairchild had felt unable to add to her generosity towards a brother-in-law’s orphan child by including her in such extravagant little expeditions as that.

So that the very idea of attending a wedding in Portugal had filled Lois with excitement, and she was almost pathetically grateful to her cousin for providing her with the opportunity to see something at last of the world. Even if it was only a very tiny corner of the world, it was, as she had already discovered, a very colorful one, and the strangeness of it provided her with a delightful sensation of having temporarily abandoned her old life in order to come upon the charms of something quite new. New, and untried, and rather like an adventure that could, if it chose, lead anywhere.

She waited while her aunt changed her dress, and then when the older woman rejoined her in her own room she looked a little expectantly into the carefully made-up face. Aunt Harriet had something to disclose, she felt sure, but she couldn’t possibly imagine how it could have anything serious to do with the wedding. The wedding was to take place in a matter of days, therefore nothing would be allowed to interfere with the arrangements already made.

Or so she thought, in her innocence, and being quite unlike

Jay.

Aunt Harriet, on the other hand, having produced Jay, and understanding her better, found it less of an effort all at once to

stop keeping up a pretense, and she decided that now was the time to answer the question in her niece’s eyes.

“Do sit down, Lois,” she said, a little impatiently. “There’s something I’ve got to make clear to you.”

“But can’t we go in and see Jay first?” Lois asked. “I’ve been simply dying to see her ever since I heard of her engagement.” Her young, fair-skinned face looked suddenly eager, and her blue eyes—that were merely an attractive greyish-blue when compared with the jewel-blue eyes of her cousin, just as her honey-gold curls were a pale imitation of Jay’s strawberry-blonde locks—appealed faintly to her aunt. “I’d like her to see my dress, too, and find out whether she approves. She told me I could choose any color I liked so long as it was a pastel shade, and it’s a kind of clover-pink. . .”

“Your dress won’t be needed, Lois,” Aunt Harriet told her. “Jay isn’t going to marry Dom Julyan!”

“Not—going to marry him?”

Lois sounded utterly uncomprehending.

Aunt Harriet walked to the dressing-table and fingered the inexpensive hair brushes and one or two bottles of toilet lotions and perfume that Lois had already unpacked, and she looked like someone who was grimly prepared to face up to an extremely awkward situation.

“And you might as well know that she is not ill— not really ill, that is! She has been keeping to her room because we decided it was best, and the only way to avoid Dom Julyan. The Portuguese, although you probably don’t know it, are extremely correct, and however anxious he was about her he would never attempt to force his way into her bedroom, to see her—not unless he was invited. And, of course, he hasn’t been invited!”