Island in the Dawn (7 page)

“When you’re
married
?”

“Yes—nothing less this time! Funny how the desire for matrimony overcomes one in time, isn’t it?” And she smiled almost languorously. “It will you one day, when you meet the right man!”

Then, without giving Felicity a chance to say anything more, she swept out of the room, and the girl in the bed was left staring at the closed door wondering whether all this was actually happening. Or whether, perhaps, she was just dreaming..,

CHAPTER EIGHT

THE following morning Felicity knew she was not dreaming. Cassandra wrote out a cheque and gave it to her even before they went down to breakfast, looking at her very meaningly as she did so.

“That will keep you going for a few months,” she said. “I don’t want you to suffer as a result of this change of plan. After those few months are up, if you haven’t landed a job you must let me know. Actually, I’d prefer it if you didn’t look for another job, because I’m going to need you sooner or later.”

“Thank you,” Felicity returned, and handed back the cheque. Cassandra’s coolness was inclined to take her breath away, but enough remained for her to remember her own dignity. “I can manage to keep myself for the next few months,” she observed, “and you’ve already paid my salary up-to-date. I don’t take what I don’t earn,” Felicity said stiffly.

“Don’t be silly,” Cassandra protested. “There’s your fare back to England, and that is my concern. If you won’t take the bonus—and why shouldn’t you look upon it as a ‘bonus’?—you must accept the cheque in order to cover your expenses.”

“Thank you, but I can manage those, too,” Felicity told her, and although it was not her intention to introduce a note of any particular significance into her voice, the significance was there as she added: “And, in any case, the steamer isn’t here yet!”

Cassandra sent her a long, hard, shrewd look.

“I’ve told you that Uncle James isn’t the type to wait for a steamer! He may be here any day—perhaps even this afternoon—and whatever it is that brings him can take you back. As far as Kingston, anyway. After that you’ll have to arrange to fly, or go by sea, as you wish.”

Felicity turned away.

Cassandra said: “That’s why I recommend that you start packing almost immediately!”

They went down to breakfast, and the shady
corner
of the veranda, to find that Harry Whitelaw was already drinking coffee at the table. He looked up apologetically at Felicity—and this was unusual, because almost always his eyes went straight to Cassandra when the two girls were together. But this morning Cassandra, in her lime green and white, with the perilously high
-
heeled sandals and that matched the outfit making her willowy height seem more noticeable than ever, seemed to be completely overlooked by
him.

“I’m sorry about yesterday, Miss Harding,” the young man said earnestly. “I’d no idea I was putting you through a gruelling experience, and if I’d known
about your headaches
—
”

“Forget them,” Felicity said, gently.

Harry sprang up to pull out a chair for her at the table.

“But you had to go to bed early last night, and it was all my fault.
” He sounded really distressed.
“And if I’d only had the sense to use Mr. Halloran’s car
...”

“But
I
pointed out to you that it might be needed,” Cassandra cut in sweetly, as she selected her own chair with considerable care. She helped herself to a smooth
skinned peach and inspected it gravely. “Have you forgotten that?”

“No, I haven’t forgotten it,” Harry returned shortly. She looked at him with slim eyebrows raised.

“Then why are you reproaching yourself? It wasn’t your fault, you know
—
we do have to consider our host, and you your employer! And if we’d deprived him of his only means of transport that would not have been very considerate, would it?”

Harry returned her look a little w
on
deringly.

“He hardly ever uses it. It’s nearly always in the garage.”

“But he
might
have wanted to use it!”

“Yes, he might,” Harry agreed, a little slowly, as if he was trying to make her out. Then he turned to Felicity, whose fair-skinned face was bent above a slice of melon, while there was very little evidence that, in spite of her weariness the night before, the climate of the island didn’t suit her. On the contrary, that delicate skin was already overlaid by a light coating of tan, and in the clearness of her eyes when she lifted them he saw natural health and resilience. “You don’t feel as if you are bruised all over this morning?” he asked ruefully. “I know a jeep isn’t the most comfortable method of gettin
g
about the island, but it takes to bad roads like a duck to water, and I thought you were keen to see as much as possible. I’m afraid I spun things out and showed you a lit
tl
e too much.”

“I enjoyed every minute of it,” Felicity assured him, because he looked so anxious. “And I’m feeling fine this morning!”

“You are? Then that’s splendid!” He studied her with open intentness for a few moments, and for the first time she read admiration in his eyes as they gazed at her. Then he grinned boyishly. “Perhaps you won’t have to go home after all
—
not yet awhile, anyway! I wouldn’t like that to happen!”

Cassandra drew in her lower lip, and refused melon when it was offered to her.

“You mustn’t be misled by appearances, Mr. Whitelaw,” she said. “And Felicity is going home.”

“She is?” He sat forward, and the match he had applied to the end of his cigarette burnt itself out.

“Then Mr. Halloran will hold me responsible! He was simply furious with me last night,” with a still more rueful expression crossing his tanned island face than that which had appeared on it before. “I’ve never known him quite so furious. He’s normally pretty even
-
tempered, but he let me have it last night. In future, Miss Harding, if you want to be taken anywhere, I’ve got to see to it that you’re comfortably ensconced in the back of his car. The back, not the front!” with a white-toothed grin appearing slowly. “If the weather was cold he’d no doubt order a hot-water bottle and rugs!”

Cassandra pushed away her only partly drunk cup of coffee, and then rose and walked to the opposite end of the veranda. Harry looked after her curiously, realizing that she was annoyed, and she couldn’t conceal the fact. He crinkled up his dark eyes a trifle.

“Your employer is a little difficult to understand sometimes,” he remarked to Felicity.

Later that morning Felicity ran into Paul Hallora
n
when he was emerging from a room that
s
he knew to be his own private sanctum, and she was amazed to see the surprise that appeared on his face.

“But you shouldn’t be up!” he exclaimed. “I told Florence that under no circumstances were you to be permitted to get up until lunch time.”

For no reason at all Felicity felt suddenly almost light-hearted as his blue eyes gazed at her, and she dimpled suddenly, and rather deliciously.

“I’m afraid I was up before Florence thought it was safe even to look into my room! And there’s no reason at all why I should stay in bed.”

“Isn’t there?” His eyes seemed to be searching her smooth, laughing face. “But what about your headache?
—
and that gruelling drive yesterday?”

“The drive provided me with a few bruises
—
the hardness of the seat!” she laughed. “But my headache’s completely gone!”

“And you’re not afraid it will come back if you don’t test?”

“Of course not.” For a few moments she completely forgot that she was supposed to be a victim of a peculiarly vicious form of migraine. “I’m not subject to headaches! It was just a touch of sun! I mean
...”
She put up a hand to her mouth as she realized what she had said, and Paul Halloran’s eyes grew bright and alert.

“Then what Miss Wood said last night was not
s
trictly true?”

“No—”

“Can you think of any reason why
sh
e should say such a thing?”

“I ... No, I...”

“Perhaps you are anxious to return home? Is that it?”

“No.” She shook her head quite violently. “How could one wish to leave all this behind?” Looking out through the open french window at the veranda, bathed in s
unshine
, and beyond it the rich emerald of th
e
lawns, with the cool gloom of the plantation beyond that.

“If you really suffered from very bad headaches I
think
you mi
ght
justifiably make them an excuse,” he said, in the same gentle tone he had used to her the night before. “But if you don’t suffer from headaches, and you like it here, then there is no reason why you shouldn’t remain Miss Harding!” He touched her arm,

“Yes?” She was just a little startled, and looked up at
him
. They were standing very close together, and she discovered that be was exactly a head taller than she was.

“Miss Harding, I want to talk to you
...
It is the sort of talk I don’t wish interrupted, and as Michael is waiting for me to go through some household accounts with him this is hardly the time! But this evening, before dinner, might be a very good time
...
Do you
think
you could come here to my study about half an hour after the dressing-gong has sounded tonight? As you know, we don’t usually hurry for dinner, and Miss Wood likes plenty of time to dress. You could probably get changed quite quickly
...
?”

“Oh, yes,” she agreed, rather breathlessly. “I never take long over changing.”

“I’ve already gathered that.” He smiled at her, his white teeth dazzling her a little because they were so beautiful, while the tinge of blue-black in his hair made her think of a blackbird’s plumage. His eyes she was prepared to lose herself in, as if they were twin blue pools that could tempt her to dive into them, and then be dragged down into unplumbed depths. The thought made her inclined to gasp. “And yet you always look so enchanting!”

“D-do I?”

“I shall always remember you as I saw you that first morning,” he told her, “when you appeared suddenly on the lawn out there!” He indicated the lawn, with a shady tree overhanging it, beneath which Bruno was lying asleep. “One moment I was
thinking
of business matters, and then I looked up and saw a deliciously demure feminine creature standing there in a blue linen dress! I remember being surprised by the darkness of your hair in contrast with the fairness of your skin, and when you came close and I saw that your eyes were brown instead of blue
—
as, of course, they ought to
be!
—
I
knew that although you were unmistakably
English you were the most unusual
Englishw
oman I’d
ever met! And you weren’t even afraid of Bruno!”

“Although he growled at me!”

“Yes
—
but you put out your hand and touched him. And when you
thought I was still blind you wanted so badly to help me, didn’t you? I could feel your anxiety to be some sort of assistance to me even before you told me your name.”

“Could you?”

Her heart was thumping wildly, and she no longer dared to meet his eyes.

“Tonight at about seven? You won’t forget?”

And as she shook her head, so that the dark curls bobbed against her neck, he picked up one of her hands and carried it to his
li
ps.

“Tonight at seven!” he repeated.

CHAPTER NINE

IT was a night such as Felicity knew she would remember, for the rest of her life.

Caribbean stars are always bright, but tonight they seemed to have discovered an extra brilliance, and the sky in which they appeared to hang suspended, like jewels, might have been made of royal purple velvet The light had died out of it more slowly than usual, and while Felicity was putting the finishing touches to her dressing, in front of her dressing table mirror, a warm glow lingered on the tall tops of the trees in the plantation; it was still there, gilding those feathery tops, when she went out on to her balcony to enjoy a little coolness and calmness from the still sweetness of the night air.

She felt the gentle, zephyr-like breeze touching her cheeks like a caress, and just for an instant the excited flush in them died. Then, when she put her fingers up to them and touched them, the flush was back, hot beneath the tips of her slim fingers as the blood pounded eagerly through her veins. She knew there was little point in deceiving herself. She
h
ad no idea what Paul Halloran wanted to talk to her about in his room at seven o’clock, but she did know that the fact that he wanted to talk to her was all-important.

So important that she needed to clutch at her balcony rail as she stood there in the darkness, with something inside her persisting in behaving like the imprisoned bird beating its wings against a cage.

She had been terrified, while she was dressing, that Cassandra would open the door of her room and curl herself up in one of her graceful attitudes in a chair, or on the foot of her bed, as an indication that she wanted to talk. But so far there had been no intrusion, and it needed only a few minutes to seven o’clock. Her ears prete
rn
aturally sharpened, she was listening for the mellow chimes of the grandfather-clock in the hall, and as soon as she heard them she felt that it would be safe to go down.

She went back to her dressing table and looked at herself anxiously in the minor. She was wearing the only dress in her wardrobe that was really expensive
—
an evening gown that she had purchased for some special occasion, and which became her very well indeed. In fact, she could hardly have looked more utterly charming than she did tonight, with the pale mauve of the evening-gown doing something to her lightly tanned skin that seemed to give it a kind of glow. It was there on her cheeks, and on her lips, and her eyes had the tawny darkness of pansies in a cottage garden border. The sort of border to be found at home in England, not here on the flaming Caribbean.

The dress was softly draped, and one shoulder was completely bare. It had the ripe smoothness of a pomegranate. The other had a brooch pinned to it, and in her ears there were matching ear-rings. She didn’t normally wear much jewellery, but these pieces were good, and had been bestowed on her by a wealthy godmother when she came of age. They were composed of small rubies surrounded by delicately glistening pearls. The rubies matched her lips, and the pearls gave her the feeling that for once she was really elegant.

She heard the grandfather-clock begin to chime, and she crept to the door. Outside on the staircase she became panic-stricken lest Cassandra should appear and stop her, and in her highly agitated state she couldn’t
think
what explanation she would offer to her. It wasn’t that she was afraid of Cassandra, but she had become used to obeying her lightest behest.

But Cassandra didn’t appear, and she went on down the stair. Outside the study door she felt her heart begin to beat wildly, but before it could
a
ffect
her breathing and drive the color from her cheeks the door opened, and Paul Halloran stood there.

He was wearing a white dinner jacket, and he looked black and white and elegant. Only his skin was the color of pale bronze, and his eyes, of course, were deeply, disturbingly blue.

Felicity, when she looked into them, felt the color begin to recede from her cheeks.

“You’re very punctual,” he said. He stood aside for her to enter the room, and she saw that it was small but luxurious. The windows stood wide to a side veranda, and a fan stirred up a pleasant current of air. The only light streamed from a reading lamp beside a deep, comfortable chair. Paul made her sit down, and then asked what she would like to drink.

“Oh...”
Her voice failed her, and he smiled a little.

“I think you like sherry, don’t you?”

He went to a tray of drinks that stood on a small, carved, ebony table, and Felicity watched
him
as he poured sherry into a glass. His hand was so shapely, and so firm. The whiteness of his cuff above his brown wrist fascinated her. She was so afraid that her feeling would be given away by her eyes that she wrenched them away as he approached her again and concentrated feverishly on a slender bronze statuette that stood on his writing table and served the useful purpose of a paper-weight.

“How—how charming!” she commented. “It’s Italian, isn’t it?”

“Yes, I picked it up in Florence, when I was staying there once. I’d had rather a busy season in Milan, and Florence is a delightful place to relax in when you’ve been under a certain amount of strain. I don’t know whether you know it?
—
The little shops on the Ponte Vecchio, so like London Bridge in olden times? You can come upon all sorts of things if you search long enough..
.”

“No, I—I don’t know it,” she had to admit. She added shyly, feeling very small and insignificant because she had travelled so little: “I don’t know very much about the world, I’m afraid! This is the first time I’ve been out of England!”

“Really?” He stopped, and he smiled at her
—
just a little whimsically, she thought. “Well, in that case, you’ve a good deal to see yet, haven’t you?” He reached for the statuette and put it into her hand. “Do you admire Italian craftsmanship? At least you seem able to recognize it!”

“Yes, I’m afraid I’ve a weakness for antiques, and I haunt antique shops when I’m at home in London,” Felicity confessed.

The smile vanished from his face, and he stood looking down at her.

“Really?” he said.

“Yes, really.” She smiled in the way that brought the dimples into play at the
corner
s of her mouth, but she kept her eyes on the paper-weight. “You
—
I suppose you regard Italy as your home, don’t you?” she asked.

“Well, no, as a matter of fact, I don’t.” He started to pace up and down the room, and beneath her lowered lids she watched his graceful, almost cat-like strides. She could imagine him climbing the steps to the rostrum in a great concert hall
—
the moment when he lifted his hand, and an absolute hush descended. “My father was Irish, as Miss Wood was at pains to remind me on the
mornin
g
when you arrived here!” She couldn’t tell whether it was humor that chased itself across his finely
cut mouth, or whether it was something else that tightened and curved the lips a little. “And I was brought up in Ireland. I have a house there to which I may, or may not, return one day
—
I don’t know!” He shot her a quick, rather odd look. “It’s quite a charming house, overlooking a bay that is sometimes as blue as the seas here. But, of course, the weather isn’t the sort of weather we get here.”

“And you like it here best?”

“I like the sunshine, and the warmth. Possibly I’m not really very Irish, and my Italian blood craves sunshine.” He paused, and almost nervously he lighted a cigarette. “And that brings me to the reason why I asked you in here tonight!
...
Why I said I wanted to talk to you!”

He moved to the window, where the curtains were swaying gently in the softest current of air, and he suggested without looking at her: “Perhaps you’d like to come out here, Miss Harding? It is, as almost always, a perfect night, and I feel that what I want to say to you can be better said in the open! It’s nothing alarming,” turning to smile at her a little as she followed him into the darkness of the broad side veranda, “but it may take you a little by surprise, and
...
Well, anyway, it’s cooler out here!” He drew forward a chair for her. “Please sit down, and if you feel you’re not warm enough
—
”

“I’m quite warm, thank you,” she assured him. Her brown eyes gazed up at him a
little
uncertainly. There was no doubt about it, he was slightly agitated, and she couldn’t think why
—
except that it was unusual that the two should find themselves so completely alone at this hour. “As you said, the nights are always perfect here.”

“Yes.” He threw away his cigarette, and then started to light another. “And it is quite true that the climate doesn’t upset you?”

“Quite true.
”

“Then why do you suppose Miss Wood wanted to make us believe that it was otherwise?”

Felicity felt that she had to be careful here. One point had to be stuck to, but she had known Cassandra for years, and she couldn’t come out with the bare truth.

“It is possible,” she said at last, a little diffidently, “that I am no longer very important to her, and she thought it would spare my feelings if she invented a reason for my return home. And, after all, as an employer she has a perfect right to terminate employment when she feels like it.”

“Although you appear to have known one another for quite a while?”

“We were at school together, yes.”

“Then you must have always rather liked one another?”

“Yes.”

He was looking at her keenly through the velvet gloom that lay between them.

“Do you want to return home?”

“I
—”

‘Have you a job to return to?”

“I expect I shall soon find one.”

“I
think
you told me that you have no parents. With whom will you stay while you are looking for something to do?”

Felicity’s eyes widened still more as he shot the questions at her. She simply couldn’t understand why he was doing so, and why he looked as if he was determined to sift to the bottom of her personal problem as he stood there only a few paces away, keeping his blue eyes fixed on her.

“I shall probably take a room somewhere.” Her fingers closed nervously about the ruby and pearl brooch attached to the draperies over her shoulder, and she
tried to convince him: “I’m not in the least concerned about being sent home, Mr. Halloran. That is to say, I don’t find it upsetting that I’ve become a little redundant. And I think Miss Wood is of the opinion that it’s a bit of an infliction having us both thrust on you, and
when her aunt and uncle arrive
—
”

“They will not make the slightest difference, because after the first night or so they will not be staying here.” He moved towards her, until the yard or so between them had narrowed to barely a foot. “However, we won’t go into that now. That is something Miss Wood will lea
rn
about when her aunt and un
cl
e arrive. In the
meantime I want to ask you, Miss Hardin
g
—
”

“Yes?”
sh
e said, feeling as if a pulse actually leapt in her throat

“Or may I say Feli
ci
ty? I know that Miss Wood
—
Cassandra!
—
calls you Felicity!”

“I don’t mind what you call me.” She tried to sound coolly amused. “Cassandra is nearly always known as Cassandra.”

“But you are not the same type as Cassandra, are you? It is easy to be on Christian name terms with some people, but not so easy with others.”

“And you class me amongst the ‘others’?”

“I don’t class you with anyone!”

She stood up because that nervous beating in her throat was making her feel a trifle breathless, and anyway she felt better when she was standing facing
him.
“What is it you want to ask me, Mr. Halloran?” Was he going to offer her a job, she wondered? Did he perhaps want
a
secretary?
—
Someone to type his letters?

“I want to ask you to stay here and many me,
Felicity
,” was the answer that took her breath right away. “And the name is Paul,” he added quietly.
Felicity
stood holding on to the arm of her chair. It
was a low rattan chair, and she had to bend backwards to grasp at the arm, and it gave her the attitude of
shrinking
away from him a little.

“M-marry you?” she gasped.

His face all at once was a picture of concern.

“Have I startled you very badly?” he asked. As she straightened he put forth his hands and took both of hers, holding them so vitally and so strongly that little thrills coursed their way up and down her arms. “I didn’t want to startle you! In fact
—
and it may sound impertinent!
—
I had the queer feeling that I wouldn’t! That you wouldn’t be utterly unprepared!”

She could say nothing, only look up at him with enormous dark eyes, and slightly parted lips.

“I want to marry you so badly, Felicity!”

“Why?” she managed, in a whisper.

“I don’t quite know!” He was frowning a little as he gazed down at her. “From the moment we met I’ve felt that we were in tune
—
as some people are in tune! You’re so human, and comradely, and sweet, and
—
and, of course, you’re very lovely!”

He said that as his eyes dwelt upon the slightly quivering parted lips
—
scarlet in the dim starlight
—
and then shifted to the creamy throat that disappeared into the mauve dress.

“Cassandra is beautiful!” she heard herself
remarking, for no reason that sh
e could think of.

He made an impatient movement, and dropped her hands.