Kissing Kin (21 page)

“It’ll be all right.”

“They think so. And they fixed you up, didn’t they.”

“Yep. I’m all fixed up.”

“Like your new job?”

“It’s wonderful.”

“Poor old gun.”

“She won’t forget us,” said Raymond.

“About this Jenny,” said Calvert, reverting shamelessly to what was uppermost in his mind. “I’m not fooling. I can’t wait to see her again.”

“Her father is a duke.”

“So I hear,” said Calvert unconcernedly. “Did you meet him?”

“Yep.”

“How was he?”

“Nice.”

“Lady Jenny,” mused Calvert affectionately. “Sounds kind of cute, doesn’t it.” And as Raymond, who had learned that on the outside of an envelope she was Lady Jennifer, said nothing, Calvert rambled on. “Dinah was a ladyship too, but that didn’t stop Bracken. Of course this leg could stop me.”

“Your leg’ll be all right,” said Raymond.

“You keep on saying that and it may come true. How would you like to have Jenny in the family?”

“That would be swell,” said Raymond.

“Well, there’s no harm in trying, is there, once I get on my feet again. Of course Jenny might have other ideas,” Calvert conceded with another confiding grin. “Something tells me
I
never will. She struck me all of a heap, somehow. I wonder what Camilla will say.”

“It will be all right with her, won’t it?”

“They’re great friends, I think she’d be pleased. Better pleased than I am about her, anyway. Did you see much of Sosthène at Farthingale?”

“The Frenchman? No, not much.” Raymond looked an unasked question, and Calvert nodded grimly.

“We haven’t any secrets from you. Did you notice anything between him and Camilla?”

“No. That would be kind of a funny set-up, wouldn’t it?”

“I’m pretty worried about it. She’s taking it too hard. Nothing I can do, of course, till I can see for myself. He’s not a bounder, is he?”

“I wouldn’t think so,” said Raymond cautiously.

“Not like Gerald?”

Raymond’s black brows and heavy lips expressed his wordless estimate of Gerald.

“Maybe Gerald’s going to get what he deserves, with Fabrice,” suggested Calvert hopefully.

“You’re right about that.”

“And Jenny—what does Jenny deserve?”

“The best,” said Raymond, feeling for another cigarette.

“Which is better than me,” said Calvert lightly. “Oh, well—I reckon Jenny’s going to have a chance to turn me down, anyway.”

“You might get a shock,” said Raymond. “She might take you up on it.”

“Did you notice anybody in my way?”

“Nope,” said Raymond, and his lighter flared, and his fine hands cupped the cigarette between his lips. “So far as I know, nobody is going to stand in your way.”

Camilla went down with influenza in May, and was shipped off to Farthingale, very shaky, to recover, along with Calvert, equally shaky and on crutches and in constant pain. They arrived on a day of drizzling rain, and Sosthène came to the station in the car to fetch them, driven by the aged
gardener-chauffeur
. Camilla was absorbed in assisting Calvert to negotiate the step from the train to the platform and did not see them until Sosthène’s voice said at her elbow, “Let me help, if I can.”

Calvert, who was facing the platform, felt her fingers tighten convulsively on his arm as Sosthène reached out to steady him on the other side, and he stood between them as Camilla said faintly, “It’s Sosthène.”

“How do you do?” said Calvert, with sangfroid for two. “Awfully good of you to come and meet us.”

“The car is just there,” Sosthène told him gently. “Take it slowly—Bickett will see to the luggage—was it cold in the train?”

“Bitter,” said Camilla, playing up. “We had rugs, of course. But I’m looking forward to a cup of tea.”

“It will be waiting,” he promised.

Calvert managed with difficulty to clamber into the back seat, Camilla got in beside him, and Sosthène covered them
both with a fur-lined rug and himself took the seat beside the chauffeur. Sliding back the glass, he sat with his arm on the back of the driving-seat, chatting with them through the opening, giving the news of the country family and the Hall, asking easy, interested questions about London.

Camilla, her cold fingers clasped in Calvert’s comforting hand under the rug, replied with an effort at a similar
casualness
, and Calvert joined in helpfully, though he looked drawn with weariness and pain. Sosthène’s serene, secretive face showed nothing but the most normal and polite pleasure at their arrival, and a total unawareness of constraint, Camilla appreciated once more his utter self-possession and at the same time felt an unreasonable disappointment. Apparently it meant nothing to him in the way of a personal emotional upheaval that she had come back to Gloucestershire. In the face of his smiling Continental composure, her own wild heart beat seemed childish and absurd, and she wondered if Calvert would ever believe now that she had not imagined that Sosthène knew and had accepted her feeling for him.

The car drew up on the gravel sweep in front of the house and old Bickett got down rather stiffly and opened the door to the back seat. Sosthène came round the other side and together they helped Calvert down with his crutches and he began a slow progress towards the shallow stone steps, supported by Bickett. It was only then that Sosthène turned back to the car, just in time to extend a steadying hand as Camilla stepped down on to the gravel. It was only then that their eyes met in a long look, and she was conscious of the lingering clasp of his fingers cradling her hand, enfolding her wrist above the short unbuttoned glove she wore.

“You are so thin,” he said pityingly, and his gaze moved intimately over her face and throat and shoulders. “You have been very ill.”

“Yes, it was
beastly,” she admitted, smiling up at him. “And I go on being so wobbly even now that it’s over.”

With a glance at the two slow figures climbing the steps
ahead of them, they moved towards the house, her left hand still held by his right as he drew her arm through his.

“You want cossetting,” he said in his low, unemphatic voice. “We shall see to that here.”

“Oh, Sosthène, what a heavenly word!” she cried. “Where did you learn it?”

“Cossetting?” He was a little surprised. “Have I said it wrong?”

“No—we don’t say it at all at home—that is, I must have heard it, because I know what it means, but—”

“It must be one of Sallee’s words,” he said easily. “I seem to have known it always.”

“How is she?” Camilla asked, while another question twinged through her: Has he known Cousin Sally
always?

“Just the same. Ah, there—you see?” He nodded towards the open doorway, where Sally stood with welcoming arms outstretched to Calvert, who was gently enfolded as he reached the threshold. “Now she will have a new slave,” said Sosthène complacently. “One has only to ache ever so little somewhere and Sallee becomes a ministering angel.”

“Poor Calvert aches quite a bit,” said Camilla briefly, suppressing a quick reminder that she was the nurse.

By the time Calvert had had his tea in front of the
drawing-room
fire and been helped to bed, Camilla was telling herself firmly that it was a good thing she hadn’t got a jealous
disposition
. For Calvert was frankly enslaved and bedazzled and loving the experience. The two older girls came down to the drawing-room for tea, and hung devotedly above their wounded cousin from America, even to the neglect of his invalid sister, but it was Sally he talked to and listened to and looked at. Once more Camilla watched the Sally legend coming true, exactly as it had happened to herself. It never failed, she thought ruefully in her chair at the corner of the hearth. Calvert would be on Sally’s side if—if there were ever any necessity to take sides, which of course there wouldn’t be….

She looked up to find Sosthène standing at her elbow with a dish of hot scones, saying, “You must eat another. They have been very generous with the butter today.”

Because it was not in her to refuse anything he suggested, she took a scone and bit into it obediently, though she found it difficult to swallow with his kind, searching eyes on her face.

“Last time it was Virginia with a game leg,” she said rather at random. “Remember? You made such a lovely fuss of her, I was quite envious.”

“This time it is you I am concerned about,” he answered with a rueful smile.

“Do I look so awful?”

“You look very breakable,” he replied. “And quite
transparent
.”

“I hope not that,” she murmured, and his eyes lit and answered the implication in her steady look, as she added simply, “I never try to hide anything from Calvert,
anyhow
.”

“No, I can see that you have not,” he agreed, and she wondered if something in Calvert’s level scrutiny had already warned him that her twin was abreast of things.

He turned away, smiling imperturbably, to replace the scones on the tea-table in front of Sally, and there was no further exchange between them before the complicated business of getting Calvert up the stairs began.

Calvert was to have his dinner on a tray in bed, and Camilla went in to help him with it before going down for her own. She had changed into the same old black dress she had worn on her first night here last winter, and her hair was bound round her head because Calvert was not keen, he said, on short-haired girls.

“You look sweet,” he said, eyeing her from the pillow. “Sort of shining—and very sweet. I didn’t think I was going to be sorry for him, but I am.”

“You
do
like him?” she entreated.

“I’m afraid I shall. I didn’t want to. I was hoping to be able
to feel that you had made a mistake and it would soon blow over.’

“And now you don’t feel that?”

“Not that you’ve been an utter fool, if that’s what you mean.”

“You see what he is. You see why I—”

“Easy, now. I’ve only had a dozen words with him so far. Does Jenny know about this?”

“Yes, she spotted it. She says it’s best not to care about
anybody
till the war is over. She says the way to be most useful is to have no
particular feelings for anybody—that makes the best nurse. Of course it isn’t as though Sosthène were in the war.”

“Jenny’s not in love with anybody, then—since that business with Gerald,” he remarked thoughtfully.

“No. After Gerald she doesn’t want to be. She says she’s not going to walk the plank again for anybody.”

Calvert grinned.

“That’s one way to put it,” he said.

“You like Jenny, don’t you, honey.”

“I sure do.”

“I wanted you to. Calvert—somebody like you could save Jenny.”

“I’ve got this leg.”

“But if it gets well—it
will
get well—don’t let her waste her life, Calvert. Just because she’s been kicked in the teeth.”

“Think she’d look twice at me?”

“You’ll have to work at it, Calvert—she’s made up her mind not to fall in love again.”

“Mm-hm,” said Calvert thoughtfully. “How do I start?”

“Be very kind—and patient. Don’t rush her.”

“What chance do I get, anyway?”

“She’ll come over to see me—tomorrow probably. She comes on her bicycle from the Hall, during her time off. It’s not very much, of course, but sometimes she gets away for
dinner, or an hour in the afternoon. And since I’ve been ill, it will seem natural for her to come here instead of my going there. I can say you have to be amused.”

Calvert grinned again.

“Poor Jenny,” he said. “Cards stacked against her from the start. I’m glad you’re on my side.”

Camilla looked down.

“One of us may as well be happy,” she said.

So Jenny, unsuspecting and kindhearted, spent most of her free time at Farthingale amusing the invalids there. She was not unwilling. It was fun to play and sing with Camilla for Calvert lying on the sofa under a rug. They had all read the same books and liked the same authors and had the same shaped joke. She loved Camilla dearly, and she thought Calvert both pathetic and charming, and she had another reason: Where Calvert was, there would be news of Raymond; where Calvert was, Raymond would come for his leaves.

But before long it began to dawn uneasily on
Jenny that behind Calvert’s natural Virginian gallantry of manner and his own particular brand of affectionate foolery there lay a deeper feeling for herself. At first she hoped she was wrong and tried to pretend even to herself that she hadn’t noticed. But as Calvert’s leg progressed and he felt a little surer of ultimate recovery his spirits rose and he stopped trying to conceal his love for her.

Then there was a day when Calvert got a letter from
Raymond
announcing five days’ leave on his transfer to Upavon, and accepting the often repeated invitation to spend it at
Farthingale
. Calvert felt he ought to be able to report progress in all directions when Raymond came. He seized a time when Sally had claimed Camilla’s attention upstairs and he was left alone with Jenny in. the drawing-room, with no very clear idea how to proceed.

“It will be good to see Raymond again,” he began at random, playing with the fringe on the edge of the woollen
rug which covered his legs. “They don’t come any finer than he is.”

“No, I’m sure they don’t,” she agreed, half hoping, half dreading that he would go on talking about his idol.

“I expect you got to know him pretty well, while he was at the Hall.”

“Pretty well, yes. I had two other men to take care of at the same time, but they weren’t much trouble, poor dears.”

“Was Raymond trouble?” he grinned.

“He tried not to fret. But it was agony to him to lie helpless in bed so long. He was like something tied up by the leg.”

“You got him well, though.”

“Oh, yes. And you’ll get well too, you’ll see.”

“If I do,” said Calvert recklessly, playing with the fringe, “I’m going to ask you to marry me.”

“Oh, no!” cried Jenny quickly, for she had not seen it coming. “I mean—I—” She stopped miserably. None of the things she could once have said were any good any more. I don’t want to play, I’d rather sit and watch—I’m cured—I’ve thrown in my hand—all that is not for me—once is enough—it was all lies now, because of Raymond. There was nothing to answer Calvert with except an unvarnished refusal. And that, for a man just crawling up the slope of life again, was cruel and unfair.