Prisoner of Love (4 page)

“Well, Laura,” he said, “what have we to consider? Is there any
bona fide
reason why you can’t marry me?”

Her hands, busy with the percolator, were shaking. There were so many reasons, but she wanted to sweep them all aside. She wanted to share his life, to watch the unfolding of his future success at close range, to help, if that were possible, although she did not think he was a man who needed help, particularly with his career.

“I have my brother to look after,” she said unsteadily. “That is my main reason. I have to make a home for him.”

He poured two liqueurs and set one of them on the table at her elbow. “Not exactly an insurmountable obstacle,” he decided briefly. “Until I have a son of my own it will be interesting to supervise your brother’s education. You must leave all that to me, Laura.”

A lump rose into Laura’s throat. Lance was all she had been worrying about, really—whether Julius would accept him or not. And now he was being more than magnanimous about him, offering him a home and a life far removed from the rather haphazard upbringing he was receiving in the Chiswick flat, through no real fault of her own.

She saw the drab pattern of their lives gilded out of all recognition by this man’s kindness, saw a brightness in the future for Lance that she could never have given him on her own, but she could not make her decision all at once. She had to think, too, about what she could give in return.

“I need someone to look after me, Laura,” he said, as if he had read her thoughts or guessed at her indecision. “We have the same interests, the same ambitions, and I could teach you to love me.”

Perhaps that had been the omission she had been waiting for him to correct. He had not mentioned love before, yet his kisses had been wholly passionate, his hands hard and demanding on her bare flesh. If love meant attraction and respect and something that was akin to hero worship, she already loved him. It was only that it was difficult to believe, out of the blue like this, that he had really noticed her as a person and not just as a unit when they had met at the hospital, difficult to realize that he wanted to marry her.

Her pulses stirred when she turned to look at him and he lifted her glass and passed it across the table to her.

“Need we wait?” he asked. “Let’s drink to the future, Laura. Our future together!”

“Can I tell you tomorrow?” she begged. “I feel that I may have some—adjustments to make.”

“You are far too conscientious!” he said, but he did not attempt to kiss her again, and when she rose to go an hour later he walked with her to the door and halfway down Harley Street to find her a taxi.

It was only when she was in the taxi and alone that she seemed able to draw breath.

The flat was very quiet when she reached it. All the lights were out and she supposed that Anne and Gillian were having one of their rare early nights. Lance had been in bed and almost asleep before she had left, so that she was surprised when he called to her as soon as she switched on the light.

When she went through to his room he said in the weary, impatient voice of the sleepless, “I wish you could do something about this eye, Laurie. It’s getting worse.”

She had noticed a redness about his left eye when she had returned from the hospital, but he had dismissed her comment—rather evasively, she thought now.

“Good heavens!” she exclaimed, looking at it in the brighter light from the overhead lamp. “It’s black and blue. What happened? It looks as if you've been in a fight
.
”

He said dismally, rubbing the offending eyes, “It wasn’t much of a fight—not really. A gang of older boys came over from Hammersmith when we were playing football and—well, we had an argument.”

“I see!”

Laura’s tone had been lightly practical, but as she went to heat water and find something with which to bathe the blackened eye there was a good deal of doubt in her heart. Could she really care for Lance and work at the hospital as well? The word “gang” had frozen in her mind, and although she did not think for one moment that the present skirmish had been at all serious, she began to wonder about the future. No matter how she might plan, there was always that gap between Lance’s coming home from school and her own return. If there happened to be an emergency or if she was kept later than usual for some other reason, he had to get his own supper and put himself to bed.

True, he was quite capable of doing all these things successfully, but was it fair to ask him to do them and study, too?

Tears were very near her eyes as she went to sit on his bed and bathe the injured eye.

“Lance,” she said after a moment, “what would you feel about my getting married?”

There was a small, rather startled silence in which he peered at her incredulously from under the pad of cotton wool over his eye.

“D’you mean that you’re
going
to be married?” he asked at last.

“I’
ve been thinking about it.”

“Would you go away from London?” he asked anxiously, the eye forgotten.

“Of course not! It would be just the same in a good many ways, only more comfortable for both of us,” Laura explained. “You would still go to school—perhaps to a different school—but I would be at home every day when you got back instead of your having to fend for yourself.”

“Who is it?” Lance asked after a pause. “The man you’re going to marry?”

She smiled at the decisiveness of the question. Lance already took it for granted that she had made up her mind to marry Julius.

“You saw him once when he brought me back from the hospital,” she explained.

“Not the doctor with the Bentley?”

“Yes—Doctor Behar.”

He said rather awkwardly, “When will it be, Laurie?”

“Quite soon, I think.” Laura finished bathing his eye, gave him a light sedative and tucked the bedclothes securely about him. “No more gang warfare!” she admonished. “That eye should keep you out of action for a day or two. We’ll see what it’s like in the morning and decide whether you should go to school or not.”

“I’ve got to go,” he said sleepily, “because of the exams. They’re most important, Laurie.
”

Laura did not sleep very well. She had made up her mind to marry Julius Behar. The decision, once it had been made, should have set her mind at rest, but her sleep was curiously disturbed. She got up early and made Lance’s breakfast, seeing him off to school afterwards with a sense of relief because the eye appeared much improved.

“Come to tea,” Julius had said when he had discovered she had time off during the afternoon. “I have a consultation, but I should be through by four o’clock. Holmes will make you comfortable if you have to wait.”

Walking down Wigmore Street in the afternoon sunshine, Laura remembered suddenly that Julius Behar’s home had been devoid of flowers and she wondered if she might buy some for Julius. Flowers were a necessity to her; she bought them for the flat when she could afford them, going without something else so that she might have them.

She bought daffodils and jonquils, a great armful of them because they were in season and therefore cheap, and carried them toward Harley Street with a touch of spring in her heart. All her doubts had left her. This was the beginning of a glorious new life. Only the beginning!

Nearing the door of Julius’s home, she felt suddenly shy and a
little nervous, wondering if she should have brought a gift at all. Perhaps Julius did not like flowers. Perhaps he might even consider them out of place in the discreet atmosphere of a house that was, first and foremost, a consulting room. Yet she had seen flowers in a hospital ward make all the difference to sick people.

She looked down at the golden sheaf in her arms, thinking how little she really knew about this man she was going to marry. Then, swiftly and deliberately, she walked the few remaining steps to her destination.

As she did so the door opened, held just wide enough to let a tall man in a thick overcoat out into the street. He carried his hat in his hand, and as he turned to bid the butler a brief “Good afternoon”, she noticed how his dark hair grew well into the nape of his neck.

Because of his height, perhaps, he seemed to stoop a little.

She was on the bottom step when he reached the top one, and suddenly she looked up and into the bluest eyes she had ever seen. With a profound sense of shock she was immediately aware of the naked pain in them, the sharp reflection of a soul’s torment momentarily revealed.

In the next instant they had avoided each other with a brief murmur of apology and passed on, Laura to step into the hall where Julius Behar was waiting for her, and the tall young man to hail a taxi and drive away in the direction of Wigmore Street. Yet in that split second Laura knew that she would remember the look she had surprised in those vividly blue eyes long after she had forgotten the man himself.

“I wondered if I would get rid of my last patient before you arrived,” Julius said, helping her off with her coat and giving the flowers to Holmes. “He was quite a problem, by the way.”

“I bumped into him, I think, on the doorstep,” Laura found herself confessing while she wondered what Holmes was going to do about the flowers. “He looked as if he had taken rather a jolt.”

“I suppose he had,” Julius said with a frown. “He had all the makings of a brilliant surgeon up to a year ago, it would seem. It’s easy enough to recognize a coming man. He’s had the most infernal luck. He went abroad—out East somewhere—and picked up a bug. It has practically destroyed his nerves. It’s all rather sad,” he observed, leading the way into the drawing room where a low table had been set for tea before the fire. “I’m taking on the case, of course, but I’m afraid he will never operate again. He’s rather depressed about it, as one might imagine,” he added,
pulling forward a chair for her. “He considers himself a failure, and that’s not good for any man.”

“But he’s young!” Laura protested. “Surely something can be done?”

“It may be a long process,” Julius said. “I’m sending him to Scotland. I think he would be better away from London for a spell. There’s no doubt that the pace is killing nowadays, especially if one’s nerves are not too strong.”

“Anyone can pick up a germ,” Laura mused. “It’s terribly bad luck. He didn’t look the ailing type.”

“That’s rather the point,” he said, turning as Holmes came in with the teatray and plugged in an electric kettle on the hearth. “The ‘ailing type’ accept a spell of inactivity without trying to fight it. People like Blair Cameron never will.”

Blair Cameron. The name awakened a memory in Laura’s mind, but it was a vague one and she did not pursue the train of thought. She could have heard it in the hospital, she supposed, yet it seemed to stir up impressions of high mountains and the waste places of the earth.

“He went with Renson’s expedition to the Himalayas, and I believe he has been twice in the Antarctic,” Julius said. “But his real work—his future success—would have been in surgery.”

“It seems a great pity,” Laura murmured. “Surgeons are born and not made.”

“You’re an idealist, Laura!” he said. And then, when Holmes had left them: “Dare I hope that you have made up your mind about the future?”

She met his eyes, instantly aware that he expected her to say “yes,” and her heart began to beat swiftly, as if she had been running.

“It is ‘yes’, Julius,” she said. “But I only wish that I was more sure of what I had to give.”

“My dear,” he said, coming to stand beside her, “how absurd! I ask you for no more than your undivided attention—your love, if you like to put it that way.”

“What other way could there be?” she asked, turning toward him with a shy smile. “Oh, Julius! I do love and respect you, and I hope, more than anything else, that I can make you happy.”

He took her hands, drawing her to him.

“That will be enough,” he said. “If we can find happiness together I shall be well content.”

His eyes were no very definite color as he bent to kiss her, neither green nor gray, but the light in them was surely and unmistakably the gleam of triumph.

CHAPTER FOUR

Long afterwards Laura was to realize that Julius must have had his plans well laid for their marriage even before he had asked her to be his wife. He could see no reason for delay, deciding that their engagement should be announced immediately, followed by a wedding in the late spring or early summer.

Two months did not seem so very far away when she had so much to do, Laura thought. Shyly she broke the news to the two girls in the flat, surprised and a little hurt when the blunter Gillian remarked that her
fiancé
was surely a great deal older than she was, considering the eminence to which he had risen in his profession.

“He’s exactly eight years older than I am,” she found herself replying a trifle sharply. “A difference in age doesn’t mean a thing.”

“No,
”
Gillian decided, still rather doubtfully, “perhaps not when a man has had to give so much to his career. Then, too, he’s been married before, hasn’t he?”

“Only for a short time,” Laura told her. “His wife died rather tragically, in Scotland, I believe.”

“You did mention he had a house up there?"

“Yes. We’re going there for part of our honeymoon.”

Julius had arranged that, and she saw Gillian glance at her in some surprise and then away again, as if she had meant to say that she wouldn’t have liked to spend a honeymoon in Scotland under the circumstances.

“I hope you’re going to be happy, Laura,” the more gentle Anne said two weeks before the wedding. “I know you and Doctor Behar have a great deal in common and he’s desperately handsome and fascinating, and I suppose his having been married before doesn’t really matter—” Laura knew that it would matter to Anne because she was the romantic type to whom first love was essential, but did first love really matter all that much? And for her this
was
first love! She was wholly and completely in love with Julius.

“I hope you’re right about this Laura,” Nurse Roath said in her rich Irish brogue when she finally handed in her resignation at the hospital.

“I know I’m right, Mary,” Laura protested instantly. “I’ve always wanted to be married to someone like Julius—sharing his life and his success and helping him with his career.”

She paused, and in the small, electric silence she seemed to hear all the little sounds of the busy hospital that she had come to love receding farther and farther away.

“You’ll only be his wife,” Mary reminded her almost tartly. “A man like Julius Behar doesn’t need any help with his career.”

That was foolish, of course, Laura decided, and probably the remark was slightly tinged with envy. Mary had always been quick enough to express her wholehearted admiration of Julius’s skill in the operating room in the past. She could not—would not
—
let these adverse criticisms sway her. She was completely sure of what she wanted to do.

Julius had been more than kind about Lance, too. He was to stay with Holmes for the two weeks they would be in Scotland, and afterwards Lance and Holmes would be sent to Scotland during the school holidays.

“Dunraven is a boy’s paradise,” Julius had said. “He can fish, and Holmes will teach him to use a gun and sail a boat.”

What more could she wish for? Already Lance was Julius’s willing slave, ready to do everything he asked.

Two days before the wedding, when she went to Harley Street one afternoon to deposit a suit
c
ase, Julius put the prospectus of a well-known public school on the table between them.

“I want you to have a look at this, Laura,” he said. “I have made arrangements for Lance to go to Ashleigh in the Michaelmas term, and I thought we might run down there this afternoon and take a look at the place.”

It was a bolt out of the blue, and if it was meant to surprise her, it certainly had that effect. Of course, it was wonderful of Julius, utterly generous, but she wished that he had given them more time to consider it. She had no idea how Lance would react to the thought of a boarding school, and surely there would have to be some sort of interview.

“We’ve been lucky enough to be offered a vacancy,” Julius
said, as if he had guessed the reason for her hesitation. “Lance will go down and see the headmaster while we are away.”

“Will we be taking him with us this afternoon?” Laura asked, acutely aware of a sudden sense of loss when she thought of the coming months without her brother’s companionship.

“I don’t think Lance needs to be with us this afternoon,” Julius said. “You can mention Ashleigh to him, though, when we get back.”

Laura still had a lot to do, but she accepted the idea of the drive into the country eagerly enough because she had seen so little of Julius during the past few weeks. He had told her, laughingly, that he was putting his house in order, but she could see no appreciable difference in Harley Street and supposed that he had used it as a figure of speech, wondering shyly if he had many adjustments to make before their marriage and what would become of Holmes when they finally returned to London.

“Julius,” she asked as they drove across the Downs, “will you keep Holmes?”

He half turned from the wheel, appearing to bring his thoughts back from some distance to answer her.

“Holmes? Good gracious, yes! I would be utterly lost without Holmes in London.”

“I wondered what you felt about it,” she said. “I know he manages everything very well. I hope we can fit in together.”

“My dear Laura!” he smiled, “there’s no question of y
o
u and Holmes not fitting in. I can assure you that you're not in the least likely to get in each other’s way.”

She felt relieved and settled down to enjoy the remainder of the afternoon. The school was situated in wonderful parkland beside a river, a majestic Gothic building with a proud tradition stretching back for over four hundred years. Treading the quiet of its arched cloisters and looking out across the greenest grass she had ever seen toward the playing fields, Laura could only be aware of an overwhelming gratitude to the man walking by her side.

They strolled down the gradual slope to the river and stood under an ancient elm while the headmaster told them something of the school’s history, and then they returned for tea in his study.

“Do you think we acquitted ourselves well enough?” Julius asked with a quick flash of humor as they drove away. “It depends very much on that, I would say.”

“He knew who you were,” Laura pointed out. “I was hopelessly nervous, but you needn’t have been!”

He smiled, not answering, and she said rather wistfully, “It was the chapel that impressed me most, Julius. What a wonderful atmosphere to grow up in! No boy could fail to respond to it. I want to thank you for doing all this for Lance.”

He smiled down at her.

“Harley Street is hardly the place for a boy to run about,
”
he said briefly.

She tried not to feel slightly chilled, nor to imagine that Julius did not want Lance. The idea was too ridiculous when he was already doing so much.

“Golly!” Lance exclaimed when she broke the news to him. “Must I go, Laurie? I mean—I thought I would be with you.”

“It’s a wonderful chance,” she appealed, feeling a slight betrayal as she looked into his confused blue eyes. “You’ll love it once you’re there living among other boys of your own age, having so much to do and so many friends. It’s such a splendid education, too.”

“O.K.!” he agreed. “If that’s what you and Julius really want.”

“It was Julius who thought of it,” she explained, not quite knowing why she should have thought it necessary to make the explanation at all.

The next two days were so busy she scarcely had time to think about Ashleigh. Julius had made all the necessary arrangements with Holmes, and La
n
ce seemed to be quite enamored of the idea now.

Their wedding was to be a comparatively quiet one, but nothing would have kept the nursing staff at the hospital from sending every available representative along to the church. They came in their blue capes lined with scarlet, sitting in the back pews in a tight little phalanx that made her heart miss a beat as she walked down the aisle with a very proud and correct brother by her side. They seemed to be her final link with St. Clement’s, the last contact she might have with the hospital for a very long time.

Eventually, she supposed, she would return there on social occasions as Julius’s wife, but that, perhaps, would not be quite the same.

Anne and Gillian followed her down the aisle. She had found it too difficult to choose between them and had asked them both to be bridesmaids.

Julius, standing before the altar as he waited for her, looked very tall and distinguished in his faultless morning coat and dove-gray waistcoat, and she felt her heart caught up in a thrill of pride as he turned toward her. Then, with the most abrupt suddenness, the sun seemed to desert their part of the chancel and the church was cool and still and dark as they repeated their vows.

When they returned from the vestry, however, the sun had broken through the clouds and was shining again as brightly as ever. Laura put her hand on her husband’s arm, and Julius’s strong, fine fingers closed over it possessively.

The reception at one of London’s larger West End hotels was lavish yet appropriately discreet. Friends and colleagues clustered around to wish them well. Laura had no idea that Julius knew so many distinguished people, and he insisted on the reception being his responsibility. She ceased to argue with him after a while, aware that she could not have afforded anything like this present outlay.

When it was time for them to say goodbye, she clung to Lance rather foolishly. Her cheeks were flushed and her voice was not quite steady when she said, “You’re going to have a wonderful time with Holmes, and
I’ll write and tell you all about Scotland just as soon as I get there.”

“Be sure you do!” he said in an adult, offhand way which was meant to reassure her about his own happiness. “I’ll be waiting to hear what you think about it.”

Long afterwards Laura was to realize how little of the truth she was able to put into those first letters she wrote to him from Dunraven.

Julius arranged to take his car north with him by rail as far as Inverness and to motor the remainder of the distance from there. For the first time in her life Laura realized how comfortable it was to travel with every detail thought out for her beforehand. Julius was evidently quite well known on the particular train and the stewards in the dining car reserved them a table. Their luggage was stacked into their first class sleeping berth with brief efficiency and they were alone at last.

Laura took off her small, close-fitting traveling hat and tossed it into the rack above her head, running her fingers through her hair to free it.

“Well,” Julius said, “how does it feel?”

She gave him a small, shy smile.

“To be Mrs. Julius Behar? Give me time! It’s all very, very new yet.”

He said: “You’re quite different, Laura,” and for the first time she was remembering Helene, the girl who had been his wife for little more than a year. Had he taken Helene to Scotland, too, on a honeymoon trip just like this? It was nothing new for Julius to be sitting facing his bride of a few hours, seeing the wonder of love in her eyes and the shy confusion, but she wished that he hadn’t compared her with the dead Helene quite so obviously.

Then, determinedly, she thrust all thoughts of Helene out of her mind. They could not live in the past, neither she nor Julius. The present and the future were theirs.

“Tell me about Scotland,” she said as they sat over their coffee and cigarettes. “I’ve never been any farther north than Edinburgh. Are we completely in the wilds at Dunraven?”

“Wester Ross is remote,” he conceded, “but it depends what you mean by ‘the wilds.’ Coigach is isolated and we have no near neighbors, but that is as it should be.”

“Yes.” Suddenly her cheeks were burning under his straight, demanding look. “Do you own the house, Julius?”

“The house and the island it stands on, and several hundred acres of land on either side of the loch,” he told her. “It is a fair property and the loch itself is practically our own. There’s a small township farther inland—no more than a dozen cottages and a scattered croft or two—but the people there don’t concern us very much. We face the sea and the North Minch. The easiest access to these outlying promontories on the west coast of Scotland is by sea, but they are, of course, inadequately served. The larger townships have a bi-weekly steamer calling on its way to Stornoway in the Outer Hebrides, but Dunraven is too far north for that. In the winter it can be completely cut off. In the summer,” he assured her with a smile, “it can be an earthly paradise.”

“I’m longing to see it,” she told him, forcing back the vague sense of disquiet that suddenly assailed her at the thought of their complete isolation from the outside world. It was ridiculous to think of Dunraven as a prison.

The train thundered on, and at ten o’clock Julius rose and began to gather their hand luggage together. Immediately an attendant relieved him of everything but the pile of magazines he had bought for Laura at the station bookstall, and they walked steadily along the swaying train in his wake, past the blind doors of other sleepers, till they reached their own.

“I hope you will find everything all right, sir,” the man said. “If there’s anything else you wish—”

Julius dismissed him with a handsome tip.

“I thought the fellow was never going to leave us alone,” he said when the door finally closed on the uniformed back and they were alone together.