Romance Classics (128 page)

She stepped out on deck into a blaze of sunlight that hit her almost like a blow in the face. She shaded her eyes with her hands, and looked eagerly at the sprawling city that seemed to reach right down to the dock. Beyond were the mountains, lifting bright against a cloudless blue sky, and grouped on the docks were laborers unloading such cargo as the Caribbean Queen carried. They were dark of skin, laughing, shouting, as gay and blithe as the lovely morning.

Groups of shore-going passengers went by, chattering, and now and then someone paused to say goodbye to Kristen and to repeat how much he had enjoyed her dancing, before going ashore.

Kristen turned as Leon spoke behind her.

“Have you seen Marisa?” he asked urgently.

Kristen turned. “Why, no, I haven’t. If she’s gone ashore, she didn’t stop to say goodbye, and I’m sure she would have.”

“Oh, I know she hasn’t gone ashore,” Leon cut in. “She said last night that she wanted me to meet her father, who was coming to meet her. She wouldn’t leave wihout saying goodbye to me, I’m sure.”

“I’m sure she wouldn’t either.”

Casey came hurrying to them, his brows drawn together.

“Look, you two, we’re all supposed to wait in the lounge until the hotel manager gets here and clears us for going ashore. I’ve managed to get all the boys out of bed and into their clothes, and they’ve had breakfast. Kristen, how about routing Sherry out for me? We’re
all
supposed to be together in a bunch. Seems there are certain formalities that have to be taken care of, since we are here to work, not just for fun.”

Leon scanned the deck, where a few groups were idling, and then looked down once more at the dock, before he turned reluctantly and followed Casey back to the lounge. As Kristen reached the door of her cabin, it opened and Sherry came out, looking fresh and pretty in a thin white sharkskin dress. But her blue eyes were sleepy.

“This getting up at the crack o’ day is for the birds,” she growled.

Kristen laughed. “It’s after nine o’clock.”

“So? I still say it’s for the birds,” Sherry said crossly.

“Well, tomorrow morning I’ll slip out of the room as quiet as a mouse and you can sleep until tea time if you like,” Kristen promised her.

“I’ve never seen a gal who could stay up as late and get up as early and be as full of bounce as you are.” Sherry led the way into the lounge, where a rather glum-looking band waited. “Hi, fellows, you look the way I feel,” she greeted them, and dropped into a chair.

Casey scanned them resentfully.

“For Pete’s sake,” he raged, “do you want this guy to think he’s hired a bunch of zombies to play at his joint? Try to look a little alive, will you?”

“We’re musicians, not actors,” growled the first sax. “How
come we’re supposed to look all bright-eyed and fun, fun, fun at this ungodly hour?”

“We’re not opening until tomorrow night,” Casey told them sternly. “You can all go straight to bed the minute you get to the hotel and sleep the clock around if you like.”

“Oh, no, we can’t!” the first sax protested. “Himself here will want to rehearse for the next twenty-four hours.” He threw Leon a hostile glance.

“Oh, we needn’t rehearse until tomorrow,” Leon said carelessly. “We’ll all need to get the feel of the place. Acoustics and the like.”

“Oh, of course,” said someone in the band, his tone dripping with sarcasm. “It would be too much to expect that a multi-million dollar project could possibly be built satisfactorily, unless you personally approved.”

“Fellows!” snapped Casey, and there was the crack of a whip in his tone. “You’re behaving like babies. Belmont will be here any minute. And if he hears you wrangling like this, he’ll probably cancel the whole contract. Now, knock it off, will you?”

A moment later a plump, well-fed looking man in his mid-forties, wearing a pale gray suit of some sort of raw silk, came hurrying in, mopping at his brow with a fine linen handkerchief, looking swiftly about the group.

“Mr. Hodges?” he asked, and Casey came forward, smiling as they shook hands. “I’m Belmont. Sorry I was a bit late, but the traffic—”

“It’s quite all right, Mr. Belmont,” Casey assured him. “I’d like you to meet the gang. This is Miss Dillard, our dance star, and her partner, Leon Westerman; and Sherry Malone, who sings with the band; and there are the fellows.”

He introduced each one by name, and Mr. Belmont was pleasant and friendly.

“I’ve been hearing very nice things about your troupe, Mr. Hodges,” he said when the introductions had been finished. “Miss Newman cabled her father that we were lucky to get such a group for our opening. And last night when her father and I came down to meet her, she was very enthusiastic. She talked about you all the way back home; she was especially impressed with Mr. Westerman’s dancing.”

Leon said sharply, “Miss Newman has already gone ashore?”

Mr. Belmont looked at him curiously, as though wondering whether he had any right to ask such a question.

“Why, yes,” he answered. “The Queen docked at two o’clock, and Mr. Newman and I were waiting. He was very anxious to see her, and saw no reason to wait until this morning to take her home.”

Kristen saw the slight tightening of Leon’s jaw as he turned away.

Later, when they all trooped ashore, there were cars waiting for them, and Kristen lost herself in eager absorption of the colorful, noisy scene that lay before them as the cars wound their way through the narrow streets and on to the hotel.

They were all suitably impressed by the very handsome glass-brick-chromium building, but secretly Kristen felt it was out of place in this ancient city. However, she supposed it was what the sort of tourists who had travelled on the Caribbean Queen would expect.

She and Sherry were assigned a room together, overlooking the side drive, and there was a glimpse of the bay, toward which the hotel faced.

Their luggage was brought in by a pleasant, middle-aged, very dark-skinned porter, who gestured toward one of the huge closets and told Kristen that an air-freight package for her had arrived a few days before, and its contents had been unpacked and hung in the closet.

When the door had closed behind him, Kristen went to the closet and looked. Hung neatly in transparent garment bags were the gowns from Nina’s, and Sherry’s eyes widened as she saw them.

“Hi, you went all out, didn’t you?” she gasped.

“Leon ordered them. I wouldn’t be surprised if he designed them, would you?” Kristen mocked, touching with delicate fingers an airy thing of turquoise lace that looked as if it begged to be released from its transparent container.

“I hate you!” Sherry said grimly. “You’re going to make me look like the ashman’s daughter.”

“Well, you know Leon,” said Kristen dryly.

“Oh, sure, I know Leon! The question is—do
you?
”

“I know him as well as I need to know him, since I’m only working with him.”

“He sure gave the Newman gal a whirl aboard ship,
didn’t he?” mused Sherry, brows slightly furrowed. “Of course it was only because her old man owns the joint.”

Kristen turned swiftly.

“Do you think it was only that?” she asked.

Sherry gave her a startled, hostile glance.

“What else could it be?” she snapped. “You surely don’t think a guy like Lee could fall for that baby-faced kid?”

“Don’t you?” Kristen countered, somehow not wanting to believe that Leon could make a play for a girl just to further his ambition.

“Ha!” Sherry’s ejaculation was one of contempt. “When Lee falls, it will be for someone sleek and sophisticated and who knows her way around; somebody in show business, because what else does the big, handsome lug know? It sure won’t be for a kid just out of finishing school.”

“Well, of course you know him much better than I do,” answered Kristen. “I’m going for a walk,” she decided suddenly.

“A walk!” Sherry gasped. “In this heat? Are you out of your mind?”

“I want to get over my sea legs and turn them into land legs before we start rehearsing, and I want to see what the place looks like.”

“You’ll bake your brains—if any! That sun has authority, pal!”

Kristen laughed and caught up a hat as she went out of the room.

The lobby was thronged with a luncheon crowd, and there were some people at the desk, registering, picking up mail, getting directions for sight-seeing trips. The hotel was already doing a thriving business.

She put on her hat as she stepped out into the brilliant flood of sunshine, and looked about her. The town lay just beyond the hotel entrance; a town that seemed to her old and fascinating and delightfully exotic. She resisted the eager solicitations of a couple of lounging taxi drivers, whose language she could not understand, but whose eager gestures toward their rickety vehicles she could not mistake.

She was so absorbed in the colorful, gay scene about her that she scarcely realized it when she stepped off the narrow curb into the street. Strong arms shot out and caught her just as a small car hurtled around a corner and plunged directly at her.

“What the devil are you trying to do, kill yourself?” snapped a man’s angry voice as she was jerked back to safety with only inches to spare. “We can’t have that, you know. Tourists are our most cherished industry—can’t have them flinging themselves under cars and the like.”

She was badly shaken by her near-escape, and she looked up at the man whose arms had jerked her back to the narrow sidewalk.

“I’m sorry,” she stammered. “It was idiotic of me. I wasn’t watching where I was going.”

“I’m sorry I yelled at you,” said the man, and beneath the edge of a very neatly trimmed small mustache, he was smiling at her. “It was just that it was such a near thing. You looked as if you’d deliberately stepped in front of that car.”

“That’s ridiculous! I didn’t even
see
the car!” she protested.

“Of course not; I realize that now,” said the man. She decided that he was a very attractive man, tall, rather sparely built, with a deeply bronzed face and a tiny mustache.

“Are you all right now?” he asked.

“Oh, yes, I’m fine,” she replied, and brushed at her thin white dress. “I was watching the people and just sort of wandering along.”

“Come along out of this. It’s Planter’s Day, and the mob will increase with every hour,” he said, tucking her hand through his arm. “We’ll go around the corner and have some coffee.”

He insisted, and marched her to the corner and along it to a sidewalk café that faced the big park in the centre of town.

As they settled themselves at a small table and a waiter hurried to serve them, Kristen looked across to the tall white marble statue that dominated the park. All around it, the streets were crowded with traffic, with gaily costumed
Martinquais
, with children running and screaming at their play. But the white statue stood serenely, gazing out over the scene, surrounded by a graceful iron fence, shaded by stately palms.

When her host had given their order, he turned to her and followed the direction of her eyes.

“Even carved in marble, she’s beautiful, isn’t she?” he said lightly.

“Who is she?” asked Kristen curiously.

“The Empress Josephine,” he answered.

Wide-eyed, Kristen asked, “Napoleon’s Josephine?”

“Of course. Didn’t you know she was the daughter of one of Martinique’s oldest families, and was born at
Trois Ilets?
The stone shell of her family’s sugar plantation is a favorite tourist spot on sight-seeing trips,” he explained.

“I guess I don’t know much about Martinique,” she admitted. “This is the first time I’ve ever been out of the United States!”

“Then you must give me the pleasure of showing you about and, at the risk of boring you, relating some of the history of the island,” he said pleasantly.

“That’s very nice of you, but I’m afraid I’m going to be pretty busy,” she answered. And as she saw that he took that as a rebuff, she added hastily, “You see, we open at the Riviera tomorrow night, and the man I’m dancing with demands a lot of rehearsals.”

Her host’s eyebrows went up.

“Oh, then you must be Kristen Dillard,” he said. “Marisa seemed much taken with you.”

“Oh, do you know Marisa?” she asked.

“I’m not so sure that I do nowadays, although I am her father.” He laughed. “I’m George Newman. Forgive me for not introducing myself sooner.”

Kristen felt the color rise in her cheeks beneath the warmth of his dark eyes, the smile that touched his thin lips beneath his trim mustache. He was very attractive, and it seemed absurd that he could be the father of a nineteen-year-old girl!

As she came into the lobby of the hotel, Leon came to meet her, obviously in a bad mood.

“Where have you been?” he demanded.

Kristen eyed him coolly.

“Since I wasn’t supposed to rehearse, I went for a walk,” she told him.

“I was afraid you’d get lost.”

“Oh, no, I had a marvelous time,” she assured him pleasantly. “Mr. Newman took me to lunch and told me something of Martinique’s history. It’s a fascinating place.”

“Mr. Newman?” Leon cut in sharply. “George Newman? How did you happen to scrape an acquaintance with him?”

Kristen’s eyes blazed.

“I resent that,” she snapped.

“Do you now?” He seemed quite undisturbed by her flash of anger. “Then how did you meet him?”

“Well, he sort of yanked me out of the street just before one of those little foreign cars nearly ran me down,” she confessed.

“I see,” Leon said dryly. “And how were you careless enough to let a foreign car nearly run you down?”

“Well, it’s Planter’s Day, you know.”

“No, I
don’t
know. What’s Planter’s Day, and what has it got to do with your being careless?”

“Well, Planter’s Day is market day. It’s every Monday, and the farmers and the merchants all get together and have a bang-up get-together,” she answered, her voice sharp. “The town is jam-packed. The street I was on was very narrow, and I didn’t see the car because I was busy watching the people. You should see the town. It’s the most exciting place I’ve ever seen.”