Four Roads to Windrush Page 4

  "I suppose you could say I've done my fair share," he agreed. "How about you, Miss Carteret?"

  Lindsay felt that there was a touch of mockery in his tone, for he knew full well that she had spent all her life, apart from her terms at boarding-school, in the environs of Windrush, which now belonged to him.

  "I would love to travel—see more of the world than I've seen."

  "Perhaps you will," he said quietly.

  "Perhaps." And then all at once she seemed to see the tall, grave house in Kensington very clearly, and she asked before she could stop herself. "Was it very austere—that house where you lived as a boy?"

  "Very." The tea had been brought, and he watched her begin to pour out, after inquiring whether he took milk and sugar. She did it elegantly, he thought, and with a rather touching air of absorption. "It had very steep stairs, and a cellar where the cook threatened to put me sometimes if I became extra troublesome—"

  "But that was dreadful!" Lindsay exclaimed, and he was amazed because she actually looked shocked. "Where was your mother to allow such a thing?"

  "My mother wasn't living with us at that time," he answered in a very dry voice.

  "You mean—"

  "No, I don't mean that she suffered an early demise," in an even drier tone, "but she found the Kensington house even less to her taste than I did. My father was a very hard-headed business man, and his greatest pleasure was making money, but my mother was used to gaiety. She liked money, but only when it was poured into her lap, and not as a subject for daily discussion. So she decided she would have to cut adrift from us both."

  "You mean, she left you—you, her own child?"

  "She didn't have much choice. My father insisted on keeping me."

  "I see," she said, and suddenly she knew she was looking at him with entirely new eyes. No wonder he had grown up with such an absorption with business!

  "You must have been very lonely sometimes," she said. And in spite of the fact that he had so often upset and angered her with his hardness and lack of feeling, she felt a sudden rush of sympathy for him.

  "Not any lonelier than you must often have been yourself," he replied, a little curtly.

  She stared at him, her blue eyes wide, but just as she was thinking that a link might have been formed between them, he added mockingly:

  "Don't let the thought of my childhood upset you, and as to my mother's preference for other things—well, I don't think that ever upset me! But it did teach me that there are some things—and some people—that are rather like oil and water. And it's no use expecting oil and water to mix, is it?"

  He called for their bill, settled it, and then stood up. As they went out of the door he said to Lindsay in an entirely different voice:

  "By the way, I've a friend coming up from London tomorrow who may wish to stay for a few days. Elise has fixed her up with a room, because a cancellation took place just in time."

  "Oh, really?" As they re-entered the car she looked at him for further information.

  "It's a Mrs. Larne. We've known each other for several years, and I'd like you to make her as comfortable as possible. See to it that nothing's lacking from her room, and put a few flowers into it, will you? The gardener will let you have anything you want."

  "Of course," Lindsay murmured, but she managed to keep a certain amount of astonishment out of her voice, and as they drove back to the hotel he did not see her glance at him thoughtfully more than once.

  She thought: A married woman!… Or is she a widow? And she must be a very special friend if he wants flowers put in her room!

  Monday night was the night of the Opening-of-the-Season Dance and Aunt Grace spent the entire afternoon carefully pressing an evening gown of pearl-coloured silk, with which she intended to wear an exquisite petunia stole.

  Lindsay, not on duty, had been given permission to attend the dance.

  "And a good thing, too," Dane had said, when she told him "Otherwise I would have bearded that employer of yours in his den and demanded that he release you for the evening."

  Lindsay remembering his words, smiled to herself as she snatched a few moments to attend to her dress. Made of apple green chiffon, it swirled and drifted softly. Her shoes were a matching green and her only ornament would be a pair of gold ear-rings like tiny stars.

  She would not make a vivid picture she knew, but she was dressing to please one man only and if he was pleased that was all she wanted…

  Mrs. Larne arrived during the afternoon, while Lindsay was on duty in the office. She was not at all sure what she had expected a close woman friend of her employer's to look like, but Mrs Larne was in any case a revelation to her. She had always thought her Aunt Grace an extremely elegant woman, but Alison Larne was more than elegant. She was, Lindsay thought, little short of perfect. Somewhere between thirty and forty, she had large, dark eyes, an attractive, low-pitched voice and an infinitely attractive smile.

  When Lindsay took her up to her room she looked about it for a moment in a pleased fashion, and then tossing her mink stole on to the bed went up to the flowers on the dressing-table and touched them lightly, approvingly.

  "Freesias," she observed. "How I love their scent! And that cushion of violets on the writing-table! Whose thought was that?"

  "Mr. Summers asked me to see to the flowers in here," Lindsay explained.

  "And you arranged them?"

  "Yes."

  The smiling eyes commended the arrangement.

  "But it was Philip's thought?—dear Philip!" she exclaimed.

  Lindsay left her opening her case, on top of which was something dusky and peach-coloured, probably a negligee, and as she went downstairs she thought that the new arrival and Aunt Grace would have a lot in common, except that Mrs. Larne possessed what Aunt Grace did not—charm.

  Lindsay skipped dinner that night in order to devote as much time as she could to her appearance. She took her bath early, and lingered for a full half-hour in the warm, scented water. She made up and did her hair carefully and last of all put on her dress. When she was finally ready she knew that there was nothing wrong with her appearance. Aunt Grace, still in a housecoat and coming in to borrow some face tissues, paused to admire her openly.

  "My dear, you do the Carteret family credit," she told her. "But why are you ready so early? The dance doesn't start until half-past nine, does it?"

  "No, but there are one or two things I must see to in the office before I feel absolutely free to enjoy myself."

  Aunt Grace's eyebrows rose disapprovingly. "Office! How I hate the sound of that word. It's as though you're harnessed to something that never permits you any real freedom, and so long as you show willing that man Summers will use you! I suppose you realise that he hasn't any ordinary human feeling, and to him you're just a machine."

  "Oh, I don't know about that." Just for an instant Lindsay heard again Mrs. Larne's soft voice, while she looked at her violets, exclaiming huskily, 'Dear Philip!' and she knew that she, at least, did not share Aunt Grace's opinion. "He was still busy in his own room when I came upstairs."

  "Oh. well—" Aunt Grace shrugged—"you must have it your own way, but remember there's no reason why you should go on working here indefinitely. And don't forget that Dane Temsen's staying on here an extra week in order to be near you!—Oh, yes, he is!" as Lindsay flushed revealingly. "I like him enormously, and I don't think he approves of your working so hard. In fact, I know he doesn't. So bear it in mind that a girl like you doesn't have to wear herself to a shadow in order to please an exacting employer, and that there is such a thing as marriage!"

  Lindsay's colour flamed.

  "But, Dane hasn't—Dane doesn't…" Her voice trailed off.

  "We're just good friends—he's absorbed with the thought of getting back to his work as soon as he can—"

  "Very likely." But Miss Carteret's voice was very smooth and Lindsay, feeling acutely uncomfortable, hurried out of the flat.

  Downstairs in the office she removed th
e cover from her typewriter and started hastily to type a letter which ought to have caught the evening's post. But she had barely finished the opening paragraph when the door was pushed open and her employer appeared. She looked up at him vaguely, one half of her mind still on her work the other half registering how very distinguished he looked in evening dress, and how well cast to be the owner of an hotel like the Windrush.

  "What are you doing here?" he almost snapped at her. "Aren't you supposed to be off duty? "

  "Yes, but—"

  "There can't be any buts if you've finished work for the day."

  "I have, but there were these two letters I wanted to finish—"

  "Then you can leave them, and don't let me find you back in here until tomorrow morning!" As she rose from her chair he moved forward himself to thrust the cover back on to her typewriter, and then he stood regarding her in a mildly interested way. Her green dress drifted about her like vapour and her hair looked like floss silk Her eyes were very darkly blue—perhaps because her rush to get through all her preparation had tired her a little already—and they held a gleam of uncertainty.

  "Your friend, Dr. Temsen—or is it Mr. Temsen?—is waiting for you," he told her, with a kind of cool amusement in his voice, "and I don't think he'll like it if he has to wait for you much longer. The look in his eye when I saw him five minutes ago boded no good for me if I didn't liberate you soon. And people are already dancing in the ballroom, so don't hang about here any longer. Be off with you!"

  "If you're quite sure ?" she was beginning. "I don't want Elise to have to do more than she has to, so…" And then a wave of perfume reached them even before the door was pushed wider, and a slender figure in a gleaming gold caftan, with satin-smooth curls of black hair piled high on her shapely head, stood smiling in upon them.

  "So there you are, Philip!" exclaimed Mrs. Lame. "I thought you told me you were doing no more work tonight! And yet here you are amongst all the paraphernalia of an office, and with Miss Carteret, too—looking as if she's dying to dance!"

  "I'm just going," Lindsay said, and slipped past her quickly before her employer could say another word to her. As she went she heard Alison Larne laugh softly. It was a most pleasing laugh, with an undercurrent of genuine amusement, but Lindsay was not at all sure that she liked it. She was not at all sure that she liked Mrs. Larne.

  The rest of the evening Lindsay found quite perfect. She had hardly reached the ballroom door before Dane claimed her, and, as he had said he would do, he insisted on dancing every dance with her. He was an effortless dancer and the floor was as smooth as glass. Gradually her earlier tiredness fled away from her and her eyes began to glow like blue jewels, while her face became softly flushed with a mounting excitement.

  Dane held her closely, and whenever she glanced up his eyes were watching her, and they told her things that caused her to miss her step for a moment, and that strange feeling of excitement grew. She had never felt like this before—as if something breathtaking and wonderful was waiting just around the corner…

  Only once during the evening did she find herself forced to dance with someone else, and that was when she was approached by Philip Summers himself, and he gave her no opportunity to refuse him. Dane had been called away to answer a telephone call from London, so she was temporarily alone, and Philip said with a curious, blunt note in his voice:

  "Don't you think it would look well if you bestowed just one favour elsewhere before the evening is over?"

  Before she properly realised it they were expertly circling the floor, and if he had been any other man but the man he was she knew she would have enjoyed that dance.

  But, as it was, she sensed a reproof in his 'just one favour elsewhere ', and realised that he thought it would have looked better if, as a member of the hotel staff, she had refrained from monopolising one of the most personable male guests all evening, and had herself accepted a few invitations to dance from other men present.

  But once Dane returned and she and he were together again she forgot her employer's criticism—if it had been a criticism!—and found herself looking at him anxiously, because it struck her that he was suddenly rather serious.

  "Is everything all right?" she asked. "Your telephone call ? "

  "Perfectly all right," he assured her, but his smile was a little mechanical. "Would you like me to get you a drink?" he asked.

  "No, thank you."

  "Then let's get out of here."

  He took her by the arm and led her into the conservatory, heavy with the scent of hot-house flowers, and putting her into one of the, wicker chairs, he sat down beside her, a frown creasing his forehead.

  "There is something wrong, isn't there?" she said anxiously.

  "Not exactly wrong, but I've got to leave here earlier than I thought. In fact, I'm afraid I'll have to leave tomorrow!"

  "Oh!" Lindsay exclaimed, and the solitary word gave away all her shocked disappointment.

  He turned to her and taking both her hands in his, gripped them fiercely. "My lovely little Lindsay, I love you so much…"

  He caught her into his arms and she made not the slightest attempt to resist him, but lifted her face to his, her eyes alight with happiness.

  "Lindsay, my sweet !"

  They clung together, and Lindsay felt as if her bones literally melted into water at the touch of, this one man's lips and the feel of his arms that held her as if they had hungered for her from the very instant they met.

  "Darling! You do love me, don't you?"

  "Do you—love me?" There was a quiver in her voice as she replied. "Really?"

  "I don't merely love you, I think that the whole affair of my illness was planned in order that I should meet you!… Oh, little love, hasn't it struck you that the moment I arrived here we both knew what had happened to us? I knew—and I believe you did, too! You let me kiss you that first night we went out together—"

  "I wanted you to go on kissing me!" she told him, while his lips lingered against her temples and against the soft gold of her hair.

  At last he said hoarsely:

  "And I've got to leave you tomorrow! How am I going to do so? "

  "Must you?" Her hands were locked at the back of his neck, and she looked up at him imploringly as if she couldn't believe that separation actually threatened them. "You're not really well yet— you ought to have that other week—"

  "But I can't, darling." He put her gently away from him. "Oh, don't you think I'd stay if I could? I've been counting upon those extra days, and we could have had such a wonderful time together— now that at last we know we belong. And we do belong, sweetheart. You must never doubt that. And one of these days I'll take you away from this job I loathe to see you in—"

  "It's quite a pleasant job, really," she assured him, just a little flatly. "And I wouldn't want another job away from Windrush."

  "But Windrush is no longer your home," he reminded her. "And there are other jobs. You might even get one in London!"

  "I'd feel very strange in London," she told him, looking down at her hands-He caught them and held them closely.

  "But, darling, you'd be near me! We could see each other often…"

  She stole a look at him, and her heart contracted.

  "But you'll be coming back, won't you?" she begged, leaning towards him. "You'll come back for a weekend or something? And perhaps later on I'll think about getting a job in London."

  "My precious!" He caught her to him. "Lindsay, it's not fair that we should have to part like this, but I've got to go back and take up the threads of my life again… I'm quite fit now— thanks largely to you, for you've proved the most wonderful tonic any man could have—and I can't shirk things any longer. In my job you can't afford to sit back and let other men come to the front. You've got to go on striving if you want to get to the top eventually."

  "But, surely," she interrupted softly, "you've already got somewhere? "

  "Not as far as I mean to go—not as far as Sir Adrian Benedi
ct, for instance, who has been my boss, my friend, and my particular guiding star ever since I started out into surgery."

  "Sir Adrian Benedict?" she echoed. "I seem to have read something about him lately… Hasn't he a daughter?"

  He looked at her quickly.

  "Yes."

  "A very beautiful daughter? She came out last year. The newspapers were full of her coming-out dance, and she always seemed to be getting into the news… Yes; I remember now."

  Dane shrugged his shoulders.

  "Mary is quite pretty, but I wouldn't call her beautiful. And, in any case, she's nothing to do with us." He put his fingers under her chin and lifted it. "Darling, you're the only woman I consider beautiful, and you're not merely beautiful, you're utterly enchanting! And the thought of leaving you tomorrow is almost more than I can bear! But one day—" His arms strained her to him, and he said no more.

  "One day?" she prompted, gently, feeling the violent thudding of his heart against hers.

  "One day we'll be together always—that much I promise!" he told her, and although his voice was husky there was a note like dedication in it.

  They thought they heard someone moving away down at the far end of the conservatory, but when no-one manifested themselves he stood up, drawing her with him. She was so small and slight in his arms…

  At last she drew away.

  "I must go now," she said. "It won't do if I disappear altogether on the night of an hotel dance, and in any case I think we ought to go back to the ballroom." She looked up at him. "But you will get in touch with me after you've left tomorrow? You'll—you'll write to me sometimes… ?"

  "I'll telephone you tomorrow night," he promised her. "And if I can manage to live through the following day without you I'll telephone you the next night—and the next!"

  "That would be too extravagant," she told him, laughing just a little. "A letter will content me."

  "Then you shall have as many letters as I can find time to write."

  She sighed and rested her golden head against his shoulder.

  "It will be something to—live for!" she said.

  CHAPTER THREE