Harlequin Omnibus: Take Me with You, Choose What You Will, Meant for Each Other Read online

  TaheMe xvithYou

  "Mind your step with Lucas Morrion, young woman/' Auntie warned Leoni. 'The Lucas Morrions of this world don't make very safe companions for innocents at large."

  It was true that prior to her secretarial job in London Leoni had lived a sheltered orphanage life. She didn't know much about men — but she certainly thought she knew all about Lucas.

  However, one important bit of information was missing

  CHAPTER ONE

  "Very well, Leoni." The matron of the orphanage looked across her large, well-worn desk at her oldest—and, to tell the truth, her favorite charge. "I'm very willing to give you permission for this weekend visit, but it would not have oeen right to let you go without having a talk with you first"

  Leoni, whose wide blue eyes betrayed her suppressed excitement more clearly than she knew, smiled irrepress-ibly.But she answered quite sedately, "Thank you, matron-bo th for the talk and the permission."

  The matron's own shrewd gray eyes twinkled.

  "I daresay the permission seems more important than the talk," she said with dry kindUness. "But that's very natural. Now run along, and be sure you send Mrs. Vandeem a note this evening."

  "I will," Leoni promised, and made her exit in good order and with an air of what she believed to be dignified restraint.

  Once she was outside in the passage, however, and had carefully closed matron's door, she executed a httle solo dance of pure joy. For .though the talk had been sobering, the permission to accept the weekend invitation did, as matron herself had said, seem a lot more important at the moment.

  It was not only that she wanted so much to go to Julia Vandeem's eighteenth birthday party—at which, according to Julia herself, "all the most exciting things are going to happen." It was not even that kind Mrs. Vandeem had promised to provide Leoni with her first real evening dress for the occasion. No, the final thrill to Leoni was due to the

  fact that she was to stay for two whole days and three whole nights in a real house, to sleep in a beciroom instead of a dormitory for the first time in ner life, and to be one—well, almost one—of a family. And perhaps no one who has not lived, slept, eaten and played m a community without ever going into a house and knowing it for home, can quite gauge the thrill that possessed Leoni at this thought.

  This does not mean that the orphanage in which she had spent the eighteen years of her life was anything but a well-run and most humane institution. But inherent in every child is the desire—vague or defined—to belong somewhere. And in Leoni this desire had always been particularly acute.

  Even now—sitting at a desk in one of the deserted classrooms and idly sketching out the first sentences of her letter to Mrs. Vandeem—she could remember with a smile her first attempt to stake a claim of her own in the outside world.

  She had been nine at the time—half her life ago. Could one really remember a scene in detail for half one's life, Leoni wondered. Well, she certainly seemed able to relive the experience, even to remembering the sensation of the sun's heat on her back as she trotted down the driveway, the feel of the bars of the big gate as she clutched them and gazed out on the fascinatmg mystery of the world beyond them, and the extravagant thrill of excitement and pleasure with which she found herself studying the handsome young man at the wheel of a very magnificent car that was drawn up immediately in front of the gate.

  In point of fact, Leoni had no right whatever to be clinging to the bars of the orphanage gate, for that end of the driveway was strictly out of bounds. But already stirring in her small fair head was the notion that someone from the outside world might be persuaded to allow her to *' belong."

  The idea had been put into her head—and, if the truth be told, into the heads of a hundred other little girls in the orphanage—by the unprecedented good fortune of one Pamela Robinson.

  Pamela Robinson was the kind of little girl to whom Things Happened—even in an orphanage. She was a picture book-lookmg child with a placia yet appealing disposition. No one had been especially surprisea therefore—not even matron—when a well-known journalist who lived in the

  district, and who had visited the orphanage for the purpose of writing an article about it for one of the more expensive illustrated periodicals, took a great fancy to Pamela and asked if she might be allowed to have the child to tea.

  Permission was granted and the visit was a great success. It could hardly be otherwise, for Pamela behaved exactly as the popular journalist thought an orphan should behave, while the journalist herself, in her desire to behave as a benefactress should, surpassed the most extravagant expectations that any orphan could reasonably entertam.

  Pamela returned to the orphanage talking very confidently of "Auntie Carola" (tor such was the journalist's somewhat flowery reconstruction of her ordinary name, Caroline), and announced amidst envious "oohs" that she was going to tea with her newfound relative every fortnight in future.

  There was really nothing against this scheme, and Pamela was as deserving of the good fortune as anyone else. But the passion of desire for an '*auntie" (or even in some origmal cases, an '* uncle")» which immediately flamed up in the breasts of Pamela's companions threatened to create a major problem.

  The matron, who was a woman of both heart and imagination, frankly told Pamela's "Auntie Carola" how matters stood, and the two put their heads together. The result was that quite a number of "aunts"—and even a few "uncles"—had been found in the large country town where the orphanage was situated.

  Leoni had not been one of the fortunates thus "adopted," but in any case she intended—by what process she was not quite sure—to do her own choosing. Not for her the simple process of trotting beside any visitor and unblushingly saying, "Please take me with you," as those little girls with more firmness than finesse were apt to do. Leoni meant to have a very special and wonderful "adopter," and until that moment when she looked through the gate at the handsome boy in the car, she had certainly thought of the much-to-be-desired-relative in terms of an aunt. But as she gazed at the beautiful and shiny black car, with its picturesque—though bored-looking—driver, she knew at once that what she wanted was an uncle.

  He was entirely unconscious of her gaze—still less of the

  fact that her gaze was possessive. Only when she spoke—in a voice that was husky with excitement—did he turn his head. And then all she managed to get out was hello.

  He looked a good deal nonplussed for a moment. Then he said hello and looked away again.

  This, of course, was a major error on his part. If he wished to close the conversation, he should have looked away without saying hello. As it was, no tone in which he voiced the one reluctant word could take away from the fact that he had passed the conversational ball back to Leoni. And— snatching at the fleeting opportunity—she voiced her desire in the very words she had faintly despised in others. Pushing her face between the bars, and thereby imprinting an exceedingly dirty mark on either cheek, she said:

  "Please take me with you.'*

  There was another short pause. Then, to Leoni's rapture, the prospective uncle opened the door of the car and got out, displaying a gray flannel suit of a cut and expensiveness quite beyond her appreciation.

  He came up to the gate and looked down at her from his considerable height.

  "What is it you want? To know the time?*' he inquired, with all the ignorance of one who believes that this is the only question children ever ask.

  "The time? N-no.*' Leoni couldn *t imagine what the time had to do with it. "I know
the time—near enough, thank you. But will you be my uncle, please?**

  "No, I will not,'* the boy stated with emphasis. "Why on earth should I? I don *t even know your name. **

  "It's Leoni," Leoni hastened to inform him, in case that should be the only bar to the arrangement.

  "Is it?" he said without interest and turned away.

  But he reckoned without Leoni, who was not going to lose a perfectly good uncle so easily. Reaching through the bars of the gate, she grabbed a handful of gray flannel trousers, on which she left the imprint of a hand which had collected an astonishing amount of dirt from the bars of the gate.

  "Please don't go," she said, and something—perhaps it was the tug on his trouser leg, or perhaps it was the imploring note in her voice—arrested the young man and made him turn back to her.

  "Here, I don't know what you think I can do for you,'* he began. *'And stop tearing bits out of my trousers.*'

  "I didn't tear them," Leoni said. And then, "Oh!" as she saw what she had done. "I've made a little smudge on them, though."

  "Little smudge!" He inspected the damage with a frown that scared her. "I like that! You've put about half a pound of soot and rust on them."

  "Oh, dear! Will they-will they wash, do you think?" Leoni was overwhelmed by the magnitude of the disaster.

  "I shouldn't think ... "he began. Then he looked down at her worried face, and suddenly he smiled—in a rather roguish way that lit up his dark face—and unaccountably he altered the irritable remark into "—I shouldn't worry, if I were you. You're certainly a young lady who believes in making her mark. What did you say your name was?''

  "Le-Leoni."

  "And what's this uncle idea?" he wanted to know, his curiosity obviously aroused at last.

  "Just that—that I want you to be my uncle."

  "But I can't, you know. I'm not one of your family."

  "I only meant an asking-out-to-tea uncle," Leoni explained rather humbly. And then as he didn't seem to have grasped the idea fully even now, she added: ''Lots of people do It. Aunts and uncles. You only have to ask once a fortnight—or even once a month."

  "Do you mean someone takes you children out on a spree once a fortnight?" he inquired, amused and not a little scornful.

  "No—not on a spree. On a bus. Or else you just walk if it's near. It's just to go no-home somewhere and belong."

  She must have sounded rather near tears, Leoni supposed, as she recalled the scene with a smile. Small and fair and dirty and earnest, she must have seemed an odd little creature to the elegant, rather blase-looking teenager on the other side of the gate. She could imagine now that he must have been a good deal embarrassed and very much tempted to beat a retreat. But something fundamentally generous must have prompted his next action. Because, instead of turning away, he bent down to her, so that his attractive, smiling eyes were on a level with her own.

  "I'm sorry I can't be your uncle and take you home to

  tea,*' he said very gently. "But I don't live near here at all. I'm only on a visit, and most of my time I'm at.college. That's like a school for grown-up people, you know."

  "And would you be my uncle if you weren't at a grownup school?" Leoni wanted to know, because it was suddenly even more important that he should want to be her uncle than that he should actually be so.

  "Yes," he stated, gravely and categorically. "If I weren't at college, and if I had a home near here, I 'd be your uncle, and you should come home to tea with me once a fortnight,"

  Leoni was so much impressed by this magnificent gesture that for a moment she was bereft of speech. Instead she pushed her face through the bars again, with the unmistakable indication that she wished to kiss her would-be adopter.

  As she recalled his expression of extreme embarrassment, she laughed softly.

  But he must have been a nice youne man at heart, she thought. For, flushing slightly, he had bent forward and kissed her, a little awkwardly but very gently.

  Then he had straightened up and looked past her up the driveway and said, "You'd better run along now. I shouldn't think you're supposed to be here, are you? And someone's coming."

  As far as she could remember, she had not even bidden him goodbye, but made her escape into the bushes with all the speed and thoroughness of which she was capable.

  And that, thought Leoni rather whimsically, was the only time a man has kissed me—and the suggestion came from me!

  It was also the only attempt she made to obtain an adopter. Somehow the wonderful idea of an unspecified aunt or uncle no longer seemed as attractive as it once had. She knew who it was she wanted. Anyone else would only be in the nature of an unworthy substitute.

  But, as so often happens in this ironical world, when Leoni ceased to pursue the bright star of her desire, the bright star fell into her lap of its own accord.

  At eleven, she won a scnolarship to the big high school in the town—and won it with such distinction that even the governors of the orphanage congratulated her (with the

  dignity befitting a Board of Governors, of course) and wafted her on her way to her new life with everything necessary for the occasion. Everything strictly necessary, that is to say.

  At first the novelty of it all was almost equally a mixture of bliss and unhappiness. Leoni was entranced by a world peopled by girls who all had individual family lives and went home to their own houses every evening. But she was also more conscious than ever that '*nome" to her was only the orphanage where, if she was fed, cared for and disci-plined^at least as well as she would have been in most of the private families of the town, the hundred and one intimacies that made up the home life of her companions simply did not exist.

  It was no one's fault. It was simply a fact.

  And then she met Julia Vandeem. Or, rather, she became aware of Julia Vandeem, who contentedly occupied the bottom place in the class that Leoni topped almost without effort.

  Julia was by no means dense. As her own mother said, when her father viewed Julia's reports and made noises like a displeased parent, "The child isn't stupid—shQ']xsi doesn't happen to be good at book learning."

  Julia herself was even less worried about her class position than her mother was. Carefree and cheerful, she was much the richest child in the school.

  "I won't have to earn my own living," she confided to Leoni once, "so it seems silly to waste time learning a lot of things that are necessary to earn a living." But, except for that one remark, she never made any reference to her father's pleasantly prosperous position.

  She and Leoni became fast friends—and unexpectedly remained so through all the vicissitudes of school days. And Leoni was soon a not infrequent visitor at the Vandeems' big house on the hill overlooking the town.

  Mr. Vandeem was a wealthy business man, with all the right ideas of a good husband and father. That is to say, he spent as much time as possible making as much money as possible for his wife and children to spend. They, in return, regarded him with slightly tolerant affection and did their best to keep the ratio between makine and spending money at a satisfactory level for all concerned.

  J 6 Take Me With You

  Mrs. Vandeem, whose expressed belief was that "everybody should be happy in their own way,'* exercised practically no discipline of any sort over her son and daughter, and was not in the least surprised when—quite miraculously—they turned out likable young people instead of spoilt little toads. Julia would certainly have been difficult to spoil, being naturally generous and affectionate, but even Archie, who was nearly ten years older, had arrived at years of as much discretion as he was ever likely to possess without showing many signs of having had his own way all his life.

  The family just took Leoni in its stride. Archie teased her in a brotherly way, Mrs. Vandeem—in better chosen words than she knew—bade her "make herself at home," and Mr. Vandeem hardly noticed her during the first four years of their acquaintance.

  Then one day he said to his wife, "That's a nice and clever child that Julia b
rings home sometimes. Surprised she sees anything in Julia."

  "Nonsense, my dear. Julia is a very charming girl," insisted Julia's mother, with some truth. "And she doesn't need to be clever. She hasn't her own way to make, and she's sure to marry well. All the richest men seem to prefer stupid wives. Look at you."

  Mr. Vandeem looked at himself, and found he was such an excellent illustration of this striking theory that there was no more to be said on that subject. So he returned to his original remark.

  "Well, Leoni is both a nice and a clever child," he said. "And I suppose she has got her way to make."

  "Oh, yes. Of course. It's different for her," Mrs. Vandeem conceded. "In fact, by the time she's sixteen, I expect she will have to find a job and leave the orphanage. They can hardly be expected to maintain the children beyond that age, I suppose."

  "What will she do?" Mr. Vandeem inquired, being under the impression that all orphans went into domestic service, and being faintly perturoed at the thought of his daughter's little school friend in that role.

  "I think she wants an office job of some sort. Typing, you know, and that sort of thing," his wife explained.

  Mr. Vandeem did know, being an employer of several

  young women who did typing and that sort of thing. He immediately decided that, when the time came, Leoni should be offered a position in his firm, but refrained from saying so because he feared that his wife would promptly impart the fact to Leoni in such a form that it would appear quite unnecessary for her to acquire any training, and quite sufficient for her to rely solely on her acquaintance with her prospective employer for a permanent joD.

  In which belief Mr. Vandeem displayed his usual excellent penetration where his wife and her thought processes were concerned.

  So Leoni went on with her school career, unaware that the question of earning her living was to be simplified for her—and doubtless working all the better for that fact. But Mr. Vandeem took it upon himself to interview the matron and make representations to the Board of Governors, the result of which was that Leoni was allowed to continue her education and her stay at the orphanage a couple of years beyond the usual limit. And to Mr. Vandeem's credit, be it said, no one—least of all Leoni herself—knew who supplied the funds for this extension.