With All My Worldly Goods Page 5

  “Mr. Velnott to see me? Here! But he’s in the North of England. Oh, Martin!” For the next moment Martin himself had followed the servant into the room, without waiting for any further announcement.

  Almost before the door had closed again she had both her hands in his, and was greeting him in a manner not entirely in accordance with the upbringing of Aunt Sophie.

  “Lora, dear, I’m so relieved to see you.”

  She laughed a little then.

  “Relieved? That’s a funny word to use isn’t it? And, anyway, Martin, how did you get here? I thought your business was going to keep you in the north much longer than this.”

  “Yes, it is—or, rather, should—” Martin broke off and laughed too. “I have to go back in less than an hour, but I just managed to wangle a dash here because—”

  “Martin! Do you mean to say that you came all that way just for about an hour?”

  “Well—I was worried about you.” He smiled and tightened his grip on her hands. Which reminded her that she was still letting him hold them. “Don’t be cross,” he begged boyishly.

  “Cross! Why I could almost burst into tears this very minute because I’m so touched,” Leonora told him. And indeed her smile was not at all steady.

  “Poor little Lora. Come and sit down, and tell me all about everything.”

  Leonora allowed herself to be drawn down on to the settee, and although the “telling him about everything” did not amount to much more than a repetition of what she had already said in her letter, the relief of talking things over with Martin was exquisite.

  “I don’t specially like the sound of it all,” Martin said with a frown. “It really was an extraordinary idea of your father’s to put a complete stranger more or less in authority over you.”

  “I know.” Leonora sighed. “I still can’t imagine why he did it. It wasn’t much like daddy, as I remember him, to do such a thing.”

  “You don’t think—” Martin paused. “I don’t want to jump to conclusions—but you don’t thing this Mickleham fellow used any undue influence with him, do you?”

  “Oh no.” Leonora was surprised to find how positive she was. “There’s really nothing like that at all, Martin. I don’t like having to have a guardian—at least, I mean, a stranger for a guardian—but he is absolutely and entirely disinterested. Of that I’m certain.”

  “Are you?” Martin seemed more doubtful. “You don’t really know much about him, and it does seem such an odd business.”

  “I’m sure he’s perfectly trustworthy,” Leonora insisted, and for a moment she felt amused that Martin warned her against Bruce, just as Bruce had, in a sense, warned her against Martin.

  Actually, she realized, she was as willing to trust the one as the other.

  “Well, Lora, I don’t know quite what I expected to be able to do for you, dashing here like this,” Martin confessed with a smile. “But I felt I shouldn’t have an easy mind until I had seen you.”

  “And have you now?” Leonora returned his smile very warmly.

  “Not entirely. But I suppose if you say it’s all right, I must accept that.”

  “Really,” Leonora said earnestly, “there isn’t anything to worry about I’m well looked after, and if I do have an occasional scrap with my guardian—well, one can get over that.”

  Martin gave her a very affectionate look as he got up to go.

  “I’m very glad I came, anyway.”

  “Oh, Martin, so am I!”

  She came out into the hall with him, reluctant to see the last of him.

  “Good-bye, my dear. It won’t be long now before I’m back in London.” He seemed to sense her reluctance to be left, and to want to reassure her.

  “Yes, I know. And I’m so glad of it.”

  He took her hand.

  “And you’ll be pleased to see me back?”

  “You know I shall.”

  “Bless you. May I kiss you?” he asked as he had at the station that time.

  Leonora nodded and, bending his head, he kissed her very gravely. She returned the kiss equally gravely, and then stood at the door to wave to him.

  As he got into a taxi, she closed the front door with a sigh and turned back into the hall.

  It was then she saw her guardian was standing regarding her from the doorway of his study, his hands in his pockets.

  It gave her the oddest feeling of startled guilt, which was followed immediately by quick anger that he should look at her like that.

  “Do you want me for anything?” she said sharply.

  “Not exactly.” He seemed entirely unaffected by her tone. “I was just wondering—in my capacity of guardian, of course—whether you always kiss your young men friends so fervently.” And he turned and went back into his study.

  Scarlet with anger, Leonora followed him. She shut the door and leant against it, breathing rather quickly.

  “We had better have this quite straight now,” she said icily. “Martin is a very particular friend of mine.”

  “Quite so.” Bruce picked up a book and turned the pages casually. ‘That was really why I thought I had better mention it. In case you were thinking that you might perhaps marry him.”

  Leonora was so astounded that for a moment she could say nothing. Then anger gave her words.

  “And suppose I were? Could you have any possible objection?”

  “Oh yes.” He smiled a little at the page in front of him. “I don’t intend that this—Martin shall marry you.”

  “But you don’t even know him. What is your objection to him?”

  “As a person—nothing at all.”

  “Then do you mind telling me why you ‘don’t intend that he shall marry me’?”

  It was then, and only then, that her guardian looked up and smiled straight at her.

  “Because, Lora, I don’t intend that any one shall marry you but myself.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Leonora gave a gasp that was audible, and then stared incredulously at her guardian. In that moment her mind was emptied even of anger by the overwhelming astonishment.

  He didn’t move. He stood there, smiling—waiting apparently for her to recover from the first shock. Only his eyes seemed brilliantly, laughingly alive—the warm sparkle in them like a caress in itself, as he looked at her.

  “I don’t understand,” she said at last, rather helplessly.

  And then he moved. He was beside her, his arms round her, imprisoning her lightly but quite securely.

  “Why, you darling little fool, you didn’t think I’d let any one else have you, did you?” His voice was quiet but very tender, with an odd note in it that she had never heard in any man’s voice before.

  “But I thought—I thought—”

  “Yes?” His lips were against her hair, she knew. “You thought?—what did you think? Oh, your hair! your beautiful hair! It’s the most wonderful thing I ever saw.”

  “I thought—you didn’t like me much,” she got out at last.

  “Like you!”

  At the tone of his voice she looked up, but what she saw in his face made her drop her eyes again.

  “You’re quite right. I don’t like you. I never went through the liking stage with you. It was just this—madness from the moment you looked at me with those great, startled eyes of yours.”

  “But—do you mean that, even at Southampton, you—you—”

  “Fell in love with you? Yes.”

  “Then why were you so perfectly beastly to me?” Leonora demanded with sudden childish resentment

  “Was I?” He laughed softly.

  “Yes. You most certainly were. You made me utterly miserable.”

  “Forgive me,” he said. “I expect it was because I am a beast You will have to make something different of me.”

  “I? Oh, this is perfectly ridiculous!” Leonora moved suddenly in an attempt to get away, but, though he held her so gently, she could not escape. “Please let me go.” He shook his head—his smiling eyes o
n hers.

  “But what do you want me to do?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I don’t know.” But she colored then.

  “I see you do.” He held her with one arm and very gently took her chin in his other hand. “Is it so very difficult to kiss me?”

  “But—I don’t want to.”

  “Are you sure? It seemed so easy to kiss your Martin.”

  “I told you—he’s a special friend of mine,” she said desperately.

  “Well, I am a special friend.”

  “Oh no.”

  “Oh yes,” he mimicked her gently. “Lora, if you knew how much I wanted it, you would have pity for me and kiss me.”

  “But—” She stopped.

  “But what?”

  “If I do, you will think something I don’t want you to think.”

  “If you kiss me I shall not think at all. I shall only feel,” he told her.

  Leonora hesitated a moment, and then reached up and touched his cheek with her lips.

  She never forgot the fierce little laugh with which he caught her close.

  “Is that what you call a kiss? Give me your mouth, my darling. There’s so much for you to learn.”

  “No—”

  “Yes!”

  For a moment she saw his eager, laughing face above her as he bent her back lightly against his arm. And then suddenly everything was lost in the burning realization that his mouth was on hers—firm, inescapable, stopping breath and thought and almost life itself, so that she seemed to leave the earth behind and soar through golden light to the very gates of Paradise.

  “Oh no,” she heard herself say at last—she scarcely knew why—and she found she was lying limply in his arms, her breath escaping through her parted lips in little gasps.

  “Now do you know what I mean?” he said, and very softly he kissed her throat.

  Almost without her own volition, Leonora’s arm went up round his neck, so that she could draw his head down against her. He murmured something incoherent, and then was quite still. And as she held him close, she suddenly knew such peace after the storm that it was almost a concrete thing.

  She remembered his saying: “I have never loved anyone.” And she thought with a sort of terrified rapture: “Was it all really waiting there for me?”

  Nothing else seemed to matter. Her reason, her powers of logic, all seemed suspended. She knew that practical considerations must be forced upon them sometime, but for the moment they were in a world of their own. She had never suspected its existence—until he had forced their admission to it with a kiss.

  “Bruce,” she said softly at last, and then she realized that it was the first time she had ever used his name.

  He must have realized it too, because he gave a little contented laugh before he said: “What, my darling?”

  “Are we both quite crazy?”

  “Quite crazy,” he assured her.

  “Isn’t it a heavenly way of being crazy?”

  It was her turn to laugh a little then. And at that he lifted her right up off the ground and, carrying her across to a big chair by the window, he sat down and drew her on to his knee.

  She sat up rather straight for a minute, like a good prim little girl, and he watched her amusedly.

  “What is it, Lora?”

  She smiled at him—shyly, because she was beginning to see the whole incredible situation in a more normal light now, and it made her self-conscious and half-frightened.

  “I’m—just trying to get back to earth,” she confessed.

  “Why? Don’t you like what you’ve seen of heaven?” He put his hand against her cheek and turned her face so that she had to look at him.

  “Oh—Bruce!” she said suddenly, and dropped down against him, pressing her cheek against his shoulder. “What have you done to me?” She drew a little breath that was almost a sigh.

  “It is nothing that I have done. It’s yourself,” he told her tenderly, and dropped the lightest kiss on the side of her neck. “When will you marry me?”

  “I—I can’t. It’s absurd.”

  “Why is it absurd? Do you doubt that I love you?”

  “No, but—”

  “Don’t you love me?”

  “No. At least—”

  “How dare you.” He took hold of her in those strong, beautiful hands of his. “Shall I make you take that back?” He was laughing, but there was something dangerous in his eyes, too.

  “Oh no, please—please—”

  “Then take it back of your own accord.”

  “But I don’t know if I love you,” she cried with desperate truth. “How can I tell?”

  “I can tell you,” he said with a little arrogant lift of his head, and he put his hand over her heart. She could feel the light pressure of his fingers against her side, and in return, she knew, he must feel the wild thudding of her heart.

  “Look at me.”

  “No.”

  “Lora—please.”

  She raised her eyes reluctantly, and he smiled at her. Not his usual smile. Nothing compelling and arrogant about it, but tender and ineffably sweet. A smile that was entirely for her.

  “Your own heart is giving you your answer, beloved. It’s just that you’re a darling little coward, too, and you’re afraid of anything that has come upon you so suddenly.”

  Leonora hung her head a little and was silent.

  “Are you very much afraid, Lora?”

  She nodded.

  “You need not be. I will love you very tenderly.”

  “Will you?” she said in a whisper.

  “Yes. You’re afraid I shall hold you against your will, aren’t you?”

  She nodded again.

  “I promise not to. See—you can go now.” He took his arms away from her, so that a cold draught seemed to strike her. And it was in that one moment that she knew the answer to the feverish self-questioning.

  Without a word she flung herself against him and held him with something of his own passion.

  She heard him give a little laugh of happy triumph as he kissed her.

  “Are you mine now?” he whispered.

  “Yes.”

  “And you will marry me soon?”

  There was a long pause, and then Leonora heard herself say: “Yes, I will marry you whenever you say.”

  He held her very still after that for a long while. Then at last he said: “Suppose we go and tell Agatha, shall we?” And his voice was perfectly cool and natural again.

  “If you like.” Leonora got up at once. But, actually, people like Miss Mickleham still seemed just figures in a dream, so that she couldn’t feel it was of great importance whether she were told or not.

  They went into the lounge together, Bruce with his arm lightly round her. She was faintly put out when they found that Miss Mickleham was not alone, but Bruce was unperturbed by the presence of a visitor. He seemed to know her quite well, in any case.

  She was introduced as “Mrs. Dymster” and both Bruce and his sister called her “Millicent”.

  “This is Bruce’s little ward. I was telling you about her,” Miss Mickleham explained.

  “Oh yes.” Millicent Dymster didn’t seem very much interested. But then she didn’t seem specially interested in anything. She was obviously a good deal younger than Agatha. Not much more than thirty. Quiet, gentle, rather colorless, Leonora thought and was a little surprised at her being a friend of the Micklehams.

  But perhaps, of course, she had unsuspected depths. You couldn’t judge people in the first few minutes. Look what she had thought of Bruce at first! In any case, like Miss Mickleham, Millicent Dymster appeared just now altogether vague and unimportant.

  Leonora rather expected that Bruce would wait until they were alone again before he told his sister. But either he considered Millicent Dymster a friend of the family, or else he could not keep their news any longer.

  “I’m glad you came this afternoon, Millicent,” he said, “I know you’ll want
to be the first—with Agatha—to congratulate me on making my ward my fiancée.”

  “Bruce—it’s not true!” That was Miss Mickleham, while even her friend’s quiet brown eyes expressed the utmost astonishment.

  The utter surprise of these two brought home to Leonora more forcibly than ever how extraordinary the whole affair was. She felt for Bruce’s hand and held it tightly for reassurance.

  “My dear Lora—I’m really very pleased,” Miss Mickleham said, with obvious sincerity. “But I must say it seems most extraordinary.”

  “But why?” Her brother looked amused.

  “Well—there just hasn’t been any hint of it. I never imagined your even dreaming of marrying Lora.”

  “One doesn’t really imagine you as the marrying sort at all,” Millicent Dymster said with a smile. And then she added quickly: “But you’re not going to take the poor child out to Mexico?”

  “No, no,” Bruce assured her. “I am settled in England now and Lora with me.” He turned to Lora with a smile. “Millicent has lived out there and knows what it’s like.”

  “Yes, I lived there for five years when my husband was alive, and I wouldn’t wish any girl the same experience,” Millicent said earnestly.

  “Was that where you met Bruce? Leonora asked gently, thinking with quick sympathy that perhaps it was her Mexican experiences and her early widowhood that had made her so quiet and subdued.

  “Yes. Though I knew Agatha even before that.”

  “Oh, Millicent is a very old friend of the family,” Agatha explained. “It’s so nice for us to have her near us again. You will see a great deal of her, Lora dear.”

  Leonora expressed polite pleasure, and thought again that Millicent Dymster must certainly have more than her surface charm to account for such enthusiasm.

  It seemed she was staying to dinner, but evidently there was no question of standing on ceremony with her, because Agatha said:

  “But I expect you two want to go out and celebrate. So please go. Millicent and I have plenty to talk about—especially now.” And she laughed good-humoredly.

  Leonora went over to Bruce’s sister at that and kissed her very warmly. It seemed to her she had never liked Agatha Mickleham so much as at this moment. Certainly not every sister with an adored brother would have taken his engagement so calmly.