For Ever and Ever Page 9

  “I am not!” She was indignant immediately. “I did see you kiss her.”

  “I think not.” Mr. Pembridge looked bored. “Possibly you saw her kiss me. But, then, Renee has known me a long time and, like most artists, is rather expansive with her friends.”

  The distinction of meaning between kissing and being kissed was intriguing, and Leonie would have liked to take it up with him. But something about the Senior Surgeon suggested that the discussion had gone far enough, and suddenly she felt that she had made heavy weather of something which should have been dismissed lightly.

  “Well,” she said, trying to retrieve the situation with a careless smile, “at least it’s clear that we must not inquire too much into each other’s affairs.”

  “Perhaps you are right,” Mr. Pembridge agreed. Then he sketched her a mortifying casual half salute and went away on his own affairs, leaving her to the profitless—but, alas, very human—reflection that she would have handled the situation quite differently if only she might have had the opportunity to play the scene over again.

  It was stupid, she told herself now, to have shown annoyance when he teased her over that silly scene with Kingsley Stour. The only possible result would be that he attached more, rather than leas, importance to the scene in consequence.

  And then that rude retort about Renee Armand must have given him the impression that she was interested in his affairs. An idea which she certainly did not wish him to have.

  Vexed with herself, and rather out of humor with a day which had brought more than its share of shocks and anxieties, Leonie finally went to her cabin. And later, when she lay in bed, rocking gently to the movement of the boat, she tried to think clearly and constructively about Nicholas Edmonds’ half-cynical suggestion that she should test Kingsley Stour’s sincerity towards Claire by the very simple process of dazzling him a little on her own account.

  Her first tentative attempts had certainly been productive. And, partly because she felt furious with him still over the shabby trick he had tried to play her, partly because it seemed almost the only way in which she might show Claire her danger, Leonie decided that she might—she just might—play the masquerade out to its final, perhaps bitter, conclusion.

  The next day, and for two more days after that, they sailed through the magic waters of the eastern Mediterranean, where nothing seemed entirely real, and even Nicholas Edmonds surrendered a little to the romantic, exotic atmosphere.

  “There is nothing else quite like it,” he owned to Leonie. “I suppose the Greeks had a word for it themselves, but there is no way of really describing its languorous, insidious charm. One just has to experience it oneself. Tomorrow we shall be at Port Said, I suppose, and heaven knows there’s enough clear-cut reality about that. But today there is some sort of magic in the air. The feeling that almost anything could happen.”

  In the evening, too, there was magic, and the Mediterranean Ball which was held that night was something much more glamorous than any of the usual dances held so far. For one thing, in obedience to the Captain’s order—and the hot winds that were already blowing from the Red Sea—the uniformed personnel had gone into white, which imparted a festive air to them.

  “We must wear our most glamorous dresses tonight,” Claire declared happily beforehand. “I have a gorgeous white-and-gold-tulle affair. How about you?”

  It seemed that Leonie, too, had provided for such an occasion. Or, rather—as she reminded herself with a faint sensation of inadequacy—Sir James had. Her flower-printed nylon dress, with its immense ruffed skirt, had stood up wonderfully to packing and only needed a little attention in one of the superbly equipped ironing-rooms which were at the disposal of passengers.

  “You look lovely, darling,” Claire declared, with affectionate sincerity, as the girls inspected each other’s finery before going up to the ballroom. “I’m sure we’re both going to have fun tonight! And, oh, Leonie, I’m so glad that you and Kingsley are friends again.”

  “I’m glad, too, if that’s how you want it,” Leonie said, smiling. “But does it really matter so much?”

  “It’s always nice to have one’s friends get on together,” asserted Claire naively. “And I simply couldn’t bear the idea that you actually—actually distrusted him. Nor could he, you know. He was really upset about it, and most genuinely relieved when everything was smoothed out again.”

  “I’m sure he was,” Leonie said, and she tried not to make that sound ironical.

  “He really does like you a lot,” Claire insisted happily. “You wouldn’t believe how often he mentions you or asks me about you.”

  “And what,” inquired Leonie curiously, “do you tell him?”

  “Oh, well”—Claire laughed and colored a little, but she tossed her head a trifle defiantly, too—”as you know, I was determined that he—that everyone—should think we were old friends. So I just let him suppose that you and I were at the same finishing school together.”

  “As a matter of interest—and just in case I have to substantiate this—where?” inquired Leonie.

  “Paris. I suppose you know Paris,” added Claire, to whom it was evidently inconceivable that one should not know Paris.

  “I spent ten days there a couple of years ago. I’ll do what I can on the strength of that,” Leonie promised with humor. “But do go on. What else have you said about me?”

  “Leonie, you don’t mind my doing this, do you?” Claire looked anxious.

  “In the circumstances, no,” said Leonie a little drily.

  “It isn’t so much a question of saying things as implying them,” Claire explained engagingly. “I have not referred much to your family, because a family is always a bit complicating. I just implied that you were immensely rich in your own right.”

  “Why immensely rich?” Leonie wanted to know, a good deal intrigued now by the character of the pretence. “Wouldn’t rather wealthy have done?”

  “Oh—I don’t know. I think the other sounds nicer, don’t you?” Claire looked pleased with her own powers of invention.

  “Much nicer,” Leonie agreed with a laugh. “It would sound nicest of all if it were true.”

  “Well, I thought it would explain the fact that you are travelling on your own like this, with no strings to your plans or yourself.”

  “It explains everything,” Leonie agreed, suddenly feeling gay and reckless and infinitely amused by the situation. “Suppose we go up to the ballroom now, and I promise to do my best to play the part of the girl who was born with a golden spoon in her mouth.

  Claire seemed almost as pleased as Leonie at this. Which was a shame, Leonie supposed. But then, if it were all for Claire’s own good in the end ...

  Leonie tried not to think of the fact that some very unfortunate things had been done in history, all for someone else’s good.

  When they arrived in the ballroom they found it had been transformed, in the space of an hour or two. Masses of flowers, kept in cold storage until now, shed their beauty and fragrance everywhere, and flags and balloons added to the festive appearance of the place.

  Already the band was playing a romantic-sounding waltz, and, since the doors on to the promenade deck had been thrown open, couples were dancing not only on the circular ballroom floor but along the deck as well.

  Overhead, a deep blue velvety sky, pierced by a million stars, seemed to hang low, like a great stage drapery, while the ship itself cut an almost theatrical path of light through the lazily undulating waters. Sound and sight and the soft caress of the warm night air all combined to create that atmosphere of half-languid loveliness which heralds the first contact with the East.

  It was impossible not to be affected by all this, or not to feel that, in some strange way, make-believe was more logical than cold fact on such a night. When Kingsley Stour claimed Leonie for a dance, therefore—which he did quite early in the evening—she was completely in the mood to pretend to herself, or anyone else, that her identity was that of the girl Cla
ire had so effectively implied.

  Afterwards she was never quite sure whether cool calculation or mischievous impulse prompted her imagination to its amusing flights. All she did know was that the setting was perfect and that it was heady and exciting fun, transforming her somewhat humdrum office and home routine into a luxurious, slightly fairytale background, for the benefit—or otherwise—of Kingsley Stour.

  He was intrigued, she could see, and he smiled at her with the utmost interest and attraction as he said,

  “You never told me so much about yourself before.”

  “You mean that I’m talking too much about myself now?” She too smiled.

  “Of course not! One can’t ever have too much of a fascinating subject,” he replied, lightly but with some meaning. “Tell me some more. Where do you live in London? In a flat on your own?”

  “No. I live with my mother and sister,” said Leonie, feeling there was something to be said for introducing an element of accuracy occasionally.

  “And your father?”

  “My father is dead. And as I have no brothers, it’s a purely feminine household. Does that sound dull?”

  “Not in the least. I was wondering a little why your mother and sister didn’t come with you on this trip. Wouldn’t they have enjoyed it too?”

  “They had other plans,” Leonie explained carelessly. “Besides, although we get on marvellously together, we rather believe in living our own lives, you know.”

  She felt faintly ashamed when she thought how surprised—and probably displeased—her mother would have been to hear this conversation. But to her companion it evidently sounded very good.

  “How very sensible of you all,” he said. “And, though I dare not make comparisons when I remember that you carry a torch for Sir James Elstone, you must admit that family life is a great deal more comfortable if the members decide not to interfere with each other too much.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. It’s different for Claire.” Leonie permitted herself to look pensive. “She is his one chick, and it’s natural for a father to want to look after his daughter’s interests. I’m sure mine would have, if he had been alive.”

  Silence greeted this, and she wondered very much if he were congratulating himself privately on the fact that there was indeed no father to interfere with any plans in this case.

  “I don’t really want to let you go,” he said, as the music began to slow down. “But will you dance again with me later in the evening?”

  “If I’m free.” She smiled carelessly at him.

  “Make yourself free, Leonie. Please.” He still held one of her hands in his. “I have a feeling that you and I are only just beginning to get to know each other.”

  “Perhaps you’re right,” murmured Leonie.

  And then he went away to dance with Claire, and Leonie found the Senior Surgeon bowing a little ironically before her, with the request that she would dance the next dance with him.

  “I really meant to—to rest for a minute or two,” she assured him hastily.

  “Then will you come and sit it out with me?” There was no objection to make to that. Besides, he invariably stimulated and interested her, however much he might make her feel that, in some way, she was still the pro who needed a touch of authority to keep her from doing the things she should not do.

  They found a couple of chairs in a sheltered part of the deck. And as they sat down, Leonie said—though she could not imagine why—

  “Do you still think of me as a pro?”

  “Certainly not.” He sounded genuinely surprised. “Do you feel like one?”

  “When you’re around—yes, I do rather,” Leonie confessed.

  “I’m sorry. You’re not meant to. When I think of you in hospital terms at all, I remember you as a very capable second-year nurse,” he assured her.

  “Oh—I didn’t feel like that when you rescued me from the hotel in Naples the other day,” she said soberly.

  He laughed at that.

  “These things can happen even to a fully qualified Sister,” he told her indulgently.

  “But never to a Senior Surgeon.”

  “Senior Surgeons are there to save the situation when it becomes desperate,” he assured her.

  It was Leonie’s turn to laugh then.

  “I never was more frantically glad to see anyone,” she confessed. “And I don’t think I ever really thanked you sufficiently. Claire told me afterwards that you simply refused to let them sail without me, and insisted on going for me yourself, because you knew they couldn’t sail without the Senior Surgeon. Was that right?”

  “It was not reduced to the terms of an ultimatum. Even Senior Surgeons don’t do that, you know. But I had no intention of having you left behind,” he said calmly.

  “Ha-hadn’t you?” Leonie experienced the most extraordinary sensation of warmth and gratification. “Why, Mr. Pembridge?”

  “Why? Did you want to be left behind?”

  “No, of course not. But I mean—why did you feel it was your affair to see that I was brought back?”

  “Oh”—he looked faintly surprised, as though he had never thought that out for himself—”I suppose the fact that you were once one of my nurses at St. Catherine’s made you in some way my responsibility.”

  She was astonished to find how pleasing it was to be the responsibility of Mr. Pembridge of St. Catherine’s. And, with a rush of nostalgia for the place which gave her this unexpected claim, she exclaimed,

  “I did love my days there!”

  “So did I,” he said, with unexpected simplicity. “I get quite homesick for it sometimes.”

  “Mr. Pembridge,” she burst out, on impulse, “why did you leave there? And the other hospitals where you were a consultant? And—and everything which made you a distinguished surgeon—Or don’t you want to talk about it?” she added, with belated discretion, as she remembered that she had not meant to indicate any special interest in his affairs.

  “I don’t mind talking about it to you,” he said slowly, and again she had that sense of warmth and gratification which she could not quite explain to herself. “You were a nurse. You know the life of a hospital and an operating theatre, and you will appreciate better than most people why I felt the way I did.” He paused, and Leonie held her breath suddenly, aware, though she could not have said why, that the wing of drama brushed them at that moment.

  “I don’t know whether you knew, but I was engaged to a very lovely girl when I was at St. Catherine’s.” He spoke, she thought, like a man who was looking at something he had deliberately put away out of sight for a long time. “A few months before we were to be married she was taken violently ill. She was rushed to hospital—my hospital—with a ruptured appendix. But it was too late. She died on the operating table.”

  “On the—But you were not—?”

  “No. I didn’t do the operation. But she died in my theatre.” He looked grey and bleak and drawn suddenly. “I’m not a fanciful man, but I couldn’t bear the very look of the place afterwards. I stayed on for a few weeks. Then Trevant—you remember Sir James Trevant—?”

  “Of course,” said Leonie, recalling the very handsome Senior Surgical Officer of St. Catherine’s.

  “Trevant suggested I should take a few months off and go away on a sea voyage. I couldn’t face the idea of idleness. I felt I needed more work, rather than less. So I joined the Capricorna as acting surgeon. As I think I told you, I’ve been here for a year now. And perhaps” —he passed a hand wearily over his face—”that’s long enough.”

  “I’m so terribly sorry.” Leonie spoke gently and from her heart. “I had no idea, of course, that you’d had such a dreadful experience. If I had, I—I shouldn’t have said that silly thing I did, the other evening.”

  “What was that?” He smiled slightly.

  “If you’ve forgotten it, I don’t know that I want to remind you,” Leonie smiled slightly in her turn. “But I meant that—that rather inquisitive bit of bantering a
bout you and Renee Armand.”

  “Oh—that?” He laughed then, and she though he must be beginning to feel better. “You don’t need to worry about that. Anyway, I’d rather invited it, hadn’t I?”

  “Perhaps you had,” said Leonie, also beginning to recover. “But, anyway, as you said at the time, I expect she is lavish with her kisses. She seems a very charming and vivacious person.”

  “Oh, she is. And I’m genuinely fond of her,” declared Mr. Pembridge without affectation. “But of course the only person who interests her seriously is Nicholas Edmonds.”

  “You don’t say!” Leonie was intrigued and astonished beyond measure. “But I thought—I mean they’ve been married once, haven’t they? He told me he was married to her for a year.”

  “Of course. And although they have temperamental clashes of the most harrowing variety, I’m inclined to think they are still deeply fond of each other. They would never live a peaceful life together. But then I’m not sure that they would ever live a happy one apart.”

  “Then you think they might—make it up?” Leonie’s sense of romantic fitness made her eyes sparkle.

  “Stranger things have happened on long sea voyages,” was Mr. Pembridge’s dry reply.

  And then, as the music slowed for the second time since they had been sitting there, Leonie said perhaps they had better return to the ballroom.

  He rose at once and gave her his hand, and, as they strolled along the deck together, she retained those strong, thin fingers few a moment, while she said, quickly and a little breathlessly,

  “Thank you for telling me about your fiancée. I wish one could say something helpful. But I know there isn’t anything, when it goes as deep as that.”