For Ever and Ever (13 page)

“Leonie, what’s the matter with you?” He leaned forward and caught both her hands in his, turning her so that she had to look at him. “I haven’t done anything to deserve that! I’m sorry if that ass Pembridge chose to throw his weight about and be puritanical, and if you like I’ll go and knock his head back for him—”

“Oh, no. I don’t think so,” put in Leonie coldly.

“But, in any case,” Kingsley Stour went on, disregarding the sceptical interruption, “he’s of less than no importance to us, surely. Maybe I did choose the wrong setting in which to make love to you, but you can’t expect a man who feels as I do to be too precise about that.”

“And how do you feel—exactly?” inquired Leonie, looking him straight in the eye.

“You
know
how I feel about you,” he retorted’ unabashed, and with such a look of reproachful surprise that she was shaken.

But after a moment she collected herself and said quietly,

“Mr. Stour, I sometimes think you must have forgotten the things that were said in our earlier conversations.”

“Our earlier conversations?”

“Yes. When we first came on board. When I told you that I was worried on Claire’s behalf, and you assured me that you loved her and wanted only her good. Have you really forgotten? It’s very recent history, you know, to be so conveniently ignored.”

He looked taken aback then. To tell the truth, he looked as though he truly had forgotten all that, and was astounded to have to face it again and realize that it had actually happened. Either, Leonie thought, he was doing this extraordinarily well, or else, in some perverse way, his affections really had been captured at last by the one girl who was proof against his wooing.

“I know it seems improbable,” he muttered, passing his hand over his hair in a perplexed gesture. “Sometimes I wonder myself what’s hit me. But—I can’t tell you how—all that’s so completely and utterly past that it’s as though it never happened.”

“Not,” Leonie said coldly, “to Claire.”

He stirred uneasily.

“I’m desperately sorry about that. But she’ll get over it. She’s got everything and everyone in the world to choose from.”

“But she came on this voyage because she chose you,” Leonie pointed out.

“I can’t help it,” he said, almost violently. “People change—they can’t say how or when—and when they do—”

“Mr. Stour”—Leonie spoke slowly and clearly, determined that for once this philanderer should look his own conduct in the face—”a fortnight ago you described yourself as in love with Claire.”

“But it’s over,” he insisted. “It’s irretrievably past. Stop throwing up the past at me. It’s you I love and want to marry!—and you know it.”

She was silent for a moment. In the strangest and most illogical way, she was almost sorry for him. For she was certain that for once he spoke from his heart, and that, by a cruel stroke of irony, he was indeed in love—as far as he could be—with someone who had played him on his own line.

“Are you willing to tell Claire that?” she asked at last.

“Tell Claire?” He was aghast. “Why—why, no. There’s no need to be as brutal as that, surely.”

“Then how do you expect her to find out the new state of affairs?”

He was terribly reluctant to face the unpleasant consequences of his action, she saw, and guessed that he usually contrived to ignore them.

“Well, she’ll—gradually realize that things have changed. There was nothing absolutely settled between us, you remember. I was planning to stay in Australia, but she was not at all sure that she was going to do the same. By the time we reach the end of the voyage she will—understand.”

No longer did Leonie feel sorry for him—illogically or otherwise.

“Have you thought,” she inquired deliberately, “what stages of heartbreak she will have had to go through before she reaches final realization?”

“But, Leonie, that’s life. We all have our moments of heartbreak,” he declared. “Claire’s a darling, but that father of hers is quite right. We aren’t meant for each other.”

“Perhaps that is true,” Leonie agreed, with a touch of grim humor, lost on her companion.

“Whereas you and I—” He caught her hand again.

“No”—she drew her hand away—”it’s too early to decide.”

“Too early! My God, how cold and deliberate you are!” He gazed at her with a sort of angry, hungry eagerness. “Don’t you
care
that I love you?”

“I care about Claire—who is my friend—and how she is going to be told that you no longer love her,” Leonie said. “I am certainly not going to have you making love to me until that is settled.”

“I tell you, these things settle themselves,” he insisted sulkily.

“Well, that isn’t the way this is going to be worked out,” she retorted crisply. “If you are not going to tell her—I shall.”

“
You
will?”

Leonie nodded and, passingly, she wished she could show half the resolution with Mr. Pembridge that she seemed able to display towards Kingsley Stour.

“But how?” he asked uneasily.

“Frankly, as between two people who trust each other. Are you willing to support my story if she comes to you for confirmation, as she is bound to do?”

“I still think it’s quite unnecessary—” he began.

“It’s the only basis on which I’m willing to—to plan the future,” Leonie said.

“Do you know you haven’t even admitted that you love me?” he countered.

“I can’t,” Leonie said, “until you’re free. And, in my view, you’re not free, so far as Claire is concerned. You’re morally committed to her.”

“Very well.” He brushed the question of moral commitment aside hastily. “If those are your terms, I’m not going to quarrel with them. I don’t think you know what trouble you’re stirring up, or how easily most of it could be avoided. But if you insist on telling Claire before you’ll even tell me you love me, I’ve nothing more to say.”

“Good.” She got up with perhaps too much decision for a girl who was supposed to be in love—however troubledly.

“Don’t I even get a kiss?” He stood up too.

But she had a superstitious feeling that Mr. Pembridge would rise out of the deck beside her if she allowed Kingsley Stour to kiss her. And so she shook her head.

“Later—later,” she said, almost impatiently. And then she left him, almost running along the deck, in her eagerness to leave one unpleasant scene behind and get another one over.

She had not really expected to find Claire in their suite. But, to her surprise, she was sitting there, curled up in one of the armchairs and looking pale and sorry for herself.

“Hello—what’s the matter?” Leonie asked, running a quick, professional glance over her. “You look rather under the weather.”

“I’m all right,” Claire said. But, when pressed for details, she admitted to having felt sick earlier in the evening, and to a sharp, though intermittent pain both that day and the previous day.

“Would you like me to get Mr. Pembridge to come and see you?” Leonie, feeling suddenly anxious, decided that she had not been keeping a sufficiently watchful eye on her charge.

But Claire shook her head. And then, just as Leonie was deciding that this was not the moment for painful revelations, Claire gave her the ideal opening by asking curiously,

“What were you and Kingsley discussing so earnestly, a quarter of an hour ago?”

“Oh, you saw us, did you?” Leonie felt suddenly cold and taut, now that she knew the moment was upon her.

“Yes. But you seemed so deeply occupied with each other that I really didn’t like to interrupt.” Claire laughed slightly, but as though she had not found the situation altogether to her liking. ,

“Well,” Leonie said slowly, “since you ask me, perhaps this is as good a time as any to tell you.”

“Tell me—what?” Claire looked wide-eyed and startled, and Leonie wished passionately that there were some way of making her see the truth without too much pain.

“Claire, you’ve never talked to me very frankly about Kingsley. But—you’re pretty fond of him, aren’t you?”

“You know I am!”

“Dear—there’s no possible way of saying this to you without hurting you—but he doesn’t mean to marry you, you know.”

“Indeed he does! As soon as we can make my father see things our way.” Claire’s pale cheeks flushed angrily. “Kingsley and I know each other a great deal better than you ever supposed. We—we knew each other when we came on board.”

Claire brought out this final statement with a mixture of anxiety and bravado.

“I know,” Leonie said with a sigh.

“You
know
?” Claire was plainly taken aback.

“But, in Kingsley’s own words, that’s irretrievably past now. He doesn’t want to marry you any more, Claire. He wants to marry me—because he thinks I, too, am a very wealthy girl, but, unlike you, I haven’t got a father who will prove difficult.”

“I don’t believe it!” Claire sprang to her feet, and for a moment she stood staring at Leonie, almost as though she would strike her.

“I’m sorry, dear. There’s no easy way of saying these things. But it’s absolutely true.
That
was what we were talking about when you saw us on deck.”

“I don’t believe it,” said Claire again. And before Leonie could stop her, she wrenched opened the stateroom door and went running along the corridor and up the stairs, presumably in search of Kingsley Stour.

Leonie, suddenly feeling drained and exhausted, dropped down into the chair which Claire had vacated.

She had hated every minute of that interview, but she would willingly have prolonged it rather than have Claire receive the final disillusioning blow at Kingsley Stour’s hands. Try as she would, she could not feel anything but a brute to have set such a train of events in motion.

She reminded herself that she had had proof after proof of Kingsley Stour’s worthlessness and his unscrupulous designs. She tried to imagine the sort of life from which Claire had really been rescued. But nothing could alter the fact that her sweet, disarming, affectionate companion was being dealt a cruel blow, and that she herself was responsible.

For a long time Leonie sat there, feeling unutterably dispirited, and longing nostalgically for her distant home, where, it seemed to her now, no emotional complications ever occurred.

Then at last she heard light, familiar footsteps returning, and she braced herself for the entry of a shattered Claire.

But although the door opened, and Claire stepped into the room, there was nothing shattered about her. She looked puzzled and angry, but her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were bright. And what she said was—

“Leonie, why did you tell me that wicked story? I’ve been talking to Kingsley and I told him all about it. He says there isn’t a word of truth in it.”