And Be Thy Love by Rose Burghley Read Free Book Online Page B

wine-list.
    De Bergerac looked at her quizzically over the top of his wineglass.
    “What is wrong?” he asked. “You look as if you are working out arithmetical problems in your head.”
    “I was,” she admitted. And then she added: “There is no real reason why you should bring me out to lunch to-day.”
    “No real reason at all,” he agreed, “except that I am finding it very pleasant!”
    His dark eyes were bland, velvety, amused and smiling. They made her feel a little odd every time she gazed right into them, as if the breath caught for an instant in her throat, or something interfered with one of her heartbeats. It was a sensation entirely new to her, but she hadn’t time to wonder about it, for there were other things to wonder about.
    The attention her escort received in this extremely select restaurant, and the smiles and bows that had been accorded to herself as soon as she entered it,’ were two of the most puzzling. For it wasn’t merely attentiveness, it was a kind of delighted subservience, and she felt certain that the smiles and bows were only accorded to her because she was with de Bergerac. Any other man—any other escort—might have earned her polite and meticulous attention to her needs, but not this overwhelming desire to please at all costs—even to grovel, if so she commanded—-which made her feel a little uncomfortable at times.
    Then de Bergerac himself, when she looked at him— his cufflinks, that looked as if they were made of platinum, and had a winking suggestion of diamonds about them. The watch on his wrist, neat but plainly extremely expensive, and his cigarette-case that had some sort of a crest engraved on it. She wished she could be presented with an opportunity to examine that crest, but didn’t like to ask for permission to do so. And the sheer restrained elegance and perfection of his clothes delighted and satisfied some hitherto unsuspected aesthetic quality within her.
    “Whatever it is you are worrying about,” he told her, when they arrived at the coffee and liqueur stage of the meal, and he insisted on her accepting a green chartreuse, “you are to forget it—for the time being, at least! And instead you will tell me something about yourself—the sort of things you do when you are at home in England. The way you live, the way you play! How is it that you know Marthe?”
    “She was employed by my mother’s family for a good many years. My mother was very fond of her.”
    “And she was devoted to your mother?”
    “Yes. But I’m afraid they couldn’t keep her when—
    when ---- “
    “When they alighted on evil times?”
    “Y-yes!” She looked at him in astonishment. “But how did you know?”
    “I didn’t. I merely guessed.” He smiled at her, that soft, almost caressing smile that was beginning to do rather more than cause her breath to catch in her throat, and which she knew she had started to watch for. “It was very simple.”
    “In what way was it simple?”
    He touched her hands, one of which was toying with the short stem of her liqueur glass.
    “These are so very delicate—almost flower-like! The whole of you is flower-like, as if it was intended you should be carefully cherished, but some miscalculation on the part of your parents— or some misfortune—made that impossible! Instead you have had to fend for yourself, and that is not right! Tell me, now, how long have you had to do this fending for yourself?”
    “Ever since my parents died.” A shadow crossed her face. “They were killed simultaneously in a car accident, just before I was due to leave school.”
    “And when you left school there was no money?”
    “No, I—I had to get a job at once. But luckily I had taken a commercial course, and I could type and do shorthand, and that sort of thing.”
    “And you found a job easily enough?”
    “Yes; with a firm of solicitors. I am with them now.” “That is good,” he said. His slim fingers carried his cigarette up to his