Love is for Ever Read Online Free Page B

having received her when she arrived.
    “But you will understand that it was one of the senora’s bad days, and I could not very well leave her,” she explained. “But I am quite sure Dominic deputized for me very well. He saw to it that you were made comfortable, and had everything you required?”
    “Oh, yes, thank you,” Jacqueline assured her, and out of the corner of her eye she saw Dominic come into the room, wearing a beautifully cut white shell jacket and cummerbund, which made him look almost startlingly handsome; and as he sent a look across at her where she stood talking with his aunt she saw a sudden, faint flash of interest appear in his dark face. “But I do hope the Senora Cortina is not—is not very unwell?” she added. “If so, perhaps it was a little inconvenient that I should arrive today?”
    “It was not in the least inconvenient,” Aunt Lola reassured her with emphasis, laying a gentle white hand on her arm. “And tomorrow, if her strength has returned to her, our grandmother will be delighted to have you sit with her for a while, and get to know
    you.”
    She had to pass on because the dinner guests had arrived, and there was a great deal of anxious enquiry about the head of the household. The large room was bathed in pleasantly diffused golden light, which picked out the beauties in choice rugs and elegant pieces of furniture, and every corner of it seemed massed with flowers, so that the general effect was most pleasing. Jacqueline sat down on a damask-covered settee and waited to be introduced to her fellow guests, and as she did so Dominic came across to her, the urbane and polished host, and asked whether she would like something to drink.
    “No, thank you,” she answered, and barely looked at him.
    "Not even a very small glass of sherry?”
    "No, thank you very much.”
    One of his dark eyebrows lifted a little, and his mouth twisted in what she was later to discover was a typical smile of his—a little crooked, only barely amused, rather cool and aloof.
    “Nevertheless, after a day devoted largely to travelling, I think a little something is necessary,” he said, and left her and returned with a glass of sherry in his hand, which he set down on a little occasional table at her elbow.
    Jacqueline ignored it. She looked up at him with an accusing expression in her wide grey eyes.
    "Why didn’t you tell me that your grandmother was really ill today?” she asked, on a note of reproof. Dominic looked mildly surprised.
    “Perhaps because she so often has these bad days, and we are used to them,” he explained. “Not,” he added, with unmistakable seriousness, “that they do not distress us. We are always very much distressed when her strength appears likely to fail her, and with each attack nowadays an additional weakness is left behind. But, considering that you were a visitor from England, I don't think I really thought—”
    “That it was any concern of mine?” quietly.
    Again his eyebrow lifted.
    "I am quite certain that that aspect of the matter did not strike me. But there was very little point in distressing you, too.”
    “You are very considerate, senor.”
    He smiled rather oddly, and took the vacant place beside her.
    “I am half English,” he reminded her—“the paternal half at that! —so don’t you think you could look upon me as a fellow
    countryman?”
    “You don’t strike me as being—very English,” she told him.
    "No?” This time, as he offered her a cigarette which she refused, and then selected one himself from his monogrammed thin gold case, and lighted it, there was no doubt about his amusement. It even flickered in his eyes for a moment as the flame of his lighter lit up his face. “And you, if you will permit me to say so, strike me as being extremely English—in spite of those blue-black shadows in your hair which might so easily belong to one of our Spanish women!”
    She peeped at him under her long eyelashes and she thought it was