Read Online Perchance to Marry by Celine Conway - Free Book Online Page B

she’d had cornflowers, delphinium and scabious on her breakfast tray; because her room was blue and white, no doubt.
    Lunch was eaten at the table in the courtyard, tea could be served wherever one wanted it, and dinner, a seven-course meal accompanied by wines, was always served in ceremonial fashion in the dining room which was pleasingly furnished in seventeenth-century Spanish provincial style.
    The sala, a long room which looked into the cloisters and was really rather grand, with its portraits and landscapes and inlaid tables and damask chairs, seemed to be used only in the evening, for cocktails before dinner and coffee after it. There was usually a guest or two for dinner.
    Sally found herself drawn quite smoothly into the set-up. After the first day or so she accepted felicitations with a calm smile. Marcus saw to it that she was not called upon to converse at length with any one person, and through his debonair and ever-present care Sally had surprisingly little to contend with. Privately she wondered if he trusted her, and almost decided that he didn’t.
    In the matter of Dona Inez, for instance. He had told Sally she would probably have to see the old senora alone, but after reflection had obviously concluded it might be dangerous. So every morning at ten-thirty he went with Sally into that large beautiful bedroom, and there he talked just enough to prevent Sally from talking at all, and fifteen minutes later he would insist that they had been long enough in the room. Dona Inez would protest and he would lift an eyebrow and say carelessly, “There’s plenty of time. We want you strong and well again before we start making plans.” His way of keeping a fiancée in view but managing to stay clear of consolidation was clever, of course. If that wily old woman his grandmother suspected anything, she was lulled by the sight of her own sparkling sapphire on Sally’s finger; Sally often saw that bright, piercing glance resting tranquilly on her left hand.
    Viola, Sally was both amused and chagrined to discover, delightedly accepted the engagement as a sequel to her own warm friendship with Marcus on the “Bellesta.” Had she been younger he would have chosen herself, but in the circumstances he had done the next best thing, and Viola was the last person to be jealous of her own daughter. After all, so long as between them they brought Marcus and his money into the family, what did it matter? He was experienced and charming, very considerate and overwhelmingly anxious to take care of their future; and what good luck that he felt Sally would suit him as a wife!
    “Just knowing that we have such a man to depend on has made my heart light as air,” she said, and added ingenuously, “I’m really most easily satisfied, you know. So long as I don’t have to worry about money and there’s a man in the family I’m the happiest person in the world.”
    Sally decided not to comment upon this. If her mother decided to remain on San Palos more or less indefinitely she would always have Marcus in the background. And already she had been down to Naval Town and looked over the possibilities of starting some small business which could be run on little capital and plenty of feminine charm. Since leaving England she had improved so much in health and outlook that Sally felt her own problems to be negligible. They had come to the Mediterranean for Viola’s sake, and for Viola’s sake Sally would endure anything. And there was one thing of which Sally was very certain; after the disastrous business in Barcelona this island of San Palos must seem very like heaven to her mother.
    Sally found it easy to be friendly with Dr. Carlos Suarez. He was the dedicated type and peculiarly suited to the rather unconventional ways of the island. It was on her fourth day, just after he had seen Dona Inez and pronounced her quite remarkably improved, that he paused in the courtyard to speak to Sally, who sat there with an unread book open on