Read Online There Will Come A Stranger by Dorothy Rivers - Free Book Online

somewhere to sit, inevitably his eyes fell on Vivian, sitting by herself. Although the other voices drowned her words he saw the movement of her lips as she said, “Mr. Ainslie — ?”—saw, too, the summons in her eyes, and came to her at once, his own eyes questioning.
    Vivian said, “There ’ s something I would like to say to you—won ’ t you have your coffee here?” He smiled at her, and in his steady eyes she was relieved to see no coolness, no withdrawal, only friendliness and liking. Close on his heels Elise came with his coffee. When she had gone Vivian, in her usual direct fashion, same straight to the point.
    “I am afraid you must have thought me horribly ungrateful and ungracious for refusing to go with you to the Schweizerhof this evening—or rather, in the way I did it. Valerie said I was abrupt—and if she thought so, so must you! I ’ m sorry—you ’ ve been so kind to us! What can you have thought of me?”
    “Certainly not that you were abrupt! You didn ’ t want to come, and said so. That was all there was to it!”
    Anxious that he should understand, she said impulsively, “Last time I danced was with my husband. He was killed two years ago in a plane crash. So, you see ... ”
    There was a moment ’ s pause before he said, “I see ... I didn ’ t know. It must be very hard to pick up all the broken threads again.” He took care that his face should give no clue to his surprise that Vivian was a widow. That, of course, explained the sadness in her eyes.
    “It isn ’ t easy.” Suddenly she felt it would be best, now that she had this opening, to clear up the whole situation. “I had another reason for refusing to go out with you!” she told him. “I ’ m reluctant to impose on you. Afraid that you may feel—responsible is perhaps too strong a word, but something of that sort—because we came here on your recommendation, given with no idea that I would act on it. Yesterday you spoilt your day on our account—delaying going off, so that you might book an instructor for us, and then coming back to tell us that you ’ d done so! I ’ d hate to feel that you regarded me as—as a sort of clinging vine type, needing help at every turn ... Or that you thought Valerie and I wanted to ‘ tag on ’ to your party!”
    The laughter creases deepened at the corner s of his eyes as he replied, ‘ So that ’ s why you were so determined to display your independence! I must say a ‘ clinging vine ’ is quite the last description I ’ d apply to you. Nor did it occur to me that you might want to ‘ tag on ’ ! Quite the reverse! And as for yesterday—I helped for the same reason that I asked you to go with me to the dance: because I liked you. And now we ’ ve got that straightened out, let ’ s celebrate by having a liqueur!”
    Perhaps both felt that they had found a short cut into friendship, for they wasted no time in small-talk of trivialities, but at once slid into pleasant discussion of mutual interests, agreeing with enthusiasm over some points, joining in friendly argument over others. John drew Vivian on to tell of life as she had known it in America. Vivian discovered that he did not care for games; ski-ing and mountaineering were his passions. “And I enjoy fishing more than most things,” he told her. “In that I ’ m lucky—there ’ s a small river running by the bottom of my garden, so I can take a rod out any time when I have half an hour to spare instead of making a day ’ s business of it.”
    Each learned something of the other ’ s life. Vivian discovered that John ’ s mother had died when he was only ten, his father when he had barely left his teens, leaving him at twenty to carry on the family business, a small tweed mill in the Borders, and bring up Susan, who was then only thirteen, and another sister two years younger. Helped by the loyalty of older men whose fathers had been in the business before them, and at home by a wise, kindly housekeeper