The Runaway Bride Read online

  CHAPTER TWO

  BEING alone in a place like Brighton, Samantha discovered, could be fraught with dangers, because it gave quite the wrong impression if she ventured out alone, even for a perfectly innocent walk. She had already been eyed by at least a couple of dozen hopeful males in as many minutes, and there was another group of noisy youths coming in her direction now. And yet there was an atmosphere about it all that appealed to her present rebellious mood although it was quite alien to her usual taste. She looked at some of the bigger, more opulent hotels on the front, and wondered if there might be room for her in one of them. If she was going to stay, she might as well stay on in style. One hotel in particular caught her eye, and she approached the desk clerk with a hopeful smile. It was a woman clerk, but she was prepared to be helpful, and said there was a single room available, owing to a booking being cancelled. Samantha paid a deposit on the room and promised to move in her things right away. Thanking the woman, she stepped jauntily down the hotel steps on to the crowded promenade again. She would fetch her case, and have her lunch in her new hotel. Her present accommodation provided only bed and breakfast. She had gone only a few steps along the pavement 24 t when a hand slid under her elbow suddenly and she found herself brought to a halt. Momentarily ' panic-stricken at being actually accosted, she almost sighed her relief when she saw Barney, but quickly changed her fear to a frown and withdrew her arm from his hold. -'I might have known it was you,' she told him. 'Disappointed?' he asked, and she gave him a i long, discouraging look from the corners of her eyes. ' 'All right,' he laughed, 'don't look at me like that. You're lucky it was me with all these roving eyes about. Or is that the idea? To get picked up? If it was, darling, you should wear a funny hat with "kiss me quick" or something just as inviting on the front 'of it.' 'Oh, you would think that!' 'You're going out of your way to make me think it,' he retorted. 'I think you'd better come and have lunch with me,' he added hastily, 'before you say something you'll be sorry for.' He grasped her arm firmly and urged her along the crowded promenade, but Samantha shook herself free again. 'I'm not having lunch with you,' she told him, determinedly awkward. 'I'm lunching at ' She stopped herself in time from giving away her new address, and hastily lowered her eyes. Barney looked at her for a moment in silence, and she wondered just what he was thinking. 'You haven't wasted much time, have you?' he said quietly. So that was what he thought. That she had made 25 a date to have lunch with someone she had met this morning. He really was thinking the worst of her, it seemed, so he could hardly blame her if she tried to live up to his opinion. She stuck her chin in the air and tossed back her red-gold hair from her face. 'It doesn't take long,' she told him. 'Apparently not.' Could she have imagined the hint of jealousy she detected in his voice? Surely she must have done, for Barney had never been jealous in his life, especially of her. 'May I ask where you found him?' Samantha took time to think about that. 'At at my new hotel,' she told him, and he looked at her curiously. 'Oh, I see, you've moved out on me again, have you?' 'Of course.' 'Uh-huh' Samantha eyed him suspiciously. 'What are you thinking?' she demanded, and he grinned. 'Nothing now,' he told her, and laughed. 'When are you moving out of the present flop-house?' 'I'm just going for my case now,' she told him, and stopped short, looking at him suspiciously. 'And I don't need your assistance, thank you. I don't want you following me again.' 'Oh, I wouldn't dream of queering your pitch with the new feller,' he assured her solemnly. She wondered why she had started that ridiculous idea of having a date with someone else, for he would be sure to find out she was lying before very long. 26 'I I ' she began, prepared to be honest, since she was not easy about lying to anyone and Barney had an uncanny knack of knowing when she wasn't telling the truth. 'If you won't let me help with your luggage,' he told her, 'I'll leave you to it and go in search of my own lunch.' 'I'm sorry.' The apology was instinctive, and she saw his brows rise. 'What for?' "For Oh, never mind.' She hurried away from him and back to where she could get a taxi to take her to the hotel. At least, she thought, she would not have him on her trail again. The dining-room at the new hotel was much bigger than the other, but again she found herself alone at a table for two. Alone, that is, until she reached the second course of her meal and then she looked up to see someone smiling rather hesitantly at her. He was quite young, perhaps only a year or two older than herself, and very good-looking in a quiet sort of way. He had light brown hair and rather nice blue eyes that were looking at her now as if he was apologising for being there. Samantha smiled at him encouragingly and he sat down. 'I didn't realise I was to have company at last,' he told her. 'Where have they managed to squeeze you in?' Samantha laughed. T don't know how they have,' she confessed. 'I was just lucky, I guess. A cancellation and I just happened to come along at the right 27 moment.' 'How lucky!' He smiled again, a nice friendly smile too, and there was some sort of an accent faintly evident in his voice. 'May I introduce myself?' He proffered a large, capable-looking handacross the table. 'You won't believe it, but I really am Bill Smith.' She smiled, her hand held for rather longer than was strictly necessary. 'Samantha Dawlish,' she said. 'Samantha.' He repeated her name and nodded approval. 'I love the name Samantha and I've never met anyone who had it before.' 'I don't think I've ever met a Bill Smith before,' she told him, and they both laughed. Things, she thought, were very definitely looking up. After lunch she had no hesitation in accepting Bill Smith's invitation to join him on a trip out to the south downs, and she told herself she had no conscience at all about Barney. Bill Smith drove her in a large and comfortable car, which was the way she was more accustomed to travelling, and made a nice change from British Rail, and they came back to the hotel nicely in time for dinner. Her new friend was reluctant to let her out of his sight, having noticed another guest eyeing her from across the dining-room, so she agreed to spend the evening with him as well. They danced and walked along the front, talking about nothing much in particular, although she did manage to discover that that elusive accent he had was Scottish. It was fairly late when they got back to the hotel and Samantha was tired but quite amazingly happy 28 and lighthearted. She let herself into her room and switched on the light and gasped. On the bedside table was a box of chocolates, her favourite sort, carelessly laid so that the telephone had been knocked askew on its cradle, and on the bed was a huge bouquet of mixed summer flowers that filled the room with their perfume. She stood for several seconds just staring at them, telling herself she must be wrong to be guessing where they had come from, but before she could move to confirm her suspicions, a faint, hesitant knock on her door demanded her attention. It was Bill Smith, again looking rather apologetic, and as if he thought she might suspect him of speaking out of turn. 'I'm sorry to come knocking on your door at this time of night, Samantha,' he said, in a stage whisper. 'But the desk just rang up to say that your phone's off the hook and they can't get through to you. They knew we'd just come in and they wanted to say that there were some things delivered for you during the evening.' He looked past her to the flowers lying on the bed. 'Oh I see you've found them.' 'Yes, thank you.' He wore a slight frown, as if he disliked the idea of anyone sending her flowers. 'An admirer, evident: ly,' he said, and Samantha smiled. . 'Not really,' she told him. 'Just an old friend, I rsuspect. I was just going to read the card when you knocked.' Instinctively she glanced down at the I card she held in her hand, and sure enough there was Barney's large, bold script staring up at her, I 29 and at Bill Smith. 'To my darling Sam,' she read with disbelieving eyes. 'Not long to the twelfth now, my lovely. Barney:' She hastily turned the card over into her hand, but not before Bill Smith had seen and digested the words. 'More than an old friend, evidently,' he said, and she could have sworn that his accent was stronger in that moment. She sighed, as if all the troubles in the world rested on her shoulders. 'It's it's a a sort of old flame, actually,' she told him. 'He has a rather distorted sense of humour/ 'Oh, I see.' 'Thank you for coming along.' He shrugged, not as happy as he had been a few minutes earlier when he had
brought her back to her room. 'I only did as they asked me to,' he said. . 'They didn't catch us on the way up and I think they wanted to make sure you didn't get the idea that they were slacking.' 'Thank you again.' He hesitated, a small frown drawing at his brows. 'You will still be coming with me to the Pavilion in the morning?' 'Yes, of course.' 'Oh, good!' He heaved an audible sigh of relief. 'I just wondered whether this this man turning up made any difference to things.' 'Not a bit,' Samantha told him firmly. 'I'm looking forward to coming.' She was uncertain whether to frown or smile as 3 she closed the door behind him. If Barney was going to start acting so out of character, it was going to be very difficult to ignore him as she had planned to do. Picking up the flowers, she held them to her nose and sniffed appreciatively Barney knew how she loved stocks and sweet peas. Samantha looked around the large dining-room the following morning when she came down to breakfast, a little anxiously, she had to admit, but there was no sign of Barney anywhere. She had feared he might follow her here too, for obviously he knew where she was. He had probably seen her leaving the hotel the day before, because it was only minutes afterwards that he had come up and spoken to her. She half expected there to be something beside her plate too, since he seemed to be going all out to court her, but it was a relief to find no flowers or anything else. When she returned to the hotel to get ready for lunch, however, the receptionist handed her a small parcel and, with a wise and knowing glint in her eye, told her that a gentleman had left it for her while she was out. Samantha was in two minds whether to refuse it, tell the girl she did not want to accept it, but she admitted to being curious apart from anything else, so she took it up to her room and opened it. It was a small, exquisite locket in gold, finely chased and opening to reveal a rather unflattering picture of Barney which she suspected he had had done especially. She gazed at it for a minute and wondered why her fingers trembled so as she read 3 the accompanying note in Barney's bold scrawl. 'All my love. Barney,' she read, and shook her head as she refolded the note and laid it down. She replaced the locket in its leather box and put it in her handbag, still in two minds whether to give it back to him or not. She said nothing to Bill Smith about it when he arrived to join her, even though he asked if she had heard anything more from her 'old flame'. She merely shook her head and hastily changed the subject. 'Do you feel like dancing?' he asked over dinner, and Samantha nodded enthusiastically. She had always loved dancing, but it was a pleasure she did not share with Barney, so she was seldom able to indulge her liking. 'I'd love to,' she said, and he smiled his pleasure. 'Somewhere nice and romantic,' he told her, and a moment later smiled almost apologetically. 'I hope I don't appear to be rushing things,' he said, 'but I only have another two days and I have to start back home.' 'Home being somewhere in Scotland,' she smiled, and he nodded. 'A little place called Barsheil,' he told her. 'You'd probably find it horribly dull.' Samantha shook her head. 'I'm sure I shouldn't,' she said. 'I love Scotland, we've spent quite a few holidays there when we were younger.' 'Your family and you?' She lowered her eyes, unwilling to lie but not prepared to have Barney brought into the conver32 sation. 'With friends,' she compromised. He leaned closer, his rather boyish face looked solemn and earnest and he laid one of his hands tentatively over hers. 'I wish you could see Barsheil,' he told her. 'If you like Scotland, you'd love Barsheil.' Samantha smiled, a sudden and quite outrageous idea coming into her mind. 'Perhaps I will before too long,' she said. 'I haven't been up there for a long time." 'You mean it?' She nodded. 'Yes, I mean it.' 'I wasn't sure if you I mean do you have a a job to get back to, or anything?' 'No.' She smiled wryly. 'I'm what is popularly described as a lady of leisure,' she told him. 'And at the moment I'm flying around the countryside on British Rail.' He still had his hand over hers, but he did not look at her now, only down at the expanse of spotless white cloth between them. 'Will would you come back with me on Thursday?' he asked, and Samantha felt her heart doing all sorts of crazy things as she considered the invitation. She knew nothing about this man. He was charming and very attractive and he seemed straightforward enough, but she would surely be completely idiotic to go chasing off all the way up to Scotland on the strength of a couple of days' acquaintance. 'I don't know,' she demurred, and he tightened his hold on her hand. 'Oh, please don't get the wrong idea,' he begged 33 earnestly. 'My family will be there and I know! they'll welcome you. We have so few visitors.' 'But are you sure they wouldn't mind?' The idea was growing more and more attractive the morej she thought about it, and surely Barney would' think twice about following her that far. I Bill Smith shrugged his wide shoulders. 'There's! only my father and a cousin,' he told her. 'They're neither of them hermits and it's seldom we have! a woman on the premises, except Mrs. Maggs, the housekeeper.' 'It sounds wonderful.' 'You'll come?' Samantha held his gaze, a niggling uncertainty at the back of her mind, despite the temptation she felt to go with him. 'I I'm not at all sure I should,' she told him, and smiled ruefully. 'After all, I've known you only a couple of days. Bill, and people especially your family might get the wrong impression of me.' He held her hand more openly now and curled his fingers round hers. 'I've never asked a girl to come home with me before,' he confessed, so earnestly she was bound to believe him. 'You're something rather special, Samantha.' She smiled. 'And you're very nice,' she told him, not noticing the small frown that disapproved of the adjective. It appeared that Bill Smith's visit to Brighton was not entirely a holiday. He had some business with a firm in London, he informed her the following 34 morning as they ate breakfast, and he had to go up to town today to conclude it, then all day tomorrow he would be at her disposal. 'We'll have a last look at the downs, shall we?' he suggested. 'Lovely ' Samantha was already having doubts about the wisdom of her going up to Scotland, but she had got Bill's home address from him and had al-ready let Uncle Nicholas know where she would be. Being so far away from Barney would give her a chance to think things out and make up her mind clearly whether or not she could go through with the wedding. At the moment she was definitely decided against it and she had told Uncle Nicholas so, but there was something comfortingly familiar about the idea of Barney and home as she had always known it that refused to be lightly dismissed. She had to admit that she missed Bill when he was gone, and she wandered along the front on her own, attracting the inevitable attention. She wore a short, pale blue dress that showed off her arms and revealed plenty of golden-skinned back and shoulders too, her red-gold hair flying free behind her as she faced the brisk breeze. A group of youths came towards her and appreciative whistles shrilled from a dozen lips when they saw her. If she could have turned somewhere and avoided them she would have done, but there was nowhere she could go, and she felt rather a fool as they came nearer and started shouting appreciative but crude remarks at her. A hand suddenly slid round her waist and she 35 saw the change of expression on the youths' faces as they gave up their fooling and slouched off, grinning. It did not need a fortune-teller to tell Samantha who it was had joined her, and she looked up into Barney's dark, smiling face with an inward sigh of relief. 'What's happened to your boy-friend this morning?' he asked. 'If you mean Bill,' she told him, trying not to sound too stiff and unfriendly, 'he's gone up to town to finish some business.' 'Is his name really Bill Smith?' he asked, and laughed. Samantha frowned at him. 'Yes, it is, and I fail to see anything funny about it. It's a perfectly good name.' 'A Scottie, so I hear.' She sighed at the inevitability of it. 'I suppose you've heard from Uncle Nicholas.' He nodded. 'He rang me this morning.' They walked for some yards in silence and she wondered if he would have anything to say about her going up to Scotland with Bill. If Uncle Nicholas had told him about that, of course, and almost inevitably he had. His arm was still around her waist and it had not yet occurred to her to do anything about it. 'I want to talk to you,' he said suddenly, and drew her along to where a stone-built shelter faced the sea. 'Sit down.' He gave her no option but to obey and sat beside her. There was no one else in that particular section 36 of the shelter and they had a
certain amount of privacy at the moment. She sat with her hands folded on her lap, not looking at him, her heart thumping rather uneasily, as if she was afraid of him, which was quite ridiculous. His dark face looked stern, an expression she had seldom seen there before and one which was at once discouraging and stimulating in some strange way. He took her hands and made her look at him before he spoke, and she thought he was less familiar than she had ever seen him. 'You're not serious about going off to Scotland with this man, are you?' he asked bluntly, and Samantha bit her lip. 'Yes. Yes, I am.' 'Are you out of your tiny mind?' he demanded. 'You know nothing about this this seaside ' 'If you call him a gigolo I shall hit you,' Samantha said, her brows drawn together in a frown that tried to be fierce enough to silence him. Almost inevitably he laughed at her. 'You needn't ,try and frighten me with that scowl,' he told her. 'You only succeed in looking like a baby owl and not a bit off-putting.' 'I wish you'd mind your own business,' she said shortly, and pulled her hands free of his hold. 'If you're planning to elope to the back of beyond with some strange man, I think it is my business,' he retorted. 'After all, I have got some prior claim on you.' 'Not any more, you haven't,' Samantha declared, ' feeling quite sure of it at the moment. 37 'I see.' He looked at her steadily for a moment, his dark eyes almost completely serious. 'Well, you're not going to get away as easily as that, darling, don't you think it. I don't surrender anything as easily as that.' 'Anything!' Samantha echoed bitterly. 'You even'j refer to me as a "thing". As if I was a a part of. Dawlish and Foster.' g 'So you are,' he retorted. 'I'm not something to be handed over like shares'; in the firm,' she argued desperately. *I want to make my own mind up. Barney, not to be taken for; granted because my uncle and your father want to cement the future of the firm with our marriage.'i j He looked at her for a moment as if such an ! idea had never even occurred to him. 'Is that how;! you see it?' he asked. 'It's exactly how I see it,' she affirmed. 'We've we've always been expected to marry, ever since I was old enough to be considered as a means to an end, and I'm tired of being taken for granted.'j 'It seems to me I've been just as taken for granted in that case,' he told her. 'What applies to youi equally applies to me.'' 'Then you should be glad I'm giving you theI chance to get out of it,' she said.s He reached for her hands again and she allowed him to hold them in his large capable ones, feeling suddenly and inexplicably tearful. 'I don't know that I want to get out of it,' he said quietly. Samantha said nothing for a moment, her heart was racing wildly and she wished she could have 38I gone to London with Bill this morning, then this meeting would never have happened and her doubts would not have been raised again. 'I'm going to Scotland with Bill, Barney,' she said slowly at last. 'I need to think about a lot of things.' 'And in the meantime he makes the most of his chances,' Barney retorted impatiently. 'Oh, don't be such a little fool, Sam!' 'And don't you be so so bossy,' she returned. 'I'm going with Bill, and that's final.' She got to her feet and Barney still sat there, looking up at her with a hard, determined expression in his dark eyes. 'It's not final, darling,' he said softly, 'I haven't finished with you by a long way yet.'