Читать книгу The Girl With Green Eyes - Бетти Нилс - Страница 5

FOR several days Lucy had no chance to put her resolve into practice. There was no sign of Dr Thurloe at the orphanage and it had been silly of her to imagine that she might see him there. Very occasionally in an emergency he might be asked to go there, but there weren’t any emergencies; Miranda was doing very nicely—she was even showing small signs of improvement.

Mr and Mrs Lockitt, their journey arranged, had decided to invite a few friends as well as the doctor for dinner. ‘Rather short notice,’ observed Mrs Lockitt, ‘but they’re all old friends and we don’t stand on ceremony. I suppose I’ll have to ask Mrs Seymour …’

‘Why?’ asked Lucy, making a list of guests.

‘Well, dear, she and Dr Thurloe seem to be old friends. Indeed, people seem to think that he might marry her—heaven knows she’s trying hard enough—but I don’t think he will. Mind you’re home in good time and wear something pretty—the grey, perhaps?’

‘Definitely not the grey. There’s that rust velvet I’ve hardly worn …’

‘Ah, yes. I’d forgotten that.’ Her mother eyed her a little anxiously. ‘You’ll be all right while we’re away, darling? It is such a pity that Pauline will be in Edinburgh at that Art Exhibition for the next two weeks, and Imogen tells me that she has to accompany Sir George to Brussels—for a few weeks, she thought. But you’ll have Alice.’

‘We’ll be quite all right, Mother, dear. How long will you and Father be away?’

‘Well, we aren’t sure, it rather depends on what they’ve found. I must say Turkey is as good a place as anywhere to go at this time of year. Of course, we’ll phone you, darling.’ She smiled at Lucy. ‘Now, how many have we got? I thought we might have soup first, so comforting in this weather, and then that nice fish salad and lamb chops with new potatoes and green peas—I’m sure I saw some in Harrods. They cost the earth, but they are so delicious. I’ll get Alice to make some of those chocolate mousses, the ones with orange, and cheese of course.’

Lucy wrote it all down tidily and handed it to her mother.

‘Thank you, dear; you’re such a good daughter. I’m so glad you’re not a career girl, Lucy. You must find a nice man and marry him, darling.’

Lucy said, ‘Yes, Mother.’ It wasn’t much use telling her that she had found the nice man. The chances of marrying him, were, as far as she could see, negligible.

She dressed for the dinner party with extra care and viewed the result with some satisfaction. The rust velvet suited her—it made her eyes greener than they were, gave her hair a reflected glint, and showed off her pretty figure to its best advantage. She was even more satisfied when she joined her family in the drawing-room and her mother exclaimed, ‘Why, Lucy, how delightfully that dress suits you! There’s the doorbell—I’ve put you between Cyril and Mr Walter …’

So much for her painstaking dressing; Cyril didn’t like her, she was beneath his notice, and Mr Walter was a dear, but hard of hearing. She joined in greeting the first of the guests, moving from one to the other, watching the door out of the corner of her eye. Dr Thurloe came in alone and she beamed at him across the room; at least he hadn’t given Fiona Seymour a lift. He smiled back as he greeted his hostess and host, but made no effort to join Lucy—probably because she was trapped in a corner by old Mrs Winchell, who was eighty if she was a day and invited to everyone’s table although no one really knew why. Lucy, listening with patience to that lady’s opinion of the government, watched Fiona Seymour, the last to arrive, make her entrance. She really was good-looking and this evening she was wearing a starkly plain black dress, superbly cut, with her hair swept into an elaborate arrangement of curls on top of her head. She had half a dozen golden bangles on one arm and several gold chains hung around her slender neck. Old Mrs Winchell turned to look at her, using her old-fashioned lorgnettes to do so. ‘She’s wasting her time,’ she muttered, and then in her usual rather loud voice, went on to reorganise the government.

The talk at dinner was largely concerned with the forthcoming trip to Turkey, so that Lucy was kept busy listening first to Cyril carrying on about the rate of exchange, and then repeating to Mr Walter what people were saying at the table that he hadn’t quite heard. The doctor, to her disappointment, was at the other end of the rectangular table, with Imogen on one side and Fiona on the other.