Betty Neels - Tangled Autumn

Sappha said in a wooden voice: ‘No, not arrogant. It was just that he found someone else—blonde and sexy and willing to give him what I wouldn’t—I’m old-fashioned about marriage…’

‘Me too,’ said the Baroness briskly, ‘and you would be surprised at the number of men who want an old-fashioned girl for a wife—a girl who will love them and run their home with pride. And children—men want children.’ She waved her plastered arm in the air. ‘It’s no good me telling you that you will get over it and meet another man—there aren’t any other men at the moment are there? And you’re sure that you will never get over him, aren’t you?’

She took another look at Sappha, and it was a pity that Sappha, instead of looking at her companion, was looking backwards over the last few disastrous months, for the Baroness’s pretty face wore the look of someone who had just had a brilliant idea. She did, in fact, look very like her young daughter when that young daughter was plotting mischief. There was a little pause until Sappha said quietly: ‘Shall I go on reading?’

The Baroness yawned daintily. ‘I do believe I begin to feel sleepy again, dear. Would it be too much trouble if I asked you to fetch me just a little warm milk?’

Sappha padded downstairs and presently, with the milk in her hand, went back again through the quiet old house, to stop in the bedroom doorway at the sight of Rolf, still dressed, lounging over the end of his mother’s bed. He said nothing at all, but his gaze swept Sappha from head to foot. It was the Baroness who said in her soft voice:

‘Sappha, Rolf heard us talking and came to see if anything was the matter.’ She smiled at them in turn, giving her son a bright glance which dared him to imagine otherwise. He stared back at her, his eyes snapping with laughter. ‘And now that I see you are in such excellent hands, I’ll leave you to settle, dear Mother.’

He bent and kissed her, said a brief goodnight to Sappha without apparently seeing her, and went back to his room.

The Baroness accepted her milk with the blameless air of a good child.

‘You poor girl,’ she said contritely, ‘I’ve kept you from your bed, but I’m sure that I shall sleep very well now.’ She finished the milk, allowed Sappha to settle her once more, said goodnight in a grateful voice and closed her eyes, leaving Sappha to go back to bed, but not at once to sleep. It was a pity that her patient had asked her those questions—answering them had made Andrew very clear in her mind once more, and she wanted so much to forget him.

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