Roumelia Lane - The Scented Hills Read online

  Roumelia Lane - The Scented Hills

  Tessa hadn't liked what she had heard of Neil Stanton, and when she met him for the first time she certainly didn't like what she saw.

  Nevertheless, he was the one man with the power to wreck her happy relationship with the devastating Barry Devereux.

  CHAPTER ONE

  One step… two steps… three. Not far to go now. Down about another four steps and then it was level going out to the car. Small straight nose helping to balance the pyramid of parcels, slender navy-blue-clad shoulder pressed against the wall for support, Tessa wobbled precariously on her way.

  She could see the cigar-brown Rolls-Royce glinting at her from the roadway with superior polished impatience. Well, it would just have to glint. She was going as quickly as she could, wasn't she? And her arms weren't going to hold out much longer anyway.

  She lowered a violet gaze down over the pile of parcels and pulled in her mildly bubbling amazement on a quick breath. How on earth could one woman get through so much lotion, face cream, dusting powder, perfume, and goodness knows what else there was here? Admittedly Mrs. Van Cleef was no wispy elf of a person. To call her a mountain of a woman would only be tickling at the truth. Just the same, the amount of stuff she bought each month was staggering. Literally! Tessa blinked back a twinkle as she stumbled down the last step.

  And what about the cost? She ignored the cold stare of the Rolls up ahead. Astronomical! It had to be. Stanton and Devereux was one of the most expensive perfumiers in London. She knew because she had naively tried to buy a bottle of perfume out of her first week's wages, and found out with pink-faced embarrassment that, being junior salesgirl, she would need another wage packet before she could even approach the hand-lotion counter, let alone the perfume salon. That was six months and endless pay-checks ago, and here she was, still plumping every time for three square meals a day and the security of her little bedsitter.

  Ah well! The rich were rich and the poor were… just staggering along at the moment. She smiled wryly as her feet felt their way awkwardly over the deep pile carpet of the side entrance. There was no ignoring the sleek brown and chrome brilliance of Mr. Rolls-Royce now, but she wasn't going to be intimidated by his imperious gleam. Not now with only a few yards along the corridor to go. And once he was balancing this lot on one of his pale leather seats he wouldn't be so smug either.

  Not being able to look right or left but only rigidly ahead Tessa wasn't aware that the door where the offices were, just at the side of her, had been abruptly swung open. What brought it to her notice was a feeling that a violent wind had gusted up from nowhere, and then the door's reverberating slam.

  Too late she saw a boyish face nursing a look of scowling displeasure, and then somehow it was mixed up with the parcels in her arms. Though she did a wild juggling act, the force of the collision was too much to hold them. They shot from her with a muffled clunk! and ping! and gurgle! and then the rose and gold wrapping paper was crackling indignantly at being lowered to the status of rubbing shoulders with the carpet; even though it did have the same rose design, and was at least two inches thick.

  The slightly built figure brushing himself off was still frowning. He bent to pick up some of the parcels and stuck them into her hands with an irritated, 'Try and look where you're going next time, huh?'

  'Oh, I will… and… I mean… I'm terribly sorry,' Tessa stammered with a wide starry-eyed gaze. She stood transfixed, her arms waiting for the rest of the packages that were scattered around.

  He had actually spoken to her! Even stopped to help her! It could only be a dream ! She swallowed an ecstatic sigh.

  All the juniors at the salon knew Barry Devereux, grandson and heir of the firm. But only as a film fan knew her favourite star, and with just about as much hope of ever meeting him. He was something of a star himself, with his brilliant tangerine sports car, his way-out girl-friends, and his reputation for somewhat racy living. Tessa had seen him once or twice, but only at an awe-inspiring distance. Never, never as close as this.

  He had that thick crinkly hair that rippled like gold, right down to his shirt collar, and the same curling gold eyelashes. The smooth features were perfectly cut, and a boyish baby pink complexion made the eyes look bluer than the bluest sky she had ever seen.

  He was… beautiful!

  At her dreamy intake of breath the sulky mouth set in an annoyed straight line. 'Well, come on,' he shot her an impatient look, 'help to gather some of the stuff you've chucked all over the floor.'

  'Oh yes! Of course!' Tessa dropped rapidly to her knees and lowered her gaze. She scrabbled for the parcels, trembling to think what an idiot she was making of herself. Still, at least her mooning over those Adonis-like features had helped to prolong the moment a little. Now she had better start forgetting it. He would soar back to his place in the heavens, and she would return to her one hundred-and-odd errands as lowly junior salesgirl.

  Resigned as she was to the inevitable, she couldn't resist stealing a last adoring look at the frowning profile of the figure crouched beside her. She was sure she was doing it in all secrecy until the blue glance flickered up from roaming the carpet and met her own. She thought she saw it preparing to swing away impatiently, as though it was used to female worship. It had almost moved off, and then with a quick blink the flower-like blue eyes were looking at her hard.

  Tessa stared widely back into them because she was hypnotised. Her heart started on a wild dance. She saw the moody gaze slide for a second towards the door it had just slammed out of, and then it was lowering over her with a certain thoughtfulness.

  Shaking herself, she lunged for a rose-and-gold-wrapped package. She reached it, grasped it, and had it taken out of her hand as Barry Devereux asked her with a sudden pleasantness that caught her just behind the knees, 'You… er… work here, I suppose?'

  It was a bit of a potty question really, Tessa thought, teetering up with her load and wriggling to uncrumple her shop overall, but she answered liquid-eyed enough, 'Er… yes, I do.'

  'Well, here! You need some help with those.' The crinkly waving head lowered towards her; blue eyes came in close, oh, so close until she felt pinned like a butterfly. She saw a slow crooked grin and then her arms were holding nothing but air.

  Her mouth was taking in its share too, until she gulped it shut and hurried to fall into step beside the slim boyish frame.

  Moving up to the door, Barry Devereux nodded ahead towards the Rolls-Royce.

  'Old lady Van Cleef, huh?' he muttered irreverently, and then dropping a mocking grin over the parcels he was transporting. 'She never gives up, does she? They say she has a mirror the length of her bedroom wall.' He turned to catch Tessa's eye with a wicked light. 'The load she's carrying around, I'd say she needs it!'

  Tessa let her laughter tinkle out. It wasn't so much the slightly bent remark about a very important customer that caused her eyes to dance, so much as the fact that Barry Devereux, the Barry Devereux, considered her, the lowliest of workers at the salon, worth reciting it to. She would wake up in a moment.

  A wooden-faced chauffeur stepped out and opened the door of the Rolls as they approached. Not a muscle about him moved as the packages were tossed rattling and complaining into the back seat. Tessa turned an impish look up to the immobile countenance, and then reluctantly put on her best salon manner again. Oh dear! Time to get back to work. She was wondering shyly if she ought to offer some kind of thanks for the assistance she had received when her helper dropped a hand on her arm, and she was being led back inside.

  At least she thought he was going inside until the arm holding her pulled her up briskly at the entrance, and she. heard the lazy boyish tone
s asking her, 'What's your name?'

  'Tessa.' She looked up drowningly into the sky-blue eyes. 'Tessa Browning.'

  'Mmm!' The slim pink-shirted shoulders lifted briefly. 'Nice name.' Something of the swaggering humour was back in the gaze as he stated, rather than asked, 'You know who I am?'

  'Oh yes I' Tessa could just about keep back the sigh as she smiled shyly. 'You're Barry Devereux.'

  'S'right,' he grinned over her.

  For the next few seconds, she couldn't tell whether he was teasing her, or whether he was so wrapped up with his own thoughts he just didn't know that he was gazing hard at her. To break the spell she drew away and trying desperately to sound efficient, said shakily, 'Well, I'd better be getting back to work. Thank you for your help, Mr. Devereux.'

  'Barry to you.' His grin pulled slowly into a smile. As she was turning to go, he caught her arm again and jerking her to him, tacked on, still smiling, 'Be seeing you… Tess.'

  The carpet back into the main salon might have been a whisper to walk upon and the epitome of comfort, but Tessa never remembered touching it, a thrill-shot cloud floated under her feet as she left the pink-shirted, slightly swaggering figure, and for the rest of the afternoon she was transported around on its heavenly lightness. She didn't recall stepping down from it to unpack a new consignment of wild mimosa toilet soap, and transfer it discreetly for display in the various showcases, or to make herself invisible to dust the gold-topped bottles of almond face oil along the lower shelves. In fact, she didn't remember much at all until she was pulling on her coat in the cloakroom, and listening to the end-of-workday groans and giggles around her.

  She was tempted then to tumble off her cloud and blurt out to her fellow-underlings, who toiled at the far and distant corners of the salon, the whole dreamy sequence just as' it had happened. Almost in the same thought she decided against it. To talk about it now would take away all the magic. Perhaps tomorrow she would show off a little, when her airy platform had vaporised, and the droplets were no more than a ripple on the surface of her smooth but somewhat routine existence.

  She called her goodnights vaguely and floated out into the evening sunshine. The roar of the rush-hour traffic brought her swiftly back to earth. Even if it hadn't she knew she would have automatically adopted the brisk race along the pavements. It was impossible not to, she told herself with a twinkle, with everyone around doing the same. It was a kind of London disease that was widespread when the shops and offices were turning out. Everybody moved at a half run as though there was a dire urgency to abandon the immediate area. The bowler-hatted, pin-striped-trousered gentlemen, with their slim umbrellas and their noses thrust forward, were the worst. Tessa believed she had caught it off them in her first week in the big city. Every night after that she had resolved to deliberately stroll and take the tube with queenly calm, and every night she had found herself hurtling along with the rest of them. Still, it did give one a sort of sneaking thrill to be a part of the teeming mass.

  She sped over the road at the traffic lights and fell in with a new flow of people coursing alongside the park. Another two crossings and she would be in the tube station. There would be the gallop for the elevator and the scuffle not to be left on the wrong side of the train doors as they slid to like pincers snipping off the crowd, and then maybe she could catch her breath.

  She manoeuvred her way strategically towards the outer edge of the pavement. That was something else she was hopelessly afflicted with. If you wanted to be one of the first to cross when the lights changed, you had to hug the side of the road.

  Her eyes fixed straight ahead over the bobbing bowlers and varied hairstyles, she paid no attention to the open sports car parked on its own. Not until she was brushing alongside it, and then a head of fair crinkling hair and a boyish profile identical to the one shining in her memory made her head pivot on her shoulders.

  'Hi, Tess!' Barry Devereux had one foot draped up over the side of the car. His suede-jacketed shoulders were pressed against the seat, his elbows hanging negligently over the back. As Tessa gazed wide-eyed, it seemed to her that the crowds, the traffic, the noise, the whole world dissolved into nothingness. Only the fantastically good-looking face smiled at her through a rosy mist.

  'H… hello,' she stammered, her shyness acute now that there was no bending over scattered parcels to relieve it.

  Barry pulled his foot in lazily and leaned forward to press the starter, nodding her in. 'Climb aboard. I'll give you a lift home.'

  'Oh, but..Tessa didn't know why she hesitated. Perhaps it was something to do with the feeling that a girl just didn't fall into the car of a boy she had spoken to only once. And especially not when he was the madly wealthy grandson in an expensively elegant perfumiers where she made a modest living.

  'Well, come on I' Barry leaned across to open the door with the merest flicker of impatience. 'I can't park here all day, and I thought you would have been here before this anyway.'

  He hadn't actually been waiting for her! With a dazed smile Tessa lowered herself into the seat beside him. 'But I don't understand… I mean…' she went on idiotically, 'how did you know?'

  'Which way you would come from the shop?' Barry asked, his grin back now that she was in beside him, 'Easy!' He raised his voice above the roar of the engine as they zoomed off up the road. 'I just asked for your address from the office files and worked it out all by myself which tube station you would make for. I've been keeping my eyes skinned for the past ten minutes.'

  Tessa couldn't keep the flush of happiness from her cheeks. He must have thought about her after she had left him. Enough to go to the trouble of finding out where she lived so that he could wait for her after work. She tried not to look too ridiculously starry-eyed as the fabulously expensive-looking car slid in and out of the honking traffic.

  When they were out of the busiest area, the engine began to roar again and putting on speed, Barry asked with a showy air, 'How quick would you like to make it? Ten or fifteen minutes?'

  'To where I live?' Tessa allowed herself a small happy laugh. 'It takes me all of three-quarters of an hour to do the journey.'

  'What you need is a chariot like this.' Barry slapped the wheel with a satisfied grin, and put on speed. Tessa watched the scenery sail by and smiled at him uncertainly to say,

  'I don't think I like to go too fast.'

  'You think, but you don't know.' His eyes held a wicked light as though he was fully aware that she had never in her life been in a 'chariot like this'.

  For a few seconds they flew along and then he slowed down to shrug over the wheel with a slightly frustrated smile.

  'Don't worry. The traffic gods have thought up enough rules to keep us all down to a go-kart crawl.'

  The pace with which they moved to Tessa's address was slightly more cracking than a crawl, she decided; but then there were probably crawls and crawls in the motoring world, and Barry's was something approaching a jet.

  She wondered if he would make any comment on the gaunt rather shabby-looking Victorian house that she directed him to, but he seemed totally unconcerned with anything beyond the fact that this was where she got out. He revved up the engine noisily as she closed the door behind her, and then as she was bringing her smile up uncertainly to his, he drawled, shooting her a quick grin, 'I'll pick you up at eight.'

  'Pick me up at eight?' Tessa held on to her soaring heart. 'What for?'

  'Well, what does a guy usually pick a girl up for?' Mixed with the smile was the flicker of impatience again and then he shot at her, 'And don't waste time with food. I'll get you anything you want while we're out.'

  While she was trying to believe that she hadn't dreamed what he had said, he swung the low-slung sports car in a wide screeching curve and with a wave and a 'See you!' he roared off out of sight.

  She stood dazedly watching the exhaust fumes float up wispily on his trail, trying not to pinch herself, then she turned and fled inside. It was wild, it was crazy, but it was happening I She h
ad a date with the Barry Devereux.

  Upstairs in her neat bedsitter she swept through her wardrobe half a dozen times and then sighing philosophically settled for a well-worn primrose woollen dress with a gold chain linked around the hips and her only lightweight spring coat.

  Not a very scintillating picture for such world-shattering company, she sighed later over her reflection, after flying around to bathe and change and brush on a light touch of make-up. But it was the best she could manage.

  And come to think of it—she paused comb in hand after putting it to use. What was this new attraction she had suddenly developed? She gazed thoughtfully into the mirror. Nothing special there. Straight red hair, a pale serious face, and small chin. She thought the deep blue eyes might be an asset, but it was a face like millions of others. The kind that didn't rate a second glance in a crowd.

  She blinked and tilted her head. It did seem funny that someone like Barry Devereux should give a girl like her more than a passing thought; especially when it was well known that the ones he went around with were the glossy magazine model type. And nobody could tell her that the sombre navy blue salon overall she had been wearing this afternoon when they had collided had done anything to enhance her appearance.

  Still, these things did happen sometimes, didn't they? She swung away from the mirror, snatching back her happy mood. Just because in her case it chanced to be someone as wonderful as Barry Devereux, that was no reason to tell herself that they didn't.

  A horn blared loudly from the road making her jump and then swing wildly for her coat. It was only a quarter to eight. He really was impatient! She pulled the curtain back from the window and saw the vivid sports car and Barry frowning vaguely up at the house. A wave of shyness swept over her as she went stiffly down the stairs. She didn't know now whether she had the nerve to go through with the date. What would he think of her as someone to take out for the evening. Would he smile at the efforts she had made to try and please? Or would he…?