Dear Loyalty

by Denise Robins

Genres: Romance

Synopsis

A sweeping love story from the original Queen of Romance, originally published in 1939 and now available for the first time in eBook. Edgar Lorrimar's personal secretary Lucie has all the qualities which he admires in a woman and which his son despises. "Crash" Lorrimar is a playboy... currently in love with the gold-digging Amanda Portlake. But everything is about to change for Lucie and Crash forever. Because, knowing that he is dying, Edgar has made some very special changes to his will.

Release date: October 17, 2013

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 128

Sample

The sun beat down pitilessly upon the desert. Lucie Bryant sat on the running-board of her car and looked through her dark glasses at the far horizon, her face a study in despair.

For the last three hours she had sat here like this staring at space, or walked up and down, around the car, realising, with that most hopeless of all sensations, that she was lost. Lost in the desert, and yet she could not be twenty miles out of Cairo.

She knew now that she had been a fool to come. Somebody had told her that only cars with big desert-tyres, especially constructed for the soft sand, should venture off the beaten track. She had been foolhardy—ridiculous—and this was her punishment. For a considerable way the little car had stood up nobly to being bumped about on the rough surface, which was a mixture of sand and stone, and here and there a tuft of green, but finally it stuck. Stuck and refused to move. And three hours ago Lucie had tried walking, then given it up as an impossibility. She must keep the car in sight, and beyond it she could see no road. She might walk for miles and find herself going deeper into the wilderness.

Lucie had always loved the desert. She had longed to come out here and be alone, as one could never be alone in the city of Cairo. She had wanted to forget work, and to dream her dreams undisturbed. One could be alone and dream in the desert. It was beautiful and inspiring. Just these miles of undulating sand, golden in the golden sunlight, under a sky of dazzling blue.

But to be lost like this was another thing. Glamour was still here, in these infinite wastes. The sheer beauty of the scene still clutched at her heart and captured her imagination. But she was lost. And she was afraid. For she knew her Egypt and this was only February. As soon as the sun set it would grow bitterly cold. Even though it was hot enough now to sit without a coat.

Surely somebody would come along? A caravan … camels … an Army lorry … anything! Surely she could not just go on sitting here alone for days and nights until she starved!

Lucie was not a coward, but her heart quailed at that last idea. Yet how easily she had driven here! How could she have dreamed that it would be so difficult to retrace the way. At first she thought she could follow the tracks of her car. But she had lost them and taken the wrong route once or twice. There had been other cars here as well as hers. That at least gave her hope that there might be yet another before nightfall, and that she would be rescued.

She lit the last cigarette in her case, sat smoking it, thinking how delicious a cup of tea would be … a drink of any kind! And what a difference it would make to hear a human voice or see a human being. An unusual ambition for Lucie who, after working all day in an office amongst people, appreciated being alone.

A little while ago she had watched a long line of camels on the horizon moving slowly northwards. Useless even to try to get to them. Long before she could reach them, they would be gone. But she had watched the silhouettes of the animals until they had disappeared into the shimmering distance. And even in the midst of her plight, thought what a lovely sight they made.

She tried not to let fear occupy her mind. She concentrated on the thought of her existence in Cairo, her work, her friends. She was personal secretary to Edgar Lorrimer of the Near-East Petroleum Company. It was a job she had held for the last two years, since the death of her father, who had been an engineer, in Alexandria. She wondered, wryly, what her employer would say if she failed to turn up in the morning. But no! she couldn’t be here all night, she couldn’t be!

Restlessly she got up and began to walk round and round the car. Poor silly little Morris, sticking there in the sand, refusing to budge. And what an idiot she had been to disregard all warnings, and come out here like this alone.

It was very still in the desert. She could hear nothing but the faint yapping of pie-dogs … those lonely, miserable scavengers of the East. Somewhere … she knew not in which direction … lay the white buildings, the minarets and mosques of Cairo. And somewhere, at this hour, perhaps Crash Lorrimer was playing polo. Crash … handsome, irresponsible young man … her employer’s only son. That was the name they had given him in the Regiment a year ago, when he had first joined it. ‘A young devil’ his father called him. ‘The hell of a lad’ said his brother-officers. ‘Too gorgeous for words’ from the women. All those women, old or young, came out to Cairo for ‘The Season’ and vied with each other for the pleasure of being taken out in Crash Lorrimer’s racing-car.

Sitting here alone with her thoughts, Lucie admitted to herself that she had adored Crash for a very long time, and that adoration was about as hopeless as her chances of being found here in the desert tonight. But she liked to picture Crash on his polo pony; Crash, grandest of riders, galloping superbly over the polo-ground in the Sporting Club at Gezira. How far was that from here? If only she knew! She thought desperately about him in this hour, while she walked up and down, her feet sinking a little in the soft sand.

What would Crash say if he heard in days to come that she had been found here, a poor little corpse, victim of hunger and thirst? Nothing much, she told herself, trying to keep her sense of humour. Only that she had been a fool. He wouldn’t be very sorry. He cared nothing for his father’s secretary. Whenever he came into the office, he was always charming to her. But then Crash was charming to all women. And one in particular. That fair-haired ‘playgirl’, Amanda Portlake, whom Lucie had once heard Crash, himself, describe as ‘a dizzy blonde’. For the last two months, Crash had been going round Cairo with Amanda. But Lucie knew from old Lorrimer that Amanda Portlake could never be any good to Crash. She was just one of those thin, feverish, cocktail-drinking young women, who danced through life to the tune of a fox-trot, and lived for the next party.

Lucie felt deadly tired. She was also nearing the stage when she wanted to stop trying to be philosophical or brave, to break down and have ‘a good cry’. If only someone would come!

Ah, those blue, poignant skies … so soon to change to fiery red … then, after the exquisite dream of the sunset, sudden darkness, the chill of the starry night, alone in a car in the desert. It wasn’t a very pleasant prospect. And suddenly Lucie felt that she could not stay here a moment longer. She must leave the car and walk, walk until she found some kind of road, some kind of clue, which would put her on to the route for Cairo.

With the last cherished cigarette between her lips, Lucie began to stride forward, leaving the poor Morris behind her. She must get back. She must find people, civilisation, again. It was all there waiting for her. She could not sit down like a little fool and starve.

For half an hour she walked, straining her eyes for the first sign of a building in the distance … Surely at any moment she would see the tall spires of the Citadel rising up into the sky, or the Pyramids. Yes, surely in a moment or two she would see those gigantic Pyramids, which had once been the resting-place of the great Pharaohs, thousands of years ago.

She began to stumble, to falter, every limb aching, face drenched with perspiration, brown curls sticking damply to her forehead. There was a pain in her side. She was done, she told herself, and could not go on. And suddenly she dropped down in a little heap on the warm sand, hid her face on her arms and began to cry.

When she lifted her head again, she realised that she must have drifted from tears into sleep, the sleep of total exhaustion. And now the thing that she had feared had happened. The sun had gone down, and there was a violet darkness brooding over the desert. A darkness that made her loneliness feel even more intense. Yet beauty was here in the crystal light of the big cold stars; and the faint crescent of moon, which hung like a sickle in the indigo sky.

Lucie staggered on to her feet. She was cold, shivering from head to foot, and her limbs were cramped. Desperately she looked around her, her heart pounding with all the old fears. She might never be found. And this might mean—the end! Lucie raised her despairing young face to the stars.

‘I don’t want to die,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t want to be left here to die in the wilderness. I love life. And I want to know all the joy of living and loving … love that I have pictured only in my dreams!’

No answer. Nothing for Lucie but that infinite stillness about her, and the melancholy baying of dogs.

Then, suddenly, that blank silence lifted. She heard the sound of an engine … the powerful humming noise of a powerful motor … and in the distance a flash of a light … the headlights from a car coming in her direction.

Hope surged wildly in Lucie’s heart. She began to stumble over the desert in the direction of that light, praying madly that whoever was in the car, Arab or Englishman, would see her, take pity on her, convey her back to the safety of Cairo.

And it seemed in no time that the powerful beams of the headlamps of that car flung a white ribbon of light across her, blinding her sight. She sobbed wildly:

‘Oh, stop, please stop!’

Then she heard a man’s voice. She did not know what he said. She was semi-conscious then. She only knew that a man had jumped out of the car and had put a steadying arm around her shoulder. He was saying:

‘Good God! How on earth did you get here! It’s Lucie Bryant, Lucie … How on earth did you get here, my dear?’

Then Lucie knew who it was. That voice belonged to Crash … Crash Lorrimer. This was Crash’s famous Lagonda racing-car which he had been driving at his usual demon’s pace. It was Crash who lifted her into the seat beside the wheel and put a cushion behind her head.

‘You poor kid,’ he said. ‘You’re in the devil of a state. However long have you been out here, and what are you doing all by yourself?’

She could not speak for a few moments. Her relief was too enormous. And not only was it a wild relief to know that she was safe … but a thrill to be sitting in his car … to know that it was he who had found her. He had uncorked a flask of brandy and was making her take a sip from it.

‘I always carry this in case of accidents,’ he explained. ‘Come along … don’t choke … it will soon put you right.’

She drank some brandy and felt hysteria gradually subsiding. She grew calm, able to smile, to talk to him. She said:

‘I never thought it would be you who would find me.’

He stood beside her, leaning over the door of the car, smoking a cigarette, regarding her half with amusement, half with concern. He had so often seen little Lucie in his father’s office. He had never taken much notice of her; thought her a bit quiet and dull. And yet tonight, in the starlight, there was quite a lot of beauty to be found in her face, he thought. A heart-shaped little face with wide, brave eyes, and a sensitive mouth. He knew that his father was a great admirer of Lucie. She was his right hand in the office, capable beyond her twenty-one years. But Crash had never admired capability or efficiency in a woman. In his opinion girls were just meant to be lovely—and spoiled. Like Amanda!

‘How did you get here?’ he asked her.

She explained how she had brought the old Morris for a picnic and lost her way.

‘But you mad child!’ he chided. ‘You know you should never drive off the road without desert-tyres.’

Lucie pushed the brown, tangled curls back from her forehead. Her face, which a few moments ago had been white and pinched with exhaustion, was warm now, flushed, vital. Crash was standing there, looking down at her with those attractive blue eyes of his in a way that would make any woman’s heart turn over. And now that all her fears were ended, she felt only the glamour of the moment … of the wonderful night in the desert under the great. . .