Dust of Dreams

by Denise Robins

Genres: Romance

Synopsis

A captivating love story from the 100-million copy bestselling Queen of Romance, originally published in 1941 and now available for the first time in eBook. It begins on her father's Singapore plantation. There destiny brings the lovely Signa Manton face to face with the two men - Ivor and Blake - who will shape her future. She marries Ivor, only to be forced by his cruelty into living a lie. Through the hurt that follows - taking her to a long-lost sister in London and a fabulous treasure that will cause her deep pain - she finds in Blake a truer friend than she had ever known. Despite the monstrous husband who has shattered her dreams, will Fate give her a second chance? Could Blake ever be hers?

Release date: October 17, 2013

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 144

Sample

Signa Manton lay on a deck-chair on the veranda of her father’s bungalow in Sungei Muran, Singapore, and fanned herself with a newspaper which she had been trying to read.

It was the most difficult season of the year. Far too hot, she thought, for any English girl to cope with. Although she was dressed in the thinnest of shirts and white linen shorts, arms and legs bare, and was sheltered from the fierce sun by rush blinds, her head ached and throbbed. A storm was gathering. She could feel thunder in the air and longed for the downpour of rain which might cool the stifling atmosphere.

Suddenly she started up, a look of fright on her thin, pale face. Signa was pretty, of an almost Scandinavian fairness, and exquisitely built, but the hot sun and the damp, evil atmosphere of this part of Malaya had robbed her of her natural vigour and colour. She seemed drained of both. Her greatest remaining beauty was her wide blue eyes, almost violet-blue, and the pale gold of her smooth hair, cut like a page-boy’s, with a fringe. Today she was frightened, her nerves on edge, and the sudden appearance of a native slinking round the corner of the veranda made her heart jerk violently.

‘You’re an idiot, Signa,’ she admonished herself. ‘It’s only one of the boys.’

She lay back in her chair with closed eyes, and wished passionately that her father would come home. Where was he? What had happened to him? For nearly a week now he had been missing and she had been living alone in the bungalow.

She was used to Singapore. She had been born and bred in the Malay States; but after her mother, who had been Norwegian and from whom Signa had inherited her beauty, had died, Signa had only had Daddy. Daddy, the genial, kindly planter, known to everybody in these parts as ‘old Tom Manton’.

Heavy footsteps sounded on the path which led from the garden. Once again Signa started up. She was alone and unprotected. If the boys discovered that her father was missing, there might be trouble. The colour flamed to her face when she saw the heavy figure of the man who approached her. One look at his hard, lined face was enough to increase her nervousness. It was Stanley Richards, a hard-drinking planter who was a near neighbour. It was obvious to Signa that, even at this hour of the morning, he was in a dangerous state of intoxication. He swayed unevenly on his feet. When he reached her and spoke she could hear that his voice was thick and blurred. He looked down at her and said: ‘All by yourself, eh, girlie?’

‘Yes,’ she answered. ‘Daddy has not come back yet.’

Pulling a chair towards her, Richards sank down, mopped face and neck, and lit a cigarette.

‘It’s queer,’ he said. ‘I wonder what’s happened to him.’

Signa looked nervously around her.

‘I wish to heavens I knew. Surely if he’d had an accident or anything like that one of the boys would have come back to tell me.’

‘Of course they would,’ said the planter reassuringly. ‘Don’t you worry. Why don’t you get a drink for me and let us forget our troubles. Let’s have some fun together.’

Signa flushed angrily.

‘I don’t wish to forget,’ she retorted. ‘And it’s obvious that you’ve already had too much to drink.’

He laughed and throwing back his head to sing in a raucous voice:

‘While tearing off a game of golf,

I may make a pass at the caddy,

But if I do, I don’t follow through,

Because my heart belongs to Daddy. …’

Jumping to her feet, Signa looked down at him, her eyes bright with scorn.

‘You swine,’ she said. ‘Will you get out, or must I ask the servants to throw you out?’

Suddenly he put out a hand towards her and tried to pull her towards him. Looking into his eyes, she knew the real meaning of terror. She feared the gentle, well-mannered Malayans less than this drunken Englishman. Her heart seemed to stop beating. She realised that there was no time for hesitation. She was without protection. Richards was an unscrupulous man—and he was drunk. She must get away—escape from him.

Before he could realise her intention she had fled past him down the veranda steps into the blazing sunshine of the garden. As she ran she could hear him shouting: ‘Come back, Signa. Don’t be a fool. Come back.’

She ran on, gasping for breath, half blinded by the glare of the sun. She had no idea where she would go, but instinctively she went towards a Chinese temple half-way up the hill on the road to the town, a ruined temple where, as a small child, she had often played with her amah. Not until she reached the shadow of the great building did she stop. Then she knew that the race in the heat had been too much for her overwrought nerves. Her legs grew suddenly weak beneath her. The earth seemed to rise up towards her, and with a little moan she fell forward in a faint.

The sun disappeared behind a bank of black cloud. In the distance thunder rumbled. The storm that Signa had anticipated broke with sudden violence over the country-side. The heavy, tropical rain came down in a solid sheet, blotting out the Chinese temple and the blue-green hills, like a pall. The girl did not feel or hear it. Nor did she see the grey Ford which came racing down the road from the town. The car was almost level with her before the driver saw the prostrate young figure, and, standing on the brakes, drew up with a wild skid.

In a moment the man was beside the girl, lifted her into the circle of his arms and looked with wonderment and concern at the pale little face and the wet, golden hair which clung about her head.

‘It’s Tom Manton’s daughter, he murmured to himself. ‘What the devil can have happened?’

At the same moment Signa opened her eyes and, half delirious with fright, screamed when she saw his face bending over her. ‘Let me go,’ she cried wildly. ‘Don’t touch me.’

‘It’s all right,’ said the man gently. ‘I’m Blake Saunders—a friend of your father’s. Just tell me what’s happened to you.’

Signa ceased to struggle and her eyes looked more sanely at the boy’s face. The fine grey eyes smiling down at her were wonderfully kind, not the bloodshot, leering eyes of Stanley Richards. Blake Saunders? For a moment the name penetrated the mists in her brain. Yes, she knew about him. She had heard her father speak of Blake. He was a newcomer to Singapore. He had just bought a partnership in a rubber-estate out here in Sungei Muran with another Englishman named Ivor Gardiner.

‘I’m so glad it’s you.’ Signa gave a sigh of relief. She added with a child’s simplicity: ‘I think I must have fainted. I was running from our bungalow. Stanley Richards was there. He’s been drinking again. I was scared, I’m ashamed to say.’

Blake’s face grew stern when he listened to her explanation. He understood. He had heard a good deal of gossip in the club about the mysterious disappearance of old Tom Manton. And Richards’ drinking bouts were notorious. It was obvious that this girl was in a state of mind bordering on hysteria, and it was not difficult to understand why. She should not be allowed to stay on the estate alone save for a few Malay boys and her old amah.

‘Look here,’ Blake Saunders said, when she had finished her story. ‘You must come back to our place. Ivor and I will look after you until your father gets back. We’ll send for your amah and some clothes. You can drive straight there with me in the car.’

Signa became conscious of enormous relief. She struggled on to her feet and ran a hand over her dishevelled hair. There was a blinding pain in her eyes. It hurt her to look upon the landscape, even on this grey sultry afternoon. Every bone in her body ached. She had felt like this before, and realised, grimly, that she was in for a bad bout of fever. Young though she was—only nineteen—malaria had already laid a mark on this girl and she had not the physical strength to stand up to it.

She tried to smile at Blake Saunders.

‘Yes, please, let me go back with you,’ she said.

He stood up and held out a hand to her. She placed hers in it and immediately he was aware of her fever. Those small thin fingers were burning hot. There was a dazed look in her eyes. She rocked slightly on her feet, and the next moment he had put an arm about her and felt her dead weight against him. The fair silky hair brushed his lips. He caught the fragrance of it … of her. She was very sweet and slender and wholly adorable. And it was in that moment that Blake Saunders fell suddenly and blindingly in love—for the first time in his life.

He picked Signa right up in his arms.

‘You’re ill, my dear,’ he said. ‘I’m going to carry you to the car.’

She did not answer. She was lost in a daze of pain, of ague, of acute physical misery. Shivering, moaning in his arms, like a sick child.

He put her in the back of the old ramshackle Ford, and folded his coat under her head. He was filled with pity and tenderness for her.

As he drove through the drenching rain towards his own plantation he thought a great deal about this girl and his own startling emotions towards her. He might have laughed at himself, but he did not, could not. After all, there was nothing really laughable about it, he told himself. A fellow could fall in love at first sight. Dozens of ’em did. But it was strange for Blake Saunders. Up till now there had been no women in Blake’s life. Not because he had not felt the need of them. He liked the opposite sex. He enjoyed feminine society, and humbly and secretly worshipped at the shrine of beauty. But he was incurably shy. He had an inferiority complex about his own lack of charm, of ability to attract women. Not one but many had told him that he was good-looking and that if he tried he could get any girl he wanted. The trouble was, he had never really tried. He lacked confidence. But Signa … Signa Manton, who was so small and young and lovely, and somehow so helpless, went straight to his heart. He knew that here was a girl he could talk to, make friends with … adore. And he could tell her so.

He had not long been in the Malay States. After leaving Cambridge where all the qualities of a sportsman, and the fact that he had won the diamond sculls at Henley, had gained popularity for him, rather than intellectual triumphs, he had gone out to Ceylon as a tea planter. Whilst there, six months ago, his widowed mother had died, leaving, him a small amount of money. The tea plantation had never, somehow, interested him. A chance meeting with his present partner, Ivor Gardiner, in a hotel in Kandy, resulted in his making a change both in job and country. Ivor had interests in a big plantation outside Singapore. He asked Blake to go in with him, buy it up and work it with him. So, for the last two months they had been here in Sungei Muran. But this was the first time that Blake had come across the daughter of their elderly neighbour, old Tom Manton.

Blake knew that Ivor had not met Signa either. Otherwise he would have said something about it. Ivor was a handsome, easy-going fellow, very popular with the ladies in the district, and rather fancied himself as a heart-breaker. Without doubt had he met Signa he would have made a dead set at her.

By the time Blake reached his bungalow—a fine white building half-hidden by the flowering creepers, and magnolia-trees— Signa was barely conscious. It was a shivering, moaning little bundle that he deposited on his own bed and to whom he administered a stiff dose of quinine. Then he hurriedly sent for the amah from Manton’s bungalow, and dry clothes.

When Ivor Gardiner, his partner, returned at sundown from the plantation he was met by a Blake with rather a sheepish face.

‘I say, Gardiner,’ he said, ‘we’ve got a visitor.’

Ivor Gardiner hunched his shoulders in bored fashion.

‘Who?’

‘Tom Manton’s daughter, young Signa.’

The bored look which had crossed Ivor Gardiner’s handsome face at the mention of the word ‘visitor’ passed—changed to interest. He had heard at the Club in Singapore that old Tom’s daughter was extremely pretty.

‘Indeed!’ he said, throwing himself into a chair on the veranda and, ordering a gin-and-lime from the number-one boy, said: ‘What happened to her?’

Blake explained how he had found Signa in the storm up on the hill by the old temple.

‘She’s down with fever now,’ he said. ‘Doctor Jeffries came at four o’clock and gave her an injection and her amah is nursing her. I put her in my bed, and turned into your room, old fellow, on a camp-bed. Knew you wouldn’t mind. Can’t think what has happened to Manton. It’s very queer.’

‘H’m,’ said Ivor, sipping his drink with relish. ‘Got bitten by a snake perhaps.’

‘But as the girl says, there would have been news of him. He set out on some mysterious errand, with a couple of boys, and none of ’em have come back.’

Ivor stared at his glass. A curious, secretive look had come into his eyes. But Blake was not looking at his partner. He was thinking of the white, tired young face of the girl here in the bungalow … of the fair, rain-wet page-boy’s head … the slender arms, the gallant effort she had made not to let him see her complete and utter fear for her father.

‘Poor little girl,’ he thought. ‘Singapore’s no place for her without her people … without a father now …’

Suddenly both the men started and swung round The door, which was made of mosquito-netting, which led into the living-room had opened. A slim figure in a Chinese dressing-gown of white silk embroidered with pink chrysanthemums stood swaying there before them.

Blake sprang towards that figure.

‘My dear child!’ he began, shocked and startled. ‘You ought to be in bed with that temperature. …’

He paused, embarrassed. Signa’s white face quivered. Her long-lashed eyes, brilliant with fever, turned from Blake to the other man who was staring at her curiously. She clutched the back of a chair just in front of her. She was obviously unsteady on her feet.

‘I—can’t stay in that room—I’m stifled,’ she said. ‘Mr. Saunders … I’m frightened. …’

‘But what of?’ he asked gently.

‘About Daddy. … Where is he?’ she asked. ‘It’s a week since he left me. Something frightful has happened. I know it.’

‘I admit I’m puzzled,’ said Blake, his face puckering. ‘But don’t give up hope … he’s sure to turn up. Sit down here, if you can’t sleep indoors. …’

She sank into the long cane chair he pulled forwar. . .