Fever of Love

by Denise Robins

Genres: Romance; Historical Romance

Synopsis

An enthralling story from the 100-million-copy bestselling Queen of Romance, first published in 1950 and now available in eBook for the first time. Verona meets Stephen in Paris as a fellow student, he is the most brilliant young artist in London, and she loves him madly. His portrait of her is magnificent, capturing her large, lustrous eyes and creamy skin. Though their love is true, Verona refuses to be Stephen's mistress and leaves him in order to marry a young army officer. She tries to be happy, but soon she finds herself longing for the bohemian life of her former days, and, when her husband is stationed in Egypt, begins to wonder what would happen if, just by chance, she should run into Stephen again...

Release date: November 21, 2013

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 192

Sample

ROSS DERRELL moved softly round the bedroom. She hummed under her breath. She was very busy. She was laying a man’s dinner-jacket out on one of the twin beds; black tie, collar, white boiled shirt, all that a man would need for dinner in the hotel tonight. They were for her husband and she fingered everything lovingly, obviously a woman in love. Happy to render small services such as these.

The radiators gave forth delicious warmth and bright lights dispelled the gloom of a March day in London. A pleasant glow was cast upon the rose pink satin eiderdowns, the pink carpet, the stereotype mahogany suite. Now and again mirrors reflected Ross Derrell and showed her as a very charming woman, still a girl for all her twenty-six years, with a full beautiful figure curving under the blue kimono which she was wearing.

Ross had never been pretty in the ordinary sense of the word, but her skin was exquisite – a dear warm tan – and she had a delightful mouth. She was a Rhodesian – born and bred – and looked it. She radiated good health and good humour. She had warm brown eyes – almost chestnut in colour with a frank innocent expression. Curiously innocent eyes for a married woman. Clive Derrell, who had married her three years ago in South Africa, had told her then she was quite the most innocent creature he had ever met. She retained a strange aura of virginity which clung to her and looked straight from the dear serene eyes.

There was an almost old-fashioned atmosphere about Ross, with her long brown rope of hair hanging to her waist. She had not yet conformed to the prevailing fashion and cut that satiny hair. At home on the Ranch near the Zambesi, fashions did not matter. One wore a print overall or riding-kit. One’s few party dresses were out of date and nobody minded. Ross was the daughter of a South African farmer and had never belonged to the smart set. Clive, although a Londoner and not so much part of Rhodesia as Ross, never bothered about Ross’s appearance, and Ross took it for granted that he was satisfied with her.

This was their first visit to London together and Ross’s very first glimpse of England. London seemed to her a wonderful, awe-inspiring city. The vastness of it – the ceaseless noise – the traffic – the great shops – had interested and thrilled her when they first arrived. She had also enjoyed their week’s visit to Clive’s uncle and guardian, in Richmond. Everybody had been very kind to her and made her feel welcome. But she herself felt awkward – even nervous. Out in Africa – mistress of Swallow Dip – the big, flourishing ranch left to her by her father just before her marriage – there was nobody more self-reliant than Ross. There she was entirely at home. A splendid housewife, a capable manager, and quite a stem disciplinarian of the Kaffirs on the Ranch.

She was a little afraid that Clive might have found her dull and stolid, here in the land where he was so much at ease. But he seemed quite pleased with her. Dear, wonderful Clive! Ross thought that there was nobody in the world quite so splendid. She had thought so when she had first met him in Rhodesia. She still thought so after three years of marriage and she had never loved any other man, although a good many men at home had wanted to marry Ross. There was an undeniable, quiet charm about her that drew man and woman alike to her.

Modesty and a complete lack of self-consciousness being intrinsic parts of her nature – Ross never ceased to wonder why Clive had married her. The rapture of his wooing and their first passionately happy days together was still upon her. It had been a brief, tempestuous courtship on Clive’s part. He had come out from England, after leaving Oxford, where he had wasted both time and money, to try his luck at farming near the Zambesi. He was, and even Ross had to admit this, hopeless at farming.

He had only tried the Colonies to please his uncle, who had wondered what to do with him. A handsome, attractive boy with no particular talents except for playing a ukulele delightfully and drawing women to him like a magnet.

His laziness and incompetence were too hidden behind his superficial attractions for Ross to see them. Her men friends were the rather quiet, stolid farmers round about her home. She had never met anybody like Clive. She could not resist him. Did not want to. The fact that he was a year younger than herself had been of no account. Neither did it matter that he had no money. Ross had means and Swallow Dip. A good many hundreds of acres, splendid herds of cattle, a flourishing farm, in fact.

She would not allow him to hesitate because she had everything and he nothing. She was crazily in love with him and if he loved her that was enough. Besides, when his Uncle, Thomas Derrell, died, Clive would inherit his money, so there was something coming to him.

He had made her terribly happy so far. She took it for granted that he, too, was happy and had settled down to life on a Rhodesian farm.

It had taken all Clive’s power of persuasion to make her leave her beloved farm and venture to England. And she would never have left Swallow Dip but for the fact that Bill McCrayle, her manager, was there to look after things for her. A thoroughly reliable fellow, Bill. During the lifetime of Ross’s father he had been junior assistant at Swallow Dip. After the old man’s death he had taken over the management with Ross. There had been a time when McCrayle had been very much in love with Ross. But she had not cared that way. Only liked him immensely as a friend. So he had remained her friend. Bill was like that. And he had even deceived Ross into thinking that he was no longer in love with her.

If her marriage to the young Englishman had been a bitter blow Bill had not shown it. And when Ross had asked him to remain in management at Swallow Dip, after her marriage, he had not refused. He loved that Ranch as though it were his own. His work was his life to him now. And Clive had agreed that he was much too good a man to lose.

As Ross moved about the bedroom, so happily and busily, her thoughts would keep winging back to Rhodesia. It seemed the furthermost ends of the world now. So utterly different was the life here to life at Swallow Dip. And she was bound to admit that she was homesick even though she was here with the husband she adored.

They were going back at the end of the month. A little uneasily Ross remembered how Clive’s face had clouded when she had reminded him of this fact at breakfast. Did Rhodesian life bore him? He was so amusing – so fond of dancing – theatres – and London was his home.

Ross was a woman – a woman in love. All other things faded into insignificance beside this love. And not being very experienced with men she supposed that it was the same with Clive. Of course he would not mind going home – Rhodesia was his home now as well as hers.

A voice sounded outside the door.

“Let me in, darling.”

Her face coloured with pleasure and holding the wrapper about her, she ran to the door and opened it.

A slimly built man entered, carrying an overcoat over his arm. He pitched the coat on to a chair and looked at Ross with a careless smile.

“Getting dressed already?” he asked. She put two bare sun-browned arms about his neck and held up a glowing face.

“My darling!” she murmured.

He kissed her. Her lips clung to his and she was unconscious of the fact that all the warmth and passion was on her side. She was too blinded by the physical ecstasy which her husband’s embrace always roused in her. She looked at him with adoration, frank and unstinted, in her warm chestnut eyes. Clive strolled to the dressing-table and lit a cigarette. Very good to look at, was Clive Derrell; smooth fairish hair, brushed to one side, with a golden glow on it under the electric light. Skin burnt rather a reddish hue and very blue eyes with long fair lashes which gave him a boyish and even appealing look. The worst feature of his face was his mouth. Sulky, sensual, selfish. He looked spoiled. And of course he had been spoiled from his babyhood. The good things of this life had spilled into his lap. He had reached a stage where he took people and things for granted. His wife, her love and her possessions he took entirely for granted. He had not meant to marry so young, but when he had met Ross at the bungalow of a mutual friend near the Zambesi, he had been desperately bored. The Colonies bored him, and having to work for his living was very disagreeable to one of his luxury-loving nature.

He had never met a woman quite like Ross before. She was so innocent and entirely natural and rather refreshing to a young man who had had many promiscuous and not very savoury affairs. Her money attracted him as much as her personal charm though at the time he deceived even himself into thinking that it was Ross only that he wanted. Anyhow he married her and for three years he had made quite an astonishingly good husband. Then had come nostalgia for London and the old smart set, and he had made his wife come over with him. He might have known that it would be disastrous; that Ross who was a little queen in Rhodesia would be a nonentity here. It had struck him as soon as they had landed. She was dowdy. She had absolutely no idea how to dress.

The slender, fashionable girls over here who were a product of the day – with their smart hairstyles, cleverly made-up faces, chic clothes – put Ross in the shade for Clive. And when, tentatively, he had suggested she should use a lipstick, she had laughed at him and said: “Don’t be silly, darling. Just imagine me painting my face!”

Not that she was a prude. She admired all the smart London women but she had no intention of competing with them.

Clive had persuaded her to buy one or two fashionable dresses. But they did not really suit her. She looked her best in her old corduroy breeches and a riding shirt, on the farm.

It was too late for Clive to wish he hadn’t come to England with his wife. The harm was done. Ross no longer satisfied him and he knew it.

“What are we doing tonight?” he asked her, seating himself on the edge of a bed. Ross, brushing her long thick hair, smiled at him in the mirror.

“Don’t you remember my little English cousin, Valmy Page, is coming to dinner with us?”

Clive Derrell frowned.

“Oh, Lord, yes,” he said. “I’d forgotten. Will she be very dull?”

Ross looked at him quickly.

“Darling, would you rather have spent the evening alone with me?”

It was on the tip of Clive’s tongue to say: “Oh! heavens, no!” but he desisted.

“No, that’s all right,” he said. “I only wondered what your cousin was like.”

He knew what most of Ross’s Colonial relations were like. All farmers; unimaginative; heavy, with only one topic of conversation. Farming.

“Valmy,” said Ross, “is supposed to be the very reverse of dull. Her mother was my mother’s sister who married an Englishman and settled in London here. Her people are dead now. I’ve only heard once or twice from the child in my life. But I understand she has had a very hard time of it since she has been on her own. She does shorthand-typewriting in some office in the City. Not much fun for a girl of nineteen.”

Clive regarded the tip of his shoe moodily. The girl didn’t sound very interesting.

“Rather a pretty name, Valmy, isn’t it?” murmured Ross.

“Sounds like a new kind of chocolate to me,” said Clive.

Ross had finished twisting her splendid hair into a coil at the nape of her neck. She slipped off her kimono. Clive glanced at the beautiful figure. Too fat, he mentally decided. Ross would never look soignée in the most expensive gown. The perfect glow of health and sunshine which radiated from her had ceased to attract him.

She came and sat beside him on the bed and looked up at him almost shyly. Even after three years she was a little shy of this delicious intimate life which she led with Clive.

“You’ve enjoyed our holiday here, haven’t you?” she said.

“Frightfully,” he said.

“But I am rather longing to see Swallow Dip again,” she said.

He made no answer.

“Bill’s letter, this morning, said that old Polly calved the day after we sailed and he had quite a business pulling her through,” added Ross.

“H’m,” was all that Clive had to reply to this. Details about the farm held no interest for him in these days. And never had held much.

He was thinking that it was a pity McCrayle couldn’t go on managing the farm without them. With Ross’s income and his own small allowance from Uncle Thomas, they might have quite a decent home in London. But he didn’t dare suggest to Ross that they should leave South Africa for ever. He could imagine Ross’s horror.

“You’ll be quite glad to see Rhodesia again, won’t you, honey?” said Ross, putting her hand over his.

Mechanically, he squeezed the slim strong fingers. He knew that his answer was a lie.

“Of course.”

But he dreaded the very idea of the voyage home. And he wished that his wife was not so much in love with him. It made him feel a swine. He didn’t like being made to feel that. It irritated him. So far he had managed to conceal his irritation and his boredom but he wondered how long he could continue the deception.

Ross looked at her wrist-watch.

“Good heavens! It’s half-past seven and we are dining at eight. You haven’t had your bath yet, Clive.”

He stifled a sigh and rose to his feet, yawning.

“YOU don’t know what it means to me to come out and have dinner like this!”

Valmy Page punctuated this speech with a long sigh of pleasure. She looked round the hotel restaurant where she was dining with her cousin, Ross, and the husband, Clive Derrell, who she was meeting for the first time. Her eyes rested enviously on a particularly well-dressed girl at a neighbouring table. Finally they rested on the cousin beside her with even deeper envy.

It wasn’t Ross’s dress that she envied. Although expensive, that red lace was a hopeless choice for a woman with the chestnut tints that Ross had in her eyes and hair. She didn’t know in the least how to dress, thought Valmy, who at nineteen was sophisticated and very much femme du monde. But she did envy her this attractive young husband of hers. What luck! He was so frightfully good-looking and amusing and obviously Ross was very much in love with him. One could tell that from the way she looked at him and hung on his words. Ross was awfully nice, thought Valmy, but rather dull. She wondered if Clive Derrell minded that his wife was badly dressed and had so little to say for herself.

Valmy and Clive held most of the conversation. If Clive was witty, Valmy was quick with repartee and had plenty to say for herself. She knew how to be bright and amusing with men. The black velvet dress she was wearing was a year old. But Valmy had lengthened it cunningly and, greatly extravagant, bought a couple of orchids for her shoulder-strap; pinned them there with a paste brooch. Before she had left her ‘digs,’ her mirror had told her that she looked her best. It wasn’t difficult for her to be soignée, because of her exquisite little figure. She was shorter than Ross and as slender as a boy with just the loveliest curves here and there to make a man’s pulse beat faster.

Every time she caught Clive’s eye she smiled and he smiled back at her. Oh yes, she could see that he was attracted by her and drank in his admiration with a thrill. Insatiable for men’s admiration was Valmy. It didn’t matter whether the man belonged to another woman or not.

“I do love this hotel, Ross,” she murmured to her cousin. “It is frightfully sweet of you to ask me.”

“My dear,” said Ross, “I love having you. I’ve always wanted to meet my little English cousin and I’m sure Clive did too.”

“Yes, indeed!” said Clive.

And he repeated inwardly, ‘yes, indeed’. He had cheered up ever since Valmy Page arrived at the hotel. She had both surprised and enchanted him. Here was no unimaginative stupid creature. Valmy was altogether charming both to look at and talk to and a little devil, too, he reflected.

She had full red lips – reddened by lipstick, of course – course – accentuating a voluptuous bow. Her prettiness was not of the chocolate-box quality which her name suggested. It was too vital and, he thought, there were brains behind that white forehead, too. Hers was a fascinating face – creamy skin without much colour to it – long narrow eyes – the greenest eyes he had ever seen, between very thick black lashes. Her hair, closely shingled, was black as a raven’s wing with a tight wave in it, and brushed back from her forehead, like a boy’s, showing the tips of small ears in which she wore two large imitation pearls.

A provocative face – particularly when she smiled and narrowed her eyes until they were like green slits. She had rather a low-pitched, husky voice and laughed a good deal with a flippancy which made Ross’s gravity and quietness all the more outstanding. She was a finished and attractive product of the day, thought Clive, and if a trifle audacious she intrigued him very much. One could, he told himself wryly, get tired of a good, serious-minded woman like Ross. And he forgot how madly he had been attracted by Ross when he had first met her in Rhodesia. How enchanting it had been to break through the veil of her shyness and ignorance.

He felt that he and Valmy met on common ground. It amused him to joke with her and they talked incessantly. Ross listened to them, a little bewildered. Cocktails, dance-steps, modern art and music, horse racing, poker-parties, these things were a little out of her depth.

Of course Clive understood these things. He was a Londoner born. He had been at Public School and the Varsity. And Valmy, although she earned her own living now, had been the daughter of a jockey. Ross remembered her father telling her of the aunt – Valmy’s mother – who had left the Colonies for love of the rather gay young man who had finally broken his neck steeplechasing, and left a sea of debts behind him.

Ross, who was the most generous of creatures, was quick to admire her pretty little cousin and to be sorry for her. It was too bad that she was alone in the world, typewriting for her living. She seemed so fond of life and fun.

“You don’t know how I envy you people living in Rhodesia,” said Valmy while they were drinking coffee. Clive, in the best of spirits, was sipping a cognac and Valmy had been persuaded to have a Cointreau. Ross, as usual, drank nothing but water. Not that she disapproved of alcohol but she didn’t like it. It made her sick.

“It is rather lovely in South Africa,” said Ross.

“The more I think of it,” said Valmy, “the more I envy you. The glorious sunshine, the freedom! Think of me, in digs in Battersea and typing all day in an office!”

“It certainly sounds horrid, you poor little thing,” said Ross.

“You weren’t cut out for that sort of life, either,” said Clive.

“What was I cut out for?” asked Valmy, catching Clive’s eye.

“Love,” was on the tip of his tongue. But he said: “Oh something more entertaining. You ought to get married.”

“I haven’t met the right man yet,” said Valmy. “I’ve had one or two proposals, but —” she shrugged her shoulders and made a moue with her mouth. Clive looked at that fascinating mouth and thought:

“I wonder how many men she has kissed. I’d rather like to kiss her myself!”

“I think we shall have to take her back to South Africa with us as a secretary,” he said aloud. “Somebody to keep all the books and do all the correspondence. Eh, Ross?”

He spoke jestingly. He was altogether surprised and curiously pleased when Ross took him seriously.

“I don’t see why she shouldn’t come back to Swallow Dip with us. For a few mont. . .