66 The Love Pirate by Barbara Cartland

Author:Barbara Cartland
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: M-Y Books
Published: 2013-06-24T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Five

Lord Saire looked round the room and saw no sign of Bertilla.

It was, however, crowded with a large number of the Henderson’s friends who had been invited especially to meet them.

Some of their near neighbours had also arrived with the passengers from the Coromandel, who had become their unexpected guests.

There were, therefore, quite a number of familiar faces and, although Lord and Lady Sandford were not amongst them, Lady Ellenton was.

The planters in Malaya were a cheerful lot and the laughter was hearty and unrestrained.

By this time in the evening everyone was becoming somewhat merry on the popular local drink known as ‘Planters Punch’. It had a basis of rum, but it also contained local brandy and the mixed juices of the fruits that grew in such profusion, especially pineapple.

A number of the guests were dancing in an adjacent room where a large and very loud woman was playing the piano.

She sang at intervals while everybody joined in and the dancing itself grew progressively wilder as the evening wore on.

Lord Saire walked out onto the veranda to find that it was crowded too and above the noise and the laughter there was the continual shout for a servant to bring more drinks.

He had the feeling that Bertilla would be somewhere in the garden, seeking an isolated spot as she had done on the ship.

After moving between the orchid beds and beneath the trees of frangipani heavy with blossom, he found her.

She was looking out over the countryside, which gleamed white and mysterious in the light of the moon.

Her gown, which was one of the new ones made for her within the twenty-four hours that Mrs. Henderson had promised, was, Lord Saire had thought when she came down to dinner, very attractive.

Always before he had seen her very simply and almost drably dressed. But the gown Mrs. Henderson had chosen was swept back into an elegant bustle.

There were bunches of artificial pink roses on either side of it and the same flowers decorated the low bodice.

It was a gown that any London debutante would have been pleased to wear and Lord Saire had known as Bertilla entered the room that her eyes sought his and asked him wordlessly if he approved.

He had noticed since their arrival at Henderson House that she continually sought his approval of something she had said or done.

Not by asking him awkward questions and expecting compliments, as another woman might have done, but just questioning him with her grey eyes and knowing by the expression in his what was the answer.

‘She needs looking after,’ Lord Saire had said to himself not once but a hundred times.

Yet he told himself that it would be a great mistake for him to become too involved in Bertilla’s future and he certainly had no authority to suggest any alternative to her living with her aunt in Sarawak.

He could not help thinking that there must be some way she could earn her living in Singapore, but he had no idea what that could be and he had no intention of taking Mrs.

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