Dorothy Eden Read Free Page A

to learn.”
    “To cook?” Jeremy enquired politely.
    “That he can’t change me completely. A little, perhaps. But not completely. I’m not going back until then.”
    “Tom, if you will allow me to say so, doesn’t sound like the learning kind.”
    Cressida smiled, suddenly tender about Tom and his stubbornness.
    “Oh, yes, he will be. He loves me too much not to be.” She lay back, remembering Tom’s kisses, trying in retrospect to invest them with all the tenderness and passion that she dreamed about. Suddenly her brief optimism and lightheartedness left her, and she wanted to cry because they had quarreled so irretrievably, and now, although she was in this mess, her pride would not allow her to go back. It was a desperate situation.
    “You aren’t Tom’s type,” she heard Jeremy Winter, who after all was a complete stranger and could have no way of knowing her or Tom, saying.
    She struggled up.
    “How can you possibly say that? You don’t know either of us. After all we ought to know whether we are each other’s type or not. We’ve known each other for fifteen years.”
    “The cradle to the grave?” That eyebrow was up at its irritating angle. “Very well, you’re made for each other, but in the meantime you’re here in my room. What is Tom going to say about that?”
    “Oh, he mustn’t know!”
    “Well, I don’t propose to tell him. What about you?”
    “I won’t tell him either, and now I must go.”
    She got safely to her feet in one quick movement. The yellow cat, at being disturbed, gave a grumble of protest. Cressida said, “He’s a very spoilt cat,” and sat shakily down. “You’ve made me drunk,” she accused.
    She was aware of his hand supporting her. The room spun crazily. She wanted to laugh and ended by crying. It was all so humiliating, and so different from what she had expected on her sanguine departure from home three days ago.
    “You can’t go yet, Cressida. I want to draw you. I’ve only just begun.” He stood over her, dominating her as Tom had done, but in a different way. She was tired of being dominated by men. She would do as she herself wished, for once. If her ridiculously weak legs would let her.
    “You have just the face I have been looking for,” Jeremy Winter was saying thoughtfully. “It’s full of innocence, and yet it has sophistication and intelligence. An intriguing combination for a twenty-two-year-old. I’d like to rearrange your hair slightly. But we can do that at the next sitting.”
    “The next sitting!” Cressida gasped.
    “Tomorrow, if you like. When you’re feeling stronger.”
    “But—but where am I to stay?”
    “In Arabia’s flat, of course. You’re just the person she has been looking for. I know. My dear child, of course you couldn’t sleep with Tom in that horrible bed.”
    “W-what?”
    “At least, not until he’s learnt his lesson. And I shall have great pleasure in helping you teach it to him. I promise you.” The dark, bright eyes twinkled, the eyebrow raised startlingly.
    Cressida blinked. She said. “Mim—Mimosa! What a ridiculous name for a cat.”
    “Mimosa, I might tell you, is a celebrity. He appears in fifteen different advertisements and is the star in a comic strip. So he has cultivated a temperament. What would you like to eat?”
    “To eat?”
    “I rather think that is your immediate concern. When did you last eat?”
    “Yesterday. I think it was yesterday. About six o’clock. I had a ham roll and a glass of milk. I didn’t think I could get so hungry again so quickly. You see, the trouble was that when I left home I hadn’t much money, and money goes awfully quickly in London. And I thought it would be much easier than it is to get a job. I’m sure I could sell things. I do know quite a lot about antiques. But nobody—” Her lip quivered. She tried to make the dark shadow of yesterday and the day before leave her mind. “One thing, I was determined I wasn’t going to let Tom