Help From The Baron Read Free

glanced down at the jewelled cross, and didn’t notice the change in her father’s expression. “In Paris, genius and garrets go together, the life of a sybarite there or anywhere else can only waste . . .” Glancing up, she saw his expression. “Daddy, what is it?”
    “Nothing, my dear.”
    “Don’t be absurd, there is.” Staring, she realised that he had looked like this once or twice before when she had mentioned the Mannerings; and she remembered, too, that when he’d been asked to go round and have a drink with them, he had found an excuse. “Daddy, why don’t you like the Mannerings?”
    “I don’t even know them.”
    “That’s what I mean!”
    “Forget it, Franky.”
    “I wish you’d tell me,” she said, “and I wish I’d realised before that you don’t like them.” She was genuinely upset. “If I’d only thought, I’d never have invited them.”
    Although he tried hard to hide it, hardness sprang into his eyes.
    “Invite them here?”
    “Yes, tonight. They’ve been so good, I wanted you to meet them.” The jewelled cross, the mockery in his eyes, the happiness of the morning, were all gone; she was acutely distressed. “Daddy, I can’t put them off now, can I?”
    “My sweet, it’s the last thing I’d want you to do.”
    “Why don’t you want to meet them? Twice before you’ve avoided them, and I hadn’t realised that.”
    He hesitated; then his face cleared and he leaned forward to the hot-plate, placed another rasher of bacon on her plate, brought that silent laughter to his eyes, and said: “I’ll tell you after I’ve met him.”
    “Promise?”
    “Francesca,” he said very suddenly, “I wish to God you hadn’t to grow up.”
    There wasn’t much time to think.
    Her father had gone out in the middle of the morning, promising to come back in good time for tea. The one maid, worked up about the party, became temperamental. The tit-bits, ordered from a West End firm, were late in coming. Hired glasses, hired dishes, even the drinks hadn’t arrived in the middle of the afternoon. One of the three hired waiters came with a dripping cold, and used a venomous tongue when she told him she just couldn’t let him stay. It was after five before she realised that her father wasn’t back.
    He’d soon arrive.
    He didn’t arrive at all.
    Minute by minute as the late afternoon had passed, she had waited and watched, but he hadn’t come. The party was to last from six until eight o’clock. Three of her closest friends, two girls of her own age and a boy slightly younger, had arrived first, realised she was worried, and taken a lot of the burden off her shoulders. The party had soon warmed up, and become more hilarious than she had expected.
    A second worry was added to her father’s non-appearance; that when the Mannerings and others of the generation senior to this arrived, they would feel that it was like a bear-garden. Everyone was comparatively sedate so far, but two were talking far too much, and a red-haired girl with an enormous bust was talking much too loudly.
    Then the Mannerings had arrived - John Mannering, tall, distinctive in a way which reminded her of her father, but as English as anyone could be. His good looks seemed to belong to an earlier age, needed a wide-brimmed cavalier’s hat or the clothes of a Regency buck to set them off. And Lorna, his wife, was remarkable; the kind of woman one might hope to be. It wasn’t only her looks, although she was quite handsome. Her expression? She could look haughty and be aloof. It was poise, perhaps, a manner which somehow made it obvious that she was nice to know. She had the figure of a young woman, moved lithely, and had as much dress sense as Dior.
    It was easy to envy her.
    Mannering was dashingly handsome, almost too spectacular; and this party wasn’t right for him; or for Mrs. Mannering, either.
    “It was crazy,” thought Francesca. “I should never have asked them.”
    They shook hands, were natural and