Free For Ever and Ever by Mary Burchell Page A

implication that Kingsley Stour would have a free rein there, and her tone showed it.
    “Does it matter?” He smiled. “Did you want me to take you to see Pompeii or something?”
    “That would have been lovely,” she said eagerly, reflecting that if she could engage Mr. Pembridge on a somewhat lengthy expedition, Kingsley Stour’s movements would be the more surely curtailed. She felt rather mean about it, but what else was she to do?
    “I’ll see what I can do,” Mr. Pembridge told her. “But I think Stour is particularly anxious to go ashore at Naples, and we can’t both be missing all the time.”
    “Of course not,” Leonie agreed, but somewhat absently, because her mind was already busy with another idea.
    If she insisted on going with Claire—played the dumb, determined friend who did not want to be left behind—that, too, would guard against the two doing anything rash. It was not an enviable ro1e for her to have to play. But again—what else was she to do?
    Leonie tackled Claire on the subject the night before they reached Naples, and began by speaking as though they would naturally be going ashore together.
    Claire looked rather taken aback.
    “I’m sorry, dear. Could you join one of the other parties this time?” she said. “I was going with Mr. Stour.”
    “But I’d love to come too! He’s so amusing and charming,” Leonie replied enthusiastically. “And I’m sure he wouldn’t mind my coming. Mr. Pembridge and I took you last time, and now you and Mr. Stour can take me. It’s rather fun, isn’t it?”
    Claire didn’t look as though it were fan, and undoubtedly if she had not had a secret guilty feeling about Kingsley Stour, she would have managed quite lightly to put Leonie off. As it was, she hesitated, looked nonplussed—and in that moment Leonie said, “Well, that’s settled,” and, still smiling brightly, went off before Claire could argue the position further.
    There was still no absolute certainty, of course, that the plan was settled. But a delicate situation is always more difficult to re-open than to deal with on the spot. At least Leonie felt she had good reason to attach herself firmly to Claire and Kingsley Stour next morning. And she was determined that they should find it extraordinarily difficult to get rid of her.
    They were very fortunate in their first sight of Naples from the water, and everyone crowded on deck next morning as they slowly approached the matchless bay in brilliant sunlight. In the background Vesuvius lifted his head into the clouds, while sunshine danced in a million sparkles on the blue of the Mediterranean.
    “My, isn’t that pretty!” said an American girl standing near Leonie. “And it’s very historic too. What with Roman remains, and Napoleon having something to do with it too. Our guide-book says so. And Garibaldi—though I guess no one knows much about him now, except that there’s a biscuit named for him.”
    “On the contrary,” Nicholas Edmonds said disagreeably, “some of us remember that it was Garibaldi, the Italian exile, who, on stepping ashore in Newcastle-on-Tyne, paid England the highest and truest compliment ever paid to her.”
    “You don’t say!” The American girl, engagingly unaffected by his curtness, regarded him in a friendly way. “And what was that?”
    “ ‘England,’ “ quoted Nicholas Edmonds slowly, and with a sort of sombre dignity not unfitted to the words, “ ‘is a great and powerful nation, foremost in human progress, enemy of despotism, the only safe refuge for the exile in Europe, friend of the oppressed.’ “
    “My, that’s handsome,” the American girl said, “and I guess it’s true,” she added generously. “Is there any more to it?”
    “There is,” Nicholas Edmonds said, “And they were words which took on a curious significance in the last war. ‘But,’ Garibaldi went on, ‘if ever England should be so circumstanced as to require the help of an ally, cursed be that