Free Welcome to Paradise by Jill Tahourdin

has broken loose. It’s being driven ashore. Hadn’t I better go and pull it up before it damages itself?”
    “Do if you like. But take care, dear.”
    Out in the open, Alix was surprised at the weight in the wind. Seeing Francis having a surreptitious smoke under some bushes, she called to him to come and help her. She knew she wouldn’t be strong enough to battle with the boat alone.
    “Miss Ellix going to get wet,” Francis observed with his amiable, vacuous grin.
    “I know. But never mind. Come on.”
    She was, in fact, drenched and quite exhausted by the time they had it safely pulled up out of harm’s way.
    She said kindly, “Thank you, Francis, you were a great help.”
    “Don’t mention, Miss Ellix,” he begged her, lifting the dreadful hat.
    I wouldn ’ t care to be caught out in a small boat, in a blow like that, Alix thought as she hurried back into the house to change her sopping clothes.
    The wind died away a little around noon, then blew again with increased fury. The odd thing, to Alix, was that though some flurries of rain fell, most of the time the sun shone brilliantly so that the wild water seemed to give off flashes of light.
    The sea-birds, poor things, still cowered. Now and then they tried to rise into the air, only to flop back again, baffled.

 
    CHAPTER SIX
    ALIX put on a slim-skirted jersey suit of moss green, and pulled a matching soft angora cap over her hair. Her aunt had fixed a net over her iron-grey waves and skewered on a sort of toque, vaguely Queen-Maryish. She too wore a suit, an old but very good one of heather tweed. She looked very well in it.
    “We’d be airborne in anything full-skirted today,” she observed deeply. “You look very nice, my dear. Quite charming. And so appropriate.”
    “Thank you, Aunt Drusilla. May I drive?”
    “How about a licence?”
    “I brought my International.”
    “Good. I’ll be navigator.”
    Alix was delighted. She loved driving; had even enjoyed driving the tractors at the Priory. If she had been a man, she would have wanted to be an engineer of some sort.
    “We turn off a good way before the Edward road,” her aunt told her. They took, in fact, a “dirt” road that circled part of the lagoon at sea-level. Along this bit the wind, still blowing furiously, seemed to rock the car.
    It was better when they took a wide track going uphill through indigenous forest. This emerged at length on to a high plateau of rather open land, closely turfed as if sheep had grazed it.
    “There you are. That’s Northolme,” announced Lady Merrick, in the gratified tones of one successfully producing a rabbit out of a hat.
    Eric Gore’s house stood back from well-shaven lawns shaded by one or two magnificent trees. It was built of stone, with long balconied windows, a handsome pillared portico, and a lot of very decorative wrought - iron work and carving.
    On three sides it looked directly on to the river valley and the lagoon. It was high enough to command a wide prospect of the Indian Ocean beyond the bar.
    On the fourth side the forested mountains backed it. The road swept up to its portico round a big circular bed crammed with immense bushes of hydrangea.
    “Charming, isn’t it?”
    “Very,” Alix agreed politely. She was, in fact, much impressed with its handsomeness and size.
    As she braked to a standstill Eric Gore came out to greet them.
    “Welcome to Northol me,” he said in his light smooth voice, using what Alix had come to recognise as a current local greeting. “Do come indoors quickly. It’s hardly possible to stand in this blow. How are you, Lady D.? And you, Miss Rayne? I was afraid the weather might be too much for you. Awfully good of you to turn out on such a day.”
    “Not at all, Eric. I wouldn’t miss it for worlds. May the boy bring that suitcase in? It’s got our dinner things in it—if we may have a room to change in later. Couldn’t turn out in pretties with a westerly blowing, m’m?”
    “Of course not.