Fragrant Flower by Barbara Cartland Page B

you to take some lessons in embroidery because it would be cheaper than having to pay the Chinese,” Lady Osmund said, “but now I wonder if you really need them.”
    She then produced quite a number of gowns and underclothes that she wanted either embroidered or appliquéd, and Azalea wondered almost despairingly if she would ever be able to keep up the standard that Mrs. Chang had set for her.
    When they went to the Dining Saloon for meals, Lady Osmund made quite certain that Azalea was not seated anywhere near Lord Sheldon.
    There was always either Violet or Daisy beside him, but he took to coming down later and later to meals, and usually they had finished before he appeared.
    Azalea sometimes wondered if it was because he found the twins impossible to talk to, while the man who occupied the chair on his other side was undoubtedly a bore.
    One evening, after she was supposed to have gone to bed, Azalea crept up on deck.
    She was well aware how reprehensible her aunt would think her doing such a thing, but the evenings were warm and the sky was filled with stars.
    Azalea longed to feel against her cheeks the soft, moist air that they had encountered after reaching the Red Sea. They had gone ashore at Alexandria, and when they rejoined the ship to sail on to Port Said they had seen less and less of Lord Sheldon.
    Azalea was sure he was deliberately avoiding Lady Osmund. Unfortunately her aunt thought so too, and was extremely cross with the twins.
    “Why can you not make yourselves more pleasant?” she asked them. “You had Lord Sheldon sitting next to you at dinner the other evening, Violet, and I noticed that you made no effort to converse with him. Why could you not ask him about Hong Kong or India, where he met your father?”
    “What should I say, Mama?” Violet asked helplessly.
    “Ask him to tell you about the places he has visited,” Lady Osmund said in an irritated tone. “Really, what is the point of my spending all this money on elaborate gowns for you both if you do nothing but talk to each other?”
    She looked at their pretty, stupid faces and her eyes narrowed for a moment.
    “If I have much more nonsense,” she said, “and you do not put yourselves out to be ingratiating, I shall send one of you home!”
    There was silence for a moment and then the twins cried out simultaneously,
    “No, no, Mama! You cannot do that! We cannot be separated!”
    “I am half inclined to believe that is the best thing to do,” Lady Osmund said. “I shall talk to your father about it.”
    She swept from the cabin leaving the twins staring at each other despairingly.
    “We cannot be parted – we cannot!” they cried in identical voices and turned to Azalea.
    “Mama did not mean it, did she?”
    Because she was sympathetic, knowing how much it meant for them to be together, Azalea said,
    “You must try when your mother is there to talk and smile at any young man to whom she introduces you.”
    “I do not mind some men,” Daisy said, “but Lord Sheldon frightens me! He is so stiff and, besides, he is old!”
    “I should think he is about twenty-nine,” Azalea said, “or perhaps thirty. That is not so old, Daisy.”
    “It is old to me,” Daisy retorted, and Azalea felt that was somehow very true.
    Now as she reached the deck she found to her relief that it was empty. Everyone who had not retired to bed, was in the Saloon playing cards or else in the Smoking Room where the Bar was situated.
    Lady Osmund never went there, but Azalea used to hear laughter and raised voices and thought as she passed the open door that it sounded much the gayest part of the ship.
    She went to the rail to lean over it and watch the phosphorescence in the water moving away from the ship’s side. It was like a reflection of light from the stars above her head and she looked up, thinking that the sky seemed big and boundless, stretching away into infinity, and having a mystery that she had never noticed when she was in