The Blue Rose by Esther Wyndham Page A

the initial outburst Francie said to her: “It’s really all my own fault. He’s too sure of me. I’ve let him take me too much for granted. We’re too free and easy with each other. I ought to be more like Clare.”
    Rose didn’t see how after a quarrel like that, when they had said such dreadfully wounding things to each other, their relationship could ever be quite the same again—but it was all made up by the next morning and they appeared to be exactly the same as before—just as loving, just as comradely.
    “Was that your first quarrel?” Rose asked Francie.
    Francie burst out laughing. “Good gracious no. The first time it happened we both thought it was the end of the world ... As a matter of fact we quarrel less than most married people, but I think it does one good sometimes to let off steam. It’s an emotional release when you’re very het up ... The only sad thing is,” she added wistfully, “the more you quarrel the less marvellous your reconciliations become. Our first reconciliation was even more wonderful than first falling in love!”
    Was it true that all married people quarrelled, Rose wondered? She could not recall a single quarrel between her own parents—not so much as a harsh word even—but that of course did not mean that they had not quarrelled in private. They would have taken very good care not to let their children know they were quarrelling. But in the case of Derek and Francie their quarrel had been so loud that the children, if there had been any, would have heard it even if shut up in a separate wing of a great house. But perhaps if there had been children they would have curbed their tempers. Perhaps that was what was really the matter with them?

 
    CHAPTER ELEVEN
    THE day before her wedding Rose woke up with a bad sore throat. She hoped against hope that it was only a dryness of the throat due perhaps to having slept on her back with her mouth open; but as the day wore on and her throat got worse rather than better, she knew that she was in for a cold. She was not going to see Stephen that evening because everyone had warned her that it was unlucky to see your bridegroom the night before your wedding. Stephen had seemed rather irritated by this superstition. He himself had refused to have the traditional bachelor party. He said he would stay at home to work out the last details of their route to Florence.
    Rose had only a rather hazy idea of their honeymoon journey. She had left it all to him, and though he had told her all the names of the places at which they would be staying en route, she had not looked them up on the map. She only knew for certain that they would be spending their first night at the motel at Lympne so as to fly the car over early in the morning from Ferryfield to Le Touquet. Stephen wanted to get as far as Nancy the second night, a distance of some three hundred miles from Le Touquet.
    Francie dosed her with aspirin and hot treacle posset that night before the wedding and put her to bed early. She told her the next morning that Stephen had rung up soon after she went to bed but she had told him that Rose was already asleep. Rose had to stifle a rise of anger when she heard this. She had not fallen asleep for hours and she would have given anything to talk to Stephen, even for a moment.
    Fortunately her cold had not yet come into her head but her throat was worse than ever and she had to suck jujubes all the morning. She had been much too nervous and excited to eat any breakfast and even for lunch she would take no more than the cup of coffee which Francie almost had to force down her.
    “You’re very silly, darling,” Francie said. “You know the old saying, ‘Stuff a cold and starve a fever.’ ”
    “Mother used to interpret that: ‘If you stuff a cold you’ll have to starve a fever,’ ” Rose replied. She started to dress very early because she had nothing else to do (all her packing had been done the day before), and she was in her