Master of Melincourt (6 page)

“It means that you think only of yourself.”

“But I don’t! I think a lot about my Uncle Jervis. I love my Uncle Jervis!”

Edwina made a hopeless little gesture with her hands. She wondered why she was waging war with a child
... and where it would get her, anyway, if she continued to wage a form of cold war with such a strong-minded and unpredictable child as Tina Errol.

Less than twenty-four hours ago she had thought that they were cementing a friendship
... or, at any rate, that there were the beginnings of a friendship growing up between them, and certainly that there was no longer any undisguised ill-will. Up until the moment that Tina slammed the stable door on her they had had a particularly pleasant day together, and were looking forward to a companionable high tea in the well-appointed schoolroom at Melincourt ... the room in which so many children, with all kinds of dispositions and problems, all kinds of grudges and moments of pure happiness, had toiled over their lesson books and shared their meals with a young woman like Edwina who was appointed to look after them.

But surely not one of them had ever been guilty of quite such a calculated piece of malice as that which the sallow-faced Tina had been guilty of without any real cause for quite so much vindictiveness?

All the same, she was very small for her age, and she was very spoiled, and at the moment she did look rather abject. Edwina couldn’t bear the sight of her anxious, black boot-button eyes upturned to her appealingly, and she knew that the appeal concerned her Uncle Jervis.

Would Edwina, or would she not, tell Jervis Errol what had happened in his absence, and would this affect his opinion of his niece in any way?

Edwina suddenly shook her head.

“No, I won’t tell your uncle, and I won’t expect him to compensate me because I’ve collected a very bad headache—genuine this time—and my dress appears to be ruined by contact with the stable floor and the affectionate overtures of Mothball. Unlike a certain parlourmaid I shall say nothing ... but I shall be careful to hand in my notice to your uncle as soon as he returns. The one thing you desired above everything else will now become an established fact.”

“You mean—” Tina spoke in a whisper—“that you won’t stay here
?
”

Edwina sighed, and went across to her dressing
-
table to search the top drawer for a bottle of aspirin tablets.

“I don’t want to spend another evening locked in with Mothball and Marquis,” she replied.

“But I wouldn’t lock you in again—”

Edwina turned and glanced at her sceptically.

“You’d probably think of something else to bring me to heel. As a matter of fact, I think you’d have gone down very well with the chiefs of staff who ran the Spanish Inquisition.” And then she remembered that Tina was partly Spanish, and decided that might account for it. “I’ll just tell your uncle I don’t find the country as good for my health as I imagined, and ask him to release me as soon as someone else can be found to come and look after you. Or he decides that you’d be better off in a school!”

“Oh, no!” Tina exclaimed.

Edwina poured water into her tooth-glass and swallowed her aspirins.

“Ever heard of a boomerang?” she enquired conversationally.

Tina looked at her blankly.

“It’s a thing that comes back at you after you’ve thought you’ve got rid of it,” Edwina explained. “It’s a little like conscience,” she added thoughtfully.

Tina still stared at her.

Edwina nodded her head in the direction of the door.

“If I were you, I’d go to bed,” she said. “I’m going myself as soon as I’ve had my somewhat delayed bath.”

CHAPTER
V

JERVIS ERROL returned to Melincourt a couple of days later, and with him was Miss Marsha Fleming and one of her girl friends, and a couple of men friends of Errol himself.

Errol telephoned a few hours before he was due to arrive, and the telephone call sent the housekeeper scuttling round in a hurry to prepare beds for the three unexpected guests, and make certain that everything was as it should be in Miss Fleming’s room. Apparently Miss Fleming’s mother was not accompanying her, but as her grandmother lived in the district she would not be entirely cut off from her family during her stay.

Tina, when she heard the news, looked at first delighted and then rather more sober.

“Do you think I ought to wear my best dress?” she enquired, surveying Edwina with a certain uneasiness
...
although for the past two days their relations had been quite amicable, and Edwina had said nothing at all to lead her to believe that she would go back on her word to say nothing at all to Jervis Errol about her incarceration in the stables. However, Tina plainly could not quite believe her, and she followed her about once the news had been received that the returning master of the place and his friends were on their way, and once she even tackled Edwina on the subject.

“You won’t—you won’t say anything to Uncle Jervis?”

“Not a word,” Edwina promised, looking mildly surprised. “Didn’t I give you my word?”

“But people don’t—don’t always keep their word..
.”

“Well, I do.”

Tina heaved a tremendous sigh of relief.

“Oh, well, I didn’t really expect you’d say anything. But you never know, you might feel tempted if he asks you how well I behaved myself.”

“I’ll simply say your conduct was exemplary,” with dryness.

That vaguely alarmed Tina.

“What is exemplary?” she began. And then she decided there wasn’t time to find out, and if Marsha Fleming was arriving any moment she ought to be suitably attired to welcome her. Marsha, according to Tina, was nothing short of a fashion plate—and indeed, she had done a certain amount of modelling in her time. Her father was a retired army man who had found it difficult, on his pension, to maintain his daughter’s wardrobe at the peak she expected, and Marsha had had various kinds of jobs since she left her expensive finishing-school. Now she was planning to marry money, and with that end in view she would almost certainly arrive looking her best Tina repeated:

“Shall I wear my best dress
?
”

“Good gracious, no, why should you?” Edwina was about to reply, when she realised that that would merely involve her in argument, and she was growing a little tired of arguing with Tina. She shrugged her shoulders. “Oh, well, yes, of course
... if you feel you ought to. But you’ve so many dresses that I’m not quite sure which one you consider to be your best.”

“This one.”

Tina dragged a smart lemon-yellow pure silk from off its hanger, and went round searching for the right shoes to go with it, and other etceteras. In the end she decided that white kid sandals and a series of Indian bracelets which her uncle had given her did the best for her appearance as a whole; and when she went downstairs at last she was jingling the Indian bracelets as they encircled her immature wrist, and smelling rather strongly of cologne ... which also was a present from her uncle.

“Of course, Marsha always uses wonderful perfume,” she observed, as she and Edwina stood together in the hall, looking out through the glass doors at the gracious sweep of the drive along which the cars would appear in procession. She suddenly recollected that Edwina, too, had had a bottle of perfume once which .she might well have valued, and she glanced sideways at her uneasily. “If Uncle Jervis gives me some more pocket-money when he gets back I’m going to buy you a present,” she announced.

“For goodness’ sake, don’t do anything of the kind,” Edwina implored her. “Your pocket-money is to spend on yourself.”

“But I’d like to buy you a present.”

Edwina met her uneasy eyes.

“My dear child,” she said quie
tl
y, “I don’t need bribing. And I certainly wouldn’t want you to spend money on me.”

“But I smashed your bottle of scent—”

“I think they’re coming,” Edwina said quickly, in the same quiet tone. “That car in the lead is your uncle’s car, isn’t it
?
”

Tina was immediately diverted, and danced about on her toes.

“Oh, yes,” she cooed, “it is, it is! And Marsha’s sitting beside him at the wheel, so I suppose the others are in the cars behind. I wonder whether Uncle Jeremy is driving his own car—”

“Who is Uncle Jeremy?”

“Uncle Jervis’s half-brother. I like him very much, and I know he likes me!” She pirouetted like a ballet
-
dancer. “I know
he’ll
have a present in his luggage for me.”

“Don’t you like people unless they bring you presents?”

“Of course ... sometimes.” And then she squeezed Edwina’s arm convulsively. “Isn’t Marsha beautiful? Just like the heroine in a fairy-story with all that hair, and those big blue eyes. I’ve
never
seen such big blue eyes in my life! And she puts stuff on her eyelashes, and they stick out like brooms, and sometimes she wears false eyelashes ... only I don’t think she wants Uncle Jervis to know that. I was in her bedroom once when she was sticking a pair on—”

“You’d better save your breath to welcome your uncle,” Edwina advised close to her ear, and the housekeeper, who was also in the hall to welcome her returning master and receive instructions about the guests, overheard and looked meaningly at Edwina.

The look said plainly, “What a child! If she belonged to me I’d do something about her!”

Jervis Errol, looking fit and brown as if he had been in the South of France, or spent a lot of time lying on beaches nearer home, came running swiftly up the steps to the front door, and behind him Miss Fleming paused to have a few words with Jeremy Errol—a tall, fair, good-looking young man in his early twenties—-and accepted his assistance with some of her light hand-luggage.

Jervis burst in through the open door, took one look at Tina, and then swung her up in his arms.

“You’re as brown as a berry, kitten,” he told her. “What have you and Miss Sands been up to while I’ve been away?”

It was the kind of opening speech that secretly alarmed Tina, but she need not have worried, for Edwina, slim and composed in unobtrusive navy-blue linen, would not have given her away for the world.

“Well, Miss Sands?” He looked unexpectedly hard at her, and the tiny bruise on her left cheekbone which had not had time to fade, and which had been caused by some hard part of the stable building when she was enclosed in it, and which she must have encountered with a good deal of force, seemed to interest him immediately. “Don’t tell me you’ve taken up boxing? Or did you perhaps have an argument with a brick wall
?
”

It was so near the truth that she coloured violently. “As a matter of fact, I bumped myself the other day. It was a silly thing to do, and I couldn’t have been looking where I was going.”

He agreed thoughtfully.

“You must have been walking about in a dream. I’d advise you to concentrate more on what lies ahead when next you take your daily exercise. However, it hasn’t exactly marred your particular style of beauty.” He gazed at her even more thoughtfully, and she thought that his eyes smiled a little, and might have gone on smiling, only Tina tugged at his sleeve.

“I’ve been very good while you’ve been away.”

His eyebrows ascended.

“Have you?”

She looked challengingly at Edwina.

“Haven’t I, Miss Sands?” she demanded.

Her uncle tweaked her ear.

“For two people so close to one another in age you do seem to cling to formality,” he observed. “I should have thought by this time you’d have been on Christian-name terms with Miss Sands. By the way,” he looked at Edwina for enlightenment, “what is the name that would sound more friendly than Miss Sands?”

“Edwina,” she replied.

The smile returned to his eyes. He nodded approvingly.

“It suits you,” he said.

Miss Fleming was standing in the hall by this time, and Tina made one of her little rushes at her. The slight, golden-haired, delicately beautiful Marsha, wearing a silk suit that had plainly cost quite a lot of money, and with her arms full of flowers, elegantly wrapped parcels and other impedimenta that were not in the least calculated to weigh down her arms, uttered a small cry of alarm that faded into an apologetic laugh, and fended her off with one of the largest of the parcels.

“Oh, darling, please!” she begged. “Not in these stockings! I’ve already snagged one of them badly, and although I know you mean well you have got rather large feet for a little girl, haven’t you?”

Tina, abashed and discomfited by this revelation about her feet—and she had prided herself that the kid sandals made them look very small and dainty
—
withdrew until she was once more standing close to Edwina, and as if by accident Miss Fleming’s eyes alighted on the governess, and for a second or so she even appeared surprised. Then she came up behind Jervis and gripped his arm with her free hand, and indicating Edwina with a nod of the head demanded to be introduced.

“Is this someone you’ve got staying here?”

He looked down at her with slightly inscrutable dark blue eyes, and reminded her that he had already told her all about Miss Sands ... Miss Edwina Sands. She was the latest incumbent in a fairly long line of governesses, and he was hoping against hope that she was going to stay, so he adjured her not to ask any awkward questions, or do anything at all to cause Miss Sands to arrive at the conclusion that she could be happier elsewhere.

“Treat her as you would your favourite great-aunt who is expected to leave you all her money,” he begged. “If you don’t, I shall have the task of looking for someone else to take Tina off my hands.”

Marsha, long eyelashes fluttering—and they could, but might not, have been false—looked up at him in some astonishment.

“But, darling,” she drawled, “surely governesses are easy enough to come by... and if not you have an alternative in your hands which will make life simpler than treating Miss Sands as if she was labelled ‘Handle with care.’ You can send the child away to school, and if you ask me she’ll love it much more than being cooped up here with a young woman who has to be propitiated in order to continue looking after her.”

Edwina spoke up quickly.

“I don’t have to be propitiated. Mr. Errol was merely joking.”

Marsha looked at her with cold blue eyes, although her lips attempted an up-curving smile.

“I’m glad to hear it,” she replied. “For one moment I felt quite alarmed ... faced with the prospect of treading cautiously every time I saw you and Tina approaching. As a matter of fact, I’ve always considered that Mr. Errol treats his governesses—and, indeed, everyone he employs—far too kindly, and I know he pays outrageous salaries. No one else would dream of being so generous. I’ve always told him so
!”

“I know you have.” But Jervis Errol looked momentarily embarrassed because he was not accustomed to discussing the amount of remuneration he made to his staff before his guests and one very new member of that staff itself. He tried to treat the matter lightly. “Don’t you know that nowadays a cook can demand far more than a politician if she’s a really good cook? And that goes for young women capable of handling the Tinas of the world.”

He tweaked his niece’s ear again.

“Why are you all dressed up like that? Didn’t I buy you that dress in Paris, or somewhere like that?”

But Tina was behaving as if she had suddenly lost her tongue, and she couldn’t even remember why it was that she had dressed herself up as she had. While her Uncle Jeremy bent over and whispered in her ear and the other two guests attempted to make a fuss of her, she kept her face averted, and Edwina suspected she was even ready to cry by the time the slight turmoil had died down, and the library door had been opened to receive the new arrivals, and a tray of refreshments was carried in by the butler.

“Would you like to go upstairs?” she whispered to Tina, and the latter nodded, gripped her hand and made for the staircase.

“Yes, let’s,” she said, and Edwina understood that she wasn’t prepared to say any more. Also—and for the first time—she wanted someone apart from her uncle and Mi
s
s Fleming to cling to, and it was largely because of the treatment meted out to her by Miss Fleming.

She had thought more of her stockings, and her faultless silk suit, than she did of receiving an eager childish embrace.