Master of Melincourt (7 page)

CHAPTER VI

NEVERTHELESS, when a summons arrived for both Edwina and her charge to present themselves in the drawing-room after tea that same day, Tina could so far forget the snub of the morning as to insist on being dressed up once more in something fresh from her wardrobe, and to dance about happily while Edwina was striving to comb her hair because she felt sure that, this time, Miss Fleming would welcome her with open arms.

She had been feeling tired on arrival... possibly a bit scratchy. But after lunch and a rest in her room she was almost certainly feeling quite refreshed and therefore thoroughly amiable once more.

But disillusionment set in as soon as they entered the drawing-room, where Marsha was flirting outrageously with Jeremy Errol because Jervis had singled out Marsha’s friend, Miss Candy Shaw
—
another brilliantly attractive blonde—to be the recipient of his particular attention. He had already shown her all over the house and grounds while Marsha was resting, and now that tea had been wheeled in on an enormous trolley loaded with rich gateaux and flowery china he pressed Candy to preside behind the teapot and act the part, as he phrased it, of ‘mother.’

Marsha’s eyes were smouldering with resentment as she watched the graceful Candy manipulating the silver cream-jug and the sugar-tongs with poise and
the right amount of detachment, and it was unfortunate for Tina that she chose the particular moment when the woman she admired above all other women had just coldly declined to have her cup refilled because Miss Shaw would be the one to refill it to rush up to her—once more impulsively—and perch herself on the arm of her chair without first asking permission, to the imminent danger of a piece of cream cake that promptly left the plate and the arm of the chair on which it reposed, and alighted in Miss Fleming’s lap.

Miss Fleming’s complaints were immediate, and very much to the point. With scarlet ears, Tina listened to herself being described as ‘an awkward, and extremely clumsy child,’ and although her uncle just as promptly came to her rescue it didn’t seem to ease the situation one bit. Miss Fleming’s hard but very beautiful blue eyes blazed with unassumed wrath, and she accused both the uncle and the niece of living too much in one another’s pockets to be capable of detecting flaws in one another.

Jervis Errol’s own blue eyes began to resemble cool blue steel.

“Indeed?” he drawled. “Then I really should have warned you that it wasn’t safe to come and stay with us because, for the very reason that you mention, we always leap to the defence of one another when an outsider considers it his, or her, duty to attack. In fact, we don’t like being attacked, do we, kitten?” holding out his hand to his niece. “Not even when a lady’s skirt is ruined by a slice of cream cake!”

Marsha sought to justify herself.

“It’s the second time to-day that the child has made a dart at me—”

“Only because she has such a high regard for you.” Once more his hand was extended to the child. “Come over here, Tina, and fetch your usual footstool and sit at my feet. I promise I won’t bite you if you grab at me with sticky paws.”

“My hands are not sticky,” the child objected primly, as she nevertheless crossed the floor and curled up on the rug at his feet. Her eyes regarded him reproachfully. “They were washed and scrubbed with a nail brush before I came downstairs.”

“Good. That is an indication that Miss Sands is having an effect on you.”

“You said I wasn’t to call her Miss Sands, but Edwina.”

“Well, Edwina is having an obviously beneficial effect on you.” He glanced sideways at the governess, who had seated herself unobtrusively not far away, with that faint, gleaming, half-smile of his. “If only she can persuade you to be a little less impetuous sometimes we shall receive fewer complaints from lovely ladies like Miss Fleming here.”

“Don’t be silly, Jervis,” Miss Fleming exclaimed, also protestingly. “You know very well I don’t really mind the child showing her affection ... and if Miss Sands can be Edwina I certainly have a right, as an old and established friend, to be called Marsha.”

But Jervis merely smiled as if something about the statement secretly amused him.

“Perhaps,” he suggested, “there are friends and friends ... and other relationships develop when the particular type of friendship is established,” and he glanced once more, and rather thoughtfully, at Edwina.

Marsha, plainly regretting the edginess of her temper, made several attempts after that to return to her old relationship with Tina, but by this time the child was cagey, and not even broad hints that Miss Fleming had something upstairs in one of her suitcases that might interest Tina very much indeed had the desired effect. Tina remained close to her uncle’s side and said that would be very nice... meaning she was prepared to accept a present, if it had been bought for her, but she had already received so many presents in the course of her short life that she was not wildly excited by the thought of receiving yet another one.

Her uncle rumpled her hair—which annoyed her for the first time as Edwina had spent a lot of time on it, inducing it to wave attractively and look soft and dark and cared-for, instead of lank and definitely unmanageable.

Jeremy Errol tried to insist upon Edwina accepting a cup of tea, but she said that she and Tina had already had tea upstairs. After that he tried to draw her into conversation about herself, but she was even more cautious than Tina had suddenly become, and revealed little or nothing that could provide him with the smallest clue as to her likes and dislikes, her background or any particular ambitions that she nourished. Smiling whimsically, as if unaccustomed to being rebuffed in this way, but in no wise disconcerted by the experience, he then offered to accompany them upstairs when Edwina said it was time for them to withdraw, to have a look at the old schoolroom where, he assured her, he himself had once sat at the feet of a much more formidable female whose job it was to teach him the three ‘R’s’ than Edwina plainly was—indeed, he made it quite clear that he thought she was an exceptionally attractive governess; but Edwina instantly thought up an excuse that left him with no option but to shrug his shapely masculine shoulders and say, resignedly:

“Oh, well, another time!”

Jervis Errol spoke decisively.

“The nursery quarters are out of bounds to guests ... and at the moment you are a guest at Melincourt,” he reminded his half-brother.

The latter looked wryly amused.

“I’ve just been telling Miss Sands I used to live here,” he explained. “I wanted to show her the ink stains on the schoolroom table for which I was responsible, and which no amount of effort could ever remove.”

“I’m sure Miss Sands has already discovered the ink stains,” the senior Errol remarked crisply, “and the knowledge which she now has that it is you who was responsible for them can hardly be expected to either make or mar her day. If you wish to show anyone anything I think you ought to show Miss Shaw the hole you made in the gunroom panelling when you mistook it for an intruder after a New Year’s Eve dance.”

Edwina gathered that he was anxious to have the room cleared in order that he and Miss Fleming could bury the hatchet and restore friendly relations, and she urged Tina to make for the hall and the main staircase ahead of her; and Jeremy also appeared to comprehend without difficulty what was expected of him, and offered Miss Shaw the choice of seeing the gunroom panelling or going for a brief walk with him before they need change for dinner.

She elected to take the walk with him, and as, despite her elegance and her careful poise, there was something open-air and athletic about her, Edwina decided that she probably enjoyed walking.

Unlike, almost certainly, Marsha Fleming, who would probably look quite horrified if someone suggested a walk to her, and for that very reason stuck to stiletto heels when they were no longer strictly in fashion.

Edwina was not given any directive about the manner in which she and her charge were to comport themselves while the guests remained at Melincourt, but she felt reasonably certain her employer did not expect her to join them at dinner. And as Tina was not in the least anxious to do so without her, Mrs. Blythe agreed to serve them their usual supper upstairs.

But Tina was restless, resentful. She said that for the first time her uncle had not remembered to bring her a present after absenting himself for several days; and as for Miss Fleming
... well, she made no comment at all about her, but from her pursed lips and the hurt look in her eyes Edwina gathered that she was finding it difficult to keep alive the same enthusiasm for her and her arrival that had animated her immature breast the day before.

She went to bed at her normal hour, and she didn’t even seem to expect her uncle to find his way to the nursery quarters and say his usual good-night to her.

Edwina tucked her up, opened her window at the top and drew aside her curtains so that she could see the stars, and then prepared to leave her. But a small hand came out and caught at her arm and sought to cling on to her sleeve.

“You won’t tell my uncle what—what I did to you the other night, will you
?
” she said.

Edwina reminded her that she had given her word that she would not.

Tina looked slightly sceptical.

“Sometimes I give my word but I do things just the same,” she remarked.

“Well, I don’t.”

Tina lay looking up at her in the warm glow that streamed from her bedside lamp.

“You know,” she observed, as if she had been deliberating on the matter for some time, “I think I like you after all. I think I like you very much.”

Edwina cautioned her a little dryly:

“If I were you I wouldn’t ma
k
e rash statements of that sort just because one of your idols has toppled sideways on her pedestal. Miss Fleming was possibly not feeling quite herself to-day, and that’s why she developed a few prickles. To-morrow—the day after
—
she’ll be herself again. It wouldn’t do to split your allegiance just because she found you rather boisterous when she wasn’t in the mood to be responsive.”

But Tina’s eyes were big with doubt as she gazed up at her from her pillows.

“What do you mean by ‘split my allegiance’?”

“Open your heart to someone else because you’re feeling piqued.”

“I don’t know what piqued means, either.”

“Well, it doesn’t matter.” Edwina adjusted the shade of the bedside light, and then prepared to switch it off. “Are you quite comfortable? Do you feel like going to sleep?”

Tina shook her head violently on the pillow.

“No, I wish you’d stay and talk to me.”

“Why?”

“Because—because ...” She frowned, and tried to puzzle out the reason why she really wanted Edwina to remain. And all she could manage at last was, “I’ve already told you why. I think I’m beginning to hope you’ll never go away from here.”

“Never is a long time.”

“But you won’t let anything I’ve ever said—or done
—drive
you away, will you, Edwina?” she enquired anxiously. She shot up in bed and clasped both her small arms about her drawn-up knees. Her strange, black boot-button eyes were definitely anxious.
“
Will you
?”
she insisted.

Edwina felt inclined to smile a little, but not with anything remotely approaching triumph.

“I won’t allow myself to be driven away,” she promised.

“And you’ll stay? Stay as long as I want you?”

“By this time next week you’ll probably be appealing to your uncle to give me the sack,” Edwina observed without rancour. “So I think I can safely promise to stay as long as you want me.”

“I won’t. I won’t ever again ask Uncle Jervis to give you the sack
!”

Now that she felt reasonably secure again she was beginning to be aware of sleepiness stealing over her, and Edwina induced her to lie flat again and tucked her up for the second time. Before she put out the light and stole quietly away she felt another insistent tug on her sleeve, and bent to find out what was required of her this time.

“You can kiss me good-night if you like,” Tina said simply.

Edwina kissed her. She felt touched, but not entirely overwhelmed.

“Good-night, chicken,” she said, making use of one of the terms of endearment Jervis Errol frequently made use of when in contact with his niece. “Pleasant dreams!” she added.

She walked quie
tl
y away over the thick carpet, and once back inside her own room she moved to the window and looked out. Below her was the terrace, an oasis of deepest shadow at that hour because the late-rising moon had not yet climbed high enough in the sky to cast a flood of light across the head of the short flight of steps which led up to it from the dim greenness of the lawns, and where she was sure two figures were standing, because their voices carried clearly in the silence of the night, and the woman, at least, was laughing as if her good humour was entirely restored.

“Oh, darling,” she exclaimed, “you do have the oddest ideas. And of course I didn’t really mind, although I must have seemed upset. After all, Candy and I have been friends for years...”

Not wishing to overhear the full context of the conversation, Edwina drew back a step. And then the light, amused voice floated up to her again.

“The trouble with you, darling, is that you jump so rapidly to conclusions! And you simply don’t allow me any latitude at all
!”