Master of Melincourt (8 page)

A man’s voice answered in so low a tone that Edwina quite failed to catch what was said, and she wasn’t in the least sorry because she realised it was no affair of hers, and if Jervis Errol allowed Marsha Fleming latitude before they were married
... although, of course, it all depended on what Miss Fleming meant by ‘latitude.’

But it was plain that once again they were on the best of terms with one another.

The moon rose above a clump of trees that grew close to the ornamental sheet of water that was one of the features of the grounds of Melincourt, and within seconds the two figures standing close together on the terrace were outlined in silver. The man was tall, and wore a dinner-jacket, and the girl had silken hair drawn up on to the top of her head and piled in curls that shone like moonbeams with every graceful movement of her head; and the dress she wore, that outlined the sinuous shape of her figure just as the moonlight itself did, was also a pale, silvery affair that combined to create the illusion of a Dresden-china figurine coated in molten silver. Particularly as she was not very tall.

Edwina heard her say:

“I feel as if we’re being picked out by a searchlight, and every eye in the house is watching us. Let’s find a
corner
of the grounds where it’s really dark. What about that summer-house where we used to meet before? It used to be smothered in roses at this time of the year, and earwigs dropped on us, and you said something about having it pulled down—”

A triumphant laugh answered her.

“But it hasn’t been pulled down yet! Come along, and if your heels make holes in the lawn I’ll carry you!”

Edwina turned away, for the first time in her life -—for a reason that she quite failed to understand
—
feeling actually revolted. It could have been revulsion because she had allowed herself to overhear so much, and according to her code eavesdroppers were unpleasant people. But that explanation didn’t entirely satisfy her, because the revulsion was actually accompanied by a quite extraordinary sensation not at all unlike dismay
... and there was no earthly reason why anything about the interchange on the terrace should have dismayed her or anyone else, for that matter.

Unless it was Candy Shaw, if she had a particular interest in her host.

Therefore the experience was a dismaying one in itself.

She had half made up her mind to have a bath and go early to bed, but all at once the very thought of doing anything that was so much a part of an uninspired routine failed altogether to appeal to her. She even felt curiously rebellious, and rebellion decided her to take a walk instead of a bath.

She slipped into a pair of stouter shoes, put on a coat and ran down one of the back staircases and let herself out into the grounds by means of a side door. Normally, since she was town reared, even the grounds at night, with their inky black shadows cast by trees and shrubberies, alarmed her a little, because she was never quite sure what might or might not be lurking in impenetrable places. But to-night her sudden restlessness drove her right down to the main gate and out on to the lonely stretch of country road that ran between two equally isolated villages. The road, it is true, was as bright as day in the moonlight, but the hedges on either side rose tall and black against the sky, and only the sweet scent of them was reassuring. Edwina felt greatly daring as she moved off down the road in the direction of the nearer of the two villages, and it was astonishing how quickly the exercise and the sense of unusual adventure under a sky full of stars soothed and consoled her after a time, and common sense asserted itself before she had time to reach the outskirts of the village and recognise from the church clock that it wanted only an hour to midnight.

Somewhat guiltily she turned back, and she hoped that in her absence Tina had not wakened and wanted her, or gone in search of her; and she hoped, also, that she would be lucky enough to get back inside the house without running into either her employer and the young woman who had set off to share the loneliness of the summer-house with him, or her employer’s brother and, possibly, Miss Candy Shaw, who was the only member of the party who had struck her as likely to indulge in a considerable amount of exercise, which she might have persuaded Jeremy Errol to share with her.

But she met no one in the drive, and as she made her way round to the side of the house there appeared to be no one on the terrace who could recognise her
—
and she realised that if either Miss Fleming or Miss Shaw caught sight of her they might think she was one of the maids returning from an assignation and an evening out in the village.

Somewhat breathlessly she ascended the same flight of back stairs that she had descended a short while earlier, and when she entered the nursery corridor she felt reasonably safe and secure, and was slipping out of her coat and making for her own room when she caught sight of the light shining under the schoolroom door.

She paused and stared at it, felt absolutely convinced that she had turned it off before Tina went to bed—indeed, they had not needed a light before Tina went to bed—and then decided to investigate.

She pushed open the door of the schoolroom, and could hardly believe the evidence of her eyes when they recognised the man sitting thoughtfully in the one comfortable chair the room contained, while the light above the ink-stained table shone down on him and his sleek, dark head, and the cigarette he was smoking appeared to be glowing dully at the tip as if he was not really aware of what he was doing, and had lighted it purely from habit.

He looked up as Edwina pushed open the door and then appeared in the doorway, and his eyebrows arched enquiringly. Then he realised that she was carrying a coat and her cheeks were delicately flushed as if she had been hurrying, and there was the curious sweetness of the out of doors clinging about her.

“You!” he exclaimed. “I thought you were in bed!”

CHAPTER
VI
I

EDWINA felt almost as guilty as she looked. The coat over her arm clearly gave her away, and in addition she was panting slightly after her ascent of the steep side staircase and her race along the corridors. She shifted the coat from one arm to the other, pushed back the warm brown hair from her smooth, pale forehead with a gesture that was purely defensive, and looked at her employer with guilty eyes.

“I was going to bed,” she explained truthfully, “and then I decided to go for a walk instead. It’s such a lovely night, I—I couldn’t resist going for a walk..
.”

His black brows actually met as his frown increased.

“Do you normally go for walks at this hour of the night?”

“No.”

“When you do go for walks do you go alone?”

“I, er—yes, of course.”

His eyes were a trifle bleak.

“There’s no reason why you should say ‘of course.’ You’re a free agent, and over twenty-one. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here at all. For all I know—and for all I care, if it comes to that—you could be having
an
affair with a local lad. You might even
be
seriously contemplating marrying a local Lothario.”

Edwina was so taken aback that she stared at him.

“I don’t know anyone in this district. And I’m certainly not having an affair with anyone.”

He shrugged.

“It’s no concern of mine. I merely suggested that you might, if you felt tempted, indulge in a little light dalliance. It’s usual with girls of your age
...
and no one can say you nay. Certainly not me!”

She tried to assemble her facts. He was in the schoolroom at an unusual hour. He had been sitting there either waiting for someone, or because he was desirous of temporarily escaping the society of someone who was a guest beneath his roof. It couldn’t be the latter, or he wouldn’t have invited them to stay with him, and only a short time ago she had seen him standing on the terrace with his principal guest at his side
...
the lovely, fairylike, gleaming, golden girl who might one day be his wife. Whom Tina confidently expected would be his wife one day!

They had disappeared together in the direction of an unseen summerhouse, and as it wasn’t so very long ago he ought to look a little ruffled. There ought to be traces of powder on his dinner-jacket and, possibly, just a smear of lipstick on either the whiteness of his shirt-front or his lean, dark face; and, by rights, his hair should be a little disordered, and as he had been in a summer-house that was entirely covered by a climbing rose some indication that the brambles had caught at him and the odd insect alighted on him.

All this she thought as she stared at him, and it struck her as strange that his appearance was immaculate, and there wasn’t so much as a hair of his head out of place, and there were certainly no traces of powder on the fine cloth of his dinner-jacket. He didn’t even smell delicately of highly concentrated perfume, and he looked calm to the point of being detached and, very definitely, just a little aloof.

“Well?” he said, wrinkling his brows at her again. “What are you looking so hard at?”

“N-nothing.” She coloured immediately, and, still hugging her coat, crossed the room to a chair near the old-fashioned nursery fire-guard. “I was just wondering why
...
why you are here.”

“Haven’t I a perfect right to be here, since I own the house
?
”

“Yes, of course.”

“Well then, try not to feel so amazed because you come in from a near-midnight walk and find me sitting at the table over which you like to preside in the daytime. This is your domain—I recognise that. But I also have a right to be here. Now, tell me precisely where you’ve been.”

“I went for a walk about an hour ago and walked very nearly as far as the village of Fordham.”

Fordham? But that’s a good three miles from here! Don’t tell me your boy-friend
l
ives in Fordham?”

“I tell you I
haven’t
a boy-friend,” and she sounded really indignant.

“You mean that you haven’t a boy-friend at all?
—
Not even in London?”

“N-no..
.”

“Ah
!”
His voice was sharp and he wagged a finger at her. “I notice you hesitate! You don’t instantly deny that you have no interest at all in the opposite sex, so I’ll be discreet and probe no further. However, I would like you to know that I do not approve of a young woman of your age taking long, lonely walks at night in this district. We’re right on the edge of the moors, and the next thing you’ll be doing is taking Tina hitch-hiking on the moor. And then you’ll both get lost.”

“I promise I won’t do that.”

Her voice was quiet but emphatic, although by this time the colour had died out of her cheeks and she was feeling very tired and not at all like listening to a lecture on what she should, and should not, do while she remained in his employ. His dark blue eyes gazed steadily at her, and the small but livid bruise on her forehead seemed to interest him a good deal, and he stared at it even harder than he had stared earlier in the day.

“One reason why I came up here to-night,” he told her, “was to have a little chat with you about that bruise you’ve collected which I commented on this morning. I hoped you would be up, and I hoped you would give me a truthful explanation of how you collected it. You said you were walking about in a dream
...
well, in this dream, what was it that rose up and hit you and left that mark behind?”

“I—I—er—”

“The truth, mind!” he warned.

She looked extremely uncomfortable.

“Do I really have to tell you?” she prevaricated. “It’s just possible I can’t remember
... I mean, I don’t honestly think I can remember.”

“Nonsense.” His voice was crisp. “You remember perfectly. It would be quite extraordinary if you didn’t, considering the type of experience that was yours.”

To her horror she realised that he knew how she had collected the bruise, and as he rose and walked across to her and put out his hand and lifted her chin, turned her face to the light, she quaked inwardly because his face, all at once, looked so grim, and it boded no good for the unfortunate Tina, sleeping the sleep of innocence and youth not very far away from them.

“You mean, you
—know
all about it?” she whispered huskily.

“Did you suppose I could remain in ignorance of such an incident for long? Bennett told me when I went across to the stables within half an hour of my return this morning. He gave me a highly coloured and possibly over-coloured account of what occurred, but even if he did the experience must have been one that you won’t forget very easily, and I find it difficult to put into words how strongly I feel about it, and how seriously I view Tina’s conduct—”

“It wasn’t fair of Bennett to give her away!” Edwina exclaimed, in high indignation. “He gave me his word that he wouldn’t! I particularly asked him not to say a word to anyone—”

“Bennett conceived it his duty to warn me. He sees my niece as a kind of menace unless something is done about her
...
and more or less immediately.”

“That, of course, is absolute rubbish,” Edwina declared.

She felt very uncomfortable because Jervis was still retaining his light hold of her chin and studying her intently, and short of making a deliberate movement to escape him she could do nothing to free herself. With his free hand he touched the livid bruise on her forehead, and his pressure, although light, caused her to wince.

At once he released her.

“So it still hurts,” he said.

“Not really,” she denied. “As a matter of fact, I bruise very easily, and bruises always last with me. You mustn’t be alarmed by Bennett’s story and a bit of a mark on my forehead which ceased to trouble me days ago.”

“How many days ago?”

She calculated, “Three or four. Perhaps five.”

“Why didn’t you get in touch with me and let me know what had happened? Why didn’t you
, if it comes to that, just walk out ...
sending me a bill for damages when you got back to London!”

She coloured furiously again.

“If you think I’m capable of doing a thing like that you must have a very low opinion of me, Mr. Errol,” she accused him in great indignation.

Jervis Errol shook his head. He walked back to his chair at the scarred schoolroom table and sat down again, facing her. His expression was more or less unreadable, and his eyes almost detached.

“I want you to give me your account of what happened on the night Tina locked you up in the stables,” he ordered quietly. “I want you to give me a completely unvarnished, but nevertheless absolutely true account of what occurred. Whether or not you did anything to merit punitive treatment... always supposing Tina had the right to administer
it ...
doesn’t matter. You mustn’t digress, or attempt to defend my niece, but just tell me the truth.”

He leant his elbows on the table, rested his chin on his linked hands, and waited for her to begin.

Edwina told him exactly what took place. She tried hard to soften her experience, but the fact that she spent several hours locked up in a state of abject fear, as a result of her instinctive mistrust of horses, and during the latter part of her incarceration, in the dark, was not easy to soften. He gathered from her choice of words that after a time she arrived at the conclusion that neither of her two stable companions, Mothball or Marquis, were in a position to do her any harm—Mothball because she was a very friendly small animal, Marquis because he was in another stall. But apart from everything else she had a claustrophobic dislike of being locked in anywhere, and she assured him—or tried to assure him—that the worst part of the experience was knowing that she couldn’t get out. That really did deprive her of the power to think rationally.

Errol continued to watch her so closely that she began to feel acutely embarrassed. There was neither sympathy nor a large amount of understanding in his look—indeed, she was very much afraid that after this disclosure he would hold her in a form of very real contempt—and a curious rigidity about the set of his mouth filled her with apprehension lest he there and then announced a series of punishments for Tina.

But he did nothing of the kind.

“What if Bennett hadn’t let you out when he did?” he enquired. “What kind of condition do you think you would have been in by morning?”

“I—I don’t know.” But she was so sure that she would have been white-haired that her conviction was given away by her eyes.

He nodded.

“Yes, I see,” he said. “It was lucky for you—lucky for Tina!—that Bennett did let you out. However, I still don’t understand why you didn’t get in touch with me and leave. No one would have expected you to remain after what took place.”

She made a rather helpless gesture with her hands and shoulders.

“I didn’t want to leave ... at least, I don’t think it seriously crossed my mind that it would be sensible to do so, and I couldn’t have walked out on the child until you returned. In any case, she—she was very sorry.”

“You comfort me,” he observed.

“Oh, I
really mean it!”
She wondered how she could possibly convince him, since he looked so hard and unapproachable all at once. “I think, as a matter of fact, that when she couldn’t leave the house to unlock me she was terribly upset, and if Bennett hadn’t let me out I think she, too, would have been in an awful state by morning. She was so relieved to see me when I got back to the house that her whole attitude towards me underwent a complete and radical change from that very moment, and only tonight she gave me to understand that she no longer disliked me at all. In fact, she-—she rather likes me.”

“Kind of her, I’m sure,” he observed in the same dry tone that he had used before. Then he picked up a pen from the pen-holder in front of him and started to play with the nib. “Do you wish me to understand that you are not contemplating handing in your notice
?
”

Edwina nodded her head.

“Nothing of the kind. If—if you wish me to stay on I will stay, but I do realise that, from your point of view, and possibly from Tina’s, I’m not an ideal companion for your niece. I’m still terrified of horses, and she wants someone to ride with her. Nothing will ever induce me to learn to ride!”

To her surprise he smiled.

“I could teach you to ride in no time at all,” he assured her.

She looked alarmed.

“Do you mean that, if I stay, you’ll insist on giving me lessons in riding?”

His smile broadened, and in the dark blue depths of his eyes a spark of amusement showed up plainly.

“Well, I’m not feudal enough to insist, but I may do my utmost to try to persuade you. You haven’t yet come up against my powers of persuasiveness, so if you really are prepared to stay on here I wouldn’t bet on it that you won’t be sitting astride a horse before many weeks are out. At the moment I’ve got some visitors on my hands, but once I’m free of them—”

“How long will they be staying?” she enquired apprehensively.

She saw his white teeth gleaming at her.

“A week
...
just a little longer, perhaps. And that will give me time to find you a suitable mount.”

“I don’t want a suitable mount.”

She actually felt as if the hairs were rising on the back of her neck, and he once more went across to her and stood looking down at her with a strange, considering expression in his eyes. He stood with his hands in his pockets, as if he felt sorely tempted to touch the discoloration on her forehead again, and was striving hard not to do so, and she looked up at him nervously.

“Do you
really
want me to remain, Mr. Errol?”

“I do,” he assured her with emphasis.

“Even though I’m ... not perhaps the ideal companion for Tina?”

“I think you are the ideal companion.”

She thanked him with her eyes. All at once the warm brown depths seemed to glow as if by some magical process they had come alight. Her magnolia
-
pale skin became overlaid with one of her peculiarly attractive flushes.

“Thank you, Mr. Errol,” she returned. “If you really believe that I’ll do my best to prove you right. I might even—I say
might
!
—agree to let you teach me to ride! And I’ll certainly make an effort to understand Tina a little
more...
if,” she concluded, “you promise you won’t punish her for what she did the other night!”

His answer to this request took some time to be thought out, and while he was doing so he paced up and down the room, with its shabby well-used furniture and attempts at brightness in the form of new floral curtains and a bowl of flowers which Edwina herself had arranged only that morning, and his black brows were very bent, and his whole expression brooding.

But at the end of five minutes he returned to her, and he spoke briefly but to the point.

“Very well, I won’t punish her this
t
ime.”

Edwina beamed up at him happily.

“And there won’t ever be another time, because Tina, I’m sure, has learned her lesson. She knows very well that if you send me away I might be replaced by someone she can like even less.”

“If I send you away she’ll go to school.”

Edwina made a little movement with her hands in her lap.

“Well, one day, of course she’ll have to be sent away to school I think a child like Tina will benefit
from the disciplined life of a boarding-school
... provided, of course, that it’s well run, and the sort of place where she can settle down. But she’s too young, yet, to be sent away to school.”

“So you’ll stay and look after her
?
”

“Until someone else can take over from me.”

“You said just now that she might take exception to ‘someone else.’ ”

Edwina looked uncomfortable ... particularly as she couldn’t help calling to mind the little scene on the terrace earlier in the evening.

“I wasn’t really thinking of someone else whom you might employ,” she admitted. “I was thinking—”

“Yes?”

“Well, Tina needs a mother.”

“So you’ve said before,” he remarked.

“I think she needs to feel absolutely secure and wanted.”

“She’s perfectly well aware that I want her. I don’t know quite why, but I’m devoted to the scrap.”

“I know.” She smiled up at him. “And, as a matter of fact,” she heard herself adding impulsively, “I’m growing quite fond of her myself.”

“Despite the fact that she locked you up in the stables
?
”

“Despite that. Perhaps because of it. Locking me up in the stables frightened her so much that she began to see me in a new light. I’m sure she wishes now that she’d never thought of doing anything of the kind.”

“I sincerely hope she does.”

He spoke forcefully, but there was a wryness in his smile just the same.

“Well, if you can forgive her, I can. But I’ll have a talk with her just the same. Knowing what took place while I was away I simply can’t ignore it, but I promise I won’t lock her up in her own room and keep her on a diet of bread and water for the next few days. It might be the best thing for her, but I shan’t do it.”

Edwina rose hurriedly and thanked him.

“I know you can’t. You are almost too good to her in a way,” she told him impulsively.

“And you allow yourself to be pushed around and won’t allow any action to be taken against her.”

“I was a coward, and she knew it. She traded on that.”

“If you have any other weaknesses you mustn’t let her know about them,” he cautioned her, half seriously, half humorously. “You have already had experience of what she can do.”

They walked together over to the schoolroom door, and he opened it for her. Then he held out his hand.

“Thank you for being so forbearing, Edwina,” he said very quietly indeed as his fingers closed firmly about hers. “You’re not a coward, you know. I think you were very plucky on the whole. Bennett said you were in very bad shape when he opened the stable door and found you. It took pluck, after that experience, to stay on here ... and it was very noble of you not to complain.”

Edwina was not entirely certain that he meant what he said, but she found her way to her own room in an unusual state of mental agitation and just a degree of purely temporary exultation because he apparently approved of her, and an unusual tingling in her fingers seemed to communicate itself to her
right arm and thence to some previously undisturbed spot deep at the heart of her
being ...
which was a sufficiently strange experience in itself to set her wondering.

It was the first time in her life that a man’s fingers had gripped hers quite so closely, and it was certainly the first time that a significant look in a man’s dark blue, thickly lashed eyes had had the effect of temporarily scattering her wits.

Of course, she could have imagined the look ... but she certainly hadn’t imagined the handclasp.

She had been too taken aback to say good-night to him, but in addition to saying good-night to her he had added: “Sleep well, Edwina. You’ve a clear conscience, no emotional entanglements, apparently, so you should sleep very well indeed
!”

As she undressed rather slowly and got into bed Edwina wondered about the emotional entanglements. She had more than a suspicion that she was being caught up in a web that was not entirely devoid of some form of emotion.

The next day she and Tina spent the morning on their own, but in the afternoon Tina was invited to accompany her uncle and Miss Fleming on a short drive, which included a visit to Marsha’s grandmother, who lived in the vicinity.

Tina returned from the excursion looking distinctly thoughtful, and when Edwina taxed her on her thoughtfulness she said something about no longer being quite sure what she wanted, and Marsha’s grandmother seeming to be very sure about what was going to happen.