Summer's Awakening (8 page)

It took several moments for her to recover from being startled. To her annoyance, he had managed to make her feel as guilty as if she had been doing something wrong—instead of relieving him of the trouble of turning out again when he would much rather be lounging by the schoolroom fire.

'I'm going home, Lord Cranmere... I beg your pardon, Mr Gardiner,' she corrected herself. 'I happen to want to get back early tonight, and I saw no reason to spoil your enjoyment of your drink.'

'Do you usually leave the house without saying goodnight to Emily?'

'No, I don't,' she admitted, her colour rising. 'But in the circumstances, I—'

He interrupted her. 'I don't know how long it takes you to ride home in normal conditions, but it would take longer tonight—considerably longer than waiting for me to drink my Scotch and run you home in the car.'

'Possibly.' His autocratic manner was beginning to make her angry.

After what she had heard him say about her, she would always feel latent hostility towards him in any circumstances. It only needed a little extra aggravation to bring that hostility bubbling to the surface, like
a
saucepan of milk boiling over.

She said, 'Frankly, I'm not very keen on being driven by people who drink and drive.'

'It takes more than one double Scotch to impair my judgment, Miss Roberts, and it's my first drink today. I don't start before lunch like your previous employer.'

Later, when she was reviewing the altercation, she thought it a curious way to refer to his father's heavy drinking. She concluded he had meant to emphasise that it was he who now held hire-and-fire power over her. As if she needed 'reminding!

'However, it's still in the glass, and I'm still as sober as you are,' he went on, reaching for the dark green waterproof coat which his brother had worn for flyfishing, and taking a flat brown tweed cap from the peg above it.

It was the kind of cap worn for country pursuits by landowners all over England. It fitted his head well enough, but somehow it didn't suit his face. It went with a ruddy complexion, not a sub-tropical tan; with eyes of blue, grey or brown, but not with tawny gold irises; with an Anglo-Saxon physiognomy, not the sharply carved features of his face.

He was the last of a line which could be traced back to the early fifteenth century. Yet when he had shrugged on the coat and put on the peaked tweed cap, he looked extraordinarily un-English. He looked what he had become; a tall, tough, decisive American who liked to give orders and have them obeyed, not defied.

'And you needn't feel you're being a nuisance,' he went on. 'As anyone who knows me will tell you, being the son of a peeress doesn't make me one of Nature's gentlemen. I do things for
my
convenience; rarely for anyone else's. It would upset my plans for you to be knocked down tonight, and also I want to discuss them with you.'

She hadn't seen the car he had hired, but she thought it unlikely it would be a large estate car with room for her bicycle in the back.

She said, 'What about my bike? I shall need it tomorrow.'

'If it's fine, you can walk for a change. If not, we'll send someone to fetch you. Don't stand there arguing, Miss Roberts. Get that cape on and let's get started.'

Fuming, she did as he told her. A few minutes later she was in the leather-scented interior of a Jaguar, and he was dashing round to the driver's side of the limousine.

Summer couldn't afford to buy a car, even a secondhand model, but since her aunt's death she had learned to drive. There was a driving instructor living in the village—he worked in the nearest town, but he lived not far from her cottage. He had a daughter who had sat for her 'O' level examinations the previous summer, and some weeks before the exams, he had asked Summer if she would give the girl some private coaching in the evenings. She had agreed, if he would teach her to drive. Somewhat to her surprise, she had passed the test the first time and could now hire a car if ever she needed one.

The Jaguar had an automatic gear change, she noticed. So had the car which her father had driven. But as most of the less expensive cars on the road in England had a manual gear change, she had learnt to drive on one of those.

'What are the plans you mentioned?' she asked coldly, as the car glided forward.

'I'll go into that in a moment. First you tell me something. Why do you want to get home early tonight? Are you going out?'

She didn't have a reason ready, nor could she improvise one.

'That was a lie, wasn't it?' he accused her. 'Like the one about Renfrew disapproving of more than a few books being removed from the library. It was obvious to me that Emily had never heard of that embargo—you invented it. It was an excuse to get you out of the schoolroom.'

When she said nothing, he continued, 'Don't ever try lying to me again, Miss Roberts. I dislike attempts to bamboozle me. If the reason you didn't want a lift was because you thought a double whisky might top up my alcohol level to the point of making me unsafe behind a wheel, you should have said so, point-blank. I never prevaricate myself, and I don't like people who do.'

Again there seemed nothing she could say, unless he expected her to apologise. If he did, he would have a long wait.

'Why are you nervous about drinking and driving? Is that how you lost your parents?—in an accident with a tanked-up driver?'

'No, they were drowned in a sailing accident—a freak squall hit them. They were both
keen,
experienced sailors. Unfortunately, I used to feel seasick if the water was the least bit choppy. It was the only thing we didn't do together.'

It was no longer an effort for her to speak unemotionally. Twelve years didn't make that kind of memory painless, but it transformed passionate grief into forlorn acceptance.

To give the devil his due, James Gardiner didn't produce any of the meaningless cliches which most people felt obliged to utter.

He said, 'What was your father's occupation? Did he leave you comfortably provided for?'

'He was an artist. No, he didn't,' she said briskly. 'But my mother's sister took me in.'

'How much have Emily's parents been paying you to teach her?'

She told him.

They had almost reached the end of the long tall tunnel of trees, their branches beating in the wind. At other seasons of the year they did offer some protection from lighter showers, but not now their leaves were gone and the rain was falling in a torrent, drumming on the roof of the car and blurring the windscreen even though the wipers were fanning back and forth at full speed!

He said, 'That's not much salary for a responsible job. They were taking advantage of your situation.'

She had sometimes thought the same thing, and wondered if she ought to press for a higher salary than the one proposed by Lord Edgedale when she changed from part-time to full-time.

However, as she hadn't any proper qualifications, and working at Cranmere was both convenient and congenial, she had said nothing. But she couldn't have managed on her salary if Miss Ewing had not left a small income. Being unearned, it was heavily taxed, but it paid the rates on the cottage and the electricity bills. As she never spent money on the usual pleasures of her age-group—food was her only self-indulgence—she had been able to manage.

They had come to the pair of lodges which flanked the main gateway and housed the head gardener and his wife in one, and a gamekeeper in the other.

The great gates, supported by stone piers topped with finials in the form of swagged urns, stood open. Beyond was the minor road which, after hugging the brick wall which marked the boundary of the estate for a few hundred yards, converged with the main road.

From the junction to the outskirts of the village, her companion was silent, peering through the veil of rain on a winding stretch of road where each bend might reveal a hazard.

When, further on, she began to explain the position of Miss Ewing's cottage—her cottage now—he said, 'You forget—I've lived here longer than you have. Your aunt was here in my time. An old dragon, from what I remember of her.'

Outside the cottage he pulled the Jaguar on to the grass verge where it wouldn't impede passing traffic. She had thought that whatever he wanted to talk about could be discussed in the car, but he said, 'I'll come in for ten minutes.'

She could hardly refuse to admit him, but she was simmering again at his arbitrary invasion of her home as she ran down the path ahead of him.

Like most small, old houses in England this one lacked an entrance hall, the door opening directly into what was known as 'the front room'. Summer's cottage, which was at one end of a terrace of ten, had had a small glazed porch added. Modern in style, it was an eyesore to look at but an improvement in practical terms. They were able to shelter inside it while she fumbled for the front door key instead of the one she usually used.

As she always did, she had left the fire ready to be lit. As soon as she had switched on some lamps and taken off her outer clothing, she struck a match and held it to the kindling in the grate.

She straightened to find that James Gardiner had removed his cap but not his coat, and was taking in the details of her sitting room. The ceiling was low and seemed lower with him standing there. She watched him glance at her bookshelves, at the water-colour painting—bought with pocket money at a jumble sale—which she had brought down from her bedroom to hang above the fireplace, and at the needle-point cushions, or pillows as her mother would have called them, she had stitched as a change from always reading in the evenings.

'You're very tidy,' he said. 'Do you do your own housework?'

'People in houses of this size usually do, if you remember. Did you expect me to live in chaos?'

Her grey eyes, always friendly and gentle when she looked at Emily, met his with a steelier expression.

'What is it you want to discuss with me, Mr Gardiner?' Deliberately, she refrained from offering to take his coat.

He took it off anyway, folded the wet side innermost, and threw it across an upright chair.

'Maybe discuss is the wrong word. I've decided on a course of action, now it's up to you to decide if you're willing to go along with it. Shall we sit down?'

To ask that had been her prerogative. But the only prerogatives he would respect were his own, she thought crossly as she sat down.

Having suggested they sit, he chose to remain on his feet, casting his eye along the titles on the bookshelves in the alcove on the far side of the chimney-breast.

'I've a house on the west coast of Florida—the Gulf of Mexico side,' he told her. 'I'm going to send Emily there for the rest of the winter, and I'd like you to go over with her. There's a large swimming pool in the grounds. I'm told that running is the worst exercise for asthmatics, and swimming is the best. It has to do with the weight of the body being supported by the water so that the total amount of energy used is less than in most other exercises.'

Not for the first time that evening she was silent after he stopped speaking. But not from annoyance or discomfiture.

For some moments Summer was overwhelmed. To return, at long last, to her homeland... to escape from
an
English winter to a climate where swimming was possible...

Although not a good small-boat sailor, she had always loved being
in
the water and had swum from an early age until her departure from America. It had been her favourite activity.

'I'd be happy to go there with Emily,' she told him, her enthusiasm for his plan tempered by her detestation of its author.

He didn't appear to be gratified by this reaction. Clearly he would have been surprised and put out if she hadn't acceded to it.

'Is your passport in order?'

'No, it expired some years ago.'

'That can be remedied. Call the Embassy first thing tomorrow and find out the drill. Do you rent this place, or do you own it?'

'It belongs to me.'

Now he did sit down—in the armchair opposite hers.

'What are the chances of finding a tenant for it?'

'I have no idea. But I don't think there would be much point in attempting to let it. I'd prefer to leave it standing empty and arrange for someone to keep an eye on it. It's not a damp cottage—I shan't come back in the spring to find it full of mildew.'

'In the spring I shall probably move Emily up to Cape Cod. She won't be coming back here.'

'I see. When will she come back?'

'Maybe in five or six years if she wants to revisit old haunts. Certainly not before then, and maybe never if she finds America as much to her liking as I do.'

'I... I don't understand what you mean.'

'Emily is in the same situation that you were, Miss Roberts. The only person willing and able to take care of her lives in another country. Therefore she must adapt to a different way of life in a new place. Had she been at a boarding school, she could have continued her education in England and spent the vacations in America. As things are, she has you to be a link between her old life and her new one. I think she'll find the transition considerably less painful than it was for you.'

Summer stared at him for
a
moment; her own feelings forgotten. Her only concern for the child.