Honey Pot

by Mira Stables

  “When you were a small girl, Russet, did your Papa ever spank you for impudence?” asked Mr Cameron levelly.

  Russet was so startled that she actually jumped. It was the first time that he had forgotten the formality of ‘Miss Ingram’ and he did not seem to have noticed his slip. She twinkled at him naughtily and said, “Oh no, sir. I had the happiest of childhoods. I daresay I was shockingly indulged. Certainly I cannot remember being punished and only rarely being scolded.”

  He nodded thoughtfully. “Yes. It shows, you know.”

  “That I was odiously spoiled?”

  “Let us rather say that you were accustomed to being loved.”

  For some reason that made her blush. She hastened to give the subject a new turn, hoping that her shady hat would conceal the hot colour that she could feel suffusing her cheeks. “And you, sir? Were you, also, indulged and petted?”

  He smiled for that. “If there is any kindness in me, I learned it from my mother,” he said quietly. “In childhood I saw very little of my father who was busily engaged in laying the foundations of his fortune in India. I was sixteen when my mother and I went out to join him—my character already formed. My father, moreover, was already subject to the recurrent fever that was eventually to prove fatal, and was much concerned with teaching me all that I needed to know about his many business concerns so that I should be capable of dealing with my inheritance when failing health made it impossible for him to do so. I was very raw and ignorant and he was infinitely patient and kind, praising my efforts more, perhaps, than they merited. But he was a sick man and a disappointed one, and I, in any case, was long past the age for indulgence and petting. I admired and respected him, but I cannot pretend that I held him in the same degree of affection that I bestowed upon Mama.”

  During their long talks in the growing intimacy of this past week, Russet had learned a good deal about Mr Cameron. She understood, even if she did not always agree with, his views on a number of different topics, social, agricultural and political. But this was the first time that she had met him in reminiscent and confidential mood about his personal affairs. It behoved her to tread very softly, she felt, if she wished to learn more—as she did.

  “A disappointed man?” she queried thoughtfully. “I think you do yourself an injustice. He must have been very proud of you. Have you not taken hold of the estate that he left you and caused it to flourish and multiply?”

  It was the right note. “That, perhaps,” he agreed indifferently. “I meant rather that he was disappointed in a deeper, more primitive desire. It was always his dream to make his fortune by his own endeavours—which, indeed, he did—and then to return to Scotland and settle there. If it was possible he meant to buy back the family home which had been escheated when his father was proscribed after ’15. As things turned out he never set foot in Scotland. And perhaps in that he was fortunate, since I doubt he would have been deeply disappointed. The Scotland of my grandfather’s memories died with the clans on Culloden moor.”

  “And your mother?” she probed gently.

  “She understood his longing, since she, too, had been brought up in exile, though for her there was no hope of a return to the lands of her forefathers. But when my father died she was content to let his dream die with him and to make her home with me. When at last I was able to bring her to England, I could hardly expect her to support the Highland winters after so many years in India, and we found that this temperate Hampshire climate suited her pretty well. So I bought Furze House and established her here where I could visit her frequently and still attend to my business affairs in the city. She chose to live secluded, content with her garden and her books and her painting. She was too tired, she said, to start making new friends, and in fact she lived less than two years after we came here.”

  Russet had sometimes speculated about the lack of visitors at Furze House, especially since she had emerged from her own enforced seclusion. It was unusual, because country folk were given to a good deal of visiting, especially in the summer when the roads were good. Now she understood the virtual isolation in which Mr Cameron lived, and, being a friendly creature herself, shivered a little at the thought of his loneliness. Business acquaintances and a delicate if much loved mother. Such friends as he might have made in his youth were doubtless half a world away in India. And it did not sound as though there had been much time for youthful friendships. The father seemed to have been a stern taskmaster, a man obsessed by a dream and sparing no one, himself least of all, in its pursuit. Small wonder that the son, with such a background, should be reserved, arrogant and impatient of any who stood in his way. Like his father he would sweep aside all obstacles in pursuit of his chosen goal.

  They sat long over dinner that night. Nor, this time, did Phoebe permit the maids to disturb them. They talked of many things. Russet learned that after much patient negotiation Mr Cameron was about to take possession of the home of his ancestors.

  “And a sad state it is in,” he told her ruefully, “with little more than the walls standing and they fire-blackened. While as for the land! It will take a fortune, and years of patient work to put it in good heart. But it is work worth doing; and the folk who till the farms are worth helping. Dour and obstinate, mistrusting anything new-fangled, but not afraid of hard work and loyal to the core, once that loyalty is won.”

  “And you will forsake the comforts of Furze House and Cavendish Square for a primitive existence in this Highland wilderness?”

  “Thankfully,” he nodded. He hesitated for a moment. He did not wish to appear critical of her way of life, yet for some inexplicable reason was anxious that she should understand his motives and approve his decision. At last he said slowly, “I am not accustomed to being idle, and Town life holds little appeal for me. If I had grown up in this country and gathered around me friends and acquaintances as one does in schooldays, it would probably be very different. As it is I feel an outsider, an onlooker, whenever I am obliged to attend some social function. I have learned to recognise a great many people and can exchange trivialities with them, but it goes no deeper than that. There is no time to develop a closer intimacy. Under these circumstances I find parties boring. I shall keep on the Cavendish Square house because my business interests demand a London centre. I may sell this place—it was bought principally with my mother in mind. But that I have not finally decided. Certainly I shall expect to spend a great deal of each year in Scotland. The plans that I have in mind will require my constant personal supervision, not to say persuasion. Indeed”—he smiled a little—“if my name were not Cameron and my pedigree easily proven I doubt if I could even hope for success. It seems that in those parts it is still a name to conjure with. So much, at least, of my grandfather’s Scotland survives.”

  Miss Ingram had much to occupy her mind when at last she retired to her room. She smiled a little as Ameera, having prepared her for bed, solemnly locked her in. No one had thought to tell the girl that this formality was now totally unnecessary. After all, Miss Ingram herself was the only person who was fully informed on this head, and it had struck her as tactically undesirable that her jailer should know that she no longer had the least desire to escape. Mr Cameron—James—she tried the name tentatively, for after all he had called her Russet—might be undecided about the state of his affections. Russet had no doubt at all about hers. She had been wooed by so many eligibles, some of them handsome, wealthy, titled, several of them extremely likeable, without so much as a quickened heart-beat. She had succumbed helplessly to just such a dour, single-minded, black-avised Scot as Mr Cameron had so feelingly described, who had abducted her and frightened her for no good reason but his own arrogant whim, and had then treated her with awkward kindness and opened his proud heart to her as, she judged, he had never done to any other woman than his mother. There was no understanding it at all, and Russet did not even try. She was too busy planning how she could coax him into offering for her. It would not be easy. He had made it abundantly clea
r that he had no thought of marriage. He was not the kind of man to invite a wife to share the hardships that he had described. Hardships that must obviously endure for some considerable time, despite the wealth at his disposal. He would scarcely have detailed the primitive conditions so fully if he had entertained any thought that she might see them for herself. Nevertheless her reflections were, on the whole, happy enough, and a tender little smile curved her mouth as she remembered his remarks about impudence. At least he was not wholly indifferent to her!

  Mr Cameron’s reflections were less pleasant. To have met, at last, the one girl whom he longed to win for his wife, and to have begun their acquaintance by serving her such a trick that she would never look at him! Even if he might have stood a chance with her at the beginning—and in his present mood of humility he could see little to recommend him to any woman—she could not be expected to forgive that abduction. And worse, in his own opinion, was the fact that he had refused to believe her. She had behaved with a royal generosity over the business of the contrived accident but that did not mean that she would be ready to entrust herself to his keeping. He brooded over the happiness that might have been his had he not permitted pride and ill temper to oust balanced judgement. In one respect Russet had done him less than justice. He would not have hesitated for a moment over asking her to share a future fraught with problems and discomforts. He paid her the compliment of believing that she would wish to share all his difficulties if—and it was a big “if”—she had given him her love.

  He sighed abruptly, and picked up the two-day-old Gazette with the object of giving his thoughts a more practical direction. His eye fell on the date. He stared at it in indignant disbelief. It was not possible that more than a week had elapsed since his return from Town! He had meant to return within three or four days at most, for his negotiations had reached a stage of critical importance. If someone else stepped in and bought the place at this juncture it would be gone for good. Only a buyer who wanted it as badly as he did would be fool enough to pay an exorbitant price for a neglected estate and a tumble-down castle that was barely habitable. It was significant of his change of heart that he shrugged aside the possibility as negligible. Lingering in Hampshire as he had done might well have wrecked plans that he had cherished for years. Compared with the inevitability of losing Russet it did not seem to matter a great deal.

  He had meant to go to Southampton to call on Staneborough, too. That visit was no longer necessary. Whatever the trouble between Letty and Staneborough he was ready to go bail that it was none of Russet’s making. But he was seized by a sudden desire to see how Staneborough’s attitude would strike him now that the scales had been removed from his eyes. He would pay that long delayed visit the very next day, he decided impulsively. He need not forego the morning ride. After breakfast would be time enough. And for once he would entrust Russet to Herrick if she wished to drive out in the afternoon.

  He was well down the Southampton road next day before it occurred to him that if his interview with Staneborough proved to be as satisfactory as he confidently expected, he would have no further excuse for detaining Miss Ingram under his roof.

  Chapter Nine

  Left to her own devices, Russet decided to spend a lazy afternoon sunning herself on the terrace. The day was extremely hot, but she loved the heat and was blessed with one of those matt creamy skins that do not easily burn. After lunch she coaxed Jai to accompany her on a slow and strolling progress through the gardens, where an irate gardener complained that the pup had been raiding his raspberry canes.

  “Just walks down the row and licks off all the ones she can reach,” he elaborated, seeing Russet’s air of disbelief.

  Russet launched into a spirited defence of her pet, pointing out that she was a meat eater, rejecting even bread and milk, and vegetables, too, unless they were liberally soaked in meat broth, so that it was highly unlikely that she would take to a criminal career in fruit stealing. But the sight of a squat dark mask raised lovingly to a particularly fine raspberry that hung just out of reach, of a black nose quivering eagerly and sturdy forepaws bouncing up and down in an attempt to reach the tempting delicacy, caused her to change her plea. She smiled ruefully and apologetically at the gardener, picked the raspberry, which the pup promptly devoured with every appearance of enjoyment and the greed of one who had been starved for days, and promised that in future she would try to keep Jai out of the kitchen garden. The gardener unbent, said sadly that it would be a sore task—“made off with the pick of the strawberries, too”—and returned to his duties. Russet led her triumphant charge back to the terrace and bade her be seated. The pup, panting heavily, pink tongue lolling, collapsed at her feet.

  There was plenty to occupy a girl’s thoughts. Russet sat with a neglected novel on her lap and strove to keep from pondering the present whereabouts of James Cameron. He had said only that he was going to Southampton and would return as soon as possible. It was now three o’clock. How soon was ‘as soon as possible’? She wondered what had taken him into Southampton but she knew that part of his business was concerned with shipping and cargoes of oriental produce and thought it probable that some such matter had demanded his personal attention.

  She would have been both surprised and delighted if she could have been granted a sight of his present occupation. Mr Cameron had drawn a blank in his projected visit. Staneborough had been gone these three days past, explained his erstwhile host, and pressed hospitality on the visitor in the most friendly fashion, eager to tell him how well the invalid had mended—“a clean break, and will be as good as new in a pig’s whisper”—and to describe the perfections of the yacht that he had sold to his friend and the glories of his own new purchase. “Bigger, d’ye see, and a better sea-boat. And me with Dolly and the boy to think about, we need more room. Must start the boy right, y’know—won’t do to have him feeling sick as soon as she starts to pitch a bit.”

  It presently emerged that ‘the boy’ was two months old. Mr Cameron extricated himself at last, not sure whether to feel sorry for the child or envious of his happy host, who had obviously found a wife and a way of life that were his ideal of perfection. And better a sea-roving life than immurement in a derelict Scottish castle, he thought glumly. The discomforts could scarcely be worse and there would at least be constant variation of scene. He managed to evade offers of refreshment on the plea of business engagements and rode on to the Dolphin where he stabled his horse and ate an early luncheon. There was an hour to be whiled away before the noble animal could be considered sufficiently rested for the return, and he passed it, in highly unusual fashion, in sauntering among the shops, deciding what he would buy for Russet if only he was related to her in some degree that would permit the bestowal of gifts. It did not take him long to dispose, in imagination, of quite a considerable sum, because, apart from the goods on display, he was frequently reminded of something that would be essential to the comfort of—say—a wife, who was obliged to reside in a cool northern climate. Furs, obviously, would be a plain necessity, and he was solemnly debating the respective merits of sable and ermine when his eye fell upon a curious little object in the window of a shop that was mostly given over to a display of fine china. It looked rather lonely and out of place among the Bow and Worcester, a comical little china dog, some six inches long and no more than four or five in height. It was not really like the puppy, Jai, for it had a plumy tail and a heavy ruff of neck fur, but there was something of similarity in the sturdy golden fawn body and the wrinkled dark mass with its upturned nose and big dark eyes. Moreover it was the kind of gift that a gentleman might perfectly properly bestow upon a lady to whom he was not linked by kinship. Remembering what Russet had said of her reluctance to give up the pup, Mr Cameron thought that the little china dog might make an acceptable parting gift. For on the ride to Southampton he had forced himself to face the truth. There could be no more putting off. Indeed he should have let her go as soon as he had recognised her true quality. Today�
�s abortive visit had been quite unnecessary.

  He was pleased to discover that the little dog was quite shockingly expensive. It was of Chinese origin, the proprietor explained, very old and very rare. But for the fact that it was one of a pair and that its mate was missing, it would have been even more costly. Mr Cameron was so far gone in love that he found something singularly appropriate in the little creature’s bereft state. He bought it and had it carefully wrapped, charging the shopkeeper, on an afterthought, to inform him if ever he chanced to come across the missing figure, and went back to the Dolphin foolishly comforted by the little bundle in his pocket. At least she should take something of his giving when he was obliged to let her go.

  Russet stretched out on her ‘doolie’, as Ahmed Khan called it, in blissful relaxation. It was a very comfortable reclining chair, half palanquin, half litter, just the thing for sitting comfortably in a garden. So comfortable, in fact, that she dropped into the kind of light slumber in which familiar sounds reach the ears to be recognised and ignored. She roused to the sound of hoofs on the drive and sat up disbelievingly. It could not be so late as that! The foreshortened shadows of the trees confirmed her in this belief. Then she realised that she could hear carriage wheels as well as hoofs. Still drowsy and relaxed, she wondered why Mr Cameron, who had ridden out on Golden Emperor, should have chosen to hire a carriage for his return. With an anxious thump of the heart she hoped that no accident had befallen him. But the vehicle which at that moment turned the corner of the drive and bowled gently towards her was not at all the kind of thing that a gentleman would hire. It was a sober landau such as dowagers favoured, the top firmly closed despite the summer heat. And the astonished face that stared at Russet in startled recognition through the tightly closed windows was the pink and white countenance of Letty Waydene. Russet was vaguely aware that there were other occupants in the carriage, but had no time to identify them before it swung away from her as it turned to approach the main entrance.