by Janet Tanner
‘I wouldn’t hurt them. I’m only looking.’
‘You have no right. You’re just a little slut. Don’t ever touch them again!’
‘I – I’m sorry …’ Sarah faltered.
‘What is going on here?’ Another figure materialised in the doorway, a tall dark figure immaculate in the cutaway coat of black broadcloth, grey waistcoat and grey-striped trousers which he wore for the city. Gilbert! Seeing him Sarah was overcome by shame at being discovered trespassing.
‘She has been interfering with my dolls!’ Alicia shrilled. ‘She has no right here, Father. Tell her!’
‘I was only looking,’ Sarah protested, anxious to establish her innocence. ‘They’re so beautiful.’
‘Leave them alone!’ Alicia spat. She banged the doll back into her place on the shelf. ‘She lives here, you understand? Here!’
‘Alicia!’ Gilbert reproved. There was an expression on his face Sarah could not understand but in her terror she thought it must mean that he too was angry with her. Then to her amazement she realised it was Alicia at whom his anger was directed. ‘I told you when Sarah came here that you would learn as much as she would and one of the things I intended you to learn was how to share. You have a shelf full of dolls you scarcely play with any more. Why should Sarah not enjoy them too?’
‘Because they are mine,’ the older girl returned stubbornly.
Gilbert’s mouth hardened. ‘And now one of them is going to be Sarah’s,’ he said coldly. ‘Which one would you like, Sarah?’
‘You can’t give her one of my dolls!’ Alicia shrieked in horror.
‘I can and I will. I refuse to tolerate your selfishness, Alicia,’ Gilbert said sternly. ‘Choose, Sarah.’
Sarah recoiled in dismay. Much as she had admired the dolls the idea of taking one of them was horrific to her. They were Alicia’s and she knew if they belonged to her she would not be able to bear having to part with any of them.
‘No,’ she whispered shaking her head so that the ribbon bounced in her curls. ‘Oh no, I couldn’t.’
Gilbert reached out and picked up the doll Alicia had returned to the shelf. ‘This was the one you liked, I think. Take her.’
Sarah could see the tears sparkling in Alicia’s eyes and felt them pricking at her own. When he saw she was making no move to take the doll he lifted her arm and tucked the doll beneath it. ‘Alicia has plenty more, Sarah. Now run along home. We’ll see you tomorrow. Mr Hartley says he is very pleased with your progress, by the way. I thought you’d like to know.’
She stood quite unable to speak. He put his arm around her thin shoulders, urging her towards the door.
‘Off you go now. And Alicia – I want a word with you!’
Because there was nothing left to do Sarah went, clutching the doll tightly. She could still see the hatred that had blazed in Alicia’s eyes, feel it following her along the corridor. It was with her as she descended the staircase and even outside as the fresh air cooled her burning cheeks she was aware of it.
Alicia had disliked her before and never hidden that dislike. Now Sarah realised with a twist of foreboding she had unwittingly made a sworn enemy.
In her sitting-room along the corridor from the nursery and schoolroom Blanche Morse was disturbed by the sound of raised voices.
She set down her pen, cocked her carefully coiffured head to one side for a moment to listen, then rose from the small Queen Anne writing desk where she had been sitting to answer some letters and crossed to the door opening it a fraction.
The voices belonged to Alicia and Sarah and they were quarrelling. Blanche’s lips tightened in distaste. She hated vulgarity of any kind and always had done. There were plenty of ways of getting what one wanted without resorting to verbal violence and most of them were a great deal more efficacious. She was about to close the door again when she heard footsteps in the corridor and Gilbert’s voice. She stood, poised to fly back to the desk if he came into the room, and listened.
Every word of the altercation carried clearly along the echoing corridor and as it came to an end and Sarah scuttled past the door Blanche’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully. A door closed and she could no longer hear Gilbert’s voice – obviously he had gone into the nursery with Alicia to give her a talking to. Blanche went back into her sitting-room but she was unable to return to her letter writing.
There was something odd about the way Gilbert was behaving towards the Thomas child – she had thought so for some time. She knew his altruistic views of course and whilst she did not agree with them at least she accorded him a certain amount of respect where they were concerned. It was, she supposed, praiseworthy to wish to see his tenants and employees were well looked after and without a doubt Gilbert was held in high regard by them all. Not for him the disaffection and resentment generally reserved by the working classes for their betters.
But Blanche was unable to dispel the suspicion that there was something more than simple generosity involved here. Sarah was an attractive child, of course, a pretty little thing in spite of being too thin, and her intelligence was not in question. In some ways it was very like Gilbert to be conducting his own social experiment and at the same time patting himself on the back for enhancing the expectations of a girl who could otherwise have had little to look forward to in life. But even so …
Blanche raised a hand and carefully eased out the tiny furrow between her thin eyebrows. Pointless to give herself worry lines over the issue. And at least the young upstart was a mere girl and no matter how far she wormed her way into Gilbert’s affection she would be unlikely to pose any threat to Blanche’s plans for Leo’s future as heir to the Morse empire.
The thought pleased her and as she so often did she congratulated herself on how clever she had been. When she arrived in England, widowed and left penniless by her late husband’s business failures and resulting suicide, friends had introduced her to Gilbert and she had wasted no time in planning a campaign to win him. Handsome, wealthy, with lands that belonged to the past and a business enterprise which looked to the future he offered a life style she desired, security for her old age and glowing prospects for her young son.
For Blanche had quickly realised that when the time came Gilbert would look for his successor at Morse Motors from amongst the next generation of his family. But Lawrence was dull, Hugh had not the slightest interest in the business and James … well, James was James, dreamy and a constant annoyance to his father. None of them were suited to such a position of responsibility. And Blanche was determined that Leo should be the one to step into the breach. He had all the necessary qualities – and not least he had inherited his mother’s ruthless ambition. It was only disappointing to Blanche that so far Gilbert had failed to take to him but she had attributed this to Gilbert’s natural reticence. Now, out of the blue, had come this girl, this funny little nobody, and Gilbert seemed to be lavishing on her all the interest he had denied her son.
Blanche’s lips tightened. She did not like Sarah, and liked even less the way Gilbert was treating her as his protégée. Something would have to be done if she was not to become even more of an annoyance. When the opportunity arose Blanche was determined she would see Miss Sarah Thomas got her come-uppance.
I hate her, Alicia thought and her hands made fists with her neatly cut nails digging into her palms. Why did she have to come here spoiling everything? I hate her!
But her hatred, though pouring like acid through her veins, was impotent and she knew that revile Sarah Thomas as she might the girl was not actually responsible for spoiling anything. That had happened before she had come, beginning with the death of Rose, Alicia’s mother.
Sometimes Alicia looked back with longing to the days when she had been a little girl, the baby of the family, but they seemed so long ago now. Her mother was no more now than a lovely dream; the cherished memory of the warmth of her arms, the perfume of lavender water, the sound of her voice singing soft bedtime lullabies were the haunting echoes of another ti
me, another life.
Life now was Blanche who had imposed herself on Chewton Leigh House like the cloying heat of a summer’s day when a thunderstorm is brewing and that repulsive Leo, intruding into the nursery which had belonged to her and James, taking up her father’s precious time.
And now there was also Sarah. Another intruder, another call on her father’s attention. And he had actually given her Alicia’s doll, her lovely Sleeping Beauty, and not content with that lectured Alicia on being nice to the wretched Sarah.
Why, she doesn’t even speak properly! Alicia thought in fury. Her accent is even worse than Leo’s horrid American drawl. It sounds so common!
The thought gave her a little comfort for it made her feel superior but it did nothing to lessen the hatred bubbling inside her.
The door of the inner nursery opened and she turned to see James standing there, his thumb hovering uncertainly in his mouth.
‘Is something the matter, Alicia?’ he asked, speaking with a slight lisp.
Alicia spun round. ‘James! What are you doing here?’
‘I came up for my ball and then I heard shouting so I … I hid,’ he admitted. He looked frightened, his face pale and drawn above the collar of his little sailor suit.
She crossed to him, kneeling down in front of him and gently taking his thumb out of his mouth. Sometimes Alicia thought James was the one person in the world she loved. He had never known the warmth and happiness that made up the lovely dream world she sometimes allowed herself to remember. In the six years that they had been motherless Alicia sometimes felt that she had almost become his mother and he her child.
‘It’s all right, James,’ she said. ‘That stupid Sarah was prying and Father was angry. That’s all.’
‘He wasn’t angry with me?’
‘No, James, he wasn’t angry with you.’
He nodded but the shadows did not quite leave his eyes and she stood up.
‘Did you find your ball? If you get it I’ll come down and play with you for a while if you like.’
‘Leo said he’d play with me.’
‘Leo!’ she returned scornfully. ‘ Who cares about Leo? Listen James, it’s you and me, remember? Leo’s not your brother so you can stop hanging around him. And that stupid Sarah … Forget about them, James. I’ll look after you. And then when we are old enough we’ll show them all. We’re the Morses. We can do anything, James, you and I.’
She took his hand and in giving him comfort felt her own strength grow.
‘One day we’ll show them, James,’ she said. ‘One day we’ll show the world!’
Chapter Nine
As autumn drew on and the leaves on the trees in the park turned scarlet, russet and gold against an intensely blue sky Sarah continued to take her lessons in the schoolroom at Chewton Leigh House with Alicia Morse and Leo de Vere. The hunting season began and sometimes the sound of the horn and the baying of the hounds would carry in through the schoolroom window; if they looked up and craned their necks a little the children could see the huntsmen in their scarlet and black streaming across the hillside. Gilbert hunted when he could spare the time as did Lawrence and Hugh when they were home from boarding school and Alicia and Leo continually tried to catch a glimpse of them.
‘When I’m just a little older I’ll be able to hunt too,’ Alicia would say with a sidelong glance at Sarah, whom she knew could not ride. But Sarah refused to take the bait or even to take the slightest notice of the hunt. She was too interested in her books, too determined to make progress in her efforts to compare with the others, to be distracted by such silly ploys and besides her sympathy was fairly and squarely with the fox.
Soon her diligence was paying off and Richard Hartley was delighted with her progress. He was less pleased, however, with Leo and Alicia and he reported as much to Gilbert one crisp day in October.
‘Alicia is a clever girl and Leo, though more of a plodder, is no fool. If they spent as much time and effort on their work as they do on sniping at one another they would do very well indeed. As it is Leo is causing me some concern and I have to say that unless he is prepared to knuckle down he may flunk the entrance exam for his prep school.’
Gilbert’s face darkened. ‘Bad as that? Very well, Hartley, I’ll have a word with him.’
He strode out of the schoolroom and down the stairs. Blanche was in the drawing-room arranging a vase of chrysanthemums which Dent the head gardener had cut for her and he determined to tell her of the tutor’s concern for her son’s progress. As he talked she continued to arrange her flowers and only the slow tightening of her features revealed her displeasure.
‘I see,’ she said when he had at last finished. ‘ Well, to be honest with you Gilbert I am hardly surprised.’
He looked puzzled. ‘What do you mean by that?’
Blanche stripped a last untidy leaf from a chrysanthemum stalk, dropped it into the wastepaper basket and poked the flower into its place. Then she turned slowly, folding her hands on the skirt of her russet brown velvet dress.
‘I dare say he is being distracted by Sarah Thomas,’ she said coolly.
‘Surely not!’ Gilbert scoffed. ‘Hartley is very pleased with her.’
‘That is as may be,’ Blanche said darkly. ‘I don’t think either Leo or Alicia can be being helped by her company.’
Gilbert thrust his hands into the pockets of his grey stripe trousers.
‘I don’t understand what you are trying to say, Blanche.’
She paused, choosing her words carefully. Since she had come to see Sarah as a threat to her son Blanche had been busy. For some weeks now she had been nursing the nugget of information she had unearthed, waiting for the right moment to bring it into the open. Now that moment had come and she intended to make the most of it.
‘I am sorry to have to tell you this, Gilbert, but I have been making a few enquiries about Sarah. Perhaps you will disapprove but since she is being educated alongside my son I decided to make it my business. And what I discovered has disturbed me greatly.’
His eyes narrowed. He stood very still, the stillness from which his strength generally emanated, but now strangely it was as if even that strength was a carefully created illusion. Blanche was overcome with the ridiculous notion that she held in her hands the power to hurt him, to hurt the great Gilbert Morse. Only in the bedroom did she experience this sensation of ascendancy, when he wanted her and she with-held her favours or afterwards when he lay sleeping, his handsome face boyish in repose. But now instead of exhilarating her as it did then the knowledge of her power frightened her a little and made her hesitate, aware she was treading a fine line across a potential minefield.
‘I am afraid I have discovered that Sarah Thomas is illegitimate,’ she said meeting his eyes squarely. ‘I always had my suspicions about her mother. It seemed to me a little too convenient the way her husband was supposed to have died in India and yet nobody ever admitted to having set eyes on him. I decided to do a little investigation.’
He drew a silver cigarette case out of his pocket but did not open it.
‘And what did you discover?’ His voice was taut. The tone of it made her quake inwardly but she had gone too far to draw back now.
‘Rachel Thomas was never married,’ she said coolly. ‘She came back here under false pretences and set herself up as a respectable married woman. That she never was.’
‘And Sarah’s father?’ Gilbert asked. ‘ Who was her father?’
Blanche hesitated, wondering whether she dared confront him with the suspicion which nagged at her. She decided against it. ‘Maybe he was a soldier – goodness knows there are always young women ready to throw themselves at men in uniform without a thought to their reputation – or the consequences,’ she said shortly. ‘In any case it makes little difference. Sarah Thomas is a bastard – and this is the child you see fit to educate alongside our own.’
‘And why not?’ Gilbert snapped the cigarette case open.
Blanche glared. ‘S
he is hardly the company I would choose for Leo. And I would have thought you would have been more concerned with Alicia’s moral welfare than to allow her to associate with a child like that. She could contaminate them both – if she has not already done so.’
‘Good heavens, Blanche, don’t you think you are making a little too much of this?’ Gilbert said. His tone was as level as ever, yet she was aware that he was angry.
She held her ground. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘Well I most certainly do! Sarah – contaminate Alicia and Leo? I never heard such nonsense. This is a child you are talking about.’
‘A child whose mother was no better than she should be.’
‘That,’ said Gilbert angrily, ‘is scarcely the child’s fault. Surely she has as much right to life as any born in wedlock? No!’ He raised his hand imperiously as Blanche opened her mouth to speak again. ‘I won’t hear another word on the subject. Sarah is a very nice child and it would do Leo no harm to emulate her in many ways. As for this visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children I find it singularly lacking in charity. If you wish Leo to be educated away from what you call Sarah’s contaminating influence then that is your prerogative. I shall not interfere with any arrangements you may wish to make concerning him. But Sarah stays here.’ He paused. ‘As a matter of fact I have been considering integrating her into the family a little more. She has precious little fun with those Pughs. You have just made up my mind for me. I shall see that Sarah is taught to ride and next time we have a family outing I shall arrange for her to come along. Understand me, Blanche, I will not tolerate this sort of prejudice under my roof and the sooner you realise it the better!’
He strode to the door and threw it open to reveal James crouching there listening. He grabbed him by the collar and hauled him into the room.
‘And what do you think you are doing skulking there? How dare you listen at keyholes?’ He administered a quick cuff to James’ ear, then turned and stalked out.
‘How dare you, James!’ Blanche echoed him. ‘ Go to the nursery at once!’
