by Pamela Kent
She examined books and pictures, delicate examples of bric-a-brac, the contents of one or two china cabinets. The room was furnished in an old- fashioned manner, but everything in it was either costly or valuable. She knew that. The portrait above the fireplace was remarkably like old Angus when he was younger, without bristling whiskers and unkempt hair. As the hours passed his intense blue eyes looked down at her, watching every movement she made, smiling a little occasionally... or so she thought.
There was a chiming clock in the hall—probably a grandfather clock—and it kept her informed of the flight of time. One o’clock, two o’clock, three o’clock ... At four she parted the curtains and looked out into the darkness. Flakes of snow were fluttering against the panes, and snow was already lying deep in the shrubberies. She could ascertain that much in the light that streamed from the drawing-room windows. It was too early yet for any flush of dawn to show in the sky; too early for cocks to crow... And the whole world was completely hushed and still.
She shivered in the slight draught from the window, and went
back to the fire. No one had been in to build it up, and it was not much more than a pile of embers in the grate, but the room was warm with central heating. She stretched herself out on the rug and rested her head in the lap of a chair... If only the house wasn’t so silent. Somewhere in it old Angus was lying, critically ill. Why didn’t they let her see him? She had come all this way to see him.
Once she thought she heard a car drive up to the house, and then it drove away again. Once, between sleeping and waking, she thought that a man put his head in at the door and looked hard at her... He had fiercely red hair, and his eyes were a cold, hard blue. They were old Angus’s eyes, and yet they were not Angus’s eyes.
She fell fast asleep about five, and it was broad daylight when she awakened. Several people were in the room, and one was actually shaking her awake. She thought instantly of the school day that might have begun, and sprang up in confusion.
“You’ll have to take me back! I’ll never be back in time!”
The dark Giffard who had brought her to the house looked almost as concerned as she did.
“I’d no idea you were spending the night in here,” he apologised. “I understood that my aunt had put you into a room.” He looked with sharp rebuke at his aunt, and then back again at the girl who was still bewilderedly rubbing the sleep out of her eyes, and endeavouring to settle the disorder of her clothes at the same time. “Really, Aunt Clare, this is too much!” he exclaimed. “Miss Andrews has had to spend the night most uncomfortably...”
But his aunt was weeping into a handkerchief, and when she lifted her eyes for an instant it was to glance at Tina in such a vague fashion that she might not even have existed.
“It’s no use blaming me,” she protested. “I didn’t want the girl brought here. And you could have saved yourself the bother of bringing her. Poor Angus was never in a fit enough condition to see her.”
“But he asked to see her.”
“I know, Alaine, I know! Don’t we all know that he asked to see her?... And don’t we all know why!” The slim young woman who had moved and looked like a wraith in the hall was also crying fitfully into a handkerchief. Alaine turned to her as if his nerves were on edge.
“For goodness’ sake, Juliet, is that really necessary?” he demanded. “Uncle Angus is dead, and you had no time at all for him when he was alive... None of us had! So why are you so upset now?” The door opened, and someone else came into the room. He
was taller than Alaine, and possibly several years younger, and even although he was unshaved and his dinner-jacket had a crumpled appearance, and it was quite obvious he was far from in a good humour, the quality of his looks affected Tina with a queer sensation of shock. She knew that she had seen him before—in the night—and it was the redness of his hair and the blueness of his eyes that impressed her then. Now she was impressed by the arrogant perfection of his features, the coldness of his jaw and the hardness of his mouth, that somehow left unmarred the sheer masculine beauty of it.
He ignored the rest of them and looked at Tina.
“So you’re still here,” he commented. “Why doesn’t someone send you home? Old Angus isn’t alive any more and you won’t have any more opportunities to turn his ageing head. You must have worked pretty hard during the short time that you knew him-”
“Angus!” his aunt exclaimed, as if even she was slightly shocked by his outburst.
But he ignored her.
“And to look at you you’re nothing more than the little school-marm we know you to be. A conniving little school-marm from some isolated village school!” The cold contempt in his merciless blue eyes made Tina cringe. She had never encountered anything like it in her life. “But there’s no fool quite like an old fool, and old Angus was a bachelor all his life—”
Alaine didn’t merely order him to be quiet, he ordered him from the room.
“Until you know how to behave in a house that has just been deprived of its master, and can remember you’re supposed to be a gentleman, not an oaf!”
Alaine’s tone was arctic, his dark eyes glinted as if steel lay in their depths.
“Go to bed, if you’re tired, but whatever you do, go! Miss Andrews has spent the night in here, and no one even thought to keep the fire in for her.”
“Miss Andrews was warmed by the thought of the future,” Angus enunciated with obvious difficulty, and then turned and strode from the room.
White-faced, Tina turned to Alaine.
“What does he mean?” The clouds of sleep were still whirling in her brain. She didn’t merely feel at a disadvantage; she felt as if she was up against something that was quite beyond her, and that the others held the key to a mystery that was utterly baffling. “Why did
he look at me like that—?”
“Don’t worry, my dear,” Alaine said gently, patting her shoulder. “We’ve all been up all night, and we’re none of us particularly fresh. Sir Angus died about four o’clock, and it didn’t seem worth going to bed after that. Aunt Clare, you’d better go to bed.”
His aunt groped her way to the door.
“I think I will. Everything’s been such a shock over the last few days... Juliet, you’d better go to bed, too.”
But Juliet had stopped crying, and her expression was sullen. She had the same aubum-tinged hair as her brother, the same nearly perfect features, but her complexion had the strange whiteness and delicacy of a hot-house camellia. She looked like a hothouse plant that had been carefully nurtured all its days, and now in her twenty-second year she was beginning to suspect that there was another side to life. It carried its shocks and disappointments as well as pandered to her pleasures.
“I don’t think I want to,” she answered sullenly. “I’ll go and find
Angus and we’ll have some breakfast together. I suppose we’re still entitled to breakfast in this house—?”
Alaine looked at her long and peculiarly.
“If you want to be helpful,” he suggested, “you can rouse up one of the maids and get her to provide breakfast for us all. Miss Andrews will need some before she leaves.”
But Tina said swiftly: “No, thank you, I’d rather leave now, if you don’t mind. I can’t possibly be back in time to begin a normal school day, but I’d like to get away from here. And perhaps I could telephone before I leave? Someone will have to be informed of the reason why I disappeared so suddenly last night.”
“Of course,” he answered. “And we’ll stop and have breakfast on the way back. I’m afraid you’ve received very little hospitality in this house, but the circumstances were unusual. My aunt isn’t normally inhospitable... And unfortunately Sir Angus was in no condition to see you once we got here last night.” She glanced round the handsome room, that was beginning to oppress her unbearably.
“I was an intruder at the wrong time,” she said quietly. “I should never have been brought here at all. I can’t think why I was brou
ght here... Sir Angus and I hardly knew one another.”
Alaine Giffard was silent.
She gazed at him with sudden earnestness, too weary to drive home the point, yet feeling it had to be made.
“You believe me, don’t you?” she asked. “Your relatives obviously don’t—” ignoring the fact that Juliet was still in the room with them—“but it’s true. The friendship between Sir Angus and myself was a brief affair that might never have happened at all, but for the fact that he needed help one night. And now he’s dead, and I’m sorry because I liked him . . . the little I knew of him. He was the loneliest man I’ve ever met, and yet apparently he need not have been lonely at all, for he was not alone in the world as I imagined. He wasn’t even poor.”
She glanced up at the portrait above the fireplace.
“That was him when he was younger, I suppose?” The fierce blue eyes seemed to be watching her with a curious, fixed eagerness. “I’m sorry it’s over,” she whispered. “I’m sorry we won’t meet again, Sir Angus!”
“But Sir Angus’s interest in you isn’t over,” Alaine told hier, oddly, as he guided her to the door. “You’ll find that out in a week or so. You may be inclined to agree with those nearest and dearest to him that it was a somewhat excessive interest for such a fleeting impact on his life!”
Barely a fortnight later Tina understood what he meant. She received a letter from Sir Angus’s solicitors informing her that she was the sole beneficiary under Sir Angus Giffard’s will. His nephew inherited his title, but the property—which was not entailed—was bequeathed to her. She was also to become the possessor of his investments, his two cars, a large amount of family jewellery, and a London house.
CHAPTER THREE
TINA went to London for an interview with the solicitors. They were an old firm—a very old-established firm—and she found them enshrined in an atmosphere of handsome tooled leather and crackly parchment that was mostly contained in black japanned deedboxes.
The crackly parchment that was concerned with Sir Angus Giffard, deceased, and his estate had already been brought forth from its appropriate deed-box. The senior partner of the firm was awaiting her behind a handsome walnut desk, and as she was shown into the room by an underling he rose with promptitude and walked to meet her. She was surprised, because he was quite unlike the aged and bent solicitor who had handled her father’s affairs, and had practised in a dark and stuffy little office where he employed one man and a youth; and the sea of faded but beautiful carpet she had to cross before her hand was firmly grasped by long white fingers was as much a surprise as everything else. Quite obviously London solicitors were far more prosperous than those who practised in small provincial towns.
“Ah, my dear Miss Andrews!” Mr. Jasper exclaimed. He had a thin
and elegant face as well as thin and elegant hands. She could actually fed him beaming at her.
Tina was wearing a warm wool dress under her fur-trimmed coat. The dress was a very dark red, and the coat was an even darker red—a shade that took the colour out of her small, delicately boned face. Her hair swung loosely on her shoulders, and as she had washed it only the night before it was an unbelievable pale flaxen yellow. Her eyes were alert and darkly blue.
“Mr. Jasper” she began, as if she had rehearsed her speech in advance, “I can’t understand why Sir Angus—”
“No, no, of course not, my dear young lady,” the solicitor returned, guiding her expertly to a chair and putting her into it. “No one ever understands why certain things happen, but they do happen, nevertheless. Sir Angus was a man, in any case, inclined to the unexpected, so perhaps this final gesture of his is not such a surprise, after all.”
“You mean—” looking at him with those very darkly blue eyes—“that you yourself are not surprised?”
He shrugged. It was an elegant gesture, and he took his place once more behind his desk.
“My dear young lady—” obviously he was going to adopt the paternal note—“does it matter? The important thing is that you rendered a service to Sir Angus, and he decided to reward you. A perfectly understandable thing for a man of his temperament to do.” “But what of his relatives? All those people who should have benefited under the terms of the will?” Mr. Jasper shrugged, and this lime he smiled a trifle curiously.
“Not really your concern, Ms. Andrews,” he assured her. “For one thing, the fact that they have been passed over in the will doesn’t mean that they have been reduced to a condition of poverty, or anything of that sort. Mrs. Clare Giffard has a perfectly satisfactory income of her own, and her daughter, also, is provided for. Dr. Giffard never expected to be mentioned in the will, and Sir Angus—”
“Ah, Sir Angus!” she exclaimed. The memory of those hard blue eyes that had raked her from head to foot and then dismissed her in complete contempt when she was not in any condition to put up any defence for herself had not faded. If anything, the memory of them had become like a raw wound that refused to heal ... Startling her suddenly in the silence of the night, rising up like an uneasy miasma in the daytime. He had stripped her bare of something that was more important than pride, and the fact that he had had no justification for disliking—if not despising—her offered her no comfort.
She had come to London for the express purpose of putting matters right, and avoiding all further contact with the owner of the merciless blue eyes. But it began to seem that it was not the simple matter that she had imagined, and Mr. Jasper talked with such smooth plausibility and so successfully prevented her advancing any arguments that she began to feel deliberately frustrated. According to him the new baronet was in no greater need of financial assistance than either his mother or sister.
It was unfortunate, perhaps, that Giffard’s Prior would no longer belong to any member of his family; but Sir Angus—the late Sir Angus—had been on such poor terms with his family for such a number of years that they could not have formed the habit of visiting there. And after all, it was entirely up to Sir Angus where he left his money . . . everything that belonged to him apart from his title. If he had married he would no doubt have had a wife and really close family of his own who could have benefited; but he had remained a bachelor all his days, and it was his whim that a young woman who was neither kith nor kin should inherit his possessions. In his will he had stated very clearly, and in no uncertain terms, that he considered she deserved them ... ‘The only female I ever met for whom I felt an instant attachment, and to whom I would have proposed marriage if I had been of an age to consider it. Being far beyond that age, and wishing her to know the greatest amount of security and comfort for the rest of her days—in an unmarried state if that should be her wish— I feel that I can now die happily, and at peace with my relatives who may not think kindly of me once I am gone. But as they never thought kindly of me during my lifetime that is not anything to worry me! My nephew, Angus, will get the title . . . And much good may it do him! And may he make a better success of his life than I have ever done!
‘My nephew, Alaine, lacks for little. My niece, Juliet, will almost certainly marry ... I should like my leading beneficiary to provide her with all the trimmings of a magnificent wedding when this event is to take place. My sister-in-law, Clare, might
be encouraged to visit at Giffard’s Prior if this should in no way inconvenience Miss Clementina Mary Andrews.’
Provision was made in the will for a couple of old servants, and there were one or two other minor bequests . . . But, apart from this, Tina was the only one who really benefited. To her it seemed a quite extraordinary and utterly unacceptable Last Will and Testament.
“You must realise, of course, that I couldn’t possibly— possibly.” she was beginning, when Mr. Jasper’s smooth voice died into silence; but he rose immediately and went towards her.
“Miss Andrews,” he pointed out, with unexpected firmness, “there is no question of your benefiting anyone if you decline to accept all that the late Sir Angus has made available to you. Short
of an expensive legal action which might very easily go against them, the Giffard family will still get nothing even if you do refuse the benefits. Sir Angus provided for this eventuality in his will . . . The money goes to an obscure society for the preservation of ancient dialects, and the house—or houses, since there is also the London house—are to be sold to swell the funds. It seems to me that Sir Angus didn’t really want this to happen.”
Tina was startled and amazed.
“Did he dislike the members of his family so very much, then?” she asked.
Mr. Jasper smiled faintly, but declined to answer in so many words.
“And is it true that he put that bit in about wanting to marry me if—if he had been young enough to marry?” she managed to get out, while blushing vividly.
Mr. Jasper, with a wider and much more benevolent smile, asked her whether she would like to peruse the document for herself, but she declined hastily with an even more painful flush.
“No, no! It was just that I ... I couldn’t believe . . . You see, he only knew me a week.”
“Hearts have been lost in a day, Miss Andrews,” the solicitor reminded her gallantly.
“I know. But that usually happens when two people are—are young—”
“And impressionable? Well, I’ll confess Sir Angus proved himself to be far more impressionable than I would, have ever believed, although I can’t say I’m entirely astounded.” Mr. Jasper became very fatherly all at once. “You’re very attractive, my dear, if you don’t mind my saying so,” he said.
Tina felt a little glow of pleasure seep through her but it was largely because an old man who was nearly eighty had found her attractive enough to wish tc marry her after the briefest possible acquaintance, and stated so openly in his will.
“I shall always remember Sir Angus wanted to marry me,” she confessed with shy impulsiveness. “I’m twenty-three, and no one has ever wanted to marry me before!”
“Believe me,” the solicitor assured her a little drily, “it will not be the last time a man will want to marry you, Miss Andrews. You may find yourself very popular from now on.”
