by Pamela Kent
“Perhaps because I thought you looked a little like a snowdrop that day you and Appleby were inspecting the stables, and I saw you underneath my window wondering whether you ought to pay me a call. A rather pinched and bewildered snowdrop ... but a snowdrop all the same! There wasn’t any other really appropriate flower that I could send you.”
“You didn’t have to send me flowers at all,” she reminded him.
“In fact,” with a sudden rather shy gleam in her eyes, “it was a little irregular, to say the least.”
His eyes mocked her mildly.
“Are you against irregularities ?”
“In this case, I think I—appreciated them very much indeed. It was nice of you, Sir Angus.” The shy look deepened.
He removed one shoulder from the mantelpiece, and wagged a finger at her to enjoin caution.
“Always remember that I’m not nice, Miss Andrews. If ever I seem really nice you’ll have cause to mistrust me. But perhaps I thought I owed you an apology for my insufferably bad behaviour when you paid your first visit to this house, the night my uncle died... It was rather much to expect any young woman to put up with, and you were rather defenceless. My cousin Alaine realised that. However ...” He walked over to the window, and abruptly he changed the subject. “I don’t know whether you know it, but it’s a fine day outside. The sun is actually shining, and it’s not particularly cold. What about letting me take you for a drive somewhere this afternoon ? It would do you good!
She thought for a moment.
“There is somewhere I would like you to drive me to,” she admitted. “I would like you to drive me to see the children in my old school. And, as a matter of fact, there are a few of my things that have to be removed from the schoolhouse.”
He stood looking down at her curiously.
“You don’t think it’ll look rather odd if you drive up there in the Bentley? Rather like—”
“Showing off? No,” she shook her head with its feathery soft fair curls, “they’ll love it, and I’ll love seeing them again—particularly little Johnny Gains. And we’ll take them some sweets and toys and things. Perhaps we could buy them on the way.
But he shook his head.
“I'll buy them this afternoon, and we’ll make the trip tomorrow. I think it would be a bit much for you to make the trip this afternoon, when it’ll be dark around four o’clock. Much better to leave early tomorrow morning—-if it’s fine enough—and I’ll go into Stoke Moreton and buy the gifts this afternoon.” She thought it a good idea.
“Then I’d better give you some money,” she said. He shrugged. “Afterwards will do.”
But she was very firm about it.
“No, you must have the money now. I’ll give you a cheque.”
She rose and made her way over to a bureau in a corner, and he watched her as she bent a little unfamiliarly over a cheque-book and wrote in silence for a few seconds. Then, when she handed it over, his eyebrows lifted.
“So much?” he said. “You’re being very generous, Miss Andrews.”
“Not at all.” She shook her head, smiling. “Buy them some nice things, won’t you ? The sort of things children like... books, games, dolls. The little girls must have dolls!”
“And how many little girls are there?”
“There are ten, including Mary Jane Williamson, who is rather old for a doll. But still, she’d better have one.”
He turned away, smiling.
“And sweets? A big box, that they can share amongst them?”
“A very big box! ”
He reached the door, and turned and bowed to her with a touch of the old irony.
“It looks to me as if you really are going to turn out to be a kind of Lady Bountiful,” he remarked. “We’ll have to watch you,” more drily, “in case you over-reach yourself.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN IF Tina had expected the children at her old school to welcome her with open arms she was disappointed. It might have been the Bentley that overawed them, or the fact that, being children, they had already forgotten her; but although her replacement, a much older woman, encouraged them to smile and look welcoming, most of them looked more than normally glum, and only the sight of the presents brought gleams of sudden delight and appreciation to their faces.
Little Johnny Gains sidled up to her as soon as the opportunity arose and patted the sleeve of her coat as if even he, youthful though he was, could detect the difference in a handsome velour cloth and a piece of inferior tweed. And although he was temporarily diverted by his model engine and box of sweets, he was much more impressed by the Bentley, and Tina promised to come over one day when the weather was really fine and take him for a drive in it. Perhaps during the next school holidays.
“That’ll be Easter,” he said, gazing up at her solemnly.
“Quite right,” she agreed. And then an idea seized her. “How would you like to come and stay with me, Johnny?” she suggested. “At Easter! We could do all sorts of things together, and I’d see that
you had a lovely time.”
“And would we go out in the Bentley?” he asked, his eyes widening at the prospect.
“Of course we would. We’d go for long drives.”
He showed her the gap in his small front teeth.
“I’d like that,” he told her. “Gee, I’d like that!”
On the homeward drive Tina felt oddly, but distinctly, depressed. Somehow the visit to the schoolhouse had not been an unqualified success, and her ego had been pricked like a bubble by the fact, which she couldn’t prove, that the children had more or less forgotten her. And they were children over whose homework books she had once pored, concerned herself about when they were ill, been touched and warmed by when they brought her little gifts, like bunches of flowers and baskets of strawberries—even a solitary apple occasionally.
And now the one who had seemed closest to her— and who had, at least, remembered her—had quite obviously been much more impressed by her car than gratified by the sight of herself. And when she pressed half-a-crown into his hand, with which to buy more sweets or a comic or two, before departing, he had hardly thanked her for it, having the car very much on his mind.
“You won’t forget,” he said, looking up at her intently, “that you’ve promised to take me out in it, will you?”
“Of course not, Johnny,” she answered.
A sort of early dusk set in before they reached Giffard’s Prior, and the house itself looked a little grey and grim in the bleakness of the late February afternoon. Angus, when he held open the car door for her to alight, realised that she both looked and felt depressed, and although her depression might easily result from the bout of ’flu she had had he knew it was not entirely that. He saw her glance up at the windows, that were rather like blank eyes overlooking the lake, and he knew she was thinking of the empty, firelit room where she would have tea on her own, and where even Mrs. Appleby would not linger for longer than the few minutes it took to set down the tea-tray and enquire whether she had had an enjoyable outing.
Angus smiled . . . rather a peculiar little smile.
“It’s always a good thing to come home,” he remarked. “But perhaps you haven’t come to look upon Giffard’s Prior as your home yet?”
Tina’s eyes forsook the long line of windows, and encountered his darkly blue ones.
“I don’t suppose I ever will do that,” she replied.
He shrugged his shoulders.
“Oh, I don’t know... At the moment the place is unfamiliar, and you’re feeling lonely, but if you had company it would be different. You’ll have to induce someone to come and live with you.”
“A companion, you mean?” she asked. “Mrs. Appleby suggested that I look out for a companion.”
Again he shrugged.
“If you’re so bereft of friends that you have to pay someone to come and live with you, well, do so. It might be the answer. Personally, I’d just get on the telephone to a few people I know and suggest a party.”
“I haven’t any friends,” she answered simply, still gazing up into his face.
He looked inside the car to make certain she hadn’t left anything behind, and then prepared to slip back into the driving seat. She thought of the long evening ahead of her, and that room with the portrait of old Sir Angus hanging on the wall above the fireplace where the handsome silver tea-tray awaited her, and impulsively she issued an invitation.
“Won’t you come and have tea with me before you return to your quarters? I’m sure Mrs. Appleby will make more toast, and there’s bound to be plenty of cake and things...” Her voice trailed away.
Sir Angus squared his shoulders under the fine grey cloth of his uniform jacket, and to her mortification his eyebrows ascended and the blue eyes looked back at her with a kind of amused disdain.
“My dear Miss Andrews!” he exclaimed. “However sorely tempted I might be to accept your invitation, I hope that I know my place! Think of the consternation in the servants’ hall if I sat gossiping over a pot of tea with you while they were firmly shut away in the kitchen!”
Tina said nothing further, only turned and walked up the steps. But her ears burned. How deliberately cruel he could be to her on occasion, and how much he must dislike her. She mustn’t let that box of snowdrops go to her head! He was quite plainly warning her about that.
Nevertheless, after her lonely tea and still lonelier dinner, she felt that she had to have someone to talk to or go quite mad. For the first time in her life her nerves were on edge; she jumped every time some slight noise occurred in the house and the great room in which she sat was utterly unaffected by it; every time her eyes met the eyes of Sir Angus hanging on the wall above her she was disturbed by the queer little smile in them ... not at all unlike the queer little smile she sometimes surprised in the eyes of the present baronet.
She wondered what Sir Angus would say if he knew she was employing his nephew as a chauffeur. She wondered why he had passed him over so entirely when making his will, and had remembered Alaine to the extent that he had left him a collection of stamp albums, and one or two pieces of Georgian silver.
Even Juliet had been remembered in the will, and Aunt Clare. They had each received some valuable china, and Aunt Clare had been permitted to make her choice amongst some family portraits, and select a couple for herself.
So far she had not availed herself of this postscript to the will, but no doubt she would do so one day when her mood of indignation had cooled a little.
Only Angus had been completely overlooked, and Tina could not think why. Unless old Sir Angus had disapproved of him so strongly that he couldn’t bring himself to leave him anything in his will.
She prowled about the room as the slow minutes passed, and at last she couldn’t bear it any longer. The house was oppressing her unbearably, the constant intrusive thought that she had no right there— and others had!—was like an obsession, and inside the quiet room she could not escape from it. Although it was a cold, windy night, and she had just had a bout of ’flu, she decided she must go for a short walk in the grounds, and perhaps the exercise would clear her mind for her. She might even, under the cool, remote stars, forget that she was singularly bereft of friends, and that Angus had refused to have tea with her.
She fetched herself a coat from the hall cloakroom, tied a headscarf over her hair, and let herself out by a side door. It was still only nine o’clock, and when, after rounding the angle of the house, she saw a light shining through the curtained window of the flat above the stable block where Sir Angus was at present quartered, she was not surprised to discover that he was still up. It occurred to her to wonder how he spent his time, and what means of diversion were provided in the little flat.
Had he a television, or a wireless set ? If not, ought she to provide one for him? What sort of furnishings was he living amongst, and how much actual comfort had he got? As his employer, it was her duty to find out as soon as possible, in order that any bad omissions could be rectified, and surely now was as good a time as any other to acquaint herself with his needs, if any? She ought to have done so days ago, but she had been confined to her bed, and also she had lacked the courage. Now, despite the fact that he had snubbed her and put her in her place earlier in the evening, she decided to summon all the remnants of her courage and go boldly up to his door and knock on it.
He couldn’t really be rude to her... not any longer, now that she was his employer. And he couldn’t refuse to admit her—unless, of course, he was actually in the act of retiring to bed—for the very good reason that she was his employer, and he was nothing more than an employee. Owing to the enormity of the late Sir Angus Giffard’s will the present Sir Angus had no rights at all at Giffard’s Prior, and if his employer chose to call on him at a reasonable hour of the evening, well then, he couldn’t just shut the door in her face and tell her to go away.
All the same, Tina directed another careful look at the light in the flat living-room before she knocked on the door at the foot of the flight of stairs that led up to it. It was a very bright, and quite cheerful light... there was no sign of any light in the bedroom.
Her rat-tat seemed to echo unbearably in the silence of the night, and she was tempted to turn and run away before footsteps could sound on the stairs. But as they did not sound she knocked again. And Sir Angus did something utterly unexpected. He opened a window. He looked out, and she heard him utter an expression of cool amazement.
“You! What in the world do you want with me at this time of the night?”
Tina tilted back her fair head with the creamy head-scarf protecting it from the rawness of the night and looked up at him appealingly.
“I don’t really want anything. I—I just thought...”
“Wait a minute!” he called. “I’ll be down in a couple of seconds.”
When he had the door open she saw that his face was slightly grim, and very, very far from welcoming, but the tone of his voice was perfectly polite.
“Come in,” he said. “These stairs are a bit dark, but there’s a good light shining out at the top of them. I was just thinking about getting myself some supper, but I don’t mind delaying the process. Come in.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
TINA found that the light was embarrassingly bright when she reached the top of the stairs. It showed him her windblown hair, and the slightly scared look on her face, as if she knew that she was intruding unwarrantably, and at an hour when she could have no possible excuse, unless an emergency had arisen, or she required him to drive her somewhere. In which case she would have got in touch with him over the telephone, not braved the blustery dark that had played havoc with her appearance, although it had put a glow of unusual colour into her cheeks.
“In here,” Angus said, standing aside for her to precede him into the sitting-room. “This is the hub of the home, if you can call it a home.” His eyes were appraising her, looking frankly surprised. “I’m honoured by this visit, but I can’t think why you’ve made it.” “I know it’s late,” Tina apologised. “At least, country people would consider it late, but I didn’t think you’d be in bed.”
“I seldom go to bed before midnight,” he admitted. “Frequently much later.” He waved a hand to indicate the one comfortable chair the room contained. “Do sit down. It’s not exactly a comfortable chair, but the springs don’t hurt if you sit down gently.” But she refused the invitation, and stood looking about her, genuinely horrified.
“I’d no idea this was such a poorly equipped place,” she told him. “I imagined—I don’t know why —that it was adequately furnished.”
“Perhaps because you’ve formed the opinion that I’m a bit of a sybarite, and like lounging about in the lap of luxury. But, as a matter of fact, it’s not too bad.” He cleared some books off another chair, and then carried a tray with the remnants of a meal on it through into the tiny kitchen. “The bed’s quite comfortable, and although there’s no bath I can have a Saturday night wash down in the k
itchen sink.” When he returned to her he was looking a little grim. “You should take more interest in your employees, you know. Make sure their surroundings conform with the modern idea of what a domestic should have provided for his or her needs.”
“I know,” she admitted almost humbly. “But, as you know, I’ve had that bout of ’flu, and I didn’t feel like taking much interest in anything, but now I see that I should have inspected this place at once. I’m sorry,” the glow becoming a flush in her cheeks, “that you’ve had to put up with this.”
“And did your conscience trouble you all at once and send you across here to find out how I was faring?”
“I did suddenly start to wonder whether you have everything you need.”
“At nine o’clock at night you felt it necessary to begin a tour of inspection?”
“No... N-no, not exactly...” The colour swept brilliantly into her cheeks, her violet-blue eyes fell abashed before his. “Not exactly,” she admitted.
He thrust her with a certain lack of gentleness towards the armchair.
“Well, sit down. You might as well confess that you were lonely. That was why you invited me to have tea with you this afternoon, wasn’t it? Because you were lonely, and you couldn’t face the thought of Giffard’s Prior without a single soul to talk to throughout a long evening. Well, I didn’t accept your invitation because it would have been most incorrect, but now that you’re here you might as well have a drink and be truthful for a short while.” He produced bottles and glasses, and persuaded her to have a small sherry, although he himself drank whisky and soda. “You see,” drily brandishing one of the bottles, “I make some effort to provide the creature comforts, and as a matter of fact I don’t do too badly.
Cook reserves all her special tit-bits for me, and that new housemaid looks after me fairly well, too. I’m not in any mood to grumble, so don’t look so guilty as you sit there. Instead, tell me what went wrong this afternoon?”
“Went wrong?” She looked slightly startled. “Oh, you mean at the schoolhouse?”
“Yes. It didn’t quite go off as you’d imagined, did it? They weren’t quite as impressed as you’d hoped, and most of them had forgotten you already.”
