by Pamela Kent
“Of course,” Tina said, and rang the bell for the housekeeper. She led the way to the drawing-room, since her usual haunt, the library, was still in a sense out of bounds. “You’d better all come in here and have something to drink, and I’ll instruct Mrs. Appleby to see what she can do about providing lunch for you all, and to lay extra places in the dining-room.” Mr. Forbes muttered that she was very good, and followed her over to the fireplace where an electric fire glowed in the hearth, although the room was also warm with central heating,
“Awfully good of you,” he said, standing awkwardly and wanning his hands at the electric fire at the same time. “Jolly cold weather this, and not the time of year to put anyone about. But a kind of major crisis has arisen, and we’ve got to do something about it. Angus is usually pretty good at solving problems, so we came to him.”
“I see,” Tina murmured.
Justin Forbes’ eyes kindled as he took in the slender line of her figure clothed in an attractive soft wool dress, and the pale gold hair that covered her small head like a pale aureole.
“Daresay you’ve met Mrs. Giffard,” he said. “Doesn’t take kindly to the idea of Juliet and me marrying.”
“Oh, no?” Tina murmured again.
“Pity, but there it is!” Mr. Forbes sighed. Tina was gradually arriving at the opinion that he was a perfectly pleasant young man who felt rather strongly about this impolite intrusion, but she was not exactly surprised that Clare Giffard, whom she had also met on one occasion only, was not exactly enthusiastic about acquiring him for a son-in-law. There was a certain amiable weakness about his face that could put a lot of women off—especially if they were strong-minded, and it was a question of marrying off a daughter. But Tina who had no reason to like or approve of Mrs. Giffard, developed a sudden, impulsive liking for him.
“Is it because she wants Miss Giffard to marry somebody else?” she suggested tentatively.
“Oh, no! It’s simply and solely a question of money,” he confessed.
“You haven’t got any?” she enquired sympathetically.
“Not much.” He grinned in the way she found curiously engaging, because it offered an apology for himself and any deficiencies that could be attributed to him. “That is to say, I haven’t at the moment, although I will have one day; and Juliet’s acquired a pile of debts . . . bills, you know! Her mother won’t pay them, and she thinks she ought to marry someone who will pay them.”
“But that’s dreadful! ” Tina exclaimed. She thought it genuinely dreadful that a girl should have to marry in order that some of her extravagances could be settled for her. “I thought Miss Giffard had money of her own.”
“She gets an allowance,” Justin admitted, “but it’s usually mortgaged by the time it’s due. Hence the bills.”
“For clothes, and things like that?”
“And an occasional flutter on the racecourse. I’m afraid Ju’s a bit of a gambler.”
“That’s bad, I suppose,” Tina said, and, never having gambled on anything in her life, she thought it was also rather daring. “But if it’s a question of marrying ... You must have something more than an allowance to marry on—”
The door opened behind them, and the other three entered the room. Juliet was looking tearful and upset, Kathryn was rather flushed and stormy-eyed, and Angus’s eyes were glinting in a manner that suggested the interview had been as stormy as Kathryn’s expression. Mrs. Appleby came up behind them, and Tina requested her to see what she and Cook could manage in the way of lunch for all five of them. She also asked for a tray of drinks to be brought to the drawing-room.
“Not for me,” Angus said stiffly. “I can provide myself with a drink. I’ll go over to my quarters.”
But Kathryn tugged angrily at his sleeve.
“Don’t be silly,” she said. “We’ve come all this way to see you. We can talk over lunch. We’ve got to talk!”
“Then we’ll all go over to my quarters. It’ll be a bit cramped, but I can rustle you up some bread and cheese. And I’ve no doubt I can also find you a bottle of beer apiece,” smiling unpleasantly.
Kathryn positively glared at him.
“Since Miss Andrews is willing to give us lunch,” she said, “and willing to give you lunch—”
“I’m the chauffeur,” he interrupted. “Chauffeurs have their place, and mine isn’t here. It’s in a microscopic flat above the stables.” Miss Gaylord’s beautiful eyes developed a few sparks. “If you go on talking like that,” she hissed between her perfect little white teeth, “I’ll—”
But Tina stepped forward and put a stop to the interchange.
“I think Sir Angus is merely being awkward,” she explained. “He knows very well he’s not really my chauffeur. It was his idea, not mine! And as you have family business to discuss I’m the one who is undoubtedly in the way. I’ll arrange for you to have lunch on your own, and Mrs. Appleby can bring me a tray in the library. That should simplify everything.”
She was on her way to the door when Angus got between her and the smooth cream-painted woodwork. He said with extraordinary fierceness:
“If you do that I’ll certainly go over to my quarters ! The only condition on which I’ll stay to lunch is that you stay, too.”
Tina looked up into his granite face, and realised that he meant what he said. She also experienced an extraordinary rush of warmth about her heart—a kind of glow of gratitude, as if someone had given her an unexpected and entirely undeserved present.
“Very well,” she said, and without quite realising what she was doing she smiled at him. When the new maidservant brought in the drinks she asked him in a perfectly normal voice if he would do the honours. And she was the first to whom he offered a glass of sherry, putting the glass into her hand with lean brown fingers that lightly touched her own. “Thank you, Miss Andrews.” he said.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
DESPITE the fact that she had had no warning beforehand the cook provided them with an excellent lunch. As it was such a cold day there was a thick, rich soup, cutlets with mushrooms, and a delicious fruit tart to follow—the fruit out of one of the numberless bottles in the store-cupboard. And, of course, cream. Cream was served with every meal at Giffard’s Prior.
Afterwards Tina dispensed coffee in the drawingroom, and Miss Gaylord, obviously feeling slightly better tempered after her excellent meal, lay back in a corner of one of the drawing-room settees and smoked the cigarette that Angus lighted for her in a long ivory holder. Angus, giving the impression that he was taking part in amateur theatricals in his uniform, took up a position on the hearthrug and Juliet sat curled up in an armchair. Justin Forbes handed round the coffee cups as Tina poured out, and he also made certain that she didn’t neglect to pour herself a cup. During lunch the conversation had flowed freely despite the somewhat hampering presence of the hostess. The situation—not exactly a crisis, so far as Tina could make it out—was simply that Juliet and Justin wished to marry, and Mrs. Giffard was not favourably disposed towards the marriage. She was her daughter’s guardian as well as her mother, and she controlled the strings of the purse that contained the money her father had left her, and declined to be more generous with it than the terms of the will made it necessary for her to be.
When Juliet was twenty-one—in six months’ time —she would be in a position to control her own money. Justin, also, would inherit quite a large sum of money, as well as a family estate, when he stepped into the shoes of a very elderly uncle, who was expected to depart this life at any moment. But apart from these future benefits their present capital was practically nil, and Juliet had acquired a string of debts which had infuriated her mother, and made her even less inclined to set up the two in some sort of an establishment where they could begin married life.
It had been Kathryn’s idea that Angus would help them. Angus, it now became clear, had a great deal of money, and for him it would be the simplest matter in the world to write off Juliet’s debts, and advance her enough cash
to see her through until her twenty-first birthday, when she could easily return it. But Angus, for some reason was adamant . . . He would do nothing to upset his Aunt Clare, even though he neither approved of his Aunt Clare, nor cared very much what became of her. He was adopting the attitude, also, that Juliet had no right to expect other people to burden themselves with her debts, and although he had nothing against Justin—in fact, in a half-contemptuous fashion he seemed to approve of him—he told him very bluntly that he thought a man should wait until he was in a position to suppast a wife before marrying her.
Kathryn cried out at this.
“I think you’re extraordinarily heartless!” Her eyes reproached him. “You can’t expect two people to wait to marry just because of a few bills. Marriage is important.”
“It’s also important to settle one’s debts and put one’s house in order before considering it,” he replied.
She made a little impatient gesture with her shoulders.
“It’s not as if they were Justin’s bills. He, poor dear, is just hard up.”
“Then he must wait until fortune smiles on him,” Angus returned glibly.
She surveyed him with a gleam of astonishment in her eyes, as if she was seeing him for the first time. “You’re hard,” she accused. “Horribly hard!” He shrugged.
“Perhaps. I’ve an idea Miss Andrews thinks the same thing.”
Dragged into the conversation, Tina contributed her own quota to it and successfully astounded them all.
“If Sir Angus doesn’t feel like helping,” she said, “I’m perfectly willing to do so in his place. I’d be happy to do something—and of course, I wouldn’t want it returned! In fact, it was my intention to make over some of the money left to me by the late Sir Angus Giffard to various members of his family, only I was given to understand that it wouldn’t be welcome.” Her eyes went to Sir Angus. “I received the impression that I was impertinent, and I didn’t intend to be impertinent. I merely wanted to adjust matters a little . . . since I realise I’ve been the cause of a good deal of consternation in the Giffard family.” For a moment there was silence, and then Juliet left her chair and rushed at her.
“Oh, but that’s wonderful!” she declared. “You really will do something for us? For Justin and myself?” She crouched on the rug at Tina’s feet. “And you can easily spare it, can’t you? It won’t hurt you at all—”
“Except that I won’t allow her to do it!” Angus declared, in a voice of cold fury that startled them all. Every pair of eyes in the room became fixed on him. “Juliet must get herself out of her present mess, and as for Justin . . . Well, let him get a job if he wants money!”
All of them, with the exception of Tina, gaped at him.
“A—a job?” faltered Mr. Forbes.
“Why not?” demanded Angus, almost hostile in his anger. “There are lots of things you can do, if you have the guts. You can take on the job of chauffeur here, for one thing, and Juliet can turn that flat I’m occupying into a lovers’ nest. I’ve no doubt it could be transformed, with a little feminine skill and effort.” Juliet abandoned her crouching position on the rug, and returned to her chair.
“I think you’re absolutely—horrible!” she declared, and burst into tears.
Justin went to her and did his best to comfort her. He sat on the arm of her chair and patted her shoulders, and it was left to Miss Gaylord to sail right into the attack. She accused Sir Angus of having changed almost out of all knowledge in the last few weeks, and behaving like a brute towards his cousin. She said that such indifference to the well-being of a relative would not have been possible before he attached himself to Miss Andrews—with a baleful glare at the latter—and that in any case he himself had been the biggest attacker of Miss Andrews in the days when they first learned she was to inherit all that old Sir Angus left behind him. What he said then was vicious and not entirely fair, and now apparently he wanted to unsay it all and make certain that Miss Andrews retained all her ill-gotten gains intact
The inference was that she had acquired some influence over him—that she wasn’t the mealy-mouthed little nobody, the dull little school-marm, the scheming little outsider who hadn’t hesitated to make up to a doddering old gentleman who should have been past such weaknesses in order to get his money that they had thought she was . . .
“Be quiet! ” Sir Angus ordered, at this point. Kathryn met his eyes stormily.
“Why should I be quiet? You said those things yourself—all of them!—you know you did. And you said a lot of others besides! It was your idea that you should take on the job of driving her car and give her a few ‘thrills,’ as you put it, in order to teach her how badly she had behaved! You said she was a menace . . . That young women like her should be put across someone’s knee and slapped!”
Sir Angus regarded her bleakly, although his eyes were a blue blaze that caused her to shrink back a little.
“Search your memory for a few more things I said,” he advised her, “and let Miss Andrews have the lot! It would be a pity if you left her any illusions.” “She can’t possibly have any illusions about you,” Kathryn commented, looking round at Tina, who was sitting very still in her chair. “I don’t know what explanation you gave for suddenly wanting a job as a chauffeur, but it couldn’t have been very convincing. If she believed you she must have been more gullible than I’m prepared to accept. What kind of story did you tell her?” suddenly gazing at him suspiciously.
“He said he wanted to marry you, and your father objected because he had yet to prove that he could do a job of work,” Tina, in a strangely flat and spiritless voice, told her. “Not a job that had been wangled for him, but an honest, everyday one. If it had been
true, of course, he could have taken on a job in your father’s supermarket—”
“My father’s what? ” Kathryn shrieked at her.
“Your father’s supermarket. Or one of them. I understand he runs a chain of them.”
On the far side of the room, still sitting on the arm of his fiancee’s chair, Justin Forbes put a hand up to his mouth and chortled into it.
“A chain of supermarkets! That’s rich! I had no idea you’d such an imagination, old boy,” he said to Angus.
“My father is a very respected alderman in the City of London,” Kathryn disclosed, passing on the information to Tina between her teeth. “He is also a merchant, and his business is confined to overseas products . . . Not putting them on the market for lower-class women shoppers!” She gathered up her hat and handbag, swung her expensive fur coat round her shoulders, and walked to the door. “I’m going to the inn in Stoke Moreton,” she told them, “and I’ll be there if you want to join me, Juliet. I wouldn’t bother to try making an impression on Angus’s softer side, if I were you . . . He hasn’t got one any longer! Or if he has it’s a reversed softer side for Miss Andrews’ benefit only!”
Once the door had slammed behind her Juliet gave a wail.
“But what are we going to do? ” she appealed to Justin.
Tina rose and went across to her.
“Don’t worry,” she said soothingly, “I meant what I said, and no one—no one, ” she emphasised, “can prevent me doing what I like with my own money. I’ll see to it that all your bills are settled, and that you have enough over and above that to begin married life. That is, of course, if you really want to get married?”
“We do, oh, we do!” Juliet assured her fervently, reaching out a hand to clutch at one of Mr. Forbes’ hands. “Don’t we, Justin?”
“We certainly do,” he supported her, blinking at Tina as if her unexpected generosity overwhelmed him. “But of course we’ll pay back anything we receive from you, Miss Andrews,” he assured her. “You can take my word for that!”
Angus made a sound that could have been one of contempt, but Tina merely ignored him.
“I won’t want it back,” she said, and she spoke very decisively. “I’ll do nothing for you unless it’s on my own terms, and those ar
e that the money will be accepted as your right, and not as a loan.” Juliet, who was entrancingly attractive with her pale skin and dark hair—even though her nose was now rather red with crying—
gulped something flattering into her handkerchief.
"I don’t wonder Uncle Angus took such a liking to you. It was Angus there—” she sniffed as her red-rimmed eyes turned towards him “—who did his best to set us all against you! Mother didn’t really need the money, I didn’t—although I need it now!—and Alaine certainly didn’t. And he was the only one who had a good word to say for you!”
“Miss Andrews has discovered by now that it’s a favourite hobby of mine saying unpleasant things about other people,” Angus observed, with a still gleam in his eyes, as Tina was careful to keep her back turned towards him.
Mr. Forbes suddenly remembered that they were still intruders. “Well, I think we ought to be making tracks for the inn as well as Kathryn,” he remarked. “Although as she’s probably taken the car we shall have to walk.” “You can take my car,” Tina offered, and
Angus strode forward. “Over my dead body!” he declared. “Anyone who messes about with that car while it’s still being run in will be answerable to me. If you want a lift back to the inn, Forbes, you can go outside and wait on the drive. I’ll be with you in a few minutes.”
As soon as they had left the room, in the wake of Miss Gaylord, Tina turned to him. Her eyes were quiet and expressionless, and very, very darkly blue.
They made him think of gentians, rather than violets,
now that at last she knew everything there was to know about him.
“I suppose you thought it was a tremendous joke,” she said. “Apart from providing you with an opportunity to make my life a trifle hazardous?”
