To Catch A Unicorn

by Sara Seale

  "We are still in the rough, with no frills to hand on to posterity," he said, as if divining her thoughts, "but in a generation or so, Penzion may acquire the mellowness of more gracious living."

  "What do you mean, exactly?" she asked, puzzled by the use of a phrase so at odds with its more general usage, and he smiled with a trace of irony.

  "I mean what you and your cousin presumably take for granted," he replied. "There's been no social life at Penzion since my mother died, and even when she was alive, few women visited. Our amusements are masculine pursuits, shooting, coursing, sailing and fishing, and the local pubs provide an evening's relaxation. If things should change and the Trevaynes breed daughters as well as sons, the pattern will alter."

  What a strange conversation, Laura thought, wondering if the dark Trevayne was, perhaps, at last thinking of taking a wife to make these things possible, but almost at once he seemed to forget what was probably an uncharacteristic lapse into introspection, and became again the conventional small

  landowner pointing out local landmarks and objects of interest to the uninitiated. He had, she decided, because the habit was one of her own, been talking to himself as much as to her.

  "Are you weighing me up and finding me wanting, or am I simply walking too fast for you?" he asked, looking down at her with a quizzical expression.

  "You have such long legs and the wind is rather strong," sha replied, seizing on the proffered pretext which, judging by the deepening amusement which lifted one corner of his mouth in that strange little twist of derision, did not appear to deceive him.

  "You don't, as yet, take us in your stride, as your cousin does, do you?" he said.

  "I—hardly know you—and Cleo takes most things in her stride," she answered.

  "So I imagine. One wouldn't suspect you shared the same blood."

  "No, I suppose not—but there's usually one plain Jane in a family, isn't there?"

  "One of a different make-up, yes—physical attributes aren't very important, after all."

  "Aren't they?"

  "No. You're thinking, I suppose, that Trevayne characteristics come out so strongly that you know where you are and don't need to look much further."

  She had been thinking just that, but was conscious now of a possible lack of insight in herself.

  "You—the Trevaynes—seem to follow a pattern," she said, stumbling after that preconceived impression which might or might not be wrong. "Was Cleo's husband like you?"

  "Troilus? Your cousin, I imagine, has already given you her opinion of Troy." He spoke a little dryly and she had the impression that he was reluctant to speak of his dead brother, though he added briefly: "Oh, yes, he followed the pattern, too, but he was more like Peregrine than me, actually."

  Laura supposed he meant that Troilus and Peregrine had been alike in temperament, since the resemblance in all three

  was too marked to be mistaken, then as he looked down to give her another of those quizzical, slightly disturbing glances which were beginning to trouble her, she realised for the first time that his eyes which, last night, had seemed as dark as his brother's, were blue and in the cold light of day gave him, momentarily, an entirely different look.

  "It's time we made tracks for home," he said abruptly.

  He left her at the gates to find her own way back to the house, and took a short cut himself across the bleached lawn to some undisclosed occupation awaiting him in the stable-yard. He whistled as he went, and Laura recognised the same jaunty, rather tantalising little tune which his brother had been whistling that morning.

  Sunday supper, she supposed, was no less dispiriting than the traditional affair of cold meat and salad to be found anywhere, but it was Laura's first introduction to the Trevaynes' anti-social mealtime habits. Bella, trailing her stole in the fool while she absently mopped up any remains left in the dishes, was to become as familiar as the silence which seemed tacitly agreed upon while they all bolted their food as if time would be wasted in talking. The brothers ignored one another and left the table when they had finished without waiting for anyone else, and when Cleo, catching her cousin's surprised expression that first evening, giggled and had a sly dig at no one in particular on the subject of manners, Dominic's mild rejoinder managed to sound perfectly reasonable.

  "There are chores to be done which won't wait on the leisure of protracted meals, as you've been here long enough to find out, Cleo," he said. "Your better brought-up cousin will have to get used to our eccentric behaviour, I'm afraid."

  Laura thought she detected a trace of mockery in his allusion to her upbringing, for Cleo seldom missed an opportunity to poke fun at poor Auntie Flo, but the men soon disappeared to occupy themselves elsewhere. Cleo lounged back in her chair smoking, enjoying her cousin's evident desire to leave the table, but with no intention of making the first move herself.

  "You won't find dessert and coffee and after-dinner drawing-room conversation here, my sweet," she said. "The men of this house are singularly uninterested in social pleasantries, as perhaps you've noticed."

  "I'm not used to dessert and coffee and drawing-room conversation, so that won't trouble me," Laura replied. "There seems to be quite a library in that little room they call the book-room. I shall enjoy browsing."

  "Then do your browsing when Dom's not about. That room's his own particular den and he won't thank you for trespassing," Cleo said sharply. "Brother Dom won't, by the same token, want you hanging round his neck asking naive questions about family history, either," she added waspishly, annoyed by Laura's failure to oblige by even looking uncomfortable, but this time the shaft went home sufficiently to make her colour.

  "I can't imagine what you're driving at. There's scarcely been time for more than the barest civilities between us," she replied.

  "Well, you annexed him for half the afternoon when I'd planned to have a rather serious talk myself, and anyone could see when you came back that he'd been bored to tears," Cleo snapped with the sulky self-justification of a disappointed child, but the front door slammed at that moment, male voices laughed and joked in the hall, and restored to good humour at once, she made a small wry grimace of apology at Laura and hurried from the room to join the men.

  "She's wasting her time. Unicorns are not for her," Bella observed with startling unexpectedness, and Laura blinked. Hadn't Peregrine made some oblique reference to fabulous beasts and legends?

  "Unicorns?" she said, wrinkling her forehead, but Bella, she presumed, had merely been speaking her thoughts aloud, for she simply said: "What, dear?" as if she hadn't heard, and Laura, who had such lapses herself and sympathised, did not pursue the subject.

  "Do you think I might go to bed early?" she enquired tentatively, uncertain whether she ought to offer to help Bella

  with the washing up since she had seen no sign of any servants all day, and jumped when Dominic spoke somewhat crossly from the doorway.

  "For heaven's sake! You don't have to ask permission for everything you do in this house, as your cousin's already told you. You'll be enquiring next if you may take a bath!"

  "Well, that's not so extraordinary in a strange house. Someone else might want one, or the water could be cold," Laura retorted, and he grinned.

  "Yes, well ... you clearly have the advantage over us of a nice upbringing," he said, and Bella eyed him with absent attention.

  "I brought the two younger boys up with some of the good old-fashioned notions, I thought, but perhaps not—one forgets. You were too old in any case," she observed, and began piling up the dishes.

  "Can I help?" asked Laura, reaching for a plate.

  "No, you cannot," Dominic said before Bella could speak. "The dishes are left in the sink for the daily women in the morning, and Bella won't thank you for interfering. Get off to bed, and if you want that bath, go and have it."

  "Well, goodnight," Laura said awkwardly, but since he was blocking the doorway, she could only stand politely before him waiting for him to move.

 
; He was supporting himself idly with both hands pressed against the framework of the door. The bright knotted scarf at his throat was a little awry and his eyes looking down at her seemed in that uncertain light to be as black and bold as Peregrine's.

  "I hadn't bargained for something like you thrown in for good measure when I invited my new relations to visit us," he said, and Laura did not much care for the inflection in his voice, that dark voice so different from his brother's. He seemed to be annoyed with her, and she wondered if perhaps Cleo had only spoken the truth when she said he had been bored with her.

  "You expected a nanny, didn't you? Well, I'm simply here to look after Nicky, so don't let that trouble you," she said

  with a crispness born of the decision that she had at last had enough of the dark Trevaynes' curious sense of humour, but he shook his head at her, and now there was no mockery in his eyes, only a grave attention as his glance rested on her.

  "Oh, no," he said. "You are first and foremost a guest in my house; the boy is a secondary consideration—do you understand?"

  She shook her head dumbly, only understanding that if, for some obscure reason, he was proposing to make trouble between herself and Cleo in order to assert his own supremacy, her visit here, looked on in the light of a holiday, would scarcely be without its difficulties.

  "Never mind, you will," he told her with a faint smile. "You will have to get used to our ways, Miss Laura Smith, just as we, no doubt, will get used to yours. Your head's aching, isn't it?"

  "A bit."

  "Then get off to bed. You'll find, when you get to know us, the Trevayne bark is worse than its bite. Goodnight."

  It was surprising, Laura thought in the days to come, how used one did get to things which were not normally calculated to reassure. Even the explosive altercations which blew up without warning between the brothers could be ignored, though not enjoyed. Laura, despite her inexperience in the matter of living, possessed the enviable gift of adapting herself to what came, and already the hostel and the flower shop and the daily trek to work and back seemed as unreal as the anticipation of this unlikely holiday had been.

  'How lucky for me that Nicky's nanny decided to walk out," she said to her cousin, but Cleo eyed her with a certain amount of reserve.

  "I'm not sure it was altogether a good idea," she replied. "You're so impressionable, Laura. It would be a pity if you began to get romantic notions about my colourful brothers-in-law. Perry's started in already, hasn't he?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "You know quite well. Perry can't keep his hands off any girl, however dumb she may appear. Besides, he likes to

  annoy Dom"

  Laura was silent while she considered the implications. Peregrine's brash advances in idle moments had scarcely given her an exalted opinion of her own attractions, but she found him easier to get on with than the less calculable Dominic.

  "Why should Peregrine's inability to resist flirtation annoy his brother?" she asked. "Dominic hasn't any interest in me."

  "No, darling, very obviously not," Cleo said with an amused little chuckle. "But Dom, for all his inherited Trevayne blood, has old-fashioned notions about hospitality, I suspect, and he knows Perry of old."

  "It's scarcely any concern of his if I happen to prefer his brother," said Laura coldly, and Cleo yawned.

  "Of course not, most women would, but it could rankle all the same, and Perry knows it," he said. "Besides, that was Troy's trick."

  "What was?"

  "Adding up scores, taking what he didn't want just for the hell of it."

  "That doesn't sound very nice."

  "He wasn't very nice, darling, in your meaning of the word —in fact he was no good, but he was fun and never, never dull, and Perry's too damn like him for comfort."

  Cleo spoke with such sudden bitterness that Laura felt ashamed of her own impatience.

  "If Peregrine so reminds you, wouldn't he—wouldn't he fill the gap?" she asked shyly, and her cousin's beautiful, sulky mouth twisted in rather contemptuous amusement.

  "Do you think Perry's the marrying type, dear, sentimental Laura?"

  Laura was silent, her thoughts leaping ahead to the possibility of other safeguards for the boy's future than financial settlements, then she said: "What did you really expect for Nicky when you brought him here?" and Cleo smiled.

  "Well, there are more ways than one of killing a cat," she said, answering the thought rather than the question. "The thing is—which?"

  "Which what?"

  "Which brother, you clot! Or have you got an eye on one of them yourself?"

  "Oh, really, Cleo! I've only just met them!" But Cleo was determined to tease.

  "Well, watch your step, darling," she said. "Have fun with Perry if you like, but don't be surprised if Big Brother takes a dim view if he catches on. He has, I suspect, rather old-fashioned ideas about young girls living under his roof, and it would be a pity if he sent my temporary nanny packing for forgetting her place."

  It was, of course, just Cleo's way of passing a dull half hour to talk provocative nonsense and proffer goads, Laura told herself, but she was uncomfortably reminded of the light-hearted warning later.

  Peregrine had returned unexpectedly early from the quarry for lunch and catching Laura in a unguarded moment standing on a chair to reach for a book, snatched her off it and chased her through the house, desiring, so he improbably said, to demonstrate a new throw in judo he had learnt. She sped across the hall, laughing, and crying out in mock terror, and collided with Dominic coming in.

  "Hey, steady on!" he said, catching her by the shoulder. "What are you running from in such a hurry, Miss Smith?"

  "Peregrine!" she laughed, forgetting for the moment to be circumspect in the house of a stranger. "He was threatening to throw me to demonstrate—"

  Her flushed face and disordered hair had brought a smile to his lips, but the smile froze as he rapped out sharply:

  "Demonstrate what?"

  "A—a new trick in judo, I think," she faltered, feeling he had caught her out in a rather undignified romp. Peregrine most inopportunely elected to appear at that moment in search of her and she found herself the unwilling cause of a scene.

  "Keep your horseplay for the tap-room and your current barmaids in future," Dominic snapped, and his brother's expression of teasing devilment changed to one of temper.

  "Running to brother Dom for protection, were you, Laura?"

  he flung at her nastily. "I hardly had designs on your virtue, my dear, or were you hoping?"

  "Shut up and get out!" Dominic said, and Laura, seeking to divert the storm with feeble protests, fell silent, aware that they had both forgotten her in the bitter exchange of words that followed. Peregrine's taunts and shouting were less deadly than his brother's icy, controlled anger, but both outbursts seemed altogether out of proportion.

  Peregrine finally flung out of the house and the explosive noise of his sports car intimated that he had taken himself off to more congenial places for the rest of the day, and Dominic turned his attention to Laura before she could make her own escape.

  "I must apologise for my brother's little exhibition," he said with such a sudden return to grave politeness that she gave a nervous giggle.

  "You were as bad as each other in your different ways," she retorted, because embarrassed though she had been, she scarcely felt Peregrine merited the blame for a harmless romp; but she saw Dominic's black brows go up in sudden coolness and was immediately made aware of impertinence.

  "There are several things about us you can't be expected to understand, Laura, nor are they any concern of yours," he said. "But while you are under my roof I must ask you to remember—"

  "My place?" she snapped, without thinking. "Cleo told me only this morning I shouldn't forget it."

  The tight lines round his mouth relaxed and when he next spoke it was with gentle thoughtfulness.

  "Did she indeed?" he said. "That wasn't what I was about to say, in point of fact, b
ut I should be interested to know what your cousin imagines your place to be."

  "It was only a joke," Laura answered, her little spurt of retaliation dying, "nannies and things like that, you know."

  He stood fingering the scar with that unconscious habit he seemed to have in moments of stress and asked unexpectedly:

  "Is Cleo paying you for taking charge of the boy?"

  "No, of course not—we're cousins."

  "Relatives are no less in need of wages than others, surely? You're a working girl, I understand."

  "I earn my living, yes, but my aunt left me a tiny income, so I'm luckier than most—I'd never starve, and—well, I've never taken money from Cleo for baby-sitting and things, and —and this is a sort of holiday for me, you see."

  "How convenient for your cousin," he observed.

  She sighed, abandoning the subject, and his smile became a little mocking, like his brother's.

  "Do we seem a rough, hot-blooded lot to you, Laura?" he asked, and she looked at him doubtfully.

  "I don't understand you very well, but hot blood is your legacy, I suppose."

  "And that absolves us?"

  "I don't know," she answered awkwardly. "I suppose it would depend. One can't blame everything on one's inheritance, can one?"

  "No, Miss Mouse, one can't. Well, as long as you remember that, when you're dealing with brother Perry, he won't harm you. Perhaps you've more worldly knowledge than I'd thought."

  "I can look after myself very well, thank you," she said, stung to retaliation by her own thoughts. "I'm twenty years old, know all the facts of life, and don't take everyone at face value!"

  The familiar expression of amusement came back to his face, crinkling his eyes at the corners.

  "Don't you now?" he said, and began to whistle softly. He broke off after only a bar or two, but she had recognised the tune.

  "What is that?" she asked, teased by an elusive familiarity.

  "Don't you know? It's a ditty you should mark, learn and digest with that misguided taste in s you seem to

  have," he retorted, but did not explain further. "Well, I'm glad to hear you can look after yourself and you are acquainted with the facts of life, whatever they may be. You're very young, aren't you?"