To Catch A Unicorn

by Sara Seale

  Penzion at once, before transport could become dangerous.

  Nicky, though he was reduced to tears, looked cold and frightened, and when Peregrine put him down, he ran to Laura and began to whimper.

  "Why have you locked the door again?" she said angrily, going down on her knees beside the boy. "This rather feeble joke's gone far enough, and I want to leave."

  Peregrine propped his back against the door and grinned at her.

  "It's no joke, my sweet, and we're not leaving," he said.

  "Oh now, really, Perry! You're too old to start playing cops and robbers!" she exclaimed, refusing to be alarmed. "If we don't go now, it soon won't be safe to drive."

  "Very true, my pretty. That, of course, was a stroke of good fortune I hadn't foreseen, so the gods are clearly on my side. I must say I admire your refusal to panic, but you always were a bit of a surprise in that way, weren't you? That literal mind again, I shouldn't wonder."

  She lifted Nicky on to one of the bunks and covered him with a blanket, then turned and regarded Peregrine, her arms folded in the traditional attitude of any nanny determined to stand no nonsense.

  "My literal mind is unimpressed by silly posturing," she told him coolly. "You can't keep us here all night, and if we don't go now you'll find we're stranded."

  "That hardly matters, for I'd every intention of keeping you here all night, fog or no fog, so put that in your stubborn little pipe and smoke it."

  "But why—why?" she said. "I can't see any point, unless you're hoping to make Cleo jealous, which I may add, is hardly likely."

  "Don't you think so? You've given your self-assured cousin cause for that in more ways than one, or didn't you know?"

  "Stuff and nonsense!" she exclaimed loudly, and he put his head on one side.

  "Alice, of course ..." he said, sounding delighted with his own cleverness, "that's who you must always have reminded me of. I wonder if Dom's spotted it."

  "If you know your Alice, then you'll remember how she dealt with people who needed putting in their places. 'Who cares for you?" said Alice. 'You're nothing but a pack of cards!'" quoted Laura. "And that's all you are, Peregrine Trevayne—all the Trevaynes, probably, with their high-stepping opinions and—and cardboard histrionics—nothing but a pack of cards!"

  "Well!" said Peregrine in genuine astonishment, then burst out laughing. Nicky, feeling safe and cosy again in his blanket, recognising a story-telling not~ in Moo-moo's voice, laughed too, but Laura, having relieved her outraged feelings and, as she thought, cut Peregrine neatly down to size, said on a coaxing note:

  "Come on, Perry, you've had your fun. Let's go home."

  A softer plea, however, merely stiffened him. A Laura quite unshaken by a possible threat to her virtue was no fun at all, but a pleading Laura already in love with a man who she imagined cared nothing for her was a different cup of tea.

  "Well now," he said, swaggering across to her and pushing her down on to one of the bunks, "it's time you got wise to yourself, my dear. I've had this all planned since Big Brother socked me one in the pub. I told him I'd make him sorry for that—remember? At first I -thought I'd just snatch the kid and disappear for a few days while Brother Dom sweated in uncertainty, then when you begged for a nice little outing to see the sights, I thought this was a better idea. True, Dominic will only have to sweat for one night instead of several, but one night is quite long enough to sweat to some tune when a young girl and her imperilled virtue are involved."

  "This all sounds very picturesque and melodramatic," she said with cool contempt. "But can you really carry pure spite to these lengths?"

  "Troy did."

  "And is Troy to be your criterion for behaviour all your life?"

  "Ah! Now you're sounding like prim Miss Prunes-and-prisms again! You won't feel so smug by tomorrow morning, my girl."

  "Oh, really, Perry! I may be young and inexperienced, but I'm not ignorant. I've always understood that rape is virtually impossible unless the victim is partially willing," she said, and he looked faintly surprised.

  "Well, What d'you know! Our bread-and-butter miss talking glibly about such sordid things as rape as if it were of no more consequence than stubbing your toe!"

  "Neither it is, I imagine, if one keeps one's head and remembers to kick," she retorted, but even as she spoke, she had a mental picture of her Auntie Flo's look of horror at such outspokenness, and felt herself blushing.

  "Well!" he exclaimed. "I'm glad to see you can still blush!" The predatory overlord's notions of his ewe lamb's defenceless innocence would be slightly shattered, I feel. Still, he won't be aware of that tonight, will he?"

  "Don't call him that," snapped Laura, lapsing momentarily into childish crossness. "That joke's already gone sour on him —and on me, too, Perry, I can understand your adolescent tit-for-tat idiocy in staging some silly stunt over the boy because, for once, Dominic's taken something from you and you don't like it; but this stupid caper—Dominic's scarcely going to worry unduly, knowing I'm with the child."

  He gave her a long, faintly incredulous look, and sat down beside her on the bunk.

  "Are you so dumb you can't see the delicious irony of that?" he asked quite gently. "Sure, he won't sweat about the boy, but he's going to sweat his guts out wondering what's happening to you. Don't you understand I've got the two beings he wants for himself, and one night's hell is going to pay off a lot of old scores."

  She sat very still and very small beside him, and she must have been holding her breath, for he heard the long, quivering sound as she slowly released it.

  "Didn't you really know?" he asked, curiously. "Weren't you feminine enough to see through all that protective lord of the manor stuff?"

  "He treats me like a child," she said, too shaken to remember her present invidious position. "I thought he was—embar-

  rassed because he guessed how I felt. He even warned me ..."

  "He was warning you against losing your heart to me, I don't doubt. He thought you'd fallen for me—Cleo saw to that."

  She sat up very straight and her eyes grew wide with wonder as everything fell into place.

  "Did Cleo plan this with you?" she asked, and he grinned back at her, tempted to prick that new-found bubble of happiness, just for the hell of it.

  "Well, no—to give her her due she didn't," he replied. "She knew I was up to something, and I don't fancy she would have had any compunction in getting her own back on Dom as the woman scorned, etc., but she didn't connive, if that's what you mean."

  "I'm glad," said Laura. "I wouldn't like to think she cared so little for me after all these years. What do you mean by the woman scorned?"

  "Well, she meant to marry the lord and master, as I think you knew."

  "I thought that was the arrangement they must have come to—for Nicky's sake, you know."

  "Oh, yes, I got the set-up, and I played along with that for a time. You were very touching that night in the pub, Laura. You wanted to extract a promise from me to lay off once they were married, didn't you? Well, clever Cleo has settled for a very nice little pay-off, and if she's still clever tonight— who knows, I might take unwilling steps to the altar myself! It won't, incidentally, do the little bitch any harm to sweat a bit herself, and she won't know, will she, that you and I, in such circumstances, might possibly cut our losses and settle for each other?"

  "Most unlikely," said Laura with a return to her first briskness. "When we don't return, Dominic will come and get us. Cleo knows where we are."

  "Don't kid yourself!" laughed Peregrine. "Have you looked at the weather? Dom will be as helpless as the next man to rescue his beloved from a fate worse than death; no one but a raving lunatic would venture out in this, and Dom knows

  these fogs."

  Her eyes went to the window. She had been so intent on Peregrine's extraordinary revelations that she had paid no attention to the weather, except to be aware that the long, barrack-like room had darkened to an impression of twilight, but she saw no
w the impenetrable blanket of fog pressing against the window, and the swirling little wreaths of mist drifting in through every crack and cranny and hovering over the rows of bunks like smoke.

  "All right!" she said, sliding off the bunk and going to Nicky, who had already fallen asleep on his. "So we spend the night here and go hungry. It won't kill any of us."

  "We won't go hungry. I've got a hamper of food in the boot of the car," Peregrine said, and to Laura it was the final irritant, the last, childish assurance that, for Peregrine the whole fantastic scheme was just an excuse for a party. She came back to where he was still sitting on the bunk they had both occupied, and dealt him a stinging slap across the cheek.

  "You," she said, "ought to have grown out of such nonsense by now. I may have seemed naive to you with my schoolgirl fantasies of pirates and smugglers and pieces of eight, but you, with your mean and spiteful pride in turning out exactly like your unpleasant old father and your dead brother, seem to me never to have grown up at all."

  She knew at once that she had misjudged her own powers as she saw his hand go to his cheek and the ugly look which came into his black, brilliant eyes.

  "That," he said with a gentleness that was all the more alarming because he was not a gentle person, "is a thing youH be sorry for before the night is out, my dear. You have far more attraction for me in a belligerent mood, Laura, I'll admit, but—for that slap—I think I must teach you a lesson. We've all the night before us, and once the brat is safely asleep in his bunk, who's to know what goes on in another part of this shack? You'd better let me get that hamper— you'll need strength as the night wears on, to put these foolish boasts of yours into practice."

  At Penzion the afternoon had passed tediously for Cleo with nothing to do but laze around and regret that she had not insisted on being one of the party visiting the quarry. Perry, of course, had been up to something, judging by his parting shot before he drove off, but it was not until later that she began having certain uneasy doubts. To be jealous of the little cousin whose affections were already engaged elsewhere was, of course, absurd, but lately Perry had been throwing out hints that Laura's charms might be worth consideration, and although Cleo was pretty sure he was simply at his old game of playing hard to get, he was more than capable, if sufficiently goaded, of taking a girl he did not want simply to spite the lot of them. And Laura? Well, she wouldn't be the first young star-crossed innocent to be caught on the rebound and have regrets too late.

  Tea-time came and went, but Cleo had it alone. Dominic looked in about half-past five to enquire whether the others were back yet, and frowned when told they were not.

  "The weather's getting a bit thick," he said. "Perry will surely have had the sense to start back before the roads get tricky. He knows what these fogs can be like."

  "Well, it'll probably take a bit of time if he has to crawl," Cleo said indifferently. She was unused to fogs where there was no city lighting to aid the motorist, neither did she appreciate the dangers of a moorland road that could lead the unwary into a bog or over the cliff's edge.

  As time went on, however, and the little party still failed to return, she began to grow restless. She did not for a moment share Dominic's anxiety lest an accident had befallen them, for she thought she knew, now, just what Peregrine had in mind when he had said this was as good a way as any of settling old scores. Not only did he mean to pay back his brother for imagined grievances, but her as well. She had driven him too far, blowing first hot, then cold, and making a play for Dominic to goad him into thoughts of marriage himself. She had made it too plain that she was willing to marry the elder brother if necessary, providing the old affair could continue as before, and had been no less surprised than

  Perry was himself when he had finally admitted that he drew the line at that.

  At seven o'clock, Dominic abandoned his labours, saying the weather was now too thick for comfort, but several times he walked down to the gates to look up the road as anxious people will, even though knowing the errand to be fruitless.

  "Can't you ring up? The place is on the telephone, surely?" said Cleo impatiently.

  "I did so an hour ago, but got no reply," he answered.

  "So they're on their way and it'll probably take them hours."

  "You don't really think that, any more than I do."

  "Well then, what should one think? Someone would have answered the phone if they're still there."

  "Not necessarily. The telephone's in the office and there are other more comfortable places to bed down if you're stranded."

  "Bed down?"

  "A figure of speech, of course," he said smoothly. "We boast a quite comfortable bunk-house for the men on night-shift. There would be no need to suffer any very great inconvenience."

  She did not care very much for the way he was looking at her and her eyes slid away from his.

  "Well, surely Perry would have rung us himself if they were stranded," he said uneasily.

  "Would he?"

  He poured her another drink, then helped himself and went to stand at the window with his back to her. There was little daylight left, owing to the fog, and the lights had already been turned on in the tea-room where they were waiting until Bella should be ready with supper.

  There was a long silence between them, then Dominic tossed off his whisky, put down the empty glass, and was suddenly across the room in a few swift strides.

  "Hadn't you better come clean, Cleo? " he said quite gently.

  "What do you mean?" she temporised, but she looked frightened.

  "You know they're there, don't you? Did you and Perry cook this up between you—each getting your own back on me, but for different reasons?"

  "No---no. I swear I knew nothing, Dom," she said, and now that the affair was out in the open she could give voice to her own misgivings. "Perry muttered something about settling old scores and this being as good a way as any, but I didn't suspect till later what he was probably planning. Yes, I think they're still there; I don't think Perry ever had any intention of coming back tonight. Bella says a lot of food has gone from the larder. Dom, can't you go and fetch them, or at least get as far as the Works and spend the night there with them?"

  "To play the unwanted protector and be brushed off for high-handed interference?" he said with bitter irony, and she realised that her own doubts and regrets had made her forget that he must imagine that Laura would hardly be an unwilling party to anything Perry might propose.

  "Oh, Dom, you fool!" she cried, driven at last by her own jealousy to the truth. "Laura doesn't care a rap for Perry! I know I gave you to understand otherwise, but if you hadn't been so blind you'd have seen it for yourself long ago. The poor little ninny is sick with love for you, but she thought you were warning her off with all this kid-glove handling as if she was a half-witted child."

  For a moment she thought he was going to strike her, so lividly did the scar stand out as the skin tightened in anger across the bones of his dark face, but when he spoke it was with that quiet control which she had come to recognise as more dangerous than his brother's fireworks.

  "My kid-glove handling, as you call it, might have borne fruit if you hadn't lied and deliberately misled me as, I suppose, you also misled Laura. You're a bitch and a tramp, Cleo, and quite without any moral decency."

  "Hard words won't hurt me now," she flung back at him, brazening things out as the only possible defence in a tight corner. "I wanted you myself, and they say all's fair in love and war."

  "Oh no, you always wanted Perry, but you wanted marriage, too. You're greedy, Cleo. When Perry wouldn't play, you settled for me, thinking that way you'd have the best of both worlds, didn't you? You weren't very clever, my dear; if you'd made marriage your price, as you tried to do with me over Nicky, instead of plunging into an affair with him, you might have got what you wanted."

  The tears welled up in her eyes, not tears of shame or even remorse, but of self-disgust at having bungled a project through a wanton excess
of physical desire and over-self-confidence.

  "Oh, I know I've been a fool," she said, "but you got under my skin with all this everlasting concern for youth and innocence, with the implication that I could look after myself— Laura, too, with her naive gullibility and her bread-and-butter ways."

  "In other words you were jealous that any man could prefer the despised little cousin to you," he said quite gently, and she gave him a wry smile.

  "Yes, I suppose I was," she said frankly. "I've never, you see, imagined there could be any competition between us, and neither has she."

  "It's you who are naive, not Laura. She has a quality you wouldn't begin to understand," he said, and there was just a hint of compassion in his smile which she saw with surprise.

  "Dom," she said, stretching out a hand to him, "you've been generous to me over Nicky. It's not too late for me to put things right for you."

  "I'll put my own affairs right, when the time comes, without your help, thank you, Cleo," he said with a touch of the old Trevayne hauteur, and she said a little spitefully:

  "Of course, it may already be too late. Perry says virgins are very delectable bait, and Perry's no sluggard when it comes to taking what he wants, and then throwing it away. Girls, too, if they imagine their affections rejected, will turn to someone else for false comfort."

  "I've not overlooked any of those things," he replied, "but it's a little late to make mischief now. Whatever the outcome

  of this night's work, my feelings will remain the same."

  The naked pain which she glimpsed for a moment in his eyes provoked an animal instinct in her to tear down and destroy something which she could not understand, and she said with derisive scorn:

  "Oh, I'm sure you'd be willing to take over Perry's leavings, just as you would have taken over Troy's. What a pity you never seem able to make first base."

  He did hit her then, a stinging smack across the cheek with the flat of his hand which sent the blood tingling under her skin, and he stood over her with such dark passion in his face that she shrank back against the cushions.