It was time to go in. Georgy was snoring his small head off, and she rehooked her bra and got up reluctantly. She liked the couple who were eating with them tonight, but they were her father's friends and generation and rather an earnest pair. It wouldn't be much fun, and if she hadn't had that scene this morning she might have asked her father to make some excuse for her.
As it was she had better be there. And better get herself dressed. This was hardly suitable get-up for entertaining the Rural Dean and his wife.
She walked into the house through the long drawing-room windows that opened into the garden, and as she did the phone on a side table rang. She picked it up and a moment later Aunt Lucy opened the hall door to hear Charlotte say, 'Oh, I am sorry, Mrs Reynolds.' The Reynolds were the couple they had been expecting to dinner. Aunt Lucy sighed and stayed. 'What wretched luck,' said Charlotte, 'it must be terribly painful. Perhaps next week?'
When she put down the phone Aunt Lucy asked, 'Not coming?'
'He's turned his ankle,' said Charlotte, 'and it's puffing up like a balloon. I wonder if this lets me off the hook. I mean, there's only some old business codger, surely my father can chat him up himself.'
Georgy let out a yelp and began to back, crablike, from a winged armchair at the other end of the room. A man got up, Georgy went on yelping, and Charlotte recognised the face that had glared at her through the window when Kelly had nearly landed on his car.
He was tall, with dark hair, dark eyebrows, and shock made her temporarily speechless. He said, 'Miss Dunscombe, I presume?'
'Yes. You're ?'
'The old business codger.' His smile was everything a smile should be, showing excellent teeth, but her tongue was sticking to the roof of her mouth and her speech was jerky.
'I'm sorry about that. But then I was only guessing, and you are rather early for dinner at eight, and if you'd stood up a little sooner—' The towel, draped around her shoulders, slithered as she moved, and as she jerked to grab it the hook she hadn't quite slipped into place on her bra gave, and her bra slid off, leaving her topless. It was like a scene from a Carry On movie. 'Hell's bells!' she muttered, clutching everything she could around her as she got out of the room.
In the hall Georgy barked furiously at the closed door and Aunt Lucy stood trying to look shocked. 'I'm thankful the Reverend wasn't here,' said Aunt Lucy.
Charlotte grinned. 'It's all this oil all over me—I'm slippery as an eel. Good job the bottom half was secure. I'd better get into a bath.'
'You better had,' agreed Aunt Lucy.
When she reached her bedroom Charlotte went to the window. The sun was setting and there were clouds in the sky and the perspiration on the palms of her hands was cold. She had mocked at intuition this morning. 'Unless you're using a crystal ball,' she had said, with all the sarcasm she could muster. But this uneasy feeling now, warning her against the man downstairs, was like second sight. There had been an aura of menace about him. And what was a stranger doing, sitting all alone in the drawing room as though he had known them all his life, or as though this was his own home?
CHAPTER TWO
Charlotte dressed for dinner in a strange state of mind. It was unusual for her to feel apprehensive about meeting anyone, but she had made an idiot of herself twice today with this man, and she blushed at the memory.
She wished she could laugh about it. The first time, with Kelly, had been a bit of criminal negligence, but just now was funny in a way. She wasn't one of the topless brigade, but she had wandered among them unembarrassed on the beaches of St Tropez, wearing a strip of bra that hardly counted, and anyway her breasts were young and firm. She tried to tell herself what had happened had been comic, but she would have given a lot to have clipped that clasp into place and avoided the whole incident.
Her next appearance had better be circumspect, and she chose a plain white dress, sleeveless with thin shoulder straps, and wore it with a round gold slave bangle on her upper arm, and gold sandals. She brushed her hair until it shone, swept it sideways so that only one ear was revealed and wore a single gold pearl-shaped dropper earring.
She wished she was dressing for Jeremy. It would have been lovely if he had been the one downstairs tonight, waiting for her, given the run of the house by her father like this stranger. She dabbed perfume on pulse spots and went to the window again and looked out across the gardens. It was a heavy night, very still, the few clouds seemed motionless and she thought, I wouldn't be surprised if we get thunder. She had a feeling that something was about to break around her and it was probably a storm.
'What's he doing downstairs all on his own?' she said aloud, addressing Georgy as he was the only one there. He lifted his ears and put his head on one side and appeared to consider the question, and Charlotte said, 'Let's go and ask somebody, shall we?'
Most days Aunt Lucy had help around the house from Maudie, a young married woman who went home to her family. Aunt Lucy lived here, of course. This had been her home for the last forty years and while the Dunscombes stayed so would she. She was in the kitchen now, preparing the herb sauce for the rainbow trout, and as Charlotte donned a long bibbed apron she said, 'Shouldn't you be joining the company?'
Charlotte shrugged. Her father liked her around when they entertained, but tonight she was less than enthusiastic. She asked, 'Who is he?'
'Name of Laurenson.' Aunt Lucy added a pinch more tarragon.
'And?' Charlotte prompted.
'That's all I know. Your father says "This is Mr Laurenson".'
'Well, he seems to be making himself at home.' She was resentful, although they had something of an open house here. Both she and her father had a wide social circle. Only her father didn't seem to be welcoming Jeremy and she would have preferred Mr Laurenson to have stayed away.
Aunt Lucy tested the sauce again before she enquired, 'Why? What was he doing?'
'Just sitting, I suppose,' Charlotte had to admit, adding, 'And jumping out of the shadows. I felt a right fool, I can tell you.' Again hot colour flared in her cheeks and Aunt Lucy said philosophically, 'I expect he's seen a naked woman before.'
'I wasn't naked!' It was ages since she could remember blushing, but now it seemed she couldn't stop.
'In my day,' mused Aunt Lucy, 'if a girl had carried on like that she'd never have shown her face again. But we wore real foundations, not bits of ribbon. Measured for them, we were.'
Aunt Lucy was still measured, her corsets were little miracles of engineering, and Charlotte stifled a giggle. By no stretch of imagination could she visualise Aunt Lucy's bra slipping off. 'I suppose I'd better go,' she said.
The starters, melon, grapefruit and grape cocktails, looked cool and pretty, and the trout was local, served with the herb sauce and cucumber. Then there was Aunt Lucy's special treacle tart and cream, and cheese, of course. It would be a good meal. It always was. Her father ought to be satisfied with his womenfolk and his home at the end of that, and Charlotte wondered if there was hope of a word alone with him before they all sat down. She would have liked to put things right. But if she got no chance to apologise she would have to settle for actions speaking louder than words, and being very conciliatory and as nice as pie over dinner.
Perhaps she would invite Jeremy round for a meal on Sunday. Facing him over a table her father would have to talk and listen, and Jeremy was anxious to please and it was an idea. She said suddenly, 'Aunt Lucy, what do you think of Jeremy?'
'A nice enough young man, I'm sure,' said Aunt Lucy, noncommittally.
'I think he's more than that,' said Charlotte.
'Then he probably is.' Aunt Lucy wasn't arguing.
'But my father doesn't like him, and I want them to get on, so what do you think I ought to do?' Aunt Lucy's advice had always been sound and this was a real problem, but all she said was, 'I think you ought to get in there and show Mr Laurenson what you look like with your clothes on.' She wasn't taking Jeremy seriously, nor Charlotte, and Charlotte wondered if she still thought of her as
a child. She said quietly, 'Aunt Lucy, I am twenty-one.' 'I know.' Aunt Lucy decanted the sauce from pan to tureen. 'And I'm sixty-one—what are we talking about?' 'Nothing,' said Charlotte.
She went looking for her father and Mr Laurenson. The drawing room was empty. She walked down the length of it because the men might be strolling on the lawns, but the garden, seen from the windows, seemed deserted. Nothing had changed in this room since Charlotte was born, not even the carpets. Everything had a serene air of ageless elegance, but tonight she felt disturbed, disorientated.
It had been an upsetting day. Especially this morning's scene with her father. She had thought he might say yes, because he was a generous man who did support good causes. At any rate she'd hoped for a sizeable contribution to the theatre's funds from him. She had never thought he would threaten her. That they would end up quarrelling.
She wished the Reynolds had been coming tonight with their friendly familiar faces, saving her from an evening almost alone with a stranger. With Georgy trotting at her heels she went into the small parlour, then looked into the dining room, and finally tapped on the study door and walked in there.
The man sitting in her father's chair behind her father's desk was Laurenson, and Georgy, who had ambled happily into the room, took one look at him and darted out between Charlotte's feet, sending her off balance. It was a wonder she didn't go flat on her face. As it was she lurched forward and grabbed the desk edge like a drunk needing support—a very undignified entry. It seemed she couldn't get near this man without doing something ridiculous.
'Where's my father?' she gasped.
He looked at his watch. 'On his way home, I should think. He had to go back to the office.'
Leaving this man behind and without mentioning it to Charlotte. But he surely hadn't invited Mr Laurenson to sit down at his desk and go through his papers, and she said, 'Do you mind? Some of this is rather confidential.'
He smiled at her. He had a curving sensuous mouth. 'Not this file, I think you'll find.' He closed the blue cardboard folder and stood up, and of course he was remembering her strip-tease, and she wondered whether she should try to make a joke of it. But she couldn't have been funny to save her life. All she could get out was, 'If you've quite finished!' sounding snappish.
'For now,' he said, and Charlotte couldn't bring herself to ask what that meant. She led the way towards the drawing room while Georgy yelped incessantly at the bottom of the stairs. 'If you'll excuse me, I'll put him somewhere safe,' she said. 'Where he can't see you.'
'Where he can't see me?' One dark brow quirked, and she carried Georgy to Aunt Lucy in the kitchen. 'Keep him here, will you? He's being a nuisance as usual,' and she hurried back into the hall to explain, 'He's scared of strangers. And it's not that he's ever been ill-treated, it's just that he was born with this over-developed sense of self-preservation.'
'Very sensible in this day and age,' said Laurenson, who obviously thought this was the kind of daft dog she would have. He had walked into the drawing room and stood facing her, but it took quite an effort for her to face him.
'Do you think it's best to run?' she asked. 'That depends on the opposition.' 'Yes, it would. Do sit down. Do have a drink.' She had played hostess in this house as long as she could remember, but she had never felt or sounded as gauche as this before. Something about him drained her confidence away. Perhaps the fact that his eyes were so dark and piercing, as though they looked right through her and nothing about her could ever surprise him. 'Mr Laurenson, isn't it?' she said. 'Saul Laurenson.'
'I'm Charlotte Dunscombe.' Which he knew, of course, and on which he made no comment. He was sitting now, and very much at ease from his stance, very relaxed. 'Whisky?' she suggested. 'Thank you.'
She went to a side table and picked up the Georgian decanter and her hands were shaking so that she spilt the drink, although the tumbler top was surely wide enough. She rolled her eyes ceilingwards in exasperation. He gave her the jitters, sitting there contributing nothing, and it wasn't as though he was bashful or overwhelmed by her looks as more than one man had been. On the contrary.
She gave him his drink and sat down herself, then for what seemed an age she could think of nothing to say worth saying. There was always the weather—'Isn't it lovely? Aren't we having a super summer after that wet spring?' But that sounded as banal as everything else that came into her head, although she wouldn't have thought there was a man alive who could have reduced her to this strangling shyness.
At last she asked, 'Are you in our line of business?' 'In a way,' he said, and nothing more, and Charlotte thought, He's enjoying stretching out the silences. And then, No, he isn't, he's simply bored. He doesn't think I'm worth talking to, he thinks I'm a dumb-bell.
She was used to men going more than halfway to meet her, although she had coaxed retiring folk out of their shells before. She swallowed. 'Are you going to be around here for long?'
'Possibly.' He didn't sound particularly brusque, although he could hardly have been more laconic.
'That's nice,' she said, and thought, Not here, I hope. Not where you and I are likely to meet. 'Where do you come from?' she asked, and he said, 'The Blue Boar.'
That was a local hotel, he was making a fool of her, and she wanted to say, 'Look, I didn't invite you. It's giving me no pleasure sitting here trying to entertain you. And as you'd obviously rather be alone, goodnight to you.'
What she did say was, 'Would you excuse me, I want to have a word with Lucy?'
It would be just before the curtain was due to go up in the theatre, and she rang Jeremy. 'It's Charlotte.'
'Anything wrong?' He presumed it had to be an emergency, and it was in a small way, although she tried to laugh.
'I just need a confidence booster. There's the most frightful man here, my father's asked him to dinner, and he makes my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth. Everything I do goes wrong. He seems to be paralysing my central nervous system. There are folk like that, aren't there? A sort of Dracula without the fangs.'
Jeremy laughed. 'You can't win 'em all.'
'I don't want to win him!' she shrieked. 'I just want to talk to somebody who thinks I'm O.K. He thinks I'm a cretin.'
'You're beautiful and I love you,' said Jeremy.
'Thank you, thank you.' She was smiling now. This had really just been an excuse to talk to Jeremy, because he was beautiful and she loved him. 'That should get me through the evening,' she said. 'Who is he?'
'I don't know really. Something to do with business, only my father isn't here and I'm stuck with him on my own for now.' 'Old chap?' 'Thirties.'
'I think I'll ring you later,' said Jeremy. 'Just to make sure the fangs haven't developed, because from what I remember of the films Dracula gets the girls.'
'Not this girl,' she gurgled. 'I can promise you that. I'm not to his taste.' 'I'll still ring.'
That might not be a good idea tonight, not after this morning, not until she had talked to her father. But by the end of dinner she could need another little chat with Jeremy, so she said, 'Better if I ring you. What are you doing after the show?' 'Going back to the flat.'
She heard her father's car and said quickly, 'My father's home. I will ring you.'
'See you do. I don't like the sound of Dracula.' 'You think I do?' She was still smiling when she hurried outside. Her father didn't see her right away. The two retrievers had dashed out to welcome him, and although he stopped to pat them, there was no exuberance in his movements. He was an athletic man. He played golf, tennis, an occasional game of squash, but tonight he seemed to Charlotte to be moving slowly as he came across the courtyard from the garages.
She went to meet him feeling guilty. He was tired. He had had a long day. Charlotte said, 'Hello, love,' and slipped her hand through his arm. 'Am I glad to see you?
Aunt Lucy will be too, you know how she is about meals getting spoiled.'
'I'm not that late, surely.'
'You've just made it.'
'You've met S
aul?'
'Er—yes.' She would have liked to get a few more details about the man, but her father was hurrying now, telling her, 'I'll be with you in five minutes. You just keep him entertained.'
Bring on the dancing girls, she thought. She said, 'He isn't easy company.'
At the bottom of the stairs her father said, 'Just talk to him, there's a good girl,' and rebellion stirred in her.
'I don't think he wants to talk to me. He thinks I'm rather stupid.'
'Only in some matters,' said her father, and smiled, patting her cheek, and she thought, I'm forgiven for this morning, but he meant it. Not just about not helping the theatre but about Jeremy.
'About this morning—' she began.
'Sorry,' he said. 'The answer's the same.' He didn't give her time to explain that she had wanted to apologise. She had hardly expected him to change his mind, just like that, but she would have to prove him wrong.
Her heart told her that Jeremy was the man for her, just as surely as her nerves jangled when she was near Saul Laurenson. As soon as she opened the drawing room door, and saw him sitting where she'd left him, she felt that tightening in her throat.
'You've had your word with Lucy?' His voice was pleasant enough, deep and crisp; and what with the phone call and talking to her father she had been away quite a time. She would have smiled at almost any other man and asked, 'Did you miss me?' She said to Saul, 'My father's here.' Then she sat down and waited to see if he would say anything.
At this time of evening there was hardly any sound. It was too early for the night creatures and the day birds had stopped twittering. Very little traffic came down this road, but Charlotte heard the grandfather clock strike in the hall, and a door shut somewhere.
It seemed hours, sitting there, although it was in fact rather less than two minutes, before her nerve cracked and she jumped up and asked, 'Would you mind if I turned on the television? It's one of my favourite programmes.' 'Not at all.'
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