'He'll be all right,' said Charlotte. Each time she told anyone that she was telling herself; and silently, each time, she added, 'Please God.'
'And is it true about the shop?' Lesley's pale grey eyes were fixed on her and Charlotte said, 'The business has been sold.' There was no point dodging the facts and she added, 'Not that my father had much choice. It would have closed down if he hadn't sold it.'
'I am sorry,' said Lesley, giving Charlotte a sad little smile. 'It's funny, isn't it? We thought you were rich, you know, going to help the theatre and everything.'
'I don't know about rich,' said Charlotte wryly, 'but I didn't know what the recession had done to the firm. This has been the eye-opener of the week.'
'And you were in a car accident, weren't you?' Lesley looked for the bruise under the fringe, so Jeremy must have described that as well, and Charlotte was aware of someone looming behind her. As Lesley's gaze switched upwards she turned, almost into Saul's arms.
He'd never followed her out. Well, he must have done, but it could only have been because he was through in there. 'Ready to go?' he asked.
She hesitated, and took the line of least resistance. 'I suppose so. Have you finished?'
'Roger's dealing with the questions.' He led her away from Lesley and she jerked her arm away from him, muttering, 'I do know where the car is.' Then she said, 'Sorry,' because if her father was going to believe they were good friends she mustn't shy at a touch; and it she couldn't bear Saul to touch her how could she contemplate letting him make love to her, if that was his price? She was far from sure that she could, but she would cross that bridge when—if—she came to it.
As they passed Dunscombes, still with the 'Closed' sign up, she asked, 'Will it be making money now?'
'Of course.'
He was so sure of himself, so arrogant, and she asked, 'Does it feel good, coming back and taking over? When you went away did you think you might do this some day?'
He smiled, at his own thoughts. 'Now you mention it, maybe I did.'
'You said you don't have any family—are your parents dead?'
'My mother died when I was sixteen.'
'And your father?'
'I can't remember anyone ever mentioning my father. As my mother was Irish tinker stock it's possible he was too.'
Charlotte said, with a flash of mischief, 'I suppose he didn't come from Transylvania?'
'What?'
'He wasn't a count with very long teeth?'
For a moment he must have thought she was raving, then he burst out laughing and leered at her. 'What great big eyes you have, sweetheart, and what a beautiful white neck!'
She giggled, then had to bite her lip or the giggles might have got out of hand. Hysteria had been just beneath the surface all morning. After that she made an effort to talk rationally. She congratulated Saul on his handling of the meeting just now. 'Although I suppose you were bound to be a success,' she couldn't help adding. 'You'd come to save their jobs, so of course they were glad to see you, especially as you're nearly local and they'll trust a local lad.'
That was ridiculous. He was a man of the world, but he had come back to buy a home here, so he must feel his roots were in this place. She asked, 'Where do you live? Do you have other homes?'
'Apartments,' he told her, 'in various hotels, a stud farm in Australia.' All staffed, of course, as this house would be, with Aunt Lucy and herself running it, cooking, cleaning. Surely that should be return enough for the privilege of living there. He had told her she would have to get into the habit of taking orders, and she observed drily, 'You've come a long way from living in a van.'
'That was a long time ago. Long enough for anyone's life-style to change.'
'Mine changed overnight,' she said. 'And all I want from the future is to be married to Jeremy and have children—two, maybe three.' That wasn't all she wanted, but it was a secure domestic picture and it seemed a defense against Saul, who drawled, 'See you don't ruin them like your father did you.'
That was unfair, blaming her again. 'Because you didn't have a happy childhood yourself,' she said hotly, 'don't begrudge me mine. It's not my fault that your mother didn't know who your father was.'
They were drawing up outside the Blue Boar. 'You're right,' he said. 'And if the children take after you they'll be beautiful.' His reversal disarmed her and she said, 'I'm sorry. I know you think I've been spoiled rotten, but I'm not really useless.'
'I'm sure you're not,' he said, and she watched him go inside the hotel. He would be settling up in there, moving into her home, because he had promised her father he would and because he was buying the house. A man came out with him, carrying two suitcases, practically bowing him back into the car. As they drove away Charlotte said cynically, 'You haven't bought the hotel?' He grinned, and she said, 'Just a good tipper?'
'Nobody carries the bags for nothing,' he said, and she heard herself ask, 'Any message from Jo-Ann?' and blinked in surprise, because she hadn't realised she was thinking about Jo-Ann.
'Yes,' he said, and turned on the radio; although if that was to close the subject he need not have bothered, because she wasn't going to ask any more questions.
Tom was working in the garden, trimming the edges of the front lawn, and waiting for them. He came to meet the car as they turned, and Charlotte wound down her window and said, 'He'll be out in about ten days. Then we can have him home.'
Tom nodded, pleased, and as they drove round to the back of the house, the courtyard and the garages, Saul asked, 'You've got another gardener besides him?'
'Me,' she said. He glanced down at her hands, with the aquamarine ring and the polished nails, and she said, 'In gloves. And that's something else I could do for a living. I've got the tools, I think—they didn't go with the furniture, did they? I could keep wild gardens down. That I've had practice in.'
The sound of a vacuum cleaner met them. Maudie was doing the housework. They were all trying to carry on as usual, although Aunt Lucy, in the kitchen, was looking hot and flustered. She said first, 'How is he?' and, when they told her, 'You've been such a time I was beginning to wonder.' And then, 'The dratted phone's never stopped ringing. You'd no sooner gone than it started. Asking me if the business was closing down. I told them pretty sharpish I didn't know, but if it was it wouldn't be before time, seeing the state it's brought Mr Colin to.'
'Saul's taking over,' said Charlotte. 'We went there, after we left the hospital. He's put a new manager in. There are going to be changes.'
'Oh, are there? Changes?' Aunt Lucy sounded as though she suspected Saul Laurenson of harassing Colin Dunscombe into that hospital bed. 'Bit sudden, all this, isn't it?' she said.
'Not really,' said Charlotte, but Aunt Lucy went on glaring at Saul. Her world, like Charlotte's, had collapsed since that man came into this house, and she was remembering now that Charlotte had said at the start that she didn't trust him.
'Young man,' Aunt Lucy began belligerently, 'I don't know what your game is, but—' Charlotte said quickly, 'I'll tell you all about it. Just sit down. We'll both sit down and I'll explain.'
The phone rang again and Saul went out of the kitchen, closing the door behind him, and Charlotte reached across the kitchen table for Aunt Lucy's hands and held them tightly, and said, 'Don't blame Saul.'
'If I knew what was going on—' said Aunt Lucy, and there was no easy way to tell her. Charlotte spoke of falling profits, of investments that hadn't yielded dividends. She didn't mention the horses that had limped home, but she emphasised her father's struggle to provide for her and Aunt Lucy and how the strain had finally broken him. Dunscombes was lucky that Saul Laurenson had been prepared to take over, but there wasn't any money left.
She said, 'It's going to be all right,' and felt this was becoming a repeating refrain. 'I'll get work, we shall manage.'
'We could do something with this place.' Aunt Lucy was less shattered at losing her security than Charlotte had feared, but of course she hadn't heard it all. Charlotte
told her, 'He mortgaged the house, he sold most of the furniture,' and went on very fast, 'But Saul was looking for a house round here and he's going to buy this one; and he's the one who bought the furniture, and he says it can stay the way it is. He'll be responsible for the upkeep, and we can bring my father back here, and we can all stay on. He'll want to choose his rooms, but he'll only be living here for a few weeks in the year.'
That took a while to sink in. Aunt Lucy thought about that, then she said, 'And we look after the place for him?'
'Yes.'
'It's a big place to be keeping on for a few weeks in the year.'
'It's hardly a stately home,' Charlotte protested. 'It's just a nice little Georgian, and he's got the money.'
'Enough to buy anything he fancies, I daresay?' queried Aunt Lucy, suddenly tight-lipped.
'Probably.'
She eased her bulk out of the chair, standing and glaring at Charlotte across the table, announcing, 'I wasn't born yesterday. I know why Mr Laurenson wants me around here—for the cooking and the cleaning. It's what he's got in mind for you that bothers me. Your father won't be much protection to you for a while, but Mr Laurenson needn't think he's moving in here and—'
While she was groping for the words Charlotte suggested, 'Exercising the droit du seigneur?'
'What?' snapped Aunt Lucy.
'She was poor but she was honest,' said Charlotte, and Aunt Lucy snapped, 'You can laugh, but you go right along to him now and you say you'll expect to be treated with respect. Like a lady. And if there's any question of anything else we're getting out of here. I've got a bit put by me, we'll manage.'
Aunt Lucy's savings wouldn't go far in today's world, but Charlotte hadn't the heart to tell her so. If her father hadn't been ill she might have agreed to leave the house and look for a cottage, but his only hope was an untroubled convalescence. He couldn't face upheavals. She said, 'Very well, I'll go and talk to Saul.' She grinned. 'And I'll tell him that Jeremy will kill him if he lays a finger on me!' She had to put Aunt Lucy's mind at rest on this. This was Charlotte's personal problem and she would deal with it herself.
'Don't talk so soft,' said Aunt Lucy, in no way reassured. 'Half a dozen Jeremy Wyldes wouldn't stop Saul Laurenson from crossing the street, let alone from anything he'd set his mind on.'
Charlotte wanted to protest about that. Aunt Lucy hardly knew Jeremy. Nor, for that matter, did she know Saul, but she might be right about one of Saul's motives in buying this house. Charlotte didn't flatter herself that she was his main reason. He liked the house and he could afford it. It might amuse him to be master here, where he had delivered goods from his market stall.
But although there was antagonism between him and Charlotte there was also a physical attraction. She could be part of the bargain, and if she was it must be kept from Aunt Lucy, who would consider it a shocking and terrible price. Aunt Lucy didn't understand how things had changed since she was a girl nearly half a century ago.
All the same, Charlotte went out of the kitchen to look for Saul with a dry mouth and panic fluttering inside her.
He was still on the telephone in the hall, finishing a call. He put down the phone as Charlotte approached and said, 'You'll be wanting this.' A sheet of paper by the phone was covered with jottings, names, numbers, the odd message, in Aunt Lucy's and Maudie's writing. Charlotte noticed that Jeremy had called, and as soon as she had talked with Saul she would sit down and call back the callers.
She said, 'Could you spare me a minute? There's something I want to discuss with you.'
'Of course.'
Then the noise of Maudie's vacuum-cleaner at the top of the stairs stopped, which meant Maudie was probably listening, and Charlotte went across the hall into the drawing room with Georgy at her heels. As Saul followed her into the room she said, 'Aunt Lucy's upset. It's all been such a shock to her. That's why she sounded as though she was about to lay about with her rolling pin just now.'
He grinned, 'Forget it, it was quite a novelty being addressed as "young man".' He was still a young man, but she knew what he meant. She said, 'I've explained to her about the business and that it isn't your fault my father's where he is.'
It was strange in this room, knowing that the house belonged to somebody else and not knowing how much of the furniture did. She couldn't be still. She went to the window, then across to the fireplace, she walked as she talked, while Georgy threaded between her feet, catching her restlessness.
'I've got some jewellery of my own,' said Charlotte. 'I shall sell that and that should pay for the nurse for a while. I can find other things to sell, I'm sure I can, to pay her as long as we need her and to tide us over! And I'm sure I can find work. I do have friends. Somebody will find me something.'
'Modelling, perhaps,' said Saul. He was standing too. He had gone to the window and stayed there, his broad shoulders silhouetted, the slanting light casting shadows on his face.
'I'm not going to take the world of modelling by storm overnight,' she said. 'I've only been an amateur. If I had time and the money didn't matter I might try my luck, but I need to start earning a living right away.'
'Very practical.' She wasn't sure whether he was amused or approving.
'Which brings us,' she went on, 'to the house.'
It brought her to the stage where she couldn't look at him. She had arrived at a glass-fronted corner cupboard, and she began rearranging the contents, moving the little porcelain objects around, with her back to him. 'If you're paying off the mortgage, and paying the upkeep, and letting us live here, we'd sort of become your staff, wouldn't we?'
'Sort of,' he agreed.
'Well, Aunt Lucy is a very experienced housekeeper and cook, so you'd get a bargain there. But you'd hardly need two cooks, so how do you suggest I pay for my lodgings?'
'Be my guest,' he said. But there could be strings to that. She could be so beholden to him that she would be hard pressed to refuse him anything, and she took a deep breath and said bluntly, 'If we're living here, and you're paying, it won't be long before they'll be saying I'm your mistress.'
Her face was flaming, because that was how folk would interpret the situation, and when Saul asked, 'Would that worry you?' she couldn't answer at once. Being his mistress would do more than worry her, it would frighten her to death. She was less sophisticated than she looked. 'What folk say,' he added.
'Oh, that! No.'
'Then what's the problem?'
Charlotte closed the cabinet door and turned to face him. 'I do do quite a lot of housework, and the gardening, I'd like to carry on with that.'
'Splendid,' he said, and she had misjudged him and so had Aunt Lucy, he didn't hope he was buying Charlotte with the property. That, was a tremendous relief, of course. She laughed at herself and said gaily, 'Anyhow, with Aunt Lucy as a chaperone it has to be a respectable set-up.'
'She's a big lady.' His eyes gleamed wickedly. 'It would be a brave man who tried to seduce you with her and her rolling pin around.' He was laughing with her, and it was all she could do not to fling herself into his arms because she wasn't relieved at all that he didn't want her. Because, suddenly and shatteringly, she was realising how much she wanted him.
CHAPTER SEVEN
It was comfort Charlotte needed, of course. Reassurance. With everything disintegrating around her Saul seemed rock-like. She wanted him to tell her it was going to be all right, and indeed he could hardly be doing more than taking over the business and the house. In his own interests, of course, but the fringe benefits would reach Charlotte and her family.
You only had to look at him to feel that if he was on your side most of your problems would be solved, and she was looking at him. At the springing thickness of the dark hair, the black-lashed eyes under the heavy brows. She knew from the way he moved that he had the body of an athlete, and she looked at the mouth, that could be humorous and cruel; her own lips parted as though under a hard and demanding kiss, and it was more than comfort that she craved.
&n
bsp; A raging hunger had seized her to be in Saul's arms. Fighting or loving, but held against him. She wanted the touch of his flesh and hair, and the taste of him on her lips, and her voice rose shrilly. 'I have to phone Jeremy.' She made a dart for the door followed, in a rush, by Georgy.
She rang the flat and Jeremy answered and she began to chatter. She told him that her father would be home within a fortnight, that there was a new manager in Dunscombes, that she had bumped into Lesley Coltan in town.
'Lesley told me,' said Jeremy. 'And she said that somebody, who had to be Dracula, took you away. He does a lot of that, doesn't he?'
'We came back here,' Charlotte explained. 'There's a lot to be done—all sorts of arrangements.'
Jeremy was all sympathy again. 'There must be. Did you say you were losing the house too?'
'Yes and no. It won't belong to us any more, but we can stay on here.' She could see difficulties ahead there, but for the time being they would have to stay on.
'How rotten for you!' Jeremy sighed for her and she couldn't agree more, although it wasn't the end of the world. 'If there's anything I can do—anything,' he said, and she glanced up at Saul, who was tapping his watch and looking impatient.
She said, 'I have to go.'
'I love you,' said Jeremy. They usually finished phone calls that way, and meetings usually.
'And I love you,' she echoed, and of course she did, although Jeremy had never stirred anything in her like those churning emotions just now. That was the difference between love and lust. Lust was a madness that hit you like a hurricane, a guaranteed wrecker.
'And what was the urgency about that?' Saul demanded as she put down the phone. She said, 'Sorry, but suddenly I thought I might not catch him if I left it any longer. I don't suppose you'd understand.'
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