Snare of Serpents

by Виктория Холт

  “Of course I’d come.”

  “Well, I’m never sure nowadays. I wish … it weren’t like this. I can tell you’re uneasy. They were wonderful days we had.”

  “Yes,” I sighed and we sat down.

  He said seriously: “I think we have to do something, Davina.”

  “What do you suggest?”

  “Your people don’t know you are meeting me.”

  “Good heavens, no. My father would think it was quite improper to pick up an acquaintance in the street.”

  “Well, what are we going to do about it? I want to call at your house. I don’t like this hole-and-corner business.”

  “I don’t like it either. I agree with you. They could discover sooner or later. So far we have kept our meetings secret … but one of the servants might see us … and there would be talk. They would all be wondering who you are and why you don’t call at the house.”

  “Davina, do you think it is possible to fall in love in a short time?”

  “I think I do,” I answered.

  He turned to me and took my hands. We laughed together happily.

  “I’d have to pass exams and get out of the University before we could marry,” he said.

  “Of course.”

  “So would you … will you?”

  “I think it would be wonderful,” I said. “But do you know me well enough?”

  “I know all I want to know about you. Haven’t we talked and talked … as much in these few weeks as people do in years?”

  “Yes, we have.”

  “And isn’t that enough?”

  “It’s enough for me. I was wondering about you.”

  He kissed me then. I withdrew, embarrassed. It was not the kind of behaviour expected on a seat in public gardens in mid-morning.

  “People will be shocked!” I said.

  “Who cares?”

  “Not us,” I said recklessly.

  “Then we’re engaged?”

  A voice broke in on us. “Davina!”

  Zillah was coming towards us. She stood there, her green eyes glowing, her reddish hair bright under a black hat. She looked very elegant in her black coat with the green scarf at her neck.

  She was smiling at Jamie. “Please introduce us.”

  “This is James North and … er … this is my stepmother.”

  She put her face close to his and whispered: “But we don’t usually mention that. I am conceited enough to think I don’t look the part.”

  “No … no,” stammered Jamie. “Of course you don’t.”

  “May I sit down?”

  “Please do,” said Jamie.

  She was between us. “You two seem to be good friends.”

  “We met while you were away,” I said. “I wandered into the old town and got lost in the wynds. Mr. North rescued me and showed me the way to go home.”

  “How interesting! And you became friends.”

  “We were both enormously interested in the city,” said Jamie.

  “I’m not surprised. It’s fascinating … historically and otherwise.”

  I was surprised. She cared nothing about the city. “Mary Mary, Hanover Squarey.” I could hear her singing.

  “Well,” she went on. “So you are good friends … apparently. That’s very nice.” She smiled beguilingly at Jamie. “I daresay my stepdaughter has told you all about me.”

  “All?” I said.

  “Well, I daresay she has mentioned that I have lately come into the family.”

  “She did mention it,” said Jamie. “I know you have recently come from your honeymoon in Venice and Paris.”

  “Venice! What an enchanting place. Those fascinating canals. The Rialto. Full of wonderful treasures. Paris, too …the Louvre and all that history … Davina, why do you not invite Mr. North to come to the house?”

  “Well, I didn’t think … I didn’t know …”

  “Oh, you foolish girl! I’m very cross, Mr. North, that I have not met you earlier. Davina has been keeping you to herself. You must meet my husband. He will be delighted to meet you. What about tomorrow evening? Come to dinner. Are you free? Oh … good. It won’t be a big party. Just the four of us. Do say you’ll come.”

  Jamie said: “I should like that very much.”

  “Wonderful!”

  She sat back on the seat and I saw she intended to stay until I left. She talked a great deal with animation and much laughter. Jamie joined in. I was longing to ask him what he thought of her.

  Moreover I was a little dismayed to have been so discovered, and also faintly annoyed. She had broken into a moment when we desperately wanted to talk about ourselves.

  IT WAS AN UNEASY MEAL. Jamie was clearly a little overwhelmed by the formality. I imagined meals were very different in the manse. My father’s dignified appearance and cool manner did not help.

  He was polite. He thanked Jamie for rescuing me when I was lost and asked a great many questions about his studies and his home.

  “You must find Edinburgh quite different from your little country village.”

  Jamie admitted that he did and that he was quite fascinated by the city.

  “Mr. North is doing a thesis on the city,” I said. “It means delving into history.”

  “Very interesting,” said my father. “And you were brought up in the manse and your parents are still there?” he went on.

  Jamie confirmed this. It was all very stiff and stilted.

  Zillah, of course, introduced a light note into the evening and I was glad of her help.

  She talked about Venice and Paris, to neither of which places Jamie or I had ever been; but she was so pleasant to him and did her best to make him feel that he was a welcome guest, which softened the ordeal to which my father appeared to be subjecting him.

  I knew it was more serious than it appeared to be and that my father was very disapproving of the acquaintance.

  He would be thinking that it was very remiss of me to talk to a stranger in the street. I suppose if one had lost one’s way there might be some excuse for doing so; but the proper procedure after that would have been for the rescuer to have taken me back to my home and called the next day to enquire how I was. Then it would have been for my family to decide whether he was worthy to be invited to the house to resume his acquaintance with me.

  Jamie was clearly pleased when the ordeal was over and when I asked him what he thought about the meeting he replied: “I don’t think your father approves of me. He doesn’t know, of course, that we are engaged and what his reaction to that will be I can well imagine.”

  “I don’t care what he says.”

  “Well … I think it would be better for us to say nothing as yet. I am sure he has not reckoned on having the penniless son of a manse as his son-in-law.”

  “It is something to which he will have to grow accustomed.”

  “He is the sort of man who would want everything according to convention.”

  Inwardly I laughed. I thought of Zillah, selected by him, creeping along to his bedroom. I said nothing. But I would remember it if he ever reproached me for unconventional behaviour.

  “So,” went on Jamie, “for the moment we’d better plan in secret.”

  I knew he was right and we had a wonderful time talking about the future.

  He did say during the course of that conversation: “That stepmother of yours … she’s quite different, isn’t she?”

  “Different from what?”

  “From your father. She’s jolly. Good fun. I don’t think she would be cluttered by conventions. Do you know, I had a feeling that she would be on our side.”

  “I never know with her. I have a feeling she is not all she seems.”

  “Who of us is?”

  We parted with a promise to meet in two days’ time.

  Before I saw him again, Mr. Alastair McCrae, who had been a widower for five years, came to dine.

  He was between thirty-five and forty, tall, upright and quite good-looking. He was a co
lleague of my father; and I knew he was wealthy for he had a private income and there was a family estate not far from Aberdeen.

  I had seen him once some years before when he had come to the house to dine. I, of course, had not been present at the dinner party, but I had taken a peep through the banisters and seen him arrive with his wife who had been alive at that time.

  My mother had mentioned him to me. “Your father has a high respect for Mr. McCrae. He comes of a very good family and I believe the estate he owns is very large.”

  I was interested to see the gentleman with the large estate and I must have been quite unimpressed because all thought of the gentleman went out of my mind until the recent mention of his name.

  Zillah said: “This is going to be a rather special dinner party. You know that dress I bought for you in Paris? It’s most becoming. Your father has asked me to make sure you are presentable.”

  “Why should he be interested in what / look like?”

  “Well, you are his daughter and he wants you to grace the dinner party with me.” She grimaced. “Between us, my dear, we’ll open this fine gentleman’s eyes.”

  There were two other guests, my father’s solicitor and his wife; and rather to my surprise I was seated next to Alastair McCrae at dinner. He was quite attentive and we talked pleasantly together. He told me about his estate near Aberdeen and how he liked to escape to it whenever possible.

  “It sounds delightful,” I said.

  He then told me how much land he owned and it seemed considerable. The house itself was quite ancient. “It needs propping up from time to time,” he said, “but what ancient house doesn’t? The McCraes have been there for four centuries.”

  “How exciting!”

  “I should like to show it to you one day. Perhaps we could arrange something.”

  My father was smiling quite benignly at me.

  “Davina is very interested in the past,” he said. “History has always fascinated her.”

  “There is plenty of that here,” said Alastair McCrae.

  “There’s plenty of it everywhere,” I said.

  Zillah laughed loudly and everyone joined in. My father was very affable, smiling at me as well as at Zillah. It was very different from that other evening when Jamie had been our guest.

  I found Alastair McCrae quite a pleasant man and I was glad to see my father in such a mellow mood. I would ask Zillah if Jamie could come to tea. It would be more friendly than dinner as my father would not be there to assess him.

  I asked her the next day.

  She looked at me and laughed. “I don’t think your father would approve of that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, dear, we have to face facts, don’t we? You’re what they call of a marriageable age.”

  “Well?”

  “Young men … particularly young men who meet you in romantic places …”

  “In those squalid wynds! You call them romantic?”

  “Romance springs up everywhere, dear child. Those streets may not have been romantic, but the rescue was. And then seeing each other every day … looking at each other in such a charming way … well, that tells a good deal … especially to an old warhorse like me.”

  “Oh, Zillah, you are very funny.”

  “I’m glad I amuse you. To be able to amuse people is one of the gifts from the gods.”

  I thought how she changed. I wondered if my father ever saw Zillah as the woman she was now.

  “So,” I said, “you want me to ask my father if he can come to tea? This is my home. Surely I can have my friends here?”

  “Of course you can and of course you shall. I was merely commenting that your father wouldn’t like it. Let us ask the young man to tea. We won’t worry your father with telling him. That’s all.”

  I looked at her in astonishment. She smiled at me.

  “I understand, dear. I want to help you. After all, I am your stepmother—only don’t call me that, will you?”

  “Of course I won’t.”

  I wondered what my father would have said if he had known she was in league with me to keep Jamie’s visit to the house a secret.

  Jamie came. It was a very happy time. There was a great deal of laughter and I could see that Jamie enjoyed Zillah’s company.

  I saw him the next day. It was easier to arrange our meetings now that Zillah knew and clearly wanted to make things easy for us. He told me how kind he thought her and it was wonderful that she was so helpful.

  As for Zillah, she said he was a charming young man.

  “He dotes on you,” she said. “He’s clever, too. I am sure he is going to pass all those exams and become a judge or something. You are a lucky girl, Davina.”

  “My father doesn’t know we’re meeting,” I reminded her. “I don’t think he will approve of Jamie … not for Jamie himself, but because he isn’t rich like … like …”

  “Like Alastair McCrae. Now, there is a fine man and, as we used to say, ‘well padded,’ which in the vernacular of the halls, my dear, means that he has a nice little fortune stacked away. I have to admit that your father would approve of him … most heartily.”

  I looked at her in horror. “You don’t think … ?”

  She lifted her shoulders. “Fond parents will plan for their daughters, you know. Your future is very important to him.”

  “Oh, Zillah,” I said. “He mustn’t. Jamie and I …”

  “Oh, he has spoken, has he?”

  “Well, it’s all very much in the future.”

  She nodded gravely and then a smile curved her lips.

  “If my father objected,” I said fiercely, “I wouldn’t let that stand in the way.”

  “No, of course you wouldn’t. But don’t you worry. It’ll all come right in the end. Don’t forget you’ve got me to help you.”

  Alastair McCrae came to dinner with other friends of my father. He was seated next to me as before and he and I chatted in a very friendly way. He was quite interesting and less dignified than my father and he seemed to want to hear all about me.

  The day after he called he asked us to spend the weekend at his country house.

  Zillah told me that my father had agreed that it would be an excellent idea to accept.

  It was a very pleasant weekend we spent at Castle Gleeson. I was rather taken with the place. It was small as castles go, but because it was of ancient grey stone and had a battlemented tower I thought it worthy of the name. It faced the sea and the views were spectacular. There was a sizeable estate and Alastair was quite proud of it. That was made clear when we drove through it in the carriage which took us from the station to the castle.

  He was frankly delighted that we were paying this visit. It was the first time my father had been there in all the years of their friendship. That was significant, of course.

  I enjoyed being shown the castle and listening to the history of the place and the part the family had played in the conflicts between Regent Moray and his sister Mary, of the troubles with the English enemy. I was fascinated by the hardy Highland cattle I saw in the fields. The country was grand, majestic and awe-inspiring.

  But everything was particularly cosy within the castle. I had a room in a turret and there was a fire in the grate in spite of the fact that it was summer.

  “The nights can get cold,” the housekeeper told me. I learned that she had been born in the castle; her parents had been servants to the McCraes; now her son worked in the stables, her daughter in the house. There was an air of serenity about the place. I was not surprised that Alastair was proud of it.

  Dinner was served in a dining room which led from a hall which must have been the same as it had been for centuries, with stone flagged floor, whitewashed walls on which ancient weapons hung. It was darkish, for the windows were small and set in embrasures.

  “When we are a large company we eat in the hall,” Alastair explained, “but this dining room is more comfortable for small parties.”

  “What
a pity,” I said, “that you are not here more often. I suppose the greater part of your time is spent in Edinburgh.”

  “That has been the case. Business, you know. But I escape on every opportunity.”

  “I can understand that.”

  He looked at me intently. “I’m so glad you like the old place. I enjoy playing the laird when I can, but mostly the affairs of the estate have to be left to my manager.”

  “You have the best of both worlds,” said my father. “It’s a very pleasant house of yours in Edinburgh.”

  “But I always think of this as my home.”

  Over dinner he asked me if I rode.

  I said I greatly regretted that I did not. “There would not be much opportunity in Edinburgh.”

  “One needs a horse in the country.”

  “It must be wonderful to ride,” I said. “Galloping over moors and along by the sea.”

  He smiled and leaned towards me. “Would you like me to teach you?”

  “Well, I think that would be most exciting, but I couldn’t learn in one lesson.”

  “One can learn the rudiments. It takes practice, of course, before you are able to handle a horse properly. But somehow I think you would be a receptive pupil.”

  I laughed. “Well, one lesson will not take me very far.”

  “It would be a beginning.”

  “What are you two concocting?” demanded Zillah.

  “Miss Davina and I are arranging a lesson in riding.”

  “What a wonderful idea! An excellent opportunity for you, Davina dear.”

  “Miss Davina is protesting that she cannot get very far in one lesson.”

  “You never know,” said Zillah slyly, “there might be more.”

  The next morning I was in the paddock, seated on a small horse on a leading rein, chosen for its gentleness, with Alastair beside me. He looked very distinguished in his riding coat. The housekeeper had found a riding habit for me. It belonged to Alastair’s sister, who visited the castle occasionally but hadn’t worn it for some time.

  “She used to ride all the time,” the housekeeper told me. “The family has always been one for the horses. But since she had her children she doesn’t ride so much. I’m sure she’d be glad for you to use her old habit.”