Master of Melincourt

by Susan Barrie

  “But I smashed your bottle of scent—”

  “I think they’re coming,” Edwina said quickly, in the same quiet tone. “That car in the lead is your uncle’s car, isn’t it?”

  Tina was immediately diverted, and danced about on her toes.

  “Oh, yes,” she cooed, “it is, it is! And Marsha’s sitting beside him at the wheel, so I suppose the others are in the cars behind. I wonder whether Uncle Jeremy is driving his own car—”

  “Who is Uncle Jeremy?”

  “Uncle Jervis’s half-brother. I like him very much, and I know he likes me!” She pirouetted like a ballet-dancer. “I know he’ll have a present in his luggage for me.”

  “Don’t you like people unless they bring you presents?”

  “Of course ... sometimes.” And then she squeezed Edwina’s arm convulsively. “Isn’t Marsha beautiful? Just like the heroine in a fairy-story with all that hair, and those big blue eyes. I’ve never seen such big blue eyes in my life! And she puts stuff on her eyelashes, and they stick out like brooms, and sometimes she wears false eyelashes ... only I don’t think she wants Uncle Jervis to know that. I was in her bedroom once when she was sticking a pair on—”

  “You’d better save your breath to welcome your uncle,” Edwina advised close to her ear, and the housekeeper, who was also in the hall to welcome her returning master and receive instructions about the guests, overheard and looked meaningly at Edwina.

  The look said plainly, “What a child! If she belonged to me I’d do something about her!”

  Jervis Errol, looking fit and brown as if he had been in the South of France, or spent a lot of time lying on beaches nearer home, came running swiftly up the steps to the front door, and behind him Miss Fleming paused to have a few words with Jeremy Errol—a tall, fair, good-looking young man in his early twenties—-and accepted his assistance with some of her light hand-luggage.

  Jervis burst in through the open door, took one look at Tina, and then swung her up in his arms.

  “You’re as brown as a berry, kitten,” he told her. “What have you and Miss Sands been up to while I’ve been away?”

  It was the kind of opening speech that secretly alarmed Tina, but she need not have worried, for Edwina, slim and composed in unobtrusive navy-blue linen, would not have given her away for the world.

  “Well, Miss Sands?” He looked unexpectedly hard at her, and the tiny bruise on her left cheekbone which had not had time to fade, and which had been caused by some hard part of the stable building when she was enclosed in it, and which she must have encountered with a good deal of force, seemed to interest him immediately. “Don’t tell me you’ve taken up boxing? Or did you perhaps have an argument with a brick wall?”

  It was so near the truth that she coloured violently. “As a matter of fact, I bumped myself the other day. It was a silly thing to do, and I couldn’t have been looking where I was going.”

  He agreed thoughtfully.

  “You must have been walking about in a dream. I’d advise you to concentrate more on what lies ahead when next you take your daily exercise. However, it hasn’t exactly marred your particular style of beauty.” He gazed at her even more thoughtfully, and she thought that his eyes smiled a little, and might have gone on smiling, only Tina tugged at his sleeve.

  “I’ve been very good while you’ve been away.”

  His eyebrows ascended.

  “Have you?”

  She looked challengingly at Edwina.

  “Haven’t I, Miss Sands?” she demanded.

  Her uncle tweaked her ear.

  “For two people so close to one another in age you do seem to cling to formality,” he observed. “I should have thought by this time you’d have been on Christian-name terms with Miss Sands. By the way,” he looked at Edwina for enlightenment, “what is the name that would sound more friendly than Miss Sands?”

  “Edwina,” she replied.

  The smile returned to his eyes. He nodded approvingly.

  “It suits you,” he said.

  Miss Fleming was standing in the hall by this time, and Tina made one of her little rushes at her. The slight, golden-haired, delicately beautiful Marsha, wearing a silk suit that had plainly cost quite a lot of money, and with her arms full of flowers, elegantly wrapped parcels and other impedimenta that were not in the least calculated to weigh down her arms, uttered a small cry of alarm that faded into an apologetic laugh, and fended her off with one of the largest of the parcels.

  “Oh, darling, please!” she begged. “Not in these stockings! I’ve already snagged one of them badly, and although I know you mean well you have got rather large feet for a little girl, haven’t you?”

  Tina, abashed and discomfited by this revelation about her feet—and she had prided herself that the kid sandals made them look very small and dainty—withdrew until she was once more standing close to Edwina, and as if by accident Miss Fleming’s eyes alighted on the governess, and for a second or so she even appeared surprised. Then she came up behind Jervis and gripped his arm with her free hand, and indicating Edwina with a nod of the head demanded to be introduced.

  “Is this someone you’ve got staying here?”

  He looked down at her with slightly inscrutable dark blue eyes, and reminded her that he had already told her all about Miss Sands ... Miss Edwina Sands. She was the latest incumbent in a fairly long line of governesses, and he was hoping against hope that she was going to stay, so he adjured her not to ask any awkward questions, or do anything at all to cause Miss Sands to arrive at the conclusion that she could be happier elsewhere.

  “Treat her as you would your favourite great-aunt who is expected to leave you all her money,” he begged. “If you don’t, I shall have the task of looking for someone else to take Tina off my hands.”

  Marsha, long eyelashes fluttering—and they could, but might not, have been false—looked up at him in some astonishment.

  “But, darling,” she drawled, “surely governesses are easy enough to come by... and if not you have an alternative in your hands which will make life simpler than treating Miss Sands as if she was labelled ‘Handle with care.’ You can send the child away to school, and if you ask me she’ll love it much more than being cooped up here with a young woman who has to be propitiated in order to continue looking after her.”

  Edwina spoke up quickly.

  “I don’t have to be propitiated. Mr. Errol was merely joking.”

  Marsha looked at her with cold blue eyes, although her lips attempted an up-curving smile.

  “I’m glad to hear it,” she replied. “For one moment I felt quite alarmed ... faced with the prospect of treading cautiously every time I saw you and Tina approaching. As a matter of fact, I’ve always considered that Mr. Errol treats his governesses—and, indeed, everyone he employs—far too kindly, and I know he pays outrageous salaries. No one else would dream of being so generous. I’ve always told him so!”

  “I know you have.” But Jervis Errol looked momentarily embarrassed because he was not accustomed to discussing the amount of remuneration he made to his staff before his guests and one very new member of that staff itself. He tried to treat the matter lightly. “Don’t you know that nowadays a cook can demand far more than a politician if she’s a really good cook? And that goes for young women capable of handling the Tinas of the world.”

  He tweaked his niece’s ear again.

  “Why are you all dressed up like that? Didn’t I buy you that dress in Paris, or somewhere like that?”

  But Tina was behaving as if she had suddenly lost her tongue, and she couldn’t even remember why it was that she had dressed herself up as she had. While her Uncle Jeremy bent over and whispered in her ear and the other two guests attempted to make a fuss of her, she kept her face averted, and Edwina suspected she was even ready to cry by the time the slight turmoil had died down, and the library door had been opened to receive the new arrivals, and a tray of refreshments was carried in by the butler.


  “Would you like to go upstairs?” she whispered to Tina, and the latter nodded, gripped her hand and made for the staircase.

  “Yes, let’s,” she said, and Edwina understood that she wasn’t prepared to say any more. Also—and for the first time—she wanted someone apart from her uncle and Miss Fleming to cling to, and it was largely because of the treatment meted out to her by Miss Fleming.

  She had thought more of her stockings, and her faultless silk suit, than she did of receiving an eager childish embrace.

  CHAPTER VI

  NEVERTHELESS, when a summons arrived for both Edwina and her charge to present themselves in the drawing-room after tea that same day, Tina could so far forget the snub of the morning as to insist on being dressed up once more in something fresh from her wardrobe, and to dance about happily while Edwina was striving to comb her hair because she felt sure that, this time, Miss Fleming would welcome her with open arms.

  She had been feeling tired on arrival... possibly a bit scratchy. But after lunch and a rest in her room she was almost certainly feeling quite refreshed and therefore thoroughly amiable once more.

  But disillusionment set in as soon as they entered the drawing-room, where Marsha was flirting outrageously with Jeremy Errol because Jervis had singled out Marsha’s friend, Miss Candy Shaw—another brilliantly attractive blonde—to be the recipient of his particular attention. He had already shown her all over the house and grounds while Marsha was resting, and now that tea had been wheeled in on an enormous trolley loaded with rich gateaux and flowery china he pressed Candy to preside behind the teapot and act the part, as he phrased it, of ‘mother.’

  Marsha’s eyes were smouldering with resentment as she watched the graceful Candy manipulating the silver cream-jug and the sugar-tongs with poise and the right amount of detachment, and it was unfortunate for Tina that she chose the particular moment when the woman she admired above all other women had just coldly declined to have her cup refilled because Miss Shaw would be the one to refill it to rush up to her—once more impulsively—and perch herself on the arm of her chair without first asking permission, to the imminent danger of a piece of cream cake that promptly left the plate and the arm of the chair on which it reposed, and alighted in Miss Fleming’s lap.

  Miss Fleming’s complaints were immediate, and very much to the point. With scarlet ears, Tina listened to herself being described as ‘an awkward, and extremely clumsy child,’ and although her uncle just as promptly came to her rescue it didn’t seem to ease the situation one bit. Miss Fleming’s hard but very beautiful blue eyes blazed with unassumed wrath, and she accused both the uncle and the niece of living too much in one another’s pockets to be capable of detecting flaws in one another.

  Jervis Errol’s own blue eyes began to resemble cool blue steel.

  “Indeed?” he drawled. “Then I really should have warned you that it wasn’t safe to come and stay with us because, for the very reason that you mention, we always leap to the defence of one another when an outsider considers it his, or her, duty to attack. In fact, we don’t like being attacked, do we, kitten?” holding out his hand to his niece. “Not even when a lady’s skirt is ruined by a slice of cream cake!”

  Marsha sought to justify herself.

  “It’s the second time to-day that the child has made a dart at me—”

  “Only because she has such a high regard for you.” Once more his hand was extended to the child. “Come over here, Tina, and fetch your usual footstool and sit at my feet. I promise I won’t bite you if you grab at me with sticky paws.”

  “My hands are not sticky,” the child objected primly, as she nevertheless crossed the floor and curled up on the rug at his feet. Her eyes regarded him reproachfully. “They were washed and scrubbed with a nail brush before I came downstairs.”

  “Good. That is an indication that Miss Sands is having an effect on you.”

  “You said I wasn’t to call her Miss Sands, but Edwina.”

  “Well, Edwina is having an obviously beneficial effect on you.” He glanced sideways at the governess, who had seated herself unobtrusively not far away, with that faint, gleaming, half-smile of his. “If only she can persuade you to be a little less impetuous sometimes we shall receive fewer complaints from lovely ladies like Miss Fleming here.”

  “Don’t be silly, Jervis,” Miss Fleming exclaimed, also protestingly. “You know very well I don’t really mind the child showing her affection ... and if Miss Sands can be Edwina I certainly have a right, as an old and established friend, to be called Marsha.”

  But Jervis merely smiled as if something about the statement secretly amused him.

  “Perhaps,” he suggested, “there are friends and friends ... and other relationships develop when the particular type of friendship is established,” and he glanced once more, and rather thoughtfully, at Edwina.

  Marsha, plainly regretting the edginess of her temper, made several attempts after that to return to her old relationship with Tina, but by this time the child was cagey, and not even broad hints that Miss Fleming had something upstairs in one of her suitcases that might interest Tina very much indeed had the desired effect. Tina remained close to her uncle’s side and said that would be very nice... meaning she was prepared to accept a present, if it had been bought for her, but she had already received so many presents in the course of her short life that she was not wildly excited by the thought of receiving yet another one.

  Her uncle rumpled her hair—which annoyed her for the first time as Edwina had spent a lot of time on it, inducing it to wave attractively and look soft and dark and cared-for, instead of lank and definitely unmanageable.

  Jeremy Errol tried to insist upon Edwina accepting a cup of tea, but she said that she and Tina had already had tea upstairs. After that he tried to draw her into conversation about herself, but she was even more cautious than Tina had suddenly become, and revealed little or nothing that could provide him with the smallest clue as to her likes and dislikes, her background or any particular ambitions that she nourished. Smiling whimsically, as if unaccustomed to being rebuffed in this way, but in no wise disconcerted by the experience, he then offered to accompany them upstairs when Edwina said it was time for them to withdraw, to have a look at the old schoolroom where, he assured her, he himself had once sat at the feet of a much more formidable female whose job it was to teach him the three ‘R’s’ than Edwina plainly was—indeed, he made it quite clear that he thought she was an exceptionally attractive governess; but Edwina instantly thought up an excuse that left him with no option but to shrug his shapely masculine shoulders and say, resignedly:

  “Oh, well, another time!”

  Jervis Errol spoke decisively.

  “The nursery quarters are out of bounds to guests ... and at the moment you are a guest at Melincourt,” he reminded his half-brother.

  The latter looked wryly amused.

  “I’ve just been telling Miss Sands I used to live here,” he explained. “I wanted to show her the ink stains on the schoolroom table for which I was responsible, and which no amount of effort could ever remove.”

  “I’m sure Miss Sands has already discovered the ink stains,” the senior Errol remarked crisply, “and the knowledge which she now has that it is you who was responsible for them can hardly be expected to either make or mar her day. If you wish to show anyone anything I think you ought to show Miss Shaw the hole you made in the gunroom panelling when you mistook it for an intruder after a New Year’s Eve dance.”

  Edwina gathered that he was anxious to have the room cleared in order that he and Miss Fleming could bury the hatchet and restore friendly relations, and she urged Tina to make for the hall and the main staircase ahead of her; and Jeremy also appeared to comprehend without difficulty what was expected of him, and offered Miss Shaw the choice of seeing the gunroom panelling or going for a brief walk with him before they need change for dinner.

  She elected to take the walk with him, and as, despite her elegance
and her careful poise, there was something open-air and athletic about her, Edwina decided that she probably enjoyed walking.

  Unlike, almost certainly, Marsha Fleming, who would probably look quite horrified if someone suggested a walk to her, and for that very reason stuck to stiletto heels when they were no longer strictly in fashion.

  Edwina was not given any directive about the manner in which she and her charge were to comport themselves while the guests remained at Melincourt, but she felt reasonably certain her employer did not expect her to join them at dinner. And as Tina was not in the least anxious to do so without her, Mrs. Blythe agreed to serve them their usual supper upstairs.

  But Tina was restless, resentful. She said that for the first time her uncle had not remembered to bring her a present after absenting himself for several days; and as for Miss Fleming ... well, she made no comment at all about her, but from her pursed lips and the hurt look in her eyes Edwina gathered that she was finding it difficult to keep alive the same enthusiasm for her and her arrival that had animated her immature breast the day before.

  She went to bed at her normal hour, and she didn’t even seem to expect her uncle to find his way to the nursery quarters and say his usual good-night to her.

  Edwina tucked her up, opened her window at the top and drew aside her curtains so that she could see the stars, and then prepared to leave her. But a small hand came out and caught at her arm and sought to cling on to her sleeve.

  “You won’t tell my uncle what—what I did to you the other night, will you?” she said.

  Edwina reminded her that she had given her word that she would not.

  Tina looked slightly sceptical.

  “Sometimes I give my word but I do things just the same,” she remarked.