Master of Melincourt

by Susan Barrie

  Otherwise he would never have said that he would dismiss her when he felt like it.

  After staring for some time at the bronze nymph—turning green after centuries of exposure—that decorated the centre of the rose-garden, she made up her mind about the thing she had to do.

  There was no alternative.

  Marsha Fleming was absolutely right.

  CHAPTER XI

  SHE packed her things as speedily as possible, but so mechanically that she couldn’t really believe she was planning to leave Melincourt. Everything she did was mechanical, and even her thoughts seemed to flow along mechanised lines.

  She had to get away from Melincourt and Jervis Errol. She should have left Melincourt after Tina locked her up in the stables. She should never have stayed to be further humiliated, and as for Marsha Fleming ... Well, since she had been provided with the badge of an engagement she had every right to be annoyed with a mere governess.

  It must have struck her that the governess was getting above herself that morning, when she went riding with her employer... and not merely riding with him, but actually sharing his horse. The extent of her fury could only be gauged by her uncontrolled gesture in slapping his face.

  That was something that simply couldn’t be allowed to be repeated, and if she stayed even more uncontrolled protests might be indulged in.

  Not that Edwina blamed Miss Fleming. If she really was engaged to Errol she had every right to protest. Errol had hardly dealt with her as if she was of great importance to him, and planning to share his life. Rather had he dealt with her as if she irritated him enormously, and he had felt barely able to conceal the truth from her.

  But whether she irritated him or whether he was in love with her—and with some men love was not as all-important as it was with others, and perhaps he was merely planning to marry because he needed a wife and a woman in his life to take charge of Tina—his attitude to her that morning had been entirely reprehensible.

  Not merely had he kissed another woman while he was out riding, but he had kissed her as if he needed to do so ... which was a very different thing from conducting an idle flirtation and topping it off with a few light kisses.

  Errol’s kiss had been anything but light ... every time she thought of it Edwina felt her lips burn. It had been a ruthless, possessive, punishing, and almost a hungry kiss.

  And it was the main reason why Edwina threw her things into her two light suitcases and took little heed of whether they were crushed or not. In any case, it didn’t matter. Nothing, she thought drearily, would ever matter to her again. She was going back to London leaving part of her behind for good at Melincourt, and she was certain to find out that it would be very difficult to live without whatever it was.

  Tina, for some reason, kept out of her way. Even the housemaid had no idea where she was ... but Edwina suspected that, as a result of her purely childish reaction to the scene she had witnessed that morning, and was keeping out of her way deliberately.

  In a way, it made things easier for Edwina. Without Tina following her about and demanding to know why she was packing her things these preparations for departure were less harrowing. She had grown quite fond of Tina ... very fond, in fact. She would miss her, and the long, sun-filled, peaceful days at Melincourt, so much that she couldn’t bear to dwell upon the loss that would be hers once the London train received her.

  In connection with the London train she rang the local station at Murchester and managed to reserve a seat for herself on the night train. Then she rang a local taxi service, and arranged to be picked up at the main gates of Melincourt within the hour.

  She would have a long time to hang about in Murchester, but it didn’t matter. The sooner she got away the better, although she simply didn’t admit to herself that the real reason why she had to get away quickly was because the thought of coming face to face with Jervis Errol again for the last time in her life was like the thought of banishment.

  If Jervis Errol attempted to apologise ... anything of that sort ... she would be lost.

  No one saw her leave the house with her suitcase—the other she left behind, addressed to herself, to be sent on after her—and make her way down the main drive. It was still a very beautiful and unusually warm day for June, and she felt distinctly irked by her neat tailored suit. It was a day for sun-tops and very thin cotton dresses ... for long ice-cool drinks served under the cedar tree on the main lawn, and afternoon tea in exactly the same place at four o’clock. It was a day for cool salad lunches in the dimness of the long dining-room, for dinner at eight, also in the dining room, wearing something silken and supple—the sort of dresses Marsha Fleming possessed in abundance—and coffee afterwards on the terrace outside the drawing-room windows, while the moon rose and flooded the whole peaceful landscape.

  It was certainly not a day for returning to London ... flies, dust, noise and heat the only things she could look forward to. It was not a day for dwelling on employment bureaux and possible future employers.

  Apart from the temperature, all those things were too agonising.

  The taxi was waiting for her, ticking over quietly outside the gates. Just as she was about to enter it Tina came running down the drive, waving her hand to her to stop and explain what she thought she was doing. She heard the childish voice calling to her:

  “Edwina, Edwina! Where are you going?”

  Edwina paused long enough to wave back to her.

  Tina came racing up to her, clutching at her with hot fingers.

  “But you didn’t tell me you were going somewhere special! Why are you all dressed up like this?” the child demanded.

  The taxi-man looked at Edwina, and she nodded her head.

  “Yes, I mustn’t wait ... I haven’t got a great deal of time,” which was not in the least true. She bent and kissed Tina on her upturned, freckled cheek.

  “Good-bye, darling,” she said. “Give my love to Honey ... and look after her for me!”

  Then the taxi-man let in his clutch and they were away, with Tina making a desperate spurt after them, and then falling back. Looking back at her out of the rear window, Edwina was appalled to see her standing very still and looking after them with one hand partly raised in a kind of farewell gesture, while something bright sparkled on her cheek in the bright morning sunshine.

  When they arrived in Murchester Edwina paid off the taxi, left her bag in the station at the left-luggage office, and decided to go and get herself some lunch. But she found it utterly impossible to eat anything.

  She was haunted by the remembrance of Tina’s small, sharp, childish face, bedewed with bewildered moisture, while the taxi sped away from her and she knew she was quite unable to follow. And she was worried because she had not even left a note behind, and, now that she thought about it, that struck her as a very ungrateful omission.

  For, according to his lights, Jervis Errol had been kind to her, right from the beginning. He had been charming to her on several occasions, and very close to her on one. That closeness she would never forget.

  She wandered about the small country town during the afternoon, and in the evening she had dinner at the local hotel. Everything she did was not in the least real to her. Far more real were the constant thoughts that brought Tina and her uncle into the shabby hotel room with her, and sometimes they sat smiling at her, sometimes they merely mocked her, and sometimes they seemed quite upset.

  She could never imagine either of them being upset because she had left, but stranger things had happened ... and, latterly, she had been very close to Tina. The two of them had got along quite admirably until Marsha Fleming arrived at Melincourt. And even after her arrival there had been moments when the child had seemed to need Edwina as she had never displayed a need for anyone else, not even her uncle.

  At midnight she boarded her train, and to her certain knowledge, as she looked up and down the platform, there was no one else boarding it. It was a fairly long train, that would grow longer as they rolled southw
ard, and it took her some time to find her reserved seat. Actually, she need not have reserved it, for it was a very empty train. Considering the time of year it was an unusually empty train ... unless the explanation was that everyone was travelling northward.

  They roared through the night, and after two more local stops went on without stopping until they were very far south. It was about three in the morning when Edwina, having tried fruitlessly to get some real sleep, closed her weary eyes in order simply to rest them, and then opened them again to see the man standing in the open doorway that was the exit to the corridor.

  She thought at first it was the ticket-collector, and was beginning to fumble with her handbag when she looked again and received a shock. It was no ticket-collector who stood there, simply looking at her, and it was no ticket-collector who slid into the seat beside her and addressed her with a certain amount of peevishness.

  “Why did you have to choose the wrong end of the train?”

  “The wrong end of the train?”

  “Yes; it’s at the opposite end from the sleepers, and coaches away from the restaurant car. Don’t you like to refresh yourself occasionally during a long journey?”

  She looked at him. He was wearing a grey suit and a fight grey overcoat flung on rather hastily ... and altogether, he looked as if he had made his departure from Melincourt in a hurry. It was true that beneath the overcoat she could see a neatly tied tie and a crisp collar; but by comparison with his normal appearance it was not as fastidious as it might have been. And his expression was not as detached as she had frequently known it ... indeed, his eyes were glowing at her most strangely, although his mouth was set.

  “Tina said you refused to stop for her,” he said.

  “I stopped and told her to look after Honey.”

  “Honey is Strawberry’s offspring?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why do you think I gave you Honey?”

  “Because—because, I suppose, you thought I would look after her.”

  “Yet within a couple of days of having her made over to you you run out on her! What sort of an owner do you think you are for an unoffending dog to have?”

  She said nothing. She looked down at her lap and pleated her skirt with shaking fingers, and although the whole of her body was trembling as if she had received a shock, hammers were beating inside her head because every pulse in her body was bounding wildly with nothing short of sheer excitement, the wildest excitement of her life.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  “You’re sorry?” He leaned towards her and regarded her incredulously. “You take the coward’s way out, abandon my niece and throw overboard all your obligations—incurred when you agreed to work for me—didn’t even leave a note to explain why you were running away—and then tell me that you’re sorry!”

  She peeped at him. And then her brown eyes were too confused to go on meeting his.

  “It seemed to me the best thing to do to—to leave,” she explained. “In a way it was best for Tina, too, since you’re going to be married quite soon, and it’s only fair to Miss Fleming that she should have a chance to get used to her. Besides, she didn’t really like me ... I mean, she didn’t approve of me.”

  “Indeed?” he said, as if she interested him.

  She coloured furiously, and although there was only a dim light burning in the roof of the compartment he could see how her flush spread wildly.

  “I thought it best—from all our points of view—if I—”

  “Ran away?”

  “Yes,” she whispered again.

  He put his fingers under her chin and lifted it. He forced her to meet his eyes.

  “Shall I tell you the history of that ring you saw? And no doubt duly admired!”

  She was so taken aback that she stared at him. Blue eyes and brown eyes gazed full at one another. “Is—is there a history?” she stammered.

  He shrugged.

  “Not a particularly interesting one. Only she happened to take a fancy to it—Marsha, I mean—and I bought it for her a year ago. For Christmas.”

  “For—Christmas? Then it’s not—”

  “No!”

  “You aren’t engaged to her?”

  “No.”

  “Do you intend to marry her?”

  “No!”

  “I—I see,” she stammered, and felt as if a light was spreading throughout the whole of her being and blinding her with its radiance.

  He made a rough movement and seized her in his arms. Once again he caught her small, soft chin and thrust it upwards, forcing her face out into the open, as it were. Then he bent towards her until only inches separated their two intent faces, bathed by the faraway dim radiance of the roof-lamp.

  “Do you want to know the name of the girl I’m going to marry?” he asked. “The future Mrs. Jervis Errol?”

  Humbly her eyes pleaded with him. Her lips barely framed the one word,

  “Please!”

  “Then listen carefully—very carefully!-—and I’ll spell it out for you! It begins with an E...”

  He could feel her move responsively in his hold. “It continues with a ‘d’ and a ‘w’ and an ‘i’ and an ‘n’ and am ‘a’ ... and if you’re able to spell it spells Edwina! When I first met her she called herself Edwina Sands ... a very correct and formal young lady. I don’t think she liked me at all when we first met, and I didn’t take a great deal of notice of her until one day my niece pointed out that she wasn’t young enough to play with her ... and then I took another good look at Edwina and I made the discovery that she was adorably young, and altogether quite the most adorable young woman with reddish-brown hair and a pair of eyes exactly the colour of cairngorm I’d ever met. From that moment she fascinated me, and I made up my mind that if she’d have me I was going to make her a member of my family. But this morning I kissed her, and she ran away! I like to think it was because she didn’t want to learn to ride, and for no other reason.”

  Edwina—utterly surprised that she could find the courage to do so—wound her arms about his neck. By this time their faces were touching.

  “Oh, Jervis!” she breathed.

  He laughed unsteadily against her hair.

  “My darling, adorable child,” he managed in husky amusement, “for one moment I was terrified you were going to call me Mr. Errol!”