Naive Awakening

by Cathy Williams

  ‘You would sacrifice your brother’s ambitions because of pride?’

  ‘It’s not as simple as that,’ she muttered helplessly. ‘I have a job here. I’d never be able to pay you back, and I won’t be indebted.’

  ‘Oh, you won’t have to be.’ He leaned back in the chair and looked at her unhurriedly through narrowed eyes. ‘Believe me, my grandfather may be overflowing with the milk of human kindness for you and your brother, but the sentiment isn’t shared. Oh, no, you won’t be coming to London to enjoy a free ride with us. You can work for me, and as far as I can see that would sort out both our problems.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  IT WAS ten days before Leigh and Freddie found themselves at King’s Cross station in London.

  She had managed to persuade old Mr Edwards, one of her grandfather’s friends, to keep a regular eye on the cottage for them, in return for which she would keep him supplied in cherry pies whenever she made them. It had seemed a fair deal. In fact, it was only deal available since her finances couldn’t quite stretch to hiring a full-time caretaker.

  Nicholas had been spot on target when he had pointed out her cash flow problems to her. The fact was that her money—what little she earned from her job and the small amount left to her by her grandfather—was just enough to make ends meet, and that was with some very acrobatic economising.

  Which, she had thought bleakly after he had left, had been the crux of the problem. And he had manipulated it like the persuasive, successful barrister that he was.

  Hadn’t he known instinctively what argument to use on her? That it was for Freddie’s benefit? And she, who had never been persuaded to do anything which she did not want to do, had found herself put into a position in which she could barely manoeuvre. She must go to London for the sake of her brother’s future and her own finances and stomach the fact that she was in a trap.

  It had only been her brother’s enthusiasm for the idea that had stopped her from calling him up and telling him where he could put his stupid suggestion.

  As for the job he had thrown her, she was sharp enough to realise that it was a gesture only partly designed to ease her conscience. After all, she thought, surveying the nerve-racking impersonality of the platform crowds, what did he care about her conscience? No, having mulled it all over, she could see quite clearly that his offer of a job was far more designed to ensure that he wasn’t lumbered with a couple of unwelcome unpaying guests. He basically didn’t want them cluttering up his smart London life, but since he had had little choice in the matter, what better than to make sure that she work for her keep?

  She wondered whether he thought that they would stick to his grandfather’s generosity like two parasites and shamelessly eat them out of house and home.

  Oh, he had exploited the situation admirably, and as far as she was concerned had left her bereft of any pride.

  Now here they were, standing on the platform of a station the size of which she had never seen before, surrounded by their clutter of battered suitcases, some of which had been tied with string, and no porter in sight.

  What seemed like thousands of people, more people in fact than lived in her entire village, hurried around them, carefully side-stepping their bags, intent on their business. In Yorkshire, she thought ruefully, there would have been no shortage of people willing to help them.

  Her brother was lost in the novelty of it all, as he had been from the very minute he had stepped on to the train at their tiny station.

  Leigh looked at him affectionately and promptly ordered him to go and find a trolley.

  ‘Where?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said irritably, ‘just go and get one. If we wait for someone to come along and help us, we’ll be here till we go grey.’

  He ambled off obediently, and left her to her thoughts. More doubts and a feeling of being completely out of her depth. She had been to Leeds a few times before, but only once to London when she was very young, when Freddie was only a baby, and it was as vast and confusing as she remembered.

  She only hoped that Nicholas was outside waiting for them, as he had promised he would be, because if he wasn’t it would be another nightmare of waiting for a taxi to take them to the house in Hampstead.

  Oh, God, she thought, why on earth had she ever agreed to come here? She didn’t belong here, she belonged in the country, where people only dressed up for special occasions, and the busiest place was the local market.

  Here, everyone seemed so smartly dressed, lots of high heels and tailored skirts everywhere, and the men walking briskly in their suits and carrying briefcases! She couldn’t remember her grandfather ever wearing a suit, although he must have possessed one at some point in time.

  She glanced down at her own outfit, a light flowered sleeveless dress falling softly around her slim figure, and a pair of sandals. She had even brought her straw hat with her, to protect her face from the sun.

  She was quite pale-skinned, with a smattering of freckles, which always came out with a vengeance if she wasn’t very careful in the sun. She wished now that she had forgotten about the hat, because she imagined that it only served to emphasise how rustic she was.

  Freddie returned with a trolley, and after what seemed like ages they managed to find their way through the ticket barrier, and outside the station, which was every bit as crowded as it had been outside.

  ‘Wow,’ Freddie crowed, staring around him, ‘have you ever seen crowds like these?’

  ‘Ask me whether I ever wanted to.’

  ‘Stop being so miserable,’ Freddie said, turning to her with a frown.

  ‘I’m not being miserable. I just miss all the open space.’

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘I know you don’t. You’re like a little boy at Christmas-time!’

  They laughed and she put her arm around him, noticing with amusement how he edged out of her embrace. Sisterly cuddles were taboo with him, especially sisterly cuddles administered in public.

  She was looking around for Nicholas, when she heard his deep voice from behind her.

  ‘So I see you managed to find your way here all right.’

  She swung around, blushing as the grey eyes ran over her, feeling oddly as though his scrutiny was stripping her of her clothing.

  ‘Yes. No problem at all.’ She was here now, and she would be polite, but there was no reason why she should be friendly. She couldn’t forget those thinly veiled insinuations that she was irresponsible when it came to Freddie, and a potential gold-digger who would be given a job if the alternative was her sponging off their hospitality.

  ‘Good.’ He picked up the cases as though they weighed nothing at all and began striding away. Leigh hurried behind him, clutching her hat, oddly mesmerised by his easy, graceful walk. There was nothing clumsy or cumbersome about him. In fact, from behind, he could well pass for an athlete of some kind.

  He was chatting to Freddie, answering all his excited questions, getting along with him as though they had known each other for years. Obviously his hostility did not extend to her brother.

  She would, she thought, have to have a serious word with him about being careful not to let London go to his head, and to remember that he was a country lad at heart. The last thing she wanted was for him to change.

  The gleaming Jaguar seemed to fill Freddie with as much reverential awe as it had the last time he had seen it.

  ‘It’s just a car, Freddie,’ Leigh commented, halting his monologue on its engine capacity in mid-flow, and missing Nicholas’s raised eyebrow. ‘Metal on four wheels, designed to get you from A to B.’ She slid into the front seat and strapped herself in, inwardly admiring the walnut dashboard and the deep, luxurious seats.

  ‘A lot of women would be very impressed by this particular piece of metal on four wheels,’ Nicholas murmured, as he started the engine. His eyes slid along to her face, and Leigh purposefully ignored both him and the little leap of her pulse.

  ‘Really?’ she said, gazi
ng with mixed feelings through the window. ‘I can’t see why. As far as I’m concerned, the last thing that would impress me about a man would be his car. Or, for that matter, the sort of house he lived in, or the kind of clothes he wore. All that’s superficial and doesn’t say a thing about the kind of person he is.’ So, she wanted to add, you needn’t worry that I’m after your money.

  ‘And have you been impressed by any men?’

  Leigh frowned and didn’t answer, because as far as she was concerned it was none of his business whatsoever.

  ‘No,’ Freddie chipped in from the back seat, ‘she hasn’t had a boyfriend for ages, since she broke up with Dean Stanley, in fact.’

  ‘I’ll thank you to not go broadcasting my private affairs to all and sundry,’ she snapped. ‘You’re not too old to rediscover the meaning of punishment.’

  Freddie made a face at her and resumed his attention to what they were passing, and Nicholas, she was annoyed to see, was looking vaguely amused by the interchange.

  ‘Anyway,’ she said in a honeyed voice, ‘is that why you drive this? So that you can impress girls?’

  ‘I don’t go out with girls,’ he replied, not at all disconcerted by her sarcasm, ‘I go out with women. And I don’t need to impress them with a car.’

  Leigh refused to ask him what sort of things he used to impress them. There was an intonation to his voice, something soft and insinuating, that sent her mind racing and she firmly slapped it right back into place.

  He took them a circuitous route, on Freddie’s pleading, pointing out all the sights to them, and still with that very slight edge of amusement to his voice, which went completely over Freddie’s head, but didn’t go over hers one bit.

  After a while, though, she found herself listening to what he was saying, and actually enjoying his amusing descriptions of the buildings and landmarks. He had a dry wit which made her chuckle on a couple of occasions, even though she reminded herself that she didn’t care for him, or, for that matter, what he represented.

  It was slightly over an hour later when the car pulled through the heavy gates which led on to the small courtyard in front of the house. The gardens were not massive—Leigh supposed that in London land was at a premium—but the house made up for that. It was enormous, the impressive frontage studded with numerous leaded windows.

  Freddie whistled under his breath, and she said wryly, ‘I can see that there won’t be a shortage of space here. Do you realise that your house is bigger than the one hotel in our village?’

  ‘I thought you weren’t impressed by outward trappings.’

  ‘I’m not,’ she retorted, rising to his bait, ‘I’m merely stating a fact. Do you and your grandfather live here alone?’

  ‘Most of the year. My parents come over for two months every winter, and there are several people who help look after the house and garden.’

  The Jaguar pulled up outside the front door, and Leigh stepped outside, her hat clutched firmly in both hands, her head thrown back as she studied the grandeur of the place. She had not bothered to tie her hair back and it fell down her back, silken copper set ablaze by the sun.

  Nicholas had stopped a few feet behind her. He shook his head, as if clearing it of some niggling thought, and brushed past her, opening the front door which had been double locked.

  At once there was an oldish man there, waiting to take their cases, and another middle-aged woman hovering in the background, waiting to show them to their re-spective bedrooms.

  Leigh would have preferred to stay where she was for a while, and admire the house, if house was the right word. The décor was impeccable, all shades of white and cream, with just enough colour from the pictures on the walls and the huge pots of flowering plants to stop it from sliding into blandness.

  A huge winding staircase, stripped with deep burgundy carpeting, ran to the upstairs bedrooms, and probably continued further. She knew, from the outside of the house, that there were three floors. Three floors of rooms all sumptuously decorated.

  Freddie had snatched up his two cases and was taking the stairs two by two, overtaking the maid. He disappeared from sight, and Leigh turned to Nicholas, who had been observing her from a distance.

  ‘I don’t think I’ve managed,’ she almost choked on the words, ‘to thank you and of course your grandfather for kindly asking us here. Freddie’s delighted at the prospect of going to college for his course.’

  ‘And I gather from your tone of voice that you still haven’t worked yourself up to sharing his enthusiasm?’

  ‘No,’ she replied stiffly, thinking that it was difficult to become excited over emotional blackmail.

  ‘You could always have stayed in Yorkshire, you know, and made do with your rambling cottage which would have progressively eaten up more and more of your money, and your job at the library which just paid enough to keep the food on the table.’

  ‘You might as well know, I wouldn’t be here now if it weren’t for Freddie.’

  ‘But you are, aren’t you?’ he countered smoothly. The grey eyes swept over her with cool calculation. ‘And you can stop acting as though you’re the only one who’s suffering a change of lifestyle. As I said, the only reason I bailed your brother out was because of my grandfather.’

  ‘Are you trying to say that you don’t want us around?’

  ‘I’m trying to say that you’ve been rescued from a difficult situation, and…’

  ‘I should be grateful,’ she finished for him. She felt all her good intentions to be polite with this man draining away from her. Yet again.

  ‘Shouldn’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said tightly. Grateful, she added silently, for being in a gilded cage, because she was caged—trapped by a situation over which all control had been removed from her.

  ‘I don’t expect gratitude, Leigh,’ he said in a hard voice, ‘but I do expect you to stop acting like a martyr all of the time. Now perhaps you’d like to go upstairs and freshen up?’

  ‘Perhaps I would,’ she agreed, stinging from his reprimand, but knowing that she had more less provoked him into it. ‘Where is my room?’

  ‘I’ll show you up.’ He started up the stairs, and Leigh followed him.

  Everything about him, his movements, his speech, that watchful, cool air about him, spelt power and self-assurance, and just a hint of arrogance. He was so totally different from all those boys she had been out with in the past. So totally different from her, she conceded. She would do well to remember that.

  He began talking to her about his grandfather, telling her how much he had changed after the death of his wife years ago. ‘He hardly ever leaves the house,’ Nicholas said. ‘He says that he’s simply counting down to the day when he’ll no longer be around. He comes down for meals, and he uses the library on the ground floor a lot, and that’s really about it.’

  Leigh thought that it was a shame. Her own grand-father had been full of beans right up to the end. Even in those last few weeks, when his illness had made getting around difficult, he had still insisted on taking his walks, on keeping as active as he possibly could.

  Her bedroom was on the top floor, along with Freddie’s. Nicholas pushed open the door, and she stepped inside. Her bags had been brought up and were on the floor next to the gigantic old wardrobe. All the furniture in the bedroom, in fact, was old, from the dressing-table and chairs, to the bureau sitting next to the tall, leaded window, and, of course, the four-poster bed.

  ‘It’s wonderful,’ she breathed, forgetting his presence temporarily and padding across the floor, her hands trailing along the furniture, her eyes taking in absolutely everything. A small en-suite bathroom had been added at some later stage, and had been fitted out in colours of apricot and green, with matching bath towels.

  Nicholas had been lounging by the door, and now he walked into the room and looked around it briefly.

  ‘It’s home.’ He shrugged and walked across to the window. ‘I suppose I’ve become used to it.’


  ‘I suppose you would,’ Leigh said drily, ‘although you wouldn’t, if you had any inkling of the hardship that a lot of people have to endure. I know some people who have slaved all their lives, working the pits, or toiling in factories, and for all their hard work they will never be able to know what it is to have this sort of comfort. The problem with wealth is that it cushions you against all of life’s unpleasantness, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Does it? Don’t you think that that’s a little bit of a generalisation? Why don’t you stop dividing people into categories, and start realising that everyone has something to offer?’

  ‘That’s unfair! I don’t divide people into categories.’

  Nicholas moved to where she was, and before she could escape to some other, safer part of the room he was standing next to her, far too close for comfort.

  ‘You,’ he said, coiling his fingers into her long, unruly hair and tilting her head to face him, ‘have got to be the most argumentative, stubborn woman I have ever met in my life. And I’ve met my fair share of women.’

  Leigh stared at his dark, handsome face in silence. She wanted to fire back with a retort. In normal circumstances she could hold her own in any argument, was rarely at a loss for words, but somehow her mouth had managed to go dry and wouldn’t do what she wanted it to.

  She had a swift feeling of giddiness, and then she blinked and reality returned.

  ‘Believe me, the last thing I’m interested in is the number of women in your life!’

  Her heart was beating heavily, and she could feel her hands clammy and tightly clenched at her sides. She just wanted to get away from this man. He was overpowering her.

  There was a knock on the door, and Freddie bounded in. Nicholas released her abruptly, and her moment of confusion and alarm was over.

  She retreated to her suitcases, which she began dumping on the bed, and chatted to Freddie, her words spilling over each other as she tried to shove the effect that Nicholas had had on her to the back of her mind.

  Freddie was in high spirits. He wanted to do everything, see everything, yesterday. He had already unpacked, which meant that he had thrown all his clothes into the nearest available drawers and cupboards, and was now raring to go. He somehow managed to persuade Nicholas to take him to Piccadilly Circus, which he had heard about, on the Underground of course, and Leigh couldn’t resist a grin as she tried to picture Nicholas squashed in the middle of a crowded train.