“My—my case—it’s outside. I suppose it’ll be all right?” Caroline asked slightly anxiously as he bade her be seated.
“Case? You mean you’ve come to stay?”
“Well, I don’t know,” Caroline admitted. “You see—”
He waited, without particular interest, while Caroline found herself stammering out an explanation of why she was here, disguising as best she could the fact that Aunt Muriel and Uncle Trevor had decided to get rid of her at last. “They thought it would be an excellent idea if I could be governess to Grace’s little boy,” Caroline told him with as great an air of confidence as she could assume. “It would be a change for me, you understand, and I was anxious to get right away from London for a while. ”
He was gazing thoughtfully into the fire, rubbing his long, thin fingers together, and she could not tell how much of this story he really believed. “All I know is that Grace isn’t expecting you,” he said at last. “I’m sure she’d have spoken of it otherwise. This house belongs to her, not to me, so I’ve no say in whether you may stay or not. It was left to her by Paul Brant, along with other things,” he waved his hand vaguely at the antique pieces that filled the room.
There seemed nothing much she could reply to this, so after a moment she said “Oh!”
“Tell you what, Grace has a cold and has gone off to bed early, but I’ll speak to her about you, if you wish, and ask if you may stay. As to being governess to Robin, I don’t know what the position is, although as far as I know he has someone at present. Though heaven knows, no one stops very long with Robin—not that I blame them.”
He disappeared from the room and Caroline sat staring at the fire, grateful for the cosy, glowing warmth after the blustery cold of the world outside and the fatigues of her journey. Grace would let her stay, of course, she told herself reassuringly as, in spite of her efforts, she felt her eyelids droop. All she wanted was to be allowed to stay here by the fire and not to be asked to move again until she had gathered her resources once more.
He came back shortly, looking relieved as though he had cast off a problem. “Grace is coming down to see you herself,” he told her. Then, as though relinquishing the situation, he moved again to the piano and let his fingers slide softly across the keys. He was improvising now, she surmised, his mind detached from her and her problems, his long white fingers moved about the keyboard while his eyes were fixed upon something far away. He was a true musician, Caroline was thinking vaguely. He did not merely play the piano, as some did: instead, he seemed part of the instrument, as if he and it were one, and he were listening to a message from it that no one but he could hear.
In a few minutes the door was flung open and Grace entered. Immediately Caroline was wide awake. The impact of this beautiful woman was fantastic: her presence seemed to fill the room, reducing Cecil and Caroline to mere nonentities.
Her raven hair hung down her back in a shimmering cloud and her brilliant blue eyes sparkled under strong dark brows which gave character to a face that would otherwise have been too perfectly beautiful. She was dressed in a filmy apricot-coloured
negligee that floated out behind her as she swept into the room, and even the fact that she held a snowy handkerchief to her nose could not detract from the stunning effect of her beauty and her presence.
She was also irritated and impatient, Caroline could not but know instantly as she began: “Caroline Downes, aren’t you? I shouldn’t have known you, but then it’s several years since I last saw you and you’ve grown up in that time. But what are you doing here?”
“I—I wondered if perhaps you might have a vacancy,” Caroline began in a small voice, a presentiment that her trip had been in vain stealing chillingly into her bones.
“A vacancy? Employment, you mean?” Grace enquired frowningly.
“Well, yes,” Caroline began desperately. She simply could not tell this magnificent relation of hers that she had listened in on a conversation between her aunt and uncle during which they had agreed to get rid of her. “You see—”
“Yes?” Grace raised her strong dark brows. “Well, do go on. I’ve a horrid cold and don’t feel like staying up all night.”
“You see—” Caroline began again. Then as inspiration struck her, she went on hurriedly, “Now that I’m grown up, you see, I don’t want to be a burden to Uncle Trevor and Aunt Muriel. They’ve already done more than enough for me, and—well, I thought I’d like—”
“You’d like to be independent, perhaps,” Grace ended a little dryly.
“Yes, exactly,” Caroline told her eagerly. “I’d like to get a position; stand on my own two feet, if you know what I mean?”
“So you decided that Lynebeck would be the best place in which to stand on your own two feet? You were optimistic, because this is hardly a centre of employment.”
“I thought perhaps that you—”
“That I’d have a job for you?” Grace ended. “And just exactly what sort of a job had you in mind?”
“Well—there’s Robin,” Caroline faltered, held hypnotically by those brilliant eyes.
“Really, Caroline!” Grace drummed her fingertips on a marquetry antique occasional table that stood near her chair. “Did you really
think I’d employ someone as young as you are and as inexperienced to take care of my only son? Robin’s not an ordinary child by any means. Not just anyone will do at all. Anyway, at the moment I’ve an excellent woman, Mrs. Wood, much older than you and with good qualifications. She’s been nursery governess to some of the best families. I’m delighted to have her and wouldn’t dream of letting her go.”
“Oh!” was all Caroline could find to say. She was groping for words in which to say that she would settle for any sort of job, when in the lengthening silence Cecil spoke.
He played a soft but compelling chord on the piano, as though gently to draw their attention to him, then said, “When did you last have something to eat?”
“Really, Cecil!” Grace protested. “And do stop playing for an instant. It’s quite distracting when I’m trying to iron this thing out with Caroline.”
He stood up, tall and thin and faintly abstracted in the low-ceilinged room. “It’s all settled, isn’t it? Caroline has asked for the position of governess to Robin and you’ve told her that it’s already filled. If she’s travelled from London today she must now have something to eat. I suppose you did travel from London today?” he inquired of Caroline.
She nodded and Grace said irritably, “Of course she came today. What on earth would she do wandering around the wilds of Cumberland on her own? And as for needing something to eat—there are restaurant cars on the trains, surely, on such long trips.”
Cecil’s eyes rested on Caroline as she sat hunched upon the sofa looking pale and wan.
Vaguely aware of the impression she was giving, Caroline pulled herself together and sat upright. “Of course I had something to eat!” she told Grace in a voice that she realized was just a shade too loud. No need to say that what she had had to eat were sandwiches, or to mention how many hours ago it had been.
“Are you positive?” Cecil asked in his smooth, quiet tones.
“Of course she’s positive,” Grace replied for her. “I’m sorry, Caroline, but I’ve absolutely no position here for you. I do need a scullerymaid, but of course it would be utterly impossible to employ one of the family for such work. It would only be embarrassing for both of us—and at any rate I’m quite sure you wouldn’t consider it
for a moment.”
“No, no, of course not!” Caroline murmured. Not for worlds would she have let Grace know how she would have welcomed the job. She stood up. “I’d better be getting back,” she said as calmly as she could manage.
She was conscious of a burning resentment, a feeling she knew to be quite unjust. It was not Grace’s fault she had landed herself in this predicament. No, it was due to her own impulsiveness, darting off on this wild-goose chase to the north, without as much as a thou
ght for how disastrously it might turn out.
Grace rose too, relief obvious in her attitude. “I’m sure you won’t mind if I don’t see you off,” she remarked, her manner affable, now that Caroline was on the point of leaving. “But I’d better get back to bed. I’ve a dreadful cold. You’ll understand how positively foul I feel.” She shook hands, wished Caroline a pleasant journey and as if in a dream—or in a nightmare—Caroline watched her cousin waft from the room, her negligee floating behind her again.
Then the door had closed and she was left standing there, wondering what on earth she was to do next.
Cecil jingled some coins in his pocket. “Tell me, Caroline, do you have the fare back to London?”
She shook her head.
“I thought not! You were so certain Grace would take you on, weren’t you? I’m remembering that case of yours, which you said was outside the door. ”
Caroline bit her lip. Yes, the presence of her case indicated only too clearly that she had been fully certain Grace would keep her. “You didn’t mention it to Grace,” she said gratefully. “That was kind of you.”
“I’m not really a kind person, you know,” he told her. “Just experienced! You see, I too know what it is to be poor.” At her look of faint surprise, he went on, “Oh, not definitely poor, you know. I’m not complaining. But poor enough to know what it is to have to make do. To have to make do with sandwiches instead of having a meal— that sort of thing!”
“But you didn’t give me away,” Caroline told him thankfully.
“No, we poverty-stricken people have our bit of pride,” he said gravely. “We have to hang on to that. Now about getting you back to London, let me see—” He fetched a train guide.
In his unhurried way he set about straightening out her difficulties and in about half an hour she found herself seated in a taxi once more, in her purse the money Cecil had given her for her return fare, and comforted by the snack he had raided the larder for.
Once she had bought her ticket for the train, there was nothing to do but wait on the station platform. She sat watching the rails as they glittered into the distance, a dismal melancholy settling on her and gripping her whole being, so that in spite of herself tears glided down her cheeks. So all her efforts had come to nothing! What a fool she had been to think that with Grace a new life might open up for her!
It all seemed part of the nightmare in which she was now living when a big silver-grey car drove into the station yard, and a tall broad-shouldered figure stepped out, strode over to her and pronounced abruptly, “So there you are! You arrived by an earlier train, then!”
She was jerked into protest only when this figure, seizing her case in one hand, caught her by the wrist with the other and began to drag her off towards the grey car, exclaiming impatiently, “Come along! Or do you want to spend the evening sitting on this draughty platform?”
Caroline pulled back frantically. “Who are you?” she cried, her voice rising to a squeak with alarm.
He paused, his face seemingly miles above her in the darkness of the shadowed platform, his eyes, metallic grey with the steely glance of a drawn sword. “Don’t tell me you want a formal introduction!” he gritted. “I’m Randall Craig, your new employer, although possibly you don’t know my name. You wrote to Mrs. Creed in reply to her advertisement, didn’t you?”
“I certainly didn’t,” Caroline retorted. “And I’m not going anywhere with you, when I don’t know who you are, so you can give me back my case and I’m going on the London train just as soon as it comes in, and I’ll get a job in London somehow, even if it is street sweeping—although I don’t suppose I’d be much use at that either,” she ended, with a sob in her voice.
He dropped her case to the platform. “Now just what is this all about? If you’re not the new parlourmaid, then who are you?”
“I’m Caroline Downes,” she told him, “and I ran away from my guardians—at least they don’t want me any longer, so it
doesn’t matter, and I came to be nursery governess to my cousin Mrs. Brant’s little boy, but she has a woman already and doesn’t need me, and—”
While she was speaking there had been a rumbling and a long train snaked along the platform and drew to a halt. She was about to pick up her case and move towards one of the compartments, but he stopped her with an imperious gesture. “Don’t budge,” he ordered. “Anyone for Longmere?” he called out to the porter.
The porter followed with his eyes the thin trickle of people who were moving towards the exit. “No one strange this evening, Mr. Craig.”
“I think I have the answer to your difficulties,” the stranger told Caroline. “Evidently the new girl hasn’t turned up, so if you need, a job, are you prepared to work as parlourmaid for my Mrs. Creed?”
Caroline paused for an instant. Her innate honesty made her feel inclined to confess on the spot that she knew nothing whatsoever of the duties of a parlourmaid, but instantly the bitter thought flashed across her mind that she would be equally ignorant of almost any other job. “I wouldn’t mind being a parlourmaid,” she answered, truthfully enough.
“In that case you’re hired,” he told her, and as the train eased smoothly out of the platform he hustled her towards the car.
Was she being sensible? Caroline asked herself fleetingly as she got in. But already he had pitched her case into the back seat, was getting in beside her and the car was pulling out of the station yard.
Whatever she had let herself in for, it was too late to turn back now, Caroline was thinking, as she sank back against the leather-upholstered seat. To be warm and safe for a little while, that was all that seemed to matter, after the turbulent disorientation of her life which had occurred during the past few hours. A tear, half of sorrow, half of weariness, trickled down her cheek.
He spoke not a word during their drive and Caroline lost all sense of direction in the turns and twists of the country roads. She stole a covert glance at her companion, his deep piercing eyes fixed on the road ahead. His profile was like that of a hawk, she decided, the mouth sharply carved and faintly cruel.
She felt her heart beat faster and apprehension clutch her like a vice. Why had she so passively allowed herself to accompany this unknown man? she thought desperately. But whether or not he realized her growing dismay, the dark saturnine face remained impassive, as though he had forgotten her very existence. The square strong hands on the wheel were sure and expert, and somehow they too were expressive of the man, Caroline decided. Altogether Randall Craig was rather a frightening person, whether he was aware of it or not.
Eventually they stopped outside a vast, sprawling mansion. “Well, here we are. Out you get!” he instructed.
As she was about to open the door she drew back in alarm, for two huge shapes had bounded from the shrubberies which faced the house: they were two big hounds, and she had just time to slam the door shut when she saw their faces peeping in at her, their tongues lolling and their great eyes rolling.
“Here, Rex; here, Queen! ” Randall Craig called.
Immediately the dogs abandoned their inspection of Caroline and bounded around to his side of the car where he was pulling out her case. “Come on, get out! What are you so nervous about? They won’t hurt you while I’m here,” he told her irritably.
In spite of this assurance she kept close to him as they moved towards the house, the two dogs bounding and frisking around their owner.
He marched her across a vast, oak-panelled, icy-cold hall and into a room which she assumed to be his office or study from the bundles of papers that filled the open shelves against the walls and the filing cabinets in one of the corners. Here Caroline sank upon one of the deep leather chairs, feeling utterly lost and dejected.
He poked up the fire roughly, saying as he did so, “Stop snivelling. I can’t endure snivelling women.”
“I wasn’t snivelling.” Caroline sat up indignantly.
“Oh yes, you were! You were snivelling all the way back in th
e car.”
“No, I wasn’t,” she protested.
“Indeed you were, and there are evidences of tears on your cheeks at this moment to prove my point.” Caroline drew the cuff of her coat across her cheek, feeling the harshness of the rough, woollen material against her skin. “I wasn’t,” she muttered feebly.
He paid no attention to this, but strode out of the room to return a few minutes later with a glass of red wine and some biscuits. “Here, drink this, it will make you feel better,” he commanded.
Caroline took the glass rather fearfully. Aunt Muriel had always
frowned on wines of any sort and Uncle Trevor was accustomed to drinking his after-dinner glass of port with an air that was almost apologetic. She sipped tentatively. “It’s port,” she told him.
“That’s right, it’s port,” he agreed. “Although you seemed so scared
of it that I’m surprised you know.”
“My Uncle Trevor has a glass every evening after dinner,” she
informed him.
Somehow the fact that it was port, Uncle Trevor’s favourite drink, seemed reassuring, and Caroline sipped the glass and nibbled the biscuits, feeling her spirits rise as she did so. “Yes, you’re right, it does make you feel better,” she agreed gravely as she put the glass down on the table beside her.
“You look a lot better too,” he told her ungallantly. “I wondered if I’d be able to bring you back to Mrs. Creed alive, you seemed so done up for a while.”
“Oh, that was only because I was tired with travelling,” she told him. “Usually I’m full of energy and nothing gets me down— although I’m always inclined to be pale—but then it’s my nature,” she informed him seriously.
“Oh!” He regarded her unsmiling. “Now, Caroline—I think I’ve got your name correctly—tell me, just what were you doing sitting on the platform at Lynebeck on a bleak October evening? I heard something about Grace Brant, but frankly everything’s not quite clear in my mind. ”
Caroline drew a deep breath. He despised snivelling women, he had said, and not for a moment did she intend to tell a hard-luck story. The same tale that she had recounted to Cecil Perdue sprang to her lips. “I was anxious to get right away from London for a while and sniff the country air,” she finished as convincingly as she knew how.
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