by Susan Barrie
But that night she was not so sure. Inga seemed to be deliberately trying to provoke Luke, and every time she entered into a conversation with him - particularly when it was simply dinner-table conversation - there was a provocative sparkle in her eyes, and it struck Melanie more than once that the Swedish girl had what might well be phrased ‘a bone to pick with Sir Luke’. There was a certain spitefulness in her regard at times, and the very faintest hint of resentment. Whether it was because they had had some sort of a quarrel recently Melanie could not tell, but all the indications were that they had.
And it could be that Inga was using Martin Vidal to make Sir Luke jealous.
But she didn’t seem to be succeeding very well, for Sir Luke was strangely aloof.
After dinner, when they all returned to the drawing room, he asked Melanie for the first time to play her piano. And he also made a point of referring to it as her piano.
‘If you feel up to it,’ he added. ‘I don’t know whether that bad foot of yours is in sufficiently good shape for the pedals—’
‘Oh, yes,’ she assured him, ‘it is.’ But she hesitated to make her way to the piano because it was Inga who liked to entertain the rest by strumming somewhat noisily in the evenings, although it was simply and solely, Melanie was sure, because she knew she looked good on a piano stool. And apparently her mother had spent a fair amount of money on lessons for her, which didn’t appear to have resulted in very much.
‘Please,’ Sir Luke requested, rather more firmly, looking deliberately at Melanie.
Inga, who had been exchanging light badinage in a corner with Chris Winslow, turned at once.
‘Oh, I’m going to the library to watch television,’ she announced. ‘Coming, Chris?’ she inquired, turning to him.
Winslow followed her like a dog from the room.
Mrs. Larsen looked vaguely uncomfortable, as if she occasionally deplored her daughter’s manners. Colonel Anstruther and Richard Culdrose were in the gun-room, smoking after-dinner pipes, so there was no one else in the
room.
Sir Luke walked purposefully towards the instrument and opened it for the girl. He indicated the music cabinet.
‘It’s all yours,’ he said. ‘You know what you like ... pick it out.’
But Melanie sat down at the piano and played for twenty minutes by ear. She played snatches of various favourites, such as a Chopin waltz, Debussy’s Clair de Lune, and Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. These were pieces that she had played for years, and she played them effortlessly and well ... rather more than well. The Moonlight was a particular favourite, and she lost herself in it while she was playing, seeing not the restfully-lit and really splendid drawing-room in which she was seated, but some magic world without, where moonlight fell softly from a tranquil heaven, and there was so much serenity, that Melanie was completely carried away, and the fact that she wasn’t even bothering about the others became very obvious.
Then in the second movement, the peace had gone, and it was all rather turbulent and uncertain ... no promise of undiscovered bliss, but a vague confusion that was the more disturbing because the enchantment that had gone before had been broken like a spell, and there was a sensation of being cast adrift in a night that was no longer full of placidity and moonbeams, but bleak with a certain harsh reality ... and challenge.
Sir Luke, who had been standing very quietly in the very centre of the rug in front of the fireplace, moved over to the piano and took up a position beside it, where he could watch the small hands that were flying over the keys, and the expression on the face that was bent above the hands.
Melanie lifted her head and looked at him, and it seemed to her that he was rooted out of some immovable material, and his infinitely dark eyes were absorbed in every movement she made, as if he was utterly fascinated. And in addition to the fascination there was something else - some other expression that held and absorbed her, and which for a moment slowed the movements of her hands, and even caused her to hit a wrong note ... until automatically her hands took over again, and the fascination that had interfered with her thinking became a slight constriction at the base of her throat, and a profound wonder that caused her lips to fall a little apart.
She went on playing mechanically while she gazed upwards directly into his eyes, and the night darkness softened for her so miraculously that her pulses leapt wildly for the first time in her life, and over by the fireplace, in her damask chair, with her embroidery filling her lap, Mrs. Larsen experienced a warning sensation that alarmed her.
And on top of the warning sensation she had one of her clairvoyant moments when she knew that at least one of her most carefully laid plans was in danger ... that it was highly likely it would not turn out well.
The door opened, and Colonel Anstruther and Richard Culdrose put in their heads.
‘By jove,’ the Colonel exclaimed, ‘that was quite a treat! It was really enjoyable.’
‘It was,’ Richard Culdrose echoed. ‘I’m not surprised Sir James left you his piano, Miss Melanie.’
Melanie, feeling strangely exhausted, sat with her hands in her lap while Sir Luke put away her music.
‘I think you’ve entertained us enough for one night,’ he said quietly, as he returned to the piano and Melanie’s side. He added gently, ‘I think you’d better go to bed now. You look a bit tired!’
Melanie was tired . . . tired, bewildered, and exhilarated. She knew that the exhilaration was something to do with Sir Luke, and she was adult enough to be aware for the first time precisely what it meant. She said good night hurriedly to the others in the room, and then put back her head and looked up
at Sir Luke as she passed him in the open doorway. He was holding open the door for her.
She said nothing, and all he said was:
‘Thank you.’
CHAPTER TEN
A fortnight passed, and still Mrs. Larsen and her daughter remained at the Priory, although Chris Winslow took his departure, and so did Richard Culdrose. Colonel Anstruther stayed on, and Melanie began to suspect that he was interested in Mrs. Larsen, who plainly struck him as a most attractive widow.
The two of them went for long walks together in the surrounding countryside, and for the first tune since she had arrived at Wroxford Mrs. Larsen ceased to appear tremendously concerned with the future prospects of her daughter. Or if she was still concerned with them, she was no longer concerned with them to the exclusion of everything else.
Inga behaved very oddly during that fortnight. One moment she was plainly anxious to please Sir Luke, the next she appeared to have forgotten all about him, and wandered over to the window to be alone with herself, or even removed herself to some remote corner of the grounds if they were out of doors.
Martin Vidal found an excuse to call at the Priory on two occasions, and although both those occasions had some connection with Melanie, it was Inga who was plainly the magnet that had drawn him, and it was Inga who saw him off the premises when he left
Once she was absent for a whole day, and it transpired that Martin had taken her to an agricultural show. She was apparently becoming very interested in English agriculture,
and as for Willow Farm, she never stopped talking about it. It was an enchanting house, she told her mother, mellow and comfortable and typical of everything that was really and truly English. She even suggested to Martin that she should help him choose new covers for his drawing-room chairs and settee, and she was quite fascinated by his collection of antique silver.
There was a great deal of antique silver at the Priory, but that didn’t fascinate her in the same way. For one thing, it was beautifully cared for, and Martin’s wasn’t. She even discovered an itch to clean and polish silver.
Her mother merely looked at her rather dreamily and vaguely, and said nothing. Colonel Anstruther was a member of a famous London club, and he had a ‘place’ in Somerset which he had described to her, and which it seemed almost certain she would visit before long. Colonel Anstru
ther was also a lover of travel, with an income to make travel on an extensive scale possible, and the widow who had previously lived solely for her daughter began to allow herself to dream dreams. So, obviously, did Colonel Anstruther.
Melanie’s ankle improved steadily, and within a week of receiving the assurance from the hospital that there was no serious fracture she was able to get about on it more or less normally. She did the flowers every day, and undertook many other small tasks which made life easier for Mrs. Edgerley and the girls who worked for her. On the first Sunday that she was able to drive again she drove herself to church, and was astonished when she left to find Sir Luke occupying the Charnock pew alone. He had never previously struck her as a churchgoer, and as she would never presume to use the Charnock family pew herself she had no knowledge of his presence until she turned round immediately after the blessing and while the organist was playing away courageously on a somewhat decrepit organ and found him
waiting to escort her out into the sunshine.
She was wearing a chic little suit and a hat that made the most of her darkly blue eyes, and Sir Luke was looking very well turned out in a grey suit and Old Etonian tie. The vicar beamed at them when he saw them approaching, and Melanie seized the opportunity - following the faint appeal she saw in the vicar’s eyes - to mention how very undependable the organ was, and how greatly a new one would be appreciated. She also mentioned that a donation towards the restoration of the church bells would be appreciated.
Sir Luke smiled slightly and said that he would see to it. He also commended the promptitude with which she had responded to the silent signal from the vicar.
She left her car at the church - Sir Luke said Dickson could collect it - and he drove her home. He took a somewhat roundabout route, and she wondered at the somewhat oppressive silence that kept him sitting almost broodingly behind the wheel, while his eyes were glued to the winding road ahead.
Melanie nowadays did not dare to meet his eyes for long. Since the night when he had asked her to play the piano she had felt very differently toward him ... and the feeling was so different that it was part ecstasy and part misery. She knew perfectly well that he was going to marry Inga, and however much Inga might attempt to wriggle off the hook - perhaps because she was not yet seriously enough in love with him -Sir Luke would not let her go. He had resolute hands and a resolute face, and Melanie was quite convinced that he loved her - although perhaps not in the way she nowadays thought about love - and that he intended to make her his wife.
She would make such an excellent hostess for the Priory, and once caught and tamed she would probably be reasonably submissive. She might even take very kindly in time
to being submissive.
But Sir Luke at the moment was not a happy man ... even Melanie knew that. He was not happy because he was being temporarily frustrated, and he had yet to tame his wife-to-be. It was as simple as that. He had to exert his authority over her, because he was the kind of man who preferred to dominate rather than to be adored.
Or was he ...? Melanie sometimes wondered. And when she did that she saw his eyes again as she had seen them while she was playing the piano ... and her breath caught and she experienced a strange singing of her blood.
It was like the singing of a kettle that was not far off boiling point.
One morning Martin telephoned and reminded her that he still had a couple of crates of her belongings, and if she wanted them to be returned to the Priory he would drive over with them in his car. Recognizing immediately that this was a pretty obvious excuse to see Inga, Melanie told him not to bother, and said she would collect the crates herself the following day. But that afternoon, having nothing better to do, and feeling, in fact, at rather a loose end - nowadays nothing in her life seemed exactly purposeful - she changed her mind about the following day and got her Mini out of the garage and set off for Willow Farm.
As she drove along the familiar road she recollected how often she had done this, and always in the past the thought of seeing Martin had held for her an attraction that had been due to the fact that she was fond of him. She was fond of him, and he was very, very fond of her. In need she could always turn to him.
But nowadays that seemed different somehow. Martin had scarcely put himself out to be really helpful when she had her accident to her ankle, and he had not even offered to drive her to the hospital for her X-ray. It was quite unlike him, and the change dated from the moment when he set eyes on Inga ... and apparently he had not recovered from that moment.
Melanie sometimes wondered what would have happened if she had agreed to marry him and he had still met Inga. Would the Scandinavian girl have had the same effect on him, and in that case, how would she, Melanie, have felt?
She felt rather depressed as she drove along. In fact, by the time she reached Willow Farm she was feeling very depressed. She hated things to change, and in the last month or so many things had changed. She was lucky, she supposed, to be back at Wroxford Priory, but how long it would be possible for her to remain there she couldn’t think at this stage. Once Sir Luke was married ... and at the thought of Sir Luke marrying even the unclouded blue of the deep spring sky became overcast, and the new, bright green that decorated the hedgerows struck her as positively sere and yellow. They might be on the very threshold of summer, but for her a very bleak winter could be near at hand ... much, much nearer than she would have believed possible a few weeks ago.
Willow Farm came into sight as she swung the car round a bend, and a few seconds later she had turned in at the gate. It was quite a short drive that led up to the house, and in no time at all she had parked and was frowning a little because a beautiful pale blue convertible was standing at the foot of the front steps, and she knew that car so well that she didn’t need to be told it belonged to Inga Larsen.
As a matter of fact, she had seen Inga drive off in it after lunch, presumably to go shopping in the nearest country town and to match some wool for her mother. Mrs. Larsen was knitting a sweater for Colonel Anstruther, and she was most anxious to have the wool. But unless Inga had already executed the commission, or was proposing to do so after a very short stop at Martin’s farm, there seemed little likelihood that Mrs. Larsen would have it to knit with that night. For it was already a quarter to five, the country town was a good twenty minutes’ drive away, and most of the shops closed promptly at five-thirty. One or two of them stayed open until six, but not the wool shop.
Melanie felt undecided about entering the house while Inga was also paying a visit. And then she remembered Sir Luke ... and the free board and lodging and entertainment the Swedish girl and her mother had already received from the new owner of the Priory for very nearly four weeks. As a host he was generosity itself, and although he was hardly likely to grudge them what they had already received the fact that they had stayed so long as his guests was undoubtedly due to the fact that he expected something -some time - in return. And the one thing he did not expect was that the girl on whom he had bestowed so many favours should seek her diversion elsewhere, possibly endangering his own relationship with her.
So Melanie slipped out of her car and approached the front steps. As always the front door was standing partly open, and the afternoon sunlight was lying in golden splashes on the cool tiles of the hall. Martin’s dog, Adam, a golden Labrador, came to meet Melanie, and she tickled him under the chin as she always did, and received a happy wag from his tail in acknowledgement. Then, as the sitting-room door was also standing open, and everything inside the house seemed very quiet and unnaturally still at an hour when there should have been a certain amount of bustle, with Martin’s housekeeper removing the tea-things in order to wash them up before setting the dining-room table for his evening meal and leaving for the night, she hesitated before tiptoeing towards the door, although only for a fraction of a minute, after which she stood looking down the length of the long, low room that was as bright with sunlight as the
golden splashes in the hall.<
br />
She hardly knew whether to be glad or sorry, when she stood looking into the room, that her movements had been so very silent that they had not given away her presence. Afterwards she wondered why the noise of her car wheels on the drive hadn’t issued a warning ... but apparently it hadn’t.
Which just proved how deaf two people could be when they were in each other’s arms.
They were standing in front of the fire, and Inga’s arms were twined tightly about Martin’s neck. His brown head was bent, and he was kissing her rapturously ... rapturously and silently, while they gazed at one another.
Inga was wearing light blue slacks and a light blue windcheater. Her pale golden hair seemed to be straying all over the place, and there were strands of it in one of Martin’s free hands, and the rest of it seemed to be all over the front of his jacket. Inga was standing on tiptoe, because she was not as tall as he was, and while Melanie was trying to make up her mind about her next move the Scandinavian girl spoke softly, with a kind of sensuous softness:
‘Oh, darling, I love you!’
Melanie became frozen all at once, and quite incapable of moving, for her senses were still very alert and she had heard the car that came to rest behind her own. She knew that this was one of those moments in time when one should do something. But what could she, caught up in such an extremely awkward situation, do?
Shout a warning to the other two, so that they could spring guiltily apart?
But there was no need for her to do anything. Sir Luke had parked his car and alighted almost at the same moment, and when Melanie turned round and looked at him he was already close behind her. His footsteps rang on the tiled floor, and by the time he too could see into the sitting-room the lovers had been galvanized into some sort of action, and were half-way out of one another’s arms.
