Some Sort of Spell

by Frances Roding

  To do what?' Beatrice asked, baffled.

  *To muster the full Bellaire clan,' Elliott told her drily. 'Lucilla would think it distinctly odd if I took her out to dinner on our own, but a family birthday celebration...'

  Beatrice could follow his logic, but it made her feel uneasy; so much could go wrong...

  'But it's so.. .so underhand,' she protested feebly.

  She didn't Uke the smile Elliott gave her.

  *Maybe, but drastic situations call for drastic measures. Perhaps if Benedict was as protective towards Lucilla as he is of you, they wouldn't be necessary, would they?'

  There was just enough truth in the criticism to make it sting.

  'Oh, but Lucilla isn't...•

  *What? In need of protection? You're his full sister, and you wonder why she resents you so much!'

  'I don't know if I'll be able to persuade the others to go,' she told him, remembering Benedict's earlier anger. *Ben...'

  *Oh, they'll go—if you're going,' EUiott responded drily. There was a look in his eyes she couldn't fathom, a knowledge of something outside her own perceptions. It made his mouth twist in wry mockery, and added a hardness to his face that made her shiveringly aware that he could be a very dangerous man.

  *You can tell them tonight over dinner—then they'll have two pieces of bad news to chew over together, won't they?' When she looked puzzled, he elucidated mockingly, *You were going to tell the others tonight that you'd found a substitute for Mrs Meadows, weren't you?'

  As luck would have it the whole family were in for supper that evening.

  Beatrice raised the subject of Henrietta Parker first. Benedict was still sulking, but refrained from any subversive comment, although there were general moans and groans, until Elliott said pen-

  sively, *Of course you could always share the household chores out between you—then no housekeeper would be needed.*

  Absolute silence greeted his remark. The Bellaire family were not used to having the ground cut out from beneath their feet. All of them studied Elliott and then looked at Beatrice.

  What did they expect her to do? she wondered half hysterically. Hardening her heart against their united appeal, she said uncomfortably, 'ElUott is quite right. Now that Pve taken on this new job I can*t manage the house singlehanded.*

  Then give up the job,* Lucilla said sardonically. 'If it*s the money angle you're worrying about, I dare say I could scrape around and find something. How much was this composer going to pay you? Not much, I don't suppose.*

  An anger the like of which she had never before experienced fired Beatrice's blood. In a voice so quiet that it was almost a whisper, she said slowly, 'Money has nothing to do with it, Lucilla— although I don*t suppose you'll be able to understand that, since it seems to rule your world. I'm taking this job because I want to, because. •.'

  'Because she simply can't resist going to the rescue of yet another lame dog,' drawled Benedict, interrupting her. Across the table his eyes warned Lucilla that she had gone too far. 'Well, if it means that much to you. Sis, I suppose we'll all just have to endure the ministrations of our new "nanny". Have you warned her about us, Elliott?' he chal-

  lenged, throwing an acid smile in the direction of the man at the far end of the table.

  *Ought I to have done?*

  Elliott was calmly buttering a small wholemeal roll, apparently oblivious to the highly contentious undercurrents sizzling round the table.

  ^Er.. .all of you, it*s Elliott's birthday next week,* Beatrice interrupted nervously, 'and... and... we're all going out to dinner to celebrate the occasion. Next...*

  'Tuesday,* Elliott suppHed for her.

  There was a moment's silence; Beatrice held her breath, already anticipating Benedict's objections, but Mirry spoke first, getting up and flinging her arms theatrically round Elliott's neck.

  'Fantastic! Where are you taking us, Elliott? Somewhere really expensive, I hope.*

  'It's a surprise,* Elliott responded, adding to Lu-cilla, 'and it's family only.*

  Beatrice bit her Up as she noted her half-sisfer*s rebellious expression. Elliott was manoeuvring them all hke a skilled puppetmaster, but would his machinations have the desired effect?

  The fact that they had talked together and he had made no mention of her physical response to him had lessened her tension to some degree, although her mind wasn't wholly at rest. Elliott never did anything without a purpose—his actions in regard to Lucilla showed that. There must have been something behind his deliberate arousal of her— and she was quite sure that it had been dehberate. At no time had she got the impression that he was

  a man carried away by a physical desire he could not control.

  Perhaps he was just biding his time... Perhaps Lucilla had become more urgently important and so he had been forced to shelve whatever it was he had in mind for her.

  It was like having a sword hanging over her head, she acknowledged on Friday evening as she walked in the garden. They had a very large garden, which was kept well tended by the same gardener who had looked after it when her parents first bought the house. He was well into his sixties now, and suffered from rheumatism in the winter. The kitchen garden supplied them with most of their fruit and vegetables. At the end of the summer, Beatrice normally spent the better part of two weeks preserving and bottling fruit, and making jams and chutney.

  On Monday she would start her new job... her new life, and she was looking forward to it with a sense of anticipation she had not expected.

  Tomorrow Henrietta Parker would arrive, and already she foresaw fireworks, especially from Benedict.

  A shadow emerged from the shelter of the fruit trees, startUng her. For one desperate moment she thought it was Elliott, her heartbeat only returning to normal when she saw it was Sebastian.

  *Do you talk to them?' he teased, indicating the fruit bushes. 'It's supposed to make them give good crops/

  *Of course I don't/ she lied unconvincingly. *What brings you out here? I thought you had a date tonight/

  *Not until later/ He plucked absently at a bunch of blackcurrents, shredding the fruit and leaves. *I wanted to have a word with you. Don't pay too much attention to what Ben says. Elliott's right, we are a selfish lot, expecting you always to be there, waiting hand and foot on us. It's partially your fault,' he added with a grin. ^You've spoilt us, you know. But don't let Ben's antics stop you from taking this job.'

  She was amazingly touched, almost close to tears, and as though he realised it Sebastian added firmly, **And don't let this composer chap get too dependent on you, either. Ben's right about one thing—you are a sucker for lame dogs.'

  *Seb...' Something that had been troubling her all week brought a faint frown to her forehead. *Why is Ben so antagonistic towards Elliott?'

  She could sense Sebastian's almost immediate withdrawal, and not for the first time sighed over the intense bond of loyalty that existed between the twins.

  'I... I think that's something you should ask him,' he said carefully. That is, if you're sure you don't already know.' He saw her bewildered expression and grinned indulgently, ruffling her hair. 'You don't know, do you?' He shook his head ruefully. 'Well, don't worry about it. Ben will get over it. He'll have to—he's no match for Elliott.'

  He was gone before Beatrice could query his cryptic remark. Her pleasure in the evening suddenly gone, she made her way back to the house.

  Since Elliott had moved in with them they seemed to have suffered an unusual amount of discord. She frowned, wishing the alterations on his flat might suddenly speed forward and remove him from their midst. His presence was too unsettling; it made her too aware of things she would far rather have ignored. It made her aware of herself and her needs as a woman in a way that hurt.

  Thinking about him kept her awake at night, her body tense... aching... empty, she admitted guiltily, forced to face the galUng knowledge that her body ached for the sensations he had aroused in it, that it ached/or himl

  CHAPTER FIVE


  The dinner party was not going to be a success. Beatrice knew that from the start, but all was not gloom and doom. Amazingly, all her family, but most surprisingly of all, Benedict, had taken to Henrietta Parker^s old-fashioned blend of bos-siness and spoiling Uke cats being spoonfed on cream.

  Once or twice she had even surprised in herself a brief spasm of jealousy as she saw how quickly her siblings turned from her to Henrietta, as the family had been asked to call their new housekeeper.

  Sensibly, Beatrice had told herself that her feelings were quite natural, and had perhaps less sensibly found relief for them in mothering her new employer, who had surrendered himself to this hitherto unexperienced delight in blissful relief.

  It took all day Monday for her to restore some sort of order to the small study where she was to work. At lunchtime she had invaded the sanctum of the music room with a bowl of homemade soup and some sandwiches, which she had discreetly left on a tray on the coffee table.

  When she went back for the tray an hour later the soup bowl was empty and the sandwiches were gone.

  On neither occasion did her employer Kft his head from the score he was working on, but without putting it into words both employer and employee felt that an excellent rapport had been struck.

  For the first time in a very long time indeed Beatrice returned home to comparative harmony—and to a meal she had not had to prepare herself.

  Henrietta told her over supper that she had been through the larder shelves, and was pleased to inform her that she considered this autumn they would make apple and raspberry conserve, and that the blackberries would make into jelly better than they did jam.

  Having thus established her superiority, Henrietta went on to assure Beatrice in a kindly voice that she had done very well indeed.

  *Very well,' she confirmed, casting an eagle eye round the table and its occupants.

  Much to Beatrice's relief, Elliott wasn't there. He was dining with clients, apparently, and Lucilla was also out—no doubt with her producer.

  The grins with which her siblings greeted her discomfort did nothing to alleviate Beatrice's feelings, but her moment came when Benedict was chastised for apparently sitting down without washing his hands, and William was told that from now on he would not be allowed to bring books to the table with him.

  Amazingly, not one voice was lifted in objection. Beatrice was impressed, despite her own discomfort. She suspected she need not worry about coming home and finding that Henrietta had handed in her notice, and that their new house-

  keeper was more than a match for any machinations on the part of her family.

  Just as she was musing over how unpredictable the human psyche could be in that her family seemed to accept Henrietta's bossiness where it had previously expressed intense outrage at discovering even the ifaintest suspicion of this trait in previous housekeepers, she remembered how fond her mother had been of a particularly determined and almost shrewish dresser who had once looked after her, and decided that there must be something in the Bellaire personality that enjoyed being bullied— provided that the bullying was done by experts.

  She had also noticed that Henrietta was far less incUned to spoil and fuss around her than she did the others, almost as though they were the only two adults amongst a party of feckless children, and she wasn't sure whether she ought to be flattered or upset.

  She certainly found that under the new regime she had far more time for herself. When her friend Annabel telephoned and suggested lunch on the day of EUiott's birthday party, she could not even offer the excuse that she couldn't leave her employer, since Jon was also going out to lunch with his agent. Annabel heartily disapproved of the Bellaire family, and as Beatrice had expected, they had almost reached the end of their main course before she felt she had spent a satisfactory amount of time in verbal condemnation of them.

  Several years older than Beatrice, and comfortably married with two children, Annabel was her closest friend—they had met when on the same

  catering course—and yet, Beatrice realised guiltily as she listened to her, she came nowhere even close to confiding to her what had happened in Elliott's car, and how he had made her feel. She frowned a little over this realisation, surprised to discover how stealthily the habit of standing on her own feet had grown on her. It was of course a legacy of her parents' death coupled with the responsibility for the family. But if she ever needed to do so, who could she lean on? Not Annabel, who made no secret of her disapproval of the rest of the Bellaire clan; not her godfather, who had recently begun to show signs of his age, and who was beginning to look heart-wrenchingly vulnerable.

  Unbidden, one face formed a mental picture inside her head; one person who she knew beyond any thought of a doubt had the strength to support any number of clinging vines. But what on earth was she thinking of? Elliott was the very last person she would ever want to chng to, even if she had been the clinging type.

  'Beatrice, you aren't hstening to a word I'm saying!'

  With a shock, Beatrice realised that she had forgotten Annabel completely, so deeply engrossing were her own private thoughts. She apologised, offering the palliative that her new job had been occupying her mind, and was profoundly reUeved when Annabel graciously accepted this excuse.

  They talked for a while about Beatrice's new job. Annabel had heard of her employer—her husband was an opera buff—and it seemed that Jon Sharman had been invited to join with other up-

  and-coming young composers in producing a new opera to commemorate the centenary of the company for whom Ian, Annabel's husband, worked,

  Annabel grimaced slightly as she delivered this information.

  *Hollingbroke's have always had quite a thing about their sponsorship of the arts, and this opera theyVe commissioned is apparently going to be quite something. They're hoping to put it on at the Opera House. Of course the whole thing is tax deductible, otherwise the accountants would be having forty fits, but I'm beginning to wonder if Ian works for a company that produces consumer durables, or performs operas. The whole company seems to have gone opera-mad!

  *By the way,' Annabel added, as she ordered their coffee, *an old friend asked after you the other day—Tom Leaman.'

  Beatrice had been introduced to Tom at one of Annabel's 'duty parties'. They had got on weU enough together for her to eijoy the three dates they had shared after that. But after one fatal date when there had been a mix-up in the arrangements and he had arrived half an hour early and had had to be entertained by the twins, he hadn't asked her out again.

  'He's engaged now,' Annabel told her. 'I thought at one time he seemed pretty keen on you...'

  'Obviously you were wrong.'

  'You're a fool, Beatrice. You're never going to get married until you get rid of that selfish family of yours.'

  Stifling her resentment, and telling herself that Annabel couldn't help her lack of tact, Beatrice responded reasonably, Tm quite happy as I am. Fm not looking for a husband/

  ^Nonsense! You were made for marriage,' Annabel told her, *but you need someone who'll appreciate you—spoil you—and protect you from the rest of the Bellaire clan.'

  Beatrice was glad that the meal was over. There were occasions when Annabel's outspokenness could be something of a trial.

  As they said their goodbyes, it struck her that, lately, she was more on edge, less resilient to life's smaU pinpricks. And she suspected she knew exactly where to lay the blame for that. It was Elliott who was causing her to feel as though she had one skin too few, whose constant presence filled her with a nervous tension that was beginning to overflow into every channel of her life.

  She was dreading tonight, for instance. She had absolutely nothing to wear for a smart dinner party, and that was the least of her problems.

  Then why not go and buy something? a treacherous inner voice suggested. She wasn't far from Knightsbridge, and Jon had told her to take the rest of the afternoon off since, apparently, he had several matters to discuss with his agent
, including his timetable for the next twelve months, and so would inevitably be tied up for the rest of the day.

  Without actually making the decision to do so, she found herself walking in the direction of the Knightsbridge shops, starting to window-gaze every so often. The prices stunned her and she had to

  blink once or twice to make sure she wasn't seeing things, but in Harvey Nichols, whose ambiance she liked because nothing was ever hurried or crowded, she found a suit that she fell in love with straight away, and which she probably would never have dared to try on if the assistant hadn't persuaded her to.

  In fine wool gabardine, it had a straight, very dark navy skirt and an acid yellow jacket that picked out the red highlights in her hair and was cut in such a fashion that it enhanced her narrow waist and fitted snugly over the curve of her hips.

  The jacket was coUarless with a deep V-neck that the assistant assured her was perfectly respectable when worn without a blouse, especially for evening engagements. It wasn't even too expensive, so she couldn't reject it on those grounds, Beatrice admitted dolefully as she changed back into her comfortable Jaeger pleated skirt and jumper.

  In Harvey Nichols she didn't look out of place in such an outfit, even though it was three years old. In fact many of the other female customers were dressed in very similar clothes, even if the majority of them were a good twenty years her senior.

  *We have a very attractive selection of costume jewellery and pretty tights on the ground floor,' the assistant suggested when the suit was paid for and parcelled, and somehow, even though she had not had any such intentions originally, Beatrice found herself buying not only tights and a Chanel-style rope of pearls to fill the neckUne of her suit, but also a pair of soft kid pumps in the same dark navy as her suit.