Whisper Of Darkness

by Anne Mather

  ‘And isn’t that just what you’re doing?’ demanded Joanna, aware of Anya’s startled gaze, but unable to prevent the instinctive need to defend herself. ‘Why should anyone make fun of her? She’s a perfectly normal little girl. There’s nothing wrong with her that can’t be mended, so long as she isn’t corrupted by your distorted view of life!’

  Matt muttered something about seeing to the milking then, and even Mrs Parrish made an excuse and disappeared into the pantry. It left Joanna alone to face Jake and his daughter, but her taste for the confrontation was rapidly dwindling. Once again, she realised, she had spoken without considering her words, and even Anya looked shocked at her manner of attack.

  There was an uneasy silence while Joanna stood there, her face burning, feeling the weight of censure upon her, and then Jake said bleakly:

  ‘I suggest this is neither the time nor the place to discuss Anya’s future.’ He paused, long fingers probing his scarred cheek—which did not make Joanna feel any better. ‘Later this evening I’ll speak to you in the library. Perhaps then we can clarify your position in this household, and consider what means I have at my disposal to—improve the situation.’

  Joanna licked her dry lips, but she couldn’t remain silent. ‘You’re going to dismiss me, is that it?’ she burst out, wondering what she would do if it were so, and his tawny eyes glittered.

  ‘As I say, we’ll discuss these matters later,’ he replied, with cold deliberation, and she knew he was not about to satisfy her anxiety.

  Anya pursed her lips. ‘Don’t you like my clothes, Daddy?’ she exclaimed, and Joanna realised that for all her maturity in some ways she was still only a child, concerned with more immediate matters. ‘It wasn’t my idea to spend so much money. But Miss Seton said if you couldn’t afford them, you could take the money out of her wages.’

  ‘Really?’ Once again Joanna squirmed beneath that contemptuous appraisal. ‘Well, I’d hazard a guess that Miss Seton’s finances are in a worse state than mine, little one, and if anyone can’t afford new clothes, it’s Miss Seton.’

  Anya looked confused. ‘But——’

  ‘The cost of the clothes is not in question,’ her father retorted smoothly. ‘And now I think it’s time you went and washed your hands. You can take these things upstairs later.’

  ‘Yes, Daddy.’

  She cast a thoughtful look in Joanna’s direction as she left the room, and Joanna wondered what she was thinking. It was obviously strange for her to hear anyone arguing with her father, but, she defended herself, someone had to do it. Someone had to convince Jake Sheldon that he couldn’t cut himself off from the world completely. Sooner or later he had to face the future—and himself.

  CHAPTER NINE

  MRS PARRISH’S reappearance saved Joanna from any further conversation with Jake at that point. The housekeeper exchanged a sympathetic look with the girl as Jake disappeared outside, but although Joanna was grateful, she guessed the older woman had been as shocked at her apparent insensitivity as anyone else.

  In her room, Joanna viewed her future with a feeling of depression she could not shake off. It was useless telling herself that her motives had been good. The fact remained that she had spoken crassly in front of his other employees, and he had every right to resent her presumption.

  She paced restlessly across the floor, wishing she could learn to hold her tongue. It wasn’t the first time she had undermined his influence, and what justification did she have for disparaging his methods of bringing up his daughter?

  Dragging a chair to the window, she draped her arm along its back, resting her chin on her knuckles and gazing out broodingly into the darkness. It was a crisp, moonlit evening, the sky already beginning to take on its starry mantle. Yet even so early in the evening she could hear the mournful cry of the barn owl that had made its home in the eaves, and the less eerie, but just as distinctive, barking of the dogs, as they guided Matt back to his cottage. They were nice sounds, homely sounds, sounds she had become accustomed to hearing, and sounds she would miss terribly if she had to go away.

  She sighed. Who was she fooling? It wasn’t just the cry of an owl, or the barking of dogs, or the bleeting of the sheep she would find so hard to forget. It wasn’t even Anya, although the child had begun to find her place in Joanna’s affections. It was Jake Sheldon, her employer, the man who had made it abundantly clear that he wanted nothing from her, not even her sympathy.

  Yet in spite of everything—his moods and his silences, his cynicism and his anger—she had fallen in love with him, and her vulnerability had placed her in an impossible position. She wanted to talk with him, not fight with him, to share his anxieties, and lean on his strength. But instead they seemed bound on a collision course that no appeal on her part could prevent, with the spectre of his accident like a phantom in the wings. He simply wouldn’t listen when she tried to reason with him, and his obstinacy provoked her to say things she afterwards regretted bitterly. But her feelings made a mockery of his self-consciousness about his appearance, and she desperately wanted to convince him that people were not as obtuse as he seemed to think. She loved him. She would have him no other way. But would she ever be able to make him believe it, particularly as he regarded her as little more than an adolescent, with an adolescent’s inexperience and immaturity?

  By the time she went down for supper Joanna was in a high state of nerves, and they were not improved when Mrs Parrish confided that Matt had apparently gone on another of his drunken binges.

  ‘Got a message from the pub, Mr Sheldon did,’ she explained, ladling soup into three earthenware bowls. ‘Does he do this often? I wouldn’t have expected it of him myself.’

  Joanna sighed, fingertips tapping uneasily against the scrubbed pine surface of the table. ‘Oh, he—he—I think it happens about once a month,’ she murmured absently, wondering whether this meant her interview with Jake would be postponed until tomorrow. ‘Did Mr Sheldon say when he’d be back?’

  ‘No. Just said he didn’t expect to be long,’ Mrs Parrish replied, putting the ladle back into the pan. ‘Now, do you went to eat in the dining room as usual? Or will you and Anya just have it here with me?’

  ‘Oh, here, I think,’ affirmed Joanna eagerly, unwilling to leave the warmth and comfort of the kitchen for the doubtful heat of the dining room. Of late, she and Anya, and sometimes Jake, if he was at home, had taken supper together in the dining room, but as breakfast and lunch were invariably staggered meals, they were usually eaten in the kitchen. Besides, now that the weather was getting colder the dining room could be a chilly place, despite the generous fire Mrs Parrish always kept supplied.

  Now, Joanna seated herself at the table, taking care not to snag her tights on the rough wooden chairs. She had taken particular care with her appearance, in anticipation of her confrontation with her employer, but now it seemed the high-heeled sandals and pencil-slim jersey dress were more likely to go unnoticed. Still, it had been good to dress up for once, and she knew the honey-gold colour of the dress was becoming to the gold-streaked coil of brown silk that was wound like a coronet on top of her head. When she was a little girl her father had told her that one should always go down fighting, and in his own case that had certainly been true, however tragic.

  Anya, when she came to join them, looked Joanna over with speculative eyes. ‘Are you going out with Mr Trevor?’ she enquired, perching on the corner of the table, and Mrs Parrish scooted her off as Joanna made her denial.

  ‘I just felt like—wearing something different,’ she said, trying to sound more casual than she felt. ‘I thought you might have felt the same.’

  ‘Oh, me?’ Anya’s lips jutted, as she surveyed the jeans and sweater she had worn to go to Penrith. ‘I look all right, don’t I? Besides, I couldn’t be bothered.’

  Joanna sighed. She guessed Jake’s attitude had not helped Anya to adjust to her awakening femininity, and without his encouragement she would never become the normal child he expected.

>   ‘Where is Daddy?’ Anya went on, addressing her question to Mrs Parrish, and the housekeeper explained once again where Jake had gone.

  ‘Oh, Matt!’ Anya hunched her shoulders. ‘I wish he wouldn’t get himself into trouble. Just because his wife died.’ She shook her head. ‘My daddy’s wife died, but he doesn’t get drunk all the time.’

  Joanna frowned. ‘You mean Mrs Coulston died recently?’

  ‘About a year ago,’ agreed Anya offhandedly. ‘You’d think he’d have got over it by now, wouldn’t you?’ She grimaced. ‘I didn’t care when my mother died.’ She paused. ‘I was glad!’

  ‘Anya!’

  Both Joanna and Mrs Parrish spoke simultaneously, but the girl didn’t flinch.

  ‘Well,’ she declared defensively, ‘it’s true. She didn’t care about me, and I didn’t care about her!’

  Joanna exchanged an anxious look with the housekeeper, then, trying to adopt a soothing tone, she said: ‘You don’t know that, Anya. You were too young to understand——’

  ‘She was getting a divorce!’ asserted Anya indignantly. ‘She was going to leave me. You don’t do that to people you care about.’

  Joanna considered her argument. ‘Anya, lots of people get divorced every year. That doesn’t mean they don’t care about their children. It just means they can’t live together any more.’

  Anya sniffed, a habit she had almost completely broken during the past few days. ‘You don’t know anything about it,’ she said. ‘She was going to live with another man, not Daddy, and there was no room for me. Only—only she drove too fast and almost killed us all!’

  Joanna was appalled. Until then, she had imagined, foolishly she now realised, that Jake had been driving the car when the accident took place. But Anya knew the truth, Anya was there; and these revelations might well provide an answer to the problem child she had become since her mother’s death.

  There was an uneasy silence after Anya had finished speaking, while Joanna sought to assimilate the significance of what she had said. It cast an entirely new light on the whole situation, and she wondered if Jake was aware of his daughter’s feelings.

  ‘You mean your mummy was driving the night your daddy got so badly hurt?’

  Wrapped in thought, Joanna had almost forgotten Mrs Parrish’s presence, but now, as she asked the question, she was forced to acknowledge her. However, Anya surprised them both by performing a sudden volte-face.

  ‘I didn’t say that,’ she declared, avoiding their eyes. ‘I said she almost killed us all, but I didn’t say when. It—it was another time. Not—not the night Daddy was hurt.’

  Joanna’s brows descended. She was almost completely convinced that Anya was lying, but she didn’t know why. There was no earthly reason why she should lie about the accident, and yet it seemed that she was.

  Mrs Parrish, however, merely shrugged her shoulders. ‘I’m glad to hear it,’ she averred, setting the bowls of soup in front of them. ‘Would have been an irony, that would, wouldn’t it? Her getting killed, and destroying her husband into the bargain.’

  Joanna’s eyes were indignant as they sought the housekeeper’s. ‘Mr Sheldon was not—destroyed, Mrs Parrish,’ she exclaimed, the censure audible in her voice. ‘As a matter of fact, I see no reason why he shouldn’t eventually try to take up his life where he left off.’

  ‘But I thought as how he couldn’t,’ protested Mrs Parrish, as Joanna glanced impatiently at Anya.

  ‘The kind of—effects he suffered are not usually lasting,’ she retorted, unwilling to say much more in the child’s presence. She turned her attention back to the housekeeper. ‘You shouldn’t jump to conclusions, Mrs Parrish. Things are not always as they seem.’

  Anya went to bed as usual at about eight-thirty, and Joanna left the drab confines of the living room for the more homely atmosphere of the library. This room, of all the rooms at Ravengarth, seemed to have absorbed a little of the character of its occupants, and sitting in one of the easy chairs on the hearth, she could watch the firelight flickering over the shelves of books and paintings.

  On impulse she left her chair to kneel down beside a pile of paintings, giving each of them more attention than she had previously applied. Until then she had regarded them as the careless etchings of an indifferent artist, but now she was forced to revise her opinion. They were not brilliant. She had certainly seen better. But their very simplicity was appealing, and with a very little work they might well be worthy of an exhibition.

  She sat back, well pleased with her assessment, wondering whether she knew anyone who might be prepared to give a professional opinion. Surely, among all the people she had known in London there was someone who could advise her, and if not, there was always Aunt Lydia, with her large circle of acquaintances.

  Then she sighed. Of course, she could do nothing without Jake’s approval, and somehow she knew he would never give it. The last thing he needed was for some imprudent art critic to belittle his efforts, and to succeed in anything, one had first to expose one’s vulnerability.

  Getting up from her knees, she gathered the paintings together and restored them to their resting place, struggling, as several of the smaller sketches slid out of her grasp. In her attempt to save them, she dislodged the plaited coronet on top of her head, and felt the two braids tumbling on to her shoulders. With a sigh, she acknowledged farewell to her brief spell of sophistication, and with resignation she unthreaded the coils until her hair was a silky curtain about her shoulders.

  Then she re-seated herself by the fire, kicking off her sandals and gazing disconsolately into the flames. Jake was such a talented man, she thought, with increasing frustration. If only he could be made to see that he was wasting himself by living this hermit-like existence!

  She must have fallen asleep, lulled by the lamplit room and the comforting warmth of the fire, for she was abruptly aroused by the sudden opening and closing of the door. She blinked, still half drowsy from her slumbers, and gazed up in faint alarm into Jake’s harsh, uncompromising features.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he demanded, almost as if he hadn’t invited her to join him there, and her eyes widened in mild indignation.

  ‘You wanted to see me,’ she exclaimed, trying to dislodge the feeling of disorientation she was feeling. ‘I’ve been waiting for you.’

  Jake sighed, striding impatiently about the room, dark and forbidding in an unusually elegant suit of black suede, the jacket unbuttoned to reveal a matching waistcoat and white shirt beneath.

  ‘Do you have any idea what time it is?’ he exhorted irritably, and she raised her wrist watch to eye level and tried to distinguish the figures. ‘It’s half past twelve,’ he continued, without waiting for her answer. ‘Half past twelve, Miss Seton. Hardly the time for an interview, wouldn’t you say? Or are you so desperate to be given your notice?’

  Joanna pushed her stockinged feet to the floor and groped around with her toes for her sandals. ‘I’m not desperate at all, Mr Sheldon,’ she declared, refusing to argue with him in this mood. ‘I—I’m sorry, I must have fallen asleep.’

  Jake stopped his pacing to come and stand on the hearth, hands in the pockets of his jacket, staring broodingly into the glowing embers which were all that remained of the blaze there had been when Joanna sought this refuge. Then, as if irritated by her attempts to reach for her sandals, he turned and kicked them aside, looking down into her surprised face with moody intensity.

  Joanna returned that provoking stare for only a few seconds before looking away. She had the uneasy impression that his reaction at finding her here had triggered some latent force inside him, and while she was not afraid of him, she was afraid of betraying herself. Perhaps it would be as well if she left here, she thought unwillingly, as the full realisation of the ambiguity of their relationship brought a tremulous weakening of her knees. He disliked her already, but at least that left her some respect. If he suspected her feelings, he might despise her or worse, pity her.

  Gettin
g to her feet, she started in pursuit of her sandals, saying nervously: ‘Did—er—did you find Matt? Mrs Parrish told me where you had gone. It does seem a shame——’

  ‘Matt was not involved.’

  Jake made the statement flatly, dispassionately, and Joanna halted uncertainly, wondering whether she had made some mistake.

  ‘But——’ She searched for words. ‘Mrs Parrish said——’

  ‘I know what Mrs Parrish said,’ he retorted, with a curious lift of his broad shoulders. ‘But she was wrong.’

  Joanna blinked. ‘I don’t understand …’

  ‘Don’t you?’ His eyes were enigmatic. ‘I should have thought it was quite simple.’

  Joanna sighed. ‘You mean Matt didn’t—go drinking?’

  ‘So far as I know, he’s as sober as a judge.’

  Joanna stared at him. ‘Then why tell Mrs Parrish——’

  ‘Perhaps I wanted an excuse to go out,’ he stated, with a deprecatory twist of his features. ‘Can you think of a better reason?’

  Joanna dragged her gaze away, looking about her almost blindly for the scattered sandals. She had the definite impression that she should not be here, listening to these revelations, and the sooner she made herself scarce the better.

  ‘You’re looking particularly lovely this evening,’ he remarked, as she bent to pick up the offending footwear, deciding it would be quicker and easier to carry them, and her heart quickened its beat at the uninvited compliment. ‘But then you always look beautiful, don’t you, Miss Seton? It’s one of the crosses I have to bear.’

  Joanna bent her head. ‘I think I ought to be going to bed, Mr Sheldon,’ she said quietly. ‘I—er—do you want to see me in the morning?’

  ‘I want to see you every morning,’ he said, making no move towards her, just letting the husky intonation of his attractive voice accomplish more than a physical contact could have done. ‘I’d like to wake up every morning and find your head beside me on the pillow—but disregard these observations. They’re just the meanderings of a man who’s had a little too much to drink.’