The Girl From Over the Sea

by Valerie K. Nelson

  Then looking across to Miss Yelland, he said crisply, ‘Couldn’t you have told these young people that it’s not convenient for us to have guests at the Manor just now, Miss Yelland?’

  The companion bridled. ‘But, Mr. Defontaine...’

  Lesley didn’t hear the rest of her explanation. ‘Mr. Defontaine,’ she murmured, and then, staring at him, ‘You aren’t Dominic Trevendone?’

  His black brows went up in a surprised stare. ‘No, madam, I’m not Dominic Trevendone. Whatever made you think that I was?’

  Lesley could have replied, ‘Because you came walking in as if you were the lord and master of all you surveyed.’ To her it had seemed he couldn’t be anyone else and her brain had already been groping for some way of coping with this final disaster. But if he wasn’t Dominic the situation wasn’t quite as hopeless as she’d imagined.

  From under her long lashes she gave him a swift glance. He was being just that bit too civil, she thought in deep distrust, and some instinct warned her that the best thing she could do was to sweep the twins in front of her out of the room and immediately get in touch with a good lawyer. She didn’t know who this man was, or why he was here, but she was determined to have no dealings with him.

  All at once old Mrs. Trevendone seemed to wake up. Her face glowed. ‘Blake, isn’t it wonderful! These young people have come all the way from Australia on their own!’

  ‘Have they indeed?’ commented Mr. Blake Defontaine, his cold glance ranging from Rita, lolling like a sawdust doll on the chair by the fire, through Ricky who had left the cushion at Mrs. Trevendone’s knees and gone over to stand by Lesley’s chair and finally pinned itself on Lesley, who now rose defensively.

  ‘Perhaps they will introduce themselves,’ Mr. Defontaine went on, his voice like the cold east wind blowing outside. Instead of chilling Lesley, however, it set her temper alight. Her eyes glittered very green and her small chin set very firmly.

  ‘I really see no particular reason for introducing ourselves to you. Our business here is with the Trevendone family, Mr. Dominic actually, and not with any outsider.’

  ‘Outsider? Mr. Defontaine?’ This was from Miss Yelland on a gasp of outrage.

  Blake Defontaine made a gesture which seemed to order her to be quiet. Then he turned back to Lesley. ‘Mr. Dominic Trevendone doesn’t happen to be here at the moment and. his sister, Miss Jennifer Trevendone, is away from home. .So perhaps you’ll allow me to deputise for them, madam. You spoke of business.’

  Perhaps it was his use of the title ‘madam’ that put Lesley at a disadvantage. She found herself stammering out an explanation, ‘W ... we ... are Ralph Trevendone’s family...’

  ‘Really!’ His cold eyes ranged over them again. ‘How odd! Ralph Trevendone was killed in a mine accident in Queensland twenty-five years ago, and I would guess that was before any of you—any of you,’ he repeated, his eyes on Lesley, ‘was born.’

  Before Lesley could make any answer there was a little sigh just behind her and she turned to see Rita, her slender form bent double, sliding down on to the green carpet.

  ‘Rita darling!’ Lesley and Rick rushed forward, grasping the girl’s shoulders and trying to raise her from the floor. Blake Defontaine followed them to the other side of the chair and Lesley looking up saw him standing there tall and broad-shouldered, his dark face a mask of suspicion and disgust.

  ‘Is this part of the act?’ he enquired unforgivably.

  Lesley flashed him one look of incredulity. Then her attention was again on Rita, whose hands when she touched them seemed to be burning, and yet who ever since their arrival at St Benga Town had been complaining of feeling cold.

  She thought desperately: what are we going to do? She can’t be ill in a hotel. I wonder where the nearest hospital is ... though she’ll hate being away from Ricky and me.

  Now Miss Yelland approached rather gingerly as if she was afraid she might catch something. She said, in a thin voice, ‘The girl looks really ill. Was she all right when you set out this morning?’

  ‘Help me to get her on to the settee, Ricky,’ Lesley muttered, ignoring the question. She was blaming herself bitterly that she hadn’t insisted that Rita stay in bed and postponing this visit to the Manor.

  Now Defontaine sauntered round the chair. ‘I’ll lift her,’ he said.

  With an almost tigerish expression Lesley turned on him, her eyes flashing green. ‘Leave her alone. Ricky and I will manage. You thought she was acting.’

  ‘I was mistaken,’ he admitted, ‘but you’ve been up to such queer capers on the other two occasions I’ve encountered you that I thought it was another in the series. Now move over.’

  And when Lesley didn’t move he pushed her unceremoniously to one side and lifted Rita, putting her down on the settee. He put his thumb on the fainting girl’s pulse and turned to Miss Yelland.

  ‘Ring up Doctor Statham and ask him to come over as soon as he can. Then get Mrs. Piper to prepare a room. See there’s an electric blanket and hot water bottles. This girl has a temperature and needs to be kept warm.’

  The companion gulped, looked as if she would like to protest but daren’t and rushed from the room. Old Mrs. Trevendone began to cry, ‘Poor little girl, poor little girl,’ while Ricky, his face very pale; asked hoarsely, ‘Lesley, is she going to die?’

  ‘Of course not,’ Lesley returned robustly, though she had never felt so frightened in her life. ‘She’s probably got ‘flu. We’ll take her back to the hotel and get her to bed.’

  She looked at Blake Defontaine with hostile eyes. ‘We’ll go as soon as she comes round. I’ll ask the hotel proprietress about a doctor.’

  ‘Don’t talk like a fool,’ he told her brutally. ‘You can’t take her out in to this biting wind. Instead of standing there looking self-righteous, come along and get some blankets.’

  Lesley stood rigid until she saw Ricky’s face, his dark blue eyes wide and imploring. ‘All right,’ she said shortly. ‘Stay with her, Rick. If she comes round, see if she’ll drink some coffee.’

  ‘Do nothing of the kind,’ interrupted the intolerably interfering Mr. Defontaine. ‘Wait till the doctor comes and he’ll tell us what to give her.’

  Lesley took a deep breath but decided against further speech. The main thing was to get Rita warm, so blankets were a first priority. In the hall, Miss Yelland was standing by the big oak desk telephoning and a motherly-looking, middle-aged woman was coming from the other end.

  The man said something to her, and the woman turned to Lesley and beckoned her to follow up the further of the oak staircases. ‘I’m Mrs. Piper, the housekeeper, miss,’ she said with a pronounced Cornish accent. ‘I’ll soon have a room ready for you and the young lady, but I’ll give you a couple of blankets to put round her now. When she’s warm she’ll soon come round, I reckon.’

  Lesley followed her down a scarlet-carpeted corridor right to the end where there was a linen store. Mrs. Piper picked out two pale pink blankets, beautifully thick and soft, and bound with wide satin ribbon.

  ‘If you can manage the young lady, I’ll get the bedroom ready,’ she said. ‘Now don’t you worry, miss. We’ll soon have her cosy and warm.’

  Lesley thanked her and sped back along the corridor and down the stairs. Miss Yelland and Mr. Defontaine were engaged in a conversation by the big desk, but Lesley scarcely saw them. Rita was conscious now, but she was shivering from head to foot. Between them Lesley and Rick wrapped her in the blankets. Almost immediately Defontaine came back into the room, walking with that loose-limbed arrogance that Lesley resented without quite knowing why. Perhaps it was because he seemed so much at home here.

  He ignored the little group by the settee and went over to Mrs. Trevendone. ‘Take it easy, old lady,’ he said gently, and pressed her back into her chair. ‘Everything is being taken care of. I’m going to carry the girl upstairs and the doctor should be here very soon. Just relax. Miss Yelland will be here in a minute or two.’

  He was s
miling down at her, arranging the cushions behind her and generally letting Lesley know, or so it seemed to her, that Mrs. Trevendone was a very old lady and that their impetuous arrival might have a serious effect on her. After all, she was very old.

  Lesley bit her lip. She had been prepared to fight—indeed she still was—but this collapse of Rita’s put them in an awkward position. ‘They were under an obligation before they had stated their case. And there was going to be a fight. Blake Defontaine had made that clear by ridiculing their claim.

  Having settled Mrs. Trevendone, the man now approached the settee. ‘I’ll carry her upstairs,’ he said to Lesley. ‘You’d better stay with her up there until the doctor comes.’

  Lesley hadn’t the slightest intention of doing anything else, but she was anxious not to be beholden to this man in any way. Rita was conscious now and with Richard’s help she could get her upstairs.

  ‘Please don’t bother any more,’ she said stiffly. ‘Richard and I can manage.’

  ‘I dare say you can, but all the same, I’ll carry her up.’

  ‘Let him, Lesley,’ Richard whispered, his face pale with apprehension which he was trying to hide under a show of bravado and impudence. ‘He’s got plenty of brawn, as you can see, and he can’t really help his lack of brains.’

  Blake Defontaine gave him a considering stare and suddenly terrified, Lesley rushed into the breach. ‘Please carry her up,’ she said hurriedly. ‘It’s just that she might have something contagious and we don’t want to risk anyone else...’ Her voice died away as he transferred his gaze from Richard, which was what she had angled for.

  For a few seconds she braved the sword of his grey-eyed concentration. Then she gave him best and looked away, moving so that he could lift Rita. He wrapped the blankets more securely around her and said to Richard, ‘You stay here and keep Mrs. Trevendone company and you, madam, follow me.’

  It was that word ‘madam’ that again irritated Lesley beyond endurance. If she had had a weapon to hand she was sure she would have used it. Instead all she could do was to shoot him a glance of utter loathing from her big green eyes, a glance that was reciprocated in kind.

  Oddly enough that gave her a further feeling of shock. She wasn’t used to men looking at her like that. But then she hadn’t met anyone like Blake Defontaine.

  Mrs. Piper was waiting at the head of the further stairway and she indicated that they should follow her into a large twin-bedded room, which breathed an air of comfort and quiet luxury. It had cream brocade curtains, a dark rose-coloured wall-to-wall carpet, cream rugs by the beds, bed covers of patterned brocade in cream and rose pink, the brocade repeated on the chairs and the chaise-longue. Trevendone Manor might be Elizabethan in origin, but it was twentieth-century in the quiet luxury of its appointments.

  ‘There’s a really thick blanket underneath the sheet and the electric blanket to go on top,’ Mrs. Piper said in her rich west-country accent. ‘A maid will be up soon with hot water bottles. There, put her down, poor little body. Oh, my dear life, she do be in a way! I’m surprised, miss, you let ‘un come out on a cold morning like this be. Real unseasonable it be for our part of world. Bright and sunny it may be, but there’s a wind that would cut you in two.’

  Defontaine lowered Rita still in her cocoon of blankets.

  ‘Just take her boots and her coat off, but nothing else until the doctor comes,’ he ordered.

  Lesley swallowed. She had no intention of getting Rita properly to bed until the doctor had seen her. If he could arrange it she wanted to get the three of them back to St Benga Town or even back to Australia. Lesley’s enthusiasm for the Trevendone inheritance had suffered an eclipse. She was beginning to wish she had never heard of Cornwall and the legends of King Arthur and his Knights, of Camelot, the romance of Tristan and Yseult which in her mind had twined around Ralph Trevendone’s ancestral home of Trevendone Manor.

  To her relief Defontaine now took his departure and between them Mrs. Piper and Lesley made Rita as comfortable as they could. With the thick blankets and the hot water bottles the girl was soon much warmer, though she kept complaining about her sore throat.

  ‘Doctor will be here soon,’ Mrs. Piper comforted, and then to Lesley, ‘You’m come all the way from Australy, Miss Yelland was saying. It’s mortal hot there, isn’t it? I expect the poor little thing has caught a chill coming to these cold parts.’

  Doctor Statham proved to be fairly young and very thorough. ‘She has a virus infection. It may be influenza. Her throat is very inflamed and she has a temperature.’

  ‘We’re staying in a hotel, the King’s Arms at St Benga Town,’ Lesley said, looking at him in a worried fashion. ‘If we wrap her up well do you think we could take her back? Or is there a hospital or nursing home that would admit her?’

  The doctor shook his head very decidedly. ‘We can’t move her with that temperature. There’s plenty of room here and you’ll be able to do the simple nursing which is all that will be required. If there are complications we may have to think again, but I’m not anticipating any.’

  Lesley said, rather desperately, ‘We can’t stay here now Rita is ill. We’re strangers.’

  ‘But you’re Trevendones, cousins from Australia, I understood. Of course you’ll stay here. Why not?’

  Lesley could think of several reasons why not, among them the fact that so far the only Trevendone she had met had been that old lady of nearly ninety.

  The doctor scribbled a couple of prescriptions. ‘Somebody will go into St Benga Town for them.’ Lesley left Mrs. Piper helping Rita to undress’ while she followed the doctor out of the room.

  ‘I’d like her to start on the tablets as soon as possible,’ he said, going down the shallow oak treads with Lesley beside him. ‘Could your brother take your car and go into St Benga Town straight away?’

  Lesley swallowed. Blake Defontaine was at the foot of the stairs, looking up at them. ‘I’ll take the car,’ she said hurriedly. ‘Rick isn’t seventeen yet and has no licence.’

  The doctor said, as he approached Defontaine, ‘This young woman has been talking of taking her sister back to St Benga Town to that dump of a hotel. Utter nonsense, isn’t it! Of course they can all stay here, can’t they?’

  Ironically then, it was from ‘the Enemy’ that the twins and Lesley from Australia were invited to stay in the ancestral home of the Trevendones. For in response to the doctor’s remark, he said curtly, ‘If you think your patient should be kept in bed, doctor, then she must certainly stay here until she has recovered. And naturally her sister and brother must stay too.’

  ‘And Blake,’ the doctor went on affably, ‘could you get someone to fetch these prescriptions? I want my patient on the tablets as soon as possible.’

  Defontaine held out his hand. ‘I’ll send someone immediately. Is there anything else she requires, doctor?’

  ‘No, the tablets should do the trick—and keeping her in bed warm and with plenty of hot drinks. I’ll be in again tomorrow, Miss Trevendone, so stop looking so anxious. Goodbye for now.’ He turned from Lesley. ‘By the way, Blake, I wanted to ask you...’

  Lesley murmured goodbye and sped in the direction of the small drawing room. Mrs. Trevendone was lying back in her chair having another catnap and her companion Miss Yelland was enjoying another cup of coffee.

  ‘Where is my brother?’ Lesley asked, looking round, a sudden unreasoning panic tearing her heart.

  ‘Mr. Defontaine sent him out to quieten your dog,’ the other replied repressively. ‘Really, it’s very worrying for everybody.’

  It was. Lesley couldn’t have agreed more. She bit her lip. She’d forgotten all about Dingo. He must have gone mad, having to wait alone in the Mini all this time. And what a problem he was going to be. Everything that could go wrong seemed to be doing so.

  Lesley heaved a sigh, and went back into the hall, hesitating slightly in the doorway because she did not want to meet the doctor, or rather his companion, again. But actually t
hey had both gone. She despised herself for being so feeble. She didn’t know who Blake Defontaine was and she didn’t really care. To Rita, Richard and herself, he would always be ‘the Enemy All the same it was the foulest piece of luck to run into him again here, of all places.

  She pulled open the great door and saw Richard, still pale and pinched with cold walking round the courtyard with Dingo on the lead. As soon as Lesley approached, the puppy began to bark a welcoming ‘Hello, hello’ and to bound towards her, almost dragging Ricky with him.

  ‘Pipe down, Dingo, and keep down, for pete’s sake!’ Lesley exhorted, but of course he took not the slightest notice and continued to leap towards her, yelping vociferously.

  Ricky glanced round nervously. ‘Can’t you stop ‘him making this row?’ he enquired, unreasonably in Lesley’s opinion, for Dingo was the twins’ dog, not hers, and right from the beginning she had set her face against adopting him.

  ‘That fellow, “the Enemy.” You should have heard what he said when he came in and told me to come out and stop our dog raising hell. He’s a Limey at his worst, isn’t he? Superior, sarcastic and “don’t-come-within-a-yard-of-me, I-might-catch-something-from-you,” sort of devil.’

  Lesley frowned. ‘You have to give the devil his due,’ she pointed out. ‘He’s sending someone for Rita’s prescriptions to the chemist in St Benga Town and he’s said we’re all to stay here till she’s better. And Ricky, don’t you think it might be a good thing to drop those words “Limey” and “Pommie” now we’re in England? We don’t want to be offensive just for the sake of it.’

  ‘I shall never mind being offensive to “the Enemy”, said Ricky stubbornly. ‘As to that prescription of Rita’s, he isn’t in any great hurry to send anyone. Here he comes ... and I’m off. Come on, Dingo old fellow.’