Enemy Lover (2 page)

She glanced sideways at him, at his dark, aloof features, and she decided he had little or nothing of old Angus about him. Angus had a jutting jaw and a fierce blue eye, and a lot of red in his hair still. The unknown Giffard beside her was an entirely different proposition, far less predictable, but at the same time much more conventional. And as yet she did not know that he was a doctor, who could scarcely afford to be unconventional.

“Giffard’s Prior is the family house, and Sir Angus has lived there for years. ..”he went on.

"Sir Angus—?”

“Yes.” He glanced sideways at her for a moment . “You didn’t know that?”

“I’ve told you, I knew little or nothing about old Angus, as we called him.”

“You didn’t even know he was a rich man?”

She was obviously completely amazed.

“If he was—if he is!—why did he live in such a state of poverty? His cottage was utterly comfortless ... He didn’t even have enough to eat! I tried to feed him up during that week I looked after him.”

“So you looked after him for a week, did you ?” he said a little wonderingly, and it struck her that his voice had softened. “Well, it may turn out to be a rewarding week for you, but at the moment I

can do nothing but warn you. My uncle Angus has always been slightly eccentric, and his relatives have had a good deal to put up with from him. You can’t expect relatives to appreciate being swept to one side, and a complete outsider—”

But they had arrived at the house, and he broke off as he swept in at the drive gates. There was a blaze of light from the house itself, streaming down the drive to meet them, so that to Tina it seemed strange and bewildering with midnight not much more than a quarter of an hour away. As they came to rest before a handsome portico she could hear the chimes of a distant stable clock shattering the stillness, claiming that in actual fact midnight was only a quarter of an hour off.

The front door was flung open, and figures appeared at the head of the steps. The man who had driven Tina for fifty miles with calm capability, and without revealing very much about himself, alighted and opened the car door for her; and she found herself being urged quite gently up the steps. She also heard him say in a quiet, warning voice:

“Don’t let them over-awe you. They will if they can ... You’ll just have to remember that you’ve been sent for, and you’re not here to gratify any whim of your own.” And then his hand halted her progress for an instant. “By the way, I never asked you... You are Miss Clementina Mary Andrews, aren’t you?”

“Yes, of course.

He nodded in a relieved fashion.

“I don’t know why I didn’t ask you. I suppose it was because you fitted the picture I’d been given of you so well.”

Tina had no time to ask him what sort of picture someone had painted of her—very likely old Angus himself—for they were met at the head of the steps by an agitated elderly lady who promptly seized hold of the dark man’s arm, and completely ignored Tina.

“I don’t think there’s much time!” she said. “He’s been asking for you...” Still she ignored Tina. “You’d better go up at once. Dr. Ambrose is there, and Philip—”

“And Angus?” he asked.

“Angus arrived about a couple of hours ago. He’s in the library. Naturally, he’s upset.”

The dark man nodded thoughtfully, and Tina felt bewildered. She felt her companion of the last few hours put his hand on her arm, and then he spoke almost sternly to the elderly woman in the handsome dark evening-dress, whose white hair provided such an effective contrast:

“Look after Miss Andrews, Aunt Clare,” he requested her. “She’s been whisked here at top speed, and she must be feeling tired.”

But his Aunt Clare merely looked surprised.

“Miss Andrews can wait in the drawing-room,” she said. “It’s not at all likely she’ll be wanted now, and you’ve wasted a lot of time. But I’ll see to it that someone takes her a tray of tea.”

A young woman in the background—also beautifully gowned, and as slender as a wraith—said tonelessly:

“I’ll see to it, Mamma,” and melted into the shadows of the great, sombre hall that not even crystal candelabra could render less sombre.

Tina was shown into the drawing-room, where she sat in a satin-backed chair amidst other elegant examples of the same type of furniture for nearly an hour, when someone tapped on the door and a maidservant brought her a pot of tea and some sandwiches on a silver tray. The girl withdrew immediately, as if she had received orders not to linger, and once more Tina was left alone, with the intense silence in the room pressing on her as if it were a living thing, the satin-damask draperies that flowed before the windows imparting to her a sensation of being smothered in their folds, while the thick carpet deadened even the sound of her footsteps when she attempted to cross the room.

She examined books and pictures, delicate examples of bric-a-brac, the contents of one or two china cabinets. The room was furnished in an old- fashioned manner, but everything in it was either costly or valuable. She knew that. The portrait above the fireplace was remarkably like old Angus when he was younger, without bristling whiskers and unkempt hair. As the hours passed his intense blue eyes looked down at her, watching every movement she made, smiling a little occasionally... or so she thought.

There was a chiming clock in the hall—probably a grandfather clock—and it kept her informed of the flight of time. One o’clock, two o’clock, three o’clock ... At four she parted the curtains and looked out into the darkness. Flakes of snow were fluttering against the panes, and snow was already lying deep in the shrubberies. She could ascertain that much in the light that streamed from the drawing-room windows. It was too early yet for any flush of dawn to show in the sky; too early for cocks to crow... And the whole world was completely hushed and still.

She shivered in the slight draught from the window, and went

back to the fire. No one had been in to build it up, and it was not much more than a pile of embers in the grate, but the room was warm with central heating. She stretched herself out on the rug and rested her head in the lap of a chair... If only the house wasn’t so silent. Somewhere in it old Angus was lying, critically ill. Why didn’t they let her see him? She had come all this way to see him.

Once she thought she heard a car drive up to the house, and then it drove away again. Once, between sleeping and waking, she thought that a man put his head in at the door and looked hard at her... He had fiercely red hair, and his eyes were a cold, hard blue. They were old Angus’s eyes, and yet they were not Angus’s eyes.

She fell fast asleep about five, and it was broad daylight when she awakened. Several people were in the room, and one was actually shaking her awake. She thought instantly of the school day that might have begun, and sprang up in confusion.

“You’ll have to take me back! I’ll never be back in time!”

The dark Giffard who had brought her to the house looked almost as concerned as she did.

“I’d no idea you were spending the night in here,” he apologised. “I understood that my aunt had put you into a room.” He looked with sharp rebuke at his aunt, and then back again at the girl who was still bewilderedly rubbing the sleep out of her eyes, and endeavouring to settle the disorder of her clothes at the same time. “Really, Aunt Clare, this is too much!” he exclaimed. “Miss Andrews has had to spend the night most uncomfortably...”

But his aunt was weeping into a handkerchief, and when she lifted her eyes for an instant it was to glance at Tina in such a vague fashion that she might not even have existed.

“It’s no use blaming me,” she protested. “I didn’t want the girl brought here. And you could have saved yourself the bother of bringing her. Poor Angus was never in a fit enough condition to see her.”

“But he asked to see her.”

“I know, Alaine, I know! Don’t we all know that he asked to see her?... And don’t we all know why!” The slim young woman who had moved and looked like a wraith in the hall was also crying fitfully into a handkerchief. Alaine turned to her as if his nerves were on edge.

“For goodness’ sake, Juliet, is that really necessary?” he demanded. “Uncle Angus is dead, and you had no time at all for him when he was alive... None of us had! So why are you so upset now?” The door opened, and someone else came into the room. He

was taller than Alaine, and possibly several years younger, and even although he was unshaved and his dinner-jacket had a crumpled appearance, and it was quite obvious he was far from in a good humour, the quality of his looks affected Tina with a queer sensation of shock. She knew that she had seen him before—in the night—and it was the redness of his hair and the blueness of his eyes that impressed her then. Now she was impressed by the arrogant perfection of his features, the coldness of his jaw and the hardness of his mouth, that somehow left unmarred the sheer masculine beauty of it.

He ignored the rest of them and looked at Tina.

“So you’re still here,” he commented. “Why doesn’t someone send you home? Old Angus isn’t alive any more and you won’t have any more opportunities to turn his ageing head. You must have worked pretty hard during the short time that you knew him-”

“Angus!” his aunt exclaimed, as if even she was slightly shocked by his outburst.

But he ignored her.

“And to look at you you’re nothing more than the little school-marm we know you to be. A conniving little school-marm from some isolated village school!” The cold contempt in his merciless blue eyes made Tina cringe. She had never encountered anything like it in her life. “But there’s no fool quite like an old fool, and old Angus was a bachelor all his life—”

Alaine didn’t merely order him to be quiet, he ordered him from the room.

“Until you know how to behave in a house that has just been deprived of its master, and can remember you’re supposed to be a gentleman, not an oaf!”

Alaine’s tone was arctic, his dark eyes glinted as if steel lay in their depths.

“Go to bed, if you’re tired, but whatever you do, go! Miss Andrews has spent the night in here, and no one even thought to keep the fire in for her.”

“Miss Andrews was warmed by the thought of the future,” Angus enunciated with obvious difficulty, and then turned and strode from the room.

White-faced, Tina turned to Alaine.

“What does he mean?” The clouds of sleep were still whirling in her brain. She didn’t merely feel at a disadvantage; she felt as if she was up against something that was quite beyond her, and that the others held the key to a mystery that was utterly baffling. “Why did

he look at me like that—?”

“Don’t worry, my dear,” Alaine said gently, patting her shoulder. “We’ve all been up all night, and we’re none of us particularly fresh. Sir Angus died about four o’clock, and it didn’t seem worth going to bed after that. Aunt Clare, you’d better go to bed.”

His aunt groped her way to the door.

“I think I will. Everything’s been such a shock over the last few days... Juliet, you’d better go to bed, too.”

But Juliet had stopped crying, and her expression was sullen. She had the same aubum-tinged hair as her brother, the same nearly perfect features, but her complexion had the strange whiteness and delicacy of a hot-house camellia. She looked like a hothouse plant that had been carefully nurtured all its days, and now in her twenty-second year she was beginning to suspect that there was another side to life. It carried its shocks and disappointments as well as pandered to her pleasures.

“I don’t think I want to,” she answered sullenly. “I’ll go and find

Angus and we’ll have some breakfast together. I suppose we’re still entitled to breakfast in this house—?”

Alaine looked at her long and peculiarly.

“If you want to be helpful,” he suggested, “you can rouse up one of the maids and get her to provide breakfast for us all. Miss Andrews will need some before she leaves.”

But Tina said swiftly: “No, thank you, I’d rather leave now, if you don’t mind. I can’t possibly be back in time to begin a normal school day, but I’d like to get away from here. And perhaps I could telephone before I leave? Someone will have to be informed of the reason why I disappeared so suddenly last night.”

“Of course,” he answered. “And we’ll stop and have breakfast on the way back. I’m afraid you’ve received very little hospitality in this house, but the circumstances were unusual. My aunt isn’t normally inhospitable... And unfortunately Sir Angus was in no condition to see you once we got here last night.” She glanced round the handsome room, that was beginning to oppress her unbearably.

“I was an intruder at the wrong time,” she said quietly. “I should never have been brought here at all. I can’t think why I was brought here... Sir Angus and I hardly knew one another.”

Alaine Giffard was silent.

She gazed at him with sudden earnestness, too weary to drive home the point, yet feeling it had to be made.

“You believe me, don’t you?” she asked. “Your relatives obviously don’t—” ignoring the fact that Juliet was still in the room with them—“but it’s true. The friendship between Sir Angus and myself was a brief affair that might never have happened at all, but for the fact that he needed help one night. And now he’s dead, and I’m sorry because I liked him . . . the little I knew of him. He was the loneliest man I’ve ever met, and yet apparently he need not have been lonely at all, for he was not alone in the world as I imagined. He wasn’t even poor.”

She glanced up at the portrait above the fireplace.

“That was him when he was younger, I suppose?” The fierce blue eyes seemed to be watching her with a curious, fixed eagerness. “I’m sorry it’s over,” she whispered. “I’m sorry we won’t meet again, Sir Angus!”

“But Sir Angus’s interest in you isn’t over,” Alaine told hier, oddly, as he guided her to the door. “You’ll find that out in a week or so. You may be inclined to agree with those nearest and dearest to him that it was a somewhat excessive interest for such a fleeting impact on his life!”

Barely a fortnight later Tina understood what he meant. She received a letter from Sir Angus’s solicitors informing her that she was the sole beneficiary under Sir Angus Giffard’s will. His nephew inherited his title, but the property—which was not entailed—was bequeathed to her. She was also to become the possessor of his investments, his two cars, a large amount of family jewellery, and a London house.