Fortune's Lead (16 page)

‘Scrubbing. As you can see. I have,’ I told him tartly, ‘enough experience—from my past in the slums—to be able to clean a floor when something’s been spilt on it. Luckily for you, since I don’t suppose you can even boil an egg, I can make omelettes too. The dogs have eaten the supper.’

‘I thought they were looking rather sheepish when I met them outside,’ Kevin said calmly, and came further into the room as I finished the last square of floor and got up from my knees. ‘As a matter of fact, so can I make omelettes. Probably not as good as yours, though. Why isn’t Essie helping you do that? It might do her good to occupy her free hand occasionally.’

‘She’s gone out to supper,’ I said curtly, and saw him frown.

‘Who with?’

‘Several people, as far as I know. Those Tetley children. And,’ I said deliberately, ‘Michael Chace, I expect.’

‘Your friend Michael? Hm.’

‘
Not
my friend Michael,’ I retorted—and remembered with annoyance Essie’s account of why Michael had been described so deliberately as Charlotte’s Friend. It seemed time I had that one out with Kevin. I looked up at him challengingly. ‘Michael never was a particular friend of mine—it was you who chose to make out he was! See how quickly you can think up a—a respectable reason why!’

‘A very respectable reason—if you don’t like being gossiped about. Tongues always wag in small communities,’ Kevin said with maddening calm, ‘and unless you want people to speculate on the wrong grounds, it’s a good idea to give them something else to think about. So that’s what you’ve been bearing a grudge over, is it? I thought perhaps you were still—’

‘You mean because after all I am living here, as Essie would say?’ I asked dangerously, interrupting him. ‘Don’t you think it might have occurred to
anyone
that I’m doing a job? Or do you assume that everyone’s got minds like yours?’

‘So you
are
still on that! I did apologize. What do you want me to do—grovel?’ he asked, looking amused enough to make me really angry with him. ‘I’d only met you very briefly then, remember? We’ve seen more of each other since. As I’ve told you before, you have a very unforgiving nature. Let’s start again from the beginning. I’m sure you didn’t pick Henry up. In fact I’ve no doubt
he
did any picking up required—which makes it comforting to realize he has better taste than sometimes appears. However. You’ll have to admit that gossips do gossip, particularly about decorative young women, and—anyway, to get off that subject.’ He seemed to decide to get off it rather abruptly, and a frown came into his eyes. ‘I’m not sure it’s wise to throw Essie and Michael Chace together just the same. She’s—’

‘You wouldn’t be protecting your interests by any chance, would you?’ I asked icily.

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘You know perfectly well what I mean. And of all the—immoral, opportunist ideas I ever heard, that’s the worst! Your—your two-prong scheme to make sure of getting everything for yourself is—is enough to make anyone sick!’

He stared at me for a moment, and it was plain I had hit home somewhere: there was the definite beginning of anger in his eyes. ‘What,’ he asked coldly, ‘do you mean by that? What—what scheme am I supposed to be nurturing, to make you speak to me in those terms?’

‘You know perfectly well! I didn’t realize, when you talked about
scaring
me away, just what the position was—but I know now! No wonder you were so alarmed,’ I said, thoroughly angry, ‘but if ever I saw a case of judging others by yourself, it’s that! Why should Essie marry you, if she doesn’t feel like it! And it may surprise you to know that I can’t imagine any sane female feeling like it—particularly when it’s for the avowed and declared reason that Henry’s going to leave her his money even though some legal angle forces him to leave
you
his land!’

Kevin, I saw, was breathing rather hard. He looked a little as if he might pick me up and shake me till my teeth rattled. I took care not to back away. After a stifled moment, he said in a very controlled voice, ‘Why—should—Essie
—what
?”

‘Marry you. You heard me the first time. She could pick and choose, looking as she does, even if she hadn’t a penny—’

‘
If
it interests you,’ Kevin said tightly, ‘I can think of few things I’d like to do less than marry my cousin. Not that anyone asked you to interfere. You haven’t the brains of a pea-goose, or it might occur to you that she’s little more than a child, and was brought up as if she was my sister, what’s more. Where you got your ridiculous ideas from beats me, but if anyone’s judging others, you take first prize! What sort of a person you think I am is a matter of indifference to me, but—’

‘I got my ideas from Essie, who told me herself that she’d have to marry you,’ I retorted—though I felt a little as if the ground was quaking under my feet. ‘She said it was because of the entail, and—’

‘If Essie’s got ideas like that in mind, the sooner she’s disabused of them the better. And if Henry put them there,
he
can get rid of them too—it’s ridiculous! He may have had one of his Machiavellian notions about it at some time or another—but if he’d ever bothered to study his daughter, or me, he’d soon have seen it was out of the question!’ Kevin said trenchantly. He glared at me. ‘You, Miss Armitage, seem remarkably interested in entails. I’d gained a different impression of you, but perhaps I was right the first time! And I shouldn’t be surprised if you’d invented this whole thing—because no one with even an apology for a mind would ever have thought of it!’

I opened my mouth furiously—but at that moment a bell buzzed from a box high up on the kitchen wail. A red card flicked down to show that Henry was ringing from his room. He had probably forgotten it was Mrs. Mott’s evening off, and that Sarah Ann had gone home for the evening too. I satisfied myself with giving Kevin a glare—for the moment—and collected myself to go up and see what Henry wanted. Kevin moved too, so that we both stopped dead in front of the door and scowled at each other.

‘I’ll go,’ he said curtly. ‘You’re not one of the staff.’

‘That’s just what I am. For the moment,’ I added, as icily as possible, and swept past him to run up the back stairs, the quickest way from the kitchen to the gallery. Before I reached Henry’s door, I tried to compose my face into a normal expression. I was seething—but I was also miserable, to a quite exceptional degree. When I went in, I found Henry had indeed forgotten that Mrs. Mott was off, and was highly apologetic for having summoned me. He was looking a great deal better, almost his normal self, and only wanted his coffee-tray taking away. I tried to sound as cheerful as he did, and removed it for him. As I went down the stairs I was mentally girding my loins for a further set-to with Kevin—but when I reached the kitchen it was empty, and a moment later I heard his car start up outside, and zoom away with an unusual amount of noise.

I discovered I didn’t feel very much like eating anything. The only thing I felt like was crying my eyes out. The discovery annoyed me very much. I hoped that if Kevin had gone off to seek consolation with Rosalind, he would show her enough of his arrogance and bad temper to make her see through his personable exterior. I remembered that I would have to sit up until Essie came in—having assured Mrs. Mott that I would take care of everything—and after going upstairs once again to make sure Henry had all he wanted, I stalked off into the library to sit and read a book.

The book didn’t make much sense, so I sat and wished bitterly that I’d never come to Thurlanger House. And that Henry hadn’t just smiled at me sweetly, and said how glad he was I was here.

CHAPTER VII

Henry was feeling well enough to start planning again. He was all apology for what he called his ‘lapse in health ‘and seemed to feel that I needed extra attention to make up for his partial absence from the household. Nevertheless, with the weather settling into a cold wetness he would have been ill advised to go out, as I had to remind him—and I reminded him too that his doctor had told him to keep early hours, and rest at some time during the day. He looked a little frail, and more thoughtful than usual. I found myself keeping an eye on him as if he were my patient—and though he reproached me for trying to cosset him, he accepted it.

I began to see even more clearly why he hadn’t wanted the family to know he was importing a fully-trained nurse into his household: he plainly wasn’t as strong as he might have been, and with Kevin living here already the gesture might have looked exactly as he had feared. And perhaps keeping an eye on him
was
part of my job, after all. It made it difficult to say bluntly that I would be better elsewhere ... particularly since his new plans, which included me, took in a dance to be given at Thurlanger House just before Christmas, and other entertainments even further ahead.

If Kevin had spoken to Henry after his angry scene with me, I wasn’t told about it. After a long, miserable, and angry night, I wondered what would happen next time Kevin and I came face to face. What did happen was that he looked through me. And went on looking through me. I realized abruptly that, distrust him though I might, I had grown accustomed to his being civil. Lately, too, he had been often about, and I had got used to his presence: now he was less often to be seen. It was a relief, since my cowardly instincts told me it would be better to be where Henry was if Kevin was in—for protection. It wasn’t that I was afraid of Kevin, I told myself hastily, but he had certainly shown himself capable of getting into a towering temper. Lurking nervously near Henry, I admitted to myself that I had probably given him cause. My reward was a frozen treatment which didn’t make me feel inclined to apologize—and I reminded myself repeatedly that he had been the first to start this mood of distrust which existed between us.

Essie, alone amongst the household, seemed both healthy and happy. She still grumbled about not being allowed to ride, but she was finding plenty to do with herself these days. She even expressed a reasonable willingness to go to a party given by some people called Carlock (reciprocal invitations had been coming in since the Thurlanger cocktail party) and I was told firmly by Henry that the invitation included me too. Since he couldn’t go out himself I supposed, rather drearily, that I ought to chaperone Essie. I went to help her get dressed—more complicated with her injured shoulder, though it was recovering nicely—and felt glad I had taken my chance of buying her more than one dress at Henning’s boutique. She was, externally, as impervious to her own beauty as ever and talked about her ponies while I was getting her dressed, until as I was putting the last pin in her hair something seemed to remind her of an earlier conversation.

‘—anyway, I’m blowed if I’ll let Poppy exercise Cora another time, she’s got terrible hands. Oh, by the way, Shah, you were right about that property thing. Kev told me himself.’

‘Oh, he—he did?’

‘Mm. He said I was the last person he’d ever want to marry, so I’d better get it out of my mind.’ Essie chuckled. ‘You’d have thought I had two heads to hear him! He was in a shocking rage. Maybe Pa said something, I dunno. Anyway, it’s cleared up. And according to Kev, he’s told Pa before that the thing to do is to try to break the entail. Though that lands me with it, or something, and I’d rather be at Ballyneelan any day.’ She didn’t for once sound slightly wistful when she mentioned Ballyneelan, but she gave me a quick glance through the mirror, and said curiously, ‘You and Kev don’t get on very well, do you? He’s all right really, you know. When you get used to him!’

‘No—no doubt.’ I tried hard not to feel that I really did owe Kevin an apology. Small chance I would get of making it, anyway. After a second, pursuing a thought of my own, I said, ‘I—I don’t have to go on promising to stay here, then, do I?’

‘Oh yes, you do,’ Essie said firmly, and swung round to fix a pair of reproachful eyes on me. ‘You can’t rat on me! Pa might import some dreary female instead! Please, Shah—you know you get on terribly well with everyone, except Kev, and he doesn’t matter anyway! If you go we might even get Aunt Cath descending on us from Epsom, and though I don’t always agree with Pa, she
really
is the end! She’ll start
match-making
for me, of all things, and she’ll irritate Pa, which you don’t. You couldn’t do that to him when he’s still not too well, now could you? It’d probably kill him!’

She had a mischievous look in her eye which showed she was aware of her own exaggeration, but I thought grimly that she was just as good as her father was at providing incontrovertible reasons why one should do just what they wanted. I swallowed, wondered why I felt so subdued, and said in a stifled voice, ‘Oh, all right, then. But—oh, never mind. And if we’re talking about match-making, at least you know now that you can marry who you like.’

‘Not for years yet, thanks,’ Essie said cheerfully, and pulled a face. ‘At least there was one thing about Kev, he wouldn’t have got sentimental! Now then, I think I’m ready. It’s a pity my bruise doesn’t show, since it’s still a beaut—practically had Diamond’s hoof-mark in the middle of it! Pete Raglan says he’s always been a kicker, but he can certainly go. I s’pose we’ll be able to squash up in the front seat of Kev’s car without someone saying I’m going to get damaged again, won’t we?’

I stopped dead in the middle of the room, eyeing her uncertainly. ‘Ganner’s driving us, isn’t he?’

‘No, Kev’s decided to come. Didn’t he tell you?’
Essie enquired from the depths of a cupboard, where she was fishing awkwardly for a coat. I spared a moment to wonder if the careful work I had done on her hair would need redoing, but she emerged unruffled. ‘What’s the matter—are you going to sneeze, or something?’

‘I’m starting a cold,’ I said through the handkerchief I had put to my nose. ‘I—I feel pretty grim, as a matter of fact. I think perhaps I won’t come. I mean, if you’ve got Kevin to escort you, I don’t have to, do I? Your—your father only said I ought to because—’

‘Did he? How conventional of him! It’s ... oh! If it’s because Kev’s coming, I can tell him to stop being beastly to you, you know!’

‘It’s nothing to do with Kevin,’ I said with dignity, taking care to sound as nasal as possible. ‘It’s just that I’d rather not go out if I don’t have to. You—you don’t mind going without me, do you?’

‘Suit yourself,’ Essie said, but she looked at me curiously before adding, ‘He’ll be downstairs waiting by now, so I’ll go ahead and tell him you’re not coming.’ With that she left me, and a moment later the sound of the front door shutting told me that they had both gone out without any attempts being made to make me change my mind.

I spent the evening with Henry. I had to explain that I thought I was starting a cold, and it gave me an excuse to go to bed early—and get away from the rather searching looks he gave me, and his concern that I might not be feeling well. I thought, bitterly, that I really couldn’t be said to be doing any kind of job here at all ... and Henry would insist on treating me as if I was a cross between a favoured guest, and a member of the family. It was ungrateful of me to want things to do: he could hardly have been nicer to me. If only I didn’t feel that he was displaying too much of a tendency to depend on me, to count on my being here for an indefinite length of time—to talk as if I was almost a permanency at Thurlanger.

Between him and Essie, I was forced by my conscience not to say I would like to go back on the original bargain, and leave to look for a nursing job.

I heard Kevin come in, quite late, and move around quietly in the room along the passage from mine. Buying my head in the pillow, I thought resentfully that he
would
have to be right—and me to be wrong. But he
had
started it. Furthermore, I thought with more resolution, his manners were atrocious, and some of the names he had called me made it quite out of the question to feel I owed him an apology.

Henry made such a fuss of me next day that I found myself wondering uneasily if I had given him grounds for sounding so affectionate. For once it wasn’t raining, and I made out that fresh air was good for incipient colds, and took myself off in my car to work off my confusion. It must have been a connection of ideas that made me find myself aiming for Tyzet and Michael’s cottage—but when I had parked outside it I told myself that there had been quite long enough for him to get over any embarrassments, and it was merely civil to call and see him. He looked, I thought, a little surprised to find me on the doorstep—but I made the excuse that I had been passing, and had wanted to know whether he had collected up any interesting books on Suffolk that I could read. He found me one, obligingly, and after a small hesitation offered me a cup of tea. We had a slightly stilted conversation, during which I discovered that he knew far more about the local families than I did—such as that the Tetleys weren’t very well off, the Carlocks had two daughters who were engaged to be married, and the Laidlaws had more money than they knew what to do with (almost as much as the Thurlangers, Michael said with a deprecating smile). Because I could feel, depressingly, that he was still feeling awkward with me, when I got up to go I took the plunge.

‘I haven’t been avoiding you—at least I have—b-but it was a bit difficult at the cocktail party, wasn’t it? I mean, you must have wondered why we were taken for such old friends, but it really wasn’t my doing!’

He studied me for a moment, and then gave me a pleasant smile. ‘I’m sure it wasn’t. It’s all right, I quite understand. In fact, I think we both understand, don’t we? Is Kevin Thurlanger going to marry that riding-school girl, by the way?’

‘I really wouldn’t know,’ I said lightly, making an effort not to bristle at the sound of Kevin’s name.

‘I’ve seen him out and about a bit lately. He’s only a nephew, of course, isn’t he?’

‘Yes,’ I said shortly, remembered it was Michael I was talking to, and smiled at him. ‘It—was nice of you to keep Essie out of the way while she was in such a rage about not being able to ride—she was rubbing everyone up the wrong way, you know!’

‘It was nice of you to bring her.’

‘Well, with both of you not being able to ride—’I remembered, belatedly, about his ankle, and glanced down at it. ‘But I suppose you can again now—is your ankle completely better now the plaster’s off?’

‘I’ve promised Essie not to ride until she can—as a bargain. But it’s useful to be able to drive.’ He looked at me, gave me another smile, and asked, ‘How are you getting on?’

‘Oh—oh, fine. Henry hasn’t been well, but he’s getting better now, and—but I expect you know all that, since you’ve been with Essie. I’ll be going now. Thanks for the tea.’

‘You’re welcome.’ He opened the door for me, and added, ‘We’ll keep to our own sides of the fence. But with luck we may see each other some other time. ’Bye for now, Charlotte. And—er—let me know if I can help
you
, some time!’

I wasn’t sure what he meant—and his remark about keeping to our own sides of the fence had sounded a little rude, as if he thought I
was
seeking him out deliberately—but I gave him a polite smile, thinking I had probably misunderstood something, and left him. I wasn’t quite sure that I liked him so much this time: he had had an odd hard look in his eyes once or twice. I dismissed the thought, deciding I wasn’t in the mood to like anyone very much, and drove back to Thurlanger. Thurlanger—and Henry being charming, and
saying with
anxiety that he hoped I hadn’t made my cold worse, and that I really must take care of myself. I tried very hard to remind myself that gypsies couldn’t really see into the future, and told myself that if I thought Henry was getting too fond of me, I was obviously suffering from conceit ... I had been at Thurlanger House two months, but that wasn’t long enough for anyone to get fond of
anyone.

Henry was getting into full cry over plans for the dance. Since it was to be given in his own house, he brushed aside objections over his health, saying that he wouldn’t have to move away from his own central heating, and that anyway by the planned date in almost three weeks’ time he would be as fit as a fiddle. He produced a long list of people to be invited—and told me very pleasantly that he’d like to keep strictly to it, something which made me look at the list closely. It seemed to contain all the names with which I was by now familiar: the only one I could find missing was Kevin’s Rosalind. Looking again, I realized that Michael’s name wasn’t on the list either—though why should it be? But he had, from Essie’s conversation, been very much part of her particular group lately ... I wondered again with some uneasiness whether Henry thought Michael should be kept away from it, and pushed the thought aside quickly. At least I had plenty to do for once. There were invitations to write: a suitable dress for Essie to be thought of; arrangements to be made with caterers, because the dance was to be on too lavish a scale to be left to Mrs. Mott. I busied myself, and tried not to notice that Kevin was still behaving impersonally, and avoiding me. If he hadn’t been, I might have asked him politely whether he knew Rosalind had been left off the invitation list. At least, I thought I might.

Essie and I went into Henning for her dress—this time being made for her. She displayed resignation at the thought, but beneath it I sensed that she was getting used to the convention which required her to dress up occasionally and ‘do the proper’ as she called it, pulling one of her grimaces. I wondered whether the attention she was getting from James Tetley, Simon Carlock, Peter Raglan, and most other young men in the district was having any effect on her at all. (She liked Peter Raglan, I knew, but mainly because he was such a daring rider.) She let fall mischievously that once ‘all this’ (the dance) was over, she’d have done her bit, and Pa couldn’t say she hadn’t—and that he couldn’t say she wasn’t fit enough to ride if he saw her dancing all evening. I smiled at her, and asked,