Garth of Tregillis (9 page)

‘Well, at any rate he might have been terrified out of his wits.

How could you do such a horribly cruel thing to a little boy you’ve never even seen before?’

She scuffed the slated floor with the top of her shoe. ‘I’ve heard about him,’ she said darkly. ‘Uncle Garth has gone to stay with his mother in France. They’ve a castle there with turrets and moats and torture chambers. I’d love to see it—especially the torture chambers, but he wouldn’t take me.’

So Melinda, young as she was, was already suffering from a bad attack of jealousy concerning her beloved Uncle Garth!

‘Why don’t you make friends with Emile?’ I suggested. ‘He’s having something to eat now in the schoolroom. You could say you’re sorry, perhaps, and make friends with him.’

She considered this and then nodded. ‘I’ll make friends, if you like—anyway I’m hungry.’

I took this as a small victory and she led the way up several flights of stairs and into a rather shabby room at the back of the house. It was evident that generations of Seatons had done their lessons there, for it had a well-used look. The table was ink-stained and scarred and a huge brass fire-guard stood in front of the empty chimneyplace. Through the open door of one of the tall green-painted cupboards I could see a broken ball-frame and untidy bundles of tattered and ancient textbooks and exercise books.

As soon as we entered the young girl who was providing for Emile departed with an air of relief.

Melinda surveyed the boy who was demolishing a large portion of cream-cake. ‘You needn’t eat all of the cake,’ she said severely. ‘You’re a very greedy boy.’

Emile, who appeared to hold no rancour, looked guiltily at the remaining portion. ‘There’s quite a big piece left for you,’ he remarked courteously.

Melinda, without answering, sulkily slid into a chair.

All might have gone well if Emile hadn’t said thoughtfully,

‘When Uncle Garth comes back he will take me sailing.’

Melinda, who had helped herself to a glass of milk and was on the point of reaching for a portion of cake, held her hand in mid-air, as though shocked into immobility by his words. ‘Uncle Garth!’ she said sharply.

‘Why do you call him that? He’s not your uncle, he’s mine.’

‘That is so,’ Emile agreed. ‘But I think he’s going to marry Mama, so I suppose I’d better call him Uncle now. Later it will be proper to call him Papa, I suppose.’

An ominous silence held Melinda at these words. Her pale glittering eyes surveyed him with a basilisk glare. ‘It’s a lie,’ she said shrilly. ‘You’re making it up. Uncle Garth isn’t going to marry anyone, but when I grow up I’ll keep house for him. He won’t need a wife if I take care of Tregillis.’

‘But at home I’ve heard people say it, when they thought I wasn’t listening,’ Emile said reasonably. ‘I should quite like him as a papa: then I should have two homes, Chalandon and Tregillis.’

‘You horrible, horrible boy!’ Melinda screeched. ‘Uncle Garth will never, never be your papa and you’ll never live here, ’cos I won’t let you!’

‘If Uncle Garth marries Mama you won’t be able to prevent me, because Tregillis does not belong to you. You’re only staying here while your mama and papa are abroad. When they return you will go back to your own home, of course.’

Whether it was Emile’s infuriating insistence that his mother would marry Garth, or being reminded that when her parents returned from Africa she would be leaving Tregillis and Garth, but as far as Melinda was concerned, his words were the last straw.

With a shriek she sprang to her feet, letting the wooden chair fall with a crash, and scooping up the cream-cake from her plate she fired it with unerring aim into Emile’s placid countenance.

For a moment there was an appalled silence. Emile, his face covered with jam and cream, was on the point of bursting into tears.

But Melinda didn’t wait to see the results of her attack; sobbing wildly, she dashed from the room.

By the time I had cleaned Emile up and restored him to something of his usual self-possession, I had completely forgotten about the letter that I had left lying on the library floor. It was only very much later that I remembered it and by that time the master of Tregillis had returned to his domain.

I had been awakened during the night by the sound of a car driving up, the slamming of car doors and then confused voices.

I got up, crossed to one of the windows and pulled back the long chenille curtains. A silvery moon flooded the gardens and I glimpsed a tall figure and heard Mrs. Kinnefer’s voice raised in respectful inquiry.

A deep voice answered her, ‘I intended to stay longer, but I made a sudden decision to return home.’ The tone was abrupt, even imperious, and somehow it confirmed me in my original estimate of Garth Seaton. For this was the master of Tregillis, I felt sure.

But why had he returned so soon? Had he quarrelled with the beautiful Armanell? This was the man who had so cruelly treated the young girl who had given him her heart—and then, even as I remembered Diana, my heart thudded with sudden agitation. The letter must still be lying on the floor of the library, where I had dropped it when I had been disturbed by Mrs. Kinnefer. Suppose he should go there and find it before I had a chance to replace it?

I crept back to bed and waited uneasily: it was difficult to tell whether or not the house was sleeping, for the doors were so thick and the areas so enormous at Tregillis. In one’s room it was as if one were on a desert island.

However, when I judged that sufficient time had passed for everyone to have retired I put on my dressing-gown and crept into the corridor. The moonlight flooded through the long leaded windows so that it was quite easy for me to find my way to the top of the stairs and across the hall. My heart thudded with fright as the moonlight glinted off the helmet of a suit of armour that stood in an alcove.

Then I pushed open the heavy door and went into the library. I shut the door slowly and carefully so that the handle made the merest click, only to find myself in darkness; the moon was not shining in on this side of the house. I felt along the wall with my finger-tips, found the switch and as I pressed it the room was flooded with light. Everything was just as I had left it: Diana’s letter was lying on the floor where it had fluttered from my fingers at the news that Emile was missing: the History of Cornwall lay open on the arm of the chair I had been seated in.

Then I noticed with dismay that light was flooding out through the windows, picking out great brilliant patches on the smooth lawn outside. I hurried across the room and drew the heavy dark red curtains.

As soon as the curtains were closed I had a sense of security. I crossed the room, picked up the letter and was about to fold it into the book when my eye fell upon the writing. Phrases seemed to leap out at me from the page. ‘If I were older I could make you love me.’ ‘You have eyes only for Armanell.’ ‘I can’t help loving you—that is my great misfortune.’

As I re-read the words I knew that I couldn’t place Diana’s letter back in the book, restore it to its place on the shelf—leaving it to be found and read by anyone who chanced to come upon it.

Garth Seaton had been so careless of the affection his young cousin had lavished on him that he had idly scanned what she had written, then had returned the hook to the shelf, not even bothering to remove her letter. But I could not treat Diana’s heartbreak with such indifference. The least I could do for my dead friend was to take her letter with me and destroy it as soon as I regained my room.

I folded it and was slipping it into the small pocket of my dressing-gown when the door opened and I found myself gazing at a tall, broad-shouldered man who stood in the doorway.

‘What are you doing here?’ His voice was harsh and abrupt.

Shock prevented me from answering and, aware that I was trying to press the letter down into my pocket, I hastily withdrew my hand, picked up the book and began to fumble with it. The top of the letter was clearly visible in my pocket, I knew, and I was annoyed at the realization that my whole attitude was one of startled guilt.

He moved into the room and surveyed me from the top of my ruffled reddish hair to the slippers that peeped beneath my blue satin dressing-gown.

‘You’re Miss Westall.’ But it wasn’t really a question: it was a statement. ‘And what, may I ask, are you doing in the library at this time of night? Or are you such an inveterate bookworm that you spend your nights reading? It appears to me that Emile is going to have an extremely well-informed tutor,’ he said ironically.

I drew myself up in an attempt to conceal how nervous and ill at ease I felt. This was Garth Seaton, the man whom I had glimpsed in the moonlight. I mustn’t let him see that his unexpected return had taken me unawares.

I saw his eyes go from the letter, only too visible in my pocket, to the book in my hand. ‘Did you, by any chance, find a letter in the History of Cornwall?’ he asked abruptly. ‘If so, it’s my property, I think!’ He held out his hand, his voice peremptory.

He had deep-set, hooded eyes and the face was lean and slightly cruel. He was granite-hard as the boulders that bounded Tregillis Cove; the type of man, I felt intuitively, who, once his mind was made up, would not waver. It was only too easy to think of him aboard the sloop, having decided that Armanell was to be his wife and that Tregillis was to be his alone: he would be quite capable of carrying out his intentions too, I thought: yes, Diana had probably been right when she suspected him of treachery.

I raised my head and attempted to meet his steady gaze, but my eyes dropped and I found my hand abjectly creeping to my pocket. Slowly I drew out the letter and handed it to him.

He read it in silence and as he did so it dawned on me that he had never seen it before. Strangely enough this, instead of excusing him, merely added fuel to my resentment.

So he hadn’t even bothered to read it, although he must have been aware that Diana was in the habit of leaving letters in the book she had presented to him. This was obviously not the first such appeal she had sent him.

He raised his eyes. ‘You still haven’t told me what you’re doing here.’

‘Mrs. Kinnefer told me I might read in the library if I wished to,’ I said after a moment.

‘And you decided the middle of the night would be the best time to pursue your studies! What devotion to literature you show, Miss Westall! Allow me to congratulate you!’ His lips twisted in a sardonic smile. ‘By the way, what were you doing with a letter which very definitely belongs to me? You have read it, I assume.’

‘I—I came across it in the History of Cornwall. I didn’t mean to pry, if that’s what you mean. It was simply that I happened on the book, that—that—’

‘That a silly infatuated child used as sort of letterbox,’ he ended.

So that was what he thought of poor Diana’s pathetic outpourings!

‘Infatuated child!’ I gasped. ‘But she loved you and you—’ I drew to a stop as I become aware of the hooded eyes watching me.

‘You appear agitated, Miss Westall. Now, I wonder why. After all, you didn’t know the child who wrote this nonsense. Why do you appear so defensive?’

I must be more careful, I told myself. It would be fatally easy by some angry, revealing phrase to betray my interest in Diana’s affairs.

‘If I’m defensive,’ I protested, ‘it’s because naturally I resent being treated as a sort of spy. It was purely by chance I came upon this letter, and—’

‘And knowing quite well that it was not addressed to you, or ever intended for your eyes, you read it!’

I could feel my cheeks flame at the contempt in his tone.

‘I—I—’ But under his penetrating gaze I could not deny it. ‘I don’t see what difference it makes,’ I muttered sullenly.

‘It makes the difference that I demand privacy concerning my affairs. I expect that, in your position, you indulge in plenty of gossip. That, of course, I can’t prevent, but I’ll not have any gratuitous prying, I warn you.’

I think it was the use of the words ‘in your position’ that made me lose all sense of caution. To him, of course, I was only a menial. ‘How dare you!’ I said furiously. ‘What makes you think I’m interested in you or your affairs?’ Then choking on the revealing words that threatened to burst out I said, ‘I think perhaps that it would be more satisfactory from both our points of view if I were to leave tomorrow. I shouldn’t care to stay on here if I felt I wasn’t trusted.’

‘I didn’t say I don’t trust you. I was simply warning you to keep your feminine curiosity in control while you’re here at Tregillis.’

‘But I don’t intend to stay at Tregillis if I’m suspected of prying,’ I said coldly.

‘So you intend to rush off at the first hint of criticism! Why on earth did you take such pains to point out to me your suitability for the position if you had no intention of sticking it out?’

It was true, of course, I realized, looking back. I had made a special effort to prove I was the right person for the job.

‘Naturally I hoped to be engaged,’ I said quickly, ‘but I imagined I’d be treated with a certain amount of courtesy. I see now that I was mistaken.’

His face twisted into a smile that held no warmth. ‘So you expected courtesy!’