The Last Dance (10 page)

‘Bread and butter?’ John Potter offered. They were more like slabs than slices of white bread, slathered with gleaming lumps of creamy butter. ‘Looks like Mrs B forgot to take the butter out of the cold room.’ He gave her a friendly wink.

Carrots and peas, cooked until their colours had dulled, looked back at her in a lacklustre bed of the brown sludge of stewed meat that oozed from beneath a thick roof of mashed potato. Nevertheless, she would be lying if she didn’t admit it was tasty enough and she was grateful for a hot meal on a cool midday that was such a treat by comparison to her usual bread and dripping, or potted meat sandwiches and a flask of tea. Stella ate modestly, sipping at the glass of milk placed above her plate and listened to the chatter around her.

A jug was passed around to refresh her glass as the phone jangled in the corridor behind them. Mrs Boyd left to answer it.

‘Oh, no more for me. I’ve had plenty,’ she demurred to Pete the gardener, keen to top up her milk. ‘It’s delicious, though, like no other milk I’ve ever drunk before.’

‘That’s because you come from London, Miss Myles,’ he said. ‘Nothing fresh in London – not the way we know it, anyway. Our Daphne gave us this milk just a few hours ago. Aren’t I right, Mrs B?’

‘Oh, yes, indeed,’ the cook assured. ‘She’s a good milker, is Daphne. Best in Kent.’

A short discussion between the staff ensued about whether Daphne’s milk was better in early or late spring that confounded Stella by its intensity but, even so, she found it all enlightening.

When there was a break in the chatter Stella dabbed her mouth with her napkin. ‘Well, thank you all very much. Grace, I believe you’ve swapped your riding lesson to this afternoon, if I’m not mistaken. And your mother is taking you?’ She glanced towards Potter, who didn’t seem to react. ‘Um, I must prepare for lessons this afternoon with Georgina. So, if you’ll all excuse me . . . thank you so much, Mrs B, for the lovely luncheon.’

‘Ah, Miss Myles,’ Mrs Boyd said, returning to the table. ‘I must inform you that Mrs Ainsworth and Miss Georgina have been held up in Brighton.’

Stella blinked.

‘Miss Georgina asked me to let you know that she will not be available for a lesson this afternoon.’

‘What about my riding lesson . . . with Mummy?’

‘Miss Grace, I’m afraid your mother has asked me to postpone that now also. I shall rearrange it for next week.’

‘Would you like me to handle that, Mrs Boyd, seeing as my afternoon is now open?’ Stella hadn’t intended for her tone to sound so cutting, but it had sharpened up at the sight of Grace’s shoulders dropping.

‘No, that won’t be necessary, Miss Myles. It’s a simple telephone call. Miss Grace, you are welcome to play with the doll’s house. We can open up the playroom for you?’

Stella could feel her young student’s disappointment rippling through her as if it were her own. ‘Grace, perhaps we can continue our lessons. We can go for a walk as I promised and practise some French, if you would like?’

Grace managed to nod and smile, although Stella realised that this was definitely a second-best option to horse riding. It was only later when they had begun a slow ascent of the hill behind the house that she understood Grace’s disappointment was not about the horse riding so much as not having that special time with her mother.

‘I like to show Mummy how well I can ride and watch her clap and be proud of me.’

‘I know. And I’m very sure that she too is unhappy to be missing watching you ride today,’ she offered, hating that she was put in the position of protecting Beatrice Ainsworth despite the selfishness. ‘There is probably a very good reason that they’re late,’ she added, hearing the hollowness in her voice.

‘I don’t think so,’ Grace sighed, bending down to pick a daisy. ‘It happens quite a lot. I get used to it.’

‘I’m sorry, Grace. But we’re both a bit lonely so we can cheer each other up.’

‘Tell me about your brother and sister, Stella.’

‘My sister’s name is Carys.
Ma soeur s’appelle
Carys . . . Right, you try it in French.’

Grace skipped ahead and echoed in a singsong voice. ‘
Masseur
 . . .’

‘
Ma soeur
 . . .’ Stella helped.

‘
Ma soeur s’appelle
Georgina.’

‘Good! Now let’s just try it a less conversational way. My brother is called Rory.
Mon frère s’appelle
Rory.’

‘I don’t have a brother. What is father? Oh yes, I remember.
Père?
’

‘
Oui, bien. D’Accord
. My father’s name is . . .’ Stella resisted saying it in the past tense. ‘
Mon père est Evan et ma mère s’appelle Didi
.’

‘Didi,’ she giggled.

‘My father’s pet name for Dianne.’

‘Didi. Oh, that’s pretty,’ Grace admitted. The daisy chain she’d been making as they slowly climbed the hill was growing.

‘She was pretty too.’ She knew she was talking to herself and shook herself from memories. ‘Your turn. The name of my father . . .’

‘Er . . .
Mon père
 . . .’

‘
Bien
 . . .
continue
 . . .’ she encouraged.

‘He has lots of them, though,’ Grace complained and Stella could believe it, remembering her conversation with Rafe about members of these gentrified families.

‘Have a go using your mother, then.’

They crested the hill, their lone voices sprawling across a verdant, undulating landscape that Stella gathered had once been ancient woodland. From their vantage she could see farms and villages scattered in the distance. Smudged areas of heath and colourful patches of woods ebbed and flowed around the hamlets, pathways cutting in and around the hills with streams Stella imagined were fast-flowing and icy cold. Their breath steamed but neither of them was especially cold after their hike.

Stella sighed. ‘Oh, this is idyllic.’

‘I’m not allowed up here.’

‘Why ever not?’ she asked, fear suddenly trilling through her in case she was breaking a house rule.

‘Mummy says it’s not terribly ladylike to go scrambling, as she calls it, and Georgie says it turns me into a little urchin.’

Stella toned down her instinctive response. ‘Well, my opinion is that there is absolutely no harm in healthy outdoor activity like this. And because you’re with me and because we are practising French, it definitely constitutes a lesson.’ Stella sat down and leaned back on her elbows. ‘I have to just enjoy the scene for a few moments, Grace. I haven’t seen countryside like this since I was just a bit older than you.’

Grace arrived to place her daisy chain around Stella’s neck.

‘Oh, I love it, thank you. But what about you?’

‘I can see buttercups over there,’ she said, pointing diagonally behind Stella. ‘I’ll make a buttercup chain.’

‘Don’t go too far.’

‘I won’t.’

‘I have to hear you. So either sing or recite something loudly.’

Grace laughed. ‘But not in French.’

‘Practise your Wordsworth, then. “
I wandered lonely as a cloud
 . . .” Go on.’

Stella grinned as she inhaled a lungful of the freshest air she had breathed in years. She listened to the youngster reciting the poem with flawless recall and wondered why the women in the child’s life weren’t in love with this sparkling little girl as she already was.

‘And again,’ she called. Grace recited it cheerfully, even louder.

Grace was plucking buttercups, looking pleased with herself that she knew the poem so well already. She didn’t see the man steal up over the rise. His footfall was as silent as the skylark that Grace had just spotted in her nest in the heath. She craned her neck and wondered how many eggs the little bird was protecting and thought about tiptoeing closer.

‘I wouldn’t, if I were you,’ the man said softly.

Grace turned, startled, to regard a tall man with a flop of dark hair that he now dragged back from his face to reveal a wide grin.

‘Daddy,’ she breathed and leaped up to fling herself at him, buttercups scattering like golden stars.

He caught her, chuckling quietly. ‘Hello, Skipper. Nice to see you up here.’

‘I’ve missed you,’ she said, hugging his waist.

‘I came in yesterday.’

‘I know, and Mrs Boyd wouldn’t let me visit you today. She’s so stern. You look very brown.’

‘Yes, I did a lot of walking.’

‘While you were working?’

He grinned. ‘I had some time off.’

‘Where were you? Mummy couldn’t tell me.’

‘I was on the Continent, down south.’ That didn’t mean much to Grace. ‘It’s always warm there. How is your mother?’

‘She’s shopping with Georgie.’

‘Of course she is. Did I just hear you reciting William Words-worth?’

Grace grinned. ‘Yes, Stella’s teaching me it because she thinks I’m like a daffodil.’

‘Mrs Boyd mentioned Stella had arrived. How are you getting on with her?’

‘Daddy, she’s lovely. Come on, come and meet her.’

They both hushed as they heard another voice.

‘Grace? Gracie, I can’t hear you.’

‘I’m coming!’ Grace called over the hill.

Her father hesitated. ‘Maybe I shouldn’t . . .’

‘Oh, come on, Daddy. You’re going to love her too.’

Stella called out to Grace, relieved when she heard the girl respond and then turned back for one last look at the valley below, convinced she would be returning here as often as she could. She stood on tiptoe and stretched, smiling as she heard Grace arriving and to make her laugh she decided to do a pirouette.

‘Look, Grace,’ she said, spinning slowly on her toes and exaggerating the stance on uneven ground, ‘you can teach me ballet while we practise our French.’ She stopped dead, horrified to see a man standing beside Grace. They were both grinning at her not-so-graceful attempt at being a ballerina in her galoshes. Her mouth opened but closed again in shock when a double jolt of alarm slammed through her. She knew him, felt the sound of his name form at her lips but she couldn’t say it; his suddenly anxious look of denial forbade her.

Grace rescued her. ‘Stella, this is my father.’

Father?
She hesitated, not knowing what to say or how much to reveal.

‘Hello, Stella,’ he said, the mellow voice so familiar because it had been echoing through her mind since the night he’d kissed her gloved hand. He took off a baggy, plaid cap he was wearing. ‘Forgive me for interrupting you. I’m Douglas Ainsworth.’

‘Mr Ainsworth,’ she managed to squeeze out and it was obvious this had to appear to the child watching them as their first meeting. Stella gathered her wits together and cleared her throat. ‘I’m sorry. You startled me. Um, it’s lovely to meet you. I’ve heard so much about you from Grace.’

‘I was taking some air and heard a voice I knew reciting Wordsworth. That’s a first. I gather I must thank you for that.’

Her gaze narrowed slightly. ‘And apparently I must thank you for the role I now play in Grace’s life. Mrs Ainsworth assured me that you were instrumental in hiring me.’

The man she knew as Rafe gave a small smile. ‘I merely encouraged my wife to speak with an agent that a mutual acquaintance calls friend. I was told she specialises in this sort of placement. I’m glad she brought you to our family, Stella. Grace certainly adores you,’ he said, stroking his daughter’s head in such a gentle and affectionate way, it made Stella’s heart feel as though it had leaped higher in her chest. Yes, Grace hadn’t misled her; it was clear that she was as adored by her father as she was essentially ignored by her mother. ‘And you’ve only been here a day,’ he added. Ainsworth gestured down the hill towards the house. ‘Shall we? Come on Skipper, you lead the way. I’d race you down if I thought I could win,’ he added, giving her a tickle and laughing as his daughter shrieked and took off, running happily downhill. ‘Not too fast,’ he called to her back. He smiled at Stella. ‘She’s like a hare across these hills – so sure-footed.’

Stella felt she had no choice but to fall into step. Grace decided she would run down the hill waving her arms.

‘I call her Skipper because she reminds me of a butterfly that calls Kent home.’

‘Butterfly? How so?’

‘You’ve met Georgina?’

She nodded.

‘I suspect you’ve likely worked out already that Georgina’s beauty is skin deep.’

Stella regarded him and was sure the fact she didn’t bluster in denial told him plenty.

‘Whereas this girl,’ he nodded at the joyful Grace, ‘is beautiful at her core, but she is still the caterpillar and one day she will emerge from the chrysalis of babyhood to be a striking young woman, I have no doubt. I intend she doesn’t lose that warm, generous, bright soul, though, as she . . . um . . . pupates.’

Stella winced at the horrible image that conjured in her mind.

He laughed. ‘Well, through her metamorphosis into womanhood, should I say?’

‘Much nicer,’ she admitted and wondered why he hadn’t taken the same approach with his eldest daughter. ‘Is that why I’m here? Why you secretly but deliberately set me up for a role in your house?’

He looked down and his expression was one of slight injury, which reassured her that he wasn’t entirely cynical. ‘The choice was always yours, Stella. But I admit I hoped you would come to Harp’s End.’

‘And I must admit now to feeling manipulated.’

‘I would prefer that you don’t feel that way, of course, but I can understand why.’ His stride was long and assured on the unpredictable terrain; she felt she was taking two steps to each one of his and she dared not take her eyes from the earth for fear of twisting an ankle. ‘I’m hopeful you can see this arrangement is good for all concerned. I trust you are happy with the financial arrangement?’

It was Stella’s turn to look away as she stomped alongside him, carefully putting a shoulder-width’s distance between them. ‘It’s extremely generous,’ she admitted. ‘And six months is not so long.’

‘You’ll be home for Christmas.’

‘That’s my plan,’ and she could hear the wistfulness in her tone. ‘Oh!’ she suddenly yelped.

Stella tripped but his arm shot out with a lightning-fast response to prevent her falling. She felt his hand beneath the soft part of her upper arm like a scald. It was her mind playing its tricks but even so her response was entirely physical and the warmth spread rapidly through her and against her wishes.