“And why wasn’t it?” Karina asked. “Did she die or something?”
“It would have been better for Garland if she had,” Jim replied. “No, he discovered about three weeks before the Wedding that she was only marrying him for his money. She had another boyfriend tucked away with whom she was really in love, penniless, charming and not even in the right sort of Society.”
“How awful!” Karina exclaimed.
“It was for Garland,” Jim told her. “Some kind friend took the trouble to tell him that his fiancée was spending the weekend at an obscure hotel in the New Forest. He motored down and found them there. There was no denying what they were up to and they admitted quite frankly that they were in love with each other.”
“Oh, poor, poor Mr. Holt!” Karina exclaimed.
“I have never seen a chap take it so hard,” Jim said.
“Then he went back to work and from that day to this he has never discussed it with anyone.”
“And what happened to the girl?” Karina asked.
“Oh, she married someone else. Not the man she was in love with, another rich man, an American as it happens and now she lives in the States.
“But Mr. Holt never got over it,” Karina said softly. “This explains a lot of things.”
“I suppose some people would call it a blessing in disguise,” Jim went on. “It made him work harder and made him concentrate on his business. They tell me he is one of the richest men in England today and I should not be surprised.”
“It must have made him feel that he could never trust anyone again,” Karina said.
“I expect it did,” Jim replied. “But he must have trusted you to let you into Miss Weston’s office. It is really what one might call the inner sanctum. No one has ever got in there before.”
“I think he felt that I was too insignificant to do any harm,” Karina smiled.
“Well, I tell you what I think,” Jim replied. “That you are too pretty to be working. It’s going to get you into a great deal of trouble.”
“I don’t see why,” Karina answered.
“Well, for one thing, every man you meet will want to make love to you.”
Karina laughed.
“Now you are being ridiculous.”
“No, it’s true,” he said. “And I am going to start right away. I think you are adorable, the most adorable person I have seen in years.”
There was so much sincerity in his voice that Karina’s laugh was a little embarrassed.
“Now you really are being ridiculous,” she said.
“You have to believe me,” Jim answered. “You could have knocked me down with a feather when I saw you in that office this morning. I felt that you could not be real, that I must be seeing things. You are so pretty, much too pretty to wear out your eyes poring over Garland’s tedious business letters. Where have you been hidden all these years?”
“I have been living in the country,” Karina said.
“Well, thank goodness you have come to London,” he answered. “Karina, I mean this in all sincerity, you will let me see something of you, won’t you?”
“I-I don’t know,” Karina began, feeling that it was exciting to have someone flirting with her in this ardent manner, but still not sure of what she should do or what she should say. It was the first time in her life that it had ever happened to her.
And then, as she hesitated for words, she saw Jim glance up quickly and a little smile curve the corners of his mouth.
“The great man himself,” he murmured.
Karina turned her head.
Garland Holt had just come into the restaurant. He had two other men with him, both obviously businessmen.
She saw him glance round the room casually and then a look of surprise came into his face.
Leaving his friends, he walked to where she and Jim were sitting.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
“Good morning, Garland!” Jim replied. “Isn’t it rather obvious? I am taking Miss Burke out to lunch.”
“So I see,” Garland Holt replied sharply.
And Karina knew that for some inexplicable reason he was extremely annoyed.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Karina stared at herself in the mirror. She had never seen herself look so different or so unlike the ordinary Karina who usually stared back at her and whom she knew so well.
This was someone quite new, someone who still was small and fairylike, but who yet managed to look sophisticated in a gown of blue and silver lace that shimmered round her like moonlight on the sea.
So much seemed to have happened today that she could hardly remember in what sequence the events had crowded one on top of the other.
And what was more, she could hardly believe that they were true.
‘She had found it difficult to enjoy her lunch with Jim Holt even though it had been an excitement in itself to go out to lunch in a London restaurant alone with a young man.
From the moment that Garland Holt had arrived she had felt that his dark eyes were boring into her back.
She found it hard even to taste the delicious food. She kept glancing at her little gold wristwatch in case she should be a minute late back at the office.
“I hope that my cousin is not leading you into bad ways on your first day in the City,” Garland Holt had said in a disagreeable voice.
“I will not be late back,” Karina murmured.
She felt as if she had already committed a fault and knowing that he was angry by the way his dark eyebrows seemed almost to meet across the bridge of his nose.
He then turned his attention to Jim.
“I hear you have left the stockbrokers,” he said.
Jim smiled disarmingly.
“That is exactly what I came to tell you this morning, but if you know it already there is no need for me to make a humble confession.”
“I met one of the Partners half an hour ago,” Garland Holt explained. “He was extremely disappointed that you have left and so am I. I went to a lot of trouble to get you in, Jim.”
“I know, Garland, and I am grateful, I am really. But it just was not my cup of tea. I have found myself a job.”
“What is it?”
The question came like a pistol shot.
“Selling cars for Wedbury and Kent.”
“Do you call touting on commission a job?” Garland Holt asked sarcastically.
“It gives me a chance of meeting people. It’s no use, Garland, the only virtue I have is the human touch. It is something you often lack yourself, old boy.”
Garland Holt turned away from the table.
“I will talk to you about that another time,” he said. “Kindly don’t be late back at the office, Karina.”
With that he left them. But Karina was acutely conscious of him. He was right at the other end of the room, but all the time she felt that he was actually with them at the table.
“Stop worrying,” Jim told her. “What the hell does it matter what he thinks or says? You are pretty enough to get a job anywhere and a far better one than licking stamps for old Westie.”
“You don’t understand,” Karina said. “I am not really qualified for anything.”
“With a face like that you don’t need to be,” he answered.
He paid her extravagant compliments and, although she laughed at them and told him that he was ridiculous, she could not help feeling flattered.
Never before had she been able to be on such easy terms with a young man.
If men of her own age had come to Letchfield Park, there had always been Aunt Margaret or Cyril at her side, keeping them away from her, making, in some extraordinary manner of their own, a barrier between herself and the outside world.
Now, as she laughed and even blushed at Jim’s compliments, she felt young and carefree. It was all such fun, unlike anything she had ever known before. At the same time the hands of the clock never let her forget for a moment that she must be back at the office on time.
/> She made Jim hurry over his coffee and the brandy that he insisted on having with it. She fidgeted while he paid the bill and then sprang to her feet.
“Don’t bother to come with me,” she said. “I will find my own way.”
“Nonsense,” he answered. “As if I would let you go out in the street alone looking like that! Besides, the car is waiting. Think how disappointed it would be if it didn’t see you again.”
“You are absurd!” Karina answered, but she was laughing as she moved from the table.
And then, as she turned, she found herself looking into Garland Holt’s angry eyes.
The smile faded from her lips. She hurried towards the door, with Jim following her in a more leisurely fashion.
“Hurry! Hurry!” she called when they reached the car. “I feel that in some clever way of his own he will get there before I do and be waiting for me in the office.”
“Don’t be frightened of him,” Jim advised and then he bent over to squeeze her hand. “I know exactly how you feel. I have been terrified of him for years. He always makes me feel as if I am at school again and have been sent for by the prefect to get six of the best.”
“It’s ridiculous, really,” Karina said. “He is not so very much older than we are.”
“He is only eighteen months older than I am,” Jim answered. “But you are a baby.”
“I am not,” she said indignantly. “I shall be twenty-one in four weeks’ time.”
“Good Lord!” Jim said. “I had no idea. I thought you had just left school.”
“I suppose I ought to take that as a compliment,” Karina replied. “But I am sick of being told how young I look. I want to be old and sophisticated. I want people to think that I am wise instead of stupid.”
Jim threw back his head and laughed.
“Women are never satisfied,” he said. “I will tell you one thing. If you are as old as you say you are, then you can do as you like. Don’t be pushed about by anyone. Just enjoy yourself and be young while you can. We shall all be old one day.”
“Is that your whole philosophy?” Karina enquired.
“All of it,” he agreed. “Let’s laugh and be merry, for tomorrow we die. Or, worse than dying, we grow old and nobody wants us.”
“In the meantime we have to eat,” Karina said. “And, although you don’t seem to mind changing your job whenever it suits you, this is my first job and I mean to make a success of it. So hurry, please, hurry!”
“On one condition.”
“What’s that?”
“That you dine with me tonight.”
“Oh, I don’t think I could.”
“Why not? What else are you going to do? Sit in your lodgings and twiddle your thumbs?”
She had already told him that she was staying with Mr. and Mrs. Carter and now that he put it like that it did seem rather a gloomy outlook for her second night in London.
She was tempted to accept Jim’s invitation even though she could not help remembering how shocked Aunt Margaret would be at her going out twice in the same day with a man she hardly knew.
“That’s a date then,” Jim said. “Otherwise I am going to drive at ten miles an hour so that you will be late at the office.”
“You are blackmailing me,” Karina exclaimed.
“All’s fair in love and war, Karina. You know that, don’t you?”
“Even though I am a country bumpkin I don’t want you to make fun of me,” she answered.
“I am not making fun of you,” he replied and his voice was serious. “The moment I walked into that office something very peculiar happened inside me.”
“Indigestion!” Karina said, striving to speak in the same light manner that he had been using a few moments before.
He shook his head.
“No,” he said. “It was love at first sight. I know now what the women novelists mean when they say, ‘his heart leapt and turned over’ or whatever term they use. It really happened to me.”
“Please, Jim, I am going to be late,” Karina pleaded, because there did not seem anything else that she could say.
“All right,” he said in his more normal frivolous tone. “I will tell you about it tonight. But just think of me between now and then, will you? It will seem the hell of a long time to me.”
He drew up outside the big building where Garland Holt had his offices. Karina held out her hand. He gave it a quick squeeze and then, looking into her eyes, said,
“You are so lovely! I am mad about you. I will pick you up at eight o’clock and don’t be a minute late for me because I just could not bear it.”
“I will be ready,” Karina said with a smile. “And thank you for asking me.”
She pulled her hand from his and ran up the steps and into the hall with its lifts and glass doors. It seemed to her that the lift was unaccountably slow in reaching the eighth floor.
She hurried into the office to find, to her relief, that only some of the girls were back and Miss Weston was not in her room.
Karina took off her coat and hung it up, tidied her hair and then went to her desk. She was typing demurely when the door opened and Garland Holt came in.
“So you are back, are you?” he said in what she felt was a rather disagreeable tone.
“Yes, Mr. Holt,” she answered.
He opened the door of his own room.
“Come in here, Karina. I wish to speak to you for a moment.”
As she rose to her feet, she remembered how Jim had said that Garland always made him feel as if he was a schoolboy again.
It was like going into the Headmaster’s study, Karina thought now.
She went into the smaller room, closing the door behind her. Garland was sitting at his desk, a pile of papers in front of him. He rose when she entered and walked restlessly to the window and she had an impression that he was trying to find the right words.
She waited. He did not ask her to sit down and she thought in her capacity as an assistant in the office she must remain standing.
“How did you meet my cousin, Jim?” Garland Holt asked at length, turning from the window to face her.
“I met him here this morning in this office,” Karina answered.
“And you went out to lunch with him?”
“Well – he – asked me,” Karina stammered.
“Asked you?” Garland Holt queried. “Do you always do anything anyone asks of you? Do you usually accept invitations from a man you don’t know?”
“Well – he is your cousin and – and Miss Weston introduced us.”
“It is absolutely ridiculous,” Garland Holt snapped. “Jim is not at all the type of man you should be seen about with.”
Karina could not help smiling.
“Nobody knows me in London,” she said. “I don’t think that there will be anyone to see me or make any comments about who I am with.”
“I feel a responsibility for you, don’t you understand?” Garland Holt asked, hitting the top of a chair with his fist. “Jim is hopeless, irresponsible and extravagant. The only thing he has managed to get for himself is a bad reputation where women are concerned. You are not to go out with him, do you understand?”
“Oh, but he has – been very kind to me,” Karina said. “I don’t think that I could throw him over just because – ”
“Throw him over!” Garland Holt interrupted. “What do you mean? He has asked you to go out again?”
“Yes, tonight,” Karina replied, feeling somehow embarrassed even as she said it.
“You must be crazy or very badly brought up,” Garland Holt said. “I always thought that a girl got to know someone before she went out gallivanting with him.”
“Well, I really did not see why I shouldn’t,” Karina said. “It’s better than sitting in my lodgings.”
“So you are in lodgings, are you?” Garland Holt enquired.
“Yes, at Blackdale Street, with Cousin Felix’s valet and his wife. It’s near Paddington. They are very kind and it’s qu
ite comfortable, but it’s not very exciting.”
“Exciting! Do you want things to be exciting?” Garland Holt enquired, “I should have thought that you would have had enough excitement in the last few days. Running away from home, getting hit on the head by burglars, starting a new job. You cannot want to add to all that by going out with Jim.”
Quite suddenly Karina felt rebellious.
Why, she asked herself, should she be bullied by him? She did not know Garland much better than she knew Jim and there was no reason why she should submit to him making rules and regulations about her life just because he was employing her from nine till five.
“I am sorry if you are annoyed,” she said, “but I think that I ought to be in the same position as all the other typists in your office. When they leave here, their private life is their own.”
“You mean I am not to interfere?” Garland Holt asked.
“I am sure that you mean it very kindly,” Karina said softly. “But I am old enough to look after myself.”
“Very well,” Garland said.
“Oh, please don’t be angry,” she said quickly, feeling that she had been rude. “You have been so very kind in giving me this chance, but I don’t want to be a burden to you and you must see that I have to grow up and look after myself now that I am on my own.”
“You are so ridiculously young,” he said.
“I am not,” Karina replied. “I only look young. It’s quite a different thing.”
“What experience have you had of men like Jim?” he asked.
There was no answer to this and she could only make a rather hopeless little shrug of her shoulders.
“Very well,” he said. “You must do what you want to do. But you are not going to dine with Jim tonight for the simple reason that there is some work I want you to do.”
“Of course,” Karina replied. “If you want me, Mr. Holt, that is a very different matter. At what time do you expect to finish?”
“I have no idea,” Garland answered. “But well after midnight, I should imagine.”
“After midnight!”
Karina could not help the surprise in her voice.
“Oh, we are not going to work here,” Garland explained. “It is something that involves contacts with people outside. We have to dine with them. I will send a car to Blackdale Street for you at a quarter-past eight. I am not quite certain where we shall be dining, The Savoy I expect.”
The Runaway Heart Page 11