'And you certainly aren't the mildest female,' he retorted with undisguised amusement.
'You know very well you drove me to do it! You were far too cocksure!'
He laughed softly, and his hands tightened on her waist. Emma looked down at them, strong brown hands, hard and firm, with deft fingers which were capable of so much. Then she shrieked, 'You aren't steering!'
One hand moved away, lazily adjusted the handle-bars as they spun crazily towards the hedge. They veered back into line once more and the cottage came into view.
'Home sweet home,' said Ross contentedly.
'I'm longing for a bath,' Emma groaned. 'Every muscle of me is aching…'
'Good!' Ross was infuriatingly amused.
The old machine slowed down as they turned a last, hedge-blind corner, and then Ross spun into a final spurt, only to draw a deep breath of which Emma was immediately, painfully conscious, as they came in sight of the sleek car drawn up on the grassy edge of the road outside the cottage gate.
Emma knew it at once, before she saw the chauffeur in his peaked cap and dark uniform.
Ross's hand tightened again on her wrist, yet this time she knew no personal pleasure in the intimacy of the touch. Ross's mind was not on her, she sensed.
He braked carefully before they reached the car. 'You'd better run down to Mrs Pat's and get the children,' he said quietly.
'Yes,' she said, forgetting her desire to have a bath, the pain of her scratched legs. Was this the long-awaited reconciliation? Had the old financier come at last to see his grandchildren?
She slid down while Ross steadied the bicycle and walked past the car towards the whitewashed inn at the end of the lane. She kept her eyes averted from the back of the car. She did not want to know if Leon Daumaury was alone, or if he had brought a triumphant, taunting-eyed Amanda with him to witness the family reunion. Ross had made it clear that she, Emma, had no part in this moment. She had been sent to fetch the children, her role as children's nanny firmly re-established for the benefit of Amanda, no doubt.
Back straight, eyes clear, Emma had no intention of permitting herself any weakness. She found the three children cosily seated around the fire with Mrs Pat, reading a tatty, dogeared edition of Beatrix Potter.
Edie was ironing, her cheeks pink, her eyes contented. Mrs Pat looked up as Emma came into the kitchen, and grinned at her.
'You're back early, m'dear.'
'We have visitors,' Emma said.
Her tone was careful, but Mrs Pat looked shrewdly back at her and lifted one eyebrow.
'Have you, then? My, my.' She looked at the three children. 'You need a bit of a wash and brush up before you go home, m'dears. Edie…'
Edie obligingly led them away, protesting. Mrs Pat smiled at Emma, observing the storm signals in her face, the suspicious over-brightness of the brown eyes.
'Visitors, you say?' she probed gently.
'Leon Daumaury, I think,' Emma said flatly.
'Ah,' said Mrs Pat on a long, indrawn breath. She rose and poured Emma a cup of tea from the fat brown pot which never seemed to be empty. 'You look as if you need this!'
Emma drank thirstily, smiled at her. 'I did. Thank you. Life is rather like a switchback, isn't it? Just as you're going along nicely you get flung off into outer space again.'
'Maybe we get too complacent if life is too easy,' Mrs Pat said. 'Folk can get awful smug.'
Emma laughed. 'I'm surprised they ever get the chance. I'm in a constant state of surprise.'
'An exciting life,' Mrs Pat said, amused.
'You're making fun of me,' said Emma, unwillingly forced to smile.
'Me? Never,' said Mrs Pat unconvincingly. She looked round as Edie appeared once more with the children, their faces pink and clean. 'Spick and span? That's right. Off you go with your Emma, then.' She sighed. 'Lucky you had an early lunch.'
'I wish I had,' Emma said, feeling ravenous. Her adventures in Boxrey Wood had given her an appetite, and even the pain of Ross walking towards Amanda again had not taken the edge off her hunger. 'I'm a boringly down-to-earth female,' she said to Mrs Pat. 'Nothing has ever deprived me of my appetite for long. You'll never find me pining away, I'm afraid. I'm too disgustingly healthy.'
'And a good thing, too,' said Mrs Pat. 'Edie shall take the children back. You stay here and eat some lunch.'
Emma hesitated. It was tempting. She would not, then, have to see Ross and Amanda together; to witness a family reunion in which she had no part whatever, to feel shut out and alien to the new happiness around her. And anyway, Leon Daumaury, whatever his faults, had a right to privacy in these precious moments with his grandchildren. He would not want an observer to be present.
'That's very kind of you,' she said doubtfully. 'Thank you, I'd like that.'
'Sit down, then,' Mrs Pat said, nodding at Edie, who quietly led the children away. Tracy looked back, dark-browed, looking rather alarmed, some sort of intuition springing into her mind.
'Visitors? What visitors, Emma?'
'Come along,' Edie said gently.
When they had gone Mrs Pat made Emma a herb omelette, golden and creamy inside, with a crisp, white-fleshed apple to follow, and cheese available if she wanted some. 'I like cheese with an apple,' Mrs Pat said, pouring her a cup of coffee.
Emma drank her coffee by the fire, reluctant to move, then thanked Mrs Pat and made a slow return to the cottage. The car had gone, she was relieved to see, and when she came into the kitchen she found Edie and the children alone, busy making fairy cakes for tea.
'Ross has been called out to Duckett's Farm,' Tracy told her casually, preparing the cake trays.
'Oh?' Emma tried to look indifferent.
Robin looked round at her, his bright eyes curious. 'There weren't any visitors, Emma.'
Tracy and he stared at her, waiting for her reply. Emma was taken aback. Had something gone wrong? Had Leon Daumaury changed his mind? Or had he, perhaps, never been in the sleek limousine? Had it been Amanda by herself?
'I must have been mistaken, then,' she said lamely.
'It was Amanda, I suppose,' Tracy said in disgust. 'I'm glad she'd gone by the time we got here.'
'So'm I,' Robin agreed wholeheartedly.
'Mm…' Donna added with such fervour that they all laughed. Then Emma said quietly, 'You mustn't say things like that about Amanda, children.'
'Why not?' asked Robin, the acute.
'Because you must not be rude about grownups,' Emma said in a certain confusion. She might have more truthfully said that they might one day find themselves with Amanda for an aunt, and they would have to put up with it.
'You aren't working,' Edie said reproachfully at that moment, and the three children turned back to the work in hand.
Emma spent half an hour writing to Fanny, filling in the details of what had happened to her since she left London, making it all sound amusing, she hoped, and dwelling carefully on a long description of the three children. Fanny would be worried about her, no doubt, and this would ease her mind. She posted it and then returned for tea, after which she played dominoes with the three children, allowing Donna to share her hand so that she felt she was really taking part.
Ross did not return until much later. The children were all in bed. Edie was knitting a bright yellow sweater for Robin. Emma was working on some sketches, her face smoothly absorbed.
She looked up, sensing his presence. He was watching her oddly, his face enigmatic. As her eyes met his, she felt his gaze probing her expression, as if seeking some answer to an unspoken question.
Half resentful, half wary, she lifted her brows. 'Something wrong? You look grim.'
His face relaxed, as if he had found the answer to whatever was troubling him. He grinned casually.
'Nothing wrong. Do I look grim? You look like a little girl ready for bed.'
She had had her belated bath, put on pyjamas and dressing-gown afterwards, her gleaming chestnut hair damp and curling back from her pink face, tied with an o
ld pink ribbon.
'Do you want something to eat?' she asked, putting away her work. 'Was it Mr Duckett's cow again?'
He laughed. 'Not this time. Mrs Duckett's pet spaniel—he'd got his paw trapped in a grating.'
'Oh, poor thing. What did you do?' Emma's quick sympathies were aroused.
'What they should have done before calling me…soaped his paw. It slid out easily then.'
She laughed. 'Of course!' Then she shot him a guarded look. 'But you've been gone hours…' Then she bit her lip, wishing she could recall the remark. She did not want him to think she counted the minutes while he was away. He must never guess how she felt about him.
'I went into Dorchester to see Edward,' he said easily. 'We had to go over the accounts. It's a long and tedious job.'
'How is Chloe? I really liked her,' said Emma, with enthusiasm. 'She's such a warm, kind person. It was fun just being with her.'
He nodded. 'Chloe's fine. She likes you, too, by the way—she asked after you, said more or less what you've just said.' He looked at her with a faint smile. 'You're two of a kind—born home-makers.'
Emma flushed. The compliment was too sweet, too unexpected, for her to be able to bear it with equanimity. She looked away, beginning to tremble.
There was a little silence. She peeped at Ross and found him watching her, leaning carelessly against the door frame, his hands in his pockets and a wry expression on his face. An expression which seemed to say…well, what have I said? Ross probably found her obvious embarrassment very embarrassing! Didn't she know, hadn't he told her a hundred times already that he did not want to get involved with females? That he steered clear of such involvement like the plague?
She went into the kitchen, back very straight, eyes guarded. 'I'll make your coffee,' she said.
'I thought you said a meal?' He followed her.
'If you were at Chloe's house you've had a meal,' she said firmly. 'Chloe never let anyone leave without feeding them to the brim!'
He laughed. 'Isn't that the truth? She loves to see people eat, especially men. It must be some sort of tribal custom.'
'She's hospitable,' said Emma in a squashing tone. 'Don't you make fun of Chloe!'
'I wouldn't dare!' Ross gave a mock-shiver. 'I'd be too scared of that look in your beautiful big brown eyes!'
She made coffee, poured him a cup, without saying another word. Because he had said she was like Chloe she peculiarly took a great dislike to the mockery with which he had just alluded to her. If he made fun of Chloe he made fun of herself…
He sat and drank his coffee in an easy chair before the fire. Emma pretended to go on with her sketching, concentrating without really seeing what her pencil was doing. Her mind was buzzing with questions she dared not ask him. How could she betray her curiosity? He would never forgive her, she knew him well enough to know that.
But how could she help wondering about that curtailed visit? Who had been in that car? She wished now, wished bitterly, that she had not been such a coward, that she had looked in the back, seen whatever was to be seen, even if it was, as she had feared, Amanda's mocking, malicious, triumphant smile.
All this feuding business was so silly, so wrong, that she had to hope that Leon Daumaury would forgive his son and daughter-in-law, take back the family into loving relationship, welcome his grandchildren. It was right and proper that he should do so, and Emma was sad to know that he still held off aloof from them. How could anyone, let alone a grandfather, reject little Donna, Robin and proud little Tracy?
Why had Ross sent her to fetch the children if it had not been their grandfather who had come to visit them? Or had he only been getting rid of her, Emma, so that he could talk to Amanda alone?
She winced inwardly. That was a possibility. It made sense of the peculiar little incident—painful sense. She squared her shoulders. She would face it, painful or no. What else was there to do, anyway?
I'm beginning to make a habit of it, she told herself with fierce self-contempt; a habit of facing unpalatable thoughts, of admitting unpleasant facts. It was a wearing way of life. Why do I fall in love with the wrong men? she asked herself angrily. Why don't I grow up, learn some sense?
She went to bed early, eager to forget pain in oblivion, and slept deeply, her dreams troubled and shifting.
She woke to a cool, cloudy morning. The wind had changed during the night. There was a scent of rain in the air.
Ross went off early. Edie went down to the inn to work with her sister, and Emma, having done what needed to be done about the house, decided to take the children for a walk.
The gorse was sparkling with spiders' webs of all shapes and varieties. There had been a heavy dew the night before, and the leaves were still damp and glistening. The damp earth gave off a leaf-mould odour, rather reminiscent of graveyards, and there were pale fungi growing on the sides of the trees.
They walked casually, halting now and then to inspect some particularly interesting object Robin had found—a scarlet spray of berries, an enormous acorn still wearing its beige cup-hat, a patch of bright emerald moss making a fairy cushion under a great beech tree.
Emma had brought paper and pencils so that they could all do some sketching. Donna drew a holly bush, all huge berries and thin angular leaves. Robin drew a beech with huge snaky roots. Tracy did a far more careful, more realistic sketch of a woodland glade, .with a squirrel thrown in for good measure, drawn from memory rather than sight.
Tracy, of course, was scathing on the subject of Donna's holly and Robin's tree. 'They don't look like that,' she commented. 'You can't draw for toffee!'
A squabble developed, naturally, which was only settled by Emma, hurriedly intervening to suggest that they stop drawing and have a little race down to the wide path to the cart track which ran through the fields and ended at the back of the inn.
'We always go that way,' complained Tracy. 'Let's go the other way.'
'Yes,' the others agreed, 'let's!'
Emma, to keep the peace, agreed, and they walked another way along narrow, hedged lanes, stopping to talk to some sheep over a gate. The sheep stared back, mild-eyed, incurious, their long narrow faces blank.
'Silly old sheep,' Robin said, disgusted.
'They're terribly stupid, poor things,' Tracy agreed.
'Baa baa,' Donna said happily, undeterred by the lack of response.
'Oh, come on,' said Tracy, kicking a flat white stone along the road. Robin and she raced off, playing a game of football with the stone, leaving Emma and Donna to bring up the rear.
Children were very tiring, Emma thought wearily. They needed such unflagging attention! She held Donna's hand tightly and fitted her own long stride to Donna's cheerful trot.
She had done so little of her own work since coming down here. She really must get something of this Hardy stuff done! She had intended to work in the evenings, but somehow she was always so tired after a day with the children.
The lane ended suddenly, at a mysterious gate, shaped like a horseshoe, made of green-painted wood and set in a red-brick wall.
'I never saw that before,' said Tracy dubiously. 'I wonder where we are?'
'We've come the wrong way, I'm afraid,' Emma said, suddenly suspecting that this was the wall surrounding Queen's Daumaury. 'We'd better go back.'
'It's the gate to a magic land,' said Robin dreamily, staring up at the gleaming brass door knob which served as a handle. 'Oh, let's go inside, Emma.'
'Certainly not. It's private,' Emma said, uneasy and alarmed.
Tracy stared at her. 'Come on,' she said sharply, turning away. Had she, too, guessed where the mysterious gate led?
Robin stood, obstinate and entranced, staring upwards. Tracy grabbed his arm, then froze, as there was a grating sound and the green gate began to move inwards. The three children stood, staring, as the gate opened, as if expecting to see a fairy, or a wizard in weird robes, framed in the doorway.
Emma knew, with fatalistic dismay, whom they would see. Fate ha
d led them here, at this moment of time, just as their grandfather, leaning on a gold-mounted cane, came stepping through the green gate and stopped, thunderous, to stare at them in disbelief.
CHAPTER EIGHT
After a long silence he spoke in a thready voice. 'What does this mean?' He looked at Emma as he spoke, expecting her to reply, and his eyes were angry. Frail though he was he exuded power and certainty of command. Emma was shaken by his appearance, by his presence.
Before she could speak, however, Tracy had spoken, her voice clear and scornful.
'We're just going. We came here by mistake. We didn't know you lived here or we wouldn't have come!'
'Tracy!' Emma spoke sharply, shocked by the child's bluntness. She looked at Mr Daumaury. 'I'm sorry, that was very rude of her.'
He was staring down at Tracy, his brows together. 'You have a sharp tongue, miss.'
Tracy stared back at him, mulishly silent.
'Are you my grandfather?' Robin asked, in his patient but unshakeable fashion.
Leon Daumaury looked at him, and something passed over his old face, a flicker which he quickly eradicated. After a pause he said flatly, 'Yes, I am.'
'Do you live in there?' Robin peered through the green gate into the rolling vista of parkland. 'Where's your house?'
'Would you like to see it?' Leon Daumaury asked him, his eyes fixed on the child's face.
Robin lifted excited eyes. 'Yes, I would. It must be very small and round, like an elf house…'
The old eyes widened, as if Leon Daumaury had had a shock. 'An elf house? Small and…' He sounded almost as if he were breathless. He looked at Emma, searching her face with his fierce hawk-like eyes. 'What does the child mean? Surely he knows…?'
'He knows nothing, I imagine,' Emma said gently.
The old man winced. 'Nothing?' He looked through the green gate. 'Nothing of Queen's Daumaury?'
Emma nodded.
Leon Daumaury held out a frail, gnarled hand towards Robin, and the boy confidently slid his own tiny fingers into the old ones.
'We'll go and see, shall we?' Leon Daumaury looked at Emma over Robin's head. 'Will you bring the others, Miss…?'
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