Kingfisher Morning

by Charlotte Lamb

  She flushed. 'You forget, they don't know… they must never even suspect…that I once imagined I was in love with Guy.'

  'Imagined?' His voice was wry. 'I saw your face when he was talking to you just now, remember.'

  'I was happy to see him and Fanny,' she said defensively. 'I was glad to be sure that what I'd once felt was all gone now. I'm cured of Guy. It was just a brief spell…nothing real, nothing solid.'

  Ross watched her, his features sardonic. 'So? And the kiss? What was that for?'

  She looked blank. 'The kiss?'

  'I saw him kissing you,' Ross said curtly.

  'Oh…' She remembered now. 'That didn't mean anything…it was just a brotherly peck.'

  Ross gave her a dangerous, narrow-eyed stare. 'Was it, indeed? Well, don't confuse me with him, will you. Brotherly pecks aren't in my line.'

  She was confused, pink-cheeked. What did he mean? Her heart thudded.

  Then Robin called from the cottage, his voice shrill and excited. 'Uncle Ross, Emma… aren't you coming in? We're waiting for tea!'

  Emma hurried towards him, reluctant yet oddly eager to get away from the tautness of her encounter with Ross. When she was alone she would take out the memory of those moments and go over it, see what she had thought and felt. For now she wanted to break away, return to the less spine-tingling realities of life with the three children.

  Fanny and Guy were in the kitchen, helping Tracy butter bread, laying out cups and saucers, while the kettle cheerfully bubbled its way towards boiling. Emma introduced Ross to them. He shook hands briefly with Guy, assessed him politely yet with a coolness Emma felt must be noticeable to the others. Then he turned and smiled with much more warmth at Fanny. His eyes flickered appreciatively.

  'Emma said you were pretty…she understated it. You're a peaches and cream girl, aren't you?'

  Fanny smiled, dimpling. 'Thank you. Emma didn't tell us you were such a flatterer.'

  He gave Emma a little sidelong look, a flick of his dark lashes, a sardonic smile. 'Didn't she?'

  'No,' Emma said sweetly. 'I couldn't tell them you were prone to flattery because I'd never seen signs of it.' She smiled at Fanny. 'You're bringing out a new side of him.'

  'Feminine girls have that effect on men,' Ross said.

  'Ouch!' Emma retorted. 'Thanks.'

  'Emma's very feminine,' Guy declared, indignant on her behalf and bristling at Ross's approach to Fanny.

  'You obviously haven't come in contact with her left hook,' Ross drawled. 'She could go three rounds with the world heavyweight champion.'

  Fanny opened her blue eyes very wide, staring from him to Emma. 'Goodness!'

  Very pink, Emma said, 'The kettle is boiling. Excuse me…Ross, take them through to the sitting-room, will you, while I finish making the tea?'

  'I'll help,' said Fanny with determination.

  Ross gestured to Guy. 'We'd better make ourselves scarce. You know what women are like in a kitchen!'

  Guy obeyed, but with an expression that boded ill for his future relations with Ross. Guy was an easy-going man, but he had been deliberately offended during the last few moments, and he was aware of it.

  'What,' asked Fanny, 'is going on? You didn't give me any hint.'

  'Hint about what?' returned Emma casually, pretending to be stupid.

  'You know perfectly well,' Fanny said affectionately. 'There's an atmosphere between you two that could be cut with a knife.'

  'You're wrong,' said Emma. 'There's another girl.' Her voice was brittle. She hoped Fanny would not hear the underlying pain, but Fanny had known her for too long, and in this case was not made blind by her own feelings.

  'Oh, Emma,' she murmured sympathetically. 'Poor darling! What rotten luck.'

  Emma shrugged. 'Just one of those things…'

  'He's very attractive,' sighed Fanny.

  'Very,' Emma agreed tightly.

  'In a tough sort of way,' Fanny added thoughtfully. 'I'm not sure I like tough men too much.' She gave Emma a little glance of inquiry. 'You're certain about the other girl? Because I was sure I felt something just now…something between you…'

  'Yes,' Emma said bitterly. 'Irritation! We'd just had a knock-down row. Whenever he falls out with his girlfriend he takes it out on me as the nearest available female.'

  'What's she like, this other girl?'

  'Blonde and deadly,' Emma returned tartly. 'She glitters and has a vicious tongue. I hope they'll be very happy.'

  Fanny laughed. 'Oh, darling! You are in a mood!'

  'As Ross said, I'm not very feminine!'

  'He was talking through his hat. You're the most feminine girl I know. Look how you've mothered those three children! They've been telling me all about it. You've done a wonderful job here. It all depends what you mean by feminine. If you mean someone who swoons at the sight of blood, flutters her eyelashes when a man looks at her and is too weak to carry anything heavier than a cushion…then that doesn't include you. But there's much more to a womanly woman than that, and most modern men know it!'

  'You're biased in my favour,' said Emma. 'But thank you for the vote of confidence!'

  They carried the tea through into the sitting-room, and found the two men deep in a gloomy silence. Guy was flicking through the pages of a country magazine. Ross stood by the window, his profile stony.

  Fanny gave Emma an alarmed glance. They poured the tea, handed Guy a cup, asked Ross to sit down. 'A sandwich?' Emma asked him, fluttering her lashes sweetly.

  Ross gave her a little smile of indulgent amusement which made her seethe. 'Playing games?' he murmured under his breath as he settled down in a chair.

  'I thought you liked that approach,' she retorted. 'The sweet, feminine touch…'

  Guy was nibbling at one of Edie's feather-light scones with appreciation. 'Can you make scones, Fanny?' he asked.

  She looked smug. 'Of course!'

  'We must have them for tea when we're married,' said Guy.

  'If you want to, darling,' Fanny agreed.

  Ross was watching Emma, his eyes sardonic. 'Touching scene,' he murmured to her, under cover of reaching for a piece of shortcake. 'Your friend isn't just a pretty face, is she? Wifely submission makes for a happy marriage.'

  'Balderdash,' Emma said fiercely. 'Why don't you join the rest of us in the twentieth century, Ross?'

  The children were upstairs, playing a noisy game of hide and seek. Suddenly they swept down, in a shouting body, and tore into the room.

  'We're starving,' Tracy announced. 'Goody… scones and fairy cakes, biscuits and chocolate cake!'

  Robin sat down on the carpet beside Emma. 'Can we have tea in here today?'

  'No,' she said firmly. 'You make too many crumbs. Tea in the kitchen for you three. Come on, I'll supervise.' She detached Donna's tiny fingers from a biscuit. 'Your tea is already laid in the kitchen, sweetie.'

  'Choclit cake…' Donna moaned.

  'Some bread and butter first,' Emma asserted firmly.

  She led them out of the room, Donna clinging to her hand, Robin close to her, talking fast, his rosy face uplifted to hers. Fanny watched her go with affectionate eyes, and began to dream about a dim and golden future in which she herself would have children clinging to her hands…

  Five minutes later Amanda appeared at the back door, slender and well-groomed in silver-grey, her hair so immaculate that Emma wondered if she carried her own personal atmosphere around with her in order to be impervious to wind and weather. She stood there, casting a distasteful glance over the children as they ate their tea. 'Ross here?' she inquired in a cold drawl.

  'In the sitting-room,' Emma nodded.

  Amanda drifted past. Emma followed her to ask if she would have a cup of tea. Fanny was talking to Ross, laughing—she looked round as they appeared, and her blue eyes widened. Clearly, she recognised Amanda from the description Emma had given, for she then looked quickly at Ross, who was rising to greet the new arrival.

  'Can you come to Queen's Daumaury
at once?' Amanda asked him abruptly, ignoring the others. 'I tried to ring, but your telephone was out of order.'

  'Is it? I didn't know.' Ross sounded abstracted. 'Look, is it really necessary for me to…I'm in no mood for another of those scenes.'

  'Your father has had a stroke,' said Amanda.

  Emma had been watching Ross. She saw the colour leave his skin, his jaw clench. 'Is it serious? Is the doctor there?'

  'The doctor got there within ten minutes. We put your father back to bed.' She looked at Ross sombrely. 'I think it's serious this time, Ross. Judith ought to be here. Could she leave hospital? Should I send a car for her?'

  Suddenly Emma knew. She saw in a painful flash all that had been dark before. Leon Daumaury was not the father of Judith's husband—he was Judith's father. Ross's father.

  Ross would be the next owner of Queen's Daumaury.

  CHAPTER TEN

  So many things which had puzzled her now fell into place. Ross, as heir to Queen's Daumaury, must have been considered quite a catch by ambitious young women, and his story about the girl who pursued him and tried to blackmail him into marriage now made even more sense—with such a rich prize at stake no wonder the girl had been desperate enough to try any method, however wild and wickedly unscrupulous.

  Emma could imagine Ross, hurt and angry, when his father refused to believe his version of events, storming out of the house and staying away. Yet he must care deeply about his father, or he would not have stayed so close at hand here in the village. He could have gone anywhere. His profession made him a free man. He could have got work in any part of the world. He had preferred to stay, and that said a great deal for how he really felt about Queen's Daumaury and about his father.

  And Leon Daumaury was not as coldly set against Ross as he had appeared whenever she saw them together. He had come here, he had sent for Ross from time to time, and even if they had always quarrelled on these occasions, clearly there was an underlying concern between them, a feeling for each other, which remained despite all the quarrels.

  Amanda, too, was more comprehensible. Her unswerving pursuit of Ross, her cryptic hints about him…

  No wonder Ross had been evasive, despite his obvious attraction towards Amanda. He probably suspected her motives to be more mercenary than loving, and his other experience of predatory young women must have made him even more determined to steer clear of all such traps.

  Ross and Amanda left hurriedly with barely a word, and Emma faced the future with a bleak feeling of emptiness.

  Fanny followed her into the kitchen, questions bubbling on her lips, but Emma was not disposed to talk much.

  'We must go,' said Guy, seeing how things were.

  Fanny opened her mouth to protest, then fell silent, catching his stern eye.

  'Shall we see you tomorrow?' she asked Emma. 'We could drive over here.'

  'We'll be in the way if there's family trouble,' Guy told her quietly. 'It's a pity, but perhaps we ought to go back to London.'

  'No,' Emma said hastily, dragging her mind back to the present with a sigh. 'No, of course you must come over here. Please, do come.'

  Fanny kissed her, then kissed the children. Tracy was pale and very quiet. She went with the others to wave goodbye to Guy and Fanny, but Emma noticed that she looked miserable. Bending down, she put an arm around the little girl.

  'What's the matter?'

  Tracy looked up at her anxiously. 'I heard what Amanda said. Is our grandfather going to die?'

  'I hope not, darling,' Emma said gently.

  'But he's very old.'

  'Yes, but he's strong,' Emma reminded her. 'And he has a very good doctor.' She was sure that a man as rich as Leon Daumaury would have the best doctor that could be found.

  The news of his illness actually made its way into the news bulletins that evening. The Daumaury fortune was immense, and share prices began to fall when the news hit the stock market. Any change in the direction of his many companies must make alarming news for shareholders.

  Ross did not return that evening. Telephone engineers arrived to work on the telephone, and discovered some trouble with the outside wiring. They rapidly repaired it, and the telephone at once began to ring. Many of Ross's friends were trying to find out the true situation, and Emma grew weary of explaining her own total ignorance.

  Mrs Pat popped up during the evening, leaving Edie in charge at the inn, to talk to Emma about the reporters who had descended upon her. They were making the inn their headquarters while it was open.

  'It's only a matter of time before one of 'em makes his way up to see you,' Mrs Pat warned her. 'They're like hungry ferrets, they jump at anything. Don't you talk to 'em.'

  'I won't,' Emma said grimly. 'What could I tell them? I've never known anything.'

  Mrs Pat grimaced, hearing the underlying reproach. 'It wasn't my place to tell what Ross didn't want told, m'dear.'

  'I feel such a fool,' Emma sighed.

  'Why should you? You've been a tower of strength to Judith in her hour of need.'

  'I've been deaf, dumb and blind ever since I got here,' Emma said hotly. 'I took Ross for an ordinary run-of-the-mill vet. Instead of that, he's the son of a multi-millionaire who will inherit an enormous fortune very soon. Ross is about as ordinary as gunpowder.'

  'Even gunpowder is ordinary if you work with it long enough,' said Mrs Pat, chuckling with amusement. She gave Emma a shrewd look. 'You sound disappointed to find he's going to be a rich man?'

  Emma flushed. 'It's no business of mine,' she said with an evasive look.

  'Isn't it?' Mrs Pat smiled.

  When she had gone, Emma tidied the cottage with the sort of obsessive attention to detail one gives when one needs to drug one's mind with work. Just as she was about to go to bed, the telephone rang. She answered it warily, remembering what Mrs Pat had said, but it was Ross, not a newspaper reporter.

  'How are things down there?' he asked abruptly.

  'Fine,' she said. 'How is your father?'

  'Holding his own,' he said in a comparatively cheerful tone. 'Judith is here, and wants to come down to you for the night, since it looks as if there isn't going to be any sort of emergency here after all. Would it be convenient?'

  'Of course it would. This is your house, not mine,' Emma told him.

  'Judith can have my room,' said Ross. He paused. 'Are you sure things are all right? You sound a bit uptight.'

  'I'm tense, I suppose,' she said. 'I was concerned about your father.'

  There was another silence. 'Angry with me for not telling you?' he asked her shrewdly.

  'It was none of my business,' she said.

  'I can tell that you are,' he said. 'I'm sorry, but I had my reasons.'

  'I'm aware of that. You told me at the beginning—if I'd known who you were I might have chased after you like all the other girls you've ever known.' Because of her own hurt she spoke with stinging mockery, hoping to make him angry, as if his anger might ease her own pain a little.

  'It wasn't like that,' he said.

  'No?' She was icily incredulous.

  'Not the way you put it,' he said, beginning now to get angry. 'You're putting a totally false construction on it.'

  'It doesn't matter,' she said, wanting to end the conversation. 'Really, it's a matter of indifference to me whether you told me or not.'

  'I see,' said Ross. 'Well, goodnight, then.'

  She heard the crash of the receiver at his end and stared at the telephone dumbly. He had hung up.

  The sleek Daumaury limousine delivered Judith at the cottage half an hour later. Emma heard the car purring down the lane, and met her at the gate.

  Judith kissed her on the cheek with almost sisterly warmth. 'Oh, it's so good to see you, so good to be here!'

  'You look tired,' Emma said with concern. 'Have you eaten?'

  Judith smiled. 'More than enough! You've no idea what it was like at the house…the servants have nothing else to do but make meals and serve them, and they ke
pt trotting out food all evening, as if only by feeding us could they stop themselves sinking into melancholy. They're fond of the old man, you know.'

  Emma smiled, believing it to be very easy to become fond of Leon Daumaury. He had such a tired, desolate air at times. All his money could not armour him against personal loneliness.

  Judith sank into a chair in front of the banked fire, stretching out her stockinged toes to the flames, her shoes kicked off casually into a corner.

  'I'm dead beat! They whisked me out of hospital with the news, and I sat for the whole journey expecting the worst, only to find, when I finally got to him, that Father was already beginning to fight back. It will take more than a slight stroke to finish him!' Her face and voice expressed a shy pride. 'He's a tough old fellow, you know.'

  'Toughness seems to be a family characteristic,' Emma said, thinking of Ross.

  Judith stared, puzzled, then grinned. 'Oh, you're talking about my dear brother?'

  'He has a hide like leather and a mind like the edge of a knife,' Emma said bitterly.

  Judith gazed at her, wide-eyed. 'Oh…' For a few seconds she was quiet, her lips parted in surprised thought. Then she smiled warmly. 'I like you, Emma. By the way, Father likes you, too— he told me so tonight. He told Ross that if he married you he would cut him off without a farthing.'

  Emma went scarlet, then white, her breath knocked out of her. Then she said weakly, 'Why on earth should he imagine that Ross and I…whatever did Ross say?'

  'He said that since farthings were no longer legal tender he didn't give a hoot. If he wanted to marry you he would, and Father could put all his unwanted farthings into the poor box.'

  Emma knotted her trembling fingers together. 'But there's no question of…I mean, Ross was joking. We're not…there's nothing between Ross and me.'

  Judith peeped at her from between thick lashes. 'No? I didn't get that impression. The nurse was most upset about it all, but Father looked quite elated. He always enjoys a good squabble with Ross. It's the breath of life to him. Amanda, though…' Judith giggled. 'Amanda looked pretty sick about it all.'

  'Amanda heard all this?' Emma was aghast. 'But, Judith, it's Amanda Ross loves, it's Amanda he'll marry…'