‘I shouldn’t be able to see it,’ he reminded her harshly. ‘Put it a different way, would you?’
‘Oh, my dear!’ There was an affecting little catch in her voice. ‘I meant — if you were told the names, you would almost certainly remember which she was.’
‘I might,’ he agreed. ‘At any rate it’s worth trying. You might write to Sir Horace on those lines, Miss Burney. Make it your first letter will you? I’m curious to see his reply — I mean, to have his reply,’ he corrected himself deliberately.
‘Very well.’
With the air of a calm and competent secretary, Antoinette gathered up her papers and disappeared into the small office. Only when the door was shut behind her and she had sunk down in the chair before her desk did she dare to become the haggard, shaking, frightened girl she really was.
CHAPTER THREE
‘I’ll have to leave!’ Antoinette’s first panic-striken reaction was such a desire for flight that she could hardly control it. ‘There’s no way of avoiding discovery now. When that list of names comes and I read it out to him — ’ In her agitation she moved some small articles to and fro on the desk in front of her.
‘When I read it out to him — ’ Like a gramophone needle which refused to go further on a record her thoughts stuck at that one point.
In that list of unsuccessful candidates only one would stand out. Antoinette Burney.
She could almost hear him repeating the name reflectively. ‘Burney — Burney. That’s your name, isn’t it? Antoinette — Burney. But that was the girl! I remember now.’ And then the white rage and hatred with which he would turn his sightless gaze upon her and exclaim, ‘Toni — Toni! That’s short for Antoinette, isn’t it?’
Oh, she could never, never face such a moment! Much better to leave now, to trump up any excuse.
But how could she leave now? After making such high-sounding promises to Gordon Everleigh. And feeling — she twisted her fingers together until they ached — feeling as she did towards Lewis Freemont.
Not that she must exaggerate the position, even to herself. Such wording made it seem almost as though she were in love with him. Whereas what really tormented her was her desperate pity for him and her sense of guilt. All she asked was to be of use to him, to compensate in some small way for the tragedy she had forced upon him, to have some little part in rescuing a great artist from frustrating inactivity and bringing him back to the exhilarating conflict and heart-warming rewards of a public career.
But none of that would be remotely possible once he knew — once she had read out that list to him. And here she was, back where she had started.
Inevitably it would be she who would read it out. First Sir Horace’s reply, and then the list enclosed with it — name by name until she came to her own. Unless —
Suddenly Antoinette’s mind moved on at last from that dreadful, inescapable moment, with what seemed to her a terrific, breathtaking leap. For who, after all, was to know if she read out all the names?
She winced at the thought of such a gross offence against integrity — an integrity so doubly necessary between a blind employer and a secretary on whom he must utterly depend. Could she really bring herself to trick him like that? Could any ultimate good justify anything so hateful and contemptible?
She rubbed her cramped fingers, only then realizing how long she had been gripping them together.
‘It would be in his best interests,’ she tried to tell herself. ‘If I stay here I truly, truly can help him. Mr. Everleigh thought so too. He said so. He said I was to play down, or even suppress, any letters which might depress him.’
He had not meant any breach of faith like this, of course — the deliberate falsification of information her employer had specifically requested.
‘Oh, what shall I do?’ Antoinette whispered, and as she leant her head on her hands, she realized that it was aching from sheer concentration and intensity of thought.
Well, one thing was certain. The letter to Sir Horace had to be written. Mrs. St. Leger was perfectly capable of checking up on that before she left the house, for she was very keen on the fact that this was her idea. And that half appealing, half playful air of hers hid a very solid determination to have things as she wanted them, Antoinette did not doubt.
Slowly she rolled a sheet of paper into her machine and began to type a polite request to Sir Horace Keen, at St. Cecilia’s College, that he would, as a personal favour to Mr. Lewis Freemont, supply a list of the students Mr. Freemont had examined and felt bound to fail in the examination early in the year.
In her capacity as secretary, Antoinette had to sign the letter, which frightened her afresh. But if Sir Horace or his secretary found any coincidence in the double appearance of a somewhat unusual name, at least neither would go further than a mild flicker of interest. To make assurance doubly sure, however, Antoinette signed her letter ‘T. Burney’.
It was just as well she had given the letter her early attention, for, as she had expected, Mrs. St. Leger came into the office before she left and, having warmly admired the neatness and efficiency of Antoinette’s arrangements, asked, ‘Did you write the letter to Sir Horace Keen?’
‘Oh, yes.’ Without even waiting to be asked, Antoinette handed her the letter with an air of candour, and Mrs. St. Leger proceeded to read it with satisfaction.
‘I’m sure that will draw the information we want!’
The suggestion of continued interest in the subject secretly chilled Antoinette. But she tried not to take the ‘we’ too literally.
‘You’re going to be so good for Mr. Freemont, I know.’ Mrs. St. Leger’s smile was open and sweet, though her violet-blue eyes remained cool and speculative. ‘How did he get hold of you?’
‘By applying to the agency for whom I work.’ Antoinette’s smile was also open and sweet, but the expression in her eyes was guarded. ‘I was offered the job because I happen to have some knowledge of music, you remember.’
‘Yes, of course. Do you play a great deal?’
‘Not nowadays. I used to when I had more time. But earning one’s living doesn’t leave unlimited time for a hobby.’ Antoinette determinedly sounded philosophical rather than resentful.
‘You know, Mr. Freemont is tremendously anxious to hear you play.’
‘Is he? I don’t know why he should be.’ Antoinette smiled as she reached for an envelope and put it into her typewriter.
‘Because he says you have the hands of an experienced pianist. He says he can feel that you have. I told him — ’ she gave her charming laugh — ‘that I was surprised to hear he had got as far as holding hands with you.’
‘And what,’ enquired Antoinette, still smiling coolly, ‘did he have to say to that?’
‘He was rather unreasonably cross.’ Mrs. St. Leger gave a rueful little sigh. ‘I always forget that Lewis hasn’t much sense of humour. I suppose if one is a serious, dedicated artist, one doesn’t. And anyway, almost anything or nothing irritates him at the moment, which one quite understands, of course. Poor darling, he must be so utterly, utterly wretched.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Antoinette stonily, and she went on with her work, in the hope that Mrs. St. Leger would now go. But after a moment her visitor said musingly,
‘I know Lewis — Mr. Freemont — has quite a thing about this girl he wants to trace, but it was extraordinary that she should be deliberately standing there in the middle of the road when he came driving home, wasn’t it?’
‘Perhaps,’ suggested Antoinette steadily, ‘she wasn’t standing there. Perhaps she was just crossing the road.’
‘Oh no! He’s quite positive about that. He says she just stood there, so that he had to wrench over the steering wheel in order to avoid her.’
Something in the cool, clear tone and the positive words recalled that awful moment of time so resistlessly that it was all Antoinette could do not to cry out, ‘Be quiet, be quiet. You don’t have to repeat it. It’s with me day and night.’
&nb
sp; Instead, she said rather tonelessly, ‘It does sound queer, put like that. But my theory is that she was a fan who had come to have a look at his house, and she felt a fool at being caught there and hesitated for a moment not knowing whether to go back or forward.’
‘Why, how clever of you!’ The lovely blue eyes opened to their fullest extent and Mrs. St. Leger gazed at Antoinette in seeming astonished admiration. ‘Just as though you’d thought yourself into that girl’s mind! But then,’ she objected the next moment, ‘how would she have recognized him in that split second?’
‘He was driving his easily identifiable white car,’ stated Antoinette. ‘Any admirer of his would have seen that outside concert halls a dozen times.’
‘How do you know he was driving the white car?’ asked Mrs. St. Leger curiously, and for a dreadful moment Antoinette felt almost sick. Then she said coolly,
‘He hadn’t any other car, had he? I just assumed it was that one. I’ve seen it myself several times outside the Festival Hall.’
‘He has two cars, as a matter of fact. But it was the white one,’ observed Mrs. St. Leger. Then she said good-bye and went away, leaving Antoinette so shattered that she was tempted to say she could not eat anything when Brenda came to tell her that her lunch was ready.
‘Mrs. St. Leger’s gone,’ said Brenda, apparently under the impression that everything her idol did was interesting. ‘Didn’t she look lovely in that blue suit with that great red dog running along beside her?’
‘Lovely,’ agreed Antoinette. But she had a fleeting moment of sympathy with the erring Colonel St. Leger in his escape to South America with what Brenda had described as ‘quite a nobody’. Perhaps there was something relaxing and acceptable in a nobody after the all-embracing charm and rightness of everything Charmian St. Leger seemed to do.
Before she left that evening her employer also asked after the letter to Sir Horace Keen and Antoinette was able to say that it had been written.
‘Of course he might not be willing to supply the names of unsuccessful candidates at this date,’ Antoinette observed tentatively, in the faint hope that she might thus pave the way for the non-appearance of any list if this seemed desirable.
But Lewis Freemont scouted such a notion.
‘Nonsense. Of course he’ll supply the names,’ he replied, with the careless certainty of one quite unused to having his wishes disregarded. ‘Why not?’
Antoinette dared not continue the discussion further, so they left it at that. And the letter to Sir Horace Keen was posted along with all the others. Though the ‘plop’ as it dropped into the post-box had a hollow, fateful sound to Antoinette.
During the next few days she alternated between a real and deep satisfaction in her work for Lewis Freemont and an uncontrollable dread of what the post might bring. Rosamund declared a little puzzledly that it was difficult to tell if Antoinette were happy or unhappy these days.
‘I’m happy!’ Antoinette asserted emphatically. ‘I feel I’m doing something really worthwhile, and I do think that I’m making things a little easier for — him.’
‘I like the breathless hush before the significant pronoun,’ said Rosamund with a laugh. ‘Don’t lose your heart to him, Toni. I feel it in my bones — and they’re reliable bones in this respect — that Mrs. St. Leger means to have him, and she sounds to me like a lady who gets what she wants with no holds barred.’
‘I’m sure she is,’ agreed Antoinette lightly. ‘But don’t worry. I’m not putting up any competition in that line.’
‘Well, you look worried sometimes when you’re just sitting there not doing anything special,’ said Rosamund affectionately. ‘I know you too well not to notice.’
‘I think I worry a little about the work still.’ Antoinette produced an admirably casual smile. ‘I’ll soon be over that stage, though.’
But she knew she would not be over that stage until Sir Horace’s reply had been received and dealt with.
The very next morning the reply arrived. She knew at once what it was, and her heart gave an almost physical jolt of agony as she saw the address of St. Cecilia’s College stamped on the flap of the envelope.
‘Here is Sir Horace’s reply,’ she was surprised to hear herself say quite coolly. ‘Shall I read it first?’
‘Please do.’ He looked grimly interested, as though he already saw a hated goal in sight.
With an unsteady hand Antoinette slit open the envelope and drew out a letter and a separate sheet on which a list of names had been typed. There were eight of them and, glancing distastefully at the list, she saw that her own name was second on it.
‘Read the letter!’ Lewis Freemont was suddenly impatient. ‘Has he supplied the list?’
‘Oh, yes.’ And as she recognized that the moment of no return had arrived Antoinette was all at once quite calm.
She read out Sir Horace’s courteous note, in which he enquired solicitously after the famous pianist’s progress and expressed pleasure at being able to do him any small service, either now or at any future time. Then she turned to the list and slowly read it aloud, omitting the second name.
At the end he was frowning in a puzzled way, and he said curtly, ‘Read it again.’
She did so, hoping that her voice would remain steady to the end. She paused slightly after each name, as though giving him time to reflect, but really so that she could regain control of her voice.
He stopped her once and muttered, ‘Anne Broderick? — No, that wasn’t quite the name. But I think it was something like that. Patricia This and Jennifer That you can rule out. It wasn’t a name like that. Anne — Broderick? No, I’m practically certain it wasn’t that. And yet — Are those all the names? You’re sure?’
‘Those are all the names,’ stated Antoinette with iron calm. ‘I’m quite sure.’
And she felt she had crossed a tremendous gulf — safely, but with no real satisfaction to herself. In fact, never in her life before had she so completely disliked herself.
‘Well,’ he said at last, ‘it’s maddeningly disappointing. I felt sure I should recognize the name when I heard it. Particularly in context with the others. But it’s no good. Of course it wasn’t the name on paper which made the real impression. It was the girl herself. Oh, if I could only see — see — see — !’
For a moment he beat a clenched hand on the arm of his chair in an agony of frustration and despair, while she gazed at him in wordless horror, sick at the deception which so cruelly emphasized his helplessness.
‘I’m sorry.’ Suddenly he was calm again though rather despairingly sullen. ‘It upsets you when I talk like that, doesn’t it?’
‘Oh, don’t apologize!’ cried Antoinette, trying to sound warm and eager instead of wretchedly unhappy too. ‘If you can’t have an occasional outburst in front of your other self, as you called me, with whom can you have it?’
He laughed slightly at that and held out his hand to her.
‘Oh, Toni! You nice child. Much too nice, as a matter of fact, to be the other self of anyone like me.’
‘Much too ordinary, you mean,’ she corrected him, as she put her hand into his. ‘Everyone says you're a genius, while I — ’
‘Geniuses are notoriously horrible to live with,’ he reminded her.
‘That hasn’t been my experience to date,’ she replied gravely, which made him laugh again. ‘Would you like me to go on with the other letters now?’
‘No.’ Unexpectedly he shook his head. ‘I’m not interested in the rest of the post. Only in that list — which is no help after all. Routine correspondence would be insufferably dull after that. We’ll leave it for today. You can read it for me presently and tell me if there’s anything urgent. Though how can there be anything urgent now?’ he added half to himself.
‘Very well. What would you like me to do, instead of routine correspondence?’ She was anxious to direct his thoughts into something more positive than the morning’s bitter disappointment.
‘What would I li
ke you to do?’ He repeated that, as though he savoured the question with interest and some amusement. Then suddenly he said, ‘I’d like you to play for me.’
‘I couldn’t think of it!’ Her rejection of the idea was so complete that she actually snatched her hand away. ‘I — I — You make me nervous even by talking about it.’
‘But why?’ He sounded genuinely surprised as well as amused.
‘You know why! What amateur do you suppose would want to — to parade her deficiencies before a famous artist like you?’
‘You flatter me,’ he murmured, but obstinacy began to mingle with the amusement. ‘I’ll be the kindest and most indulgent of judges.’
‘No you won’t! You’re brutally frank and exacting. Everyone says you are. Look how you spoke to that wretched girl you’re so angry with — telling her that she would never be a public performer in a million years.’
She could not imagine what perverse spirit of rashness made her bring that into the conversation. But he only shrugged the reference off contemptuously.
‘Oh, her! She was a cocky, insensitive piece who needed putting in her place. You’re something quite different. You have the hands of a good executant and the simplicity and modesty that are essential if one is to learn. In fact, you’re rather too diffident, if anything. I don’t know if you’re truly musical. I can’t tell without hearing you. But I promise not to expect too much, or to be slashing in my judgment.’
‘I’m sorry, I can’t.’
He looked surprised again and rather piqued.
Toni — please!’ For the first time in all her association with him she heard something less than command in his tone. ‘I’m genuinely anxious to hear you. Good heavens — ’ for a moment the more usual Lewis Freemont flashed out — ‘I don’t usually have to coax them! Most often people are embarrassingly anxious to inflict their mediocre performances upon me.’ Then his tone changed again and he said quite gently, ‘As a special favour, will you play for me? There are few things I really want or find interest in these days. But this would give me real pleasure.’
When Love Is Blind (Warrender Saga Book 3) Page 6