by Anne Mather
Was there a hint of warning in his words? Rachel hadn’t time to speculate at that moment because Mrs Courtenay bestowed a light kiss on her cheek before surveying her thoroughly, and saying: ‘So you’re Rachel! I’m very happy to meet you.’
Rachel sought for words, but things like ‘Likewise, I’m sure’ and ‘Pleased to meet you’ kept coming into her head, and she couldn’t repeat either of those. So she said: ‘Thank you,’ and looked imploringly at Jake as if for inspiration. Taking pity on her, he said:
‘I expect Rachel’s frozen, aren’t you? We didn’t stop on our way here.’
‘You didn’t!’ Mrs Courtenay clicked her tongue. ‘Jake! You know what the doctors said about not overdoing things.’
‘Leave him alone, Sarah.’ Her husband shook his head in mock disapproval. ‘He looks well enough to me.’
‘He’s too thin,’ declared Mrs Courtenay at once. ‘Much too thin. Jake don’t they feed you at the hotel?’
‘I don’t do anything to get hungry,’ replied her son good-humouredly ‘How is our Lady?’ He nodded towards the mare in the stall, and one of the other men present turned to speak to him.
‘She’s in a bit of a state, Jake,’ he said, and Jake moved towards him, leaving Rachel with his parents.
‘That’s Sam Gordon,’ Mr Courtenay told her. ‘He looks after the horses for me and that chap kneeling down beside the mare is Frank Evans, the local vet.’
Rachel cleared her throat. ‘I—is the mare in trouble?’ she got out nervously, and Mrs Courtenay sighed.
‘She was too old to foal,’ she stated impatiently. ‘And now it’s a breech.’
‘She’ll be all right,’ said her husband doggedly. ‘Frank won’t let her down.’
To Rachel’s surprise, Jake took off his jacket and hung it over the rail beside the vet’s, squatting down on his heels beside the mare and running seemingly expert hands over its abdomen. They exchanged a few words on the mare’s condition, and after a moment the vet nodded and got up to take a bottle of oil from his case.
‘Jake!’ His mother hastened to the rail to look down at him with evident concern. ‘Come along. We’ll go up to the house and have some coffee. Dora’s preparing lunch for one, but there’s plenty of time.’ And when he ignored her, she added sharply: ‘Don’t go getting involved here, Jake. You’re not fit.’
‘If you say I’m not fit again, I’ll——’ Her son broke off abruptly as the vet handed him the bottle, and he rolled up his shirt-sleeves and began to smear oil over his arms. Then he looked at Rachel. ‘You go on up to the house with Mother, darling,’ he said, and she quivered at the casual use of the endearment. ‘I won’t be long.’
‘Jake!’ His mother was clearly not happy. ‘Jake, Mr Evans can manage.’
‘No, he can’t, and you know Sam can’t help him with his back. Go along. Mother. Show Rachel the drawing room. So far, all she’s seen is the hall and the stables.’
Mrs Courtenay looked as though she would have protested again, but her husband took hold of her arm and drew her firmly away from the stall. He took Rachel’s arm, too, and they all emerged from the stables together.
‘Leave him alone,’ he told his wife quietly, but with an underlying edge of impatience. ‘You know Jake has always been able to handle Lady better than anyone else.’
‘But what if he catches cold!’ exclaimed Mrs Courtenay worriedly, and Rachel felt the other woman’s anxiety communicating itself to her, too.
‘He’s not a boy, Sarah,’ her husband affirmed steadily, and with this she had to be content.
Dora opened the door to them on their return. Rachel guessed she must have been watching for them, and Mrs Courtenay asked for coffee for three before leading the way upstairs.
A central landing ran to the back of the house, with the east and west wings of the building creating a kind of crossroad of passages at the head of the stairs.
‘We don’t use all the rooms these days,’ remarked Jake’s mother, as she opened double doors into a magnificently furnished drawing room which was off the central landing. ‘Naturally, heating a place of this size is prohibitive, but it’s good to know we have the space if we need it.’
‘Yes.’
Rachel’s interjection was inadequate, but she was staring wide-eyed at the appointments of the room, and it was difficult to think of anything else at that moment. The high ceiling was arched and the original woodwork had been replaced with carved beams. The walls were also framed with wood, and hung with heavy apricot silk that was echoed in cushions and curtains, and the thick soft carpet underfoot. A grand piano stood at one end of the room, and its generous proportions in no way dwarfed a room which could happily accommodate a pair of sofas, at either side of the huge open fireplace. Yet, for all that, it was a lived-in kind of room, with well-stocked bookshelves and magazines strewn on a table near the hearth.
‘Everything has to be on the grand scale here,’ remarked Mr Courtenay, coming into the room behind Rachel and grinning wryly. ‘Could you imagine this room with a conventional three-piece suite and little else? It would be lost.’
Rachel nodded. ‘It’s beautiful. A marvellous room for a party.’
‘That’s what we thought,’ agreed Mr Courtenay, pulling a pipe out of his jacket pocket and putting it between his teeth. ‘We may have the wedding reception here. What do you say?’
‘Oh …’ Rachel shifted awkwardly from one foot to the other. ‘That’s very kind of you.’
‘Jake tells us your parents are dead,’ inserted Mrs Courtenay. ‘You’re very young to be alone in the world.’
‘Yes.’ Rachel accepted Jake’s father’s invitation to sit on the edge of one of the tapestry-covered sofas, and looked up at her future in-laws nervously. ‘My parents were only children, and I had no brothers or sisters.’
‘You’ve been staying at the Tor Court, I believe,’ went on Mrs Courtenay, ignoring her husband’s silent admonition not to probe, and Rachel nodded.
‘That’s right. I’ve been working for a friend—a friend of my mother’s, that is. I—she was visiting us when my mother died, and she suggested I needed to get away for a while.’
‘Away from where?’
‘Sarah!’ Mr Courtenay sounded disgusted. ‘Leave the girl alone, can’t you? You’re not conducting an interview. Rachel will tell us all about herself in her own good time.’
Mrs Courtenay tightened her lips. ‘You’re very young,’ she declared, giving her husband a resentful look. ‘Have you known Jake long?’
‘Not long,’ Rachel admitted uneasily, wondering if Jake had deliberately left her to face this inquisition alone.
‘Long enough,’ put in Mr Courtenay in her defence, and she flashed him a grateful smile.
A knock at the doors heralded the arrival of Dora with the coffee. She carried the tray into the room and set it down on the table by the hearth, pushing several of the glossy magazines aside in the process.
‘Do you still want to eat at one, Mrs Courtenay?’ she asked, and Jake’s mother shrugged her shoulders irritably.
‘That rather depends on how long Lady takes to foal,’ she remarked caustically.
Dora nodded perceptively. ‘I’ll watch for Jake coming back,’ she said, and left the room.
At least the arrival of the coffee necessitated Mrs Courtenay’s sitting down to serve it. She occupied the sofa opposite Rachel, and Mr Courtenay moved to stand with his back to the fire, lighting his pipe with a taper.
Rachel accepted her coffee with cream but no sugar, and then feeling obliged to volunteer some information about herself, said: ‘I come from Nottingham, actually. My father was a cost accountant.’
‘Did your parents die together?’ inquired Mr Courtenay, and somehow his compassion made the question a natural one.
‘Not exactly,’ Rachel said now. ‘My father contracted polio about eight months ago. He died, and my mother—well, she had an accident in her car just a few days later.’
‘How a
wful for you!’ Even Mrs Courtenay sounded sympathetic. ‘And you’re so young!’
‘I’m eighteen, actually,’ said Rachel steadily, wondering whether Jake had avoided telling his parents this. ‘But I know what I’m doing.’
‘I’m sure you do,’ observed Mrs Courtenay thoughtfully, and Rachel wondered whether she had imagined a certain irony in her tone. Perhaps his mother thought she was marrying Jake for his money. Stranger things had happened, but until last night she had not known he had any money to speak of.
‘I love Jake,’ she said suddenly, surprising both his parents with her honesty. ‘I’ll do anything I can to make him happy.’
There were a few moments silence after her words, and then Mrs Courtenay said gently: ‘Perhaps you will at that. You know of course that his previous marriage ended in the divorce court.’
‘Yes.’ Rachel’s voice was steady.
‘And you know he’s been ill.’
‘If she didn’t already, she would now,’ remarked Mr Courtenay, shaking his head. ‘How you do harp on that subject, Sarah.’
‘It’s only right that Rachel should know all the facts, Charles,’ declared his wife severely. ‘Jake has been ill, and there’s no point evading the issue.’
‘Jake overworked!’ retorted Mr Courtenay forcefully, and his wife seized on that point at once.
‘Exactly,’ she said. ‘And yet you’re still prepared to let him take over Sam’s job in the stables the minute he gets home!’
‘Of course.’ Mr Courtenay was scathing. ‘We both know that Jake would have preferred to work with animals, don’t we? He enjoys it. But—to please me, and incidentally, you as well—he took over the Courtenay chain, and a damn fine job he’s made of it.’
Rachel felt the need to make some contribution, if only to prevent their argument from escalating into something more serious: ‘I didn’t know Jake was interested in animals,’ she said hastily.
Her words halted their interchange as she had hoped they would. ‘He wanted to be a vet,’ remarked his father, looking wryly at his wife. ‘But he’s our only son and naturally I wanted him to be a chip off the old block.’
‘And Jake has a good business brain,’ put in Mrs Courtenay firmly. ‘I don’t know whether he’d have been content with a country veterinary practice.’
‘He never had the chance to find out,’ contributed Mr Courtenay, shaking his head. ‘But still … That’s all old history now.’
‘Have you thought about where you’re going to live after you’re married?’ asked Mrs Courtenay, returning to the attack, and Rachel gave an involuntary shiver. Marrying Jake was still such a nebulous event, and considering where they might be going to live seemed such an audacious circumstance.
But luckily, Mr Courtenay again came to her defence. ‘There you go again, Sarah,’ he said. ‘Poking your nose into things that really don’t concern you.’
‘Oh, Charles!’
Mrs Courtenay looked annoyed, but she asked no more questions, and when Jake came into the room Mr Courtenay was engaged in showing Rachel an antique chess set which he had found on a visit to Hong Kong.
Immediately his son appeared, however, Mr Courtenay rose to his feet. ‘Well?’ he exclaimed, and Jake made a calming gesture with his hands.
‘A filly,’ he said flatly. ‘But they’re both alive.’
‘A filly!’ Rachel saw Mr Courtenay’s disappointment. ‘All that fuss for another mare!’
Jake’s eyes sought Rachel’s, and he grinned. ‘See the thanks I get,’ he remarked mockingly, and his mother nodded indignantly.
‘Indeed,’ she exclaimed. ‘You should be thankful Lady’s survived the ordeal!’
Mr Courtenay grimaced and then gave a shamefaced smile. ‘Dammit, I wanted a colt,’ he muttered. Then he patted his son on the shoulder. ‘Thanks anyway, Jake.’
Rachel looked up at her fiancé. The expensive suede suit was stained in places, and his hands had been scrubbed with the disinfectant she had smelt earlier in the stables.
‘I know,’ he said, dropping down on to the couch beside her. ‘I need a bath. I’ll get one in a minute, but right now I could surely drink some coffee.’
His mother bustled with the cups, giving Rachel no chance to take charge, and he accepted the coffee from her with a lazily knowledgeable smile.
Rachel felt hopelessly inadequate. What had happened to her natural assurance, her ability to exchange small talk as she had done with the elderly regulars at the hotel? She had never been a particularly shy person, but suddenly she was allowing the overtones of the situation to colour her own personality. Money was not important, she told herself fiercely, but she wasn’t convincing.
As if sensing her anxiety, Jake finished his coffee and rose to his feet, a hand on Rachel’s wrist pulling her up, too. ‘Do you mind if I show Rachel around, Mother?’ he inquired, but it was purely a perfunctory question, for he was already crossing the room as he spoke, taking Rachel with him.
‘Of course, go ahead.’ His father acknowledged the gesture, but his mother had to have her say:
‘Lunch is at one,’ she warned. ‘You’ve only got half an hour if you want to bathe and change.’
‘All right, Mother.’ Jake’s tone was resigned. ‘I’ll have Rachel scrub my back if I don’t have the time,’ and ignoring his fiancée’s burning cheeks, he hustled her out the door.
Once outside, however, his expression hardened slightly. ‘This way,’ he said, and releasing her arm, set off along the corridor leading into the west wing.
The room they entered was obviously his. Apart from the fact that it was excessively masculine in its austerity, wall photographs indicated his various stages of development, and cups occupying the top of a chest of drawers denoted the different sports he had competed in successfully.
Jake viewed the room without enthusiasm, however, and gesturing towards the cups exclaimed unsmilingly: ‘My mother insists on keeping those things. You won’t find anything like that in my apartment, I assure you.’
Rachel turned from examining the cups with troubled eyes. ‘Your mother—your parents care about you, that’s all. I think it’s—wonderful.’
‘Do you?’ Jake slung off his jacket, unbuttoning the matching waistcoat with impatient fingers. ‘Is that why you looked at me like a drowning man looks at a straw when I came in?’
Rachel tucked her thumbs into the pockets of her jacket, lifting her shoulders awkwardly. ‘I—did I do that? I’m sorry. I—we—your father was showing me his——’
‘—chess set. Yes, I know.’ Jake was abrupt, tugging off his waistcoat and seeking the buttons of his shirt. ‘Was it so bad?’
‘Bad?’ Rachel swallowed convulsively. ‘It wasn’t bad at all.’
‘But you’re not comfortable here, are you?’
‘I don’t know. I—how can you ask that?’ She stared at him defensively. ‘I’m—nervous, that’s all.’
‘Why are you nervous?’ he demanded, taking off his shirt, and she wondered how far he intended going in her presence.
‘Wouldn’t you be?’ she challenged, trying to keep her eyes away from the brown expanse of flesh he had exposed. There was a gold chain around his neck, she saw, and suspended from it, a tiny gold crucifix. ‘You—you knew how—difficult this was going to be for me, but you chose to leave me to it.’
Jake sighed. ‘I thought it might be the best way,’ he declared ‘After all, you seemed to find speaking to me easy enough in the first instance.’
Rachel’s lips parted in hurt indignation. ‘That was different, and you know it!’ she exclaimed, ignoring the fact that only minutes before she had been thinking along the same lines. ‘Anyway,’ she added, ‘if that’s all you brought me here for, I might as well leave you to take your bath!’
Jake tossed the belt of his pants on to the brown patterned bedspread, and stood regarding her grimly, hands pushed into his hip pockets as if to quell the urge to take hold of her.
‘Rachel, I’m not try
ing to start an argument with you, but these people are only my parents. I want you to feel—at home with them, not on edge!’
Rachel held up her head. ‘What you’re really saying is if I can’t get along with your parents, I haven’t much chance of getting along with your friends, is that it?’
‘No!’ He spoke violently. ‘That’s not what I’m saying at all. I just want you to relax, that’s all.’
‘And what if I can’t?’
He shook his head abruptly, turning away to grip the edge of the dressing table behind him, and anxiety overrode all else. ‘Jake!’ She was beside him in a moment. ‘Are you all right?’
The face he turned towards her was paler than before, and she realised what a strain this was for him, too. ‘I guess Lady took more out of me than I thought,’ he muttered, his mouth twisting with self-derision. ‘Watch this space, Rachel! Be sure you know what you’re getting into.’
‘Oh, Jake!’ She stared up at him appealingly, but he drew back from her obvious invitation.
‘I’m sorry if I was brutal,’ he said heavily. ‘As you can see, even the smallest amount of exertion reduces me to this! Put it down to body fatigue. Obviously I’m not as fit as I thought I was.’
‘Jake …’ Rachel’s nails dug into her palms. ‘Do you honestly think that makes any difference to the way I feel about you?’
His eyes darkened, but he turned away, and walked steadily towards the bathroom. ‘Give me five minutes,’ he told her softly, ‘then I’ll show you the rest of the house.’
CHAPTER SIX
HE emerged not many minutes outside his estimate in a towelling bathrobe, his hair curling damply from the steam. Watching him from the objectivity of a velvet bedroom chair, a pile of his old university textbooks in her lap, Rachel wondered how she had existed so long without this man in her life. Now she couldn’t imagine life without him, and perhaps, in some subconscious corner of her mind, she had always known he was there.
He slid back the doors of the wardrobe and pulled out a brown suede suit, similar to the one he had discarded, together with a shirt and clean underwear. Then, when Rachel’s nerve-ends were tingling with anticipation, he opened a second door into what appeared to be a dressing room and went inside.