The pretty witch

by Lucy Gillen

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  'LUCIFER says it belongs to Vanessa Law,' Isobel told Nigel the following day when she was called upon, inevitably, to explain the scratches on her hand. 'Its name is Pyewacket.' 'Well, he'd know, certainly,' Nigel said dryly. 'He spends enough time up there.' 'He spends most of his time working,' Isobel retorted unthinkingly, and earned herself a frown of disapproval. 'Oh, I'm not denying he works hard all day,' Nigel allowed, 'but he also spends a good deal of time with Vanessa, and he'd certainly know her cat.' The thing seemed to know him very well, she made no attempt to scratch him,' Isobel said, rather rashly in the circumstances. 'I can believe it,' Nigel remarked, a bit sourly, she thought. 'Being a female she wouldn't, would she?' He seemed not to have noticed anything untoward so far and she rather optimistically began to wonder if she might, by,some miracle, get away with not telling him about Lucifer's visit last night, although it was a pretty vain hope one way and another. 'Lucifer suggested she might have been jealous of another female,' she told him, giving nothing else away. 'He could be right,' Nigel agreed, 'although I can't think why the thing should have been jealous of you in your own house. How did it come to be in your cottage anyway?' he added. Isobel shrugged, seeing dangerous ground looming large. 'It must have run in when I opened the front door, 102 I suppose. I heard it mewing outside and went to see what was wrong, but it was so dark and wet I couldn't see a thing out there. The first I knew it was there was when it ran out from under the kitchen table and nearly frightened the life out of me.' He frowned, still puzzled. 'I can't understand why the wretched thing was out at all last night,' he said. 'Especially in that storm.' 'Maybe it stays out at night,' Isobel suggested, but he shook his head. Wo, it doesn't. It's coddled and cosseted like a baby, that great brute, and it's certainly never out in the rain.' ^Well, it was last night.' *0dd.' He frowned over it. 'Mind you, it's not very far coming across the fields for an animal. It may have escaped.' Maybe it got out when Lucifer left Vanessa's,' Isobel said, unthinkingly. They arrived about the same time.' His expression told her that every chance she had ever had, however slender, of keeping Lucifer's visit a secret from him had just disappeared. She felt him watching her closely, although she preferred not to look at him at the moment, feeling rather as she had once or twice at Frome's when she had been reprimanded for some small carelessness. 'How do you know what time Luke arrived home?' he asked, and she hesitated. Only fractionally but long enough, she realized, to confirm his suspicions that she was keeping something from him. Well - well, as a matter of fact he came across and spoke to me.' It was near enough to the truth and she could see that being honest was no more popular than she had anticipated. 'Spoke to you?' Suspicion glinted at her from his blue 103 eyes and he regarded her sternly, as if she had been guilty of some dastardly crime. 'I can't see why he needed to come anywhere near your cottage at that time of night and in that storm. Why did he, Isobel ?' 'Oh, for heaven's sake, Nigel, does it matter?' He frowned, unwilling to give even an inch, it seemed. 'J think so,' he said. 'Unless of course you have any particular reason for not telling me.' Isobel looked up, getting more angry with him than she would have thought possible. 'Of course I haven't,' she told him, 'and you shouldn't be so suspicious, it's not fair.' Then tell me,' he said shortly, and Isobel sighed resignedly. T - I opened the front door when I heard that wretched cat mewing outside,' she told him reluctantly, 'arid - well, I suppose he saw the light and was curious. It was nearly midnight.' 'All the more reason for not coming over, I'd have thought in the circumstances,' he told her shortly. 'But he couldn't possibly have seen your hall light from his driveway, Isobel, there's the main drive and a couple of shrubberies between you.' Isobel sighed resignedly and looked down at her fingers, tracing the tell-tale scratches on the back of her left hand. 'Maybe he felt like playing knight-errant,' she "said lightly in an effort to lift the air of gloom that seemed to have enveloped him. To be honest, Nigel, I was silly enough to tell Lucifer that thunderstorms frighten me to death and he - well, he came over to see if I was O.K.' 'YOU're frightened of thunderstorms?' He looked more disbelieving than sympathetic. 'Why, for heaven's sake?' 'Oh, how do I know?' Isobel exclaimed. They just do, 104 that's all, I've been frightened of them ever since I was a child.' 'You didn't tell me.' 'I - I thought you might think I was stupid.' 'But you told Luke. Does he think you're stupid?' She lifted her head, her grey eyes thoughtful. 'Rather surprisingly,' she said, 'he doesn't.' 'And what was the object of his visit?' he asked. 'Or perhaps I shouldn't ask in the circumstances.' 'Of course you can ask,' Isobel told him, determinedly offhand about it all. 'His term was to hold my hand. Metaphorically, of course,' she added hastily. 'Actually it did help a lot just having someone there with me.' 'If you'd let me know how you felt about storms,' Nigel said reproachfully, 'I could have held your hand, literally, not metaphorically. Why didn't you come over to the house and let me know?' 'Oh, Nigel, how could I? It was pouring with. rain, and anyway I expect you were in bed by then, not being a coward, like me. I can cope on my own fairly well when I have to.' 'But you obviously can't,' he argued, 'and I don't like Luke taking things like that upon himself, not with you. He'd no right to come over to you. Damn him, why can't he run true to form?' His vehemence startled her and she wondered how much more angry he would have been 'if he had known about the moment of truth when she had dropped the tray and Lucifer had held her tight in his arms. 'Isn't he running true to form?' she asked. 'Of course riot. I've never known lum care tuppence whether anyone's scared of a thing or not. He's no patience with fear as a rule, he's as hard as iron.' 'He was very kind to me last night.' It was perhaps rubbing salt into the wound, but she felt 105 bound to speak as she found, and Lucifer had been kind, and gentle too, certainly not as hard as iron. 'Oh, damn him!' Frustration at his own forced inactivity welled up and almost choked him and Isobel believed that in that moment he really hated his brother. 'Nigel, please don't,' she begged. There's no need for you to feel that way about it. He came over because he knew I was frightened of the storm, that's all. He comforted me as he would have done a - a child. That's how he sees me, Nigel, as a child. He always treats me as one.' 'A child!' He looked at her, his blue eyes dark with some expression she found it hard to recognize. 'You're not a child, and he knows it.' 'I am as far as Lucifer is concerned,' she insisted. 'Why, he even calls me a cheeky kid,' she added to add conviction; although she almost despaired of ever convincing him. 'He's got more nerve than anyone I know,' he said darkly, 'and I wish he'd marry Vanessa and get out of my way.' 'Out of your way?' Isobel looked startled. 'Oh, you know what I mean.' He looked so disgruntled for a moment that she was unsure of the best way to deal with his mood. Then he suddenly looked up at her and pulled a face. 'I suppose the truth is he gives me a real granddaddy of an inferiority complex,' he confessed. 'He's so smooth and unflappable, I loathe him for it.' 'Oh, don't do that, he's your brother.^ :'! know,' he sighed, 'and that makes it worse in a way. If he wasn't I could hate him without feeling guilty about it.' He took her hand in his and pressed his lips to her fingers. 'I suppose I should be grateful to him for taking care of you last night,'he said ruefully. Isobel laughed, as much relieved as amused. 'I could ;o6 have coped without him, even if it does help to have company,' she told him. 'And I could well have done without his feline companion. She didn't like me at all.' 'It's Vanessa's,' he said shortly, 'she wouldn't.' 'It's a vicious great brute,' Isobel remarked. 'Although it was very fussy with Lucifer; it watched me with its big yellow eyes as if it suspected me of heaven knows what.' Nigel lifted her scratched hand and kissed its palm, an unusually sentimental gesture for him, although he had taken to such gestures lately. 'I'm sorry I snapped at you, darling, but it's these damned legs and the heat too, I feel so useless all the time.' He leaned over and kissed her mouth. 'But I'll personally strangle that ghastly animal if it hurts you again,' he promised. After the thunderstorms the weather seemed to improve again and it was warm and sunny without the oppressive humidity that had played havoc with tempers for the
past few days. Isobel found it difficult to believe that she had been working for Lucifer for almost a month, although she seemed to have known him for much longer than that. He was not an easy man to know well, she thought, but he had such an easy way with him that made short acquaintance seem much longer. She watched him now as he bent over a page of the almost indecipherable longhand she would be required to translate when he was satisfied with it, and frowned curiously. Nigel had said he wished Lucifer would marry Vanessa and settle down, but Isobel had her own ideas about that, although she had, wisely, so far said nothing to Nigel about them. In fact she could not really imagine Lucifer married to anyone at all, for, despite his extrovert manner, he had a strange air of remoteness about him at times. 107 He looked up suddenly and caught her watching him, smiling when she flushed bright pink and hastily looked down at her typing. 'Why the interest, piccolo?' he asked quietly, and Isobel shook her head without looking up. 'I was just taking a breather,' she told him. 'YOU were watching me,' he insisted. 'I know it, I could sense you looking at me, that's why I looked up.' 'YOU flatter yourself,' she retorted, refusing to be inveigled into admitting it. 'YOU just happen to sit in the window, that's all, and I was looking out at the sunshine, not at you at all.' 'Liar,' he said softly, and laughed when she looked up indignantly. f! beg your pardon!' 'Granted,' he obliged with another short laugh. He leaned his elbows on the desk and looked across at her, his eyes seeming to look right into her as they always did. 'But your attention was wandering, whether you were looking at me or not,' he insisted, and she shrugged. 'Only temporarily,' she said, and looked at him challengingly down her nose. 'Ate you going to sack me for laziness?' 'Not this time,' he allowed, apparently serious. He studied her for a second or two, chin resting on steepled fingers. 'Are you bored with your job?' he asked at last, and she looked startled. 'No. No, of course I'm not.* 'I'm relieved to hear it.' She looked at him curiously. 'What made you ask me that?' He shrugged, smiling wryly. 'Oh, I don't know, I just wondered, that's all.' 'But why on earth should you wonder such a thing?' Isobel demanded. 'I've given you no cause to think I'm bored, have I?' 108 'No.' He studied her again for a second or two. 'But girls of your age seem to change their jobs almost as often as they change their boy-friends!' Well, in my case that's not very often, is it?' Isobel retorted, and he laughed. 'No, it isn't, I grant you that, not while you're more or less going steady, as they say, with Nigel, but I sometimes have the feeling that one of these days you'll tell Nigel where he gets off and disappear into the blue.' His expression challenged her to deny it. 'And I'd hate you to leave me in the lurch,' he added. Isobel looked at him unbelievingly for a moment. 'I certainly wouldn't leave you without due notice,' she told him, and he smiled. 'No, being a nicely trained girl, you wouldn't.' His slightly condescending air was beginning to annoy her. 'Girls of my age, as you term it,' she informed him loftily, 'are no worse for changing their jobs than anyone else. We're just as hard-working and reliable as the rest, so you have no call to be so blasted patronizing!' 'And you have no call to cuss, my girl. I don't like it.' 'I wasn't cussing!' She looked indignant and not a little surprised at his tone. 'For heaven's sake, I'm not a baby, I can say blasted if I like without you going all righteous about it.' Repeating the word gave her a certain amount of pleasure when she saw him frown again. 'I'm not going all righteous, as you call it, heaven forbid I ever should, but you're not the kind of girl who should swear at all, however mildly. It spoils the effect.' 'Don't you approve of women being allowed a mild cuss?' she asked. That's a bit of nasty sex discrimination, isn't it?' 'Not girls like you,'he insisted. Isobel could scarcely believe he was serious, and yet he 109 appeared to be. The revelationof this unexpected streak of puritanism in him, of all people, gave her an elated feeling of having got the upper hand for once, and she would not have been human if she had not made the most of it. 'I'm sorry I offended your sensitive ear,' she teased him, and saw a swift glitter of anger in his eyes which vanished almost immediately. 'Don't behave out of character, Isabel, it doesn't suit you.' Something - some intangible something in his voice and his eyes - encouraged her and she laughed, her grey eyes dancing mischief at the idea of being able to shock him. 'Si, papa!' Revenge was very sweet and she watched his dark face run through a gamut of expressions before he got to his feet and came across to her. 'Say that again, if you dare,' he said softly, and she hastily lowered her eyes, finding the black gaze far too disconcerting close to, wondering if she had been too rash and he was genuinely angry with her. The unfamiliar excitement she felt, however, egged heron. 'I've been learning Italian," she told him defiantly and untruthfully. 'Oh no, you haven't,' he argued. "'Everyone knows that much Italian.' Tto they?' He nodded, lifting her chin with one finger although she still refused to look at him. 'If you want to leam Italian,' he told her, 'I'll teach you with pleasure, but if you call me that again I'll ' 'You'11 what?' she asked innocently, raising her eyes. He said nothing for a moment, simply stood beside her his eyes glistening with something she could only guess at, but which set her heart racing wildly and brought the no colour flooding to her cheeks. Then he bent over her, his strong hands either side of her face, holding her so that she could not escape him even had she wanted to, drawing her to her feet so that she stood close to him, and saw the dark, glistening, almost hungry look in his eyes before she closed her own. His mouth was firm but unbelievably gentle as he kissed her, her head forced back against his fingers, holding her for so long that she felt her heart must stop. Only it didn't - it tapped away anxiously at her ribs as if it sought to escape. She kept her eyes closed even after he released her, and his lips brushed warmly against her forehead before he moved away abruptly. 'Pack up and go home,' he told her shortly, before she had time to recover, and she saw that he was already over by his own desk again and standing with his back to her, looking out of the window. 'But-but it's only ' 'Go home, Isobel.' She scarcely recognized the voice that spoke to her so shortly over one shoulder, and there was a tense stillness about him as if he was waiting for her to go - wanted,her to go. He did not even turn around when, several minutes later, she called out a tentative goodnight. 'Goodnight' He answered briefly and without his customary casual wave to her as she went out of the door. She felt suddenly and inexplicably sad as she looked back briefly at the tall, dark figure outlined against the sunny window. Isobel's feelings were oddly mixed that evening as she sat with Nigel after dinner as usual. She could not have said whether she was glad or sorry that Lucifer had kissed her like that, although inevitably it would make her more self-conscious in his presence. It was, she supposed, partly her fault that it had hap. in pened at all, but she had thought Nigel's assurance that she was not Lucifer's type of woman was a fact and the risk she took in teasing him as she had had not occurred to her until it was too late. Also, she recognized ruefully, she had not realized what her own response would be. Preoccupied as she was, she appeared much quieter than usual and Nigel, almost inevitably, commented on it. 'Is something wrong?' he asked, taking her hand, and she shook her head, smiling to reassure him. 'No, nothing's wrong, I'm just a bit tired, that's all.' 'Has the slave-driver been standing over you with the whip again?' She shook her head again. ''No, in fact he's been very good lately. Not that he's ever as bad as you make him sound,' she added hastily. "He let you off early enough tonight,' he remarked, not challenging her on her last words as she half expected him to. 'What came over him?' She shrugged, making light of her early dismissal. She had certainly no intention of telling him of the outcome of her teasing Lucifer. 'I don't know what came over him,' she said. 'Maybe he felt tired too and thought he'd have an early evening for a change.2 "Hmm. Or more likely he's seeing Vanessa.* 'He didn't say so.' She must surely have imagined that edge of resentment on her voice, she thought, but even so Nigel looked at her sharply. 'Does he usually confide In you about his off-duty plans?'he asked, and Isobel shook her head. 'Not always, but he sometimes says where he's going.' She was thoughtfully quiet for-a minute or two. 'I expect he is seein
g Vanessa,' she said at last The blue eyes quizzed her briefly, then he half-smiled. ^You don't like her, do you?' The question was unexpected and Isobel looked SI2 I startled for a moment. 'I've never really had the opportunity to find out whether I do or not,' she said. 'A fiveminute meeting in a hallway is hardly long enough to judge, is it?I don't imagine I'd take to her very easily,' she added, and laughed. 'Any more than she did to me.' 'Ah, but I would say her dislikeof you was quite understandable in the circumstances,' Nigel told her. 'After all, you work with Luke all day.' Isobel looked down at her hands. 'She's jealous, vou mean?' ' He nodded. 'Without a doubt, I should say. She's jpealous of any woman who gets within smiling distance of yLuke, and she wouldn't realize that she has nothing to f- worry about where you're concerned.'I Wo. No, of course not,' Isobel agreed hastily, touching E one finger to her lips almost unconsciously. 'But I'm | rather surprised they're still on speaking terms if she's as ' jealous as you say. After all, didn't you say he had quite a I few women friends'at various times?' I Nigel shrugged, pulling a face over something he had | given up trying to understand. "Vanessa's the sort who t never gives up,' he said. They've known each other about ; six years now and they've been on the brink of marrying | for most of that time, as far as I can gather.' ; Tou mean Vanessa thinks she's been on the brink of | getting married,' Isobel told him, rather rashly scornful of | the other woman's optimism. 'But if she's waiting for Lu^ cifer I'm pretty certain she'll be unlucky. He isn't the 1 marrying kind, he told me so.' Nigel looked at her closely, his blue eyes narrowed suspiciously. 'You sound very sure about that,' he told her. 'How on earth can you know? What made him even mention the subject to you, of all people?' ; Isobel laughed, a little uneasily now that she realized , how rash she had been. 'Oh, it was just one of those "3 things that crop up,' she told him. 'Actually he was teasing me about whether I would marry you or not.' He frowned. 'Does it concern him?' She shrugged. 'I don't know, I never know what Lucifer's thinking, or very seldom anyway But he was teasing me, as I say, and I retaliated by suggesting that he did something about himself before he started worrying about me. He told me he wasn't the marrying sort and oddly enough I believed him.' 'So do I,' Nigel agreed, rather surprisingly. Isobel raised her brows, curious to know his reasons. 'You don't think he's the marrying kind either?' He shrugged. 'Well, he's shown no sign all these years of settling down with one woman for life. Maybe he isn't.' She smiled wryly, wondering if she was betraying too much interest and if he would notice it. 'From what you say he's had plenty of choice over the years,' she said. 'So maybe he just hasn't found the right woman yet.' 'Maybe - God knows he's had enough choice.9 He sounded as if he envied him. He was silent for a moment, then he frowned as if something puzzled him. 'You know, it's odd, but I've always had the feeling about Luke that he's a bit of a loner despite his women.' 'He's not an easy man to know,' Isobel said softly, and Nigel nodded agreement. 'No, I suppose he isn't.' n4