“I told myself that you must have red blood in your veins too just like other people. And yet you remained disapproving, divorced from all human emotions.”
He spoke jerkily and with a quickness that made his words hard to follow.
“But – I don’t – understand,” Aria stammered.
“I think you do,” he said. “I’ve never met anyone like you before. It’s – it’s piqued me, if you like. To know that where other people were eager to please, you were just prepared to do your job and to censure, at the same time with every breath you drew, the person who employed you.”
“It’s not – true!” Aria quavered.
“Of course it’s true,” he snapped. “And why should you manage to be so different from other women? With red hair you should be emotional, you should have feelings like every other member of your sex. That was what I told myself. And then, last night, I thought that I had caught you off your guard.”
He walked away from the fireplace and strode to the window, standing with his back to Aria looking out over the garden.
“I admit the way I behaved was indefensible,” he said. “But you drove me to it. I suppose, really, civilisation as far as I am concerned is only a veneer. I’m a savage at heart! There was something about you that drove me crazy. That is the only explanation I can make for what happened.”
He waited a moment and then turned round.
“Well, why don’t you say something? he asked defiantly.
“There is nothing to say – is there?” Aria replied quietly.
“That is the sort of remark you would make,” he retorted angrily. “Of course there’s something to say. I want to know what you are thinking, feeling. Who are you that you should disapprove of me?”
There was something almost childlike in the question and yet Aria understood the thought that went behind it.
“You mean that I have not the right to criticise?” she said, her pride coming to the rescue of both her embarrassment and her fear.
“I wouldn’t exactly put it like that.”
“But that is what you meant, isn’t it?” she asked. “By what right has a secretary, whom you have engaged from an agency, an employee who is taking your money, to criticise you, the important, influential Mr. Huron?”
There was a bitterness in her voice now and he walked back again to the hearthrug before he answered her.
“Put like that it sounds absurd,” he said. “And yet, in a way, I must be honest and admit that there is some truth in it.”
“I don’t know quite what you expect,” Aria said. “I came here to do a job of work. I have done it to the best of my ability.”
“I have often watched your face,” he said, ignoring her remark. “I have watched you when people were talking at luncheon or dinner and I have known all the time that you were sitting in judgement upon what was said and what was done. At first I could hardly believe it was true.
“Then, as I grew to know you better, I saw that you were, indeed, contemplating everyone else as if across a great gulf, a barrier which you intended should be entirely insurmountable.
“I tried to be amused, but somehow it wasn’t amusing. I even began to be afraid that I should look at my friends through your eyes and that they would no longer be my friends or amusing to me.”
He waited for Aria to say something and after a moment she murmured,
“I am sorry – that I should have disturbed you.”
“You’re not in the least sorry,” he shouted. “I don’t know what it is, but it seems as if you have been determined to rile me ever since you came here. Perhaps Lulu was right when she said that you are a troublemaker, and yet you have not made trouble in the house, except as far as Lulu was concerned.”
“That was not my fault,” Aria parried, starting to defend herself.
“I must admit that to be the truth,” he said, almost as if he grudged her a small victory. “But why, why do you feel like this?”
For one moment Aria contemplated telling him about her father, explaining her suspicion and hatred of Society, telling him about Charles and herself and the struggle they had had to keep going.
And then, before she could speak, he suddenly brought down his fist with a crash onto the wooden mantelpiece, which made the ornaments jump and jingle.
“Damn it!” he said angrily. “What are you thinking?”
There was so much fury in his voice and so much fire in his eyes that for the moment he seemed almost demented. Strangely enough his anger did not frighten Aria, instead she felt her own temper rising.
She would not be shouted at or sworn at.
“If you speak to me like that,” she said, “I shall leave this house.”
“If you say that, I – ” Dart Huron began.
But what he was about to say she was never to know, for even as he spoke the door opened and McDougall announced,
“Sir Charles Milborne, sir!”
Aria swung round, too astonished for the moment to do anything but stare at her brother as he came into the room.
He was wearing his best suit, she noted automatically. It was nearly threadbare, but it had been well cut by a good tailor and he looked very presentable and very unlike his usual untidy self when he worked on the farm in his old corduroys and open-necked shirt.
“Oh, there you are, Aria!”
He advanced towards her and had reached her side before she realised that she had said nothing in greeting.
“Charles, why have you come here?” she enquired.
He bent to touch her cheek with his lips before he answered.
“I came up to see what you were up to,” he said a little grimly.
“Would it be asking too much that you should introduce me?” a suave voice said from behind them.
Aria started a little guiltily. She had a feeling that this was momentous and at the same time disastrous and yet there was nothing she could do but effect the introduction.
“This is my brother, Charles,” she said a little hastily. “Charles, this is Mr. Dart Huron.”
The two men shook hands and then Charles drew from his pocket a rather crumpled newspaper.
“I came for an explanation of this,” he declared.
He put it down on the writing desk and Aria saw on the front page a photograph of herself standing with Dart Huron on the terrace.
“Dart Huron, the international polo player and American millionaire, announces that he is engaged to Miss Nobody of Nowhere,” was the caption.
Below was a paragraph explaining that it had been impossible to extract information from Mr. Huron about his future wife apart from the fact that her name was Milbank. She had been acting as secretary and hostess at his house at Summerhill, otherwise he was not prepared to tell the newspapers anything until the announcement should be made formally.
“Joe brought this paper to Queen’s Folly last night,” Charles told Aria.
Dart Huron gave an exclamation,
“Queen’s Folly?” he queried.
“My home in Hertfordshire,” Charles said stiffly.
“Good gracious! I’ve been there,” Dart Huron exclaimed. “The week before last. Somebody had told me about it. I wanted to see the pictures. Actually, I didn’t think they were as impressive as the house. It is one of the most beautiful period houses I have seen in my life.”
Aria expected Charles to soften at the compliments. Instead he seemed stiffer than ever.
“Queen’s Folly is my home and Aria’s,” he said. “Which is all the more reason for me to resent this sort of publicity about one of my family.”
“Your sister told me yesterday for the first time that her name was Milborne and not Milbank,” Dart Huron said. “But it did not have any special significance for me. I did not connect her, of course, with Queen’s Folly, although I had visited the place and knew by what the guide book told me that the Milbornes had lived there for generations.”
“You will understand, then,” Charles said, “tha
t as Aria’s brother and as Head of the Family I am entitled to demand an explanation.”
“Charles, it was like this – ” Aria began.
“I would prefer to have the explanation from Mr. Huron,” Charles interrupted.
Aria looked at him in surprise. He was somehow very different from the brother she had thought she knew so well. The hesitant nervousness that had been so much a part of his makeup since his breakdown had gone. Here was a man on his dignity, a man fighting for his family pride, a man affronted, as he believed, quite justifiably.
“I think under the circumstances you are quite entitled to an explanation,” Dart Huron said. “But you must believe me when I tell you that I had no idea who your sister was.”
“And yet you are engaged to be married?” Charles enquired, a note of incredulity in his voice.
Dart Huron looked at Aria and she at him. For the first time they seemed to be joined together against a common enemy. This was going to be difficult to explain.
“I must ask you, Sir Charles,” Dart Huron said after a moment, “to try and understand what will seem to you a very extraordinary chain of circumstances. Your sister came here to me as a secretary and housekeeper at a moment’s notice, because I unfortunately had to sack her predecessor.”
He spoke firmly as he started his explanation and then, having gone so far, he stopped.
“Do forgive me, Sir Charles,” he said. “But I have not asked you to sit down or to have a cigarette.”
“I prefer standing,” Charles answered. “And I am still waiting for that explanation.”
He was going to be difficult, Aria could see that. And quite suddenly she looked at everything that had happened through Charles’s eyes rather than her own. It was certainly rather horrifying and not particularly commendable.
Lulu Carlo, Mrs. Hawkins’s death, Lord Buckleigh and Dart Huron himself. What strange characters they would seem to Charles, concerned only with whether the kale needed hoeing, the wheat was coming on nicely or if the rabbits were eating down the spring wheat. How could anyone begin to explain the peculiarities of the household at Summerhill or, indeed, the strange emotional scene in which she, herself, had been a participant last night?
Then, as she wondered what Charles would think, she heard Dart Huron say,
“And so your sister came here to help me. But now I have asked her to marry me.”
‘Was that all he was going to say?’ Aria wondered. She looked at him and knew by the expression in his eyes and the twist of his lips that that was exactly all he did intend to say.
“This was rather sudden, wasn’t it?” Charles asked.
“My dear fellow! In my country we make up our minds very quickly,” Dart Huron said.
Charles turned towards Aria.
“Didn’t you think,” he began a little ponderously, “that it would have been best to come home first to tell me that you intended to announce your engagement?”
“But I didn’t intend to announce it,” Aria answered. “It was just – ”
“It was just the Press,” Dart Huron interposed. “They rushed us before we were really ready for them. We are sorry, very sorry, that this occurred. But there was nothing we could do about it at the time.”
“Well it seems to me very unfortunate,” Charles remarked.
He was not as annoyed as he had been, that was obvious. At the same time, having worked himself up into a position of having been affronted, of having his pride and dignity hurt, he was not going to give in too easily.
“There will be no formal announcement,” he said, “until everything has been discussed with me as Head of the Family and this matter of the name been put right.”
“No, no, of course not!” Dart Huron said. “We wouldn’t have thought of it. And now, Sir Charles, let me offer you a drink or coffee, if you prefer it. If you have come here from Queen’s Folly, you must have had a very early breakfast.”
“I should like a whisky and soda,” Charles said. “If it’s no trouble.”
“No, of course not,” Dart Huron said, ringing the bell.
“In the meantime Aria had better go and pack,” Charles said.
“Pack!”
Both Aria and Dart Huron stared at him in astonishment.
“Of course!” he said. “She cannot stay here unchaperoned. How could she?”
For a moment Aria gaped at him. Then suddenly she felt herself beginning to smile. At that moment he was so like her grandfather. She could see the old man now, rebuking one of his staff for some misdemeanour or speaking sharply to Charles and herself because they had been giggling during family prayers.
Until this moment she had only thought of Charles as needing care and tenderness. Someone who had been hurt and injured and with whom she must he very gentle and almost maternal.
This was a new Charles – one who was assuming the responsibilities that were his by right of birth and breeding, a man to whom authority came naturally.
“I will go and pack,” she said obediently. “Have you come here by car?”
“Yes,” he answered. “I hired one. It seemed to me the only thing to do.”
“Yes, of course,” Aria agreed. But at the same time she felt a pang at the thought of what it would cost.
“Wait a minute!” Dart Huron said. “You can’t really mean, Sir Charles, that you intend to take Aria away from here now – at this moment.”
“But, naturally,” Charles answered. “We shall be very pleased to see you, Mr. Huron, if you wish to come to any meal at Queen’s Folly or indeed to stay. But Aria cannot possibly remain here, you must see that.”
“I am afraid the conventions of English social life are rather beyond me,” Dart Huron confessed. “But if you say so, it must obviously be right. However, I don’t like to see her go.
“I can understand that,” Charles said. “And, as I’ve already said, you are very welcome to come to Queen’s Folly.”
“I can’t quite get into my head that you really own that exquisite house,” Dart Huron said ruminatively and Aria realised that he was not trying to flatter Charles, he was speaking with a note of sincerity in his voice that she knew only too well.
“If I had to settle anywhere in England, I should like to live there. And yet how difficult it would be for me. You have your roots, your background and the place belongs to you. That is what I have wanted, I think more than anything else in my life – to belong somewhere, to feel it was really mine because my ancestors fought and died for it.”
Aria’s eyes were on Dart Huron’s face as he spoke.
Charles merely looked embarrassed. This was not the sort of way he thought that ordinary people talked.
“I can’t wait very long, Aria,” he said quickly. “You know as well as I do that I have to get back to the farm. There is so much to do.”
“I will go and get ready, Charles,” she said.
She would have turned towards the door, but Dart Huron stopped her.
“Listen,” he said. “I don’t know quite what your brother wants, but you know as well as I do that I don’t want you to leave here. Can we persuade him to stay? If it will satisfy the Mrs. Grundys of Great Britain, shall I send for some maiden aunt I haven’t got or invite one or two distinguished ladies who are very good friends of mine to come here tomorrow? Would that make it all right?”
Aria shook her head.
“Charles is right,” she said. “I think it would be much better if I went home.”
She was seeing, as she spoke, how complicated the whole scenario had become. If Charles stayed here even a little while longer, members of the house party would get to know who she really was. It was only a question of time, under those circumstances, before the Press would know too.
Once again there floated before her eyes the headlines that had heralded her father’s death. She could see it being resurrected all over again. She could see how both Charles and herself would be dragged back into the limelight of public recognition.
&nb
sp; “No! No! I must go,” she cried.
She went from the room quickly and ran across the hall. It was only as she reached the staircase that she realised that Dart Huron had followed her. He called her name and she turned her head in astonishment to see that he was close behind her.
“You can’t go away like this,” he said in a low voice.
“But I must, don’t you understand?” she said. “And the quicker the better. No one must know who I am. You will just have to say to everyone here that I have disappeared and to the Press that the engagement is off.”
“But why should I say that?”
“Because it’s true,” she said. “This farce has gone on long enough. I ought never to have consented to it in the first place. It was bound to cause trouble and you can see how Charles feels about it. Besides, there are other things, things that I cannot tell you now, but which will come out unless I disappear. It is the only thing to be done – I’ve got to go.”
“And suppose I say I won’t let you?”
He spoke very slowly and she looked up into his face to see a strange light in his eyes.
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said.
“I think you do,” he answered. “I want you to stay and, if you persist in going, I might tell your brother the truth.”
Aria could only stare at him helplessly.
“You mustn’t do that,” she said at length in an agitated voice. “Charles wouldn’t understand and he would be furious about the money. I hadn’t meant to tell him how I had – earned it anyway. He would think it an insult to his family pride. I hadn’t really considered it before, but I see now it was something that I should never have agreed to, something rather degrading and shaming.”
She spoke almost in desperation and after a moment Dart Huron said quietly,
“Perhaps you are right.”
“I must go, you do see that?”
“Yes, I think I do. And yet it is against all my inclinations.”
“But, why? Why?” Aria enquired.
She was standing on the step of the stairs so that her eyes were almost level with his. It seemed to her that his glance flickered over her face and that his eyes rested for a moment on her lips – still bruised and a little swollen from the violence of his kisses.
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