by Sara Craven
'Well, that time is long past.' Antonia would have said more, but at that moment the sitting room door opened and Carne came in frowning.
'What's the trouble now?' he demanded grimly. 'I hope you two aren't going to make a habit of shouting at each other when there's resident staff in the house.'
'Oh, darling, I'm so sorry.' Antonia rose from the sofa and went over to him, smiling up at him beguilingly. In her stockinged, feet, and against his height, she looked very small and fragile. 'I'm afraid all our tempers are a little frayed today.'
He looked down at her, his face enigmatic. 'Is that a fact?' He looked at Rowan over her head, and his eyes were expressionless. She felt herself tremble. She wanted to put out her hand, to go to him, but pride kept her rooted to the spot. And anyway, Antonia stood between them, as she always would, so close to him that she might as well have been in his arms. He said quietly and coldly, 'There's really no need for you to do the housework, but if you insist;, perhaps you'd check Sybilla's flat. I've been on to the nursing home, and she's coming home in a few days. I naturally want everything ready to welcome her.'
'Naturally,' Rowan said ironically. She could Sense the shock in Antonia, the disbelief and the rejection. She must have been so sure, so very sure that Sybilla would never return to Raven's Crag. 'I'll make sure that the flat is ready for her.'
'You'd better make up the bed in her spare room too.
I've arranged for a nurse to accompany her. She'll need to take care, at least for the first few weeks.'
Rowan nodded and left the room. As she went into the hall, she heard Antonia's voice husky with resentment. 'But Carne-oh, darling, do you think you're doing the right thing . . .'
Rowan didn't wait to hear any more, but she smiled rather grimly as she went up to her room to fetch Sybilla's keys. It took longer than she expected. They weren't in the place she'd thought she'd left them, and she was involved in a tiresome search for quite a time.
When she went down to the flat, she looked around her with a certain amount of pride. It was clean and tidy, just as Sybilla had wanted, but there was no denying, it wore rather a forlorn air. It wasn't just that it was uninhabited-in some odd way, it looked bare. She shrugged, telling herself that she was just being fanciful, but as she cleaned the windows, and dusted and polished, the thought nagged at her.
It was an odd few days which followed. The new housekeeper arrived, a large slow-moving woman called Mrs Ramsden. Bovine she might appear, but Rowan soon discovered there was no need for any explanation of her duties. Silently and efficiently, Mrs Ramsden took over the housework and the cooking, indicating firmly that she needed neither help nor interference from anyone, and Rowan found herself left more to her own devices that she had ever dreamed possible.
The good weather held, and' on Sunday afternoon she slipped out of the house and away up the fell, following the route she had taken with Carne. When she reached the plateau where they had seen the raven, she sat down in the sunlight with her back to a rock and waited, but this time there was no flurry, no ripple of blue-black feathers to beguile her, just her own wearying thoughts beating inside her skull, and at last she got up abruptly, and went back to the house. The magic of the fell had withered for her.
Sshe was, glad to find herself back at the pottery again, learning to pack up the postal orders for pots as well as serve the customers who were coming in ever-increasing numbers. She saw little of David, who had been inclined to be sheepish at their first encounter, until she had laughed him out of it. The immediate prospect of exams was engaging his attention, but she guessed the fact that he knew now she was older than he was also tending to keep him at a distance, and she couldn't feel altogether regretful. Even if there had been no age difference, all he could ever have been, as far as she was concerned, was a nice boy. And she had already given her heart and mind to someone who had left boyhood behind him a long time ago.
Nor did she see a great deal of Antonia, who was clearly sulking at the prospect of Sybilla's return, but who was also very much occupied with the sittings for her portrait up in Carne's studio. Not that painting was all that" occurred, according to Antonia. Rowan was so sickened by the pinpricks of sexual innuendo that Antonia introduced every time the portrait was mentioned that she had stopped asking after its progress. If all Antonia said was true, it would probably never be finished anyway, she thought cynically. Yet Carne didn't have to make excuses about portrait painting to have Antonia all to himself. It was his house, and if he and Antonia wanted to stay in bed together all day long making love, then they could do so.
But however besotted he might be, it seemed that Antonia had been unable to change his mind about Sybilla, however hard she had tried, and Rowan remembered only too well all the little tricks Antonia had used to wind Victor Winslow around her little finger. It was a bitter triumph to know that Carne was not so easily beguiled.
But at least her stepmother's preoccupation with Carne meant that she had no time for the high-flying bridge players any more. Rowan had tried once, rather awkwardly, to find out what had happened about the money and whether Antonia had managed to pay her debts, but was told in no uncertain terms to mind her own business.
In the circumstances that hadn't been difficult, Rowan thought wryly, as she walked back to Raven's Crag at the end of her first week back at the pottery. After Mrs Ramsden's plain but excellent dinner, she usually went up to her room and worked on her story. It was drafted to her satisfaction now, and she was busily re-writing it, trying to find the correct level of vocabulary to suit the age of the audience for which it was intended, but without appearing to 'talk down' to her young readers.
She had told Grace rather shyly what she was doing, and Grace had obligingly supplied her with some large sheets of cartridge paper so that she could set out her text and leave space for the illustrations that would be needed. Rowan was no draughtswoman, but she sketched in faintly her ideas for the drawings, although she guessed that if by some remote chance a publisher became interested in her story she would probably have very little say in that side of it.
She was eager to get back to her story. It couldn't stop the hurt inside her when she thought of Carne and Antonia together, but while she was working on it, it demanded all her absorption and concentration, and she could keep her pain at a distance, at least for a while.
As she approached the gates of the house an ambulance came out slowly and turned up the road. Rowan's steps quickened; Sybilla must be home, she thought delightedly.
She sped up the drive and went up the steps to the front door two at a time. At first the house appeared to be deserted, then she heard the murmur of voices in the distance and realised that everyone must be in Sybilla's flat.
She pushed the door open and went into the little sitting room. Her first dismayed thought was how white and ill Sybilla looked-far worse than the last time she had seen her at the clinic. Perhaps the excitement of the journey home had tired her. Her second thought was how grim everyone looked, especially Carne.
She said, 'Sybilla-oh, it's lovely to see you! The flat has seemed so empty without you.'
Antonia gave a little strained crack of laughter, quelled to silence by the blazing look Carne turned, on her.
Sybilla looked across the room at Rowan, and she was appalled to see there were tears on the older woman's cheeks.
'You can say that?' Sybilla's voice shook. 'You can honestly stand there and say that to me, after I trusted you . . .'
Rowan stared back at her in mingled bewilderment and compassion. 'I don't understand,' she began. 'Is something wrong?'
Carne said tightly, 'A great deal is wrong. I don't have to ask if you recognise these?' He moved slightly and Rowan saw that his body had been shielding a small table. To h«r surprise she saw that two of the velvet-framed Victorian miniatures which normally hung beside the fireplace were lying there.
'Of course I do.' Involuntarily her eyes went to the place on the wall where
they usually hung, then returned to meet Carne's gaze. The silver eyes were bitter with anger and contempt and her heart began to thud with huge sickening strokes. She said, 'What is it? Why are you all looking at me as if I'm a criminal?'
'Not really a criminal, darling,' Antonia's voice was honey, poisonously sweet. 'Just rather a nasty little petty thief who forgot to dispose of the evidence.'
Carne said slowly, quoting, 'I'll do anything I have to--anything to get out of this place.' His eyes still held hers. They might have been alone together in a suddenly reeling universe. 'But I didn't realise you intended to go to these lengths, Rowan. What did you do with the rest of the things you took?'
'Took?' Her voice was shrill with shock. 'What are you talking about? What am I supposed to have taken?'
'Some candlesticks, a snuflbox, some ivory figures-, you know the list as well as I do. Sybilla noticed the things were missing as soon as she came in. Did you think she wouldn't? Or were you counting on the fact that she wasn't going to return here and your depredations would never be noticed?'
It was a nightmare, but soon she would waken from it. She had to.
She took a step forward, towards the small shrunken figure in the chair. She said, 'Sybilla, I never took a thing from you. I wouldn't-I couldn't! You must believe me.'
'She might have done,' Carne said coldly, 'if I hadn't found these--' he gestured towards the miniatures' stuffed into a drawer in your bedroom.'
'You searched my room? But why?'
'Because you had free access here. You' were the only one who had Sybilla's keys. That's what I was looking for when I found the miniatures. I told myself there had to be some rational explanation, but as soon as Sybilla got here she knew something was wrong.'
And so did I, Rowan thought numbly. The other day, I knew the room was too bare, but I didn't know the contents well enough to check-and anyway why should I have done?
Carne said quietly, 'Your bank statement arrived this morning, Rowan. I think, in the circumstances, we have the right to ask to see it.'
A feeling of nausea threatened to overwhelm her, but she hung an to her self-control.
'See it if you like. It-it won't tell you anything, because there's nothing to tell. I came in here to do the cleaning, not steal. I had no reason to steal.'
His voice was bitter. 'None-except your overwhelming, obsessive desire to have enough money to return to London. All you had to do was ask me, Rowan. Didn't you realise I'd have paid anything to protect Sybilla from this kind of hurt?'
She stood silently, her arms wrapped across herself in automatic defence, until Antonia returned with the bank's long brown envelope.
'Open it yourself,' Carne handed it to her. 'We don't want to pry more than we have to, so all we want to know is the balance.'
'I've nothing to hide.' There was anger stirring in her now, and hurt pride that just because of same monstrous mistake she she should be suspected and accused. She tare open the envelope and thrust the sheet it contained back at him.
He looked at the raw of figures and his mouth hardened. 'Saved from your wages at the pottery?' he asked defeatedly. 'I don't think so, Rowan.'
Surprised, she took the statement back and glanced at it, her eyes widening as she assimilated the amount of the balance in her account. Then she realised what must have happened. Her quarterly allowance had been transferred directly into the account in accordance with the instructions she had given the estate's solicitors in London. The quarterly allowance that Carne knew nothing about, but which had been one of the levers Antonia had used to persuade her to come to Raven's Crag.
She lifted her eyes and looked across at her stepmother, mutely prompting her to intervene, to tell Carne about the allowance, to remove the last piece of deception from their tortuous relationship.
But as their glances met and lacked, Rowan knew with a sinking heart that Antonia was going to say nothing. She was going to let Carne go on thinking that the money in her account had been obtained by criminal means. Her lips were already parting in protest when the whole truth struck her like a blow on the back of the head, stunning her to horrified silence.
She had seen it in Antonia's face for one unguarded moment-guilt, shame and defiance. There was no need to wonder any more where Sybilla's treasures had gone, or even deceive herself that her stepmother had obtained the money to pay her gambling debts from her lover.
Relying on her conviction that Sybilla would never return to Raven's Crag-even, horrifyingly, relying on her death, for that matter-Antonia had taken the missing articles and sold them. Rowan knew it now, and was sickened by it.
She thought agonisingly, 'How could she? Oh God, how could she?'
But in her heart, she knew precisely how. She had always suspected the degree of ruthlessness that Antonia could possess if pushed, and realised that her determination to establish her own security once and for all by marrying Carne had provided the necessary push. Nothing was to be allowed to stand in the way of the plans she had made for her future. Nothing-and no one--especially the stepdaughter in whom the habits ofl6yalty and protectiveness were already too deeply ingrained.
Rowan thought, 'She's betrayed me. She's stabbed me in the back in the worst possible way, but she knows I won't give her away.'
All the mysteries were solved. Antonia's keenness to get her out of the house and back to London became understandable. Any more thefts, and she, Rowan, would have been bound to have noticed something and mentioned the matter. As it was, she had already had that indefinable sense that all was not well.
But Antonia hadn't had time to dispose of the miniatures, so in a panic she must have put them in Rowan's room, deliberately foisting suspicion on to her. And then Carne was sent up to look for the keys so that he would be the one to find them-the one to think . . .
She sank her teeth into her lower lip. She wouldn't think about that now. All she had to think about was getting away from here, escaping from this trap which had been set for her. Nothing else mattered.
Her father expected her to look after Antonia, even to the extent of protecting her from the consequences of her own actions. And what did it matter, anyway? Carne did not love her. It was Antonia he wanted, and so the truth could only hurt him.
And she didn't want him to be hurt. Let him preserve what few illusions he had about his future wife, she thought painfully.
She made herself look at Sybilla. 'I'm sorry,' she said, steadying her voice. 'More sorry than I can say. You were honestly never intended to know.'
Sybilla was very straight in her chair, her eyes fixed unswervingly on Rowan's face.
'May I ask how you disposed of my things? I ask only because it may be possible to recover some of them. Old women are sentimental about such things.'
And about trust, and about affection, her eyes were telling Rowan.
Rowan bent her head. 'I can't say where any of them are now.’
It was the truth, she supposed wryly, or at least as much of the truth as it was possible to tell.
Carne said, 'Don't worry, Sybilla. We'll pick up the pieces somehow. He hesitated, and when he spoke again his voice had roughened. 'I assume you don't want to report this to the police.'
'I think not,' Sybilla said precisely. 'I think under the circumstances, it would be best to keep the matter in the family. However, I feel it might be preferable if Rowan was to leave.'
Rowan lifted her chin. She said coolly, 'As that was the whole purpose of the exercise, I think it would be infinitely preferable.’
She was afraid to look at Antonia in case the triumph in her eyes destroyed her tenuous self-control, but she made herself face Carne.
'I'm sorry,' she said.
'And so am I,' he said, quietly and courteously, as ifs he was a stranger. 'You'll never know how sorry. Now, you'd better go. Just take what you need. I'll arrange to have' your things sent on when you're settled.'
She said with equal politeness, 'Thank you.' And then she walked out, c
losing the door carefully behind her.
It was a pleasant room. Each evening when she returned to it, Rowan thought how lucky she had been, since that disastrous evening three weeks before when she had run like a hunted animal straight to Grace.
There, her self-command had collapsed under the pressure of Grace's concern, and she had sobbed the whole sordid story into her amazed ears. When she had finished, Grace's lips were set firmly, and Rowan had to swear her to secrecy to prevent her going straight to Raven's Crag and exposing Antonia for the thief and the liar that she was.
Grace had conceded finally, but she did not understand 'why, and said so bluntly. 'You're a fool, Rowan: She deserves nothing from you. She's played you one dirty trick after another. You don't' imagine that Carne won't find out eventually what she's like?'
'He may. He may not.' Rowan's hands twisted together. 'But the important thing is that he won't find out through" me. And she may change--once she's got what she wants.' 'People don't change,' Grace said dourly. 'They just become more the same. Haven't you noticed?'
Then she became practical. Rowan would stay the night with them, that went without saying. When she was calmer, they would see she got to London, if that was what she wanted, and they could help in the matter of accommodation too. A cousin of Clive's, whose family had all grown up and married, had converted her big terraced house into a number of bedsitting rooms, mostly for students.
'Livvy isn't in it for the money,' Grace explained. 'She likes the house, and she likes young company around her, so this way she gets the best of both worlds. And with the long vacation coming up she may well have a vacancy.'
And so it proved, although Rowan suspected that Grace could well have pulled a few strings on her behalf. Before they said goodbye, she begged Grace to take temporary charge of the things she had left there but not to tell 'anyone at Raven's Crag where she had gone.
'No problem.' Grace studied her drawn white face with a frown. 'But are you sure that's what you want? I'm not blind, you know, even though I may have promised to be dumb.'