DANGEROUS
LOVE
by
JANE BEAUFORT
Some men are dangerous... Justin Storr was such a man -ruthless, strong-willed, passionate -- dangerously attractive to women.
He was engaged to a society girl, but little Susan Willowfield, who had been his uncle's secretary, caught his straying eye.
Fight against it as she might, how could she resist the irresistible -- the magnetic charm of this violent, arrogant, lovable man?
Original title: Dangerous Lover
CHAPTER ONE
As the car turned in at the gates of Storr Hall Susan felt as if apprehension was actually sharing the well-sprung seat beside her, curled up like a living thing and reminding her with its over-bright little eyes that Justin Storr had a most unpleasant reputation.
There had once been an unfortunate female whom a former Justin Storr—somewhere about the period of the Regency—had immersed in the lake and forgotten to rescue, and he had also bricked up an enemy in the library wall. It was pure hearsay, but close friends of Sir Adrian said it would never surprise them if his nephew ran off the rails in a similar direction, and got away with it without anyone proving anything against him. He had a sinister reputation, as well as one that made the Rake’s Progress seem a trifle colourless; and there was no doubt about it, he was absolutely furious with Sir Adrian for
making one particular stipulation in his will.
The very tone of his letter, and particularly its insolent smoothness, had proved that to Susan. He had stated that he was staying at The Red Lion in Storr, and he had even used the Red Lion notepaper, which seemed somehow to underline the nastiness of his mood.
“I think it is high time you and I got together and had a little talk,” he said in the letter. “Perhaps it is rather more than high time!. . . My late lamented uncle was not particularly guileful, but I feel sure he wouldn’t expect us to share Storr between us. Not without a suitable chaperon, anyway! And it might be rather difficult to find a suitable chaperon at such short notice! Hence my putting up at the Red Lion! ... But I will give myself the pleasure of waiting upon you as soon as you arrive! ”
As soon as you arrive! . . . And here she was, being whisked between a pair of ornamental wrought-iron gates, and carried smoothly up a tree-lined drive to a house that she glimpsed long before the silver-grey Bentley stopped before a pillared portico.
They were Corinthian pillars, and the house itself was obviously very old—much, much older than the facade which presented itself to the wide opening at the head of the main drive. It had the air of having settled a little into a slight declivity with the passing of so many years, and there was a tired gentleness about the blankness of the windows, and the lop-sidedness of one or two of the chimney-stacks. And behind the chimney-stacks rose some magnificent elms, in which rooks had built for centuries.
Susan glanced sideways out of the window and saw the lake, pearly-grey in the February afternoon, and she also saw that some intrepid daffodils were waving in the wind beneath the trees. In a few weeks there would be a positive wave of daffodils marching down to the lake, and the whole of the grounds would probably come to life and glow with colour. They were well-tended grounds, for Sir Adrian had been a very wealthy man, and his nephew
Justin was now a very wealthy man, and would be able to do all that was necessary for Storr. All and more than was necessary, for as a result of having the right kind of fairy present at his birth he was nearly, if not quite, a millionaire.
Susan caught her breath at the lemon light breaking through some clouds and stealing through the woods to gild the surface of the lake. It was so beautiful, in spite of a certain grimness, that one ought not to bother about apprehension. And then the thought passed through her mind that there must have been at least one well-intentioned fairy present at her own birth since she, too, had benefited so favourably under the terms of her late employer’s will.
There was nothing to stop her remaining on at Storr for weeks and months . . . seeing it in its springtime beauty, its summer loveliness, its winter starkness! Only Justin Storr could eventually stop her!...
The apprehension jogged at her elbow again, and this time it whispered that all sorts of things could stop her. Her own pride could stop her. . . . And that was what it probably would do! She was prepared for one week-end at Storr, and after that she must go away and forget it. So why did she shrink so much from the thought of meeting Justin Storr?
The great door swung open when the car stopped, and a manservant in neat black stood waiting at the top of the flight of steps. Someone who looked like a housekeeper hovered behind him.
The chauffeur lifted her single suit-case out of the boot, and carried it up the steps. The housekeeper received it, and the butler bowed.
“Your room is all ready for you, Miss—er—Madam?” he said. “Mrs. Hollyhead will conduct you to it straight away, if that is what you wish?”
“I do wish,” Susan responded, longing to get rid of some of the grime of her journey and aware that at least a couple of maids—who looked like a parlourmaid and a housemaid—were peeping at her round a green baize door.
Half-way up the stairs, with shallow treads carpeted in midnight-blue, and a magnificent carved balustrade, she paused and looked downwards at the manservant.
“Sir Justin will be dining here to-night?” she asked, hoping her voice didn’t actually quiver with uneasiness.
“Sir Justin telephoned less than an hour ago to say that he will be here in good time for dinner,” the butler informed her portentously.
Susan felt as if a lifetime of secret fears and forebodings were dragging at her feet as she went on up the stairs in the wake of the housekeeper.
“We’ve put you in the Sprigged Room,” Mrs. Hollyhead said, as she opened a door with a vaguely triumphant flourish. “It’s so light, and bright, we felt sure you would approve of it. Although, of course, there are so many rooms, that if you don’t approve ...”
Susan gasped with pleasure.
“It’s lovely,” she said. “Absolutely lovely!”
And it was. There was a big corner window that admitted all the primrose light outside, and the room itself was as golden as a field of wheat. Delicate mauve harebells and ears of corn rioted all over the curtains and the bed-cover, and the carpet was like a sea of sunshine. There was a pale green bathroom, with lots of fluffy yellow towels, and on the dressing-table that stood in a petticoat of net over stiff satin-damask there was a bowl of aconites. Susan went to them and touched them gently.
“You picked them?” she asked Mrs. Hollyhead.
The housekeeper nodded.
“Just a touch of spring,” she observed. And then, as if she was not altogether satisfied with the choice of room: “Of course, the White Room is the principal guest-room, and the Rose Room and the Jade Room have both been recently redecorated. But we were given to understand, through poor Sir Adrian’s solicitors, that you were rather young, and—” She looked at Susan’s slight figure (so slight that it was no more impressive than a schoolgirl’s), at her neat cap of brown hair, and the few feathers of fringe on her wide, white brow; and then she looked at her large, beautiful grey eyes that were the only really remarkable thing about her, and coughed. She went on trying to get the better of the irksome little cough for several seconds, but Susan understood. She understood perfectly.
She might have come into possession of twenty thousand pounds only a few weeks before, and she might have the right to live at Storr for the next few months, at least; but until she came into possession of the twenty thousand pounds she was nothing more than a secretary! Sir Adrian Storr’s secretary! . . . And Rose Rooms and Jade Rooms were not intended for secretaries!
“I th
ink you’ve done very well, Mrs. Hollyhead,” she said, as gently as she had touched the flowers. “You’ve made an excellent selection on my behalf.”
“But it won’t take a minute to shift you ...” thinking that the grey eyes were glorious, rather like violets in the shelter of the curving brown eyelashes.
Susan shook her head.
“This is perfect. But, more than anything, I’d like a pot of tea if I can have one?”
“Of course, Miss Willowfield. I’ll have a tray sent up here to your room. Or would you prefer it in the library?”
Susan shook her head more vigorously.
“No, I won’t go down to the library yet.”
When at last she descended to the library the hall clock was chiming the hour of six. It was a mellow chiming clock, enclosed in a beautiful rosewood case, and it had stood where it was for at least a century and a half. Susan stood in front of it and admired it, and then looked round nervously for the library door.
The hall was softly lit, and there seemed to be many doors opening off it. The library door was at the end of a corridor carpeted in the same midnight-blue pile that flowed into every nook and cranny outside the main rooms, and once on the other side of it Susan felt her breath catch with pleasure. A huge fire of apple logs burned on the wide hearth, and there were two deep armchairs drawn up invitingly close to the flames. A little round table stood near one of the chairs, and on it a silver cigarette-box gleamed, a silver ash-tray and a tumbler. Susan couldn’t penetrate the shadows beyond it, and she wondered whether to switch on the lights and spoil the restfulness of it all, especially as Sir Justin wasn’t likely to arrive for another hour or more. Dinner was at halfpast eight, and “in good time for it” probably meant about half-past seven. And there had been none of the sounds of a car drawing up outside.
Susan moved towards the fire, and knelt down in front of the flames. She was wearing a little black cocktail-dress, and she looked like a slim black and white shadow as she knelt there—a shadow with brown hair that shone in the fire-glow.
“Very charming!” a voice from the deep chair behind the whisky-and-soda commented. “Very, very charming! I’ve no doubt my uncle, having reached the age when every pretty little thing is a sweet little heart-throb, thought so, too! And no doubt he told you so very often!”
Susan sprang up. The colour, that had been glowing in her cheeks, receded from them swiftly.
“Don’t look so startled,” the deep voice drawled. “I told you—or, rather, I told Bliss to tell you—that I’d be here in good time for dinner!”
As she started to grope for an electric light switch he forestalled her, and touched a reading-lamp at his elbow. The long, low room sprang into radiance, and the glass-protected shelves of books bound in every sort of leather, from calf to morocco, parchment to velvet, silk to dull, tattered brocade, came swiftly and surely to life like an assemblage of cherished beauties. The gilded cornices of the room were a little tarnished, but they, too, shone softly, and the ruby-red curtains that were drawn across the wide window embrasure were theatrical and splendid.
The man in the superbly comfortable leather chair was wearing an old hacking-jacket, with leather patches on the elbows and at the cuffs. He also wore a pair of slightly disreputable corduroy-velvet trousers. His hair was black—lank and black and a little untidy, as if he had a habit of running his fingers through it. His face was lean and dark and saturnine, the mouth mocking and humorless, the eyes as black as water stagnant at the bottom of a well. He had amazing eyelashes, like the false eyelashes particularly glamorous film-stars sometimes attach to their eyelids to add to their glamour, and his linen was immaculate—those were the only two things at odds with the rest of his appearance.
He stood up, not merely belatedly, but somewhat languidly.
“You—you can’t be Sir Justin Storr?” Susan heard herself say. And then she knew it was an absurd thing to say, for only Sir Justin—of whom she had heard so much to his discredit!—could composedly look like that, and sit carelessly awaiting her in a darkened library at Storr!
Any other man would have let her know he had arrived, and contrived something in the nature of a correct, if formal, attitude, for this moment when they came face to face for the first time—the two leading beneficiaries under his uncle’s will! She was quite a modest beneficiary compared with the vast sum he had inherited, but likely to prove a nuisance to him just the same. As she herself recognised!
CHAPTER TWO
She wanted to say—she had it all planned to say:
“You needn’t worry, Sir Justin! . . . Your uncle was goodness itself to me, but I shall not take advantage of the stipulation he made in his will that is likely to conflict with your own interests! I have no intention of taking advantage of it, and I only came down here this weekend because I wanted to see Storr, and to let you know my intentions.”
But something in the glacially mocking dark eyes of the man confronting her made her pause, and she also felt a resentment as keen almost as his own take possession of her.
“Do sit down, Miss Willowfield,” he murmured sleepily, without making any attempt to pull forward her chair for her. “We can talk far more comfortably if we are comfortable ourselves, and there are one or two rather important things we have to talk about, aren’t there?”
“There is one important thing—from your point of view!’ she answered. She sat down on the extreme edge of the companion arm-chair beside the fire. “So far as I am concerned it is not important.”
He showed beautiful hard white teeth in an unpleasant grin.
You mean that you don’t find Storr such a change after all from a London bed-sitter?” As she didn’t answer, “Ah, well! There is no pleasing everyone, and the one accusation we can’t level against my Uncle Adrian is that he didn’t try to please you! . . . Can I get you something to drink?” very smoothly, as he saw her bite her lip.
“Your Uncle Adrian was my employer,” she reminded him.
“Exactly,” he agreed. The unpleasant grin became a tiny unpleasant smile in his eyes. “And we now have proof that employers can be distinctly human! Poor old Adrian was not an acknowledged ladies-man in his heyday, but he obviously made up for it in later life!”
Two faint spots of colour appeared in her cheeks, one on each of her cheek-bones.
“Are you trying to be deliberately offensive, Sir Justin?” she asked.
He shrugged his broad, well-held shoulders.
“What a question, dear little lady! There is nothing offensive in recognising charm . . .” the evil eyes flickering over her (and she knew now that they were evil!). “You may not be a howling beauty, but I’m sure you’ve a great deal of something that appealed to an old boy getting well into his dotage! Probably he found you soothing, or perhaps you hypnotised him with those large eyes of yours, or perhaps it was just the womanly approach—the gentle, womanly approach that could mean so much to a love-starved old bachelor! The only thing that amazes me is that you didn’t persuade him to marry you! And I’m sure you tried!”
Susan bit her lower lip so hard this time that a drop of blood spurted and stained her teeth. She felt herself grow a little cold inside, for this was worse than anything she had anticipated ... gloves off and horrible!
“I think you know that you are merely trying to be rather more than offensive,” she said.
He shrugged again, and then downed the last of his whisky. He went across to a corner cabinet and replenished the glass, asking her again quite casually whether she wouldn’t join him in some sort of an appetiser.
“An appetiser,” he suggested, looking back mockingly over his shoulder, “for the delightful meal we’re going to have together! And, by the way,” as she shook her head mutely but firmly, “I must apologise because I’m so unsuitably clad,” looking down with amusement at his own untidy appearance, “but I’ve been out shooting this afternoon, and I couldn’t wait to meet you! I mean, I was really very anxious to meet you, and I’d no
idea you would dress yourself up like that for our little dinner together! I assure you I’m immensely flattered!”
“I am not dressed up, Sir Justin.” She stood up to confront him as he returned to the fireplace. “But it is customary to change one’s clothes for a dinner engagement.”
“Oh, precisely.” The drawl in itself was an offence. “But, a working girl, and all that ... Didn’t want to make you feel out of your element!”
“Sir Justin,” she gasped, hanging with difficulty on to her composure, “I think we’d better have all this out before dinner, don’t you? And it seems that there is quite a lot to have out!”
“Quite a lot,” he agreed, with a smoothness that had in it a subtle difference. All at once his eyes were cold and hard and hostile as an enemy camp. “Well, Miss Willowfield,” in that deadly drawl, “just tell me what it was that you did to my uncle—or for my uncle!—that caused him to make such excellent provision for you in his Last Will and Testament?” He quoted from the will: “ ‘Twenty thousand pounds for Miss Susan Mary Kathleen Willowfield, and the right to live at Storr Hall until the marriage of my nephew, and most important legatee!’ What sort of a set-up do you imagine that is likely to be, you and I sharing Storr? And as far as I have been able to discover you haven’t even any particularly recognisable claims to such a privilege! You were not Sir Adrian’s secretary until six months before his death, and the poor unfortunate female who worked for him for years got nothing at all to compensate her for losing both her job and security for life! How do you account for it, Miss Willowfield?”
Susan swallowed. This was an explanation that she had felt certain would be demanded of her.
“I was chosen to accompany Sir Adrian when he had to make a trip to Australia in connection with the firm’s business. Miss Garfield, his regular secretary, was unable to accompany him.”
“Why?” Justin shot at her.
“Family commitments.” She stared at him, loathing the open scepticism of his look, knowing that nothing she could say would convince him that what she was telling him was the unvarnished truth. “She couldn’t leave her mother.”
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