Dangerous Love

by Jane Beaufort

  “And you, of course, were willing to leave everything and everyone on earth in order to get your hooks into old Sir Adrian?”

  Susan felt her dislike for him crystallise and become something solid. She would never forgive him for the venom of his look, and the sheer beastliness of his insinuations. She would never forgive him, either, for spoiling something that had been perfect. Amazingly perfect when she was, after all, only a junior who had been selected to accompany the august head of the firm on a trip to the far side of the world.

  She closed her eyes, and for an instant it all came back to her, the wonder and the privilege, the breathtaking excitement! The fact that she had no one to leave behind her—no one who cared whether she went or stayed wasn’t her fault! Her father had died a couple of years before, and she couldn’t remember her mother. So far as she knew she had no close relatives in the whole wide world. Sir Adrian had been perfectly well aware of this when he asked her to accompany him. He had also said—but this she never knew: “That capable little thing with the big eyes, who reminds me of a brown mouse! She’s soothing, and she won’t make her presence too obvious! I hate to be accompanied on this kind of a jaunt by someone terribly efficient, and worse than anything else in the close confines of a liner, someone who will be more or less permanently under my nose! Miss Willowfield won’t mind if I tell her to buzz off and leave me alone occasionally but Miss Garfield would be mortally offended! It’s lucky for me that mother of hers is one of those harpies who suck the life blood out of their children, and keep them hanging round their necks for so long as they cumber this earth!”

  And as Miss Garfield was also a very bad sailor it was all for the best in a world suddenly made brilliant with rainbow hues for Susan.

  Australia, and all the ports of call in between it! ... It was so unbelievable at first that she had to keep pinching herself in order to make certain she was not dreaming. And it was certainly not due to any machination of her own that Sir Adrian Storr began to find himself less and less disposed to tell her to buzz off and leave him alone. He was a lonely old man who had never married, and had had no comfort from his family—and certainly not from his only nephew, who was somewhere in Bermuda (a visit quite unconnected with the interests of the firm!) while they were proceeding to Australia by a slightly roundabout route.

  Miss Mouse—as Sir Adrian took to calling his sec-retary—grew so enthusiastic every time she caught sight of a slip of approaching land that she affected him with her own enthusiasm, and she was so young that she made him wish he had a daughter very like her. They could, he began to realise, have marvellous times together, on shore trips, and expeditions of that sort. And they did, as a matter of fact, have quite unforgettable times together once they grew to know one another a little better.

  Susan began to watch over him as if she really was his daughter, and because he was careless about his health she never neglected to make certain he was well wrapped up, or that he had a hat when the sun was strong. Once they reached Australia there were lots of conferences and close business sessions as well as a slightly hectic social life, and Sir Adrian was a very tired man on the homeward journey. Just before they reached Marseilles he had a heart attack, and from Marseilles he was flown to London and went straight into a nursing-home, which he never left while he was still alive. To Susan’s infinite grief she never saw him again, and it was far more of a shock to her than to anyone else when she learned that in spite of the sad deterioration in his health from the time he left the ship he had found strength to have an alteration made to his will, and had had her included amongst the beneficiaries.

  To the tune of twenty thousand pounds, and that rather odd stipulation about her having the right to live at Storr, a house she had never seen. And the only explanation she could offer to herself about Storr was that she had listened very avidly when Sir Adrian had talked to her about his Wiltshire home, and the fact that he had loved it and had seen his love reflected in her face had caused him to make that strange insertion in his will.

  He had wanted heir to live there for a short while, and enjoy the beauty of it.

  But when she tried to explain all this to Sir Justin she could tell from his face that he was merely silently applauding her inventive capacity, and despising her at the same time because she apparently imagined he was a simpleton.

  “I wasn’t born yesterday, little one,” he told her, his eyes narrowed, and gleaming with a mixture of mockery and menace. “And I was never particularly interested in fairytales!” His voice grew harsh and rasping. “How much will you take to stay away from Storr? Another twenty thousand?”

  Her cheeks grew brilliantly pink, as if he had slapped them.

  “Or isn’t that enough?”

  “So far,” she heard herself say, overcoming the shock of being deliberately insulted, “I’ve seen nothing at all of Storr. I only arrived this afternoon, and I only intend to stay for the week-end.”

  He smiled derisively.

  “A long week-end, if I know anything at all of young women of your type! Rather like having a poor relation accept an invitation, and then attempt to become a family fixture! I’ve no doubt at all Storr would provide you with a very useful headquarters, but it would be highly inconvenient to me to have you cluttering up the place. This happens to be my house, and I like to issue the invitations when guests are thought desirable. And knowing nothing whatsoever about you I can’t conceive that I would ever come to look upon you as a desirable guest!”

  But for his plain intention of making her feel as uncomfortable as possible she might have felt a certain sympathy with him, for it was rather an odd clause Sir Adrian had inserted in his will. Particularly as the new baronet was a bachelor. . . . But she also thought she now understood clearly the reason why Sir Adrian had never talked of his nephew, and why the general consensus of opinion in the head offices of Storr—shipbuilders and ship-owners, and one time merchant adventurers—was so strongly against Justin, who was now at the head of affairs.

  She looked at him through grey eyes that in their turn had become a little narrowed, and without having the smallest intention previously of adopting an aggressive attitude—in fact, anything but a completely understanding attitude—she stated something that was quite irrefutable.

  “However much you may object to the fact that I have the right to come here, Sir Justin, I have the right . . . But it was not my intention to take advantage of it until a few minutes ago! I came down here just to have a look at a house I’d heard a lot about—from your uncle—and then go away again. But, since you like plain speaking, I’ll be absolutely honest with you! ... I find you so rude and abominable and insulting that I shall not concern myself with any inconvenience any future visits of mine may cause you, and I shall give you no guarantee to stay away.”

  “But you can be persuaded to stay away?” very softly and suavely.

  She shook her small brown head.

  “Neither persuaded, coaxed, cajoled, or bribed! Once I’ve seen all I want to see of Storr during this week-end I may never come again; but, on the other hand, I might find it an excellent headquarters . . . as you yourself suggested!”

  “I see,” he said, and selected a cigarette from a handsome platinum case, which he extracted from a pocket of the tweed hacking-jacket. He looked at her for an instant as if she interested him, tapping the cigarette on the lid of the case with slim, brown, powerful fingers that interested her strangely. “But, surely,” with a change of tone, “a young woman like yourself —well brought-up,” dryly, “extremely respectable, if appearances are anything to go by (and we all know they are not!)—must recognise that to a conventional mind it is not quite the correct thing for an unmarried girl to look upon the home of a bachelor as a kind of pied-a-terre?”

  “This is a very large house,” she replied to that, “and so well staffed that I need never suffer from any lack of chaperonage. Besides, when you invite your friends to stay here do you always consider a chaperon essential?
”

  “Touche!” he murmured, regarding her through a haze of smoke. “We will leave the impropriety of the thing out of it. And we can always fill the place with our respective buddies . . . Yours and mine! But, like oil and water, will they mix?”

  “I am unlikely to inflict my friends upon you,” she said stiffly, recognising that he placed her in the same category as Mrs. Hollyhead; and if they had met a hundred years earlier in the same house he would probably have chucked her under the chin, as well as ignored the fact that no one had previously attacked her reputation.

  He started to pace up and down the long room, drawing thoughtfully at his cigarette. He had a pantherish grace of movement, and in spite of his disreputable attire he was not out of place in the elegant library.

  “It seems that I have adopted the wrong sort of approach,” he observed at last, “and, in any case, you are going to be very obstinate! But then you would naturally be somewhat tenacious since you declined to allow Uncle Adrian to depart this life without making a highly satisfactory arrangement for your future welfare!” He wheeled upon her, and his strange dark eyes chilled her to the bone, and she began to know a rather more than earnest desire to rush from the room—anywhere away from him. “I shall have to get married sooner than I planned if I am to free myself of you! My uncle stipulated that you could live here until I married! . . . Well, it so happens that the lady who is to be responsible for my entire future happiness is only too eager to fix things up without delay, and her mother is even more eager! So that’s O.K.! That’s absolutely O.K.!”

  Susan stared at him. The brackish eyes were so cynical, so unfeeling, so hard—and so sinisterly unpleasant! —and that reference to a woman he planned to make his wife so unnecessarily slighting, that she had to overcome a temporary feeling of such strong revulsion and panic (yes; all at once he filled her with a kind of panic) in order to prevent herself actually retreating before him and coming up against the farther wall, that she wondered whether some of it looked out of her eyes.

  “I’ll bring her down to see you, if you’re still here, and the two of you can get acquainted! My future mother-in-law will look down her nose at you, and she’ll tell everyone you’re not really nice to know, but you won’t mind that, will you? Some of my friends are not nearly so fastidious, and they might take a fancy to you— particularly that twenty thousand pounds of yours! We really must throw a party at Storr!”

  Unconsciously she did back a step, and he smiled with amusement.

  “What! Don’t you think you’ll like my friends?”

  “I don’t like you, Sir Justin,” she told him, an uncontrollable tremble making her voice sound as if it was inclined to break a little. In the slim little black cocktail-dress she looked very young and vulnerable, particularly as it was not a very expensive dress, merely one of those she had worn on the voyage, while she was still nothing but a salaried worker, and his lips tightened.

  “What do your parents think of your sudden access of fortune?” he asked. “You’re not as old as I imagined you would be, and I should think it’s highly likely you possess the usual couple of parents, and possibly a large family besides! Weren’t they all intrigued by your association with my uncle?”

  She picked up her little brocade handbag, and turned in a hunted fashion towards the door.

  “I haven’t any family,” she told him, “and my association with your uncle was something you couldn’t understand.” She despised herself because her lower lip was trembling a little, also. “You came here to have dinner, Sir Justin, but I couldn’t have it with you! I— I don’t feel I can bear to remain in the same room with you another instant!” and she fled towards the door.

  He called after her with suave mockery:

  “A pity, my dear Miss Willowfield! You would find me a better friend than an enemy, and over dinner I might mellow considerably. As an enemy I am not at all nice!”

  CHAPTER THREE

  She could well believe it. All night she told herself that she was behaving with utter rashness in not leaving the house immediately, and as she lay in the darkness listening to the chiming of the stable clock she wondered why she didn’t depart and walk the miles that lay between her and the station.

  It was a big enough house, and every inch of floor space was thickly carpeted enough, to permit it to have a silence all its own, and the chimes of the stable clock were the only sounds that shattered it. They were musical chimes, just a little cracked occasionally, as if they had tirelessly accounted for the passing of the hours throughout several centuries, and were contemplating taking a complete rest before long. The delicate quiver after they fell silent hung in the air, and it was a warning quiver, saying to Susan quite plainly that intruders were not welcome at Storr Hall, and the present owner would not tolerate them under any circumstances.

  If she had any sense at all she would get up, repack her bag, and summon a taxi to take her to the station as soon as the first fingers of daylight appeared in the sky.

  But when daylight appeared she was standing before her window and contemplating the charms of an Elizabethan parterre in the frosty brilliance of an early February morning. She was delighting in the way the frost lay on the hedges of clipped box, and the steps that led down to a secluded rose-garden, and the bronze nymph who stood poised in the middle of the debris of dead winter leaves and a long rectangular pool on which water-lilies floated when the days were long and warm. Mrs. Hollyhead brought a tray of early-morning tea to her room, and told her that breakfast was always served in the small morning-room. Susan helped herself to scrambled eggs and sausages from the sideboard, and then went outside to explore. She wore a thick woollen cardigan and a tweed skirt, and her eyes had an adventurous sparkle in them, in spite of the fact that she knew she ought to be making for the station, as she stood in the sunshine on the terrace. A keen cold wind from off the lake, and the dead woods on the opposite shore, whipped a clear, bright colour into her cheeks, and the man who watched her cynically long before she was even aware that he was anywhere near her thought she fitted in quite well with the prospect.

  He was giving instructions to a groom-gardener about the rubbing down of his horse, a beautiful black with an ugly mouth, when Susan rounded an angle of the stable buildings, and strolled into the courtyard. The heels of her small, neat shoes clattered rather noisily over the cobbles, but he didn’t look round until he was satisfied his precise orders were clearly understood, and the horse was about to be led away.

  Susan stood quite still, admiring the black, and when Justin Storr turned at last his eyebrows went up a little.

  “So you know a good horse when you see one,” he remarked.

  Susan’s grey eyes shifted to his face, and all expression went out of them.

  “My father was a veterinary-surgeon,” she replied, “and no doubt I’ve inherited his love of animals.”

  “Does that mean you ride?”

  She hesitated. Brought up in the country she had been taught to ride at an early age, but she had always been scared of horses. But that didn’t prevent her admiring their fine points, and recognising them quickly when confronted with a magnificent piece of horseflesh.

  “I can ride—yes!”

  His eyes took on that unpleasant, mocking expression.

  “Like to see what you could do with Satan? Although I warn you he’d throw you before you were firmly settled in the saddle! . . . But as you haven’t run away back to London, as I felt certain you would do last night—even if it meant sitting on the platform all night, and waiting for the milk-train!—and are still here, you might as well enjoy the amenities of the countryside. There’s a chestnut in there,” indicating one of the half-doors, “that would carry you nicely. She’s a bit skittish when she’s fresh, but she settles down quickly. Like to try her?”

  His eyes narrowed, partly against the glare of the morning sun, as he looked at her, and Susan had the feeling that he knew very well she wanted to refuse, and was hoping to enjoy her d
iscomfiture when the admission was forced out of her that she was not a very good horsewoman.

  The groom who had led away Satan came back and looked out over the half-door.

  “You’re not recommending that the lady should ride Lady Luck, are you, sir?” he said, with distinct dubiousness. “She’s not in a very good temper this morning, and you know what happened when Miss Rosalie rode her last! And Miss Rosalie’s got a very strong pair of hands!”

  “Miss Rosalie is quite a superb horsewoman,” Sir Justin agreed drawlingly. “But Miss Willowfield is the daughter of a vet, and has been mixed up with horses and what not all her days.” Now Susan knew without any danger of making a mistake that he was getting ready to savour the situation, waiting for the moment when she would have to display her shrinking. “She’s only down here for the weekend, and what’s the point of coming to a place like Storr if you don’t take fullest advantage of all it can offer?” The smoothness of his tone grated on every sensitive nerve Susan possessed. “I suggest that if she’s got a pair of jodhpurs amongst her things she pops up and changes into them, and you can bring out the chestnut. Lady Luck hasn’t a single real vice in her make-up, and if Miss Willowfield can’t manage her I’ll never ride Satan again!”

  “You’ve ridden him pretty hard this morning,” the groom muttered, moving off with a dark look. “Not merely sweating all over, but in a lather of sweat! That sort of thing isn’t good for a nervous type like Satan.”

  “On the contrary, it gets rid of a little of the devil in him,” Justin returned, with his silken smoothness. “Now, Miss Willowfield, you’re not going to let my fiancee beat you, are you? Lady Luck didn’t actually throw her, but she tried hard ... being in a perverse feminine humour! You’re such an essentially feminine type yourself that there should be a kind of affinity between you!”

  Susan looked up at him—He was every inch of six feet, and she was a bare five feet two inches—and the slender figure in the daffodil-yellow cardigan, and tweed skirt, with beech-brown hair forming a soft fringe on her brow, and blowing into her eyes, might have struck some men as too feminine to do battle with. But Justin Storr was not cast in that mould. His brackish eyes, with the thick eyelashes, looked down with a deliberate challenge into the soft grey ones that had made Mrs. Hollyhead think of violets, and she accepted it. She swallowed, and accepted it.