Dangerous Love

by Jane Beaufort

  He bowed.

  “Well, that, at least, is healthy!” and he went over and joined Rosalie.

  Later Susan saw him disappear with Rosalie through the tall French windows which led out on to the terrace. Miss Freer was protected by mink from the chill of the night, although her high-heeled satin shoes looked hardly fitted for crossing damp lawns, or diving into shrubberies. She clung to Justin’s arm, and Susan had no doubt the arm went round her just as soon as they were outside on the terrace, and she could picture the arrogant dark head of the man she detested bent above the lovely head of the girl; and although she had never seen him look at her with anything but a kind of half whimsical tenderness she was sure that the tenderness became something else as soon as they were alone.

  And it had even surprised her, when she saw it for the first time on his face, that he was capable of tenderness.

  Bruce Fairburn came across to her, and admitted they were all going riding in the morning—Jennifer included, apparently—but he suggested Susan might like a short drive later on in the morning.

  “There’s a very attractive little village not far from here, with a twelfth-century church, and perhaps you’d be interested to see it?” he said.

  Susan found herself looking up at him blankly. Her thoughts were still outside on the terrace with the pair who had left.

  “Thank you,” she answered. “But I was going to the Red Lion, in Storr, to have a look at their accommodations. I—I’m thinking of staying there!”

  He dropped down into a chair close to her, and lightly his hand touched hers.

  “Not because of that unpleasant little—incident—on arrival?” His blue eyes smiled at her with understanding. “Believe me, it was merely unfortunate, and Miss Freer was probably feeling tired. And we mustn’t forget she was concerned about that unfortunate waiter and the soup. . . . She was probably feeling extremely vexed!”

  “I don’t mind what Miss Freer says.” Susan crumpled her handkerchief afresh. “But Sir Justin is furious because of his uncle’s will.”

  “Justin’s furies are rather like typhoons in the China Seas— they come and they go, leaving a certain amount of havoc behind them, but with very little to recall the violence that was intimidating while it lasted! I know what I’m talking about, because I’ve know Justin for years.”

  “And you don’t think he’s—impossible?” The tears were very close to the surface again, and their pricking was rather unendurable. She felt him squeeze her hand. “Utterly impossible, and atrociously rude?”

  “He can be very rude,” Fairburn admitted, “but I’m surprised he showed that side of himself to you. Perhaps he wasn’t altogether prepared for you. . . . And he resented that clause in the will.”

  “He inferred all sorts of horrible things about me and Sir Adrian,” swallowing slightly but noticeably.

  It was surprising how comforting that grip on her hand was. “All the same, I’d forget it if I were you. The devil in a black mood is never pleasant, and a lot of people think Justin has quite a large proportion of devil in him. There’s a saying about giving a dog a bad name and hanging him. . . . Well, I think that applies to Sir Justin! He’s been a roamer, a bit of a ne’er-do-well, and I know the gossips haven’t been kind to him. But, take my advice, and never listen to gossip!”

  She smiled at him mistily.

  “I don’t, normally. But I feel like an outsize in interlopers here at Storr Hall.”

  “If you’re an interloper, I shudder to think what some of us are! Sir Adrian thought so highly of you that he wanted you to live here.”

  “Yes; I know. And I wonder why?” She looked at him as if he might be able to provide the answer.

  He stood up.

  “There is one possible explanation that occurred to me as soon as I met you, but I don’t think we’ll talk of it. Instead, tell me what time you’ll be ready to-morrow morning, and forget about the Red Lion!”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  But Susan found her thoughts returning tenaciously to the Red Lion a couple of hours later.

  She went up to bed before Sir Justin and his fiancee returned to the drawing-room, and she was glad that Jennifer accepted an invitation to play billiards with Bruce Fairburn, and didn’t decide to accompany her upstairs. She wanted to be alone, and get away from them all, and think in her own room. She wanted to think over her conversation with Bruce, and although she couldn’t accept all that he said it was a slight comfort to know that when influenced by his black moods Sir Justin was well known to have the capacity for being poisonously rude.

  That night in the library, when she first arrived at Storr, he had probably made up his mind to be shatteringly rude. He knew nothing whatsoever about her, and he had formed his own opinion, with the result that she had very nearly fled away from Storr that night.

  She walked to the window and looked out into the moonlit grounds. It was only a very slender slice of the old moon, but the light was sufficient to reveal patches of shrubbery, and over by the lake there was a kind of shimmer, a delicate radiance that indicated that a smooth sheet of water was throwing back the moonbeams.

  Overhead the sky was very dark, with one or two frostily bright stars shining like the prize pieces of a jeweller’s collection against the sable velvet of a display cabinet. There were bare branches waving against the sky, and the mellow roof of the stable buildings could be quite easily recognised after she had strained her eyes for a bit.

  Susan felt an intolerable feeling of restlessness steal over her, and she longed to be out there in the shadowy dark, with the scents of wet earth and fresh growing things—all the eager bulbs that were waiting for the first deceptively warm, sunshiny day to send forth spears of colour to enliven the grounds—creeping up to her nostrils, and making her feel that after all it was good to be alive. So far she had devoted little time and thought to her recent good fortune in acquiring such an unexpectedly large sum of money, and she had devoted less thought to what she was going to do with it and her future.

  Justin Storr had come very close to spoiling Sir Adrian’s generosity for her altogether, but if she walked out there to-night ... away from them all. Away from everything!

  She slipped into a coat that was not the thickest in her wardrobe, and made her way out of the house by means of a flight of back stairs. Her shoes were more cobwebby even than Rosalie Freer’s, and she felt the moisture from the first lawn she crossed soak into them even as she crossed it. By the time she reached a flight of steps that led down to the rose-garden her feet were soaking, and she was shivering a little. But it was partly excitement because she was alone at last, and the night had a heady quality of excitement about it that affected her blood.

  Even the shadows were intriguing, and she was not in the least afraid when one moved and stood right in front of her.

  “What in the world are you doing out here at this time of night?” Justin Storr demanded, “and alone!” He threw away his cigarette, the glowing tip of which she should have caught sight of before, and ground it out beneath the heel of his shoe. “The last time I saw you Bruce was simply aching for an excuse to cross the room and attach himself to you!”

  “The last time I saw you,” she could have told him — but didn’t—“a glamourous female whom you propose to marry, although I’m sure you’re not in love with her, was clinging to you like a limpet!”

  As if he read her thoughts, he said mockingly:

  “Rosalie decided it was a little too wintry out here, as yet, and that it would be a good plan to catch up on her

  beauty-sleep. She’s gone to bed!”

  Then his hand shot out and he grasped at the shoulder of her coat.

  “Is this thick enough? It doesn’t feel very thick to me, and you seem to be shivering! And if you hadn’t the sense to change your shoes before you came out your feet will be wet!”

  “I think they are a bit wet,” she admitted, wriggling her toes in the silvery sandals, and then laughing strangely and light-
headedly. “But it doesn’t matter! If I don’t mind wet feet, then there’s no reason why anyone should object—not even you!”

  But before she could possibly receive any intimation of his intention he had swung her up into his arms, and had carried her swiftly to a little arbour inside which he deposited her on a kind of wicker table, and then shut the door.

  “Now I have you completely at my mercy,” he said, “and, like the true villain of the piece, I shall not hesitate to take advantage of it! But, first, we’ll remove these shoes!”

  He took them off, stuffed one in each of the pockets of his dinner-jacket, and then massaged her cold feet briskly.

  “Little fool!” he said. “Don’t you know that you’re likely to catch your death of cold, as my old nurse used to say when I was of an age to be impressed! Nowadays nothing impresses me, and I certainly wouldn’t heed anyone’s warnings; but you’re too small to run risks!” She didn’t answer, largely because she couldn’t, and a wildly excitable pulse was pounding away madly at the base of her throat with a mixture of apprehension and something quite unnameable, so that she felt oddly choked. His hands pinioned her, gripping each of her wrists. “As I said before, this is where I take advantage of the situation! . . . But I want to know how much you really hate me before I display my true villainy!”

  She put back her head to avoid contact with his down-bent face, and suddenly she started to tremble.

  “I don’t think I hate you as much as despise you! You’ve treated me as no man ever treated me before!”

  He laughed shortly.

  “Hate, as I said, is a healthy thing, but in order to have the right to despise someone you must be reasonably above reproach yourself. Would you say you were well above reproach?”

  “I think so,” she answered shakily. “At least I’ve never hurt anyone, and at twenty-three I could hardly be an adventuress. I never tried to extract money from your uncle, and if you’d like back the twenty thousand he left me you can have it! I’d be happier without it.”

  “And go back to being a little office girl?”

  “Yes. As an office girl I’d be safe from people like

  you, who make me feel like a—like a ------ ”

  Don’t say it,” he advised, softly, looking down at her through the gloom of the arbour. “You look like the dear little daughter my uncle never possessed, and at twenty-three, I agree with you, you couldn’t be really abandoned! I’m even prepared to accept it that you’re exactly what you appear to be, and beyond that I’ll apologise for all my appalling rudeness if you’ll allow me one small punishment before we finally decide to bury the hatchet.”

  “Small—p-punishment?” she echoed, shrinking even farther away from him. “What—for?”

  He smiled.

  “For turning me into the sort of cad a lot of people will tell you I am in any case, and for filling me with the sort of regret I don’t like to experience. I’d much rather have been right about you!”

  Her large grey eyes stared up at him through the gloom, wonderingly, and still a little fearfully.

  “In that case it doesn’t matter if you like to think you’re right,” she told him. “I can’t offer you any proof that you’re wrong.”

  “No, but you can make me feel a swine and a bounder, and that’s why I’m going to exact punishment!”

  He bent, and the cynical, mocking mouth that had filled her with such instant dislike was pressed firmly to hers, and although she twisted all ways to avoid it, it went on claiming her shrinking lips until, in danger of falling off the table, she had to put out a hand and clutch at him. He laughed and lifted his head.

  “Such a very small punishment, but, even so, I don’t believe you’re really penitent! We’ll have to repeat the dose!”

  This time his arms went round her, and he held her so determinedly that none of her struggles availed her anything, and whereas before his lips had been merely cool and firm and essentially masculine, now all at once they were warm and sweet and created a turmoil within her blood, which was the most extraordinary thing that had ever happened to her. For one moment she had been loathing him, telling herself that the wildly excitable pulse that had been beating away at the base of her throat ever since he lifted her and set her on the table was merely due to fear, and her instinctive recoil from, and mistrust of him; but now, when she should have been fighting him frenziedly, and displaying the utmost resentment, she allowed herself to go limp against him, and the small hand that had reached out and caught at him fastened its fingers more tightly into his sleeve.

  For a repeated dose, it was altogether dissimilar from the first; and when he lifted his head for the second time, neither of them said a word. There was utter silence in the arbour, yet Susan’s pulses were clamouring outrageously, and in the faint light that showed them each other’s faces Justin’s harsh one looked curiously pale and tense. It could have been entirely due to the fight, but he seemed to have forgotten how to smile mockingly, and his eyes were darker than she had ever known them. She had the feeling that he was surprised.

  Then he spoke.

  “And now I’m going to carry you back to the house! You simply can’t walk back in soaking shoes!”

  “Of course I can walk-----”

  “Don’t argue!” he said, briefly, and lifted her off the table and once more swung her up into his arms. She lay with her head resting against his shoulder, the tendrils of her hair, blown by the night breeze, brushing against his cheek, and the free and easy movements of his tall form as he strode across the lawns were peculiarly soothing to her just then. She shut her eyes and thought:

  “If Miss Freer looks out of her window, what will she think... ?” And then, with quick irrelevance, two more thoughts: “A week ago this couldn’t have happened! ... Why don’t I make him put me down?”

  He did put her down, just inside the side door through which she could reach one of the back staircases, and he recommended curtly:

  “I should have a hot bath before you go to bed. And another night, wear suitable shoes when you decide upon a nocturnal stroll.”

  “Does Miss Freer always wear suitable shoes?” she heard herself asking demurely.

  He looked down at her. Suddenly his hands gripped her shoulders.

  “You’ve sold me a mess of potage,” he accused her, his voice thick with something that could have been sheer fury, “in exchange for my freedom! And any punishment I can think up for you will have been well earned! And whether I go up or down in your opinion is quite beside the point!”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The next morning Susan was driven by Bruce Fairburn to the pretty little neighbouring village with the twelfth-century church, and on the way home they called in at the Red Lion, and she inspected a couple of bedrooms which she decided would do very well for herself and Jennifer.

  The landlord was suffering from the paucity of customers at that season of the year, and he promised to make them thoroughly comfortable. His inn was old-world and sited right beside the village-green, and Susan thought it would be pleasant to watch the ducks quacking on the pond, and the oldest inhabitant taking his daily airing on the green. The twelfth-century church cast its shadow across the huddle of cottages, the smithy, the post-office, and the village store, and it was all rather exquisitely peaceful. If Jennifer couldn’t find something to satisfy her artistic yearnings in such a spot Susan thought she would be surprised.

  When they got back Jennifer had been riding the grey Susan had once seen exercised, and her face was flushed with the unaccustomed exercise. She looked splendidly vigorous and alive in her recently bought jodhpurs and a cotton blouse, and even Bruce glanced at her with a flickering of interest, as if he had never seen her before. She was rhapsodising over the grey as it was led away, and her eyes shone brilliantly as she smiled at Susan.

  “Sir Justin says I can ride her every morning! Isn’t it a thrill?” she said.

  Susan decided to withhold her admission that she had made arrangem
ents for them elsewhere until a little later in the day, because she was afraid Jennifer would look as a child might look who was about to be deprived of a new toy. Instead, she studied Rosalie, who disdained jodhpurs as being too strictly utilitarian and unbecoming to one who was born to go always adorned in the best. She wore the most beautifully-tailored riding-breeches in a very pale primrose colour, and her jacket sat so neatly into her waist that it might have been attached to her by adhesive tape. Her little round bowler hat was jaunty, her stock infinitely becoming, and her gloved hands knew just what to do when a mettlesome steed got out of control—or showed signs of being desirous of getting out of control!

  She sat astride Lady Luck in a way that completed the picture, and Susan felt a stab of pure envy as she gazed at her. Not because she was beautiful, with an enchanting, flawless beauty; not because she had the right clothes for every possible occasion—even if they were not always paid for when the limit of her credit had been reached! But because she was so unswervingly sure of herself, so confident that Life had only the best to offer her and that in the eyes of a man who looked at her at such a moment

  as this she must be in every possible way desirable.

  She was patting Lady Luck and talking to her softly, rewarding her with a dove-like note in her voice because that morning, at least, she had tried no tricks.

  “You’re right, Justin, she has absolutely no real vice in her,” she said, smiling down at the man who owned her. “But I don’t think she likes to be badly handled.” This time she glanced at Susan, and the latter felt a faint pink stain her cheeks. Sir Justin swung round and regarded her sardonically.

  “You were wise not to risk your neck this morning,” he said. “I gather you’ve been seeking entertainment well away from the house?”

  His look dwelt on Bruce, who seemed to have adopted a slightly protective attitude towards Susan, and as he stood beside her, after helping her to alight from his car, he still kept his hand below her elbow. She was so small, and so much more fragile than most girls of her age— rather like a particularly slender reed in a strong breeze, he thought, recognising the strong breeze as the winds of adversity against which she had had to battle ever since she had had to earn her own living, and which might still blow round her now that she was a young woman of means without anyone to guide or advise her. He felt almost surprisingly protective towards her, and that morning he had gone out of his way to give her the feeling that she could depend on him in any emergency.