SPELL OF THE
ISLAND
Anne Hampson
Copyright © 2013 ROSETTABOOKS, LLC
ANNE HAMPSON
currently makes her home in England, but this top romance author has traveled and lived all over the world. This variety of experience is reflected in her books, which present the ever-changing face of romance as it is found wherever people fall in love.
CONTENTS
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter One
Mrs. Morris was crying when Emma phoned her.
‘I’m sorry, dear,’ she choked across the line. ‘Can you ring later—?’
‘What’s wrong?’ broke in Emma concernedly. ‘You sound very distressed.’
‘It’s Louise. She’s become so unhappy—please ring later,’ begged the woman, and to Emma’s surprise she put down the phone.
Standing, staring at the receiver in her hand, Emma realised that her heart was beating far too quickly. And without further ado, she determined to find out what was wrong with the woman who, twenty-two years ago, had fostered her out at the age of two, and along with her husband, now dead, had nurtured Emma with all the loving care of real parents.
Louise . . . Emma’s thoughts were naturally on the girl who had been born to Emma’s foster parents only a year after they had taken Emma, after having been assured by the doctor that they could never have a child of their own. Both girls had received love, and both had given love in return, so that the three women were still very close, with Emma visiting her ‘mother’ as she had always called her, at least once a fortnight. Emma worked in London; her mother lived in Cheshire so it was a drive of two hundred fifty miles each way when she went to visit Mrs. Morris. But Emma tried not to miss a visit, not after Louise had taken the post of nanny on the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. She had been away from home now for over a year, but two months ago her employers had moved to Sri Lanka where Mr. Winnick was to work for three years; and they had left Louise with the little boy, but moved her from their house to that of Mrs. Winnick’s brother—‘an arrogant blanc Mauritian who considers me a fool as regards intelligence and an especially inefficient nanny.’ This from Louise about a month ago, and there was more which Emma read between the lines and hoped her mother did not also perceive—that Louise was far from happy now that she was under the watchful eye of a man she obviously detested.
All the same, it had not struck Emma that the situation would worsen; on the contrary, she had assumed that this man would soon lose interest and go about his business, allowing Louise to go about hers.
Now, it seemed trouble loomed, and Mrs. Morris was plainly taking things very much to heart.
It was fortunate that Emma was on a week’s vacation, having taken it in order to decorate her tiny flat. She was papering her bedroom but left it after the phone call, and within a couple of hours she was on her way, speeding along the Motorway, eye on the mirror as she was, in her anxiety, exceeding the seventy-mile-an-hour limit.
Mrs. Morris gaped on opening the door of her Council house and seeing Emma standing there, suitcase in hand.
‘What—?’
‘Don’t look so surprised, darling,’ broke in Emma with a smile. ‘Surely you knew I’d come?’
‘But aren’t you working?’ Mrs. Morris opened the door wider for Emma to enter the narrow hallway. Emma put down her case at the bottom of the stairs.
She explained how she came to be off work; then she and her mother were in the living-room, and Emma was listening intently to Mrs. Morris, who although she several times said that Emma would understand it all once she had read Louise’s last letter, for the present made no attempt to go upstairs to get it. Plainly she was upset, her eyes still swollen from tears much more recent than those she had been shedding when she was answering Emma’s call.
‘She says she can’t stand it any longer—he’s a dreadful man by all accounts! But the trouble is she can’t come home because of the little boy—’
‘She can ask this man to get someone else,’ interrupted Emma, angry that her mother should be upset like this by a man she had not even met.
‘She has, and he refuses, telling her arrogantly that she signed for two years and she must stay at least that long.’ Mrs. Morris went towards the kitchen door. ‘I’ll make some coffee and then fetch Louise’s letter for you to read.’
‘Can’t I make the coffee?’ Emma went past her and filled the kettle, looking round at what was so familiar. Poor but happy, the Morris family had been, and the death of Mr. Morris had been the first blow, reducing the family to three. Then Emma had been faced with moving to London with her firm or losing her job as secretary to the managing director. As Louise was at home at that time Emma, rather reluctantly, decided to live in London. Then Louise had gone. . . .
Emma had not expected her to leave her mother alone; it had upset Emma, and she had contemplated asking her mother to come to London to share the flat. But Mrs. Morris had roots here in the Cheshire village of Comberbach so Emma had not asked her to leave.
‘Here’s the letter.’ Mrs. Morris had gone for it while Emma was making the coffee. And now they were both sitting by the fire drinking it, while Emma read and re-read the letter, aware of something she could not fathom, but sure her sister’s mind had been dwelling on some additional aspect all the time she was writing the letter.
‘What do you make of it?’ asked Emma at last as she folded the three sheets of paper and put them back in the envelope. She was watching her mother closely and soon realised that the underlying element in the letter had completely escaped her notice. The printed word only had caused the tears and anxiety, but for Emma, well, there was an uncomfortable conviction that there was a great deal more than Louise had revealed.
‘I can only think one thing: that this hateful creature is out to harass Louise at every turn; he dislikes her intensely and makes her life a sheer misery because of it.’
Emma said puzzledly, ‘But why should he harass her when he knows she has a job to do? He must know she can’t do it properly if he’s complaining all the time.’
‘Well, she says he’s complaining all the time—you’ve just read it for yourself. And she says he treats her with contempt and sometimes seems to be sneering at her, or secretly laughing at her.’ A pause and a frown and then, ‘Why should he laugh at her, I wonder?’
‘That,’ commented Emma as she reached for her cup, ‘is one thing that baffles me.’
‘It can’t be pleasant to be laughed at any more than it is to be admonished for not doing your job properly.’
‘Louise hadn’t been a nanny before she went out there,’ mused Emma, her brow creased in thought as she recalled her asking Louise if she really thought she could do a job like that. Louise had never taken to children in the way Emma had, although she was always charming to them. It was just that she had never had the inclination to play with them as Emma had, when, for instance, one of Mrs. Morris’s friends had called, bringing her grandchildren with her.
‘She’s been quite satisfactory up till the time Mr. and Mrs. Winnick went away to Sri Lanka. It’s only since she went to this abominable man’s home that she’s been so unhappy.’ Tears stood out on Mrs. Morris’s iashes, and Emma bit her lip. What was to be done? she wondered, wishing the island was not so far away.
‘Louise doesn’t say specifically what the man’s complaints are,’ she commented, recalling one particular passage in the letter.
‘I’m despera
tely unhappy, and cry at night when I’m in bed. I never thought when I took the post, that it would bring such heartbreak. . . .’
No wrapping it up this time. Louise was obviously distraught; for otherwise she would surely have spared her mother, knowing as she did just how easily she could be upset.
‘I believe he just wants to make my poor child’s life a misery—’ Mrs. Morris found a handkerchief to dry her eyes.
‘And yet he won’t let her leave?’
‘That’s a puzzle in itself.’
Slowly Emma took the letter out again. Just what was it that lay hidden within the dejection that ran the whole way through the pages?
‘Do you know,’ she murmured almost to herself, ‘I’m not at all convinced that Louise wants to leave.’
‘You’re—!’ Mrs. Morris stared, wide-eyed. ‘Of course she wants to leave! She says so.’
Emma nodded her head.
‘Yes,’ she agreed, ‘she does.’
Before her mother could comment, there was a knock on the front door, and Emma rose from her chair. It was the postman, who always gave a little rap on the panel after dropping letters through the box.
Another from Louise. . . . A sigh escaped Emma, wondering why her sister had not written to her instead of her mother. But in all the time Louise had been away she had written only four letters to Emma. Emma had put it down to her being too busy, but she herself wrote regularly once a month whether she received a reply or not.
‘Oh . . . !’ Mrs. Morris seemed not to want to accept the envelope held out to her by Emma. ‘You open it, love,’ she begged, a sob in her voice.
Emma did as she was requested, hoping against hope that something more cheerful would be enclosed in the thin airmail envelope. But she was disappointed. In fact, Louise seemed more distraught than before . . . and still Emma somehow gained the impression that the girl did not want to leave Mauritius and come home.
Reluctantly she began to read aloud, glancing now and then at her mother and swallowing a lump in her throat when even yet again tears appeared.
‘Why doesn’t she just walk out?’ Emma’s voice was sharp and angry. ‘No one can force her to stay.’ No, this Mauritian could not force her to stay. . . .
‘She’s frightened of him, it’s plain,’ cried Mrs. Morris. ‘He’s probably threatened to prosecute her if she breaks the contract!’
‘I can’t see him doing a thing like that.’
Her mother looked at her.
‘You seem convinced that she doesn’t really want to leave. But you have nothing to go on, have you?’
‘Nothing concrete, no,’ admitted Emma, but again she was telling herself that if Louise really wanted to leave she could do so.
‘Would you leave a little boy, if you’d promised his parents you’d take good care of him while they were away?’
‘She’d be leaving him with his uncle—’
‘That’s not an answer to my question, Emma. Would you shirk—do the dirty on your employers?’
Emma gave a sigh. For herself, she wouldn’t let her employers down, but neither would she suffer as Louise was suffering. She would certainly make a concerted effort to hold her own against the wretched man.
‘No,’ she owned at last, ‘I don’t suppose I would.’
‘So you can understand Louise’s position. She has to put up with this for at least another year.’ The sob in Mrs. Morris’s voice was plain to Emma, who was suddenly angry with Louise despite what the girl was going through. Why, she asked again, hadn’t Louise written to her instead?
‘What’s to be the end of it?’ quivered Mrs. Morris. ‘She’ll be a nervous wreck long before she’s free to leave.’
‘I’ll write to her if you like,’ suggested Emma.
‘And what good will that do?’ was the swift rejoinder, and a lengthy silence ensued.
Emma drank her coffee, watching her mother’s changing expression. It seemed an idea had come to her, decided Emma, but was certainly not prepared to hear her say, ‘Can you go over there, Emma, and investigate? You’ve almost all your holidays still to come. . . .’ Her voice trailed as Emma’s expression changed. ‘If it’s the cost you’re thinking about,’ she continued before Emma could speak, ‘then forget it. I have savings and I’m willing to spend some of them on the fare.’
‘Mother, it’s not practical to spend your money in this way,’ she began, then stopped. She herself had ample money saved for the fare. . . .
‘It’s the only sensible thing to do, to ease my mind,’ insisted her mother firmly. ‘I can’t go on like this, Emma. You know how easily I give way to nerves. Please, dear, do this for me,’ she ended quiveringly.
Do this for me. . . . Not much to ask after all she has done for me, thought Emma, and she gave her mother a swift smile.
‘All right, darling, if it’s really what you want.’
‘You’re a real daughter to me, Emma—’
‘No gratitude,’ said Emma quickly. ‘It is I who am grateful to you.’
‘When can you go?’ was the next question, and again before Emma could answer, ‘You still have three weeks, I think?’
‘That’s right.’
‘You couldn’t have them tacked on to this present week? I mean, you’ve only had three days. . . .’
‘You want me to go at once?’
‘Is that possible?’
‘If I can get a flight.’ Emma paused a moment. ‘I’m not sure that my boss’ll let me off, but I’ll phone him and see what he says.’ Emma doubted she could get away in less than a week at least.
‘Tell him it’s an emergency, love.’
Emma forced a smile. She had practically arranged to have one of her weeks with a friend in the Lake District, intending to stay with her mother for a few days on the way there and again on the way back.
‘Yes,’ she said as she realised the tension in her mother’s face. ‘I’ll tell him it’s an emergency.’ She looked at her, thinking that she was definitely aging these days, with the once lovely brown hair—almost the same colour as Emma’s and with the same auburn tints—almost completely grey, and the once clear skin beginning to wrinkle and fade. The hands, too, were loose-skinned, the knuckle bones more prominent. Emma gave a small sigh and wished she could put back the clock.
‘Will you stay tonight with me?’ Mrs. Morris was pleading; Emma said at once that she had meant to stay.
‘I brought my suitcase,’ she added as a reminder.
‘Did you, love? I hadn’t noticed.’
‘It’s by the stairs. Surely you didn’t suppose I’d come up and go back in one day?’
‘No, it was silly of me, for you never do. I don’t know what I’m doing half my time,’ she added frowningly. ‘My mind’s concentrated on one thing only—the plight of my poor child.’
Emma knew she would never ever forget that pulse-stopping moment when she was introduced to Paul Fanchette. She had previously sent Louise a telegram, and there had been no time for a reply. Louise evinced neither surprise nor puzzlement when she met Emma at Plaisance Airport and drove her to the Chateau Fanchette, set on a prominence from where the view was to a semicircular beach and sapphire blue lagoon where multicoloured sails gave evidence of luxury yachts and other craft.
‘You don’t seem surprised at my rather hasty decision to come over and see you,’ observed Emma who had merely said in the cable that she felt like seeing Louise and the island on which she worked.
‘I rather thought that eventually you’d get round to visiting me here. I did describe how beautiful it was.’
No mention of what was troubling her, and at present no sign of anxiety on her lovely, fragile-like features. Fair and slender, with big blue eyes and pale but lovely skin, Louise had always inspired gentleness in her boyfriends, whereas Emma with her dark hair and expressive brown eyes, had mainly had boyfriends who seemed to take it for granted that she could fend for herself. The firm chin and high cheekbones denoted a sort of classical strength of
character, though the mouth was full and tender, compassionate and could tremble if its owner were hurt. Slender like Louise, Emma was an inch taller—a little above medium height—and she supposed this, too, made men think she had no need of protection. But Emma basically was soft and at times, very vulnerable; she felt more deeply than Louise but was able more easily to hide her feelings.
However, as they drove from the airport, Louise was undoubtedly hiding her feelings, though she must know that her mother would have confided in Emma; and, therefore, Emma knew of the trouble in which she, Louise, was in with her new employer.
It was on the glorious, wide lawn that Emma first met Paul Fanchette, a lawn manicured to perfection and like a thick-pile carpet to the feet. He was merely standing there, staring out to the lagoon where, Emma was later to learn, his luxury yacht was moored.
‘He’s there—er—Monsieur Fanchette. . . .’ Louise seemed to falter for a fleeting moment but recovered so swiftly that her sister never even noticed. In fact her eyes were already glued to the tall, lithe figure whose very pose seemed to brand him a scion of the French nobility. ‘I suppose I’d better introduce you at once. I’ve said we’re sisters, but you have a different name because you were fostered. I don’t think he was really interested.’ Louise led the way, adding over her shoulder, ‘I said I could get you into an hotel, but he said you could stay here—but I’ve told you this already,’ she added as if impatient with herself for the repetition.
The next moment Emma’s hand was in a firm grasp that made her wince, and she was tilting her head right back to look into the most formidable countenance she had ever seen. No wonder Louise was afraid of him! He seemed like a god, so incredibly tall and distinguished but with features so set and stern that even Emma was overawed in his presence. He was dressed in white linen slacks and a white shirt with rolled-up sleeves, revealing teak dark arms to match the colour of his face. His raven hair was formed into a widow’s peak at the front and brushed back, waving slightly, from his forehead. One or two threads of silver at the temples accentuated the air of distinction, just as the hollows in his cheeks accentuated the high cheekbones and straight, aristocratic nose. His mouth was firm but somehow sensuous at the same time, full . . . too full. . . . Emma swallowed hard to relieve the dryness in her throat. Never in her entire life had she been affected like this by a man. It was absurd, she chided herself, for she had not been in his presence more than a mere few seconds!
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