by Sara Seale
“Good gracious, no! I’ve suffered from them myself,” Harriet laughed.
“You have? Then why would you be concerning yourself with needy families hereabouts, an’ you a guest of the castle?”
“I’m only a guest by chance, you know, and I can’t stop on here. I thought you might know of any houses around that would offer work.”
It had been a mistake, however, to assume that a local servant girl was the obvious source of information for domestic labour in the district. Molly simply slapped her hands on her generous thighs and gave an unexpected screech of mirth.
“Wurrk, is it! An’ haven’t you the grand humour, now, tellin’ the tale with a face as straight as a yard of portha, an’ they all sayin’ you seemed a bit simple mistakin’ the castle for the gaol an’ lavin’ your traps on Clooney station for anny young felly to make off with, puttin’ the blame on poor old Murphy an’ he with a year an’ a day to his pension. Sure, you was treatin’ us all to a touch of the English humour an’ we, over here, thinkin’ they has none! Wait till I tell thim in the kitchen, they’ll die laffin.” Unable to keep such a good joke to herself a moment longer, she made a dash for the door, knocking over a chair as she went.
“Well!” Harriet exclaimed aloud in astonishment, then smiled as she pictured Matron’s face had one of her charges so lamentably forgotten her place.
She finished her breakfast without haste, then got up and washed and dressed and made her bed with accustomed thoroughness, grateful now to that early training which had permitted nothing untoward to upset the daily routine of Ogilvy’s.
She surveyed herself in an old-fashioned pier-glass, frowning at her unsatisfactory reflection. Someone had cleaned and pressed her suit, but its ill-treatment on the Plain of Clooney had not improved its appearance and the skirt had definitely shrunk. Her shoes had not been returned to her so were probably past redeeming, for they had let in the water badly, but in any case, she would have to make do with bedroom slippers for the time being on account of her bandaged foot. She thought her feet looked decidedly odd, not to say indecent, coupled with the sober garments of daytime, and grinned again, remembering her host’s astonishing suggestion of the night before. However serious he might have imagined himself to be at the time, when he saw her again he would soon realise the unsuitability, even the ludicrousness of such a proposal.
Before going downstairs in search of him, she crossed to one of the windows to take her first curious look at the country which lay beyond the castle.
Her room must be at the back of the house, for there was no evidence of the wall and locked gates which had barred her arrival, and she leaned out across the sill, her eyes widening as they feasted on the fulfilment of a dream come true. It was all as familiar as the letters; the lough with its north shore slap against the castle, the ruined turret to the west where watch was kept for the cattle raiders and bands of cut-throats in Sarsfleld’s day, the little island far out in the calm waters where Cuchulain himself was said to have rested on his quest to Cruachan, and beyond the mountains, the hollow hills where once dwelt the terrible Sidhe, and today gave brief shelter to those intrepid spirits who once in a while made a break from Clooney gaol.
“All mine for the asking,” she murmured, comforting herself with a last pretence that, by taking the surprising master of Clooney at his word, she could make the flimsy promise of those letters come true, then she banged the window shut rather crossly and prepared to find her way to the living quarters of the castle and a sensible discussion as to her immediate future.
The house was not as vast as she had supposed, she discovered, finding the main staircase after only one wrong turn down a corridor, and in daylight it looked a little shabby with damp patches spreading on the stone walls, and panelling which had once been fine, cracked and crumbling in places with dry rot. The staircase, however, still retained its grandeur, and she paused at the top to admire its gracious, curving splendour and the shining scrolls and twists of its delicate balustrade. Here she could well indulge in fantasies of past glories and forgotten elegance, and she regretted the injured ankle, which prevented her from making an impressive sweeping descent. It was no solace to find her host waiting at the bottom, doubtless, judging by the expression on his ugly face, having watched and enjoyed her discomfiture from the start.
“A brave effort,” he observed, not without irony. “You’d better take my arm the rest of the way. We’ll go to the library.”
She obliged, not so much because she needed his support, but because she thought him quite capable of picking her up in one of those undignified swoops should she refuse, but she felt a little ridiculous being slowly escorted across the hall in a formal silence, their steps ill-matched and her head barely reaching his shoulder.
He put her carefully into a wing-backed chair, still without speaking, then smiled with a certain rather wicked satisfaction as he observed the hungry gleam in her eyes as they travelled over the book-lined walls.
“Such bounty!” she exclaimed with the incredulous delight of a beggar starved for food and drink, and he turned to a tray of heavy silver which had been set out with cut glass and decanters in the centre of the room.
“You choose your words with discrimination, Miss Harriet Jones,” he remarked, pouring from a decanter. “A glass of Madeira wine?” He handed her one of the Waterford goblets and added, as he caught her startled expression: “Oh, I can be discriminating, too, when it comes to getting what I want, or perhaps your flights of fancy are catching. I had an impulse to see how a bribe of unrestricted reading would appeal to your romantic notions. In other words, I want an answer.”
She sipped her wine in silence, the practical, common-sense conclusion she had arrived at on waking upset once again. There could be no doubt that his own conclusions had not altered with the prosaic light of day, but it was hardly fair, she thought, to gamble so blatantly and so surely on her besetting weakness. He waited for her reply but made no effort to prompt her as the silence between them grew, and that, she was beginning to understand, would always be his way.
CHAPTER THREE
“WHEN you talked about discrimination in yourself, Mr. Lonnegan, I think you meant low cunning,” she began firmly, and was a little disconcerted when he burst out laughing.
She probably did not realise how comic she looked, comic and rather endearing, he thought, observing the shrunken skirt which she was trying to persuade in vain to cover her bony knees, the bedroom slippers several sizes too large, and the disapproving look of a prim governess cancelled out by the childish fringe which kept tickling her eyebrows.
He answered, however, with a careful regard for the touchy feelings of youth:
“Well, perhaps it was a bit of both. But shouldn’t you feel flattered that I find it necessary to be devious? I don’t as a rule beat about the bush when I put forward a business proposition and expect a sensible answer.”
“It depends what you mean by a sensible answer,” she retorted, refusing to be intimidated by sheer masculine arrogance. “And a proposal of marriage, however ill-judged, is scarcely a business proposition.”
She took another cautious sip of wine, congratulating herself that so far her head was remaining splendidly clear.
“My dear child! Is that what’s troubling you?” he replied with an amusement that was tinged with impatience. “‘You didn’t suppose, did you, that I expected any more than a business contract between us?” When she did not answer, he continued in the professionally indulgent tones of a surgeon endeavouring to explain the necessity for a simple operation: “There are sound and valid reasons why I need to marry quickly, and no possible objections that I can see why you shouldn’t oblige since, as I pointed out last night, you had come here with that object in mind.”
“I didn’t come here with you in mind,” she said, knowing that it must sound a weak protest in the circumstances, but she felt gauche and inexperienced.
“That may be,” he replied. “But you came pre
pared to link up with a virtual stranger, all the same. You’re not going to tell me it was love at first sight, on a single meeting, and you’ve cherished an undying passion for my cousin Rory ever since!”
“No,” she said, fidgeting with the disobliging hem of her skirt and looking wretched, “that wouldn’t be strictly true, but—”
“But what?”
“I don’t know quite how to explain. Most girls have romantic dreams when they’re just growing up, I imagine, but orphans start at a disadvantage and have to work harder at it.”
“What a curious remark. Why?”
“Because the dreams are likely to remain just dreams since none of us in our right senses would really expect to live happily ever after with Prince Charming in a castle.”
“It would seem in that case that you must be sadly lacking in your right senses since you apparently expected the impossible,” he said with some severity as he crossed the room to let in the dogs which were scratching at the door. They padded back at his heels and lay down at his feet, and Harriet, putting out an eager hand to Kurt, her friend of the fog, felt hurt when he turned his head away and disclaimed all knowledge of her.
“Why won’t he make friends?” she asked plaintively. “I thought he liked me.”
“Leave him alone till he’s ready. Alsatians like to make their own advances, and in their own time. They are sensible animals and don’t care to spill their emotions all over the place on first acquaintance.”
“Well?” he shot at her suddenly. “Have we gone round the mulberry bush enough times for your liking, Miss Jones? I can’t really see why you should hesitate, unless it’s simply a matter of pride not to agree the first time of asking.”
“I’m not proud.”
“Then you’re just being awkward which, in the circumstances, I’d say you can’t afford to be. No one round here will offer domestic work to a guest of mine, you know, so why not make the sensible decision? Fate has thrown us across one another’s paths at a psychological moment; you need a home and security, I need a wife. It couldn’t be more fortuitous.”
“If,” she said reasonably, “you need a wife so badly, surely there must be a woman of your own kind in the neighbourhood who would be glad to oblige you?”
“I daresay—and would oblige, as you put it, with less quibbling and reluctance than you, I may say,” he retorted. She thought that over, then asked with such calm unexpectedness that she had the unlooked-for gratification of seeing him surprised:
“Is someone chasing you, Mr. Lonnegan?”
He answered with amused evasiveness;
“Well now, that’s a leading question, isn’t it? Clooney, though it’s falling to bits, helps to enhance the dubious assets of its owner with the undiscerning, perhaps, but neither I nor my crumbling castle are for sale. That’s why—”
“That’s why you think someone like me is the only possible choice,” she interrupted gently. “Oh, I do see your point. A girl from an orphanage who would be too grateful to demand much, someone content to be your wife in name in exchange for the realisation of an adolescent dream.”
“Exactly,” he said crisply. “You have a more mature perception than I gave you credit for, my dear. Come—I’ll show you the layout downstairs so that you won’t get lost if you choose to wander, on your own. That ankle is only badly wrenched, not sprained, and should be easier in a day or two. Now, we’ll start with the Grand Saloon which used to be the drawing-room in my mother’s time, but hasn’t been used for years.”
She followed him from room to room, with two dogs in close attendance. She could not take her eyes off them and, longing to share a fraction of their devotion to Duff just for one moment, tried to touch one of them as they brushed by her, but was politely repulsed again.
But she forgot the dogs as the histories of paintings and trophies were explained to her with the laconic indifference of a man who had clearly done the tourist round many times before. He pointed out with equal impartiality the threadbare state of carpets and tapestries which might once have been priceless, and she had no knowledge to discover the difference between genuine and reproduction when it came to furniture. The confused architectural styles did not trouble her untrained eye; she merely remarked prosaically that so many additional bits and pieces must make a lot of work for the servants.
“Very true, it would if they were used, and we had any servants,” he replied with a grin. “But as you can see, we are shrouded for the most part in rather grubby dust-sheets which Jimsy used to whip off if the odd tourist clamoured at our gates, which wasn’t often. But we’ve put an end to the irritation, praise the pigs!”
“By keeping the gates locked?”
“By keeping the gates locked. Barred gates, I may add, give rise to a few wild conjectures in a country where most properties stand open to the passer-by, but it saves a deal of trouble.” And also, thought Harriet, giving him a swift surreptitious glance, protected him from other unspecified interruptions; but he caught and interpreted the glance and added with a certain dryness: “The wall wasn’t built on my instructions, if you’re fondly imagining Clooney hides some grisly secret, but in the days of Ireland’s troubles, land-owners were forced to guard their properties if they weren’t to be burnt out or worse. This house is still known by its local nickname round here because it was one of the few that was never touched. Lonnegan’s Luck they called it, but it was my grandfather’s insistence on a wall and locked gates that saved Clooney, not his proverbial luck. The only other access to this day is from the rear across the lough and there was time and to spare for a reception committee before a boat could cross the water.
They had come, at the end of their tour, to a small room overlooking the lough furnished more like an office or study than the gracious retiring-room which its moulded ceiling and delicate faded wallpaper had once proclaimed it to be, and Harriet turned away to look at a portrait which hung above an ornately carved desk.
“You don’t need to keep trying to impress me, Mr. Lonnegan. I may be an orphan, but that doesn’t make me simple-minded,” she said.
He observed the slender, erect back turned to him in polite rejection, and said quite gently:
“I wasn’t trying to impress, but to interest you. Perhaps you misunderstand my doubtless puzzling importuning, but you have, I think, the quality that I and Clooney need. Does that surprise you?”
“You made that sound as if—as if I had something to give,” she said, and the colour, had crept under her skin bringing back that fleeting moment of charm which had surprised him the night before.
He replied a little roughly because already her absurd lack of self-conceit had begun to reproach him:
“Everyone has something to give. Why should you be any different, thanks to a less fortunate upbringing?”
She turned back at once to the portrait, aware that she must have sounded naive, if not even angling for compliments, and studied it attentively to avoid further misconceptions. The face of a rather plain little girl looked down at her with a teasing suggestion of familiarity. Perhaps it was the long dark hair primly confined by an Alice-band which reminded her of pictures of old-fashioned children in the equally old-fashioned annuals to be found on the orphanage shelves, or perhaps it was just that unchildlike expression of indifference in the round dark eyes, which seemed vaguely reminiscent of the acceptance seen in the eyes of some unwanted children. But there was something else, too, a likeness or a reminder of another face.
“Who’s that?” she asked, mainly to divert attention from herself and was utterly unprepared for his reply.
“That? Oh, that’s my daughter, Nonie,” he said. “The other reason I need you here, my dear Miss Jones. Shall we go and find some lunch?”
Afterwards Harriet wondered whether he had deliberately left that room until the last, banking on her natural curiosity to give him the opening he desired; but that, she ultimately decided, was too devious. There had been nothing to prevent him owning to a child a
t once; in fact it would have been a more logical means of persuasion than the confusing nonsense he had talked.
“Are you married, then?” she remembered asking him with gauche stupidity, and his reply had been deceptively mild:
“My wife died eight years ago. I was hardly contemplating bigamy,” he had said with a little quirk of amusement, and left it at that.
They had gone into luncheon then and sat one at each end of a long table, its polished surface reflecting such a lavish display of glass and silver that the distance between them seemed immense.
“You’re quite right,” he remarked suddenly from the far end of the table, after a lengthy silence. “It’s all rather overdone, but the kitchen is putting on an act for you. Our guests are so few that they have to be impressed.”
“Oh!” said Harriet rather blankly. She hardly considered she would rank as a guest worth impressing, but at least it seemed clear that the castle staff, such as it was, were still in ignorance of her humble origin.
“Haven’t you told them?” she asked innocently.
“Told them what?”
“About the orphanage and—and my silly mistake.”
“I’m not in the habit of discussing my guests with my servants,” he replied with coolness. “As to your silly mistake, that can remain a matter between ourselves, since my cousin’s not likely to embarrass you with reminders in the circumstances.”
“Your cousin,” she retorted, stung to equal coolness by his manner, “could have saved me embarrassment more easily by having the decency to stop me coming and making a fool of myself when he found he didn’t want me.”