Sally Wentworth - King of the Castle

by King of the Castle

  'Goodbye, Rudi,' she smiled at him. 'Take care of Prinz.'

  But the boy caught her hand before she could climb back into the saddle. 'Please, where you go?'

  'To my house. To the Chalet Alpenrose,' she told him.

  He nodded his tousled head and, clutching the puppy tightly, turned to run through the gateway, disappearing into a small doorway at the foot of one of the towers.

  Rather tiredly, Lee got back on the horse and set off to return down the track. At the brow of the hill she turned to look back at the Schloss Reistoven, a jumble of turrets and gables and mellow, red-brown roofs that reflected the sunlight, as they had done for hundreds of years. How could she even hope to fight the owner of all that? Someone who had the strength and power of generations of overlords behind him, an autocratic man of indomitable purpose who viewed her feeble efforts to thwart him with the contempt they probably deserved. For the first time feeling depressed at the enormity of what she had undertaken, she slowly rode back to another night alone in the chalet.

  Deciding that work was the antidote to her fit of the blues, she spent the whole of the next day on cleaning out the other first floor rooms and sandpapering the woodwork ready for painting.

  'Frdulein! Fraulein Summers!' a shrill voice interrupted her as she applied a first coat of primer paint to the bedroom window frames. Poking her head through the window, she saw Rudi. standing outside the house with Prinz beside him, securely tied by a piece of twine. She beckoned him up and he ran up the stairs to greet her, jabbering away in German.

  'Hey, wait a minute!' Lee laughed at him. 'I don't understand. Nicht's versteh'n.'

  Excitedly he began to run through the rooms and Lee only just saved the tin of paint from going flying beneath Prinz's paws.

  'But you're so clean! I almost didn't recognise you. She grinned at the well-scrubbed, slick-haired little boy in his spotless shirt and pressed trousers.

  'It has been a great effort to keep him smart until we got here, and I'm quite sure that in five minutes he will be dirty again.'

  The voice came from behind Lee and she spun round to see a woman hesitating in the doorway.

  'May I come in too?'

  'Why, yes, of course.'

  As the stranger stepped into the room Lee recognised the middle-aged woman she had seen with Max at the village church. She was wearing a simple but well-cut dress of pale blue to match her eyes, her slightly greying fair hair drawn back in a French pleat. She was slim and elegant as only a European woman knows how to be and made Lee feel gauche in her jeans and crumpled shirt. But the elder woman's smile was friendly as she came forward to shake hands.

  'Guten Tag, Fraulein Summers. I am Anna von Reistoven, Rudi's grandmother. He has told me how bravely you climbed down to rescue him. I'm afraid he is always getting into mischief, that one, but we are most grateful to you that he is here with us.'

  Lee found herself flushing under her warm smile. 'But it was nothing,' she protested hurriedly. 'He was only about eight feet down. He probably exaggerated when he told you the story.'

  But Frau von Reistoven insisted on thanking her again and then asked her how she liked Austria. Soon they were chatting easily enough, although Lee couldn't get it out of her mind that this fashionably dressed woman must be Max's mother. Which made Rudi Max's son, she supposed, although he didn't look a bit like him, for Rudi was as dark as Max was fair. Perhaps Max's wife was dark-haired.

  Up .to then their conversation had been on general topics, but now Frau von Reistoven said, 'I must admit, Fraulein, that I have been curious to make your acquaintance ever since Max first told me of your arrival here.' Her English was very good but not as fluent as Max's, and her accent was slightly heavier.

  Lee looked at her with some misgivings. Was this another von Reistoven she would have to fight? 'He told you about me?'

  'Oh, yes. I haven't seen him so—put out—is that the correct phrase? for quite some time. He thought that he had finished with all the trouble over the Alpenrose estate at last.'

  'I suppose you think that I ought to have sold to him, that I'm mad not to?' Lee said wryly.

  Frau von Reistoven smiled. 'On the contrary. I think you have done exactly the right thing,' she said surprisingly.

  Lee stared. 'You do?'

  'But certainly. I think you should hold out against him as long as you can. He will win in the end, of course,' she added with a smile. 'He always does, he is that kind of man. But at least you will have taught him that he can't take matters for granted where a determined woman is concerned, and that is a very good thing. I'm entirely on your side,' she said approvingly.

  With a delighted smile, Lee said impulsively, 'You're not a bit like Max.'

  The other woman raised her eyebrows. 'I should hope not, indeed! Max has had his own way for far too long, it is time that someone taught him a lesson.' Then she noticed Lee's sleeping bag in the recess and her cooking stove in the fireplace. 'But, Fraulein, you are not living here at the chalet?'

  'Well, yes, I am,' Lee admitted. 'I'm doing all the decorating myself, you see, arid it's much more convenient to live on the premises rather than commute from the hotel.'

  'But don't you find it rather—er—primitive?' Frau von Reistoven asked delicately.

  'Yes, it is a bit, especially when the workmen are here. But I hope that they will have finished in a few more days.'

  Frau von Reistoven looked at her consideringly for a few seconds but then turned away to look round the room. 'I remember this house when my cousin Erika lived here. She was your great-aunt, you know. Did you ever meet her?'

  'No. No, I didn't.'

  'That was a shame. She would have liked you, I think.' Frau von Reistoven paused as if she had suddenly thought of something. 'I have just realised that that makes you a relation of mine.'

  'An extremely remote one,' Lee laughed.

  'But a relation, nevertheless. And I cannot allow any of my relations to live in conditions such as these when there are lots of rooms, and bathrooms,' she added as she noted Lee's plastic washing bowl, 'just standing empty at the Schloss.'

  Lee looked at her silently, no longer smiling.

  Coming across to her, Frau von Reistoven put her hands on Lee's shoulders and looked at her steadily. 'Yes, my child, I know you are thinking that I left your great-uncle to live here in these conditions. But will you believe me when I tell you that I came here and I tried, not once but several times, to persuade him to come and make his home with us at the Schloss? But he was an extremely determined old man and he had taken it into his head that Max was his enemy, so there was nothing I could do or say that would move him. It made me very sad, Fraulein, especially when he would not accept any help from me.' She paused, then smiled mischievously. 'I do hope you aren't going to be quite so—determined?'

  With a little chuckle, Lee said, 'You put it far more gently than Max does.' Then more seriously went on, 'It's very kind of you to invite me, Frau von Reistoven. but…'

  'But you are not going to accept?'

  'No.' Lee shook her head. 'I think it's better that I stay here.'

  'Oh, dear, did that big son of mine frighten you so much?' Frau von Reistoven asked in dismay.

  Smiling slightly, Lee said, 'No, it's not that. It's just that I…' She broke off looking rather pleadingly at her.

  The older woman nodded. 'Very well, Fraulein, I won't press you any more. I understand how you feel.'

  'Please, won't you call me Lee?'

  'Thank you, my dear, and may Rudi and I call and visit you again?'

  'Of course.'

  Soon they took their leave and as Lee waved to them from the balcony her feelings were very mixed indeed. Max's mother seemed so genuine and kind, she just didn't seem to be the sort of person who would stand by and let Max do what he had done to her great-uncle. Lee watched them for a long time before she sighed and turned back to her work.

  By the time she had finished her fingertips felt raw and her arms ached from paintin
g, so she was more than pleased when Herr Kreuz's car bumped along the track to the house and drew up outside. He had brought old Herr Staffler with him and both men were loud in their praise of all the work she had done, which made Lee feel much better. Herr Kreuz told her that he had arranged for an application to have water and drainage laid on at the chalet.

  'But I can't afford that,' Lee said in some dismay. 'You know I only have enough money to pay for the repairs.'

  'Yes, yes,' the solicitor hastened to reassure her. 'But if you have planning permission for them it will be a big selling point in your favour.'

  'Oh, I see. How do I have to go about getting it?'

  'You have to go to Bergheim, to the Lander office— that is the State office,' he explained, 'and fill in an application form. I have to go to Bergheim myself the day after tomorrow and, if you are free, I could take you and help you to fill in the necessary forms. But unfortunately I cannot bring you back as I have to go on to visit a client.'

  Lee thanked him warmly and the solicitor then added to his kindness by inviting her back to his house for supper, an invitation Lee was only too pleased to accept as she was already missing the meals she had taken for granted at the hotel. Herr Staffler had also been invited, but after one or two glasses of wine the old man's sole topic of conversation became almost a tirade of abuse against the von Reistovens and all that they stood for. Herr Kreuz tried several times to change the subject, but always the old man brought it back to his hatred for Max and the wrongs he had done Howard Canning. Lee had to sit there and listen, but she wondered uncomfortably if her great-uncle, too, had been as vindictive and unreasonable as Herr Staffler.

  Both Lee and Herr Kreuz stood staring in dismay at the official in the Lander office at Bergheim. Apologetically he said, 'I'm sorry, Fraulein, but there is nothing I can do. Herr von Reistoven has already told us that in no circumstances will he allow water and drainage pipes to be laid across his land. And as your property is completely surrounded by the von Reistoven estates…' He shrugged eloquently.

  Dispiritedly they left the office. The solicitor tried to cheer Lee up by saying that he would try to find some way round it, but she knew that it was a forlorn hope. He hurried off to keep his appointment, leaving Lee to walk angrily to the bus-station. A sense of helpless frustration gripped her as she experienced the first taste of Max's ability to thwart her plans. He had only to issue an order and there was nothing she could do about it. In this area he was all-powerful and to try to fight him would be like trying to batter down the stone walls of the Schloss with her bare hands.

  As Lee walked back towards the town centre she noticed that the sky had clouded over and that there was the cold chill of an approaching storm in the air. She was wearing a pale pink sun-dress that was a perfect foil to her tanned skin and dark hair, but now that the sun had gone in her bare arms began to feel chilly. Quickly she hurried along, her thoughts filled with bitterness as she realised how easily Max could stop her if he wanted to. It's a wonder he let me get this far, she thought resentfully; then it suddenly occurred to her that the work had come to a standstill, for the workmen hadn't yet returned from their emergency job. Lee caught her breath; had Max engineered that, too? She certainly wouldn't put it past him!

  Turning into the market square, she continued to hurry along, but came to an abrupt halt as she recognised a tall figure on the other side of the street. Her thoughts had been so full of Max that she blinked in surprise, but there was no mistaking him as he walked briskly towards his car which was parked further along. Without hesitation Lee plunged across the road after him, to be noisily blared at by a driver who had to apply his brakes sharply to avoid hitting her. She hardly spared him a glance but dashed on down the street determined to catch up with Max.

  At last her running feet brought her up behind him and she put out a hand to pluck at his sleeve and swing him round to face her. She was panting a little from her run, her chest heaving and the glow of exertion in her face. Her eyes were glowing, too, but with good old-fashioned rage. 'Just a minute. I want a word with you I'

  Max's look of surprise on seeing her rapidly changed to one of exasperation. 'On the contrary, Fraulein Summers, I'm quite sure that no further words are necessary between us. On several occasions I have given you good advice which you consistently refuse to listen to. Apart from telling you that you are the most stubborn, self-willed woman I have ever met, I really have nothing more to say,' he finished crushingly.

  Lee looked up at him, her hand still restrainingly on his sleeve. 'Oh, but I think you do. I think you have a great deal to say. I've just been to the Landesburo,' she said deliberately.

  His mouth tightened, but before he could answer there was a sudden violent crack of thunder and the heavens opened to let fall a torrential burst of rain; rain that came pelting down in huge drops that smacked and hissed on the still warm pavements.

  'This way,' Max took off his jacket and held it over her head as they ran along the road towards the Mercedes. He had the passenger door open in a trice and bundled her in before hurrying round to the other side, but already the material at the front of her sun-dress was soaked through.

  A lock of hair clung damply to Max's forehead as he climbed in beside her and shut the door against the downpour.

  'Have you ever been in the mountains during a storm?'

  When Lee shook her head he started up the car and drove out of the town, the windscreen wipers working furiously to give a clear field of vision. About a mile outside Bergheim, Max drew up on one of the flattened- out parking places on the side of a mountain, constructed so that tourists could take photographs and admire the view. But there was nothing to admire now; there was instead the unforgettable experience of hearing the thunder magnified a hundred times as each clap reverberated against the mountains and echoed dizzily back again. The jagged flashes of lightning lit up the entire range, breaking apart the thick black clouds that hid them and playing hide-and-seek among the peaks. It was a great cacophony of sound and light that hurt the ears and dulled the senses, it was heart-stopping in its intense primeval power and magnificence.

  Almost as suddenly as it had begun the lightning eased and the thunder rumbled wearily away across the valley like a tired old man who had outgrown his strength. The rain, too, had stopped, and they sat together in awed silence for some time before Lee turned to this man of the mountains and said bluntly, 'Why won't you let me have water and drainage laid on at the chalet?'

  Max turned his head and looked at her, his expression unreadable. 'Do you really have to ask that question?'

  Lee stared back at him in mounting anger. 'No, I don't suppose I do,' she said caustically. 'You want that land and you intend to make sure that no one else gets it. I worked for two years in a solicitor's office and in that time I learned a lot about mean, underhand people, but believe me, Herr von Reistoven, you take the prize! I'm only just starting to really understand why Uncle Howard hated you so much, but now I see that you're the worst kind of despot—one who wants everything for himself and can't stand to let others have what is rightfully theirs. You sit up there in your eyrie and manipulate others' lives, wielding the power you have to slowly grind people down until they…'

  Her words were choked off abruptly as Max released his grip on the steering wheel and swung towards her. He caught her by one shoulder, but his other hand went to her throat, effectively silencing her. His eyes were murderous and Lee suddenly knew fear, real, mind-bending fear, and adding to the terror came the knowledge that no one knew she was here with this man, alone on the mountainside where one push could send her headlong to her death.

  He must have read it in her eyes, but he didn't release her, just stroked her neck slowly with his thumb while he continued to look at her.

  'Is this what I have to do to get through to you? Frighten you into listening to me?' His face was very close to hers. Lee tried to turn her head away, but he forced it back with ease, the look in his eyes different now.
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  Then, amazingly, he let her go and sat back in his seat. 'Cigarette?' He seemed completely in control of himself again.

  'N-no.'

  He lit one himself and opened the window to let the smoke out. The clouds had almost disappeared now and the watery sun had started to warm the earth again.

  'My mother tells me that you're camping in the chalet?'

  'Yes.' Lee still felt completely unnerved.

  'Was it because of me that you refused her hospitality?'

  'Not completely. It just didn't seem right to…'

  'To fraternise with the enemy?' he finished for her drily. 'You may not believe this, Fraulein Summers, but I'm far from being your enemy. If you listen to old Herr Staffler and Herr Kreuz they'll talk you into doing far more to the chalet and spending far more money on it than you intended. And they won't be doing it to help you, only to spite me through you.' He looked at her shrewdly. 'It was their idea to apply for water and drainage, wasn't it? Not yours?'

  Lee bit her lip. 'They're only trying to help me when I'm in a strange country. And Uncle Howard trusted them, so why shouldn't I?'

  Rather tiredly Max said, 'The mood you're in, you wouldn't believe me if I told you. But this you can believe: if I can stop them from using you by blocking your plans, than I shan't hesitate to do so. Until you come to your senses, that is,' he added crushingly.

  'I suppose that's why you took the workmen away?' said Lee, anger still in her voice.

  'What do you mean?'

  'Isn't it a bit late to start acting the innocent?' she asked bitingly. 'You know very well that the workmen left four days ago to go to what they called a two-day job and they haven't come back, and I don't suppose they ever will, not now I know just where I stand with you!'

  Tersely Max said, 'I had nothing to do with that.'

  'No?' Lee said insultingly, then turned to stare out of the window. 'If you don't mind, I'd like to go back to Bergheim now. I have to catch the bus.'

  He continued to look at her averted profile for a moment, then, without a word, reversed the car and drove back the way they had come, but he didn't stop in Bergheim, instead he drove her silently back to Ausbach to where the track to the chalet branched off the road.