The Smouldering Flame

by Anne Mather

  ‘He had no choice,’ Shannon pointed out steadily. ‘Now he has.’

  ‘And when you walk out again—what then?’ Philip’s lips curled scornfully.

  ‘We’ll have to face that hurdle when we come to it,’ rejoined Shannon, and then, catching sight of Joanna hesitating uneasily on the stairs, he added: ‘Here’s your fiancée. Perhaps she’ll be able to persuade you that her father has a mind of his own.’

  Joanna came reluctantly down the remainder of the stairs, conscious of Shannon’s mocking eyes upon her. ‘I—I’m ready, Philip,’ she said, feeling like an intruder. ‘Are you?’

  Philip hunched his stocky shoulders. ‘I suppose so,’ he muttered, but he flashed a venomous glance in Shannon’s direction. ‘Don’t think I’ll change my mind either.’

  Shannon’s arms fell to his sides, and he lifted his shoulders in an indifferent gesture. ‘If you’ll excuse me, I have work to do,’ he said, and turning, walked across the hall to her father’s study. He opened the door and let himself inside, and the door closed firmly behind him.

  ‘Look at that!’ declared Philip furiously. ‘He treats this place just like his—his——’

  ‘—home?’ suggested Joanna tautly. ‘Well, it is, isn’t it?’

  ‘That’s not what I meant. That’s your father’s study, Joanna. Don’t you care that he’s using it as his own? He interviewed me in there. He did! Not your father. Your mother said your father was resting and couldn’t be disturbed. I haven’t disturbed him other afternoons I’ve called, have I?’

  ‘Oh, Philip!’ Joanna couldn’t bear any more of this bickering. ‘Come on, let’s go out. The afternoons are so short, and I need some air.’

  ‘So do I,’ muttered Philip resentfully. ‘The air around here stinks!’

  It was a childish retaliation, but Joanna forgave him as she followed him to the kitchen to collect his coat. Her father was foolish, acting so precipitately as soon as Shannon got here. Didn’t he realise Shannon could walk out again just as precipitately? Did he really think that by heaping responsibilities on his son’s head, he could keep him here indefinitely?

  Once out in the fields surrounding High Stoop, Joanna was able to forget her own troubles for a while at least. The wind whistling down from the distant fells made it imperative to keep moving, and her boots were soon caked with snow as she struggled to keep up with Philip’s longer strides. His dogs, Hector and Lysander, ran on ahead, churning up flurries of snow as they scrabbled about searching for animals buried beneath. Joanna knew that a sheep could survive being buried for a short space of time, and that often ewes had been brought out virtually unharmed. But today they were not so lucky, and the only animal they did find was already stiff and cold.

  Back in the kitchen at High Stoop, Mrs Lawson had a pot of tea ready for them on their return. Already darkness was falling, and with it came the drifting flakes of further snow. But it was cosy in the firelit room, crouched about the blazing fire, drinking tea laced with brandy.

  ‘Did you see Mr Carne?’ Philip’s mother asked presently, and Joanna could feel the tension in the air.

  ‘No.’ Philip set his cup down heavily in its saucer. ‘I saw Joanna’s brother.’

  Mrs Lawson glanced at the girl. ‘I see.’

  Joanna sighed. ‘My father does rest sometimes, after lunch,’ she murmured. ‘And now that Shannon’s here——’

  ‘Now that Shannon’s here, the old order changeth,’ retorted Philip shortly. Then he, too, sighed. ‘Oh, leave it, Mother. It’s not Joanna’s fault. I’ll make the arrangements to have the herd driven back tomorrow.’

  Mrs Lawson shook her head. ‘He’s a strange man, your father, Joanna,’ she said. ‘Ben and Philip—they’ve done everything they can to help him, and how does he repay us?’

  ‘I said leave it, Mother.’

  ‘I know, I know. But we’re not well off, like the Carnes. Oh, we own this bit of land, we scrape a living, and at least when we leave it to you, Philip, you’ll be your own master. But we don’t have modern machinery, and central heating, and deep freezers …’

  Joanna felt awful. ‘Really, Mrs Lawson, my father does appreciate what you’ve done, honestly. It’s just that—well, now that Shannon’s home, he’s hoping to persuade him to stay. Maybe he thinks if he can get Shannon to take on the responsibilities for the estate …’ She paused, and looked appealingly at Philip. ‘Make allowances, please. He’s not a well man.’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with Shannon’s health,’ retorted Philip shortly.

  ‘No, but like he says, my father gives the orders. He’s just carrying them out.’

  Mrs Lawson poured herself some more tea. ‘Well, all I can say is, it’s a pity he ever came back,’ she said, heavily. ‘He’s been no son to his father. Why, Philip here has done more for your father during the past eight years than Shannon has. Walking out like that. Caring nothing for any of you. And now I suppose he thinks he can come back and take over.’

  ‘It’s not like that at all!’ exclaimed Joanna impatiently. ‘Shannon doesn’t want the estate.’

  ‘What’s he going to do then?’ demanded Philip. ‘Sell it?’

  ‘No. I’ve told you, he’s just—not interested.’

  Philip and his mother exchanged a look which Joanna found impossible to comprehend. Then Philip reached out and patted her knee.

  ‘All right, love, don’t get upset. I promise not to come to blows with your big brother.’ He chuckled rather maliciously. ‘Not that I wouldn’t like to. That damned high-and-mighty attitude of his! I could push his face in.’ He nodded. ‘But I won’t.’

  Joanna sipped her tea, wondering why the victory seemed so hollow somehow. It was what she wanted, after all—Philip to come to terms with Shannon. But as for Philip pushing Shannon’s face in—that was something else. She had the distinct feeling that while Philip might be more solidly built than the other man, those hard muscles she had felt when she was in Shannon’s arms might well be able to resist anything that her fiancé might throw at him.

  It was almost a relief when Mrs Lawson changed the subject, even though it was to discuss the wedding. She got up and rummaged through a drawer and came out with a rather grubby-looking pattern. Mrs Lawson was not the most meticulous of housekeepers, and Joanna knew she would have quite a task ahead of her when she took over the running of the household in June. High Stoop was not as old a building as Mallowsdale, but it had not received the care and attention of the old Hall, and consequently there were a number of things needing attention, not least, the general cleanliness of the place.

  ‘There. What do you think of that?’

  Mrs Lawson dropped the sewing pattern into Joanna’s lap and she set down her cup and picked it up. On the front of the folder was a picture of the dress to be made from the pattern inside, and despite some tea or coffee stains smudged across the skirt, Joanna could see that it was an attractive style. The neckline was high and cuffed, and the skirt flared from a gathering under the bustline in a slightly mediaeval style. Long sleeves with pointed cuffs added to this illusion, and the headdress the girl was wearing in the picture resembled a small coronet, edged with pearls.

  ‘I—it’s beautiful,’ she said honestly. ‘Where did you find it?’

  ‘In a little remnant house in Carlisle. It’s quite an old pattern, I think. I’ve looked through the latest catalogues and there’s nothing quite like it.’

  Joanna nodded, looking down at the picture again. She was tall enough to carry such a style, and she knew that Mrs Lawson had the ability to make it. Perhaps she could even find a headdress something like this one, and if she piled her hair up on top of her head …

  She brought herself up short. This was her wedding dress, she was thinking about, her wedding day. The day when she gave up being Joanna Carne and became Mrs Philip Lawson instead. It was a daunting prospect. Was marriage to Philip what she really wanted? And wasn’t it a bit late now to start having doubts? If only …

  �
�I thought perhaps crêpe—or ivory damask,’ Mrs Lawson was suggesting thoughtfully. ‘And you’re going to have our Janice’s two as bridesmaids, aren’t you?’

  Janice was Philip’s sister who was already married and lived in Lancaster. She had two little girls, Shelley and Elizabeth, and Mrs Lawson was keen that they should be part of the ceremony.

  Joanna could feel the ground slipping away from under her feet. There was something inevitable about the plans for a wedding. Once they were set in motion, they gathered momentum on the way, and every action had a reaction until one had the feeling that one was being propelled onward almost against one’s will.

  ‘I think they’ll look best in pink or lilac,’ Mrs Lawson was saying now, resuming her seat by the fire. ‘Neither of them suit deep colours, and in any case, you don’t want definite colours at a wedding, do you?’

  Philip was waiting expectantly for Joanna to make her own feelings known, and she forced herself to take an active part in the conversation.

  ‘I’d like to discuss it with Mummy first,’ she said, seeking a respite. ‘She’s rather good at choosing colours and things. And I’d like her to see the pattern before making any definite decision.’

  ‘Well, we’ve got to start thinking about it, Joanna,’ said Mrs Lawson rather sharply. ‘There are only about fifteen weeks left, you know. And this is our busiest time of the year. If you want me to make the dresses for you, you’ll have to come to a decision soon.’

  ‘Oh, I will, I will.’ Joanna moved her shoulders apologetically.

  ‘I mean, I have to know,’ went on Mrs Lawson, almost as if Joanna hadn’t spoken. ‘You dashing off to Africa like that didn’t help, did it? And with your father being ill and all … We’ve all had to help out, and helping out takes time.’

  ‘I know that, Mrs Lawson, and I’m very grateful, honestly——’

  ‘Well, that’s more than can be said for some!’ commented a harsh voice from the doorway, and Joanna shivered in the cold draught of air emitted by the entry of Philip’s father, a new-born lamb clasped in his brawny arms.

  Her sympathetic delight in seeing the lamb hid the aversion she always felt in Ben Lawson’s presence. She didn’t like Philip’s father, she never had, a feeling which had intensified on the one occasion he had cornered her in the milking shed and run familiar hands over her thighs. When she had slapped his hands away he had pretended he had been having a joke with her, but Joanna had known better. Now she avoided his company whenever possible.

  Ben put the lamb down on the hearth and it promptly struggled to get to its feet. But weakness and exhaustion overcame its efforts, and Mrs Lawson went to heat it up some milk.

  ‘The ewe’s dead,’ announced Ben, in answer to Philip’s questioning stare. ‘That makes four today, and it’s snowing again.’

  Joanna got to her feet. ‘I ought to be going, Philip,’ she said quickly. ‘If it’s snowing …’

  Ben shrugged off his thick anorak and slung it carelessly over the back of a chair. ‘What have you got to go dashing off home for? You don’t have any ewes lambing, do you?’ he challenged her.

  Joanna made a helpless gesture. ‘No—but if it’s snowing——’

  ‘You’re not going to get snowed in or anything. Sit down, sit down, lass.’ He came to seat himself in the deep armchair his wife had previously been occupying beside Joanna, and began to tug off his boots. ‘You can’t go running away as soon as I come in.’

  ‘I am not running away, Mr Lawson,’ declared Joanna forcefully, her dislike of him stiffening her resolve. ‘But I am going home.’

  ‘Oh, ay?’ Ben stretched his feet towards the fire. ‘Well, you can tell that young devil of a brother of yours a message from me——’

  ‘Father! We’ve been into all that,’ exclaimed Philip, quellingly, but his father was not to be put off.

  ‘You can tell him that when you and Philip are married, I’ll stand no truck with his arrogance. We’ll be family then, my girl, and he won’t make me the laughing stock of Mallowsdale again.’

  ‘I’m sure Shannon had no intention——’

  ‘Didn’t he?’ Ben sought about his person for his pipe, a disreputable object in which Joanna was sure he burned anything he could lay his hands on. He jammed the pipe between his teeth, and lighting a spill in the fire, he added: ‘You just give him the message. Let me be the judge as to what his intentions are.’

  Philip drove Joanna back to the Hall in his Land-Rover. It was snowing quite heavily now, and it caked on the wipers, making visibility difficult. But when she suggested she could walk the rest of the way, he wouldn’t hear of it, and drove her right up the drive to the front door.

  ‘Are you coming in?’ she asked, half hoping he would refuse, and when he did, perversely wishing he had not.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’d better get back. And—well, don’t take too much notice of what Dad says, will you? I mean, it’s natural that he should feel bitter.’

  Joanna hesitated a moment, and then leant across and pressed a kiss to his lips, welcoming his arms around her for the first time since her return from Africa. This was where she belonged, she told herself determinedly, this was the man she loved, the man she was going to marry. Anything else was pure madness.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she said now, snuggling against him. ‘This weather is making everyone irritable.’

  Philip hugged her close. ‘I’d be less irritable if we had more time alone together,’ he spoke into her hair, pushing back her hood so that its silky curtain fell about her shoulders. ‘It was bad enough before, but since your father’s stroke …’ He sighed. ‘Never mind, it will soon be June, and then I’ll have you to myself for all time.’

  The awful inevitability of his words brought a chill down Joanna’s spine. Fifteen weeks, that was what his mother had said. Fifteen more weeks—and then a lifetime’s commitment. It was too much to consider right at this moment.

  Pulling herself away from him, she brushed back her hair. ‘I’d better go in,’ she said. ‘Daddy will have heard the sound of the engine and will be wondering what’s going on.’

  ‘Surely he’ll know,’ retorted Philip dryly. ‘Joanna, sooner or later, your father has got to realise that you’re not his possession any longer.’

  ‘I know,’ Joanna nodded, as she climbed out, raising her hand in farewell as he adjusted the gears and reversed away down the drive. She waited until the lights of the vehicle had disappeared before mounting the steps and entering the house.

  The door to her father’s study was open, and to her surprise she could hear the sound of voices from within, Shannon’s and someone else’s, a young, feminine voice, which from time to time dissolved into fits of giggles.

  Curiosity made her cross the hall before taking off her parka, and she hesitated outside the study door, listening to the exchange going on inside. She wasn’t consciously aware of eavesdropping until Jessie came out of the kitchen, but then her cheeks flamed as the daily woman raised her eyebrows knowingly.

  ‘It’s young Tracy,’ she told Joanna easily. ‘Charlie Simmons’ girl. You know she’s working for Websters, the estate agents. Well, she’s a shorthand typist, and seeing that she’s on holiday for a few days, Shannon suggested she might like to come up here and give him a hand sorting out your father’s correspondence and so on, and earn a bit of cash into the bargain. Tracy fair jumped at the chance. After all, there’s not a lot to do on holiday at this time of the year, is there?’

  Joanna could feel her nails digging into the palms of her hands, and she knew the desire to draw blood. But not her own. She would fain have liked to walk into that study and order them both out of there, but her excuse that they were intruding on her father’s privacy did not quite ring true, even to her ears.

  Instead she said tightly: ‘I could have helped him,’ and turning away, began to unzip her coat.

  ‘I didn’t know you were a shorthand typist, Joanna.’

  Shannon had heard their voices and com
e to investigate himself, and now he stood in the open doorway, lean and disturbingly masculine in close-fitting black corded pants and a fine knitted shirt in dark red wool.

  ‘I’m not.’ Joanna faced him defensively. ‘I just think you might have—have mentioned your intentions to me.’

  ‘Consulted you, you mean?’ he suggested dryly. ‘I’m afraid that thought didn’t cross my mind. But if you have some objection to Tracy coming here …’

  The girl had appeared behind him. Joanna remembered her well enough. She was the Simmons’ eldest daughter. She would be perhaps nineteen or twenty now, fresh from secretarial college, and like most girls of her age, full of confidence. She was not normally as tall as Joanna, but the wedge heels she was wearing added a couple of inches to her height, and a tight-fitting sweater and French slim pants completed her ensemble.

  ‘Hello, Joanna,’ she called, her smug expression revealing she had overheard Joanna’s interchange with Shannon. ‘You don’t mind me helping out, do you?’

  Put like that, Joanna could not object without being rude. Her eyes sought Shannon’s, but the detachment she found there was almost her undoing. Those moments in Nairobi might never have been. And to think she was the one who had been thinking she would have to convince him that it would never happen again!

  ‘I—no. No, of course I don’t mind, Tracy,’ she replied shortly. She took off her coat and hooked it over the banister. ‘If you’ll excuse me, I—I want to change before tea.’

  CHAPTER NINE

  DURING the following week Joanna saw little of Shannon. When he wasn’t out about the estate with Murray Dowsett or Charlie Simmons, he was closeted in the study with Tracy, sorting out her father’s correspondence, and putting the accounts in order. It was remarkable what had accumulated during the two months of her father’s illness, and he spent so much time indoors that even his tan started to fade.

  Joanna could not help but be concerned about him. She knew, better than any of them, that he had only just recovered from a debilitating attack of malaria, and the effect on his system of transferring from a tropical climate to an extremely cold one could not be ignored. There were lines on his face which had not been there before, and she thought he could not be sleeping well. At times he looked quite haggard, but this added to, rather than detracted from his dark attraction.