by Sara Seale
"I don't apologise for that because it's the only sort of treatment you understand, and you'll doubtless get plenty from Perry if you ever bring him up to scratch," he said. "Now, you can listen to my ultimatum for the last time, for I shan't bother to repeat it. Last night we came to terms. You were willing to hand over the boy in return for a specified sum, and signed an agreement to that effect. I will add a further condition to get rid of you and your particular brand of poison. If Perry still wants to be bought out of the business I'll somehow raise the money to do so, and what arrangement the pair of you come to after that I neither care nor want to know. But you will be out of my house by tomorrow —understand? My lawyers will see that things are tied up legally as soon as possible, but in the meantime, I no longer want you under my roof—yes, Bella?"
For almost the first time Cleo welcomed the interruption. She was scared, but also quite genuinely at a loss to understand how she had failed to measure up to the familiar Trevayne tradition. She would end up, she knew, with one of those upsetting crying jags, and there would be no Laura, this time, to sit up half the night and soothe with soft words and cool compresses.
"I wondered what you wanted to do about eating, Dom," Bella was saying. "I have a stew in the oven, but I don't think it's much use waiting any longer for the others, do you?" "No, Bella, no use at all. They won't be back tonight,"
Dominic said.
"No, I thought not. Do not agitate yourself, dear boy on that account. Perry is not a true unicorn, you know," Bella said, and went calmly back to the kitchen to dish up.
For Dominic it was a long and weary night of mental torment, and the no less agonising state of enforced impotence, for there was nothing he could do until the fog lifted. He sat up listening to the clock strike hour after hour with the dragging slowness which time has for those who must wait, isolated in the eerie silence which fog brings, when night sounds are stilled and no bird stirs. Bella sat with him, replenishing the fire from time to time, but neither of them spoke much, nor did their thoughts once go to Cleo, sleeping at last in her bed upstairs; perhaps for both of them she had already ceased to exist. It was nearly five when Dominic went again to the window to look out, and this time he drew back the curtains with fresh decisiveness.
"It's clearing," he said. "In a very little while we can get going."
Bella came and stood beside him and they watched the dawn breaking through the curtain of mist which every so often swirled and parted sufficiently to reveal the dim shapes of shrubs and the stone seats on the terrace beyond. Presently the light began to change. The sun was coming up and, as the first rosy rays grew stronger and the fog started to disperse with a heartening speed, Dominic told Bella to go and fetch her coat. It was she who had decided she should go with him, for, she said, someone should be there to take charge of the little boy while other matters were attended to.
"Dear Bella," he had said affectionately, "nothing ever surprises you, does it? I suppose you've known about my understandable stupidity all along?"
"Oh yes, dear boy," she replied. "Sometimes your blindness afforded me great annoyance, but then I chided myself for lack of faith when all the portents were there for those who cared to accept them."
"Accept what portents? " he asked, because he liked to tease
her, but she only smiled that rather baffling smile and said: "You know very well, dear boy."
He felt immeasurably tired as he turned the car on to the cliff road with Bella beside him, but the headland air was sweet and fresh and, even at this early hour, the sun had warmth enough to ease the tautness of his skin. By the time they had reached the quarry gates only pockets of mist still hung about in the hollows and declivities in the moor; dew sparkled on everything, and the sky was a tender arc of duck's egg blue; it was going to be a beautiful day.
Dominic drove to the bunk-house, sounding a blast on his horn, and presently the door opened and Peregrine stood there, hands on hips and legs aggressively apart.
"Well, well, well! The tardy deliverer just several hours too late," he said as his brother got stiffly from the car.
"Where are they?" Dominic barked, his tiredness forgotten in a returning wave of last night's fury.
"In there, asleep," Peregrine grinned, with a jerk of the head behind him. "Why don't you go in and have a look? Your ewe lamb appears charming in sleep, on second thoughts, though, I shouldn't wake her. She's had a rather exhausting night, which, of course, was only to be expected. Isn't it a beautiful morning? So—" He choked on the unfinished sentence as his brother took him by the collar and yanked him off the low wooden platform that ran all round the building.
"You've been spoiling for a fight for a very long time, and now you're going to get it," Dominic said.
"History repeating itself? Same place, same bone of contention," sneered Peregrine, still on one knee in the soft white china clay dust where he had sprawled.
"I don't think so. We'll fight fair this time, but we'll fight bloodily too. I've had about as much as I'll stand from you, Perry. Get up and defend yourself." He jerked his brother to his feet by the collar again, and surprised a most unfamiliar look of sheepishness in the black eyes that looked bloodshot in the early morning light.
"I'm not fighting you, Dom," Peregrine said unexpectedly, and the insolence had dropped away from him.
183
"What in hell are you up to now? Gone chicken-hearted when it comes to a showdown?" Dominic said roughly.
"No. Your terrifying ewe lamb who, I'm beginning to suspect, was sired by a tiger and not a mild old tup, has already defeated me," he said, but before he had finished speaking his brother had knocked him down.
He sat there, nursing a tender jaw, but made no move to get up and strike a blow for himself, and Dominic slowly lowered his own fists.
"What were you saying?" he asked. The torment of those waiting hours had bitten too deeply to permit of reasoning as yet, but faced with this inexplicable refusal to fight, he felt the anger begin to drain out of him.
"I was saying, when you so rudely interrupted," Peregrine replied, "that I had already been defeated, and made to eat humble pie at the point of a gun, so to speak. Ask her yourself—there she.is!"
Dominic turned and saw Laura standing on the narrow platform, the rosy tint of morning touching her pale face with warmth. She had clearly been roused from sleep, and standing there in her crumpled dress, with her hair tousled and her drowsy eyes blinking against the sunlight, she looked like a surprised little girl, not yet wholly awake.
"Laura ... are you all right?" Dominic asked very quietly, and at the sound of his voice she seemed to shake the sleep from her, and the colour crept up under her skin.
"Of course, Dominic, quite all right," she replied with her customary sedateness. "You mustn't fight, you know."
"See what I mean?" remarked Peregrine from the ground. "Your ewe lamb has salutary methods of dealing with would-be seducers—no struggles and maidenly shrieks or pleas for mercy—just practical, unconcerned reasonings that would damp the most ardent spirit, and a nursery lecture on good behaviour to boot! She's quite a gal! Why don't you fling yourself into his arms, Miss Bread-and-butter? He has, after all, come to save you from a fate worse than death, albeit unnecessarily as things have turned out, but he's earned some reward, don't you think?"
She took no notice of him, but just stood there staring at Dominic, her colour mounting in waves until at last she held both hands to her face in embarrassment.
Peregrine had got to his feet, and he gave his brother a hesitant slap on the back.
"She's not quite sure of you, you see," he said. "I spilled the beans for her, just as I don't doubt Cleo has for you, but she's never actually heard you say the magic words. Well, I'll be off home for a bath and a shave, which, by the way, you look as if you could do with yourself. Oh, just for the record —had you by any chance found yourself wedded to the wrong lady, I—I wasn't prepared to carry on that affair while I still broke your bread.
So long!"
He walked away without looking back, and presently the sound of his sports engine, emitting noises like a last defiant rudeness, shattered the early morning silence, then diminished with a receding whine into the distance.
Silence closed down on the quarry again, and the isolation seemed complete. Bella must have slipped into the bunk-house unobserved, but Laura still stood there, silent and waiting, and Dominic went to her and circled her waist with his two hands.
"Laura ...?" he said, and-there was a hesitant question in the way he spoke her name. As she stood on the little platform, her eyes were level with his, and she slowly took his face between her hands.
"Was it bad—the waiting?" she asked, seeing the tiredness in his eyes and the endearing spattering of white threads exposed in his uncombed black hair.
"Yes, it was bad," he told her gravely. "You are, you see, very precious to me."
"Then it's really true?"
"That I love you, my dearest dear? Yes, it's really true."
"Not just another of my foolish whimsies?"
"No. Are you going to be hard to convince, Miss Mouse?"
"I don't think so. It's never hard to be convinced of something you've wanted badly," she said, and his hands tightened on her waist and he swung her suddenly down to
the ground, and close up against him.
"What fools we've been, my silly sweetheart," he said a little roughly, and she answered back with that familiar, engaging refusal to be taken for granted:
"There was some excuse for me, since I'm not very experienced in love, but you should have known better, being the dark Trevayne and lord of all you survey."
"So I should. Predatory overlords should, in any case, take what they want, regardless of the wishes of others. Isn't that how you thought of me?"
"Only at first?"
"Oh no, allow me to correct you. At first you thought I was the devil," he told her severely, and she laid two fingers against his lips.
"Are you always going to treat me like a child that must be humoured?" she asked, and saw an uncharacteristic shyness touch the dark, unshaven face for an instant.
"No, my darling, but one's defences don't come tumbling down in a minute, having been painfully built up in the first place," he said. "We have to discover one another slowly. As for me—part of you will always remain the endearing child I first loved. Shall you mind?"
She rubbed her cheek against his, feeling its roughness, and felt, too, the roughness of his toiler's hands as they touched her flesh.
"No, I shan't mind. I'll mind nothing ever again so long as I'm with you," she said, before offering him her mouth, and the ardent pressure of her young breasts against him ...
As he released her, the sun came up behind the tall burrows, turning them to gold, transforming even the ugly buildings and gaunt machinery to a fantasy of fleeting beauty.
"There's your magic working for you," Dominic said, and his own dark face was touched with that golden light. "Even the modern eyesores of commerce can borrow enchantment for a moment."
"Sloughing another skin, like Prince Lindworm?" she murmured reminiscently, but he shook his head at her and let that very blue, challenging regard of his dwell for a long
moment on her upturned face before replying.
"No," he said with tenderness, "I think you've forgotten the unicorn."
" Oh!" Her eyes grew wide and her mouth began to curve in a slow smile of discovery.
" 'No sooner does he see the damsel ..."' she quoted softly, "'... than he runs trustfully towards her ... and so suffers himself to be captured ..."'