by Lucy Gillen
Conversation between Louise and Essie in their bedroom that night was more restrained than usual, and Louise regretted it more than she could say, especially since the other girl’s suspicions were groundless.
She watched Essie pack her suitcases, helping when she could, and they both turned rather sharply when a light tap heralded Robert’s appearance in the door of the dressing-room. ‘Mummy—’ he hesitated, seeing Essie, and Louise went across to him, brushing the dark hair back from his forehead gently.
‘What it is, darling?’ she asked. ‘Can’t you sleep?’
‘I’m thirsty,’ he told her, his eyes on the suitcases. Then he turned his gaze on Essie curiously. ‘You goin’ away?’ he asked bluntly, and Essie nodded.
‘Yes, I’m afraid so, love,’ she said. ‘I’m wanted back in London.’ She smiled at the frown formed between his brows as he turned his huge dark eyes back to Louise.
‘She came with Jon,’ he declared, almost accusingly, Louise felt. ‘I don’t want Jon to go too, Mummy, I don’t want Jon to go!’
Louise crouched beside him, bringing herself level with the dark, reproachful eyes and the lip that trembled warningly. ‘Darling, sooner or later Mr. Darrell will have to go. He has a job down in London like Essie has, he can’t stay here for ever, now can he?’
‘Why?’ Robert demanded, and Louise felt her heart sink at the prospect before her. She had not looked forward to telling him that his hero would be going away, but the moment had been precipitated by his seeing Essie’s suitcases and his reaction had been as she feared.
‘Because he can’t, Robert,’ she insisted gently, ‘any more than we can.’
This was obviously food for thought and he was silent for a second. Now, thought Louise, I’ve taken the first irrevocable step, I’ve admitted that we have to go.
‘Where we goin’?’ Robert asked, having given it some thought. ‘Are we goin’ with Jon?’
She thought she heard Essie’s hastily drawn breath and wished there had been no witness to the sudden flush of colour to her cheeks. ‘No, darling,’ she told her son, ‘we shall go when you start school next year.’
‘Mmm?’ Louise did not feel up to explaining that prospect as well, not at that time of night and she hastily straightened up, smiling at his sober face.
‘I think you’d better sleep now,’ she told him. ‘I’ll get you a drink and then you must go back to bed. We’ll talk about it again, some other time.’
‘Mmm,’ Robert agreed sleepily, and trotted after her into his little room with Essie’s thoughtful gaze following them.
Louise found herself doubly sorry to see Essie going, next morning, not least because she disliked the other girl harbouring misplaced suspicions about her own standing with Jonathan Darrell. She had developed a very genuine liking for Essie and she hated to think of her making such a mistake and perhaps disliking her for it, but there really seemed very little she could say to her without appearing very gauche and embarrassed, and perhaps making matters worse.
She walked down to the pier with Robert and Jonathan to see Essie and her escort off and, as they turned away after watching the little boat out of sight behind the tall hills of the next island, she felt a strange sense of loneliness. It was the first time she had experienced such a sensation since she came to Berren and she frowned as the boat drew away, tossing and yawing in the still heavy seas, wondering which of the departing guests had caused the feeling.
‘You’ll miss Essie,’ she suggested as they walked off the pier and Robert ran on ahead.
‘For a while anyway,’ Jonathan admitted, crooking an eyebrow as he judged her reaction. ‘Nostalgia is an emotion I don’t allow myself to indulge in.’
‘The tough, untouchable newsman,’ she retorted, suspecting he had deliberately baited her. ‘Aren’t you ever affected by anyone?’
There was the inevitable laughter in the gaze he turned on her, but she refused to more than glance at him, disliking the way her pulse was pounding in her temple.
They had come’ as far as the beginning of the incline up to Gray, and Robert was already running up the steep climb, when someone called from further along, where the pier joined the rough road to the cottages.
‘Madame!’ Louise stiffened and felt the strong curl of Jonathan’s fingers over her arm as they both turned and looked at Henri Dupont.
The stark reflected whiteness of the snow made him look much older and gave the dark face a sallow look under the rather rakish brown fur cap he wore. ‘I thought you would have left this morning on the first available boat,’ Jonathan told him before Louise .could recover sufficiently to speak, and she saw the dark eyes flicker resentment.
‘I would like to speak to Madame Dupont alone,’ he said surlily, and Louise felt again the strangeness of unfamiliarity at being addressed by the title she had scarcely used.
‘I don’t think Miss Kincaid has anything to say to you,’ Jonathan informed him brusquely. ‘Have you, Louise?’
‘No, no, nothing.’ She was only too willing to let him speak for her and bear the brunt of whatever the outcome of the meeting would be. It was a coward’s way out, she supposed, but she had a genuine fear of Henri Dupont, perhaps because he was so much like Simon and yet so unlike she had always imagined Simon being.
The man’s dark face flushed angrily and his eyes glinted in a way that Louise remembered Simon’s the last time she had seen him. ‘M’sieur, this is a family matter that does not concern others. I should like to speak to my brother’s wife alone, if you please.’
Even now Jonathan managed to keep the initiative, standing as he was on slightly higher ground and having the added advantage of his own extra inches, he looked down at the other man with a hint of arrogance for his lower stature. ‘I agree it’s a family matter, Dupont, and as far as you’re concerned I’m Miss Kincaid’s family. You’re not seeing her alone unless she specifically requests it.’
It was a presumptuous statement coming from a man who had known her such a short time, she realised, and Stephen would no doubt have been horrified to hear it, but Louise inwardly thanked heaven that Henri Dupont had not caught her alone.
‘Madame!’ The hard, sharp eyes held hers for a moment and she felt the cold flick of fear in her as she shook her head.
‘No, no, I don’t want to talk to you!’ She was aware from the corner of her eye that Robert was coming back, impatient at the delay and curious at the face that must have struck him as familiar. ‘I have nothing to say to you,’ she added hastily. ‘Now please go away and leave us—me—alone!’
Robert hesitated only a few feet away and Jonathan, seeing him there, looked down at Louise. ‘You take Robert back to the house, Louise,’ he told her quietly. ‘I’ll follow you in a few minutes.’
She hesitated only momentarily, then turned without a word and took Robert’s hand, climbing the steep path in silence, surprising herself by her docile acceptance of his order. She could only suppose that she was too relieved to shift the burden of Henri Dupont on to his more capable shoulders to argue with him this time.
Halfway up the incline, she turned her head briefly and looked back over one shoulder. Jonathan was standing alone at the bottom of the path where they had left him—of Henri Dupont there was no sign and the rise hid the beginning of the road to the cottages.
As he promised, Stephen was back in time for dinner that night, looking rather smugly self-satisfied after having seen Essie safely on to her train.
‘You didn’t mind my taking Miss Nostrum, did you?’ he asked Louise as they sat, after dinner, in the big sitting-room.
‘Of course not.’ She might have sounded a little absent, she supposed, for she was still thinking of their meeting with Henri Dupont and his apparent change of mind. She was also, she admitted, a little puzzled by a faint mark on Jonathan’s chin which could have been a bruise.
‘You couldn’t really care less, could you?’ Stephen asked shortly, obviously annoyed by her lack of reaction.
‘No, no, I didn’t.’ He glared across the room at nothing in particular. ‘But you can’t expect me to relish your indifference, you know.’
Louise shook her head. ‘I’m not indifferent,’ she denied, trying not to sound impatient. ‘But I do have rather a lot on my mind at the moment, Stephen, with the party and one thing and another. I shall be very glad when it’s all over, quite frankly.’
‘So shall I,’ Stephen assured her. ‘When all the unwelcome visitors have left.’ His meaning was unmistakable and he looked across the room at the object of his venom. ‘I wish Great-gran hadn’t got this—this wretched fixation about having Darrell here.’
Louise sighed, wishing too that her great-grandmother had been more tactful than to prolong Jonathan Darrell’s stay when she knew it must inevitably increase Stephen’s jealousy of him. It must be discomfiting, she thought, having the old lady dote so obviously on a stranger when he had always been such a favourite with her himself.
‘I don’t think you could really call it a fixation,’ she denied, seeking to excuse the old lady’s behaviour. ‘He really is remarkably like old Robert in the picture she has of him.’
‘I know he is,’ he allowed grudgingly, ‘but she just—dotes on him and,’ he eyed her for a moment darkly, ‘what with Great-gran, your Robert and you all falling over yourselves to be friendly towards him it’s no wonder he acts as if he owns the place.’
‘Me?’ Louise stared at him unbelievingly for a moment, then an angry flush coloured her cheeks and she glared resentment. ‘That’s not true, Stephen, and you know it isn’t. Being in the same house with him how can I help but be normally civil towards him? I’d be a very bad hostess if I wasn’t, but you’re talking, or at least implying, nonsense. It’s just your—your ridiculous jealousy!’
She was overtired, she told herself, or she would never have reacted quite so violently, but Stephen too looked angry when he raised his eyes, a frown as black as thunder between his brows. ‘I’m sorry you find me ridiculous,’ he told her. ‘Perhaps you like being ousted by a stranger, perhaps you don’t mind Darrell’s take it or leave it approach. It seems popular enough with most of the ‘women, I must say, but I thought you had more intelligence than most.’ The bitterness of his attack, she realised, stemmed from more than jealousy of her alone, it included Essie and Emma Kincaid too, but she resented being included in the admirers of Jonathan Darrell. She got up from her chair, cheeks flushed, blue eyes blazing angrily, her red hair slightly awry as if the chaotic state of her mind had disarranged it. Without a word she opened the door and left the sitting-room, closing it behind her with a bang.
The small sitting-room, she knew, would be unoccupied at that time of night, with the old lady gone to bed, and she went in there and sat down by the dying fire, gazing into it blindly. Stiff with resentment, she sat there for several minutes until she felt herself start to relax, the rapid, angry beat of her heart returning to normal.
Back to the door, she heard footsteps in the hall and stiffened again ready to snub Stephen’s apologies. ‘Go away,’ she said, as the door opened behind her. ‘I don’t want to talk to you.’
‘Oh?’ The voice was not only mildly surprised but also amused, and she turned to see Jonathan Darrell looking at her, one brow raised in query. ‘What have I done to you?’
‘I’m—I’m sorry,’ she apologised, only halfheartedly. ‘I thought it was Stephen.’
‘Curiouser and curiouser,’ he said, coming across to stand beside the fire, one elbow on the high mantel, a finger and thumb pinching his lower lip thoughtfully as he looked down at her. ‘And what’s Stephen done to deserve such abrupt dismissal?’
‘It’s none of your business,’ she told him abruptly, and returned to her contemplation of the fire.
‘Oh well, at least that remark’s more normal,’ he commented, and studied her face for a second or two. ‘My, you are in a temper, aren’t you? Perhaps I’d better go away and leave you to brew it into a full-scale storm, and come back later.’
‘I wish you would go,’ she retorted. ‘I’d like to be alone.’
‘Uh-huh, in that case I won’t tell you what I came in here to tell you, since you’re not in the mood.’
She looked up at him, searching for some clue to his meaning, but there was only amusement and a hint of impatience in his expression. ‘Is it something important?’ she asked, and he shrugged.
‘It depends,’ he said. ‘But since you’d rather be alone, it can wait.’
‘Oh, don’t be so infuriating!’ She glared at him balefully and he laughed. ‘Jon!’
‘Ah, there now!’ He nodded his head in satisfaction. ‘That’s progress—you called me Jon, now that is definitely encouraging. I’m very glad I came.’
‘I don’t believe you have anything to tell me at all,’ she told him shortly, ‘you’re making it up.’
‘Never!’ he vowed piously, holding up one hand. ‘Journalist’s oath!’
‘Then tell me,’ she insisted, her eyes sparkling anger when she realised the way he was baiting her. ‘Tell me or get out of here and leave me alone.’
‘Ooh, temper!’ He took a deep breath and studied his nails carefully as he spoke. ‘You won’t be seeing your brother-in-law, Henri Dupont, again.’ It was a simple statement, and made without dramatics, but Louise looked at him round-eyed.
‘He’s gone?’ she asked, and her gaze flicked briefly and involuntarily to that faint blue mark that could have been a bruise, just beside his chin.
‘He’s gone,’ he echoed, nodding, ‘I’ve made quite sure of that.’ For some inexplicable reason his certainty made her uneasy.
‘I find it hard to believe.’
He looked at her reproachfully. ‘Well, it’s true, I can assure you. I thought you’d be pleased,’ he added. ‘I even thought you might say thank you, Jon.’
She bit her lip at being reminded. ‘Thank you,’ she said, carefully omitting the Jon, and he looked exaggeratedly disappointed.
‘Is that all?’ he asked. ‘I had thought of something a bit more demonstrative, like throwing yourself into my arms in a surge of relief, or even giving me a chaste kiss for my trouble, but I can see I was being too ambitious.’ He sighed deeply. ‘Ah well, at least you’ve called me Jon once today, that’s a start, who knows where it might lead.’
‘It won’t lead anywhere,’ she retorted. ‘I—it just slipped out, I didn’t mean it to.’ She hated the way he watched her and the way the pulse in her temple fluttered uneasily under the scrutiny.
‘Oh, now don’t spoil it by apologising,’ he begged, and Louise got to her feet, feeling demoralisingly small beside him, but summoning every ounce of dignity she possessed.
‘I wasn’t apologising,’ she informed him, ‘I was explaining. Good night, Mr. Darrell.’
The bang the door made when she slammed it behind her was very satisfying, but she would have been more pleased if she had not heard the deep, quiet sound of laughter from behind it as she walked away.
CHAPTER TEN
LOUISE was awake early on the Thursday morning, Emma Kincaid’s one hundredth birthday, and she lay listening to the distant sound of the sea below the rise and the impatient voice of the wind round the old house.
It would be lovely when spring came again, she thought, then reminded herself with a sigh that she would probably not be there when spring came round again to the little island.
Jonathan would like it in the spring—the thought came unbidden to her mind and she dismissed it hastily. Jonathan Darrell had no place in her plans and certainly no place on Berren, for he would no doubt consider it a wilderness, even in spring.
There are many things for an idle mind to dwell on and as she lay there lazily, Henri Dupont came again into her thoughts and the puzzle of why Jonathan had been so certain that the Frenchman would
not be worrying her again. There had been such an air of finality about the way he had told her, something almost ominous, and then there was that faint mark on his face that could have been a bruise.
She sighed, turning to look at the clock, dismissing her thoughts as fanciful, but the worry still sat determinedly at the back of her mind and she called only absently when Davey McGregor knocked on her bedroom door.
‘The auld lady’s in fine form this mornin’,’ Davey informed her with a smile, when she handed her her tea. ‘She said I was the first one ta wish her a happy birthday an’ I was a guid girl.’
‘I suppose you were the first,’ Louise said, smiling at the girl’s obvious pleasure. ‘I’m glad she’s feeling fit to face the celebrations, it’s a big day today, Davey.’
‘Ooh aye,’ Davey assured her, ‘Mrs. K’s fit ta face a whole army if she’s a mind to, but I’m no so sure about Miss Charlotte, though.’
Louise pulled a wry face. ‘Oh dear, is Aunt Charlotte grumpy this morning?’ She was used to the girl’s somewhat familiar manner and knew she was none the less respectful for it.
‘Well,’ Davey demurred, ‘she’s no exactly grumpy, ye ken, but she’s no exactly a ray o’ sunshine either, but there, mebbe a sip o’ tea’ll do her guid.’
‘Let’s hope so anyway,’ Louise said feelingly, sipping her own tea, with some misgivings for Aunt Charlotte’s temper.
It was difficult to cope with sometimes, and made life difficult enough when there was only the four of them. With a houseful of guests it would be doubly embarrassing if Aunt Charlotte decided to be temperamental.,
Everyone was at breakfast that morning, even Aunt Charlotte, Louise was relieved to notice, determined to miss nothing of the celebrations.