by Susan Barrie
Carole was a little surprised that there were no dogs or animals rising to greet them; but then she remembered that the family—or what was left of it, since it was a very small family in actuality—was so often away that pets would almost certainly pine in their absence. No doubt, now that they were back, this omission would be remedied, for Marty, at least, loved animals, and was a great rider whenever the opportunity offered.
She flung herself down on a couch covered in expensive tapestry, and extended her hands to the warmth from the leaping fire. Although outside it was a sultry June night Carole understood perfectly why they had a fire in this echoing, whispering hall. Not merely was it stone-flagged, but the thickness of the walls with their lancet windows must admit very little sunshine even cm the hottest day, and therefore the atmosphere would be delightfully cool when it was unbearable outside.
“Bring us some coffee and sandwiches, Bradshaw,” Marty ordered.
“Yes, miss,” he replied. “The tray is all ready, and I’ll bring it immediately. The coffee has been kept hot in thermos flasks, since we had no real idea of the time you would arrive.”
Marty smiled at him, in a way Carole had never seen her smile before, with a kind of little-girl charm and contentment ... and from the way in which she stretched herself luxuriously on the cushions she really was delighted to be home.
“That’s all right, Bradshaw,” she told him. “The main thing is that we are home! And from the way everything looks you’ve looked after things splendidly in our absence.”
“Thank you, miss,” Bradshaw acknowledged the compliment with dignity, and went away to fetch the tray.
James had been wandering round the hall, and he had even disappeared into a room that opened off it, as if anxious to renew acquaintance with familiar things; but he now returned with the same look of satisfaction on his face that had transformed his sister’s. Bennett, the housekeeper, was waiting to inform him of the arrangements she had made for the comfortable bestowal of his lady visitor.
“I’ve put Miss Sterne in the White Suite,” she explained. “I hope you approve, Mr. James?”
There was just a suspicion of doubt in her voice, for she had been studying Carole discreetly, and although she approved of her as a ‘nice little friend’ for Miss Marty, she was not quite what she had expected if it was true the master intended to marry her. There had been occasions before when he had been threatening to marry someone—or had had a particular lady friend whom he had brought to the Abbey; but never once had he brought anyone like Carole, who might have been an attachment to the family such as a companion for Miss Marty, and used such a little make-up, and was so natural, and retiring, and somehow uncertain of herself that she hardly looked like a prospective mistress for Ferne Abbey.
James didn’t seem to pay much attention at first to what she was saying; and then he threw back his head and laughed, as if the full meaning of the information she had passed on to him suddenly struck him as ludicrous. In fact, highly entertaining.
“The White Suite? For Carole? But why on earth, Bennett? ...Why on earth?”
Mrs. Bennett was too well trained to betray surprise.
“It’s the principal suite that we keep for guests,” she pointed out.
“Yes, but Carole is—” And then suddenly he remembered that Carole was wearing his ring, and he fell awkwardly silent. He glanced at Carole, coughed, and then strove hard to correct any unfortunate impression he had created. “Why, yes, of course, Benny, you’ve done the right thing,” he told her. “Miss Sterne and I are—er—well, you might as well know, Benny, we’re engaged. Engaged to be married!” He made a little gesture, as if introducing the two women formally to one another, and then coughed behind his hand, while Carole—tired by the journey and depressed by the magnificence surrounding her, and feeling utterly and entirely out of place—tinned slowly red as if a humiliating fire was burning her cheeks.
“Benny, this is your future mistress.”
Bennett inclined her head stiffly, and as she drew herself up the bunch of keys at her waist jingled.
“May I wish you very happy indeed, miss,” she said.
Carole managed to say ‘thank you’ between stiff lips, and Marty, on the couch, looked up with wide, amused eyes.
“But I’ve just told you, Benny, that I’m to be mistress here!” she said. “However, I don’t mind giving way to—James’s wife, when he has a wife. And at the moment he isn’t married!”
“And I’ve put Miss Sterne in the White Suite,” Bennett repeated.
“Jolly good idea,” James approved. “Very clever of you, Benny!” But he was frowning as he approached the tray set down by Bradshaw, and he poured himself a whisky with an impatient hand, and tossed it down and poured himself another as if he needed it. “Very clever!” he added. “I’d no idea you had it in you.”
She departed, looking a little ruffled as if she suspected there was a certain amount of irony behind his speech, and as soon as they were alone Carole walked stiffly up to him and demanded:
“What is it that is so important about the White Suite? I’m quite prepared to sleep in one of the attics if you’d rather I did so.”
He looked down at her with a sharp cleft between his brows. “Don’t be foolish, little one,” he replied mildly. “The explanation is that we don’t normally use the White Suite.”
“Except for very important visitors? Like a genuine fiancée?”
He continued to frown.
“I’ve just introduced you to Mrs. Bennett as my fiancée, haven’t I?”
“Yes, but that was only because she rather caught you out ... when she mentioned where she was putting me—where she has, apparently, decided I’m to sleep—she took you so much aback that you practically laughed aloud. In fact, you did laugh aloud! You said, ‘What, the White Suite for Carole?’ And then because you realised that sounded odd you introduced me hurriedly as your fiancée.”
“Oh, dear!” Marty said, and rose and came towards them. She looked with a kind of whimsical humour at Carole, and then she slipped an arm behind her shoulders and squeezed them affectionately. “Darling, don’t be so horribly sensitive,” she begged. “I know it’s rather a difficult position for you, but James honestly wasn’t thinking when he said that... that bit about wondering why on earth you should be put into the White Suite. As a matter of fact, it’s so horribly ornate we almost look upon it as V.I.P. quarters. It looks ridiculously like a bridal suite. My father had it redecorated shortly before he died, and we know he was planning to marry again—someone rather like Chantal St. Clair, who would have fitted into it beautifully.”
“I understand perfectly,” Carole returned, but she hardly sounded as if she was mollified. As a matter of fact, she was a little surprised herself that she wasn’t more humbly grateful because they were prepared to fit her into the least comfortable niche in this wonderful house, for if they hadn’t invited her here she would have had to stay at Miss Dove’s for the whole of the summer holidays. “You don’t have to go into any more explanations,” she added, trying to erase the impression that she was starting to be difficult and hypersensitive.
Marty gave her shoulders another hug, and then looked across at her brother and winked one eye.
“I’ll take Carole upstairs and she can see the suite,” she said. “Unless I’m very much mistaken she’ll rather wish she wasn’t a V.I.P. when she realises what it’s done for her.”
Mrs. Bennett was lovingly folding away a white satin bedspread when they altered the room where Carole was to pass the night. The room immediately affected her with a sensation like shock. It was enormous, with great windows overlooking the gardens before which flowed white brocade curtains, and the bed itself stood in a kind of alcove and was draped with white velvet. The carpet was almost pure white, and so thick the feet sank into it and made literally no sound. The dressing-table had a petticoat of embroidered satin, and the mirror above it was framed in beautiful Florentine silver.
&
nbsp; There were two other silver-framed, full-length mirrors on the walls, so that it was practically impossible to walk from one end of the room to the other without catching a glimpse of one’s reflection. And what with the effect of whiteness and lightness—even the bedside lights were shaded with white—and the adjoining bathroom that had an ebony bath, although everything else was either white or silver, there seemed to be no escape from it.
Carole stood beside Marty while Mrs. Bennett put the satin bedspread lovingly away in a cupboard, and she understood perfectly when Marty nudged her gently and enquired, sotto voce, what she thought of it.
“Think you’ll sleep well here?” she enquired lightly.
Carole placed her small dressing-case, which she had carried up herself, and which was a trifle worn, a little gingerly on the graceful, console-shaped table at the foot of the bed.
“Yes, I see what you mean,” she said, as if she had been asked an entirely different kind of question.
“But the bed’s superbly comfortable, Isn’t it, Bennett?” Marty said to the housekeeper, and went and sat on the side of it and bounced up and down luxuriously to test the springs. “It’s the finest bed in the house, made to some sort of specification laid down by my father.”
All the same, Carole regarded it dubiously, and she wondered whether she would ever get a wink of sleep in that cloistered alcove, with swathes of white velvet rising above her until they were secured by something that looked like a highly ornamental crown made out of silver and forming a kind of apex to the whole.
“I realise now why your brother laughed when he heard I’d been put in here,” she remarked in an undertone to Marty, and looked-so depressed that the other laughed heartily.
“Don’t be silly,” she said. “Almost any girl at Miss Dove’s would give her eyes to have a room like this, and you’ll look sweet under that canopy. And I won’t be very far away from you, because I’m in this wing and on this floor, and if you want anything—or you feel lonely!—you can come along to me. And now what about going downstairs and rejoining James and having some supper?”
But Carole asked to be excused on the grounds that she really was very tired, and Marty left her standing in the middle of the vast sea of white carpet and looking forlornly about her as if completely overawed by her surroundings, while Mrs. Bennett—having been denied the privilege of unpacking for her—bustled away in another direction to carry out some other duty in connection with her master’s arrival home.
As soon as she was alone Carole sat down on a chair and continued to look about her, wondering why she felt as if this room in itself was a kind of anti-climax. She had come here expecting to be received as James’s fiancée—but purely temporarily; but she hadn’t expected to be made a kind of laughing-stock of ... and having this room allocated to her was very close to having an actual joke played on her.
Naturally, Mrs. Bennett wasn’t to blame. Word had reached her beforehand—from what source Carole could only guess—that her master had become engaged to be married, and she had prepared the most suitable room in the house for his bride-to-be.
It was—it must be—the room that would be the property of the lady of the house when James finally did take a wife. Carole went round it, touching each article it contained a little wonderingly ... the white silk lampshades, that had ornamental silver bases in the shape of coiled serpents, the crystal jars and flagons on the dressing-table, the beaten silver leaves that framed the dressing-table mirror. She went through into the bathroom and looked at the embroidered towels, the deep-sunk bath, the essences and bath powder on a glass shelf above the bath, and the slim white velvet bath-robe that hung on the bathroom door.
And then she went back into the bedroom and tried to picture Chantal St. Clair taking possession here, and it was so painfully easy that she began to feel certain she was being haunted by Chantal, and that set her wondering, because there was no real reason why she should be haunted by Madame St. Clair.
Or was there? She caught sight of herself in a mirror, and she walked up to it and examined herself carefully. Travel-stained and travel-weary, she couldn’t possibly compete with Chantal, and although her hair had a brilliant shine under the pristine beauty of the lights, and the surrounding virginal whiteness lent her eyes a strange, deep, challenging colour, so that all at once they were very nearly as green and exciting as emeralds, and the matt smoothness of her skin had remained perfect despite the trials of the day, she still couldn’t compete with Chantal.
Chantal, by this time, would have changed—slipped was the word—into something expensive and suited to the room, such as an elegant negligee. But she didn’t have anything suited to the room in her suitcases, and as if to prove it she went and opened one and lifted out a simple nylon nightdress that she had made herself. It was very pretty, but it wasn’t the nightdress for that sumptuous bed, any more than her white candlewick dressing-gown was the right dressing-gown to lie casually across one of the low white chairs.
But it was white ... that was a coincidence.
She decided to have a bath before she went to bed—at least she should take advantage of all the amenities while she had the opportunity. Marty was right when she said that any girl at Miss Dove’s would give her eyes to have the right to sleep in this room, and wallow in that sensuous, marble bath.
But back she wandered to the dressing-table. She studied herself hard again in the mirror, and she thought of James Pentallon, and the right he would one day have to stand behind his wife in front of this mirror and meet her ardent eyes in the flawless sheet of glass.
An extraordinary feeling took possession of her ... She knew it was one of simple envy. James Pentallon’s dark blue eyes meeting another woman’s, smiling at her in the glass, passing on to her all sorts of secrets, ardent messages. James’s hand would rest lightly on the slim, bare shoulder of the woman who was his wife, and she would lean her head back against him, and he would kiss her hair ... it would be black hair, of course ... black and lustrous and shining.
And then she would probably turn and wind her arms about his neck, and—
It was Carole who turned away, feeling hot about the neck and behind her ears, as if she had blushed suddenly with a mixture of shame and envy ... shame because James Pentallon’s intimate moments with the woman on whom he finally bestowed his name would be his affair when he married, and envy because she knew the last fortnight had done something to her that could never be undone.
Without ever intending to do so—indeed, she had taken special precautions against it from the very first—she had fallen in love with James, and he looked upon her as an amusing little appendage of his sister’s, who had suddenly proved herself extraordinarily useful, and would go on proving herself extraordinarily useful until he let her know definitely that the game was over, and she could run away and have a holiday with his sister, after which she must find herself a new job.
She listened to the thunder of the water pouring into the bath, and raced into the bathroom to turn off the taps. Then she undressed, soaked herself and deliberately closed her mind to everything but the sheer, sensuous pleasure of the moment, took a long time over the business of drying herself with the luxurious towels, and then slipped into her nylon nightdress and finally into bed.
Mrs. Bennett had turned down the sheets. It was all ready for her ... and the comfort of the bed was fantastic when she lay down at last. Like going to bed on a cloud, she thought dreamily, and refrained from putting out the lights because she wanted to lie and look at the room.
Tomorrow she would ask Marty to put her into somewhere less magnificent ... Somewhere more suitable for her. Tomorrow, too, she would tell James definitely that he could no longer use her as he had been using her, and she was going back to Paris. Marty and her brother belonged to one way of life. She belonged to another.
She would point this out to James.
And then she fell asleep, and it was broad daylight when she opened her eyes, and Mrs. Bennett wa
s standing beside her bed with a breakfast-tray.
CHAPTER TEN
MRS. BENNETT looked somehow less reassuring in broad daylight than she had done at night. She was very soberly dressed, but her black working silk was well cut, and her strong, capable hands were adorned with one or two rings to indicate that she did very little work these days, and they smelled pleasantly of lavender toilet soap.
As she bent over Carole she rustled slightly, and the scent of lavender seemed very strong.
“Mr. James asked me to let you know that he and Miss Marty have gone riding,” she said. “He thought you would like to sleep late as you were probably very tired.”
Carole sat up in bed with a jerk.
“Why, what time is it?” she asked. She could tell by the sunlight streaming into the room that it was long after her normal hour for getting up, and she simply could not understand why she had slept apparently uninterruptedly for hours ... well into the morning, in fact.
But, even so, she was not prepared for the truth when she heard it.
“It’s eleven o’clock,” Mrs. Bennett told her.
Carole made as if to leap out of bed, but the housekeeper stopped her. She looked mildly surprised.
“Lots of Mr. James’s friends sleep late when they come here,” she said. “And Miss Marty’s too, of course. It’s probably because they find the beds very comfortable.”
“Very comfortable?” Carole looked up at her with a slight, reminiscent smile in her eyes. And then the smile became a smile of strange gratification. “It was like sleeping on a cloud,” she confessed. “Or that was my impression of going to sleep in this bed. I don’t imagine if one was suffering from actual insomnia one could remain awake in this bed. It’s wonderful. Are all the other beds at Ferne Abbey as good as this one?”