The Black Benedicts

by Anita Charles

  “You ride well,” he told her once, in his blunt fashion. “In fact, you ride far better than a good many young women I know. You sit well, and you look well on a horse.”

  Once again, as she met his eyes, she felt herself inclined to flush a little, and a faint glimmer of amusement appeared in those black-lashed eyes.

  “Another thing to add to the testimonial I shall be able to write for you one of these days,” he said, “when you feel the desire to leave us. Have you any idea when that will be? Have you started to grow tired of Morven yet? If you have, I wouldn’t altogether blame you, because unless you’re used to this type of country it can be very lonely sometimes.”

  “I don’t find it in the least lonely,” Mallory answered, not altogether truthfully—for there had been moments in the past few weeks when, in spite of the beauty and the luxury surrounding her, she had felt as if she was a little redundant sometimes, and could very easily be dispensed with without any single feature of the fair landscape on to which she looked so often being blighted in any way by her departure. “And nobody could ever grow tired of Morven,” she added, because she meant it.

  “Couldn’t they? That’s what Adrian says, and he scarcely ever leaves it, and I like it myself— particularly after I’ve been away from it for a while. But that applies to so many things, doesn’t it? You appreciate them so much more when you’ve been deprived of them for a time?”

  His eyes were on her face as he spoke, and there was something thoughtful and speculative in his look which, together with a strangely quiet note in his voice, caused her to look down rather wildly at the reins in her hands, and unconsciously she tightened them so that her mount threw up its head and became mildly obstreperous for a moment.

  “Obviously Shamrock doesn’t agree with me,” he remarked, a dry note of amusement in his voice. “Or, possibly, you don’t either, Miss Gower?”

  “I”—Mallory had once again gained complete control of her mount, but her colour was high, and for some reason she could not meet his eyes—“I’ve told you I don’t think anyone could ever grow tired of Morven, and so far as I’m concerned once I like a thing I don’t have to be deprived of it to continue to appreciate it. But perhaps that’s because I’ve never had a great many things to claim my interest and divide my allegiance,” she added, somewhat hurriedly lest he should think she sounded a little prim and condemning.

  “And does that apply to people, also?” he asked, rather curiously. “You’ve never met a large number of people?”

  “Not outside my own family circle and old school friends, no,” she admitted, and thought how dull she must strike him by comparison with someone like Sonia Martingale, for instance, who, although she was still young, had already a large portion of the world at her feet. And not only was she used to people, she was used to dealing with them and comporting herself amongst them in such a way that her poise was the one thing about her apart from her exotic beauty which struck anyone meeting her for the first time as worthy of the greatest admiration.

  “I think that’s rather an intriguing confession to be able to make,” Raife Benedict observed, and, daring to dart a small sideways look at him, Mallory was a little astonished to detect that the smile on his lips was oddly gentle. “It means that there’s so much in store for you in the future, and so many experiences which you’ll probably find quite exciting. Life may have all sorts of things to offer you, and at the moment you don’t know anything at all about them...!” His eyes, that seemed to be much darker than sherry-brown to-day, with the little golden gleams floating in them almost lazily, dwelt with a kind of pleased contemplation on the whole slender outline of her as she rode beside him, and for an instant his voice was almost caressing. “I could almost wish we had a crystal ball and could peer into it together, Miss Gower, and see just what the future has in store for you!”

  She tried to laugh lightly, as if the suggestion genuinely amused her.

  “It would probably reveal a whole succession of jobs somewhat similar to the one I’m holding at the moment, and a great many new and difficult children all waiting for me to break them in. And no one could say that would be very exciting,” she concluded, wondering why her heart was beating in a kind of bumpy fashion rather in keeping with the hollow trotting of their horses’ hooves, and why once again she felt a little breathless as she spoke.

  But he shook his head quite vigorously.

  “That is a future I do not envisage for you,” he told her. “However good you are at governessing, you were not meant to keep it up—I can tell you that much!”

  He sounded so emphatic about it that for a moment she did not know quite how to respond to his mood, and in order to change the subject she asked quickly:

  “Did—did it take you long to recover completely from that nasty toss I caused Saladin to involve you in?”

  He seemed to relax and to smile with amusement both at the same time, and then he shook his head.

  “I felt sore for a fortnight after that little episode, and I haven’t made up my mind yet whether Saladin is suitably ashamed of himself.” He glanced down at the handsome black, and at the same time he touched it almost caressingly on its arched and glossy neck. “However, time will tell whether he’s worth hanging on to.” They heard Serena crashing noisily ahead of them through the dim, cool shade of a little beech wood, and before they entered it, and he had to fall back into single file behind Mallory once more, Benedict remarked with a sudden complete change of tone:

  “By the way, Miss Gower, I shall probably want your assistance again, but not with secretarial work—or not exactly. Miss Martingale is going abroad in the autumn—a tour of the Continent with her ballet company—and before she leaves she’ll be coming down here for a few weeks, and she’d very much like me to give a costume dance at Morven.” As Mallory could no longer make any attempt to see his face she could obtain no clue as to whether he also thought it was a good idea, and he continued. “I suppose Morven is just the right setting for that sort of thing, and in my mother’s day we were not so inhospitable as we are now, and on the whole things were much gayer at Morven. But getting out of touch with things—being away so much, amongst other reasons—I’ve rather lost trace of the various families and people who would be likely to wish to receive invitations to a dance of that sort, and I thought perhaps you might make it one of your duties to unearth a few details about the local hoi polloi who would definitely be interested. Is that too much to ask of you?” They had emerged from the wood, and could see Serena galloping madly and heedlessly away in front of them, and Mallory answered with once again that little breathless tremble in her voice: “Of course not. And of course I’ll do anything to help...”

  “Good girl!” he exclaimed, but he was looking over her head at Serena, and his eyes were once more inscrutable. “That’s splendid, especially if you don’t mind taking a bit of trouble. Get on to Carpie, and ask her to help you—she’s a mine of information about this part of the world, and in any case she’ll have to be consulted about all the arrangements. And Phipps will be in his element—Phipps loves formal parties, and that sort of thing.”

  Mallory said nothing, and Serena suddenly pulled in her mount and her uncle cupped his hands over his mouth and called to her to wait until they caught up with her. Then, for the last lap of the ride, Mallory was forced to put all other thoughts out of her mind as, in order to gratify Serena, they all three rode their horses at exhilarating speed across the undulating country which lay between them and the parkland surrounding Morven, and when at last they galloped up the drive and then shot across the stately timbered park to the house, with its diamond-paned lattices flung wide to the brilliance of the new day, and the scent of opening roses in the rose-garden floating in the warm air and lapping it about like a caress, the faces of both the governess and her charge were glowing, and Raife Benedict also looked unusually alert and bright-eyed. As he swung himself out of his saddle and held out a hand to help Mallory dismount, she tho
ught that his eyes were also once more just a little inclined to mock her.

  “We’ll have to see what we can do about that witch-ball,” he said. “Unless you’d rather possess your soul in patience and just wait for things to happen?”

  She did not answer, partly because she was quite sure he was laughing at her, and partly because at that moment she had no slightest wish to peer into her future. Much of the brightness of that morning had been dimmed for her when she had heard about Miss Martingale’s proposed second visit to Morven—a visit that was to last a few weeks!—and the costume dance which she desired so much that no expense was to be spared in granting her wish.

  Just then, despite that last blood-stirring canter which had brought the colour to her cheeks and made her eyes look brilliant as soft grey jewels, something inside her was not happy. And she felt that it would be a mistake to peer into the future—her future!

  Whatever she might see in a witch-ball, it would bear no resemblance to the kind of things Miss Martingale would see...!

  That night, when she was thinking that it would be scarcely necessary to change her frock for dinner, Rose the maid brought a message to her room to the effect that Mr. Benedict would like Miss Gower to prepare her charge to stay up late and have dinner with him, and that he expected Miss Gower to join them as well.

  It was so much like a command that Mallory knew there was nothing she could do about it, although having got Serena into some kind of a reasonable daily routine, she was not at all approving of her staying up later than her usual bed time, for herself she would have infinitely preferred to have her evening meal alone in her own room.

  But Serena was delighted when the news was conveyed to her, and she declared that it was delightful having Uncle Raife back at Morven. He had always spoiled her, and now he was beginning again after a too long interval, and the only thought in her head was what she should wear to make her appearance in the dining-room, and what sort of entertainment would be provided for after dinner.

  But Serena’s pleasure was short-lived, for the evening meal so far as she was concerned was one of extreme simplicity, and afterwards she was dispatched to bed with small ceremony, and scarcely any heed paid to her disappointed utterances because for once her Uncle Raife was behaving like a disciplinarian, and Miss Gower supported him almost with relief when it was suggested that Serena should miss as little as was possible of her beauty sleep and go to bed without delay.

  But if Mallory thought that by retiring upstairs again with Serena she would escape anything in the nature of a tete-a-tete with her employer, she, too, was doomed to disappointment. For he made it clear that he not only expected but requested her return downstairs once her small charge had either been handed over to Darcy, or she had seen her into bed herself. And although she couldn’t imagine why, although there were no guests in the house and he was probably feeling a trifle bored—perhaps missing Sonia Martingale acutely!—he should want to continue a conversation which had seemed stilted and difficult at dinner, she knew better than to invent an excuse which would keep her in the sanctuary of her own rooms.

  She had a feeling he would not listen to excuses, and that he would probably come upstairs and skilfully prove that it was only an excuse. So, after seeing Serena into bed, and leaving her with Belinda curled up in her basket beside her, she flicked a hasty powder-puff over her own face, gazed disapprovingly at herself in her mirror because, in her own opinion, she was so sadly bereft of anything approaching glamour, and then returned downstairs to the library where the master of the place awaited her with a somewhat impatient look on his face, and the face of his ancestor in the portrait. On the wall above the fireplace behind him also looked down at her almost accusingly.

  “If you’ve been putting Serena to bed,” he said, “that’s not one of your duties. It’s Darcy’s job to act nursemaid.”

  “As a matter of fact,” Mallory answered, “Serena is a little old for a nursemaid.”

  He waved a hand impatiently. He looked very handsome and arrogant in his dark evening clothes, and she felt very dowdy and inadequate in her one and only grey evening frock and her mother’s small pearls.

  “That’s all beside the point,” he said. “This arrangement of your looking after Serena is only temporary, and Darcy’s job is only temporary, too, so we won’t discuss anything relating to Serena to-night. We can do all that another night, and in the meantime I want to talk to you.”

  “Oh, yes?” Mallory said, and waited, wondering just how ‘temporary’ her job was going to be.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Raife Benedict leaned one shoulder against the broad mantelshelf, and behind him the crossed broad-swords on the panelled walls made a fitting background to the dark haughtiness of his sleek head and faintly hawk-like profile. The library was softly illuminated, for it was already quite dark outside, and only the tall cases of books and the more distant portraits were in deepest shadow—rather like the velvet shadows which lurked outside the open windows. He produced his cigarette-case and offered it to Mallory, but when she declined he carefully and rather slowly lighted himself a cigarette, and then surveyed her thoughtfully through the faint haze of fragrant cigarette-smoke.

  “Tell me something about yourself, Miss Gower,” he said suddenly, surprising her—so that she was conscious all at once of a feeling of relief. “Something about your background, your family... I know practically nothing at all about you, save that your father dealt very adequately with wild cats, and your grandfather shot tigers!”

  Mallory crimsoned on the instant, recalling that rattier childish boast she had once made to him of her family’s ability to handle the most dangerous animals, but she could see that his eyes were twinkling a little, and it was surprising, she thought, that he remembered her boast. “You were brought up, I believe, in a parsonage, and that’s why you make a point of going to church on Sundays, and why Serena is nowadays much, less of a pagan. But that doesn’t give me a very clear picture of you when you are at home. I want to know whether you’ve brothers and sisters, and how you pass your time.”

  Mallory, once her initial astonishment had been overcome, found it a comparatively simple matter to give him a few facts concerning the way she had lived until she came to Morven, and she could see that he was amused by her description of her mother’s menagerie of domestic pets, and the way she herself was called in to groom and attend to them in between being entirely responsible for cooking for the entire family. And the doings of her schoolboy brothers and sister also amused him, as well as her description of the muddle which usually prevailed in their small cottage home. But he did not look so amused when she told him of the necessity to earn more money in order that the several members of her family could keep their heads above water, and her sympathetic picture of her mother as an over-worked and constantly harried widow of a clergyman made him frown a little.

  “So you had to be the one to turn out and earn the money!” he said. “We’ll have to go into this question of your salary and decide whether it’s adequate or not.”

  “It is—completely adequate!” she assured him. “And, in any case, I couldn’t accept any more.”

  “Why not?” he asked, smiling a little.

  “Because the salary I receive is already over-generous for the few duties I have to perform, and the ease and comfort of my life here. If you offered me more, and I accepted it, I should be robbing you.”

  “Dear me!” he exclaimed, as if that was a very serious offence. But from the way he continued to smile she gathered that what she had actually succeeded in doing was amusing him even more than she had done before.

  He turned and looked out of the open French window at the golden light that was streaming across the lawns, and the way the shadows beyond merged into the deeper blackness of trees and shrubberies. The moon had not yet risen, but when it did the whole of the garden would come alive, bathed in mystic silver, and even the distant Welsh hills would become clearly visible from the upper w
indows.

  “So your mother knows this part of the world, does she?” he mused reflectively. “And she prepared you for the loneliness of it, and the feeling of primitiveness that lurks out there beneath the stars on such a night as this!” He glanced up at the portrait above him, and studied it intently for several seconds. “In his day it was even more primitive,” he remarked, at last, “and Morven would have been much more of the stronghold you expected than the pleasant country house it is to-day. We were a wild lot up here on the border in the days of that ancestor of mine—a wild and lawless lot—and if you’d arrived here then you might not have found your job so pleasant.”

  His eyes returned to her face, and he studied her thoughtfully while he crushed out the end of his cigarette and lighted himself another.

  “But in those days people were not so inhibited, and they behaved in a way their instincts dictated. My ancestor, for instance, was not much better than a pirate, and his piracy was not confined to amassing for himself a fortune. He also helped himself to a bride—a Spanish bride—and rumour has it that the lady was not particularly willing, but he married her just the same! That sort of thing, to-day, would be well-nigh impossible, and in any case the law would call him to account for it. But in many ways they were exciting times—they had much to commend them!” and she thought that something like a tiny flame leapt and danced for a moment in his extraordinarily brilliant eyes, and reminded her of that first night when she had caught sight of him in the hall. His eyes had actually rather frightened her then.

  He moved towards the open window, and then turned to look at her again.

  “It’s very warm to-night,” he said. “Do you feel like a breath of air before you go upstairs to bed?”