by Jane Corrie
The news, as Jenny had known it would, had spread like wildfire through the hotel. There was not one member of staff who had not been aware of the fact that their new boss was a 'marked' man, for there was very little that they missed, and the way Dilys had 'haunted' him had, Jenny suspected, started a betting tote below stairs. She could even hazard a guess at the odds—of Mark evading the net so flagrantly flung in his direction, and there was no doubt that he would have gone down in their estimation at his apparent easy capture.
The only one who would derive satisfaction from this state of affairs would be Tony, she thought
sadly, but in this she had wronged him, for at lunch that day he was even more morose than ever. 'That filly should have been given a firm hand years ago,' he muttered darkly. 'Easy to see she's never gone short of anything. Think she started the fire?' he asked Jenny suddenly.
Jenny looked up startled, and toyed with her dessert spoon before answering, to give herself time to think. It was more or less what she had suspected herself, but to actually say so might not be a good thing at this stage. She didn't know for certain, and if it had occurred to her and Tony, it would certainly have occurred to Mark, and it was up to him to take it from there—not that there was much he could do about it; he was not likely to press charges under the circumstances. With a light shrug she answered slowly, 'I don't know, Tony. We're lucky that the fire was contained on the first floor, and no casualties. It could have been much worse,' she reminded him in an effort to channel his thoughts elsewhere.
In this she was almost successful, but his gloomy, 'Never thought I'd feel sorry for Chanter, but he didn't stand a chance, did he?' remark just before he left her proved that his thoughts had not been diverted for long.
When he had gone, jenny sat for a long time staring at the remains of her now cold sweet. What appetite she might have had had now deserted her, since she had only gone down to lunch to give herself a change of scene from the empty office, and stop the miserable thoughts that threatened to over-
whelm her. After his first brief appearance in the office that morning, Mark had spent the rest of the time inspecting the damage, and Jenny did not expect him back that day, but knew he was around somewhere.
Quite apart from the amount of work that had to be supervised, she suspected he was keeping out of Dilys's way. The way she had breezed into the office to see him early on showed either a remarkable lack of sensitivity on her part, or a need to brazen it out, she mused. Perhaps she had wanted to determine Mark's mood, and if that were so, then she had been left in no doubt of his feelings.
A faint hope by Jenny that Dilys might gracefully bow out of the bizarre situation she had placed both Mark and herself in was quashed when Dilys sought her out later that day.
It was a meeting that Jen had done her best to avoid, and Dilys knew it, for she must have hoped to find her in the office, but knowing Mark was unlikely to need her services that afternoon, Jenny had kept herself busy helping Lodie and the staff in the business of retrieval and cleaning up of some of the not too badly burnt furniture. In all, only three bedrooms had been affected, and only two of them needed complete redecoration. Most of the damage had been confined to the corridor which had consisted of oak panelling now beyond repair—the same with the three bedroom doors, but as Jenny had told Tony, it could have been much worse.span>
A tap on her door not long after she had finished work for the day announced that the peace that she
had hoped to enjoy was about to be shattered, and with a nasty feeling that she knew the identity of her visitor, Jenny answered the summons.
On seeing Dilys, she groaned inwardly, and much as she would have liked to have made some excuse for not asking her in, she knew the confrontation would have to come sooner or later, and she wanted to get it over with. Dilys wanted to justify her actions, of that jenny had no doubt, but it was her uncle she ought to be making justification to, for he had witnessed the whole embarrassing affair, and as understanding as he was, it was unlikely that he would condone his niece's conduct.
Dilys's voice, and the way her mouth had a certain stiffness about it, told Jenny of her state of mind, and her first words confirmed her feelings.
'I suppose, like Mark, you think I started the fire?' she blurted out as soon as Jenny had closed the door behind her.
Jenny's eyebro ,,hot up at this bald accusation, and she wondered if Mark had actually charged Dilys with it. 'Has Mark said so?' she countered quietly.
'No, he hasn't!' snapped Dilys, 'but the way he's avoiding me shows just what he thinks about it, and you've been busy making yourself scarce. I went to to the office several times today, but you were nowhere to be found.' She bit her lips hard to stop them trembling. 'Even Uncle Silas doesn't believe I had nothing to do with it,' she swallowed, 'even when I told him how it was.' Her eyes bright with unshed tears met Jenny's defiantly. `So I'm telling you too.
I don't care what you think about what happened between Mark and me.' She gave an over-casual shrug that belied her words and showed Jenny that she did care, very much, but was doing her best to hide it.
Jenny nodded towards the settee. 'Sit down, Dilys. I'm going to, I'm tired. When I wasn't in the office, I was helping the staff to clean up some furniture—not, as you seem to think, keeping out of your way. There is an awful lot to do, you know,' she added as matter-of-factly as possible, pushing down the urge to lecture her on her shotgun tactics to secure a husband. There was also the fact that Dilys did not know that Jenny had been within earshot and had witnessed how a proposal had been wrung from Mark, and she wondered if Dilys would try to gloss over this unpalatable fact.
The calm statement somewhat soothed Dilys, and she took up Jenny's offer of a seat, and sat for a moment or two in silence while she marshalled her thoughts, her nervous fingers entwining the leather thongs of her dress belt. She was not dressed in evening wear, Jenny noticed, and that meant that she was not having dinner with Mark, or her uncle, presumably, for by now dinner would be almost over. Jenny knew arrangements had been made to provide meals for the staff, and Mark had made arrangements for Silas and Dilys to be provided with an evening meal until other arrangements had been made for them.
'I know how the fire began,' Dilys said in a low voice, her gaze now intent on the hem of her dress.
'But I didn't do anything about it.' Her eyes left the hem and met Jenny's. 'I guess, as far as that goes, I'm partially to blame. But I didn't start it.' She smoothed her dress over her knees carefully before she began again. 'Someone had thrown a cigarette end into one of those fancy canisters you keep in the corridor. I suppose there must have been some paper tissues in there that caught alight. Anyway, I saw it was smouldering when I went to the bathroom at about one o'clock.'
Her glance met Jenny's again, and there was such a look of naked misery in it that Jenny wanted to wince. 'I wasn't feeling too happy at the time,' she went on in the same low voice, 'and Peacock's Walk could burn to the ground for all I cared.' Her voice was firmer at this juncture as she relived her feelings at that time. 'I knew we were going home the next day,' she swallowed quickly, 'so it didn't matter, nothing mattered.'
Jenny listened, but did not comment on this bald statement. The thought that lives might have been lost did not apparently occur to her, but in this she had wronged Dilys.
'I never thought the fire would take such a hold,' she said simply. 'When Uncle Silas banged on my door a short while later, I was horrified, and frightened that if anyone died, it would be my fault for not reporting it, or at least trying to put the fire out. It 'was such a tiny flare when I saw it, I didn't dream . .' Her voice trailed off here.
'Well, thank goodness, no one was hurt,' Jenny said consolingly, for there was no doubt that Dilys
must have gone through a bad time at that stage.
Dilys nodded, and 'swallowed again, and Jenny knew she would tell the whole of it, and not try to cover up her subsequent actions. Jenny would have liked to have stopped her the
re, but she realised Dilys's need to talk about it, she would not have received a favourable hearing from either Mark or her uncle, and in the circumstances could hardly have expected one, and that left Jenny, who would rather not learn the whys and wherefores at this stage. It was enough for her to understand that Dilys had been a very frightened girl as well as an extremely unhappy one. It was small wonder, she thought with an inward sigh, that she had behaved as she had.
Dilys's gaze left Jenny and she concentrated her attention on the tip of her expensive shoes before continuing. 'I did leave the room when Uncle Silas came to get me,' she said in a low whisper. 'I got as far as the stairs,' she gulped as she looked back up at Jenny. 'There were a few people ahead of me,' she shrugged lightly, 'I suppose they'd been aroused by the other staff, and I wondered where Mark was.' She was silent for a second, then began again. 'Then I saw him—just as I got to the top of the stairs—he had you in his arms.' Her voice thickened with emotion. 'And you weren't even on the same floor—you weren't in any d-danger—yet it was you he'd g-gone to look after. He d-didn't care about me.'
Jenny looked away quickly from the stark misery in Dilys's eyes. There was nothing she could say to this.
'I could tell,' went on Dilys in a low vibrant
voice, 'that you hadn't liked being dragged out like that, you were trying to make him put you down. I suddenly couldn't bear it! He loves you—and you couldn't care less! And I love him so much—and he c-couldn't care less about me. I ran back to my room.' She swallowed again. 'I had some wild idea of making him come and get me. I wasn't going to come out until he came.' She looked down at the floor again after giving Jenny a quick glance that held a mixture of dislike and yet a kind of plea to understand how it was. 'The rest sort of happened,' she ended simply.
Jenny said nothing for a few seconds to enable Dilys to gain some measure of control over her feelings, then she said quietly, 'I do see how it must have been for you, but you must understand that you can't possibly hold Mark to that promise, the promise he gave you—was forced to give you—under such impossible conditions,' she added gently.
Dilys's quick vehement answer shocked Jenny, who had expected her to agree, be it miserably, with Jenny's summing-up of the situation.
'I can—and I shall! ' she said wildly, turning from the position of a defendant defending her case to a young vixen defending her young. 'Why should you care! I'll make him happy. I know he's absolutely furious with me now for pushing him into proposing to me, but he'll get over it, you'll see. And what's more, we'll be happy, I know we will! '
The last words ended on a desperate note, and Jenny knew exasperatedly that she would be wasting her breath in trying to dissuade the girl from taking
such an irrevocable step. Nevertheless, she had to try—for all their sakes. To say now. that she loved Mark would only make matters worse, and make Dilys all the more determined to embark on a collision course that would only bring more unhappiness in its wake.
She tried the mild approach. 'It's very apparent that you don't know Mark very well, Dilys,' she commented, trying to keep her voice casual. 'I told you once that he was not the type of man that liked having his mind made up for him. Do you honestly believe he'll ever forgive you for blackmailing him into marriage?' At Dilys's painful flush on this bald statement, Jenny gave a slight shake of the head. 'I'm sorry, but it has to be faced, and no matter how much you try to gloss over this fact, it will always be there between you. He would have to love you very much to forgive you—and on your own admission, he doesn't—so why not be sensible about it? Pull out before it's too late. He'll respect you all the more for your honesty.'
'He does love me!' ground out Dilys. 'Only he doesn't know it. If you hadn't let him down, he wouldn't have this thing about you. He thinks it's love, but I believe he hates you for what you did to him. You say I don't know him very well, that's as much as you know. I've known him since I was twelve, and I've never stopped loving him. I cried for a week when I heard he was engaged, and I was so happy when he broke off the engagement. I knew one day he'd turn to me,' she gulped hard. `So it didn't happen just as I'd dreamed, but it happened
—and it's going to go on happening. Sooner or later he's going to realise just what he feels about you. They say hate is akin to love, don't they? Well, he probably hates me now, and I hope he'll go on hating me—it's better than seeing me as the eternal little girl—anything's better than that!'
The slam of the door accompanied Dilys's abrupt departure, and Jenny drew in a breath of silent relief that the embarrassing interlude was over. She had tried, but as she had known it would, her attempt had failed. Dilys's attempt to make her believe that Mark hated her had also failed. It might have worked before the fire—but not now, she thought sadly.
CHAPTER SEVEN
WITH Mark only putting in brief appearances in the office, and Dilys, braving it out, for there was no other way to describe her behaviour, that hovered between a kind of defiance and a bright couldn't care-less attitude to dumb misery whenever she failed to locate Mark's whereabouts, Jenny soon found herself making plans for her departure from the scene.
There had been one or two occasions when Dilys had taken Mark's removal from her vicinity out on Jenny. She must have some idea where he had gone, etc, good secretaries always knew where their bosses were, didn't they? and so on.
It would not have been so bad for Jenny if Silas and Dilys had taken the accommodation Mark had found for them in his other hotel, but Dilys had dug her heels in and querulously demanded that some other rooms were found for them at Peacock's Walk. Only the first floor had been damaged, hadn't it? and surely they could be found some other accommodation on another floor.
It was obvious to Jenny that in spite of what, Dilys had told her earlier of her determination to
see things through, she was very unsure of her ability to actually carry it out.
What did surprise Jenny was that Dilys got her way, and rooms were found for them on the ground floor. Rooms that would otherwise have been allocated to staff, had the hotel been functioning normally, and as such would not be as large or as luxurious as the guest rooms, but this would not have worried Dilys in the least, who saw her victory as a small ray of hope in her wish for regaining Mark's goodwill.
Jenny, however, saw it as a small concession on Mark's part towards Silas, who must have been blaming himself for what had happened. He had, as he had told Jenny, encouraged Dilys in her quest—or at least, tried to make things come right for her, but he could not have foreseen subsequent events. Jenny had only met him once after the fire, and had not missed the fact that his once ready smile had not been forthcoming. Indeed he seemed, if anything, apologetic towards her, and she had gone out of her way to show him as gently as she could that she did not hold him responsible in any way for what had happened, as she suspected Mark had done, in his own way.
With Dilys encamped in a room only a little way down the corridor from her rooms, Jenny saw the ending of her peaceful evenings, particularly if Mark continued to absent himself from taking dinner with Dilys and Silas, and dining out elsewhere.
It was all part of the lesson he was giving Dilys, and no amount of complaining would make the slightest difference, Jenny knew. Mark could be
cruel, this she also knew, and it was something Dilys would have to face up to sooner or later. Try as she might, Jenny simply could not see the 'happy ever after' ending that Dilys had so defiantly predicted.
It looked as if things were at a complete impasse all the way round the bizarre affair, and if Dilys was feeling the strain, so was Jenny. She wanted to pack up and get out of what was becoming an intolerable position, with not only Mark's silent rebuke and cold attitude during the short space of time that he attended to the office affairs, but Dilys's persistent popping in on her during the evenings.
No matter which way one looked at it, Jenny was being made to feel the villain of the piece. Mark blamed her, even if he hadn't actually said so, and Dilys m
ade no bones about it. It was the usual theme of 'if you hadn't let him down', etc, blaming Jenny for Mark's cruelty to hey. Yet in spite of all this, Jenny found herself unable to break free. It was as if she were caught in a web that held her powerless, even though she knew she had only to put a few things in a case to tide her over, and she could walk out of the hotel. There would be no one to stop her, and if Dilys just happened to be in the foyer, then she would take great pleasure in waving Jenny goodbye.
Her reluctance to do this stemmed from her love for Mark, and she acknowledged this fact without reservation. As Silas Hawter had wanted to see things through, so too did Jenny. So far, no actual wedding date had been fixed, but this had not worried Dilys, who had given Jenny a detailed descrip-
tion of the kind of wedding dress she would wear,
and the trousseau she hoped to be able to purchase.
These sort of confidences would have caused Jenny much pain if she had not realised that Dilys was indulging in a daydream—a dream that had been there for years, always with Mark as the bridegroom.
Because she felt sorry for her, Jenny was able to stand apart and not let her confidences upset her. even while knowing that that was the sole purpose of the exercise.
Within a day, Jenny witnessed a scene that put an entirely different light on the affair, and made her start packing in earnest. If she had not chosen that moment to slip down to reception with the day's mail for Rose to post on her way home, she would not have seen Mark smile at Dilys as they passed each other in the foyer.