by Lucy Gillen
CHAPTER FIVE
NOEL was. Charlotte realised with an inward sigh, getting much too serious too soon. She liked him a lot, more than she had ever liked any man before, but she had far too much on her plate at the moment, with Blanestock to look after and restore, to want a serious romance to cope with as well. 'For someone you don't like,' he told her one evening as they sat together on the edge of a low wall that surrounded the paved terrace, 'you see an awful lot of him, it seems to me.' They were, of course, discussing Scott Lingrove, and not for the first time Charlotte wished she had not let him know that she had lunched with Scott instead of quarrelling with him about the letter. 'I don't see any more of him than I can help,' she told him. 'I did go round to Wainscote that time, I admit, but usually it's he who does the visiting, not me.' 'Keeping an eye on his property, I suppose,' Noel said sourly, and she glanced at him curiously. 'Do you think of it as his property?' she asked, and he frowned. 'No, of course I don't.' 86 She laughed shortly. 'Well, it sounded very much like it, and Scott himself has no qualms about telling me he intends to get it, one way or another.' 'And that wouldn't surprise me in the least,' Noel said shortly. 'I told you he doesn't like losing anything he's set his heart on.' 'He admits it.' His earnest blue eyes looked at her anxiously for a moment. 'Did you say as much to him?' he asked, and she realised that she had been indiscreet this time. 'I'm afraid I did,' she confessed. 'But you needn't worry, he took the opinion in his stride as he does everything else.' She laughed softly when she remembered what else he had taken in his stride too, although it had infuriated her at the time. 'He even offered to marry me to get his hands on Blanestock,' she told him, and Noel stared at her aghast. 'Good God!' he said hoarsely. 'He's sunk pretty low, hasn't he?' Charlotte, now treating the whole thing as a bad joke, laughed again, and raised her brows at the opinion. 'You think it's sinking low to want to marry me?' she asked, and he shook his head hastily. 'Charlotte! You know I didn't mean that nothing like that. But I never thought he'd sink to the level of asking a girl to marry him just to get possession of a house. I wonder what Caroline Bye the would say if she knew.' Charlotte looked at him curiously, a sudden and rapid fluttering in her heart, although the change I 87 was quite inexplicable and without reason. 'Who is Caroline Biythe?' she asked, and Noel shrugged. It could have been imagination that made her think the shrug was an uneasy one, but she thought not, and he did not look at her when he answered. 'The county's belle of the ball, until you came along,' he said. 'And I heard that she and Lingrove were thinking of getting married sometime soon.' 'Oh, I see.' There was no earthly reason why it should come as such a shock to her to learn that Scott was contemplating marriage. It had even passed through her own mind, only the other day, to wonder why he was still unattached. But she felt suddenly confused and not a little angry when she considered his attitude towards her. The light-hearted way he kissed her, although he had never made a pretence that it was serious in intent, had misled her, and she resented it. 'Anyway,' Noel said, suddenly shaking off the subject of Scott Lingrove, 'don't let's talk about him anymore.' I came to see you, and you're a much nicer subject for discussion.' 'Am I?' she said, and smiled, but the idea of Scott being on the brink of matrimony troubled her a lot more than she was prepared to admit. 'It's me!' The face round the edge of the front door had a broad smile on its brown features and for a moment Charlotte almost responded to it, then she remembered that if he chose to forget his commitments, she had no intention of doing so. 'Hello, Scott.' The greeting was so obviously without enthusiasm that he could not miss it, and raised a curious brow. 'Am I in the doghouse?' he asked. 'And if so, what for?' 'Not at all,' Charlotte replied, continuing on her way into the sitting-room with a stepladder. 'Here, let me take that for you ' He took the stepladder from her despite a few murmured protests, and carried it into the sitting-room where he spread its wooden legs and leaned on it, one hand stroking his chin as he gazed at her thoughtfully. 'Tell me, Charlotte.' She did not look at him, but moved him away from the ladder and dragged it over to the far wall where she carefully aligned it with a big gilt-framed painting. 'There's nothing to tell,' she said coolly. 'Now please excuse me, I have something to do.' 'So have I,' he retorted. 'But I came over here to ask you if you'd like to come for a little trip tomorrow. I can see now I shouldn't have bothered. You've got one of your uppity moods on, and I'm not in the mood to put up with you when you're like that.' 'Nobody asked you to,' she told him tartly, and wrung out a sponge in water before climbing the steps. 'Now if you don't mind I'd like .to get on with this.' 89 He watched her for a moment or two in silence, and she wondered just what was going through his mind, and if he had any inkling at all why she was being so offhand. 'I don't know why you don't get a proper firm to do that for you,' he said at last. 'You could damage it, you know.' 'I won't,' she assured him, rubbing gently at the frame of the painting. 'Charlotte, you ' She turned, too hurriedly, to argue with him and her left foot slipped on the wooden step, sending her flying with a piece of the frame still in her hand. Her cry was instinctive and she knew he would say I-told-you-so even while she was bumping painfully down the rest of the steps. 'My leg!' she complained, trapped inelegantly between two slats of wood. 'Help me, Scott i' He lifted her out of her predicament, carefully and quite gently, but he seemed far more concerned with the fate of the painting than he did with her leg. 'Now you have spoiled it!' he declared, taking the piece of broken frame. 'I knew you'd ruin it, mucking about with it like that.' Charlotte was too busy rubbing a painful leg to either see or care about the picture, and she glared at him reproachfully. 'I'm more concerned about my leg,' she told him. 'Although you don't seem to think it's important, I do.' 'You are a clumsy little devil,' he told her. 'I told you not to get up there.' Oh Oh, you and your precious picture!' Char90 lotte exclaimed angrily. 'I could have a broken leg and you'd just ignore it, wouldn't you?' He turned a brief, malicious grin on her. 'Your leg isn't a hundred years old,' he said. 'If it was I might feel as concerned as I do for the frame.' 'You inhuman, callous wretch!' she declared, and put out a hand for the sponge she had been using. 'I wish I could kick you, then you'd know how I feel!' Instead she hurled the sponge at him and, quite by chance, her aim was unerring. It caught him full face as he turned towards her. She was not sure whether she had intended it to find its target or not, but the look in his eyes gave her a curiously fluttery sensation in the pit of her stomach and she shook her head instinctively as he came towards her. 'That,' he declared firmly, 'was a mistake, Charlie Brown, a very bad mistake on your part.' Scott!' She backed away as best she could, but he followed her until she was brought up sharply by the opposite wall, then he reached out and pulled her across his knee, one foot resting on the edge of a chair. She felt the first hard slap but managed to evade the next one and stood with her back to the wall, daring him to come any closer, although he still held on to her arm in a grip like a vice. 'You've really got it in for me today, haven't you?' he said, a small tight smile round his mouth. 'Tell me why and I might let you off the rest of that well deserved spanking.' 'I don't have to tell you anything,' she told him, her eyes wide and as appealing as she could make them. 'I really have hurt my leg, Scott.' He did nothing for a moment, watching her and only half believing, then he let go her arm and, without a word of warning, scooped her up into his arms and carried her over to one of the armchairs. 'Let me see,' he said, and still sounded more resigned than sympathetic. 'It's my shin,' she told him, resenting the tone. 'I cracked it on the edge of the step.' There was already a red and puffy-looking patch on her bare shin and it promised to be a beautiful bruise by the next day, but the skin was not broken and he looked up at her suspiciously when she winced at his touch. 'Does it hurt that much?' he asked. ' yes,it does ' He smiled and straightened up. 'Right! Doctor's for you come on.' Charlotte stared at him in dismay. She had intended to impress on him that she was hurt as well as the picture frame she had been trying to clean, but she had no idea of going that far. 'That's not necessary,' she objected. 'I
t's only a bruise and ' 'I quite thought you'd broken it from the fuss you were making,' he told her. 'But if there's any doubt at all, I'll run you down to Doctor Waring's and let him look at it,' 'It's not necessary!' 92 The hazel eyes regarded her steadily for a moment or two and she felt again that rapid and disturbing flutter under her ribs. 'I suppose you think I'm the original hard-hearted Henry?' he said then, and smiled in the way that crinkled his eyes at their corners. 'I was thinking along those lines,' she confessed, not looking at him, and he laughed softly and crouched beside her again. 'Tell me where the medical kit is,' he said, 'and I'll put something on it.' She found herself only too willing to let him take the onus on himself, but then she remembered why she had been offhand with him in the first place and determinedly shook off the lazy, almost sensual feeling he inspired and stuck out her chin. 'I can take care of it myself, thank you,' she told him. 'It's nothing much, I can manage.' Being crouched beside her as he was his face was lower than hers and after a moment's pause, he bent his head and looked up into her eyes, one finger raising her chin. 'I wish you'd tell me just what dirty deed I'm supposed to have done,' he said quietly. 'This isn't anything to do with the house, I know, or at least I'm pretty sure it isn't. Now what is it. Charlotte? What have I done to make you so damned distant with me?' 'I you ' She shook her head, avoiding the finger that held her chin. 'Please don't question me, Scott.' 'I think I have a right to know why you're beino93 so shirty with me,' he declared inelegantly. 'Now talk, Charlie Brown, before I get really annoyed with you.' 'You have no call to be annoyed,' Charlotte retorted, unwilling to raise the subject of Caroline Biythe, whoever she might be. He still crouched beside her and it was very hard to resist looking at him, meeting the curious and increasingly impatient gaze. 'Charlotte.' The voice was low and infinitely persuasive, and a warning bell shrilled in her brain, but still she said nothing, and he used a hand to turn her face to him again. 'What have you been listening to?' he asked softly. Some tale some gossipy local's regaled you with, and which you're only too ready to believe?' Charlotte raised her eyes at last and looked directly at him, and there was nothing she could do about the appealing, little girl look in them. 'Who's Caroline Biythe?' she asked. 'So that's it!' He still looked at her for a long moment, then shook his head, a small tight smile just touching his mouth. 'Damn Noel Chartres, he couldn't resist it, could he?' 'How do you know it was Noel that told me?' "Oh, it has to be Noel,' he said wryly, as he stood up, the fingers of one hand running through the thick fair hair where it lay across his forehead. 'For reasons you needn't know about. Charlotte.' Charlotte got to her feet, her bruise momentarily forgotten. 'You are ' 94 'What I am needn't concern either you or Noel Chartres at the moment,' he told her briskly. 'It seems to me that he's stepping out of line far too often lately, and mostly where it concerns me and my affairs. I don't like it.' There was a stern, autocratic ring to the objection and she wondered if she was included in his disapproval or if it was confined only to Noel. 'I know it doesn't concern me really,' she began, 'but if you ' 'If you're worrying about my taking you out, you needn't,' he assured her brusquely, and Charlotte stared at him. 'Are you?' she asked. 'Taking me out, I mean?' For a moment he looked at her curiously, then he smiled. 'Didn't I tell you?' he asked. 'That's what I came over here for. I wondered if you'd like to go to Scayswich one day.' 'Scayswich?' 'The safari park it's not very far from here.' He laughed. 'I gather from your expression that you've never heard of it.' 'I haven't,' she admitted. 'Is it a new one?' 'Fairly new,' he agreed. 'It certainly hasn't had its fair share of publicity yet, it only opened this year.' 'Oh.' She was not quite sure why she was hesitating, only that she was yet to be convinced that Caroline Biythe could be as easily dismissed as he seemed prepared to do. She could not altogether disbelieve Noel's version that Scott was on the brink 95 of marrying her, and it made her cautious. ' I'm not sure if I ' 'Scared?' Scott suggested softly, and Charlotte frowned at the suggestion. "No, of course I'm not,' she denied. 'I like animals.' 'I felt sure you would,' he said, his eyes fixed on her, waiting. She was weakening, she recognised ruefully, it was inevitable that she would, and seeing her almost sold on the idea, he smiled again. It's very interesting,' he told her persuasively. 'And they have some lion cubs there too little ones.' It was blatant seduction. Charlotte thought, and wondered at herself for allowing it. 'Little ones?' she asked instead, and he nodded. 'Come and see for yourself.' He held her gaze for a long moment and she could feel her pulses racing wildly until she felt sure he must be aware of it. 'Maybe I will,' she said at last, and lowered her eyes. 'Tomorrow?' She shook her head. 'Not tomorrow,' she told him. 'I'm seeing Noel for lunch, and he's coming over to see me tomorrow evening too.' He pulled a face, one expressive brow commenting on such constant attention. 'Is he?' he said softly. 'He is dancing attendance, isn't he?' She disliked the suggestion of sarcasm and frowned over it. 'He happens to like me.' 'Of course he does,' Scott agreed, his eyes showing malicious amusement. 'You're not only very beauti96 ful, you're very rich, too.' Charlotte stared at him, then his full meaning dawned on her and she glared, enraged, her deep violet eyes glowing angrily. 'That was spiteful and uncalled-for,' she told him crossly. 'And what's more, if those implications apply to Noel, they equally well apply to you. And you were ready to suggest I married you, just so that you could get your hands on Blanestock.' His laughter, she told herself, was no more than she expected, but she kept her own features determinedly straight and left him in no doubt of her disapproval. 'But maybe it wasn't only Blanestock that I had in mind,' he said softly, and in a voice so outrageously seductive that her pulses responded to it by thudding wildly as she hastily lowered her eyes again. 'Scott, I wish ' 'I wouldn't make remarks like that,' he finished for her, and laughed. 'I'm sorry, Charlie Brown.' 'And don't call me Charlie Brown!' He licked, the tip of one finger and made an imaginary mark in the air. 'Three black marks,' he said, 'I'd better watch my step or you'll change your mind about coming with me.' 'I probably will,' Charlotte retorted, then caught his eye and found herself smiling. 'I don't think I like you,' she told him. 'No?' He bent his head over her and, despite her previous anger with him, she was unable to resist laughing at his expression. 97 'I shouldn't have anything to do with you,' she told him firmly. 'You criticise me, leave me in agony while you fret over a picture frame, then try to spank me when I turn on you in self-defence.' 'Are you still in agony?' he asked softly, bending much too close for comfort as he gazed down at her bruised leg, and she shook her head. 'Not now, but it would have been all the same to you if it had been broken, wouldn't it ?' 'Not quite,' he told her solemnly. 'I can put stingy stuff on cuts and bruises, but I'm not good with splints and bandages.' 'Then what would you have done?' she asked, out of sheer curiosity, and he grinned. 'Hauled you off to the doc's,' he said. 'But I'm glad you can walk, because there are acres of gardens at Scayswich as well, and I'm sure you'd love them.' 'I'm sure I would,' she agreed, and looked up at him. 'When can you take me to see your little lions?' He sighed, rubbing the back of his head as he thought about it. 'Bother Noel Chartres and his persistence,' he said, almost as if to himself. 'I can't make it on Saturday or Sunday. The season's almost finished, but if there are any stray visitors they'll come at the week-end, and Monday I have an appointment in Chedwell. How about Tuesday?' Charlotte nodded. 'Fine. Morning or afternoon?' 'Afternoon, if that's O.K.' She nodded. 'Good.' He reached out and took her hands in his. 'And, 98 Charlotte don't arrange to see Noel Chartres as well, will you?' Charlotte pouted reproach, but allowed him to retain his hold on her hands although she told herself she was only encouraging him, and her heart was rapping urgently at her ribs. 'Of course I shan't,' she told him, and he laughed softly. 'Of course you might he retorted, then, before she realised his intention he put a hand behind her head and pulled it back with a handful of her hair, his mouth on hers, hard and purposeful. 'Just so you don't forget,' he said. 'I shan't take second place again.' It was a lovely evening when Noel came over to visit her the following day, and it had bee
n Charlotte's idea that they should go for a walk. Noel had all a confirmed townsman's aversion to wide open spaces, despite the fact that he lived in a small town surrounded by some of the most beautiful and impressive scenery in Britain, and he had greeted the suggestion with a certain reticence that Charlotte could not fail to notice. 'Don't you like walking?' she asked with a smile, as she got to her feet. 'Oh yes, yes, of course I do,' he assured her hastily, although so unconvincingly that she laughed and shook her head. 'I don't believe you,' she said. 'You look very longsuffering about it.' 99 'Oh no, truly. Charlotte, I don't dislike it that much.' She eyed him curiously for a moment before deciding. 'I shall take you at your word,' she told him. 'It's such a lovely starry night I'd really love to go for a walk.' 'Then you shall,' Noel promised, his blue eyes as earnest as ever. 'You're obviously a country-lover, and I really don't object to the occasional walk, especially when the company is as delightful as mine will be tonight.' She appreciated the compliment with a smile, and went through to fetch a coat. 'It probably isn't, very cold,' she said, 'but I'd better have a coat.' It was, in fact, quite warm once they were walking, although there was a clear, cold sharpness in the wind that blew up from the valley below them on the other side of the road. These enormous, rocky falls of landscape were something she found it hard to get used to. It,seemed so awe-inspiring, almost frightening at times especially when one was driving at any speed, to find oneself on a road that fell away some two hundred feet or more on one side of the road and rose as high on the other. There were gaunt and straggly ghosts of trees and shrubs growing, even on the most exposed places and often in unbelievably precarious positions. 'Are you warm enough?' Noel asked as they walked along the winding road, their footsteps zoo crunching on the loose grit, and Charlotte nodded. She wondered a moment later, with a smile he could not see in the darkness, if he had been hoping for her to say no, so that he''would have a legitimate excuse for putting an arm around her shoulders. Experience had taught her to recognise it as an opening gambit and Noel, she thought, seemed to be in a particularly mellow mood tonight, and rather less reticent than usual. 'It isn't as cold as I expected,' she told him. 'In fact it's quite beautiful out here, isn't it?' He looked down at the shadowy, moonlit valley on the other side of the road, bordered here by a safety fence, and was bound to agree. The stars were out in strength and glittered clear and bright over the dark hollow between the rocky walls, and above their heads. There was just enough wind to keep the clouds at bay too, and allow the heavenly bodies to display themselves in all their glory. 'It's lovely,' he agreed. Charlotte sighed deeply and with infinite satisfaction. 'I can imagine how my Granny Brown must have felt at leaving all this to go and. live in a town,' she said. 'It must have been awful.' Noel's good-looking face turned towards her, looking shadowy and somehow older in the moonlight. 'You've really taken to your new home, haven't you. Charlotte?' he asked, and she nodded agreement, love it,' she told him truthfully. 'I think it's wonderful country.' 101 And nice people?' he suggested, and she laughed softly, looking up at him. 'And nice people,' she agreed. He ventured to put an arm around her shoulders at last, although it did no more than rest there lightly for the moment. 'I'm glad,' he said quietly, and with his customary earnestness, 'because it means you'll be wanting to stay.' Charlotte smiled up at him, not averse to a little reticent romancing on such a beautiful night. 'Oh, I shall be staying,' she told him determinedly. 'I told Scott so on Tuesday when I got that letter about the house.' Oh yes, that letter,' he said. 'I forgot to mention it at lunch time. Thank heaven he didn't give away the fact that he knew you'd already been told about his wanting to buy the house. I quite expected he would.' 'I'm not really too surprised,' Charlotte said, a little surprised to find herself defending Scott, no matter how mildly. But it was quite true to have betrayed Noel's indiscretion to his father would have been a petty and rather childishly spiteful thing to do, and whatever his faults, Scott was not petty.'You like him, don't you?' Noel asked, and somehow managed to convey disapproval. Charlotte said nothing for the moment, trying to decide just what she did feel about Scott Lingrove, and unable to come up with an answer. 'I'm not sure,' she told him at last. 'I don't think I disike 102 ? him, but he's rather I don't know quite. Overpowering is the word, I think. He's such a strong personality that trying to argue with him, or get the better of him, is rather like trying to stop the ' tide from coming in it does no good at all.' . 'Like his wanting Blanestock?' he guessed, and she nodded. 'You won't let him have it, will you, Charlotte?' 'Most definitely not!' She sounded so firm and adamant about it, that he could hardly believe her other than unshakeable. Tm very relieved.' The arm about her shoulders was more confident now, and his fingers curved into the softness of her arm. 'I couldn't part with it now,' she said. 'I love the place, the countryside, everything. And everyone's been very good to me.' 'Even Scott Lingrove?' he suggested, and she was not really surprised to detect a certain resentment in his voice. 'He has been very helpful,' she was bound to agree. 'Even if I do suspect he has an ulterior motive.' 'Blanestock, you mean?' She nodded, remembering that facetious suggestion that marriage would ensure his getting the house. 'But forewarned is forearmed,' she said. 'I know he'll do almost anything to get it, so I'm not so easy to fool as I might have been. I even suspect that the proposed trip to the park is only another way of working things round to his way.' 103 'Park?' He frowned curiously, and Charlotte nodded. 'Scayswich, I think he called it.' His frown deepened. 'The safari park? Is he taking you there?' Charlotte nodded. 'Yes. On Tuesday.' She looked at him curiously. 'Do you know it?' 'I've been.' He shrugged, apparently not very impressed by what he had seen. 'What is there to see ?' 'Lions, giraffes, the usual things.' It sounds intriguing.' 'I suppose it is,' Noel allowed, grudgingly she guessed, and smiled up at him. 'But you don't sound very enthusiastic about it.' He looked down at her, and so bright was the moonlight that she could see the rueful face he made. 'Maybe because I wish I'd thought of asking you to go with me,' he confessed, and hugged her close for a second. 'I suppose it's no use hoping you'll change your mind?' he suggested. 'I can't, Noel.' 'No. No, I suppose you can't.' He seemed so sunk in regret that she sought to bring a little more cheer to their mood. 'Well, never mind,' she said, looking up at the wonderful star-spangled sky and smiling. 'I should have to go a long way before I found anything as impressive or as lovely as this, all around us. Just look at those stars I feel I could reach out and touch them!' 'I can see some even brighter ones,' Noel said 104 quietly, his voice deeper suddenly, and throatily husky as if he fought with some uncontrollable emotion. He turned her to face him as they stood at the edge of the dark road, and Charlotte's heart thudded hard against her ribs when his face, shadowed by the moonlight, bent over her. 'You're so lovely. Charlotte.' Noel.' She was unsure whether she would have protested or not, but it was unlikely, she thought, for she had heard much the same words a number of times before, and she was not averse to hearing Noel say them. Indeed she lifted her face to him and smiled, the moonlight lending a dark shine to her deep violet eyes, and, after only a brief moment of hesitation, he kissed her. It was a gentle, slightly reticent kiss, and there was nothing nerve-shattering about it, but the cool, starlit night made everything seem so romantic that she was prepared to be quite carried away by it. He held her close to several moments after he had kissed her, and she could feel the heavy, rapid beat of his heart too, as if he felt far more than his kiss had revealed. Then he held her away from him and looked down at her almost anxiously. 'I hope I haven't been too too premature,' he said earnestly, so earnestly that Charlotte could not resist a smile. 'Who could possibly object to a kiss on a night like this?' she asked lightly, and he smiled, hugging 105 her close again for a moment. 'I don't want you to think I'm an opportunist,' he told her, and she hastily dismissed Scott's veiled suggestion that he was possibly just that. 'Of course I don't think anything of the sort,' she assured him, leaning back, her eyes deep and shining. 'It's a beautiful night, Noel, and I didn't object in the least.'
Thus encouraged, he kissed her again, this time with a little more fervour,- and she wondered, as he released her at last, if she had given him the wrong impression of her own feelings. She liked Noel. she even found him more than usually attractive, but she was not prepared to commit herself any further : at the moment. He looked down at her again, and she could see how bright and glowing his eyes looked in the moonlight. 'It must be a magical sort of night,' he . told her with a short laugh. 'I feel like a different person. It must be you, lovely Charlotte.' I 'I expect it's the moon and the stars,' she said lightly, looking across his shoulder to the tall, black rocks with the skeleton of a tree outlined at the very' top of the sheer climb, against the starry sky. 'There's an old dead tree up there, and it looks exactly like a hand.' She gazed up at the sparse, thin branches sprouting from a knotted rope of trunk and spread out like gnarled fingers against the sky. 'It's exactly like a big hand, full of stars.' He laughed, the first time she had ever heard him do so, and he kissed her lightly on her mouth. 106 'That's a romantic notion,' he teased, and Charlotte smiled. ' suppose it is.' she allowed, and wondered why she should suddenly think of Scott Lingrove.