by Susan Barrie
He removed a gold cigarette-case from his pocket and lighted a cigarette. He surveyed her quizzically through the delicate cloud of smoke that settled around his head and his shoulders. ‘What is your name?’
‘Melanie.’
‘Well, Melanie,’ jerking his head in the direction of the door, ‘you can perform the function of that defective bell system -another thing I shall have to put right! - and go and find Horton for me and tell him I shall require him to lay out my things for dinner, and if he has not already unpacked for me he must do so at once. And if he can spare the time - bearing in mind his affection for that pantry of his! - to make himself useful to one or two of my gentlemen friends I’m sure they will be grateful, and they’ll no doubt suitably reward him before they depart.’
‘Yes, Sir Luke.’ But she was trying mentally to picture Horton’s face when she passed on to him his new master’s instructions.
‘And if it isn’t absolutely essential for you to rejoin that flock of females in the kitchen do you think you could offer a hand to the ladies upstairs? With their unpacking, I mean?’
‘Y-yes, of course.’
She moved hesitantly in the direction of the door, and while she was trying to find words to explain matters he commented on her clothes.
‘Do you usually go around dressed like that? As if you were a female groom!’
‘I - I beg your pardon, Sir Luke?’
The cigarette he was smoking smelled delightfully, and was probably compounded of very expensive and very choice tobacco. His remarkable dark eyes continued to regard her very openly, and rather curiously, over the tip of it.
‘Boots and jodhpurs! Hardly the correct garb for a parlourmaid, or a housemaid, or whatever you are. And by the way, when you go riding whose horse do you ride?’
‘My own.’
His eyebrows ascended.
‘And you stable it here?’
‘Yes, of course—’
The door opened, and an agitated Mrs. Edgerley put in her head.
‘Miss Melanie, if you’ve finished here will you give Cook a hand in the kitchen? She only wants someone to watch the saucepans and stir the sauces. They’re in such a state of confusion out there I’m afraid dinner will be delayed. . . .’ She caught sight of her master and apologized, hastily. ‘Oh, I do beg your pardon, Sir Luke, for intruding!’ He waved her away ... waved them both away.
‘Go and sort out the confusion and leave me in peace,’ he ordered them. ‘And don’t forget, Melanie,’ he called after her, ‘to convey my specific instructions to Horton!’
She found that the uproar in the kitchen was by no means overstated by either Mrs. Edgerley or her employer, and although Betty Clark’s mother had arrived from the Bell Inn the situation was hardly improved. Mrs. Clark had worked at the Priory for several years before she married, and she had often lent a hand since, but she disliked being summoned at such short notice, and she never worked well with the cook. The two of them had more than one argument in the middle of dishing up the roast turkey and the steamed halibut, and but for the intervention of Horton there might have been trouble.
Horton had been butler at Wroxford for so many years that he knew how to quell underlings. He might, in the course of long and leisurely service with the late Sir James, have acquired a few of the habits of a gentleman of leisure; and indeed, he rather looked like one, with his silvery hair and his aristocratic features and dignified mien. But when the occasion arose he could rise to it, and, fortunately for everyone else, he did not become agitated.
He sailed into the kitchen and restored order there, and Melanie followed him back to his pantry, where he was engaged in sorting the silver, and told him that Sir Luke expected his services upstairs. A pained expression flitted across Horton’s face - as he pointed out to Melanie he was not a gentleman’s gentleman - but as the arrival of the new master was almost bound to create tensions they would have to be surmounted somehow.
Melanie offered to go on sorting the silver for him, but he said he would manage. The really important business of the evening, in his opinion, the decanting of the wine, had already been attended to, and there were only a few finishing touches to be put to the dinner table. Melanie had been accustomed to doing the flower arrangements at the Priory ever since she left school, and she looked in to the dining-room on her way upstairs to make sure her somewhat hastily contrived centrepiece had not collapsed since she put her final touches to it.
She was quite pleased with the general effect of the massed pink roses, and she noted that Horton had brought out the glowing Venetian glass that was normally kept locked away in the silver pantry for the occasion. It was very beautiful glass, brought back from Venice many years ago, and against the rich patina of the table, the lace table mats and the sparkling Georgian silver it seemed to acquire an additional delicacy and beauty. Melanie touched one of the claret glasses with the tip of a slender finger and heard it give off a bell-like note that rang and echoed around the room until it finally became caught up and smothered by the heavy velvet drapes that were drawn across the main window.
She checked the seating arrangements swiftly, and noted that Horton had laid for six people ... which meant that he had laid for Sir Luke and the five guests he had brought with him. According to Mrs. Edgerley there were two ladies and three gentlemen, and as Melanie would not be joining them she was unlikely to catch a glimpse of any of them that night.
It was too late, now, to offer her services to the ladies, but it had seemed much more important that the dinner should arrive in the dining-room on time than that a couple of presumably capable women should be helped to unpack their suitcases. While they were at dinner she might go along to their rooms and tidy up for them. She could do that.
But as she climbed the magnificent carved oak staircase she felt in need of a bath herself, and she smiled slightly as she wondered what Sir Luke had thought of her with that smut on her face. Horton had thoughtfully removed it for her with the end of one of his table napkins when she entered his pantry, but before that she had caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror above his stainless steel sink. It was a very noticeable smear, and there was no doubt Sir Luke had set her down as a housemaid because of it and the apron tied round her middle.
She had got rid of the apron as quickly as she could, but that had drawn attention to her riding clothes. Apparently Sir Luke knew nothing about her, and that meant she would have to explain herself away at the earliest opportunity. Otherwise, in addition to asking questions about his horses and his stabling, he might ask questions about her cottage.
She peeped into the open door of a bathroom as she passed, and the whole place reeked of powerful bath essence. It was also in a state of shambles, with towels flung about, dusting powder all over the place, and mirrors obscured by steam.
She shrugged slightly as she went on her way. She supposed she had better lend a hand to clean that up as well.
The house, that was normally so quiet at this hour - even when Sir James was alive — seemed to have become electrified, and although she was unable to catch any actual scraps of conversation she had a feeling as if conversation was going on in a buzz all around her. There was a blaze of light in the principal guest room, which had undoubtedly been made over to the most favoured of the two female guests.
Wroxford Priory was a great, rambling house with at least two disused wings, and so many bedrooms that not even Mrs. Edgerley was quite sure of the number. But the number of bedrooms equipped and ready for guests was limited, and Melanie wondered how the housekeeper had fitted them all in.
She was still wondering when she arrived at her own room
— which would be hers no, longer in a few days’ time — and it was then that she received her first real shock. The door of her room was standing open, and two women appeared to have taken possession of it. One, in a lovely slinky dinner-gown that glittered with iridescent embroidery, had just ripped the covers from her bed and was tossing them on to the f
loor. She said casually to her companion, who was a much older woman and did appear to be wearing a slightly dubious expression:
‘But of course it’s all right, Mother! You know you can’t sleep in a room with an eastern aspect, and there’s no one else staying here as far as I know apart from the staff. This was obviously never intended to be a staff-room, and it looks to me as if half the stuff in it is packed up. It was probably used when Sir James was alive, and might even have been used by his nurse—’
Melanie walked forward quietly into the room.
‘You’re wrong,’ she said, ‘it’s my room. If you’re not satisfied with the ones you have perhaps the housekeeper can fix up something else for you!’
CHAPTER TWO
The girl in the smart dinner-dress spun round in surprise. At the sight of Melanie her eyes widened and then narrowed, and then a spark of pure frostiness invaded them.
‘Oh, really?’ she said. ‘And would it be unreasonable of me to inquire who you are?’
‘Not at all,’ Melanie replied. She was trying to sound casual and normal ... although she had never felt so angry in her life.
Her beautiful satin bedspread that had been a present from Sir James when he fitted the room out for her flung across the carpet; her sheets tossed to an opposite corner of the room, and her pillow-cases ripped from her pillows. Why, even her perfume bottles and her hairbrushes had been swept from the top of the dressing-table and deposited in an open drawer! The contents of another drawer - handkerchiefs and gloves — had been tossed in with the perfume bottles and the brushes, and a small folding photograph of her mother and father that always stood beside her bed had been flung in with them.
Melanie’s reaction was positively primitive. For one second she actually saw red, and then she counted swiftly up to ten and swallowed her rage. After all, they were Sir Luke’s guests, and she couldn’t be rude to them. This was Sir Luke’s house, and she really had no rights in it any longer.
‘I’m Melanie Grainger,’ she said, ‘and I shall be moving out in a couple of days. I was hoping to keep this room until I left, but if it’s needed I don’t mind shifting my things myself. But I shall have to ask you to wait until after dinner, because I was just going to have a bath and I’m absolutely filthy.’
She stared hard first at the older woman, who was also elaborately gowned and actually looked rather pleasant and motherly, and then at the younger, who was not merely almost startlingly attractive but had hair and eyes that appeared to match under the soft brilliance of the shaded electric lights. She was a natural blonde — a Scandinavian type of blonde - and her eyes were the strange, translucent gold of a cat’s. Beneath obviously false eyelashes they glittered as if she was not accustomed to being told that she must wait for anything.
‘But my mother is tired,’ she objected, ‘and it will not do that she must wait!’ She had a slight but noticeable accent that was inclined to interfere with her utterance a little, particularly as she was also full of impatience. ‘This house is under-staffed, and already I have had to run my bath for myself... and my mother has had no one to assist her with her unpacking! I do not understand what Sir Luke is thinking of, keeping a great house like this without servants—’
‘This is the first time Sir Luke has been here for years,’ Melanie explained, keeping her temper admirably once she had recovered it, ‘and I think most people would agree that considering we live in an age when hardly anybody has servants Wroxford Priory is lucky to be run by a housekeeper and a butler, as well as a couple of permanent maids and several outsiders who lend a hand when needed. If Mrs. Edgerley had had the least idea that you were all arriving today instead of at the end of the week she would have had the house ready for you. But she was taken by surprise, and I’m afraid you’ll have to make allowances.’
‘If Mrs. Edgerley is the housekeeper I do not think she is very competent, otherwise the house would have been ready to receive us!’
Melanie bit her lip.
‘I’m afraid you don’t understand,’ she said. ‘There has been an orgy of spring-cleaning going on, and we’ve all been lending a hand. The place wasn’t ready for you!’
‘In a well run house there should be no need of an orgy of spring cleaning. However, all this is beside the point. My mother wishes to change her room, and yours seems very suitable ... or at any rate, fairly suitable.’ She glanced round it a trifle disdainfully. ‘You say you are leaving in a couple of days, so it won’t hurt you to move out tonight. But you haven’t told me yet what you are doing here.’ The coldly gleaming golden eyes fastened on Melanie with the fixity and ferocity of a pin that was about to impale a moth for the purpose of adding it to a collection. ‘I like to get things clear, and to avoid confusion,’ she offered as enlightenment, ‘it will be simpler if I understand perfectly who you are. You are not a servant here? No?’
‘No,’ Melanie answered quietly.
The slender brows confronting her knitted together.
‘You have had, perhaps, some position here? You were employed by Sir James before his death? You helped to nurse him in his last illness?’
‘No,’ Melanie answered, shaking her head as well this time.
‘Then ...?’ The delicately marked brows fairly knotted themselves together. ‘You are a secretary? A superior servant? You come here to assist in some way—?’
Melanie was about to say ‘No’ for the third time when the dinner-gong sounded. It was the first dinner-gong, which meant that drinks were being served in the library, but the golden beauty’s mother seemed slightly startled by it, and she turned to her daughter and addressed her hurriedly.
‘We must go down now, Inga, or we will be late!’ she urged.
‘Sir Luke might not like that!’ Then she turned back to Melanie and smiled at her almost apologetically. ‘I don’t really need to change my room,’ she assured her, and ‘I wouldn’t like to think I was turning you out of yours just because Inga thinks I ought to sleep in a room with a southern aspect. It’s true, I do suffer from rheumatism and I hate a cold room, and there doesn’t appear to be a bathroom adjoining the one they put me in—’
Melanie interrupted her. ‘You shall have mine,’ she promised, smiling responsively in return. ‘I’ll see to it as soon as I’m fit to touch your things,’ and she exhibited her grubby hands. ‘I’ve been making up fires, and that sort of thing, and I really am in rather a mess.’
Inga moved towards the head of the stairs.
‘Come along, Mother, we’ll go down,’ she said, and she completely ignored the other girl. ‘If the uproar in this house is anything to go by there’s bound to be confusion at dinner, and we don’t want to add to it.’
But her mother hung back long enough to have a few more words with Melanie.
‘I’m sorry about your things, dear,’ she said, patting her on the arm. ‘That photograph beside your bed ... I didn’t want to touch it, but Inga was so sure it didn’t matter. She’s rather over-excited, you know, because this is the first time she’s visited a house as big as this.’ She glanced around her in some awe, and at the same time it was obvious she considered the luxury highly satisfactory. ‘It’s a beautiful house, isn’t it?. . . A real English country house! In Sweden, where we live, everything is very different.’
‘So you come from Sweden?’ Melanie murmured, aware that the daughter was awaiting her mother impatiently on the stairs.
‘Yes. Although I’m English. I married Olaf Larsen when I was much too young to know what I was doing, and of course he took me away from England. He’s dead now, and Inga and I travel about quite a bit. She’s a beautiful girl, isn’t she?’ proudly, glancing at the exquisite figure on the staircase. ‘Everyone says she’s almost unbelievably beautiful, and I spend every penny I can spare on buying her the right clothes. We’ve just been to
Paris, as a matter of fact, and she’s got some lovely things. Before that we were in Durban, and the sunshine was wonderful!’
She referred once m
ore to the eastern aspect of her room, and explained that it was after the warmth of South Africa that she felt the cold. Melanie assured her that she would not be required to sleep there, and she was trying to slip past her along the corridor when Mrs. Larsen caught her arm again quite determinedly and hung on to it for a long moment.
‘What do you think of Sir Luke Charnock?’ she asked, lowering her voice dramatically. ‘I find him very charming, and of course he’s very rich, and he does seem to be badly smitten with Inga. They met two Christmases ago in Sweden, you know. He couldn’t take his eyes off her from the moment they met! And running into him again in Durban was quite extraordinary. He’s half American, you know. His mother is a very fascinating woman, and very cultured. I believe she influences him a lot . . . but Inga tells me he wants to marry her.’
‘Oh, er - yes?’ Melanie heard herself say in suitably surprised accents. Not too surprised, she hoped, when she thought about it afterwards.
‘Yes. It’s rather wonderful, isn’t it? I’d like to think of her as mistress of — all this!’
And once again she glanced around her at the corridor, with its rich crimson carpet and stone arches, the subdued light barely showing up the faces in the portraits that lined the walls. And in the shadowy gallery on to which the corridor opened there were more portraits and tables loaded with objets dart.
The hollow sound of the second gong booming below them in the hall caused Mrs. Larsen to remember that she had certain obligations as a guest, and with a guilty look at Melanie she left her and hurried after her daughter down the stairs. By this time Inga had passed on into the corridor which led to the library, and as she gazed thoughtfully after Mrs. Larsen’s retreating back and pitied her discomfort in the absurd high-heeled shoes that had a very French look and appeared to be literally encrusted with gems, Melanie could picture the scene in the library as the two principal guests made their appearance.
For if Sir Luke was contemplating marrying Miss Larsen she was undoubtedly a very important guest indeed, and her mother was hardly less important since she, also, would be acquired as a relative.