by Susan Barrie
And despite her friendliness and her motherliness she would probably strike a very hard bargain when it came to marriage settlements. There had been an avaricious gleam in her eyes when she cast them around the gallery, and Melanie hoped Sir Luke knew what he was taking on.
She shrugged her shoulders as she herself moved away along the corridor. It was not her affair, and she had rather liked Mrs. Larsen ... the little she could get to know of her in such a short time.
She had a quick bath and then returned to her old room and started preparing it for Mrs. Larsen’s occupation. The knowledge that she was leaving the Priory so soon prevented her feeling any real regret as she took a last lingering look around the room once it was finally ready; and without her personal possessions scattered about it it already had a strange look.
She put hot-water bottles in Mrs. Larsen’s bed and hung up all her clothes in the wardrobe, and filled the many drawers with the various items of her underwear and other garments. She was quite fascinated by Mrs. Larsen’s collection of shoes, which were obviously hand-made for her and must have been worth quite a lot of money.
Having done all this she went down to the kitchen by the back stairs and fetched herself a tray of supper, which she carried upstairs to her new room. For the first time in her experience of life at Wroxford Priory she felt a little lonely as she sat disposing of it and listening to her transistor radio for company. But that could have been because she knew there were other people - quite a large number of people, in fact — in both the main portions and the domestic corners of the house, and she was excluded from making contact with any of them.
She was, in fact, an outsider ... and she had never felt an outsider before.
She was up early in the morning and out exercising Lady, her small chestnut mare, long before Miss Inga Larsen had lifted her golden head from her pillow, or was taking even a partial interest in the world about her.
Purely from force of habit Melanie had her breakfast in the oak breakfast parlour, which had always been used by the family in Sir James’s day. It was by no means a small room, but it was smaller than the main dining-room, and quite capable of accommodating Sir Luke and his guests. Mrs. Edgerley was adhering to practice, and the oak sideboard was loaded with covered dishes that emitted the savoury odours of sausages and scrambled eggs, kidneys, bacon and mushrooms when the lids were lifted.
Melanie helped herself to scrambled egg, and poured tea from a handsome silver tea-pot The whole sideboard, in fact, was a blaze of silver, and the table looked most attractive with its homely crisp white cloth and blue Delft china. There were one or two letters that had come for her in the early post and she would have liked to sit there and read them in the sunshine that streamed through the window with its old-fashioned leaded lights, but she had caught a glimpse of one of the male guests the night before, a young man with rather longish fair hair and a definitely ultra-modern style of dressing, and he had waved to her from the hall as he stood looking up into the gallery, and had actually charged the stairs in an attempt to have a few words with her.
She had beaten a swift retreat and locked the door of her room when she reached it, but she had heard him swearing softly on the other side of it. He obviously fancied himself as a lady-killer, and she did not wish to be cornered by him in the breakfast parlour, so she hurried over her breakfast and was gathering up her letters ready to depart when the housekeeper entered the room.
‘Ah, I’m glad I’ve caught you, Miss Melanie,’ she said. She was looking very much as if her exertions of the day before had exacted a certain toll of her good humour, and to Melanie who knew her well she still looked harassed. ‘Sir Luke says he wants to see you as soon as you’ve had your breakfast. Apparently he doesn’t breakfast himself - apart from a pot of strong black coffee which Horton has already taken to the library — and he’s in there now looking as if you’ve either said or done something that’s annoyed him. I can’t think what it is, because I know you were most obliging yesterday and even let that Mrs. Larsen turn you out of your room ... which I didn’t approve of one bit,’ tightening her lips, ‘when I heard of it. I told Horton I wouldn’t let anyone turn me out of my room!’
‘Ah, but you see it’s rather different in my case.’ But Melanie felt strangely grateful for her support. ‘I haven’t any right here at the Priory any longer, and I was occupying one of the guestrooms.’
‘Sir James always said it was your room,’ Mrs. Edgerley insisted, 'looking as if anything and everything Sir James had said in the past would have a particular value for her in the future. “Miss Melanie’s room,” he called it ... and even when you were away in France it was kept exactly as you left it, and only the maids were allowed in to dust it. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I walked in with your tea at seven o’clock this morning and found Mrs. Larsen in your bed!’
‘Oh, dear!’ Melanie dimpled. ‘Did you disturb her?’
‘She told me to take the tea away and bring her some coffee. I can’t understand how people can begin the day on coffee! To me it doesn’t seem civilized.’
‘I suppose it’s just a matter of taste. Some people like coffee, and some people like tea.’ But Melanie was rearranging the bowl of flowers on the table. ‘Did you say Sir Luke seemed annoyed with me?’
‘He’s in a very bad temper ... or that was my impression. He asked me a lot of questions about you.’
‘And you told him who I was?’
‘Well, naturally, miss.’ She seemed surprised. ‘I told him you were Sir James’s ward, and that he left you the cottage and the grand piano in the drawing-room, and that you’d be moving out in a few days’ time. He said he’d never heard Sir James had a ward.’
‘I don’t suppose he had.’ Melanie tucked a wallflower in between a yellow tulip and a bronze one, and then decided to do the whole arrangement again later on in the morning because she wasn’t satisfied with it. She set the bowl aside for collection later on. ‘I was never Sir James’s official ward,’ she explained. ‘I was just adopted in one of his kindly moments, and sent to school. I’m surprised, however, that Sir Luke didn’t come upon some mention of me in the will. His lawyers should have drawn it to his attention that a cottage on the estate had been made over to me, and that I was also to inherit a small sum of money. It s very small, but it will keep me until I decide whether I want to be a vet or a concert pianist.’ She grinned a trifle impishly at the housekeeper. ‘Some people, hearing me play the piano, would recommend strongly that I become a vet!’
‘That’s nonsense, miss.’ Mrs. Edgerley was quite emphatic about it. ‘You play the piano beautifully, and you must know it yourself. Many’s the time Horton and I have listened to you outside the drawing-room door, and Sir James wouldn’t have sent you to that music academy in Paris if he hadn’t thought you were good.’
‘He sent me to the Sorbonne because he thought I had possibilities. He let me study music because I thought I might one day lead the same sort of life as my mother, and travel about from one Continental capital to another, delighting huge audiences. But the trouble is I’m not talented, and I just play nicely ... adequately, you could say.’ She frowned. Do you think Sir Luke is annoyed with me because of the piano? It’s a good one - a very good one! - and perhaps he doesn’t want to part with it. I thought I heard someone playing on it last night ... It could have been Miss Larsen.’
‘Much more likely to have been that long-haired young man who was thumping out dance music when I took the coffee in last night, and kept me awake until the small hours by playing a radio just underneath my room,’ the housekeeper declared with disgust.
Melanie looked slightly relieved.
‘You’re sure it wasn’t Miss Larsen ... Playing the piano, I mean, later in the evening?’ she persisted. ‘I’ll admit the sound wasn’t very classical. It was pop rather than Beethoven, but a lot of people like pop. I’m rather fond of it myself.’
Mrs. Edgerley made another sound indicative of strong criticism.
‘Well, I’m not, and if that was Miss Larsen displaying her talents I hope you take the piano away before she leaves, miss ... and from all I gather from Sir Luke they’re here for an indefinite stay.’
Melanie nodded.
‘Yes, I kind of suspect the lady - the young lady! - is here for a very indefinite stay! As for the others, I haven’t met them yet, but the long-haired young man looked quite amusing. I’ll admit that his clothes are slightly Carnaby Street, but it takes all sorts to make a world.’
The housekeeper sniffed.
‘I don’t know anything about Carnaby Street, but I do know I prefer the other two gentlemen Sir Luke brought with him ... both rather elderly, and one very nice indeed. A real gentleman. I can always tell a gentleman!’ and she sniffed a second time.
Melanie smiled at her.
‘You’re a snob, Mrs. Edgerley,’ she accused her. Then she glanced at the clock. ‘Well, I’d better go, hadn’t I? If Sir Luke said as soon as I’d finished my breakfast then he obviously meant as soon as I’d finished my breakfast, and I actually
finished it about ten minutes ago.’
She glanced rather whimsically at Mrs. Edgerley.
‘I was rather rude to Miss Larsen last night,’ she admitted. ‘For one thing I declined to give her any information about myself, and she obviously thought I was a very dubious character indeed. But her mother’s so unashamedly impressed by everything at Wroxford that I rather took to her ... and that despite the fact that she turned me out of my room! Or her daughter did. I actually caught her turning things out of my drawers and doing most of my packing for me before I could raise an objection!’
Mrs. Edgerley looked as if words failed her. Then she fell back on a favourite lament of the last few weeks:
‘If only Sir James was still with us!’
CHAPTER THREE
Melanie received permission to enter as soon as she knocked at the library door. Sir Luke had been going through the desk drawers and the floor was littered with papers, and a series of antique deed-boxes had also been opened and their contents scattered broadcast.
Melanie waded through a sea of discoloured parchment and bundles of faded letters tied up with pink tape in order to reach Sir Luke, and to be in a position to judge for herself whether he was very much incensed by her. Actually, when she finally alighted on a patch of clear carpet in front of the desk she thought that his expression was rather more distrait than full of concentrated annoyance.
‘Why do people hoard so much junk,’ he demanded, glancing at her almost casually above an open plan of the estate. ‘This map dates from 1720, and it’s practically disintegrating. It might be of some interest to the curator of a museum, but not to me. There are at least half a dozen absolutely first-class maps of the district locked away in the safe, and at least they’re all in one piece.’
Melanie bent over the spread out map with interest.
‘I’ve never seen this before,’ she said. ‘It shows Wroxford before the extensive alterations that were carried out in 1740. That was before the east wing was added, and when the whole house was very much smaller than it is now. Of course, it was originally a priory, but not a very large or important one. It was a French foundation, I believe, somewhere about 1482.’
‘1483,’ he corrected her.
‘Oh, yes, I remember discussing it with Sir James once, and he was against the authenticity of such a fairly late date. He put it at about fifty years earlier.’
Sir Luke passed her a cigarette box, and then nodded at the chair facing the desk.
‘Sit down,’ he said. ‘I want to talk to you. In fact, there are quite a lot of things I want to talk to you about!’ his dark eyes beginning to kindle. ‘But first let me express a certain amount of surprise that you appear to be quite knowledgeable on the subject of ancient buildings. In addition to stoking up fires and running errands for the overworked members of the staff here, playing the piano and worming horses and cottages out of impressionable elderly gentlemen like my late uncle, have you any other accomplishments that are worthy of note? I understand that you studied for a year at the Sorbonne, and that Mrs. Edgerley thinks you ought to have inherited Wroxford outright instead of simply being granted the right to stable your horse here ... apparently for as long as you choose, however inconvenient it might be to me!’
She blushed lightly and rather delightfully.
‘Oh, I’m sure Mrs. Edgerley didn’t mean you to get that impression, Sir Luke,’ she said softly and clearly. ‘She has known me very nearly all my life and not unnaturally she takes a kind of interest in me, but when you arrived here yesterday I’m sure it was a very happy day for her. You are a Charnock, and there have been Charnocks at Wroxford ever since the house was converted to a domestic dwelling house.’
‘Oh, really?’ he returned very drily. ‘And does the continuation of the line of Charnock mean as much to you as it does to Mrs. Edgerley?’
She glanced down demurely at the map spread out in front of him.
‘Almost as much,’ she admitted with some truth.
He crushed out his cigarette in the ash-tray, stood up, and started to pace up and down amongst the litter he had created, dispersing it like blown leaves and apparently indifferent to the fact that certain legal-looking documents suffered in the process.
‘You deceived me!’ he declared. ‘You deceived me quite deliberately, and for no other reason that I can think of than that it amused you to do so. I mistook you for some sort of a housemaid, and you didn’t even utter a squeak of protest! Why, you even delivered my message to Horton, with the result that he somewhat belatedly attended to it and at least my dinner-jacket had been deprived of its creases by the time I put it on last night.’
‘I’m glad of that,’ she remarked, in the same demure tone.
‘Are you?’ He stared hard at her, and she received the impression that he really was annoyed, but there was some other emotion as well as annoyance that was contesting for pride of place in the armoury of his emotions. ‘And if you couldn’t have got Horton to press my dinner-jacket would you have done it yourself?’
‘I might.’
‘Did you perform services for Sir James as a return for his
somewhat amazing generosity?’
This time she flushed angrily.
‘I never asked Sir James for anything,’ she assured Sir James’s nephew. ‘To me he was always kindness and goodness itself, and I can never be sufficiently grateful for all that he did do for me. But if you ask me why he did it, then I can’t tell you! It has always been a bit of a mystery to me, although I believe he had a particular affection for my father, who was the son of an old friend, and when he died - my father, I mean - and my mother was also dead, Sir James and Lady Charnock took me to live with them. Lady Charnock, as you know, has been dead for a good many years, and I expect Sir James was grateful for - for a certain amount of company after she died.’
‘Meaning you?’ Sir Luke inquired bluntly.
‘Well - er - yes.’ Her extraordinarily dark blue eyes peeped at him with a mixture of surprise and suspicion, while the morning sunlight discovered slightly astonishing burnished lights in her shapely cap of soft dark hair. ‘We’re talking about me, aren’t we?’
‘And your name is Melanie Grainger?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you and Sir James were close friends? Bosom friends?’
She frowned again.
‘I don’t know what you mean by that, but I suppose we admired one another, or I certainly admired him. I think he was quite fond of me, and as he’d never had any children or grandchildren of his own I suppose I was quite a novelty. Also we shared lots of interests. We went bird-watching together in the days when he was more active, and we also went fishing together. He told me the books I should read, and he also saw that I read them, and he encouraged me to play the piano.’
‘Ah, the piano!’ Sir Luke exclaimed, and his black brows became positively bent. ‘We’ll come b
ack to that later! But the thing I’d like to have explained to me at the moment is the reason why I never saw you here when I came on occasional visits. They were very occasional, because at that time my home was in America, and it was only while I was at school at Eton that I had a chance to see my uncle and aunt.’
‘I suppose it was because I was away at school too.’ Her dark blue gaze rested on him, and she tried to picture him as a schoolboy visiting Wroxford, a schoolboy who must have been a good many years older than she was - since he was now obviously in his middle thirties and she was not yet twenty-three. Which no doubt accounted for the fact that they had never met. ‘Although I think, if you don’t mind my saying so, that your schooldays were slightly before mine,’ she added with a spark of slightly malicious humour.
His lips tightened unappreciatively.
‘I’m still young enough to remember Horton enjoying convivial evenings in his pantry - with a young underhousemaid, I believe she was at the time! - and Mrs. Edgerley inspecting the backs of my ears before I was allowed to go to bed when she did duty for Mrs. Appleby, who was a nurse here for years.’ His eyes, that were almost exactly the colour of Indian ink, echoed a little of her malice. ‘You don’t go back as far as that, do you, Miss Grainger? I’ll bet you’ve never even heard of Mrs. Appleby!’
Melanie admitted as much.
‘Then you don’t know everything about Wroxford Priory, because she was an institution if ever there was one!’
He walked to the far end of the room, looked out through the French window at the smiling prospect of well-cared-for lawns and neatly trimmed box hedges, and then returned to her and confronted her as if he was a judge.
‘Why did you let yourself be turned out of your room last night?’ he demanded.
She looked surprised, for it hadn’t occurred to her that he would take this attitude to her eviction.
‘Oh, that,’ she said. ‘That was nothing.’
‘But it was your room for years, and it must have been a bit of a shock to find you were being thrust out?’