Lesley brushed her thoughts away impatiently, put the cover on her typewriter and picked up her yellow sweater. ‘There had been a high wind all day, and though it was very sunny, it might be a bit chilly on the cliffs.
‘Lesley.’ Blake Defontaine stood in the doorway, looking across at her with those cold repellent handsome eyes of his. Lesley’s own eyes widened slightly. Odd for him to use her Christian name. Usually he was formality itself. Always ‘Miss ... Trevendone’ with that hesitation between the two words that even now left her feeling uneasy. As if he knew she had no claim to the name, and was mentally accusing her.
‘Yes, Mr. Defontaine.’ Formality there too. She might think of him as Blake and sometimes as ‘the slave-master ‘, but ta his face it was always formality.
‘You have a visitor,’ he said coolly, and stood aside to let a squarely built fair young man follow him into the room.
‘Steve!’
‘Lesley!’
They moved instinctively towards each other, met in the middle of the room where Steve’s arms went round her in a bearlike hug.
‘Les, it’s seemed like years,’ he said, kissing her again and again.
Lesley managed to release herself. ‘Steve, it must be telepathy! I’ve been thinking about you tonight, and now here you are, though I didn’t expect you for weeks. Surely the party isn’t coming till June?’
‘I decided I couldn’t wait any longer,’ he grinned. ‘Oh, Les, I’ve missed you.’ He would have begun to kiss her again, but Lesley drew back.
‘Steve, this is Mr. Defontaine. I told you in my letters that I’m working as his secretary.’
‘It’s a bit on the late side to be still working, isn’t it?’ Steve’s blue eyes were faintly hostile as he turned to nod to Blake. Lesley had always thought of Steve as tall and broad, but beside Blake he looked almost a boy.
‘We work all hours here,’ Defontaine returned, giving Steve an assessing stare. ‘Actually I think Miss Trevendone has just finished work now. Where are you staying, Mr. ... er ... Wentworth, isn’t it?’
He was being, as Steve was to remark later, a Limey at his worst.
‘Les said there was a hotel set-up here,’ Steve said bluntly. ‘I’d thought of getting a room here.’
‘I’m afraid the hotel is completely booked, isn’t it, Miss Trevendone?’ Blake said, with no regret whatever in his voice.
‘Yes, Steve, I’m afraid it is,’ Lesley looked rather embarrassed, for Steve was staring at her in a puzzled fashion. This wasn’t Australian hospitality. She could read the expression in his eyes and knew what he was thinking.
And now it was Blake Defontaine’s turn to be blunt. ‘Mrs. Trevendone is very old and though she had extended her hospitality to Miss Trevendone and the twins, in the old Manor, I don’t think Miss Trevendone would care to impose on her further.’
‘No, no,’ Lesley said hastily, her face flaming. How could she think of asking the Trevendones to entertain one of her friends when she herself was an impostor? Oh, why hadn’t Steve written to say he was arriving earlier than the other life guards?
‘We’ll get you a room at the King’s Arms in St Benga Town, Steve. It’s only three miles away and Mr. and Mrs. Cleaver who run it are very pleasant people.’
‘Quite a good idea,’ said Defontaine blandly. ‘I suggest you ring the Cleavers up, Miss Trevendone, and then you’ll be able to run your friend down in your car.’
He went out and Steve opened his mouth to say something uncomplimentary, but Lesley put a slender hand up to his lips to restrain him. ‘Wait till we get up to my car, Steve, and I’ll explain,’ she said hurriedly. ‘There was a lot I couldn’t write.’
And indeed why should she? It was Steve who had broken with her in his first anger at her leaving Australia with the twins, and the distance and the weeks of separation and all that had happened had created a gulf which couldn’t be bridged in five minutes.
Mrs. Cleaver had a vacant room and she would reserve a table for dinner for two. Lesley suggested that Steve should leave his bags in the porch of the Lodge where they could pick them up when she drove down. Then she took him up the drive across the garden and into the courtyard. He stood staring at the pseudo-Elizabethan front of the new Manor and shrugged. ‘Quite a place, isn’t it, Les? But no room for a visitor from Down Under!’
‘Steve, it’s terrifically popular. People come year after year, and there just isn’t one vacant room. After all, I’m the receptionist, so I really do know.’
‘You seem to be running the place, if you ask me...’ His voice changed. ‘Why, if it isn’t Rick! Say, old chum, I’m real glad to see you, too right I am!’
It was Rick, with Dingo on the lead, who had just walked round into the courtyard. The puppy, of course, set up his usual chorus of excited welcome and in desperation Lesley drew Steve away from the front of the hotel and round to the old Manor in the stable yard of which her Mini was parked.
Rick followed, declaring as soon as he heard that Steve was booked in at the King’s Arms that he was coming too.
.’Where’s Rita?’ Lesley asked, once they were out of earshot of the new Manor.
‘She’s rushed to do her face and hair,’ Rick said laconically. ‘The slave-master phoned up to say Steve had arrived and that Les was taking him down to St Benga Town in the Mini. It seems the limit that we can’t put Steve up here in our own place, Les,’ he finished in some disgust.
Lesley was busy trying to puzzle out why Blake should have bothered to phone up to the twins of Steve’s arrival. It almost seemed as if he was ensuring that they should accompany her when she drove Steve down to the King’s Arms.
She said almost absently, ‘Rick darling, it’s still old Mrs. Trevendone’s house in theory at least, and she is very old. We can’t expect her to entertain any more strangers ... and the hotel is full.’
Ricky frowned. ‘I suppose you’re right, but I don’t like it. Steve coming all this way and our not offering him hospitality. We’re still Aussies and always will be.’
‘Never mind about that,’ Steve smiled, putting a careless arm round the boy’s shoulder. ‘But what’s this slave-master caper? Some ye olde English custom?’
Ricky rushed in with full explanations of their arrival in England, their two unfortunate encounters with Blake, their final coming to the Manor and eventually what they had found out as to the true situation.
‘What a load of old rubbish!’ ejaculated Steve indignantly. ‘He can’t be the owner of all this. And if he is, why should you three stay slaving for him?’
Kicky gave a little grimace. ‘Well, actually Rita and I don’t do much slaving. It’s Les who does that. She says she’s paying for our keep while we’re here. As it happens,’ he finished with elaborate carelessness, ‘it suits us to stay here, at least for the rest of the summer.’
‘Why? ‘Steve asked bluntly, and his eyes were on Lesley. Was it just while he was here? they seemed to be asking.
Ricky was only too anxious to explain. ‘I’ve become a member of a group—guitarist and vocalist, just at week-ends. Dominic told me yesterday that he hadn’t any idea we were so good...’
‘Dominic?’ Lesley’s eyebrows rose. ‘Has he heard you?’
Rick nodded. ‘Yes, he and Sorrel were at the discotheque on Sunday night, and-he says they’re coming again this weekend. Dominic says he’s going to recommend it to some of the hotel visitors.
‘Oh, I know,’ he added hastily as he saw Lesley was going to speak, ‘that most of the people here are fuddy-duddies who come down here to get away from it all, but we do get the odd young person or so who could be interested. Not that we need to do anything to pull in the crowds. They’re there, especially at the weekends.’
‘He has a good line in sales talk, hasn’t he, Steve?’ Lesley laughed, but she was thinking, Sorrel and Dominic! What exactly was the dark girl up to now? She had never brought up again the subject she had once mentioned to Lesley—that Blake might have in mind a�
��match between herself and Dominic. She had warned Lesley off ... and she was perhaps now consolidating her own position with Dominic. Though why she should do that when she was going to marry Blake wasn’t very clear to Lesley. Was she the sort of girl who must have more than one man in her life? If so, it occurred to Lesley that she had chosen one of them badly. Blake Defontaine wasn’t the sort to stand for that. Unless he too... But Lesley closed her mind to that memory as she always did when it came to her. He had never referred to that kiss, probably had never given it a second thought, and that was how she too should treat it.
‘Les, you and I must go and investigate this night spot,’ Steve was saying. ‘I’d begun to wonder what sort of dump I’d arrived in.’ And he made a disparaging gesture at the old Manor lying sleepily in the evening sunshine.
‘Rick, if Rita is going to be much longer, we can’t wait. Mrs. Cleaver will want to serve dinner spot on.’
Fortunately the girl came running out of the front door just then. She had changed into a pale pink trouser suit with a Victorian type blouse in white and though she was rather overdressed for the occasion, she certainly looked very pretty and ‘with it ‘.
Steve smiled broadly. ‘Why, if it isn’t my favourite girlfriend all growing up!’ he exclaimed.
She rushed towards him, putting her arms round his neck and kissing him. Steve released himself. ‘Give me time,’ he ejaculated in mock terror. ‘I haven’t got used to the permissive society yet.’
Rita blushed. ‘I’m sorry, but oh, Steve, I’m so glad to see you, to hear an Aussie voice. These Limeys...’ and she began one of her clever imitations, this, time of Blake, who was frequently the target of her venom.
‘Oh, that’s the guy who owns the stately home,’ Steve guessed. ‘The slave-master, Rick called him. Not been trying any of his tricks on you, has he, Rita? ‘
She shook her dark head. ‘No, on the whole he leaves me alone. “You’re your sister’s responsibility,” he said to me once, “and God help her.” No, it’s Les he tries his tricks on. I believe she’s frightened of him. She jumps to it when he cracks his whip. Even Sorrel says so.’
‘Rita, you’re just being silly,’ Lesley put in, her face disturbed. ‘Get in if you’re coming with us.’ The girl did so, and Lesley switched on, crashing the gears as she raced down the drive. She hoped to goodness there would be no sign of Blake when they stopped to pick up Steve’s bags, and luckily there wasn’t.
She could hear the twins telling Steve about the Lodge, and the laboratory beside it, both of which he had already seen. At least they were saving her a great deal of explanation to Steve. Although when she came to think about it, what was there to explain except to say that she was doing a job while she waited for the twins to settle down in their new life with their family in Cornwall?
They were now back to the all-absorbing subject of the discotheque at Penpethic Harbour and already they had arranged to have dinner at the King’s Arms as quickly as possible and then run down to the old cinema to have coffee or drinks.
‘Officially we’re closed tonight, but some of the boys will be around practising,’ Ricky promised.
Steve managed to say to Lesley, ‘I’d rather have had you to myself tonight, but as the twins are with us and look like staying, we may as well go down to this disco place.’
Lesley agreed, and if the truth be told was grateful that the twins had decided to stay. ‘I’ve only been twice myself. Both times it was packed out. They really are good—no getting away from it. But I just don’t know...’
Once again, it was a wakeful night for Lesley. The lovely evening had lengthened into the blue and amethyst shadows of a tranquil twilight, and even now it was not really dark.
It was a night to be thinking of love, but her thoughts were not really on Steve, although his manner of saying goodnight to her had made it only too clear that he had come to Cornwall with the intention of asking her to go back with him to Australia as his wife, at the end of the summer. There had been messages from ‘Mum’ and ‘Dad’ and...
Lesley pushed away that problem. It was Rick’s which was worrying her. During the past few weeks she had tried to put it aside, hoping against hope that the craze would subside. She had already met Tim Drage, the man who was running the discotheque, a young Cornishman who had agreeably surprised her by his steadiness and good sense. But tonight he had buttonholed her, asking her bluntly whether she was ‘for’ or ‘against.’
Lesley, taken unawares, had pretended that she didn’t know what he meant. He had said, staring at her gravely, ‘I’m absolutely convinced that Ricky has a big future as a pop singer. He’s the best thing that’s happened to me since I went into management. He’s very young, of course, ‘and he has a long way to go. He’s told me a bit about this Trevendone inheritance. Is that what you have in mind for him, running that hotel, getting him trained in hotel management, I mean?’
That was the last tiling, to be truthful, that Lesley had ever contemplated. She had come to Cornwall, starry-eyed, wanting nothing more than to see Ricky claim his romantic inheritance. But the truth was that there was no inheritance as she had imagined it ... and if there had been she very much feared Ricky wouldn’t have been very interested. He was staying down here because he had been made the vocalist in Tim Drage’s group at Penpethic Harbour. He had told Steve that, and Lesley was sadly aware that it was true.
Rita! Lesley was worrying about Rita too, though she didn’t know why. Sometimes the girl defied Blake and there was a row, but for the most part she kept out of his way, attended her commercial course at the technical institute and did a minimum amount of homework. Only with Sorrel Lang and the horses did she show any enthusiasm.
Tonight she had been more like her old self. That was probably because Steve had arrived, bringing with him a breath of the old life and of their own country. Rita, thought Lesley, would go back to Australia tomorrow without the slightest sigh of regret. But would she leave if Ricky stayed on in England? And what about Lesley herself?
The scents of the sweet early summer night drifted into the room as Lesley turned back to her bed. What indeed was she going to do?
Those lovely days of May wore on and sea pinks and yellow vetches on the cliffs blazed with colour and faded. In the hedgerows campion, white and pink valerian, Queen Anne’s lace and a host of wild flowers whose names Lesley never knew bloomed in colour and delicate beauty.
The changing sea, sometimes turquoise, sometimes heavenly blue, sometimes, though rarely during this lovely month, a dull pewter, but always with its heavy white embroidery of surf and spray.
The hotel was completely booked, its elegant and unhurried service moving smoothly from day to day. Lesley’s work at the reception desk and in the little accounts office, relieved from time to time by Dominic and more often by Jennifer, was pleasant and far from onerous. But it seemed that Blake Defontaine’s demands on her time could never be satisfied. It was as if he was unwilling to allow her ever to leave the little office off his research lab where she worked for him.
Steve, with time on his hands before his party arrived from Australia, waxed angry and indignant with what he, imitating the twins, called the slave-master’s slave-driving.
Lesley placated him as best she could and gave him every moment of her spare time. They swam and surfed together, sunbathed among the rocks on the private beach below the hotel, strolled on the soft springy turf of the downs, danced at the disco at Penpethic Harbour, sometimes drove further afield to dine at one or other of the famous eating places on the coast or drove in the Mini to some of the legendary beauty spots of Cornwall which Lesley herself had not seen till now. By tacit agreement between them, the twins were almost always excluded from their meetings, and while Steve looked very very-happy, Lesley became more fine-drawn and tense as the month came to its close.
She knew quite well that so far as she was concerned the breaking point was very near and she couldn’t keep up the pace much longer. But of course th
e one person at Trevendone who never missed anything was all too well aware of the situation.
‘When does that Australian start the demonstrations of surfing and life-saving he’s supposed to be here for?’ Blake enquired one evening as Lesley covered her machine in the little office next to his lab.
Lesley swallowed, tense as ever whenever he addressed her directly on something unconnected with work. There was a dark look on his face, but as usual since that episode under the Kissing Trees she avoided his glance though she was all too conscious of it,
‘The group arrive next week,’ she said briefly.
‘And what are you doing tonight?’ he asked, and it seemed to her that half the Arctic Ocean was in his voice.
‘I’m going to the reception desk to take over from Jennifer,’ she said quietly. Her brow was pleated slightly. She had had a headache most of the day and it had gradually become worse.
‘You’re doing nothing of the sort,’ he said grimly. ‘How much longer do you think you can go on like this, burning the candle at both ends? You didn’t come in till three o’clock this rooming and you were on duty again at the desk at eight o’clock.’
The scowl on his face made her wince, and she was very near to tears, but she struggled to hold them back. ‘What I do in my spare time is no concern of yours, Mr. Defontaine,’ she told him defiantly.
‘True enough,’ he conceded. ‘But what does concern me is your undertaking to do the job you took on here efficiently till the beginning of October. I had your promise, remember. And at the time I thought you were a woman of your word.’
She shot him a quick glance. How brutal he was, and his expression seemed to suggest that he could think up much crueller things than those he had already said.
The Girl From Over the Sea Page 15