Lakeland Lily

by Freda Lightfoot

  Power. That was what Marcus enjoyed, nay, thirsted for. More and more power. He certainly could not tolerate overprotective mamas interfering with his life, which was, in his opinion, very nearly perfect. He never relinquished a prize once he had won it. And there were other prizes that he had long had his eye on.

  Selene smiled, as if reading his thoughts. Reclining naked upon the silk coverlet she gazed adoringly up at him out of kohl-lined eyes, hoping she resembled one of the heroines in the Ethel M. Dell novels she read so avidly. She certainly had the figure for it. Nice girls, of course, didn’t have bosoms. But then, Selene did not consider herself a nice girl. She’d shingled her hair, crimsoned her wide mouth, even pencilled her eyebrows. She was a vamp, wasn’t she? Much more fun.

  ‘We’ve just been honoured by a visit from your mother,’ Marcus informed her. ‘She has grown strangely protective of your virtue lately.’

  This so amused them both that they felt bound to devise a silly game where Selene dressed as a child in long stockings and garters and ran around the bedroom whimpering and pleading for him to be a good daddy to her, while Marcus chivvied and chastised her, telling her to run faster, till eventually she allowed him to catch her and make her be a good girl.

  Later, as they lay damply entwined, he quietly outlined his plans. ‘I think we have been patient long enough, don’t you, my sweet?’

  ‘Indeed I do. Have you found someone?’

  ‘Everything is in place, my dear. It needs only my word.’

  ‘Good,’ Selene inserted a cigarette into a long, tortoise-shell holder. Marcus lit it, and one for himself.

  ‘Your stupid brother confessed to the arson, silly oaf.’

  Selene frowned. ‘I didn’t even know that he’d visited the Lakeland Lily that night. Drunken fool!’

  ‘We certainly deserve our pleasantly indolent life in the Lakes.’

  ‘Otherwise what was the war in aid of, if we achieve no reward for our effort?’ Selene agreed, smiling.

  ‘Quite.’ He rubbed his hand over her hot skin and squeezed one breast, hard, making her close her eyes in ecstasy. ‘I believe it’s time for us to take possession of what is rightfully ours, now they are both fat with success. First one and then the other.’

  ‘For my revenge.’

  ‘And your inheritance.’

  ‘Quite.’

  ‘But softly.’ He nuzzled into her soft flesh with his mouth, then pushed open her legs, preparing to enjoy her again. ‘So no one hears us retrieve it.’

  The very next morning Marcus Kirkby called upon Nathan and made an offer to buy him out, lock, stock and barrel. He pointed out that he already owned a substantial part of the Steamship Company, having secretly acquired the remaining shares still held by Captain Swinbourne’s widowed sister, who had been more than eager to get her hands on some ready cash.

  Marcus told Nathan he had always held a longing to spend his declining years in the Lake District. How he was a romantic at heart, seeking only a business to amuse him, something to ‘play with’ now that he had made his fortune.

  ‘Highly diverting, what? That I, Marcus Kirkby, businessman and entrepreneur, should find myself untroubled about making more money.’ He laughed, a deep booming sound that held no mirth in it. ‘I have all that I need and my offer, you will admit, is generous.’

  Nathan made no comment. The news that Marcus Kirkby owned such a large share in the company had come as a shock. Drat Swinbourne! A cheat even in his business deals.

  With commendable restraint he showed Kirkby the door. The Steamship Company, he declared unambiguously, was not, and never would be, for sale.

  ‘Pity,’ said Kirkby, smiling while inwardly cursing. Had he mistaken Monroe’s character? He’d thought the man a rogue, ready enough to turn in a nice fat profit, without favour or sentiment. ‘Do think about it, at least. It wouldn’t do for you to suffer regrets later.’

  ‘There will be no regrets, and no question of a sale. The boats are my life as well as my livelihood.’

  ‘But your profits are down.’

  Nathan’s eyes narrowed. ‘Who told you so?’

  ‘My dear man, any fool could guess. I have seen the queues on the pier. Lily’s exclusive little steamboats seem extremely popular.’

  ‘Then why would you wish to buy what you see as an ailing business?’

  ‘Perhaps I feel that I could take on the competition from Lakeland Lily in a more objective and businesslike manner.’

  Nathan held open the door. ‘Good day to you, sir.’

  ‘Should you change your mind, as I’m sure you will when you’ve had time to reconsider, you know where to find me.’

  Nathan had no intention of doing any such thing and followed Kirkby out on to the steps in order to tell him so. But he never quite found the words for his attention was caught by the sight of a familiar figure. He would know that Fair Isle sweater and those baggy plus fours anywhere. The man was leaning into the booking office talking to Rose, and as Nathan watched, oblivious of his recent visitor’s irritation, he saw Rose close the shutter on the little window, lock the door and, slipping her hand under the young’s man’s arm, walk briskly with him across the wooden pier.

  Seconds later Nathan too locked his office door, climbed into his Morris and drove with his foot hard down on the pedal right around the twisting road that circumnavigated Carreckwater, straight to Barwick House.

  Kirkby sat in his Daimler and watched him leave, and then instructed his chauffeur to follow.

  Lily was not in. Betty, in sorrowful tones, informed Nathan that she had gone down to Preston in search of a new engine. He declined to leave a message but felt disappointment and vague irritation as he left. He’d simply have to wait until she came back.

  Later, he wondered about the wisdom of going up to the house at all. Perhaps it was wrong to interfere. Hadn’t he tried several times before and she’d either ignored, or returned, every one of his notes? If Lily didn’t want to see what was going on, why should he care? Because he did. He cared a great deal.

  A bleak emptiness grew within him. Why couldn’t he forget her? Lily didn’t belong to him any more. Hadn’t she made that abundantly clear? She wanted to be a respectable married woman and successful businesswoman, at whatever cost to her happiness, in order to prove that she’d climbed out of the gutter.

  On second thoughts, perhaps it was just as well she hadn’t been in. Much better that he keep his nose out of her affairs. Let fate resolve the matter as it surely must, then he couldn’t be blamed if things went wrong, could he? He must try to forget her, learn to live without her. Though God knows how.

  At least no harm had been done by his visit. Betty would probably forget to mention he had even been in the neighbourhood.

  Betty did not forget. She thought Nathan Monroe real matinee idol material, with a sort of lurking danger in his face, rather like Rudolph Valentino in The Sheik. She eagerly related his visit to a startled Lily, aware her mistress feigned disinterest while drinking in every word.

  Lily, however, had other matters to concern her. Her latest acquisition had been found half sunk at its moorings, a steel plate having been bent and buckled sufficiently to permit water to flow in. Could this be another of Bertie’s drunken binges?

  He was so affronted when she accused him of it that she found herself apologising for even considering him capable of such a dreadful act.

  ‘As if I care about your bally boats!’ he said, aggrieved.

  She’d found him, as so often these days, in the conservatory. When she had finished begging his forgiveness, he returned to reading his newspaper, a half-filled glass of whisky at his elbow. It was eleven o’clock in the morning.

  ‘Aren’t you going to work on your power boat?’ she gently enquired. ‘You don’t seem to be making much progress.’ He turned a page as if he had not heard.

  ‘Bertie.’

  ‘You can’t rush such a delicate operation. It needs painstaking precision.’

&
nbsp; ‘Yes, but I would’ve thought you were eager to sail in her.’

  ‘You drive a power boat, not sail.’

  ‘Sorry. What I meant was...’

  ‘I know what you meant.’ He sighed and laid down the paper with a gesture of impatience. ‘Why must you always be checking up on me, Lily old thing. Can’t a chap take a morning off once in a while?’

  Lily glanced at the glass and at his bloodshot eyes, not quite focusing on anything so that she wondered if his reading the newspaper were a sham. She smiled brightly. ‘My mother always said the devil finds work for idle hands to do.’

  ‘Are you accusing me of being in league with the devil, Lily?’

  ‘No, I meant only that work - real work - keeps us happy and young. Don’t you think so?’ she ventured, on a note of forced brightness. ‘Better to be busy than bored, eh? And you won’t finish your boat sitting here.’

  He smiled sadly at her, as if it were all out of his hands. ‘Best for you to be busy. We all know you were brought up to work, Lily. I was not.’ He shook out the pages of his newspaper with an angry rustle and buried himself behind it once more.

  Defeated, Lily turned to go. She was almost out of the door when she heard the splinter of glass. With a cry she saw that he had hurled it to the floor. Shards of it sparkled on the green slate tiles. He could as easily have thrown it through the window, she supposed, such was the angry flush on his face.

  ‘Don’t worry.’ He was pushing past her. ‘I’ll work, damn you, since that’s all you care about. I’ll finish the dratted thing - prove I’m as good as you. I’ll build the fastest bloody power boat on this whole bally lake. You see if I don’t!’

  When he had gone, scattering pages of The Times in his wake, Lily was left with a disturbing sense of unease, wondering exactly what she had unleashed.

  Nathan was waiting for her by the folly. He knew she came that way and couldn’t help himself. He had to see her.

  The sight of him, calmly and patiently leaning against the mistletoe-cloaked stone, as if he would wait for her all day if necessary, was so unexpected it shook Lily badly.

  He was, in her opinion, quite the most handsome man in all the world. How had she imagined she could contemplate life without him? How could she hope to get him out of her system just because of her own sense of guilt over the damage she had done to the Clermont-Reads? An emotion she was beginning to see as entirely misguided in view of the way the family were determined not to help themselves in any way.

  So long as he kept his distance, she could survive. She could cope with Margot’s pettiness and Bertie’s selfish idleness. She would serve her penance for daring to enter their rarefied portals and damaging their lives. For the sake of Thomas, at least, and her own sense of justice.

  But if he touched her she would be lost. Lily knew this instinctively. As she approached he took his hands quickly from his pockets and stood up straight. He spoke her name, making her toes curl with pleasure, but she let him go no further, unleashing upon him the full power of her temper.

  ‘How dare you call at my home and pester me?’ As he opened his mouth to protest she rounded on his again. ‘No, don’t trouble to deny it. Betty told me. Nor do I want any more of your silly love notes. You promised to stay away. so please do so. Is your word meaningless?’

  With miserable satisfaction she watched the blood gradually drain from his face, his jaw tighten, eyes narrow till they were dark and forbidding. He took a step towards her and a crisp stem of bracken cracked as loud as gun-shot beneath his boot. Lily jumped.

  ‘They weren’t “love notes”, but something I reckoned you should know about.’

  She raised her eyes in disbelief.

  ‘I thought you and I had trust at least, Lily?’

  ‘All that is in the past. I never think of it now.’

  ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘No. It’s over, our ... our…’

  ‘Affair?’

  She’d start it again now, if he asked her. ‘I’m a respectable wife and mother, and businesswoman, with a reputation to consider,’ she announced.

  He gave a bitter laugh. ‘And how important that reputation is to you. Worth more than our happiness, or even honesty in a marriage.’

  Lily felt as if she were falling. She longed to deny this, yet he was right in a way. Her marriage had begun in dishonesty and fed on it until it was now a festering sore. The only saving grace in her quest for revenge had been the fact that once Bertie had been entirely sweet and charming. Now that was no longer the case, she felt she’d no right to complain but must live with the results of her own folly. Bertie needed her. And Nathan, by obsessively refusing to let her go, was only making matters worse. She told him so now.

  ‘You mustn’t keep holding on to me.’

  He looked at her almost with pity in his eyes, perhaps seeing the shine of tears in her own. His voice, when he spoke again, was gentle. ‘How could I, when you’ve made it clear that I’ve no right? I wanted only to help, Lily. I reckoned there were certain matters that you should know.’

  She wished he wouldn’t keep saying her name in that soft way that made her toes curl. ‘What sort of matters?’

  ‘What your newly reformed husband might not tell you himself.’

  For a second she was caught wrong-footed, but, Lily being Lily, she leaped at once to Bertie’s defence. ‘He might be to blame for the firing of Lakeland Lily, but he wouldn’t hurt me. We’ve made a fresh start.’

  He was staring at her with open sympathy in his eyes and she felt her iron control start to slip. If he didn’t go soon she would fall into his arms and burst into foolish tears. When he put out a hand to her, she flinched away as if scalded. ‘Leave me alone, Nathan. Get out of my life. I don’t need you.’

  ‘I think you do.’

  She shouted at him then, the old Lily, hot and fierce. ‘You’re a bloody nuisance, Nathan Monroe. And a liar.’

  ‘I’m telling you the truth.’

  ‘As you did when you denied ever having been in prison? Well, I wish you’d never come back from there, or whatever hell hole you sprang from.’ She regretted the words almost the moment they were out of her mouth, but it was too late.

  They stood in stunned silence, both breathless, as if they’d run a race or fought a battle, which in a way they had. But the anger in her was spent, and in its place had come need, sweet and dangerous.

  He was so close he was almost touching her. He looked so handsome in his dark suit, smooth and close-fitting over his perfect man’s body, and a shirt of palest cream with a cravat of navy blue silk, she noticed. Lily’s fingers itched suddenly to untie it, to peel back the shirt, and she very nearly, in that fleeting second, laughed out loud as this startling burst of desire clenched every muscle within her. If she had done so, if she had reached for him, perhaps everything might have been different. But he was speaking again and as the words penetrated, the laughter died in her throat, stillborn.

  ‘You’re the one who lies and cheats, Lily, not me. I’ve done nothing to be ashamed of. I haven’t married someone I don’t love. I haven’t set out to take revenge on anyone. But I might, damn you. I just might.’

  He was shaking her by the shoulders, almost lifting her off her feet in his fury. Then he let her go so abruptly that she lost her footing and very nearly stumbled.

  ‘If you won’t listen to advice, to hell with you! And if you want me out of your life, so be it.’ Whereupon he swung on his polished heel and strode away.

  Lily stood with one fist clenched tight against her chest, watching till he’d plunged through a thicket of willow and hazel and vanished from her sight. Then she put the hand to her cold cheeks and found them wet.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  The Lakeland Lily lay low in the water, rails and funnels brilliant white above the maroon of her hull, flag flying, a lily proudly embossed on her prow. She was a fine, neat little steamer, quick to respond to the lightest touch and easy to handle in a fractious wind. She be
gan work at ten each day and steamed for twelve hours taking passengers up and down the lake, even continuing till midnight if a private party was on board.

  Lily herself often skippered her, steering through the channels with practised ease. She’d learned to land without bumping, had become accomplished at the task and held no fear of it. Though when she’d first started she’d been perfectly hopeless, missing the pier entirely while the boatmen had laughed and shouted out to her, ‘Shall we fetch the jetty over for you?’

  Now, despite the way the dales could funnel the wind from two different angles at once, she could manage the boat well, whether it be light or dark. Lily knew she could sail out in sunshine and as easily return in thick mist, and that the light could play tricks with the eyes, presenting a mirage of hills that did not exist. But Ferryman Bob and George had trained her well and made sure of her skills.

  Now Lily had every confidence in herself. She took care to remember that there was more behind than in front of her. She could shout ‘Throw more wood on’, or ‘Send it on’, when the cruise was about to start as loudly as the rest, proud to be a skipper.

  There were other rules to follow on the lake, of course, and it was essential that they be kept. There were currents and shallows, and underwater rocks to avoid. When two vessels met they were expected to pass on the port side, altering course well in advance in order to do so. Lily had learned all of this.

  She helped to load the wood and coal in the mornings, pump out the bilges, check that everything was shipshape with ropes neatly coiled, fire buckets to hand, the correct pressure in the boiler. There was nothing she wasn’t prepared to do for the sake of her lovely boats.

  Best of all Lily liked to mingle with the passengers, taking their tickets or, as today, relaxing on the buttoned seats, hearing the swish of the water creaming behind them and enjoying listening to Ferryman Bob tell one of his many yarns. This one was about Charles Fildes who built the Fairy Queen and used to take out her boiler and engine each winter to use in a miniature locomotive in his garden. At least this was one of his true stories, related to entertain the passengers.