Bird of Prey (2 page)

“She knows you’re coming, I suppose?” he asked doubtfully after a little while.

“Well, no, not exactly,” Caroline admitted. “But she’s a sort of cousin of mine, so I expect she won’t mind.”

“Hum. Thought you couldn’t have been expected,” he said thoughtfully. “Usually she sends down one of her own cars for anyone who’s coming—even new maids,” he ended. “But no doubt you’ll be lucky and find her at home.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Oh, just that Mrs. Brant’s spent most of the summer abroad and that the house was shut up. I don’t know if she’s back yet.”

“Oh no,” Caroline cried. “It can’t possibly be! You see—” She stopped. She had been about to say that Grace couldn’t possibly be away from home—not when she, Caroline, needed a job so badly.

She sank back in her seat, noting vaguely that a strong breeze was blowing and that the trees along their route were tossing their branches restlessly.

For the first time she paused to consider how Grace would receive her—that was, should she have returned from abroad. Now she was conscious of being shabby and very much the poor relation.

There flashed through her mind the one occasion when she had met Grace. She had seemed to light up that small terraced house near the Thames with her beauty and the elegance of her clothes. It had been her scent Caroline had remembered best; a deep, musky, oriental sort of tang, not pleasing to the nostrils of a child. Caroline had wrinkled her nose at it, but somehow it had seemed to pervade the house for days afterwards. Now she knew that it must have been fabulously expensive, possibly especially blended for Grace’s exclusive use.

“Well, here we are,” the taxi had turned into a short tunnel-like drive between clipped yew trees at the end of which Caroline, straining her eyes, could make out a dark house. As they stopped before the door she gazed at the sprawling, single-storied stone house, her heart sinking as she saw that it was wrapped in darkness.

She scrabbled in her bag for the coins for her fare. “If there’s no one here I’ll take you back to the station,” the driver offered as she paid him.

“I can’t afford the fare back to London. That’s all I have,” Caroline told him tremulously. How mad she had been to set out on this journey without making sure that Grace would at least be at home!

Then, magically, under her startled and grateful eyes, a dim light shone in one of the rooms and Caroline’s spirits soared. “It’s all right,” she cried excitedly, “ she must have come back.”

She grabbed her case and ran with it towards the door, knocking energetically as the taxi swung around and disappeared from sight.

She waited, knocked again and waited, but no one came to open to her. Perhaps the sound of the wind sighing through the trees and the creaking of the branches made it difficult for them to hear her! She moved to where she had seen the lighted window and peered through the small leaded panes. Inside a fire flickered and in the comfortably furnished room with its soft carpet, its low easy chairs and occasional tables, she saw a young man seated at a grand piano playing softly by the light of a tall rose-shaded lamp beside his piano stool. He was playing some classical music. What would it be? Mozart, she surmised, but the strong breeze made it difficult for her to hear and she could not be sure.

She tapped and waited, peering through the window, but he played on serenely. He was a long-backed, bearded, thin young man with fair hair; Caroline’s idea of a famous concert pianist.

She shivered with cold and drew her thin coat closer about her, then knocked rather louder. Abruptly the music stopped with a crash of his hands upon the keys: he swung around with a startled expression and fixed his eyes upon her, where her pale face was peering through the window.

He was tall all right, she thought vaguely as he crossed the room with long strides of his thin legs and stood behind the window staring back at her. For a long moment they regarded each other, then he pantomimed that she should go towards the door and she scurried off.

She waited outside, shivering now, and in a few moments the door was opened. Inside stood the tall, bearded, thin young man. “Well?” he asked.

“I—Is Mrs. Brant in?” quavered Caroline.

“Why? Do you want to see her?” he asked, surveying Caroline.

It was clear that she had made a bad impression and she blurted out, “I’m Caroline Downes, her cousin, and I’ve come from London and—”

His expression changed. “Well, come in, then!” He issued the invitation without particular enthusiasm, but Caroline was too glad to find herself in the hall, away from the searching icy wind, to care how he felt about her.

He regarded her thoughtfully. “Not Caroline Downes, Laura Downes’ daughter?”

“Yes,” she told him, returning his glance with equal interest. Whoever he was he knew about her mother, and that at least was an introduction. She searched her memory concerning the last time she had seen Grace. Surely this young man resembled her! Then suddenly she knew who he was—this must be Cecil Perdue, Grace’s brother.

He showed the way across the hall and they entered that cosy room into which she had peered only a few moments before.

“My—my case—it’s outside. I suppose it’ll be all right?” Caroline asked slightly anxiously as he bade her be seated.

“Case? You mean you’ve come to stay?”

“Well, I don’t know,” Caroline admitted. “You see—”

He waited, without particular interest, while Caroline found herself stammering out an explanation of why she was here, disguising as best she could the fact that Aunt Muriel and Uncle Trevor had decided to get rid of her at last. “They thought it would be an excellent idea if I could be governess to Grace’s little boy,” Caroline told him with as great an air of confidence as she could assume. “It would be a change for me, you understand, and I was anxious to get right away from London for a while. ”

He was gazing thoughtfully into the fire, rubbing his long, thin fingers together, and she could not tell how much of this story he really believed. “All I know is that Grace isn’t expecting you,” he said at last. “I’m sure she’d have spoken of it otherwise. This house belongs to her, not to me, so I’ve no say in whether you may stay or not. It was left to her by Paul Brant, along with other things,” he waved his hand vaguely at the antique pieces that filled the room.

There seemed nothing much she could reply to this, so after a moment she said “Oh!”

“Tell you what, Grace has a cold and has gone off to bed early, but I’ll speak to her about you, if you wish, and ask if you may stay. As to being governess to Robin, I don’t know what the position is, although as far as I know he has someone at present. Though heaven knows, no one stops very long with Robin—not that I blame them.”

He disappeared from the room and Caroline sat staring at the fire, grateful for the cosy, glowing warmth after the blustery cold of the world outside and the fatigues of her journey. Grace would let her stay, of course, she told herself reassuringly as, in spite of her efforts, she felt her eyelids droop. All she wanted was to be allowed to stay here by the fire and not to be asked to move again until she had gathered her resources once more.

He came back shortly, looking relieved as though he had cast off a problem. “Grace is coming down to see you herself,” he told her. Then, as though relinquishing the situation, he moved again to the piano and let his fingers slide softly across the keys. He was improvising now, she surmised, his mind detached from her and her problems, his long white fingers moved about the keyboard while his eyes were fixed upon something far away. He was a true musician, Caroline was thinking vaguely. He did not merely play the piano, as some did: instead, he seemed part of the instrument, as if he and it were one, and he were listening to a message from it that no one but he could hear.

In a few minutes the door was flung open and Grace entered. Immediately Caroline was wide awake. The impact of this beautiful woman was fantastic: her presence seemed to fill the room, reducing Cecil and Caroline to mere nonentities.

Her raven hair hung down her back in a shimmering cloud and her brilliant blue eyes sparkled under strong dark brows which gave character to a face that would otherwise have been too perfectly beautiful. She was dressed in a filmy apricot-coloured

negligee that floated out behind her as she swept into the room, and even the fact that she held a snowy handkerchief to her nose could not detract from the stunning effect of her beauty and her presence.

She was also irritated and impatient, Caroline could not but know instantly as she began: “Caroline Downes, aren’t you? I shouldn’t have known you, but then it’s several years since I last saw you and you’ve grown up in that time. But what are you doing here?”

“I—I wondered if perhaps you might have a vacancy,” Caroline began in a small voice, a presentiment that her trip had been in vain stealing chillingly into her bones.

“A vacancy? Employment, you mean?” Grace enquired frowningly.

“Well, yes,” Caroline began desperately. She simply could not tell this magnificent relation of hers that she had listened in on a conversation between her aunt and uncle during which they had agreed to get rid of her. “You see—”

“Yes?” Grace raised her strong dark brows. “Well, do go on. I’ve a horrid cold and don’t feel like staying up all night.”

“You see—” Caroline began again. Then as inspiration struck her, she went on hurriedly, “Now that I’m grown up, you see, I don’t want to be a burden to Uncle Trevor and Aunt Muriel. They’ve already done more than enough for me, and—well, I thought I’d like—”

“You’d like to be independent, perhaps,” Grace ended a little dryly.

“Yes, exactly,” Caroline told her eagerly. “I’d like to get a position; stand on my own two feet, if you know what I mean?”

“So you decided that Lynebeck would be the best place in which to stand on your own two feet? You were optimistic, because this is hardly a centre of employment.”

“I thought perhaps that you—”

“That I’d have a job for you?” Grace ended. “And just exactly what sort of a job had you in mind?”

“Well—there’s Robin,” Caroline faltered, held hypnotically by those brilliant eyes.

“Really, Caroline!” Grace drummed her fingertips on a marquetry antique occasional table that stood near her chair. “Did you really

think I’d employ someone as young as you are and as inexperienced to take care of my only son? Robin’s not an ordinary child by any means. Not just anyone will do at all. Anyway, at the moment I’ve an excellent woman, Mrs. Wood, much older than you and with good qualifications. She’s been nursery governess to some of the best families. I’m delighted to have her and wouldn’t dream of letting her go.”

“Oh!” was all Caroline could find to say. She was groping for words in which to say that she would settle for any sort of job, when in the lengthening silence Cecil spoke.

He played a soft but compelling chord on the piano, as though gently to draw their attention to him, then said, “When did you last have something to eat?”

“Really, Cecil!” Grace protested. “And do stop playing for an instant. It’s quite distracting when I’m trying to iron this thing out with Caroline.”

He stood up, tall and thin and faintly abstracted in the low-ceilinged room. “It’s all settled, isn’t it? Caroline has asked for the position of governess to Robin and you’ve told her that it’s already filled. If she’s travelled from London today she must now have something to eat. I suppose you did travel from London today?” he inquired of Caroline.

She nodded and Grace said irritably, “Of course she came today. What on earth would she do wandering around the wilds of Cumberland on her own? And as for needing something to eat—there are restaurant cars on the trains, surely, on such long trips.”

Cecil’s eyes rested on Caroline as she sat hunched upon the sofa looking pale and wan.

Vaguely aware of the impression she was giving, Caroline pulled herself together and sat upright. “Of course I had something to eat!” she told Grace in a voice that she realized was just a shade too loud. No need to say that what she had had to eat were sandwiches, or to mention how many hours ago it had been.

“Are you positive?” Cecil asked in his smooth, quiet tones.

“Of course she’s positive,” Grace replied for her. “I’m sorry, Caroline, but I’ve absolutely no position here for you. I do need a scullerymaid, but of course it would be utterly impossible to employ one of the family for such work. It would only be embarrassing for both of us—and at any rate I’m quite sure you wouldn’t consider it

for a moment.”

“No, no, of course not!” Caroline murmured. Not for worlds would she have let Grace know how she would have welcomed the job. She stood up. “I’d better be getting back,” she said as calmly as she could manage.

She was conscious of a burning resentment, a feeling she knew to be quite unjust. It was not Grace’s fault she had landed herself in this predicament. No, it was due to her own impulsiveness, darting off on this wild-goose chase to the north, without as much as a thought for how disastrously it might turn out.

Grace rose too, relief obvious in her attitude. “I’m sure you won’t mind if I don’t see you off,” she remarked, her manner affable, now that Caroline was on the point of leaving. “But I’d better get back to bed. I’ve a dreadful cold. You’ll understand how positively foul I feel.” She shook hands, wished Caroline a pleasant journey and as if in a dream—or in a nightmare—Caroline watched her cousin waft from the room, her negligee floating behind her again.