Bird of Prey (21 page)

For the next few minutes Caroline and Betty worked in silence, bringing order to the room. Now that the girl had shot her bolt, she was surly and resentful, and for this Caroline was grateful because it gave her a little while in which to bring order into her chaotic thoughts.

Afterwards, when he had concluded his business with Randall, she drove Dick to the station. It was an extremely uncomfortable drive: Dick maintained an aggrieved silence, which he broke only as they approached the station. All his air of boyish good-humour had evaporated and his voice was brittle, as he said abruptly, “By the way, regarding my suggestion, that we—well, that we form a partnership—I think you’d better regard it as off. On second thoughts, I think it wouldn’t work out.”

“Neither do I,” Caroline replied good-humouredly.

“Oh!” He appeared a little taken aback.

Had he really thought, she wondered a little bitterly, that she had had any intention of accepting his equivocal proposal, or his plans for a business marriage, as she mentally termed it?

“After all,” he pursued aggrievedly, “there’s a great difference between being a social secretary and a member of the domestic staff.”

“I didn’t know you were such a snob, Dick,” she replied quietly.

“I’m not a snob,” he retorted defensively. “It’s simply the fact that you deliberately set out to deceive me concerning your position at Longmere. I know I’m easy-going in lots of ways, but I’d expect my wife to be straightforward: if I couldn’t depend on you in small ways, how could I depend on you in the more important things of life?” he asked virtuously.

So underneath Dick’s brash good-humour there was a hard conventional streak, she thought wonderingly. How little she had really known him! Yet the shattering of a youthful illusion is never a pleasant thing.

She sat in the car numbly for a long moment after the train had drawn out of the platform. Dick had not even bothered to lean from the window to wave good-bye, she thought bitterly. How differently they would have parted had he still believed she held a position of some importance at Longmere!

Oh well, it was just as well to know what he was like: it was all part of growing up, she told herself wryly, as she turned out of the station yard, all part of the business of acquiring that rhinoceros skin that seemed to be necessary if one were ever to be truly mature!

CHAPTER EIGHT

CAROLINE spent most of the following day in the kitchen regions

where all was hustle in connection with the dinner party in the evening. She washed dishes and hurried upstairs and down again in obedience to Mrs. Creed’s terse instructions until eventually the bell of the main door rang as she was coming out of the big yellow and gold drawing room in which pre-dinner drinks were to be served, and Caroline had time only to disappear into the kitchen quarters as Betty crossed the hall to admit an elegant elderly lady and gentleman, the first of the guests.

From now on things would be fairly plain sailing, Caroline felt sure. All possible arrangements had been made under Mrs. Creed’s eagle-eyed supervision. The cook who had been engaged for the evening was busily clashing her pots and pans in the kitchen. Betty was admitting the guests while Randall himself was pouring predinner drinks.

She was seated at the table in the servants’ dining room, her head resting on her cupped hands as she drew a breath, thinking how wonderful it would be to go up early to her cool spacious new room, to be alone for a little while to sort out some of the tangled events of the last few days, when to her surprise Mrs. Creed approached her and said rather shortly, “The master wants you to serve drinks to the guests in the yellow and gold drawing-room. You’d better put on a white apron.”

“Oh, need I?” Caroline protested.

“I suppose you’re too grand to wear an apron,” Betty interposed angrily.

“Yes, I think you’d better,” Mrs. Creed broke in decisively. “The master would expect it.”

Why should Randall expect it? was the thought that crossed Caroline’s mind as she prepared to undertake this distasteful task. She had never worn a uniform since she had arrived at Longmere; surely he would not expect it now when she would be appearing before his guests to serve drinks! Mrs. Creed must be mistaken, she felt sure.

She was still feeling puzzled when diffidently she entered the great drawing-room, but she found that as she opened the door the guests glanced up for an instant, then, catching sight of the tiny snowy-white lace-edged apron which she had tied about her slender waist, they resumed their conversation, taking no further interest in her. It was with a curious feeling of being invisible that she crossed the room to the cabinet where Randall was mixing drinks.

He did not as much as glance at her as he placed the filled glasses on the silver tray she held in her hands. As she moved away about the room distributing them to the guests she caught the look of surprise that crossed Grace’s face for an instant before she turned her attention once more to the very handsome man beside whom she was seated. So Grace was not going to acknowledge their relationship before the rest of the guests!

As a background to the soft, low-voiced conversation came the strains of Cecil’s playing as he sat at a grand piano in one of the great bay windows. She gravitated towards him and here in this nook apart from the other guests she felt safe in Cecil’s reassuring company.

For a moment her cares seemed to slip from her shoulders as she became aware of the slow haunting melody he was playing. “What is that lovely tune?” she asked.

“I’m glad you like it,” he returned with a faint smile, “because it’s written in your honour: my very own composition, dedicated to you.” Then as his eyes took in her costume, he asked quickly, “But what on earth are you doing in that outfit?”

“I’m serving drinks here this evening,” she told him.

“Now why should Mrs. Creed have you do such a thing?” he asked, amazed. “Does Randall know?”

“Oh yes—in fact he ordered it. I’m merely getting into my true position in the household at last. ”

“But I thought Randall—” Cecil’s voice tapered off. “I must say I thought he felt very differently about you.”

She too had thought she had won some little special place in Randall’s life, Caroline was thinking bitterly. Now she knew better.

“Why should he feel anything about me?” she demanded, anger making her speak rapidly and bitterly. “A girl he picked up in a

railway station can hardly mean anything to him.”

“Don’t feel so badly about it, Caroline,” Cecil said in his low, rather melancholy tones. “I know it’s hard for you to bear it, when you’re—well, you’re in love with him, aren’t you?”

Yes, she was in love with Randall, Caroline was thinking miserably. Otherwise why should she feel it so keenly, this humiliation—this proof that she had lost the position she had thought herself to hold in his household—and perhaps even in his heart.

Cecil’s long white fingers rippled up and down the keys in a silvery tinkle and then he said, “Don’t feel too badly about this, Caroline. Perhaps you’ll look back on it as the best thing that could have happened. You see, while Randall is perhaps not exactly in love with Grace, yet I do believe she’s the only woman he could ever possibly marry. They understood each other: they’re both hard, ruthless people.”

Caroline attempted a smile as she said as lightly as she could, “I always thought it was opposites who were supposed to fall in love.”

“Not in this case,” Cecil replied thoughtfully. “Perhaps it’s that with Randall the rules don’t apply. But I’d be sorry for any woman who married him who wasn’t really a match for him. Put the idea of marriage to Randall completely out of your mind. It could never have happened, and as long as you keep the idea in your head you’re only wasting your life hoping for the impossible. Listen to this, Caroline.” Again his fingers moved over the keys in that haunting melody that had caught her attention and then changed to a rapid and merry beat. “I’ve called it the ‘Caroline Fantasia,’ “ he told her. “And I like to think it catches your .moods, sombre and gay, mature and yet very young, just as you are, Caroline. Listen, tell me what does this music say to you?”

She listened attentively, her lips slightly parted, her eyes dark and sombre in her elfin face. “It’s very lovely, of course,” she said at last, “but as to its telling me something—”

“Don’t you realize that as another man might compose a love-poem to you, I’ve written this music for you?”

“You’re not telling me you’re in love with me, Cecil, are you? Why, you’re married to your music! I suppose you’re trying to boost my ego because of this.” For an instant her fingers touched the dainty lace-edge of the tiny white apron.

“I admit that nothing and nobody in the world counts as much to me as music,” Cecil said slowly, “but still I can say with all honesty that I admire you tremendously. Your coming here to Lynebeck has been a wonderful thing for me. Perhaps we’d better put it this way—that there’s not much hope for me while Randall fills your thoughts to the exclusion of any other man. ”

“But you’re wrong. I’m not in love with Randall, why I hate him! I loathe and detest him. I think he’s the most horrible—”

But she was interrupted by a little crashing chord from Cecil. “Come, Caroline, you don’t have to pretend with me. You’re madly in love with him, and nothing you can say will alter that fact. The kind of hatred you have for him is so akin to love as makes no difference.”

She was about to deny it once more, but she halted, struck by the conviction with which Cecil spoke. “Is it so obvious, then?” she faltered. “I’d hate it if Randall were to—to know that I—”

“Don’t worry,” Cecil broke in reassuringly. “Randall isn’t likely to know. He’s too obtuse, too rough, to notice what’s going on under his very nose.” Fervently Caroline hoped that Cecil was right. How dreadful if Randall should guess that, in spite of his harshness, and especially in the face of this latest humiliation, she was still hopelessly, helplessly in love with him.

“Have you forgotten our guests?”

Caroline swung around to find herself staring into Randall’s steely eyes. “Look,” he indicated Grace, who was staring in Caroline’s direction with an angry expression, her white fingers toying with the stem of her empty glass.

Caroline flushed at the curt, terse tone of Randall’s voice, and Cecil’s hands came down upon the keys with a sharp discordant crash. Then he burst into a piece which she recognized as one of Chopin’s scherzos, playing it with great verve and rapidity.

Caroline hurried across the room towards Grace, fully expecting a rebuke: instead Grace, hardly turning her head, swept a glass from the tray, continuing her conversation uninterruptedly as she did so.

It was the same with the other guests, Caroline found. They reached glasses from the silver tray, hardly glancing at her.

When she had made sure that every guest had been supplied, there was nothing for her to do but to take her place unobtrusively near the drinks cabinet.

As she took up her stance there, Grace’s voice carried to her, raised a little as she exclaimed, “A good husband! How I loathe that expression! Can there be anything more boring than a good husband? The very words make me want to yawn. The man I marry must be unpredictable, someone who will keep my interest. You feel the same as I do about this, don’t you, Randall?”

Randall moved towards her and stood leaning on the back of her chair, and Caroline, unnoticed in her nook, waited with breath held for his reply.

“I agree it would be deadly to be married to a bore,” he replied. “On the other hand I feel it would be harrowing to be married to a woman who’s fickle: it must be disconcerting, to say the least of it, to come in unexpectedly to find your wife in another man’s arms.”

Caroline, so near to that little group and yet so far away from it, found to her amazement that as he spoke Randall’s eyes were fixed on her with an intense piercing look.

So it was to her he was referring! He had come upon her with Dick’s arm about her shoulders, his cheek close to hers and had felt that by such behaviour she had stepped out of line, forgetting her place as a servant in the household. This was the reason he had determined to teach her a lesson by making her wait upon the dinner guests.

An instant later and she knew from the expression on Grace’s face that she had intercepted and resented that glance. But immediately she gave a light laugh and with the familiarity of an old friend, said gaily, “Come, Randall, when are we going to eat? I’m simply starving!”

Hardly had she spoken than, to Caroline’s relief, dinner was announced and the guests filed out, laughing and chatting, leaving her alone in the yellow and gold drawing-room.

From then on Caroline was free and she was glad to go upstairs early for she was feeling exhausted.

It was only as she entered her room that she became aware that a storm was blowing up: a casement window which she had opened slightly that morning was now rattling violently and she hurried across the room to close it.

Slowly she undressed and got into bed, but she was unable to sleep. She lay awake, tossing and turning, her mind going over every detail of the evening. From time to time gusts of wind boomed against the windows and at the casement sounded the tapping of a branch. When next she looked there was a whiteness outside, which she knew was snow, and it crossed her mind that probably some of the guests would remain at Longmere overnight. Randall would not wish them to drive home through such a storm.