Camellia (37 page)

'Mel,' she croaked. 'Amelia Corbett,' she said as an afterthought. It was the name of a girl she'd met in Ibiza and close enough to her own that she'd remember it. 'I heard you wanted a . . .' her voice gave way again and she merely mouthed the last two words 'kitchen maid'. It was a lame excuse but the best she could think of on the spur of the moment.

'Okay, Mel. Don't try to speak if it hurts you.' His voice was gentler now, and with that the driver of the car said his goodbyes and left. 'Just nod or shake your head,' he went on. 'Are you in pain?'

Camellia shook her head.

'You've walked a long way?'

A nod.

'Well, let's get you out of those wet clothes and into a hot bath.'

Magnus took her downstairs to the basement. He ushered her into a small bathroom, handed her a towelling dressing gown, and ordered her to take off her clothes.

'You must have a hot drink and some soup before the bath,' he said. 'I don't want you passing out in here alone.'

It was bliss to take off her sodden clothes, to hug the thick warm towelling around her and by the time she'd come out again, Magnus was coming down the passage with a bowl of soup and a mug of tea on a tray.

He sat her down at a small desk in the passage and she drank down the soup greedily despite her sore throat. Magnus disappeared again but she could hear him rustling things in a room further along the passage by the bathroom. There were other voices, coming from the direction of the kitchen, a male one with a French accent and a woman's, but neither of these people looked out at her.

'I've rung the doctor and run your bath,' Magnus said, when he came out again to find she'd finished the soup. 'Don't lock the door in there just in case you pass out. I'll be waiting out here if you need me.'

Gratitude that she'd been rescued was all she felt while she was in the bath. She felt too ill to contemplate the next day, when she would need to make explanations; for now it was enough to be warm. But as she climbed out of the bath, before she could even wrap herself in a towel, she was violently sick.

It was a horrible experience. It seemed to be coming out of her nose as well as her mouth and the stench of tomato soup mingled with the earlier whisky made it even worse. Magnus came rushing in, as she was leaning over the toilet bowl, giving her no time to cover herself. He picked up the dressing gown, put it round her shoulders, and pulled her wet hair back from her face.

'The soup was clearly a mistake,' he said in that now familiar growly voice. 'I suppose you've been starving for days while you slept rough.'

She couldn't speak to tell him this wasn't so. She managed to get her arms into the dressing gown and wrap it round her naked body, while he picked up her sodden clothes one by one from the floor, holding them distastefully between thumb and forefinger.

'I don't have any time for hippies,' he said, glaring balefully at the string of love beads around her neck. 'The doctrine of hitching rides, conning food, avoiding work and numbing your mind with opiates is anathema to me. However I wouldn't turn a dog out on a night like this, especially not a sick one. You can stay here until you are better, but I do not want to find you wandering upstairs for any reason. If you have any drugs in your possession, I suggest you flush them down the lavatory now.'

Camellia was soon safe in a warm bed, piled high with extra blankets, but although she was exhausted, she still couldn't sleep, for shame and embarrassment.

Camellia felt tears roll down her cheeks as she lay there. The room felt like a prison cell. There was just one small window high up in the wall and it had bars over it. The room was bare except for a plain small chest of drawers and a single upright chair.

She had blown it again. If she had let those people in the pub call for an ambulance she'd be safe in a hospital now. Well she wasn't going to tell Magnus who she really was. Let him think she was just a dirty hippie passing through on the lookout for a handout. She'd stay until she was better, take the pills the doctor had given her, then go. She didn't need a father who was as blinkered and bigoted as him.

Chapter Thirteen

Camellia came up the steps from the basement, skirted round the side of the house, then crossed the flagstone terrace to the wide stone steps which led to the lawn.

Once down there, partially concealed by bushes, she paused to look back at Oaklands. Soon Magnus Osbourne would be summoning her and this might be her only opportunity to look around before she was thrown out.

She had been in his hotel for six days. For the first two she'd been too ill to worry any more about what he or anyone else thought of her. She vaguely remembered Magnus coming into her room along with a doctor, but once her temperature returned to normal he made no further appearances. Mrs Downes, the housekeeper, and the French chef Antoine, who looked after her, said he asked how she was daily, but Camellia felt that only meant he wanted shot of her as quickly as possible.

Even down from the basement, Camellia had felt the house's magic and beauty. Now that she was at last outside, she saw it was even more magnificent than she'd imagined.

Looking at it from this position, across the lawn in weak autumn sunshine, was to see its best aspect. Like most Georgian country houses, it had been designed with its best side facing the view. And there couldn't be a finer one in all England.

The house sat proudly at the top of a lush green rolling valley. Below was the river Avon, the canal, the viaduct and the tiny village of Limpney Stoke, where Mrs Downes lived. Beyond that the hills rose up again. She could just make out the road she'd stumbled down before getting to the pub where she was rescued.

Camellia turned to look at the house again. Virginia creeper in its full autumn fiery beauty enhanced the golden-yellow stone, but she had a feeling that whatever the season there would be other climbing plants to take its place. She knew from Mrs Downes that behind the long elegant windows to her right was the dining room, that the ones on the far left belonged to the drawing room and that the room in the middle with doors leading onto the garden was the bar.

Mrs Downes had said that two of the ten luxurious guest rooms had four-poster beds, and she'd spoken of extensive renovation in the old servants' quarters, but although Camellia had hoped for more descriptive information, none had been offered. She could only guess that it was all as beautiful as the elegant entrance hall she'd seen briefly on the night of her arrival.

As she had surmised when she arrived, it wasn't ordinary people who stayed here, but the very rich, distinguished and famous. Magnus apparently took a pride in protecting those who might not wish the media prying on them, and she'd heard that staff had been sacked in the past for being indiscreet.

The hotel also served as a country club, where members could come and drink in the bar, have a gourmet meal, wander around the grounds, or just sit in the orangery over afternoon tea.

As she stood there gazing at Oaklands, a stiff wind blowing her hair into a tangle, Camellia felt a tug at her emotions. She knew what she was thinking was ridiculous, because within minutes Magnus was going to call her in and ask her to pack her bag and go. But all the same she wished she could stay here.

Part of this feeling was due to kindly Mrs Downes. Outwardly she was tough, uncompromising, briskly efficient and shrewd, yet her hard shell was mere protection for the softness inside her.

She lived down in the village with her husband, and came in daily. Camellia reckoned she was about fifty-five, a short, tubby figure with grey neatly permed hair and thick glasses. It was she who'd brought Camellia her medicine, and a constant supply of honey and lemon, she who'd found her magazines to read and comforted her in those first two days when Camellia had felt so ill.

Camellia had stuck to the name Amelia Corbett, but she'd kept to the truth as far as possible, saying that both her parents were dead and that she'd been brought up in London. To wipe out the need to discuss the last couple of years she said she'd been travelling and working all over the continent, ending in Ibiza.

In the last couple of days since she'd been well enough to get up, she had pitched in to help down in the basement, sorting laundry, ironing, polishing silver and folding napkins. Last night she'd got all the salads ready for the dining room under Antoine's eagle eye.

Antoine was excitable and temperamental: a tall, thin man with a hangdog expression which belied his exuberant personality. Mrs Downes had confided that he was forty and that he'd been in England for twenty years, yet he apparently still put on a thick Gallic accent when called into the dining room. Down in the kitchen his accent was an extraordinary mix of London slang and West Country phrasing, with an appealing Maurice Chevalier lilt. Camellia was intrigued by him. He was a brilliant chef, and the only member of staff who lived in. His room in the basement was extremely messy and cluttered and he didn't appear to have any sort of private life. She wondered why he'd never married: he was attractive with his glossy black hair and sparkling dark eyes. It had-crossed her mind he could be gay, though nothing he said or did indicated this.

Aside from the housekeeper and chef, she'd only met one other member of staff – Sally, the girl who came in as a waitress in the evenings. But she knew there was a whole team of groundsmen, cleaners and casual staff.

'Mel!'

She looked up at the shout to see Mrs Downes beckoning to her from the bar doors.

She took one last gulp of the clean, sweet fresh air to brace herself and went on up the steps to join the housekeeper. Once she'd seen Magnus Osbourne face-to-face again she'd probably be only too anxious to leave. Mrs Downes and Antoine might think he was the wisest, fairest man in the West Country, but his hard words on her first night here were still ringing in her ears, and she wasn't anticipating any kind ones now.

'Are you feeling better?' Magnus Osbourne asked as she came into his office.

'Yes thank you, Mr Osbourne,' she said, keeping her eyes down. She didn't feel he was really interested in her health; it was more, 'I hope you're ready to push off now.' She looked up. 'You've been very kind letting me stay here. It was an awful imposition.'

The lion-like impression she'd had of this man on her first night hadn't left her. She had watched him from the basement windows in the last two days as he strode around the grounds purposefully, his fair hair blowing in the wind like a mane, his chin up, eyes scanning the distant horizon. He was a big man, perhaps six foot, with a healthy glow from working for long periods outside. She was amazed when Mrs Downes told her he was sixty-six; he had the vigour and strength of a fifty-year-old. Twenty years or so ago he must have been quite something.

'Sit down,' he said impatiently, indicating a chair by the window. His office was masculine, dark-red wallpaper, a cluttered mahogany desk, two brown leather armchairs and a filing cabinet. It overlooked the drive and the old stable block and it was rather dark. 'Now, let's have the truth about why you came here?'

His direct, straight-to-the-point approach unnerved her, as did his penetrating eyes. They were an extraordinary colour, blue predominantly, but speckled with green and brown. For a moment she thought perhaps he had somehow found out her real name.

'I didn't actually intend to come here that night,' she said truthfully. 'I was just on my way to Bath to look for a room. But I'd met someone in Ibiza who came from the West Country, who said she'd worked at a hotel called Oaklands, so I had it in mind to look for it once I was here. I went into that pub down the road and fainted. When I came round they asked me where I was going and I just said the name, I don't know why, I was dizzy and confused. Next thing they had me in the car and on the way here.'

He raised one bushy eyebrow. 'And the name of this girl you met?'

'Susie,' Camellia said defiantly. 'I never knew her surname.'

'You are an interesting phenomenon, Amelia,' he said, picking up a pen from his desk and playing with it. 'I feel you had some strong motive for coming here which you are hiding. Now could it be that your hippie chum mentioned also that this hotel is isolated and tends to be full of wealthy people?'

She was incensed by the insinuation of his question.

'You are insulting my intelligence,' she said coldly. 'If I wanted to burgle this place, I would hardly call to case it dripping wet with a dose of flu. I'd dress myself up, arrive in a taxi and flannel my way in as a welcome guest.'

'But you haven't any decent clothes have you?' he smirked. 'Everything you had in that rucksack stinks of that foul hippie perfume. Those jeans are so worn it's a wonder they don't split. You've spent all summer lying around on beaches getting out of your head on weed. You couldn't aspire to anything more than offering yourself as a kitchen maid.'

Camellia was suddenly furious. She stood up, her nostrils flaring. 'I was very grateful to you for giving me a bed and calling the doctor,' she snapped at him, her eyes blazing. 'But I did not spend the summer lying on beaches, smoking what you call weed, I worked. In fact I had three jobs. As for my clothes smelling of patchouli oil, well I'm sorry about that, I inherited the rucksack from a friend and it happens to be impregnated with it. I do have some very nice smart clothes, but they are in a suitcase at a friend's in London. Okay, you don't approve of people travelling and picking up work as they go along, well boring old you. I suppose you spent all your youth working out how to become a millionaire? But I don't despise you for that. At least I know that not everyone marches to the same drumbeat.'

'Touché,' he said, and surprisingly his eyes twinkled. 'Well, it's nice to hear you've got your voice back, and heartening to know you aren't the little sniveller I took you for a week ago. Now shall we talk about a job?'

Camellia was so astonished that her mind went completely blank and she sat down again with a bump.

Magnus Osbourne was not a soft touch. As a young man he'd been full of altruism, but over the years he'd become aware that the vast majority of people abused generosity. He had learned to be suspicious, to hold back confidences and friendship until people proved themselves worthy of trust. Each summer he had scores of students coming here looking for work, and for every four he took on, at least one would attempt to fiddle him.