The Fire of Love Read online

  Sir Percy moved towards the fireplace and put his hands on a small armchair, which he pushed a few inches forward.

  “Come, Miss Warner,” he said invitingly. “I promise not to touch you,”

  Carina felt the blood rush crimson into her cheeks with the implication of his words. Because she felt that she was behaving like a foolish somewhat hysterical girl rather than a poised Governess, she moved reluctantly forward and seated herself on the edge of the chair, watching Sir Percy apprehensively as he leant against the mantelshelf.

  “You are very lovely, you know,” he said unexpectedly.

  “I don’t like compliments, Sir Percy, as I have already told you,” Carina retorted. “You have something to say to me? Perhaps you would tell me quickly what it is,”

  “I am almost beginning to suspect that you are a suffragette,” Sir Percy said but, as Carina did not laugh, he went on, “I was, as a matter of fact, not paying you a compliment but stating a fact. Shall I put it more clearly? You are too attractive and far too pretty to be a Governess,”

  “If that is all you have to say – ” Carina said, making as if she would rise.

  “No, no!” he protested. “Stay where you are. I insist that you hear me. I have a proposition to make to you, in fact I am about to offer you a new position,”

  He put up one hand to smooth the greying hair at the side of his temple and smiled as if he was savouring the words he was about to say.

  Carina did not speak, she merely waited, her eyes serious as she watched him, wondering as she did so what there was about him that was so distastefully repulsive.

  “Have you thought seriously what your life will be in this place?” Sir Percy asked.

  “Of course,” Carina answered. “I would not have taken the position if I had not known exactly what was required of me.”

  This was untrue, but she had no intention of letting Sir Percy gain a point by admitting that she was in any way troubled by the thought of the future.

  “Listen to me, girl,” Sir Percy smiled. “You are pretty, far too pretty to be a Governess. Any man who comes to this house will be after you. You will not have any peace, because if it is not the men, the women will be at you. Women don’t care for their employees looking young, lovely and very desirable.”

  Carina made a movement and he continued hastily,

  “What I have to offer you is a very different sort of life. A house of your own in St. John’s Wood or anywhere else you would like to suggest, a carriage, a lot of amusement one way and another and the only thing I am asking in return is that you should be nice to me.”

  Carina rose to her feet. Now she was sure of her ground and not in the least embarrassed by what she had to say.

  “If you are suggesting, Sir Percy,” she said, and her voice was icy and aloof, “that I should become your mistress, I can only say that I would rather spend the rest of my life in a hovel looking after pigs or whatever animal is lower than a swine.”

  She felt that her rudeness must sting him and she was glad to notice that his lips were pressed together and that his eyes narrowed before he spoke.

  But the moment of anger, if that is what it had been, passed and he gave a short laugh.

  “Bravo. Bravo! The speech of an innocent maiden defying the wicked Lord who wishes to seduce her.”

  “I hope I have made myself clear,” Carina said sharply.

  She would have moved away, but to her horror. Sir Percy reached out with a swiftness she had not expected and caught her wrist.

  “Now that we have finished with the play-acting,” he said, “let’s get down to brass tacks. Are you really going to refuse me?”

  “Are you so conceited that you cannot understand my meaning?” Carina asked, trying to free herself from his grasp.

  “Women always say a lot of things they don’t mean,” Sir Percy replied smugly.

  Now she realised that his other arm was encircling her.

  “Let me go!” she called out angrily, trying not to sound frightened, striving to keep him away from her and to escape at the same time.

  But she might as well have tried to stop the incoming tide.

  Sir Percy’s arms were around her and now his face with its lines of dissipation and thick sensuous lips was very near to hers.

  In a sudden panic, Carina struggled with all her strength.

  “Let me go!” she cried. “Let me go!”

  Even as she spoke, she realised how mad it had been of her to stay in the room alone with this middle-aged satyr. He was strong, far stronger than she was, he was inflamed with desire and she knew as she fought against him that her resistance excited him too.

  His arms were pulling her relentlessly closer and closer until she felt that the very breath was being squeezed from her body.

  Her hands beat ineffectually against his chest.

  “How dare you? Let me go!” she protested.

  She heard the soft lawn of her blouse tear. Then before she could say anything further her lips were captured by his and she felt the fierce, hot possessive cruelty of his mouth holding her captive, leaving her breathless and, it seemed to her, sapping her will away from her.

  She tried to fight harder, but she had no strength and she could no longer breathe.

  His kiss was brutal and she felt that she was sinking down into deep dark waters in which she was drowning and from which there was no hope of escape.

  She felt his hands tearing her blouse and touching her breasts and again she would have struggled against him, but she was helpless and impotent in his grasp.

  When at last he raised his lips from hers to look down at her triumphantly, she could only gasp weakly, trying to go on fighting against him, but feeling instead that she must faint.

  “You are an exciting little devil, aren’t you?” he asked, his voice thick with passion.

  Weakly she tried to push him away, feeling as if a great darkness hovered very near her as she struggled against him, not only physically but with every nerve in her body.

  “Let me go!”

  She could hardly hear her own voice, it was strangled in her throat.

  “Never,” he answered. “I want you and, by God, I will make you want me before I have done with you. You will come away with me the day after tomorrow. No need for explanations. You will leave a note saying that you have been called back to London. My man can take you to the Station and we will travel up in the train together.”

  ‘No! No!’ Carina tried to say the words and found to her horror that she could not enunciate them.

  The darkness was creeping even nearer and now, with an almost superhuman effort, she struggled against it.

  But it seemed to catch up with her and she knew that at any moment she might become unconscious.

  Her white face and the way she lay helpless in his arms made Sir Percy realise something was wrong.

  “Here, you’re all right, aren’t you?” he enquired.

  Carina raised a trembling hand to her forehead.

  “I feel faint,” she managed to whisper.

  He set her down in the chair and walked across the room to where a grog tray was arranged on a side table. She heard the clink of the decanter as he poured something into a glass and the hiss of the syphon.

  Then he came towards her carrying a crystal tumbler in his hand.

  “Drink this,” he ordered.

  She was feeling too ill to refuse. She felt the fire of the brandy as it slipped down her throat. The darkness seemed to recede a little.

  “Better now?” Sir Percy enquired.

  She nodded, not trusting herself for the moment to speak.

  “Hope you are not the ailing sort,” he said. “I never could stand sick women. My wife spends the majority of her time in bed and much good does it do her!”

  Carina said nothing.

  She was not surprised that he had a wife or that he was unfaithful to her. She imagined that there was no vice in which Sir Percy would not indulge or have the le
ast hesitation in doing so.

  A little shakily she set the glass down on the table.

  “That’s better,” Sir Percy said approvingly. “The blood is coming back to your face. Now you look more like the girl I admire. You’ll soon be better and we’ll talk later. You will come with me to London, don’t make a mistake about that.”

  Carina rose to her feet, and, without looking at him, started to move towards the door.

  “One moment,” Sir Percy said. “Don’t go off like that. Give me a kiss before you go.”

  The very thought of his touching her again brought the life back into Carina and with a quick movement she reached the door before he could prevent her.

  She turned the handle and slammed the door with a bang as she heard him calling her name.

  She ran across the marble floor towards the inner hall. She was in such a hurry that she did not look around her and she was halfway up the stairs before she realised that someone was coming down them.

  Two more steps and she glanced up and found herself looking straight into the dark questioning eyes of Lord Lynche.

  “Oh, there you are, Miss Warner,” he said. “I went to the nursery to ask how the child is, but you were not there.”

  She saw his eyes looking down at her hair and then at her torn blouse and realised, with a kind of horror, how she must have struggled with Sir Percy.

  “Where have you been?” Lord Lynche asked sharply and this time there was a note in his voice that she had not heard before.

  Carina sought for words with which to answer him, but somehow her head still felt stupid and her body weak. Yet the brandy had made her vividly receptive so that she knew instinctively what Lord Lynche was thinking before he spoke.

  “I am afraid that you must find it rather dull here away from the amusements of London,” he said and his voice, cynical and sarcastic, was almost like a whip.

  All the pride that had been Carina’s ever since she had been a child rose to resent the inference in his tone and the contempt in his eyes and for a moment sheer anger kept her from speaking.

  And then, stuttering because she was so incensed, she cried,

  “How – dare you even think what you are – s-suggesting! I was asked to come downstairs by a footman, who told me that you required my presence in the library. You were not there and I consider it intolerable – that I should be assaulted in your home by one of your guests and – subjected to his odious insinuations and his even more disgusting advances.”

  She saw Lord Lynche turn as if in surprise at her attack.

  And then he said,

  “Who has dared to behave as you suggest?”

  “Surely you know your own friends well enough for that,” Carina replied. “Please let me pass.”

  She moved by him, her head held high despite the uncomfortable knowledge that her hair was beginning to fall down her shoulders.

  She forced herself to move quickly, but still to walk, until she reached the top of the stairs. Then, as she moved out of Lord Lynche’s sight, she ran as fast as she could up the next flight and, bursting into her bedroom, flung herself down on the bed.

  It was only when she felt herself free of them all that the tears came flooding down her cheeks and sobs seemed to shake the whole of her body. She cried with childish abandon until she could cry no more.

  When she was left with only a catch in her breath, she rose and went to the dressing table to stare in horror at her red eyes and the great waves of golden hair cascading on to her shoulders.

  ‘What must he have thought of me?’ she asked herself and answered that she did not care what he or anyone else thought for that matter.

  ‘I must get away,’ was the first idea in her head. But, as she said the words, she knew that she could not leave Dipa and could not surrender so quickly a job that was in its way her own salvation.

  She went to the window and stared out at the peace of the shining lake and the great trees behind it, many of which had stood there for centuries.

  Had it only been yesterday that she had gone out so hopefully in search of employment? Could this all have taken place so quickly?

  She remembered that, when she had been at home, she had often thought that nothing ever happened to her and that life would go on quietly and peacefully until perhaps one day a man would appear with whom she would fall in love and to whom she would entrust her heart and her life.

  How different things were in reality.

  Here she was alone – terribly alone – in this strange frightening Castle with people who, each in their turn, seemed more horrifying and sinister than the last.

  She told herself that she hated them all – Sir Percy with his lecherous suggestions, Lord Lynche whose behaviour to his wife and even to his mother was beyond comprehension and their friends whom she had seen at luncheon, bold coquettish women and the flirtatious overfed men.

  “I hate them all!” Carina cried desperately and knew with a deep sigh that her feelings were not of the least consequence to any of them.

  She realised her own insignificance in that Sir Percy really believed that she would go with him to the house he had suggested in St. John’s Wood. He thought he was doing her an honour offering her the position as his mistress until such time as he would tire of her.

  ‘He is obviously used to having such invitations accepted eagerly,’ Carina thought and wondered with a kind of dull despair how she was going to convince him that when she said no she meant it.

  ‘Perhaps I should leave,’ she told herself again.

  But where could she go? She could not go far with less than ten pounds in her purse and, although she might find other employment, was it likely to be better than this? It might even be worse!

  At least upstairs in the nurseries she was alone. There was no doting mother to come and interfere with her, there was no overbearing and hysterical Nanny to try and isolate her from the other children.

  “I will stay,” Carina said out loud. “I will not let them defeat me.”

  She poured some water into the china basin and washed her face. Then she coiled her hair up neatly at the back of her head, trying to confine the silky thickness of it into a severe bun, which she felt was appropriate to her position.

  Small tumbles of curls kept escaping around her oval forehead and, although she brushed them back, they defied her again.

  After a while she gave up the struggle and left them as they were and concentrated on changing into another blouse, clasping round her small waist a belt, which had once been her mother’s, with a silver embossed buckle that shone as she moved.

  She heard a movement in Dipa’s room and went in to find that he was awake and that his chill or fever, whichever it had been, had gone.

  Now he wanted to run about and jump, but she prevented him, saying it would be best if he stayed in bed and she would read to him.

  “Get up,” Dipa protested. “Dipa want to get up.”

  Carina felt his forehead and his hands and they were cool. The thermometer was in the nursery and she thought that very likely it would be a fight to make him keep it under his tongue, so she decided not to worry him at the moment.

  “I will get you some tea,” she said.

  “Get up,” Dipa repeated and before she could prevent it he was out of bed and jumping about the room in his nightshirt.

  She laughed, chased him and having finally caught him made him do as he was told while she brought the tea to his bedside and suggested that they had a picnic.

  This was a new word and new game and, after he understood what it was all about, Dipa willingly acquiesced, enjoying honey sandwiches and sponge cake, although the way he ate did not improve the appearance of the sheets.

  “Now ride horse,” Dipa suggested when tea was finished.

  Carina shook her head and instead fetched him a box of toy soldiers that she had seen earlier in the day in the nursery cupboard.

  The soldiers were rather battered as if they had been played with m
any times and she had a sudden vision of Lord Lynche as a small boy marching them up and down the nursery floor or perhaps playing at battles with his brother.

  It was hard to imagine Lord Lynche being naughty like Dipa and she wondered if, when there had been children in it, The Castle had been less awe-inspiring and perhaps a happier place. There was something gloomy about the long silent passages and the empty nursery wing.

  She thought how cut off they were up here from the busy household below and was thankful, although at the same time it gave her a strange feeling of isolation.

  Supposing Sir Percy came upstairs – even if she screamed it was unlikely that anyone would hear her.

  Then she realised that Dipa was talking to her and she had not heard him.

  “Look, look,” he insisted and she forced herself to go on playing with him and not to think of her own problems.

  Mrs. Barnstaple came up to the nursery just as Carina had finished giving Dipa his bath and put him into bed.

  “Have you got everything you want, Miss Warner?” she enquired.

  “Everything, thank you,” Carina answered.

  “I won’t stay long, if you don’t mind,” Mrs. Barnstaple said, “there’s a big party downstairs tonight. A dozen people are coming to dine. I have to get a bedroom ready for the ladies so that they can titivate when they arrive and Ellen, the second housemaid whose job it is, always forgets something.”

  “What are they going to do after dinner?” Carina asked. “Will they dance?”

  “Oh, no,” Mrs. Barnstaple answered. “It’s always cards these days. I was just saying to Mr. Newman that ever since his Lordship became friends with that Sir Percy it’s been cards, cards, cards all the time. Before that I don’t think there was even so much as a game of whist in the house. But now they sit up playing cards all night and start again the next day, almost as if there was nothing else to interest them.”

  “Perhaps there is nothing,” Carina said, thinking as she spoke that Sir Percy at any rate had other interests.

  “I don’t like that Sir Percy and that’s a fact,” Mrs. Barnstaple said. “And, as I said to her Ladyship this morning, it’s not good for his Lordship to be cooped up in that smoky atmosphere for so many hours at a time.”