Love Forbidden Page 13

  And yet she had worked hard and it would be wrong to say that she was anything but a worker in her own way and for her own self.

  And then there was Lord Buckleigh with his charm, his way of saying, ‘I love you’, which made her heart turn over even though she told herself that it was only a nonsensical falsehood on his part.

  What had he contributed to life except an easy gaiety, a superficial veneer, good manners and pleasantry? And yet even he, in his own way, worked.

  He looked after many of Dart Huron’s affairs, chose him his polo ponies and made arrangements with people to whom he and he alone had the entrée.

  Yes, Aria supposed he worked in a sort of way, as did all the other gay young men who came to Summerhill either to stay or to enjoy a good meal. She was not certain what she felt about them except, perhaps, that they lacked depth and fundamental understanding.

  Or was she judging everyone by Lulu Carlo and Lord Buckleigh?

  She felt suddenly young and very helpless. And then, as she sat there, she knew that Dart Huron was waiting for her to go on speaking.

  “I am – sorry,” she stammered. “I shouldn’t have – said that. I don’t think – what I’m talking about.”

  “Don’t you think,” he said with a sudden gentleness in his voice that she had not heard before, “that you are trying to change, people too quickly and perhaps things that need a lot of understanding and, in many ways, much sympathy?

  “We are all rather inclined to force people into our own mould or rather to criticise them if they don’t live up to our own particular standards. Yet are our standards the right ones?

  “We have to ask ourselves that and ask ourselves too, if our standards being right for us, are they also applicable to other people who have, perhaps, a very different outlook and a very different background from our own.”

  Aria turned to look at him in surprise.

  “I didn’t think that you would say anything like that,” she said involuntarily.

  He smiled at her naivety.

  “Perhaps you are also judging me rather harshly.”

  “I am sorry,” Aria replied. “That sounded rude. I didn’t mean it to be.”

  “I know you didn’t,” he said. “You see, I have knocked about the world a great deal. I have met a great many people. May I say something to you that may sound impertinent? I think that you have come up against something in your life that has prejudiced you against people, at any rate the sort of people whom you meet here.”

  It was so true that Aria did not know what to say.

  How could she tell him that everyone she had met at Summerhill had made her think of the women and the people with whom her father had surrounded himself, who had encouraged him in his spendthrift, extravagant, rakish way and in the selfishness which had resulted in his destroying the ancient wealth of Queen’s Folly and in hurting Charles beyond all hope of the hurt ever being erased.

  “I think perhaps – that is true in a way,” Aria said at last.

  “I was sure of it,” Dart Huron said. “I have watched your face when people are talking carelessly, saying things that perhaps would be best left unsaid. And I have known that it has all meant something to you personally.”

  He drew on his cigar and the lighted tip flamed red against the darkness of the sky.

  “You must think me very stupid,” Aria said at length in a low voice.

  “On the contrary, I have the greatest admiration for your courage,” Dart Huron said.

  “My courage?” Aria enquired.

  “Yes! In taking on a job of this sort,” Dart Huron replied. “It’s not easy, I know. In fact I know it’s a very difficult one. But you are doing admirably. Incidentally, I shall be going back to America at the end of the month.”

  “At the end of the month!” Aria repeated stupidly.

  “Yes! I was going to stay until the end of the summer, but I have decided to leave sooner than was intended. I shall want you to stay on a week after I have gone to close up the house and see that the staff leave everything tidy before they go. You will do that, won’t you?”

  “Yes, yes, of course!”

  “Well, that gives me another fortnight here,” Dart Huron said. “England can be very pleasant at this time of the year.”

  Aria did not know how to answer him.

  She was faced with the sense of dismay that was out of all proportion to what she might have expected to feel at hearing that the job that she had just said she did not care for was coming to an end.

  She did not know why, but she had the strangest desire to protest, to ask him to change his decision.

  But there was nothing she could say and so they sat in silence, Aria consumed by an inexplicable sense of impending loss.

  Chapter 8

  A clock in the distance struck one o’clock. At almost the same moment there was a faint sound in the passage outside Aria’s bedroom door. She switched off the reading lamp that stood by her side, plunging the room into darkness.

  She was still dressed in the black evening gown that she had worn for dinner, but she had flung a wrap over her shoulders and now, despite the warmth, she found herself shivering as she listened.

  It seemed to her that a century of time rather than a few hours had passed since she had come up to her bedroom and deliberately made no effort to go to bed. Instead she had sat pretending to read, holding the book in front of her eyes, but not seeing the printed pages.

  Now, what she had anticipated had happened, and another sound told her all too clearly that there was someone outside the door.

  She waited.

  The handle of the door turned very slowly, but it would not open and after a moment there were several faint clicks as if someone pushed hard, with perhaps a muscular shoulder, against the unbending woodwork.

  The handle was turned again, this time less silently and then came a faint knock.

  “Aria! Aria!”

  The voice was in a whisper, but there was no mistaking who spoke. In the darkness Aria put her hands up to her cheeks as if to feel the warmth of the blood coursing there in a crimson flood.

  The knock came again. Then, reluctantly, as if their owner found it hard to admit himself defeated, footsteps moved away from the door and down the passage.

  Only when there had been silence for a long time did Aria reach out and switch on the reading lamp. Then she rose and went to the window to draw back the curtains and let in the night air, drawing deep breaths into her lungs as if she felt suffocated by the need of it.

  This was what she might have expected, she told herself. And yet somehow it was difficult to face the fact now it had happened. She had a sudden vision of the pretty, painted women with whom her father had loved to associate.

  She could see all too clearly the expression in their eyes, the invitation on their curved lips, the voluptuousness of their every movement, everything about them invariably a calculated provocation to sex.

  How she hated them! Even before she had understood what they meant and all they stood for in her father’s life, she had felt disgusted and somehow a little soiled because she, herself, had come into contact with them.

  And now a man had thought of her as being in the same category as those poor creatures whom she had eventually come to pity rather than despise.

  She wished now she had opened the door and told him what she thought of him. And, then she knew that it would have done no good. He would not have understood and she would have merely cheapened herself by ranting at him for something that was instinctively beyond his comprehension.

  He would merely reiterate that he would marry her if he could and he would not realise how poor a compliment such a statement was or that in reality she deemed it an insult.

  Hard-eyed, her lips a tight line of anger, Aria undressed and climbed into bed. She expected to stay awake, incensed by her feelings.

  But the day had been long and in reality she was very tired.

  Soon she was sound asleep and
, in the contrariness of the subconscious, dreaming happily that she was with someone she loved and who loved her. She could not see his face, but she knew that she loved him.

  She felt herself surrounded by the warmth and protection of his love so that when she was awakened by a knocking on her bedroom door she was smiling happily and the expression in her eyes was soft and gentle.

  She slipped out of bed, unlocked the door and then yawning was back against the pillow in the passing of a few seconds. But the opening of the door did not prelude, as was usual, the housemaid’s coming in quietly to draw the curtains and place a tray of early morning tea beside her bed.

  This morning the door thrust open with a bang and the Italian girl burst into the room, tears running down her face.

  “Signorina, come quickly! Oh, come quickly!” she cried, her hands going out beseechingly towards Aria who, startled from dreams to stark reality, could for a moment hardly comprehend what was happening or what was being said.

  In the dim sunlight seeping through the chintz curtains the girl’s emotion and appearance had, in themselves, an almost unreal quality.

  “What is the matter?” Aria managed to ask at last.

  “The old lady, Signorina. Please come to her.”

  Aria wasted no more time in asking questions. She jumped out of bed, slipped her feet into her mules and covered her nightgown with the pretty dressing gown of flowered cotton that Nanny had made her the previous summer.

  She did not stop to glance in the mirror or to tidy her hair, which rioted in tiny curls all over her head. She quickly followed the Italian maid, who started to run down the backstairs and along the corridor that led to the garden room.

  The curtains were pulled and Aria realised that the maid must have called Mrs. Hawkins at eight o’clock as she had been instructed and then turned, when she had done so, to look at the bed.

  One glance at the ivory features of the old lady, who had fallen sideways a little on her pillows, was enough for Aria to realise the truth.

  She bent forward to touch the thin, white, veined hand, but the coldness of it only confirmed what she already knew. Mrs. Hawkins had died in her sleep.

  “Poor lady! Oh, Signorina, I am so sorry for her. She died alone and without making her peace with God.”

  Aria realised that this was the Catholic point of view and turned to put her hand consolingly on the girl’s shoulder.

  “It was as she would have wished to die,” she said quietly. “We must not grieve for her.”

  Even as she spoke the words she heard someone enter the room and turned with a start to see that Dart Huron was standing there. He was dressed in riding clothes and she knew that he rode very early in the morning and had doubtless just returned from his ride.

  He walked across to the bedside without speaking to Aria and stood looking down at Mrs. Hawking.

  Then he turned to Aria and in a voice of steel said,

  “McDougall told me that something extraordinary was happening here. Who is this woman?”

  “She is Mrs. Hawkins – Miss Carlo’s grandmother,” Aria answered.

  She thought that Dart Huron looked at her almost incredulously and then, before he could say anything more, the Italian girl burst into such loud sobbing that it was obvious it would be difficult to be heard above it.

  “Come to the library when you are dressed, Miss Milbank,” Dart Huron said sharply. “In the meantime I will send for the doctor.”

  He walked from the room and Aria put her arms round the sobbing Italian girl and tried to console her. When she grew calmer, Aria led her outside into the corridor and sent her to lie on her own bed.

  Then she went in search of the Head Housemaid.

  Burroughs was a sensible woman with an almost jaundiced view towards life, which made her welcome death as if it was a friend rather than an unpleasant occurrence.

  “Leave everything to me, Miss Milbank,” she said crisply when Aria told her what had happened. “I have laid out my mother and three of my father’s sisters. I know what to do and Mrs. Felton, the gardener’s wife, will give me a hand. She was a midwife before she married and is used to such things.

  “If you had told me the old lady was likely to pass away, I should have advised you not to let Maria look after her. If anything happens, foreigners always work themselves into a state. It’s always the same with them. They love a chance to be emotional.”

  “I am afraid it was rather a shock for poor Maria,” Aria said.

  “It would be a shock for anyone,” Burroughs answered. “But there’s no need for her to carry on as if the lady was a long lost relation or anything like that. Restraint is what is needed, Miss Milbank, under such circumstances.”

  Aria could not help agreeing with her, even if she thought it was easier said than done. She was, however, thankful to leave everything in Burroughs’s capable hands and go upstairs to dress preparatory to seeing Dart Huron in the library.

  She could not prevent her heart sinking at the thought and a glance at herself in the mirror did not dispel her feeling of disquiet. She must have looked very inefficient and inadequate to cope with such a situation, she thought, staring at her reflection. Her unbrushed hair gave her rather the look of a surprised choir boy and her face, without powder, and her untouched lips made her appear curiously young.

  Then she remembered that it did not really matter whether he was displeased with her or not, considering that he was leaving in a short space of time and the house was to be shut up. And yet, she rather wanted to impress him with how well she had managed since she had come to Summerhill.

  It had not been easy to get the household working without rows or departures.

  It had not been a simple matter not only to answer his personal letters but also to cope with the immense complexity of orders, bills, wages and all the million-and-one things that went towards keeping up a big house filled not only with servants but with guests.

  She had felt in some ways that she had achieved what at least her predecessors had never achieved before and now she had ruined what she had fondly imagined was quite a good impression.

  She had too precipitated herself into a very uncomfortable position in which she must explain her action in bringing to a man’s private house not only someone who had been uninvited but who was extremely unwelcome so far as one honoured guest was concerned.

  Whether it was her reluctance to face the row or because of the many interruptions that came while she was dressing, Aria was not sure, but it was nearly nine-thirty before finally she walked down the stairs and went into the library.

  The room was empty, but, as she looked round her, wondering whether to go or to stay, Dart Huron entered by another door that led into the breakfast room. It was only as she saw him shut the door behind him that Aria realised that she, herself, had not only had no breakfast but had left, untouched, the tea which one of the housemaids had brought up to her room while she was dressing.

  She had felt the sight of food or drink repelled her, but now the thought of it must account for the curious sinking feeling inside her as Dart Huron walked across the room, his dark eyes, his face, or so it seemed to her, unusually severe.

  “The doctor will be here about eleven o’clock,” he said. “I understand that in the meantime everything that ought to be done is being done.”

  “Yes! Burroughs said that she would see to everything,” Aria murmured unhappily.

  “There will, of course, have to be an inquest,” Dart Huron remarked.

  Aria looked at him with startled eyes.

  “I hadn’t realised that.”

  “I think there are several things that you haven’t realised,” he said. “The first thing is that it is usual to ask the host’s permission or at least inform him that guests are arriving in his house.”

  “I know,” Aria murmured. “And, please, I can only apologise and say how sorry I am about it all. But I couldn’t leave Mrs. Hawkins where she was – I just couldn’t! And there wa
s nowhere else to take her.”

  It seemed to her as if Dart Huron’s expression softened a little.

  “Perhaps you had better tell me about it,” he began.

  Before Aria could answer, Lulu Carlo came into the room. She was wearing a sensational negligée of white chiffon and white mink. Her face was exquisitely made up, but her hair flowed loose over her shoulders and her feet, clad in high-heeled diamond-studded mules, clattered on the parquet as she crossed the threshold.

  “I was told you were here,” she said to Dart Huron dramatically. “You have heard what has happened?”

  “I understand that your grandmother died during the night,” he said gently.

  “That is what I have been told,” Lulu replied. “That she has died. And whose fault is it, I should like to know?”

  She turned accusingly towards Aria.

  “It was you! You killed her! Bringing her away from the home where she had lived so long, over-straining her with the journey and the excitement of coming to a place like this. You’re responsible and I hope you’re ashamed of what you’ve done.”

  Aria went very white and for the moment she could find nothing to say.

  “Wait a minute, Lulu!” Dart Huron said quietly. “I imagine that Miss Milbank acted in good faith. She was just about to tell me why she had brought Mrs. Hawkins here when you came into the room. Perhaps, Miss Milbank, you could care to go on.”

  “I hope you are not going to listen to her lies,” interposed Lulu, before Aria could speak. “She brought my grandmother here without asking and it was, I consider, a gross impertinence on her part. What right had she to interfere? What right had she to decide that the place where I had put her was not good enough?

  “I’ve got hundreds of letters to say the old lady was perfectly happy. She wanted to see me, of course – she adored me – but that was no reason for dragging her about the place and incidentally killing her in the process!”

  “I don’t think you should speak like that, Dart Huron said. “Your grandmother was a very old woman. She would have died anyway. Shall we allow Miss Milbank to tell us exactly what happened?”