The Runaway Heart Read online

  Cousin Felix! She had heard about him for as long as she could remember – heard disparaging remarks about his gaiety, the fact that he was always written up in the social papers, that he had a luxury flat in London and was seldom in it.

  “Felix Mainwaring with the Duchess of Downshire on the beach at the Lido.”

  “Felix Mainwaring at the Hunt Ball given in the Duke of Northwood’s Castle.”

  “Felix Mainwaring in Nassau. In New York. At Cannes.”

  She could hear Aunt Margaret’s voice saying distinctly as she held out The Tatler to Uncle Simon,

  “Really, Felix is beginning to get quite bald on top. I suppose this dissolute life of his is beginning to tell at last.”

  There had been almost a malicious delight in Aunt Margaret’s voice and afterwards out of curiosity Karina had glanced at the paper. She had thought that the lady Felix was escorting to some gala was lovely – dark, mysterious and sophisticated – but Felix had appeared rather old.

  Now, she looked at him in a startled manner. Could he have meant what she thought he meant? Of course he was not really elderly. He could not be much more than thirty-five and thirty-five was not really old.

  “Well – ”

  She realised with a little start that Felix was awaiting her reply.

  “I – don’t understand what – you are trying to say.”

  “I think you do,” he answered. “But it is too soon, isn’t it? The only thing is that Garland Holt need not be afraid that you are yet another woman who is running after him. I am not taking you to his home just to lose you.”

  “I-I want a job. I want to work,” Karina said,

  “You shall,” Felix said soothingly. “Don’t upset yourself. Don’t be frightened by what I have said to you. Just leave it at the back of your mind. One day perhaps we shall get to know each other a great deal better than we do at this moment.”

  Without taking his eyes from the road he picked up her hand from her lap and raised it to his lips.

  “Don’t be frightened of me, Karina,” he said. “You are trembling and it is quite unnecessary, I assure you. I am not a big bad wolf! Just Cousin Felix, cosy and kind, who is going to look after you.”

  His words soothed Karina, as they had been meant to do. She felt herself relax and, leaning back, watched the road ahead.

  It still seemed incredible that she had taken the step that she had and run away from Letchfield Park, which had been her home ever since both her parents were killed in an aeroplane accident when she was only seven.

  She could still remember her mother kissing her goodbye, the fragrance of her scent, the soft tickle of her furs that framed her happy face.

  “We shall be back in a week, poppet,” she said. “Daddy and I are going on another honeymoon. I will send you beautiful picture postcards of Rome and Florence and all the glorious places we go to. Look after her, Nanny.”

  They were the last words Karina ever heard her mother say.

  Then had come the move to Letchfield Park – the dark, big, sombre house that had seemed to close in upon her from the very first moment that she saw it. Her world had narrowed down to three people, Aunt Margaret, Uncle Simon and Cyril.

  She felt a shudder run through her as she thought that if Cousin Felix had not walked unexpectedly into her life, she would, in five days’ time, have been married to Cyril.

  They had worn her down. She knew that now. They had not shouted at her or argued with her.

  They had not even appeared to coerce her, except by the insidious method of assuming that she wanted to make them happy and of reminding her indirectly a hundred times a day how kind they had been in taking a poor unwanted orphan child into their home.

  Night after night she had lain awake wondering how she could do it, hoping that she would die before the Wedding Day came, knowing that every dawn brought her twenty-four hours nearer to it. Then Cousin Felix, arriving unexpectedly, had swept her off her feet. His disgust and horror at the idea of her being married to Cyril had been a far more persuasive argument than anything he might have said.

  She knew then that was how other people would regard it, people from whom she had been isolated, people outside Letchfield Park, normal and ordinary men and women.

  Impulsively she turned now towards the man who had saved her.

  “Cousin Felix, I can never thank you enough for taking me away,” she said.

  Her soft voice, which seemed to have some musical quality about it and yet, at the same time, was so young and so unspoilt that it seemed impossible that it should come from someone no longer in her teens.

  “I don’t think at this moment that I could love anybody very much. I have been so unhappy and frightened for so long. But if you will wait – ”

  She stopped, blushing at the intensity of her feelings.

  “As I have already told you,” Felix said soothingly, “I am prepared to wait until things right themselves, until we get to know each other very much better. It is rather exciting, don’t you think, to start a new friendship with someone who attracts you very much but of whom you know so very little.”

  He took his left hand from the driving wheel and laid it on hers.

  “I want you to tell me all that you are thinking and feeling, about new places we are going to and about new people we are going to meet.”

  “Supposing – supposing they don’t like me?” Karina asked anxiously.

  Felix laughed.

  “I cannot imagine anyone disliking you,” he said. “Just take a look in that mirror you will find in the pocket beside you.”

  Automatically Karina obeyed him. She pulled out the mirror with its grey suede back and held it up to her face.

  “Is there anything wrong?” she asked. “Have I a blotch on my nose?”

  “Look at what you see there,” he said.

  Obediently she stared at her face. The blue eyes were fringed with dark lashes, an inheritance from some Irish grandmother, a tiny tip-tilted nose, a full red mouth and soft fair hair, almost ash blonde, waving against the pink and whiteness of her cheeks.

  “I wish I looked older,” she said involuntarily.

  “In which case you would not be here,” Felix replied quickly.

  She turned enquiring eyes towards him and he added hastily, almost as if he had made a slip,

  “I mean that if you looked older you would very likely be older in which case you would have run away a long time ago.”

  “Yes, I suppose I should,” Karina said. “Oh, Cousin Felix, thank you so much! Thank you! Thank you!”

  “I don’t want to be thanked,” he replied, but she knew enough of men to know that he was pleased and she made a mental note to go on thanking him.

  They must have travelled for over an hour before they turned in at high ornamental gates and drove down a wide drive towards a huge stone house with a pillared portico.

  “Are we there?” Karina asked nervously.

  “We are,” Felix replied. “Don’t be afraid. I promise you that everything is going to be all right.”

  “If they don’t want me, promise you will take me away,” Karina said. “I can find a room in London while I look for a job? There must be something I can do.”

  “Don’t worry,” Felix admonished her. “Leave everything to me.”

  He drew the car up at the front door and, as the butler came hurrying out, said,

  “Good evening, Travers! I am afraid I am three days late.”

  “You are, indeed, sir,” Travers replied. “Her ladyship was very upset at your message that you had broken down. You weren’t hurt in any way?”

  “No, Travers. It was only a burst tyre. You will find my luggage and Miss Burke’s in the boot.”

  “Will the young lady be staying, sir?” Travers asked in a respectful voice.

  “Yes, she will, Travers,” Felix Mainwaring answered.

  He put his hand under Karina’s arm and led her up the steps and into a great, cool hall.

  She
had a quick impression of pillars and statues skilfully lit and of pale-green walls hung with pictures in gilt frames.

  And then Felix led her through another door, opened by a footman, and she found herself in what she knew was the drawing room.

  It was a big Georgian room with huge bow windows and a fireplace at the end, in front of which was seated a woman.

  Karina had imagined Lady Holt to be old, why she could not have said. But the woman who sprang to her feet with a little cry of welcome seemed incredibly young until one was very close to her.

  “Felix!” she exclaimed. “I had almost given you up for lost. Where have you been, you naughty boy? I have been worrying myself sick about you.”

  “I was afraid of that, Julie,” he said, raising both her hands to his lips one after the other.

  “You are three days late! Isn’t that like you!” Lady Holt said. “And the Cartwrights could not wait. They have gone back to America, terribly disappointed not to see you.”

  “I am sorry about that too,” Felix smiled. “But you know that I would much rather find you here alone.”

  Lady Holt took one hand from his eager grasp and turned towards Karina.

  “Who is this?” she asked.

  “My cousin,” Felix answered. “My little cousin, Karina Burke. And she is here, Julie, because she is desperately in need of help.”

  “Really!” Lady Holt did not seem very pleased at the idea.

  Felix drew her towards the sofa and sat down beside her.

  “You have to listen, Julie, and only you in the kindness of your heart will realise what this unfortunate child has been through. She has been brought up, since her father and mother, he was my first cousin, were killed in an aeroplane accident, by an uncle and aunt who have one mentally deficient son. Oh, he is not listed as that, nor have they acknowledged it. He looks fairly all right, but he is, in actual fact, not quite normal. His brain does not always synchronise with his body and he is at certain times of the month extremely queer.”

  “It sounds horrible,” Lady Holt said a little petulantly.

  “He is,” Felix agreed. “And so you will understand why I could not allow my cousin, although, indeed, I have not seen her since she was seven, to marry such a creature.”

  “Marry? How could she have contemplated such a thing?” Lady Holt cried.

  “She was being forced into it,” Felix explained. “And that is why I have run away with her. We crept out as soon as it was dusk, threw her luggage into the car and came here to hide.”

  Lady Holt gave a little cry and clasped her hands together.

  “Felix, isn’t that like you! So impulsive, so impetuous! I have always told you that it will get you into trouble one day.”

  “And will you help me out of trouble?” Felix asked.

  She smiled at him.

  “I suppose so. Silly boy! I can refuse you nothing, can I?”

  He kissed her hand again and Karina, watching them, noticed for the first time that Lady Holt’s hand was old, the fingers a little bent and the white veins showing. She looked more closely at the skilfully painted face, at the neck, with its six rows of huge pearls that hid the wrinkles and at the beautifully coiffured hair, which she realised now must be dyed.

  She had a sudden vision of Aunt Margaret with her grey hair drawn back into a neat roll at the base of her neck and of her lined face above her inevitable woollen twinset, which did nothing to disguise the flatness of her figure.

  It was difficult to imagine two women who would be a greater contrast.

  “Well, will you be kind to her, at least for a little while until we can find her a job?” Felix asked.

  “But of course,” Lady Holt said. “How could I refuse you, Felix? And how could I be so unkind as not to help this poor child?”

  She put out her hand towards Karina.

  “Come here, dear. You must tell me all about it,” she said. “You are much too young to think of being married anyway, let alone to someone like that.”

  “I am – ” Karina began, eager to tell the truth about her age, only to catch a warning glance from Felix to silence her.

  He obviously did not want Lady Holt to know how old she was and so she was silent.

  “Of course you must stay,” Lady Holt was saying in her soft purring voice. “Tell Travers to prepare a room for her, Felix. I am afraid that we have a very quiet evening ahead. Garland may arrive about half past seven, but he is not certain and there is no one coming until tomorrow. Will you be bored?”

  It was a question to which she obviously knew the answer and Felix’s garrulous compliments seemed to please her. She smiled at him flirtatiously over her shoulder before she moved across the room in a flutter of blue draperies to pour him a drink at the cocktail table.

  Felix looked at Karina and winked. It was not a gesture that she was expecting from him and, because it seemed so funny, she gave a little gurgle of laughter.

  The door opened suddenly and a man came into the room. But ‘came’ was not the right word. It was more as if he burst into the room and yet actually he was moving quite slowly.

  There was something so purposeful and so determined about Garland Holt that he appeared to people who met him for the first time to almost have a volcanic quality.

  Still laughing at Felix, Karina looked up at his entrance and met his eyes, dark dynamic eyes that seemed almost, she thought, to bore their way through her.

  “Garland! So you have made it!” Lady Holt exclaimed from the cocktail table. “Well, that is splendid. And look who has arrived three days late.”

  “Hello, Felix!”

  Garland Holt held out his hand, but he did not sound as if he was particularly pleased to see Felix Mainwaring.

  “Hello, Garland,” Felix said. “This is my little cousin, Karina Burke.”

  Garland Holt held out his hand. Karina put out hers.

  She felt the warmth and strength of his fingers. She had the strangest feeling as if he were a magnet drawing her towards him. She felt as if he drew her and then she remembered Felix’s description, ‘drunken moths round a candle flame’.

  “Have I seen you before?”

  His dark eyebrows were knit above his penetrating eyes. He would be good-looking, she thought, if he did not appear so fierce and so uncompromising, the kind of man with whom you could never feel comfortable or relaxed.

  “I-I don’t think so,” she stammered involuntarily as she did when Uncle Simon barked at her for something she had done wrong.

  “Of course you haven’t seen her before,” Felix said. “She has come to us out of the blue, it’s a romantic story, if you care to hear it.”

  “I was asking Miss Burke,” Garland Holt said. “I suppose she can answer for herself.”

  Karina looked bewildered. Why, she wondered, was he so snubbing to Felix?

  “I-I don’t think we have met before,” she managed to say in a quiet voice, at the same time pulling her hand away from Garland Holt’s grasp.

  It almost seemed as if he had forgotten that he was still shaking hands with her.

  “Yes, we have,” he said. “A ball in Belgrave Square three years ago. You were in a white dress and you went out onto the balcony when the dance was over.”

  He paused.

  Karina’s eyes were looking up into his as if mesmerised.

  “You stood there for a moment,” Garland Holt went on, “and you said, ‘I hate this! I want to go home!’ That was you, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes, I did say that,” Karina said in a low wondering voice.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Alone in her bedroom, where a maid had already unpacked her luggage and laid out an evening dress on the bed, Karina stood for a moment with her hands to her forehead. She was trying to think of all that had happened during the day.

  It seemed impossible that only a few hours ago she had been at home at Letchfield Park and that even now her uncle and aunt would not have realised that she had left.

  It was
unlikely that anyone would go to her room until she did not appear at dinner. Then they would find the note that she had left on her dressing table.

  She could imagine their amazed faces when they realised that she had run away and she could visualise their incredulity when they learnt that she did not intend to marry Cyril.

  At the thought of him she shivered. Even now she could not believe that she had really escaped.

  She felt sure that they would find her and take her back, make her fulfil her promise, make her submit to Cyril’s fumbling hands and the look of greed and lust that she had surprised so often in his small shifty eyes.

  How could she ever be grateful enough to her Cousin Felix? she asked herself. And yet, somehow, she could not feel the warm response towards him that she knew was his due.

  He had been so kind and so incredibly understanding. If he had not come to Letchfield Park at that very moment and if he had not found her alone in the greenhouse, she would never have been brave enough to run away and to shake herself free of the shackles with which they had kept her prisoner.

  “He is so kind, so very kind,” she said aloud.

  Yet, unbidden, the thought came to her mind that she had only exchanged one gaoler for another.

  She was appalled at her own ingratitude!

  Cousin Felix was going to find her a job. She would live in London on her own. She would work and be independent. Of course that was what was going to happen.

  Then she remembered Felix’s words during their journey here and the way he had hinted that they might mean more to each other than just friends and relations.

  On an impulse Karina crossed the room, drew back one of the curtains and opened the window. Outside it was dark and she felt the clean fresh night air on her face.

  “I am free!” she called out aloud. “Free! Free!”

  But every nerve in her body yearned to fly away into the darkness, leaving behind all the problems and difficulties and perplexities that had been hers for so long.