The Runaway Heart Read online

  She did not want to be held back. Above all else she did not want to belong to anyone. She just wanted to be herself and she knew that she was afraid of Felix, just as in the past she had been afraid of Uncle Simon and Aunt Margaret and, most of all, of Cyril.

  She tried to imagine what was behind Felix’s motives in bringing her here. It was quite obvious even to the most unsophisticated eye that Lady Holt looked on him as her own property.

  As she had talked to Felix before they came upstairs, Karina had noticed that her conversation was all about things they had done and things they were going to do. There was the picture Felix was having cleaned for her in London, a handbag that he had promised to collect next time he was in Bond Street and the play for which she had bought tickets because she knew that it was the type he liked.

  It was all so intimate and yet, of course, Lady Holt was much older than Felix. Even as she thought this, Karina remembered that Felix was much older than herself.

  Did age matter in such things? She felt that she was too inexperienced to know the answer to such a question.

  She turned from the window and the darkness outside to look at the luxury of her bedroom. The fire was burning in the exquisite Regency fireplace surmounted by a Charles II mirror with a riot of gilt cupids and crowns.

  The carpet on the floor was so thick that Karina felt as if her feet sank into it. The bedspread was of embroidered satin, while the curtains were of the heaviest and most expensive brocade.

  It all seemed to shout money, just as the luxury and comfort of the drawing room downstairs had been the result of what unlimited money could buy.

  Inevitably her mind came back to the man who owned all this. Garland Holt. She could feel his strange dark eyes boring into hers. She could feel the almost electric quality of his handshake.

  And she remembered uncomfortably the scream of protest that his assertion that he had seen her before had evoked from Lady Holt.

  “Three years ago! My dear Garland, it’s impossible! The child would have been in the nursery!”

  “I am never mistaken,” her son had replied, “I remember it well.”

  Karina, looking from her host to his mother, caught the expression on Felix’s face and realised that he was annoyed. She had somehow suspected that he wanted to pass her off as being younger than she was, although why she could not tell.

  “Anyway,” he said hastily, interrupting the exchange between mother and son, “it is extraordinarily clever of Garland to remember such a tiny incident for so long. Of course, Karina was at that time only just out of school, a mere baby. You can hardly call her grown up even now.”

  “She certainly doesn’t look it,” Lady Holt commented.

  Karina began to feel as if she was an inanimate object that had no thoughts and feelings and then, before she could say anything, Garland Holt asked sharply,

  “Did Felix bring you here?”

  He asked the question of her, but he looked across her head to where Felix was standing by Lady Holt’s side and Karina knew that something antagonistic passed between the two men.

  “I have thrown myself and this poor homeless child on your mother’s mercy,” Felix answered in a somewhat affected manner.

  “Not for the first time,” Garland Holt said with a slight sneer at the comers of his mouth.

  “This is different,” Felix replied briefly.

  “I wonder,” Garland muttered.

  Before anybody could make a reply, he looked at his wristwatch.

  “I am going out for a breath of air.”

  He gave a low whistle and two dogs that had been lying unnoticed in the far corner of the room sprang to their feet and came running to him.

  He turned away, walking down the long room and out through the door before, it seemed to Karina, anyone could think of anything else to say.

  Then Felix turned to Lady Holt.

  “Julie! If we are a nuisance – ”

  He did not get a chance to complete the sentence.

  “Don’t be so ridiculous, Felix,” Lady Holt cried. “You know Garland and how tiresome and disagreeable he always is. I tell him it is almost pathological that at his age he should dislike meeting new people, in fact it’s quite absurd.”

  “The last thing that Karina and I want is to be a bother to you,” Felix said in offended tones.

  “You could not be a nuisance if you tried,” Lady Holt retorted, patting his arm affectionately. “Pay no attention to that stupid son of mine. He may be clever when it comes to finance, but in dealing with human beings he is quite hopeless.”

  Felix allowed himself to be mollified and coaxed back into a good humour.

  But Karina was left feeling uncomfortable and unwanted.

  Why, she asked herself, could not Cousin Felix have done as she had suggested and taken her to London? He could have put her in some respectable hotel or boarding house until she had time to find herself a room that she could afford.

  She watched Lady Holt making a great play with her mascara-darkened eyelashes and pouting red mouth. Felix hardly opened his mouth without flattering her. She responded by making him realise how essential he was to her.

  ‘Why does he do this?’ Karina asked herself. ‘It cannot be for money.’

  How could Cousin Felix, with his huge grey Bentley, expensively cut suits and monogrammed silk shirts, want anything from Lady Holt, however rich she might be?

  It was a puzzle she could not understand and at the moment she was too preoccupied with her own problems really to worry about Cousin Felix’s. And yet, through no fault of her own, they were insolubly interlocked.

  She walked about her bedroom now restlessly, like an animal in a strange cage, until she realised that time was getting on and she must change for dinner.

  There was a bath drawn all ready in the bathroom adjoining her bedroom and, having bathed, she dressed quickly, putting on a short evening frock of white lace, which made her look like a girl at her confirmation.

  She was so small and tiny that she usually found it easier to buy clothes in what were called ‘the Junior Miss’ departments at the stores and, as she could afford very few, she always chose those with the simplest lines in pale clear colours that suited her white skin and fair hair.

  She looked at herself in the long mirror and thought that it was understandable that everyone treated her as a rather stupid child. She did look absurdly young and she made a mental note to buy herself a sophisticated black dress with the first money she earned.

  A little shyly, because somehow she felt afraid of going back to face both Lady Holt and her son, she came out of her bedroom onto the landing and stood for the moment looking down the deep well of the stairs into the hall below.

  A voice behind her made her jump.

  “You are very early,” a man’s voice said.

  She turned to see Garland Holt standing behind her.

  He was wearing a dinner jacket with a red cummerbund and he looked larger and more frightening than he had done before.

  “Yes,” she replied, conscious of how idiotic she sounded and wondering why he should have this curious effect on her.

  He stood looking at her, taking in, it seemed to her, every hair on her head, every inch of her from her blue eyes, raised in perplexity to his, to the toes of her white shoes.

  It seemed to her that he was about to say something and then changed his mind.

  “I am going to see my grandmother,” he said abruptly in his rather ungracious tone, which somehow seemed antagonistic, however simple the words he used. “Will you come with me?”

  “Of course,” Karina answered politely. “I should like to meet her.”

  “She is a rather formidable person,” Garland Holt informed her.

  He turned and led the way down the long corridor to where there were some big double doors at the far end.

  He knocked and a nurse opened the door and smiled at the sight of him.

  “Good evening, Mr. Holt! Your grandmother wa
s asking if you had forgotten about her.”

  “Am I half a minute late?” Garland Holt enquired with a smile as he walked into the room with Karina following behind him.

  It was a large room and was dominated by a very large bed, a huge four-poster that faced the door with a bow window at one side of it and a fireplace on the other. There were ostrich fronds in deep crimson touching the carved ceiling, there were long red silk curtains falling from the canopy to the floor.

  Sitting up in the bed, which was covered with an ermine rug yellow with age, was the most incredible old woman Karina had ever seen.

  She was very thin, her white hair was piled high on the top of her head and her wrinkled skin was like old parchment. Round her neck were twisted row upon row of fabulous pearls and the thin, blue-veined hands that she held out to her grandson were loaded with rings.

  “Here you are, Garland!” she said. “I was wondering what had happened to you. You have no time to spare for your old grandmother these days, I suppose.”

  Her voice was sharp, at the same time deep, and her eyes, which were peculiarly like her grandson’s, darted from his face towards Karina.

  “And who is this?” she enquired.

  Garland Holt bent to kiss his grandmother on the cheek.

  “This is Karina Burke, Grannie.”

  “Who is she? Another girl to run after you? I told you to keep away from them. They are no good to you, any of them.”

  Karina felt the blood course suddenly into her cheeks, but Garland Holt only laughed.

  “No, Grannie, Miss Burke is nothing to do with me,” he said. “Felix Mainwaring brought her here.”

  “Felix! Well, what’s he doing with a young girl?” the old lady enquired. “I thought he had enough to do running after your mother, turning her head with his stupid compliments and making her load her face with paint until she looks like a circus clown!”

  “Grannie, you are shocking Miss Burke,” Garland Holt said with a note of laughter in his voice that he did not attempt to disguise.

  The old lady held out her hand towards Karina.

  “Come here, child. Let me have a look at you,” she commanded.

  Karina did as she was told, fascinated by the dark eyes that seemed still youthful despite the wrinkles around them and by the claw-like hand, which was almost as cold as marble when it touched hers.

  “Are you another of these harpies who are trying to trap my grandson?” was the question that was asked of her.

  Karina shook her head.

  “No, indeed,” she said. “My cousin brought me here because I have run away from home. I had never heard of your grandson until today.”

  “Never heard of him?” The old lady seemed to take affront at this. “Good gracious me! Where have you been living? Don’t you read the papers? He is famous! Famous at twenty-nine! Everybody has heard of Garland Holt.”

  “Everybody but one, Grannie,” Garland Holt said. “You see, I am not such a success as you think.”

  “So you had never heard of him,” the old lady said, looking at Karina. “I wonder if that is the truth or another of your feminine tricks? We have seen them all, haven’t we, Garland? The ones who have an accident at the gate and are terribly surprised to find whose house it is and the ones who wander into your bedroom at night, saying they want an aspirin because they have a headache!”

  The old lady gave a shriek of laughter at this and her grandson said reprovingly,

  “Grannie, your bawdy talk is shocking Miss Burke,”

  “She will be lucky if nothing shocks her worse than that in her life,” his grandmother snapped. “Now then, my dear, tell the truth. Why are you here?”

  “My – my Cousin Felix – persuaded me to – run away because – because I was being forced to – marry someone I – did not love.”

  Even as she spoke the words in a low hesitant voice, Karina thought how weak and stupid they sounded.

  Here was someone who had never been coerced into marriage. Here was someone strong and independent who must have stood up to the world and defied it even when she was very young.

  “So you ran away?” the old lady said. “Well, that was wise of you. It’s what I am always telling my grandson to do, to run away and keep running. But still you are a woman and a woman’s better married. My grandson is different. If he wants to enjoy life, he has to keep clear of all the traps those little vixen set for him.”

  “Well, I have been very successful up to date, haven’t I?” Garland Holt asked.

  “Don’t boast, boy, it’s unlucky!” his grandmother snapped at him.

  Then, turning again to Karina, she said,

  “Well, what do you intend to do now? You have run away from one prospective husband and you will look for another, I suppose.”

  “I have not the least wish to be married,” Karina said. “My cousin has promised to find me a job in London and I want to start work as soon as possible.”

  “Oh, you do, do you?” the old lady said. “Well, if you take my advice you will go back and marry this man who wants you. A chit with your face will not find it easy working in an office. What is more, you will spoil that pretty complexion of yours and lose that innocent expression.”

  She gave a harsh laugh.

  “I know them, these girls who work. They all get hard-faced and hard-hearted. That is why they chase the first man they meet, so as to be able to give up their jobs and make him keep them for life.”

  “Stop being cynical, Grannie,” Garland Holt said. “You are frightening Miss Burke. Let her do what she wants to do. There is plenty of room in the world for everyone. They don’t all have to live the way you live.”

  “It’s a pity they don’t,” the old lady said. “Your grandfather and I started the hard way, no money, no influence, only ambition and a determination to get what we wanted. We got it too!”

  She chuckled.

  “Worth two million when he died and when I married him he had not saved more than fifty pounds. That was an adventure if you like.”

  She put her hand suddenly down on Karina’s.

  “Go back home, child. Marry the man who wants you and make something of him. There is nothing you cannot do with a man if he loves you.”

  “I cannot do that – you don’t understand,” Karina stammered.

  “Stop bullying the girl, Grannie,” Garland Holt commanded her. “Cannot you see that she does not want to marry the man, whoever he may be?”

  “And if you are not careful she will be wanting to marry you,” the old lady retorted.

  Garland Holt put back his head and laughed and Karina felt herself suddenly growing angry.

  “I assure you,” she said, “I have no intention of marrying anyone and I think perhaps you overrate your grandson’s powers of attraction.”

  She did not mean to be rude, but she suddenly felt incensed that this old lady, and apparently Garland himself, should be so sure that everyone was running after him.

  The moment she had spoken she regretted it. She felt that it was gauche and unattractive and her eyes suddenly swam with tears because she had been so foolish.

  But once again the old lady only chuckled.

  “So you have a bit of spirit, have you?” she smiled. “I like girls with spirit, it’s what I have always had myself. No, I don’t overrate Garland’s powers of attraction. It isn’t his beaux yeux they run after, it’s his money, my dear. He has the Midas touch or so the newspapers call it. It’s true too.

  “Now my son was no use when it came to finance. He lost nearly everything my husband had made, lost it by sheer incompetence. But Garland has made it all back and more. That is why the girls find him so attractive. That is why they run after him.”

  “Then I can promise you that I don’t want money, whether it’s your grandson’s or anyone else’s,” Karina said.

  “Do you mean that?” the old lady asked, her shrewd old eyes searching Karina’s face. “I believe you do. Well, that’s a change! I have neve
r met a girl who wasn’t after money, when it can mean jewels, furs, big cars, servants and comforts of every kind.”

  “I don’t want those things,” Karina replied. “I just want to be on my own. I don’t want people to order me about, to tell me to do this and to do that. I just want to live alone.”

  “That is a surprise for you, Grannie, isn’t it?” Garland Holt asked. “You don’t have an answer to that one, have you?”

  “Perhaps not,” his grandmother replied. “But I shall think of one sooner or later!”

  “We had better go down to dinner,” Garland Holt laughed, “before you say anything else outrageous. Come along, Miss Burke. I am afraid that you will have to put up with a few people around you at dinner for tonight at any rate.”

  Karina turned away and she felt that he was mocking her.

  ‘I have been a fool,’ she told herself.

  Why did she have to say what she felt or what she wanted? What did it matter to these people what was the real truth? A few conventional polite sentences would have served her much better. Instead of which she felt as if she had exposed her innermost heart to their ridicule.

  Outside in the passage she and Garland Holt walked along in silence until they reached the top of the stairs and then he suddenly turned and smiled at her.

  “What do you think of my grandmother?” he asked.

  “I don’t know what to think,” she answered.

  “She’s eighty and to my mind utterly magnificent,” he said. “She has the strongest personality of anyone I know and a mind as keen as a rapier. I would rather have a word of praise from her than be made a Freeman of the City of London.”

  “I suppose she has helped you in your career?” Karina asked a little cautiously.

  “More than anyone else,” he replied. “In fact she is the one person who has helped me. Almost everything I have ever done is due to her.”

  He spoke simply and without that aggressive tone in his voice that she had found so frightening and almost repulsive before. Once again he disconcerted her, for now she did not know what to say or how to accept his confidence.

  Before she could reply they had reached the hall and the butler came forward to say something to Garland Holt, so that she walked on alone and in through the open door of the drawing room.