Love Forbidden Page 4

  She looked at the girl beside her and went on,

  “Goodness, that Mrs. Cunningham! There’s a fool if ever there was one! And she wants the money, I know that, because she has a child to keep.”

  “She told me that she just couldn’t help it,” the girl interposed. “There’s something about him,” she said. “And you know, I can believe it. You can see it even in his photographs.”

  “What happened to Mrs. Cunningham?” Aria asked nervously.

  Again Mrs. Benstead and the girl looked at each other.

  “You had better know the truth,” Mrs. Benstead said. “She fell in love with him, followed him about and made a nuisance of herself. Those were his very words on the telephone. Now, what do you think of that?”

  “Are you quite sure that he wasn’t being objectionable to her?” Aria asked.

  “Who? Mr. Huron? Objectionable to Mrs. Cunningham when he’s got Lulu Carlo there!” Mrs. Benstead laughed so much that she had to take her cigarette out of her mouth. “That’s a joke if ever there was one. You should see Mrs. Cunningham!”

  She laughed until she had to wipe her eyes with the knuckle of her first finger.

  “Love! It’s the one thing he won’t stand. He has a complex about it. When he was over here before – last autumn wasn’t it, Vera? – I got him fixed up in a flat in Grosvenor Square. He had trouble with one of the maids. She mooned about, looked at him with sheep’s eyes and went into hysterics when he told her she had better get her work done or go.

  “He told me then that he was fed to the teeth with that sort of thing, and now Mrs. Cunningham does the same. I could slap her, that I could, letting me down like that after all the trouble I took to get her the job.”

  “I can assure you that I am not likely to be – er – interested in Mr. Huron,” Aria said stiffly.

  She felt a great reluctance to have anything to do with the job or with this man to whom she had already taken an almost intense dislike.

  At the same time the thought of twenty pounds a week was too much for her. If she lived in, she need spend hardly anything. It meant that there would be almost twenty pounds to go back to Queen’s Folly – twenty pounds a week!

  It would mean another man on the farm and repairs to the roof. They could begin to pay some of the bills that were always standing in an ever increasing pile on Charles’ desk. However distasteful, however irksome the job might be, she must take it – for the sake of Queen’s Folly.

  “Do you think Mr. Huron is likely to engage me?” she asked.

  It seemed as if Mrs. Benstead looked at her for the first time.

  “You’re a bit young,” she said. “Isn’t she, Vera? He asked me for someone middle-aged. That’s why I sent Mrs. Cunningham, she isn’t far off it.”

  “I am older than I look,” Aria came back quickly.

  Mrs. Benstead shrugged her shoulders.

  “Well, we can but try,” she said. “I’ve got no one else to send him and I don’t like to let him down. If he went to any other agency, it would be disastrous for us. You pop along to Claridges at three o’clock and have a tidy.

  “For goodness’ sake don’t look so sloppy or let him think that you might fall in love with him. That’s what he dislikes. It must be uncomfortable, in a sort of way, if you think about it – being a sort of Frank Sinatra. Bother that Mrs. Cunningham, I’m furious with her!”

  “Will you give me a card of introduction?” Aria asked.

  “Yes, here you are,” Mrs. Benstead said, scribbling her name on the top of one of the printed cards. “Send this up at three o’clock. If you get the job, telephone me at once. I’ll ring through now and say you’re coming. I’ll have to say I’ve known you for some time. I’m taking a chance, mind, but somehow you look trustworthy and if you know three languages you must have had a good education.”

  “A passable one,” Aria said with a smile.

  She took the card and thrust it into her pocket

  “Goodbye!” she said, holding out her hand.

  “Goodbye, Miss Milbank, and good luck!” Mrs. Benstead replied.

  Aria passed into the outer office. Sitting disconsolately in the chair against the wall was a woman wearing rather fussy over-elaborate clothes. She was a faded blonde and must once have been very pretty. Now she was middle-aged, her chin-line was sagging and her figure thickening.

  ‘This must be Mrs. Cunningham,’ Aria thought with a pang of pity. And then, because she felt embarrassed at taking a job from an older woman, she passed down the stairs and out into the street.

  She had a cheap and solitary luncheon at a small tea shop off Oxford Street. She found her mood alternating between excitement and optimism at the thought of the salary and depression at what might be expected of her should she actually land the job.

  At ten minutes to three she walked into Claridges and asked the hall porter if Mr. Huron would see her. The hall porter telephoned upstairs and then said,

  “Mr. Huron is not yet in his suite, madam. If you would like to wait, I will inform you when he comes in.”

  “I have an appointment for three o’clock,” Aria informed him.

  “Mr. Huron should be back by then. He is very seldom late if he makes an appointment,” the hall porter informed her.

  The seats in the hall were all filled, so Aria walked into the lounge where quite a number of people were still lingering over their coffee.

  She seated herself in a chair that had its back to a pillar and beyond was another lounge arranged with low sofas and comfortable armchairs that were intended for the residents in the hotel.

  Aria had hardly sat down before she heard a voice behind her say,

  “I shall kill myself! I shall, really.”

  It was a woman who spoke with such a passionate intensity that it was with the greatest difficulty that Aria restrained herself from turning round to see who had spoken.

  “Now, honey, you are being ridiculous,” a man’s voice with a soft American accent said soothingly. “You know as well as I do that people who threaten suicide never do it.”

  “Then I shall be the exception.”

  “Nonsense! You are too pretty and life holds far too much for you.”

  “It holds nothing, nothing, without you.”

  “Now, listen. We have been through all this before.

  “We agreed, you and I, that there was nothing serious between us but a desire for fun. And we’ve had fun, haven’t we?”

  “Must you put it in the past tense?”

  “No, of course not. It’s you who started this conversation.”

  There was silence and then what sounded suspiciously like a woman’s sob.

  “Come, honey, cheer up,” the man said. “Can I buy you a drink?”

  “No of course not. Is that your cure for every ill?”

  “I’ve known diamonds pretty near as effective!”

  There was no mistaking the slight humour underlying the words. In response there was a sudden chuckle and then two people were laughing in what seemed to Aria a warm accord with each other.

  “When do we go and get them?” the woman asked after a moment. “Now?”

  “No, I have an appointment,” the man replied. “What about tomorrow morning? Shall we visit Cartier or Boucheron?”

  “Why not both? You know I can never have enough of a good thing!”

  They were laughing again as if at some familiar joke.

  Then suddenly Aria glanced down at her wristwatch and saw that it was five minutes past three. She jumped to her feet, anxious lest, because she had been listening to a quite irrelevant conversation between two strangers, the hall porter had overlooked her and that she had missed her appointment with Mr. Huron.

  She hurried to the desk. She had to wait a moment or two while a large fat woman gave an order about her Pekinese, which apparently had to be walked at regular intervals in the Park.

  At last she gained the hall porter’s attention. He glanced at the clock before he spoke to
her.

  “Ten past three,” he said. “Mr. Huron ought to be back by now, I’ll try him again, madam.”

  He picked up the receiver and held on for what seemed to Aria an unconscionable time.

  Then at length someone answered.

  “There is a lady here who says she has an appointment with Mr. Huron at three o’clock – yes, very good.”

  He replaced the receiver.

  “Mr. Huron’s valet is upstairs, madam,” he said to Aria. “He suggests you go up and wait. He doesn’t think his Master will be long. The page boy will show you the way.”

  A diminutive page in silver buttons led Aria to the lift. There were two long mirrors on either side and, as they travelled swiftly towards the sixth floor, Aria, glancing at herself, thought how terribly young and inexperienced she looked.

  Nervously she pushed back the hair curling over her ears. Perhaps a more severe hairstyle would make her look older.

  She felt suddenly very nervous, her heart dropping at the thought of the interview that lay ahead. Suppose, after all, she didn’t get this job? Twenty pounds a week would mean so much to Queen’s Folly.

  She could imagine the sudden light in Charles’s eyes when she told him and the excitement in his voice as he repeated after her, “twenty pounds a week!”

  It was then that she remembered a pair of sunglasses she carried in her handbag. They were not very dark ones but plain and rather severe in shape, which she had bought many years ago when she was in Rome.

  She seldom used them nowadays, but they had been in her black bag when she picked it up to wear it with the black coat and skirt and she had not bothered to take them out.

  As she followed the page along the passage, she drew the glasses out of their case. She slipped them on her nose, as she did so pushing her hair still further back behind her ears.

  The page knocked at a door. It was opened almost immediately by an elderly man dressed in the conventional rounded coat and striped trousers of a manservant.

  “You have an appointment to see Mr. Huron, madam?” he said. “My Master should not be long. Will you wait for him in the sitting room?”

  He led the way into a comfortable room and indicated a sofa where Aria should sit.

  “I don’t know whether you have seen The Daily Telegraph this morning,” he said, laying it beside her. “Or if you prefer it, here are The Daily Mail and The Daily Express.”

  “Thank you,” Aria said with a faint smile.

  “It’s a pleasure,” the valet said with what was almost an old world courtesy.

  He went from the room, but Aria did not look at the newspapers. Instead she inspected herself in the small hand mirror she carried in her bag. The glasses certainly made her look older. She looked, too, with her swept-back hair, rather businesslike and efficient. She hoped that Mr. Huron would think so, at any rate.

  She heard an outer door open and a voice speak and only just had time to slip the mirror back into her handbag before someone came into the room.

  “I’m sorry to keep you waiting, Miss Milbank,” he said apologetically, his voice low and deep and with only the faint trace of a transatlantic burr.

  Almost instinctively Aria’s hand went out to grasp his. It was then, as she felt his fingers touch hers, that she looked up into his face and recognised him.

  It was the man who had come to Queen’s Folly. The man with the high cheekbones who had driven the grey Bentley and whom she had thought so attractive that she had found herself thinking of him, not once but continually.

  Chapter 3

  “I am sorry to have kept you waiting. Will you sit down?”

  Dart Huron indicated a hard chair set beside the writing desk.

  Aria crossed the room to it uncomfortably. She had the feeling, absurd thought it was, that she should not have been seated on the sofa.

  Dart Huron lit a cigarette and then sat down at the desk. He took some sheets of writing paper out of a drawer and picked up a fountain pen.

  “Mrs. Benstead told me your name, but gave me no other particulars,” he said. “I think it would be best if I wrote them down.”

  He spoke in what seemed to Aria to be an abrupt, rather harsh voice, and, now that her first surprise at meeting him was over, she was able to look at him calmly and without feeling that curious leap of her heart, which had occurred when he came into the room.

  His was a strange face, she thought. Not exactly handsome but arresting and, as she herself well knew, unforgettable. He had high cheekbones and his eyes were very deep set, dark and strangely penetrating.

  It was easy to understand that some people must find it difficult to look him straight in his eyes. His mouth was full-lipped but firm and in repose his face had a rather hard expression as if he was a man with little tenderness and not much sympathy for weakness.

  “Well, Miss Milbank!”

  It almost made Aria jump as he looked up at her suddenly, his pen poised over the paper.

  “What do you – wish to know?” she stammered.

  “A few particulars about yourself,” he said. “You look extremely young for a job involving responsibility.”

  The cold impersonality of his tone somehow robbed the words of their rudeness. But nevertheless Aria felt herself stiffen.

  “I am older than I look,” she said. “But if, in fact, you are looking for someone middle-aged, then perhaps it would be better not to waste any more time.”

  She was surprised to hear her own voice saying the words and, even as she spoke them, she wondered how she could throw away this one chance she had of helping Queen’s Folly.

  Yet there was something in the stranger’s attitude that was bringing to the surface a pride that she did not even know she possessed.

  “I am looking for an efficient housekeeper and Social secretary,” Dart Huron replied. “I have not any particular prejudice about age. I only want somebody who is capable of filling the position.”

  “If the particulars Mrs. Benstead has given me are correct,” Aria said quietly, “I think I could fulfil your requirements.”

  “You speak Spanish?”

  “Yes.”

  He gabbled a sentence to her in Spanish, asking her whether she lived in London or whether she had merely come up for the day. She answered him quickly and without any hesitation, replying that she had come from Hertfordshire and that it usually took about an hour-and-a-half to reach to London from her home.

  “Good!” he said in English. “And you are as fluent in French and German?”

  “I have lived in both countries,” Aria replied.

  “Good!” he said again and then, throwing down his pen as if he had no further use for it, he added, “Mrs. Benstead will have taken up your references so we need not bother with them. You can start at once, I presume?”

  “Do you mean today?” Aria enquired.

  “Today or tomorrow. I have a house party coming to Summerhill for the weekend and I want someone to look after them.”

  “I shall have to go home and fetch my clothes,” Aria said. “I could start tomorrow if that is convenient to you.”

  “You had better make it as early as possible,” Dart Huron replied. “The telephone number is Guildford 8877. If you will telephone the butler and tell him what time you are arriving, he will arrange for there to be a car to meet you at the station. I shall be down at luncheon time. We can discuss then what arrangements are to be made.”

  “Thank you,” Aria said and added, because she was suddenly anxious at all that she was now undertaking, “I will do my best.”

  “Thank you, Miss Milbank.”

  He rose to his feet as if the interview was at an end. And then, as Aria rose too, he hesitated and his lips tightened as if he was making a sudden decision.

  “There is one thing more I want to say,” he began.

  Aria waited and after a pause he continued,

  “I think it best to be quite frank with you, Miss Milbank. I have had trouble in the past with my E
nglish housekeepers becoming – how shall I put it? – too attached to me personally. In America I am fortunate in having an exceptional secretary for whom I have the utmost respect. She manages my affairs admirably and she never intrudes her own personality on mine. She is, unluckily, ill at the moment and as she has to undergo an operation is likely to be in hospital for some months.”

  Dart Huron flicked the ash from his cigarette and continued,

  “I miss her not only because her work is first class but because of her very detached attitude towards me. I think you will understand what I am trying to say.”

  He looked at Aria in what seemed to her a very disdainful manner.

  Instinctively her chin went up.

  “I assure you, Mr. Huron,” she said stiffly after a moment, “that you need not worry that I shall inconvenience you with any unwanted attention or affection. My position in your household will, of course, be exactly as you have defined it, and my attitude towards you will be strictly that of an employee towards an employer.”

  “I am glad of your reassurance, Miss Milbank,” Dart Huron answered. “As I have said, in the past I have been perhaps singularly unfortunate.”

  Aria thought of Mrs. Cunningham sitting disconsolately in the dusty agency in Baker Street and felt slightly sick.

  “I can give you my assurance that I shall be interested only in my job,” she said and heard the slight edge on her voice that betrayed her inner resentment and rising irritation.

  If Dart Huron heard it, he made no sign.

  “I shall trust then, Miss Milbank, to your good sense.”

  “Thank you.”

  She turned away from him and walked towards the door. Deliberately she did not offer him her hand, knowing at that moment that she would like nothing better than to tell him that she had changed her mind and had no desire to take the position he offered her.

  She longed almost intensely to see the surprise in his face and for him to realise that it was not only he who could pick and choose but other people as well.