The Runaway Heart Read online

  Karina stiffened.

  “If you think I wanted him to – ” she began angrily, only to hear Felix say quickly,

  “Hush!”

  Garland Holt was returning, walking towards them with something in his hand.

  “Come along,” he said. “I have taken the key from the strong room. All these precautions are a damned nuisance, but the Insurance Company insists on them.”

  He did not wait for their comments but led the way across the hall to where, underneath the stairs, there was a door. He inserted the key in the lock. The door swung open and they found themselves in a small room almost completely square, in which the walls were covered with glass shelves cleverly lit.

  On the shelves, iridescent in the light, were hundreds of pieces of carved jade. The effect was exquisite. Karina did not know enough about such things to realise how fabulously valuable and unique the collection was.

  There was not only jade. There was pink quartz, whole shelves of it, each piece more beautifully carved than the last, the warm pink contrasting with other pieces of blue lapis lazuli, red amber and pure transparent crystal.

  She heard Felix gasping with excitement as he listened to Garland Holt describing a piece of burial jade or the value of an especially beautiful figure in red amber.

  “I have never seen anything like it!” Felix exclaimed. “And how wonderful they look here! You could not have chosen a better setting.”

  “My father always had them in the bank,” Garland Holt answered. “He would see them perhaps once or twice a year. I was determined to have them with me.”

  “How often do you see them?” Felix asked.

  “Very often,” Garland Holt replied. “It rests me and makes me feel relaxed to come in here and look at anything quite so beautiful.”

  He gave a little smile.

  “Sometimes I think how long they have existed in the world, five, six, ten centuries, and realise that it doesn’t matter one way or another if the deal I am trying to put over today succeeds or fails.”

  Karina glanced at him with a new interest. She had not heard him speak like this before. For once he was not being austere or aggressive, sarcastic or on his guard. He was just looking at the treasures he loved and enjoying the beauty of them.

  “This is my favourite piece,” he said quietly.

  He took down from the centre position on one of the shelves a small figure made from pink quartz with emerald eyes.

  Felix put out his hand, but Garland Holt gave it to Karina.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “It is Indian,” he replied. “It is Ganesa, the elephant God, the symbol of good luck.”

  “It’s so heavy!” she exclaimed in surprise.

  She held it up to the light and saw the little stand on which it was seated was made of amethyst, set with diamonds.

  “It’s lovely!” she cried.

  “It must have been carved in about the thirteenth century,” Garland Holt said. “And there is a legend that whoever possesses it will always have good luck. Originally it belonged to my grandfather. My grandmother always swears that his luck changed from the moment he was given it by a Maharajah whom he had befriended. Anyway, he kept it beside him until he died and then he left it to me, his only grandson, in his will. I have a feeling that it has brought me luck, at any rate as far as money is concerned.”

  “It’s very beautiful,” Karina said. “But if you lost it, would you be afraid?”

  “That my luck had gone with it?” Garland Holt questioned. “Yes, perhaps I should be. I tell myself that I am not superstitious, but where this is concerned it is almost a family heirloom. My grandmother believes in it firmly.”

  “I think all these wonderful pieces have brought you luck,” Felix said. “May I look at your elephant?”

  He held out his hand and Karina gave it to him. She had a curious reluctance to do so.

  There was something in the smooth coolness of the carved stone that gave her a strange feeling, but what it was she could not formulate even to herself.

  “It’s fabulous!” Felix enthused. “I shouldn’t think there is a piece like it in the whole world.”

  He placed his long fingers over the elephant’s head, touched the little green emerald eyes, as if he was appraising every inch of it.

  Garland Holt suddenly bent forward and took it from him.

  “Let me put my luck back where it belongs,” he said. “I had a special lighting device where this was concerned. Do you see how it makes the eyes shine and shows up the transparency of the body?”

  “Very clever,” Felix smiled.

  And then added,

  “Have you any idea what this is worth? The whole collection, I mean.”

  Garland Holt shrugged his shoulders.

  “Can you put a price on things that could never be replaced?” he asked. “It is insured for two hundred thousand pounds.”

  “I hope you will keep it safe,” Felix said. “There is no other way into this room except the two doors through which we have just come?”

  “Not unless you break down the window,” Garland Holt replied.

  “The window?” Felix seemed surprised.

  “The people who designed the room wished to keep it entirely artificially lit,” Garland Holt said. “But I hate to dispense with sunshine when there is any and so I insisted on having a window.”

  He drew back some curtains as he spoke and Karina saw that there was one long narrow window between two sets of shelves that she had not noticed before.

  It was raining outside and therefore the light that percolated into the room was grey and sunless, but she could understand how, when the sun was shining, the light would pick out the exquisite colours of the quartz and jade.

  “No bars?” she heard Felix ask.

  “Ah! That’s my secret,” Garland Holt replied. “I was not going to have the place looking like a prison, so the whole window, which incidentally is very difficult to reach, has every sort of special burglar alarm that anyone has ever thought of. You have only to touch a pane and the whole house will reverberate with the noise of a dozen bells.”

  “I congratulate you,” Felix said. “You seem to have thought of everything.”

  “I hope so,” Garland Holt answered. “I had enough people working on it.”

  He drew the curtains over the window again and, walking to the door, switched out the lights behind his treasures. It was, Karina thought, as if he deliberately excluded them once again from the glimpse that they had had of his true self.

  “Many collectors would like to get their hands on this little lot,” he said in his ordinary tone, half-jocular and half-aggressive.

  “I can believe it,” Felix said. “Mind you keep the key safe.”

  “Oh, I do,” Garland answered.

  They stepped into the hall again.

  “Well, that was certainly an experience,” Felix purred. “I shall always remember that I have actually seen the Holt Collection.”

  “And what did you think of it?” Garland Holt asked Karina.

  “I think it is very beautiful,” she answered. “But – ”

  She realised that she was about to criticise and stopped suddenly.

  “But what?” Garland Holt asked.

  She hesitated and then decided to tell him the truth.

  “I think it is sad that anything so beautiful should just be kept – for one person,” she answered. “So many people would like to enjoy the beauty that so many created.”

  “I am sure, Karina, that you don’t mean anything so stupid,” Felix said sharply. “The only way that Garland could let a lot of people see his jade would be to give them to a museum.”

  “And why not?” Karina asked. “At least they would be seen and admired rather than shut away in a dark room except when their owner condescends to visit them.”

  She realised that what she was saying was annoying Felix. She saw the anger in his eyes and the sudden tightening of his rather thin lip
s.

  And then Garland Holt gave a laugh, a sharp laugh without any humour in it, and turned on his heel and walked away from them.

  Felix watched him go and then turned to Karina.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” he asked.

  “I-I was only s-saying what I think,” Karina replied a little nervously.

  “Then don’t think such things,” he snapped. “I want to talk to you.”

  He looked round and then led the way to a room on the other side of the hall where there was a large rather awe-inspiring library.

  The books, bound in beautifully tooled leather, were on shelves stretching from floor to ceiling and several big leather armchairs were arranged round a huge carved stone fireplace.

  Felix waited until Karina reached the hearth and then closed the door firmly behind him.

  “Now listen to me, Karina,” he started.

  Karina clasped her hands together.

  “Please, Cousin Felix, don’t be angry with me,” she pleaded. “I daresay I have said the wrong thing, but Mr. Holt was very rude to me. He implied that I was running after him, trying to get at his money. He seems to think that everyone wants to get at him in some way or another. I think he is odious, conceited, spoilt and – very unpleasant.”

  She saw that her words were making Felix even angrier and she went on hastily,

  “Please let’s go away. Please let’s go to London so that I can find a job.”

  The room seemed to echo with her voice.

  Felix did not answer her. Instead he stood with his hand on the mantelpiece looking down into the leaping flames, a strange expression on his face that she could not fathom.

  She waited, feeling suddenly rather like a child who has been caught stealing the jam. The silence was far more frightening than if he had scolded her.

  “Cousin – Felix!” she whispered at length.

  He looked up from the flames.

  “I suppose,” he said slowly, “that having made a mistake the best thing is to rectify it. You had better go back.”

  She stood as if turned to stone.

  “I thought you would be sensible,” he said. “Obviously I was mistaken.”

  “But, Cousin Felix! Please – what do you mean?”

  The words were hardly above a whisper, but it was plain that he had heard them. His eyes, cold and with what seemed to her almost a look of dislike, looked her over and then turned away.

  “I can arrange for you to return tomorrow,” he said.

  “Back to Letchfield Park? Back to Aunt Margaret, to Uncle Simon and to – to Cyril? Oh, Cousin Felix, you cannot mean it!”

  “What else can I do?” he enquired. “You are obviously going out of your way to make yourself disagreeable to my friends, who have been kind enough to take you in simply out of friendship for me. I am sorry, Karina, that you don’t find them more congenial. But as it is, you force my hand to take the desperate measure of returning you from where you came.”

  Tears started to Karina’s eyes. She ran forward, her little hands outstretched, her face upturned to his.

  “Cousin Felix! Please, Cousin Felix!” she cried. “I didn’t mean it. I swear I will not be rude again. I will do anything you say, anything, only please don’t – send me back to Letchfield Park.”

  Felix did not look at her.

  “I should think it would be even unnecessary to send you,” he went on. “A telephone call and doubtless your uncle would come and fetch you.

  “No! No! No!” Karina cried in sudden terror. “You must not tell them where I am – you must not! I couldn’t face it again. I couldn’t go back. Please, Felix! Please!”

  She was crying now, the tears running down her cheeks, her voice coming brokenly, racked with sobs from between her lips.

  She put out her hand and clutched at Felix’s arm.

  “P-please, Cousin – Felix, p-please. I – I promise – you I’ll n-never do any – thing wrong again.”

  “What did Garland say to you?” Felix asked.

  Desperately Karina tried to remember what had happened. It was difficult to think of anything but the terror that she might be sent back.

  “I – went to the – schoolroom and he – came after me,” she said. “He told me – about his grandmother and his – governess, and then he – he seemed to think that – that I had gone there deliberately so that he could come and be – alone with me. I-I’m afraid I was rather – rude to him and then, when I tried to go upstairs to my bedroom to get away from – him, you called me and he offered to show us the jade.”

  “He offered to show you the jade,” Felix corrected.

  He was silent for a moment and then he said, almost beneath his breath,

  “I wonder! I wonder if this isn’t a better approach!”

  “Approach to what? Oh, Cousin Felix, you will not send me back, will you?”

  Felix was silent for so long that Karina felt her heart drop lower and lower. The tears were still running down her cheeks and she made no attempt to stop them. And then at last, when she could see no more, she blindly groped for a handkerchief as Felix said,

  “I will not send you back, but you must not antagonise him too far.”

  “Whom? Garland Holt?” Karina asked.

  “Who else are we talking about?” Felix said irritably.

  “But he is so – so rude,” she insisted.

  “Millionaires are always rude,” Felix replied in a tired voice. “And they are entitled to be. People will put up with anything if a man has a couple of million to his credit.”

  He stroked his chin, looking down at her with an expression that she could not fathom.

  “Please, Cousin Felix,” she pleaded.

  “He did not show his jade to anyone else here,” he said. “He did not show the jade to – Well, never mind.”

  “I don’t understand what you are trying to say,” Karina said.

  Felix sat down on the sofa.

  “Listen to me, Karina,” he said. “I am beginning to think I have been wrong. At the same time rudeness for someone who looks like you, and even repartee, is somehow out of place. Be gentle, sweet, at the same time retiring and a little lost. That is what one would expect.”

  “But I am feeling – lost and I suppose you might say that I am retiring – because I don’t fit in with the people who are here,” Karina answered. “But why should you want me to pretend? What for? What is the reason?”

  “I think you can leave that to me,” Felix said. “Just do as you are told and don’t be rude.”

  “You will not send me back! Promise you won’t send me back!” Karina begged.

  “Not as long as you behave yourself,” Felix answered.

  He smiled suddenly and, bending forward, kissed her on the cheek.

  “I forgive you,” he said. “You had better go and bathe your eyes. You don’t want anyone to think you have been crying.”

  “I still don’t understand,” she pleaded.

  “Don’t try,” Felix answered. “Now, run along. I have a telephone call to make.”

  Karina walked towards the door. There were a dozen questions she wanted to put to him, a hundred things she wanted clarifying in her mind. But she realised that he had no intention of telling her anything more.

  “Will you give me an outside line direct to this room?” she heard him say.

  She stood for a moment hesitating in the doorway, hoping he would look at her, hoping that in some inexplicable manner he would make things clearer.

  But he was drawing with a pencil on the pad by the telephone, so she went from the library and closed the door behind her.

  She ran across the hall, frightened that she would see someone. She reached the top of the stairs in safety and was just going into her room when a maid came down the passage and stopped her.

  “Excuse me, miss, but Mrs. de Winton said that if I saw you. I was to ask you to come and see her.”

  “Mrs. de Winton?” Karina asked in surprise.


  “Yes, the old lady – Mr. Holt’s grandmother. That’s her name,” the maid explained.

  “Of course,” Karina said.

  She remembered that Garland Holt had told her that his grandmother had been married three times.

  “I’ll come in a few minutes. I just want to go to my room first.”

  Karina went to her room, sponged her face with cold water and tried to hide the traces of tears with powder. She hoped that Mrs. de Winton would not notice.

  But as soon as she entered the old lady’s room, her bright penetrating eyes scrutinised Karina’s face and she said sharply,

  “Who’s been making you cry? Don’t tell me it’s that rascally grandson of mine.”

  Karina felt that in truth Garland Holt was indirectly responsible for her tears, but she prevaricated by answering,

  “How did you know I have been crying?”

  “I have eyes in my head, haven’t I?” the old lady asked. “And, what’s more, I was not born yesterday. Something has upset you. What is it? Tell me.”

  “My cousin was angry with me,” Karina said, “and he threatened to send me back to Letchfield Park.”

  “Oh! He has a good hold over you if you are so frightened of what he might do that it makes you cry,” Mrs. de Winton snorted. “Take my advice, child. Never let anybody dictate to you. It makes you feel small and inferior and that is bad enough without anything else.”

  “I know, but it could not be helped,” Karina said.

  Mrs. de Winton looked as if she wanted to question her further, but instead she said,

  “What’s the party like downstairs? The usual collection of bloated financiers who eat and drink too much and take too little exercise?”

  Karina laughed, she could not help it.

  “They do look rather like that,” she confessed.

  “What about the girls?” asked the old lady. “My daughter-in-law told me that she had asked the usual silly creatures who are always hoping that Garland will marry them.”

  “He says he will not marry until he finds someone like you,” Karina said.

  The old lady chuckled.

  “So he said that, did he? Oh, well! I did not credit him with having so much good taste.”

  She was obviously pleased with the compliment and then she said with another of her penetrating glances,