Love Forbidden Page 6

  “Did you have any visitors?” Aria asked, looking into the box where the money was kept.

  “Eight,” Nanny replied. “And all American. Two car loads of them. They were doin’ a round of all the houses, they told me. They thought this was ‘real quaint’ because it was so tiny.”

  Nanny trying to imitate an American accent made Aria laugh.

  “Close the door,” she said. “It’s after hours and I have lots to tell you.”

  “You’ve got a job,” Nanny said. “I can tell it by the look in your eyes.”

  “Can you guess what it is, as you’re so clever?” Aria enquired.

  “I’m not going to waste my time guessing. Come along and tell me all about it, dearie.”

  She led the way towards the sitting room. Aria threw herself into a chair and pulled off her hat. It was only as she did so that she realised that her hair was still brushed back from her ears as she had arranged it for the interview with Dart Huron.

  She had taken off her glasses in the bus that had carried her to the station, but she had forgotten about her hair and she wondered now why Nanny had not remarked on it.

  Perhaps it had not made such a difference as she thought. Perhaps she would have looked just the same to Dart Huron if her curls had been rioting against her cheeks.

  Nanny came back from the kitchen with the tea-tray.

  “I’ve cut you a nice lettuce sandwich,” she said, “I’m sure you didn’t have a proper lunch, seein’ that you had to pay for it.”

  “I had a salad, some cheese and a cup of coffee,” Aria answered. “And you’ll hardly believe it but it came to four-and-sixpence. I was furious afterwards that I hadn’t gone somewhere cheaper.”

  “These London places are all the same,” Nanny snorted. “It’s a wonder that the wretched people who have to work in the town don’t die of starvation. They never give you enough in those eatin’ places to put a bit of flesh on your bones.”

  She poured out Aria’s tea and sat down at the table.

  “Now, tell me what you’ve been up to,” she said.

  Aria told her from the very beginning. How she had gone from agency to agency until finally, at Mrs. Benstead’s, she had been offered the fantastic job of housekeeper and Social secretary to Dart Huron. She described her interview with him at Claridges, only omitting what he had said to her about becoming too affectionate to him, even as she had omitted all reference to Mrs. Cunningham in her description of the agency.

  “And so I’ve got the job, Nanny,” she said at last.

  “It doesn’t seem possible!” Nanny ejaculated. “All that money! He must be rollin’ in it if he can throw it away as easily as that.”

  “I think he is rolling in it,” Aria replied.

  “And what’s he like, dearie?” Nanny asked. “Is he a decent man? I wouldn’t like you to be goin’ to a house where you would not be mixin’ with people like yourself. No money in the world is worth some things you might encounter.”

  “You need not worry about that,” Aria replied. “And if you want to know what Mr. Dart Huron’s like, I can tell you. You’ve seen him.”

  “I’ve seen him!” Nanny looked puzzled. “When?”

  “Do you remember the man in the grey Bentley with that very pretty blonde American who came here yesterday?”

  “Of course I remember him,” Nanny said. “Do you mean to say that’s Mr. Huron?”

  “Yes, that’s him.”

  “Well, fancy that now!” Nanny exclaimed. “Oh, well, I’m glad that he has seen your home and knows the sort of place that you come from. It’s better that he should have an idea of who you are and the respect you are entitled to.”

  Aria did not disillusion Nanny by telling her that she had given a different name from her own. Nanny had very exaggerated ideas as to what Charles’ title and Queen’s Folly meant to the average person.

  She would never have understood, even if Aria had tried to explain to her, how ashamed she was by the notoriety of her father’s death or the gossip that Sir Gladstone Milborne had always caused in his lifetime. To Nanny, the gentry, good or bad, were still people to be looked up to.

  She had no idea that times had changed or that Aria, as well as Charles, was not proud of their position or their history.

  “Twenty pounds a week!” Nanny repeated “Well, it seems a lot of money. Do you think he will want you to stay a long time?”

  “I have no idea,” Aria answered. “The summer, I suppose. But now I have something else to tell you, Nanny.”

  She related how she had talked with Betty Tetley in the train and what she had suggested about her coming to Queen’s Folly as a pupil if she was not entirely satisfied with the Fullers.

  “No decent girl ought to go into Plover’s End and that’s a fact,” Nanny said. “That Fred Fuller’s a bad man. Why, Mrs. Hurcombe was tellin’ me only last week that he’s been after the Deaken girl at the Post Office. Goes down to meet her in the evening – and him the father of four children!”

  “I suppose Mrs. Fuller knows it’s no use protesting,” Aria said. “Anyway, we can only see if she turns up here. I couldn’t say more, could I?”

  “No, dearie, of course, you couldn’t. Though I’m sorry for the poor creature if she goes into a house like that.”

  “That’s what I felt,” Aria said. “You don’t think Charles would mind?”

  “Well, I was thinkin’ that it would be company for him when you’re away. He’ll feel a bit lonely in the evenings when there is no one to talk to and you know what I am for dozin’ off when supper is over. I’ve tried everythin’ but I can’t keep awake.”

  Aria laughed.

  “And there’s no reason why you should, Nanny. You have your forty winks and if our pupil comes, Charles can instruct her in the rotation of crops or something equally thrilling.”

  “If she’s a decent sort of a girl, it will do him all the good in the world to have someone fresh to talk to,” Nanny said. “If you asks me, the way he keeps himself all buttoned up is bad for him. He ought to try and be young again. Do you know, I haven’t heard him laugh, not once, this past year.

  “I was thinkin’ the other day how he used to laugh when he was a little boy. ‘It’s funny, Nanny! Don’t you see how funny it is?’ he used to say to me and laugh till I thought his sides would burst. Now he’s as solemn as a judge. It isn’t natural.”

  “No, Nanny, it isn’t natural,” Aria said, thinking of the tortures that Charles had endured as a prisoner, some of which he had once revealed to her in a wild moment of misery and depression.

  She picked up her hat and bag and rose to her feet.

  “I’m going upstairs to change,” she said. “I hope Charles will be in soon. I can’t wait to tell him all that has happened today.”

  “I’m just prayin’ that young girl will come here,” Nanny said and Aria realised with a little sigh that, as usual, Nanny was thinking more of Charles than of anyone else.

  He had always been Nanny’s favourite and, as she walked slowly up the uncarpeted stairs, Aria felt as if she had already gone from the house and out of Nanny’s and Charles’ lives. It was almost like being in no-man’s-land. Today was finished – tomorrow had not yet begun!

  And what would tomorrow bring her? She heard again that harsh cold note in Dart Huron’s voice and felt herself shiver. It had made her angry at the time and yet now, in retrospect, there was something slightly sinister about it.

  Was he cruel? she wondered. As cruel as his Indian forbears had been? She felt suddenly afraid.

  Chapter 4

  Aria arrived at Guildford Station to find a large limousine awaiting her.

  The chauffeur put her luggage into the back of the car and they drove through the town and out into the Surrey hills.

  And, although Aria was prepared for something rather impressive, as they turned in at the drive gates with huge stone newels and a rather ornate lodge, Summerhill House, when it came into view, took her breath away.
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  Originally built by an Italian in the reign of King George III, it had been added to by subsequent owners until it sprawled, large, a little unwieldy and yet contriving to be strangely beautiful, over several acres of ground.

  It was situated on the very summit of the hill and the ground sloped sharply on the other side of it into the valley below and on clear days one had an uninterrupted view towards the distant sea.

  Not only was this house unique but the gardens also were unique. Everything that money could do to make a garden exceptional had been done at Summerhill. There were flowers and statues, fountains and arbours, rockeries and rippling streams until the eye was bewildered with it all.

  For a moment Aria sat open-mouthed in admiration and then a feeling of nervous anticipation supplanted everything else. This was so much bigger and more impressive than she had expected and suddenly she remembered why she was there – to run this awe-inspiring house, to manage it for the man who was prepared to pay her twenty pounds a week for her services.

  She wondered what the respectful and rather uncommunicative chauffeur would say if she commanded him to turn round and take her back to the station.

  Yet that was what she wanted to do more than anything else – to run away, to evade this responsibility, which she was quite certain was more than she could shoulder.

  But it was too late. The car had drawn up under the portico of the front door, a footman in livery was hurrying down the steps and a moment later Aria found herself being greeted by McDougall who looked, she thought with a sudden flash of humour, like a rather dissolute Archbishop.

  “Mr. Huron said we were to expect you, Miss Milbank,” he said politely, but with just that hint of familiarity as of one servant to another.

  “Perhaps you will be kind enough to show me round,” Aria said. “But I should like first to see my own room.”

  “You will, I presume, be using the same apartments as Mrs. Cunningham,” McDougall said, and once again Aria fancied that there was something lurking underneath the words as if secretly he was poking fun at her.

  “I imagine that will be most convenient,” she said stiffly.

  He took her upstairs and she found at the end of an enormously long corridor two extremely pleasant rooms.

  The bedroom was small but exquisitely furnished, while the sitting room had large windows overlooking the garden and besides a serviceable-looking writing desk, which appeared to Aria to be piled with papers, there was a comfortable sofa, armchairs and a television set, all, she gathered, for her own exclusive use.

  “What charming rooms,” she said, forgetting for a moment to be formal in front of McDougall.

  “So Mrs. Cunningham thought,” he said. “She was sorry to say goodbye to them.”

  There was no mistaking the sidelong glance of his eyes or the expression on his face. Aria felt her heart sinking. If all the staff knew why Mrs. Cunningham had left, she could see very clearly that her new position was not going to be an easy one.

  “I think now it would be best if you introduced me to the staff,” she suggested. “Mrs. Benstead informed me that they all came through her agency.”

  “That’s right, miss,” McDougall smiled. “We’re all from the Benstead stable, so to speak. Some of us have been with Mr. Huron when he has been over here before and some, if I may be permitted to say so, are not up to our usual standard. But there you are, one has to take what one can these days.”

  Aria agreed with him as they went down the backstairs to the kitchens. There she met the chef, to whom she took an instant liking and shook hands with an enormous miscellaneous collection of men and women without for a moment having any conception what their duties were or how any of them fitted into the household management.

  “Here’s my dining room, if you would care to see it,” McDougall said.

  He flung open the door of a very large, beautifully proportioned room as he spoke, but Aria knew that there was a warning for her in the possessive ‘my’. McDougall did not intend her to interfere in his department.

  “And now perhaps you would like to see the front rooms,” he proposed.

  Aria shook her head.

  “There is no hurry for that,” she said. “Perhaps later you could inform Mr. Huron that I have arrived and let me know if there is anything that needs doing in the meantime.”

  “There’s the seating for dinner,” McDougall said a little grudgingly. “Mrs. Cunningham used to do that, but Mr. Huron would be quite prepared to leave it to me.”

  “I think until Mr. Huron gives definite orders I had better see to it,” Aria stated firmly.

  She saw only too clearly that she and McDougall were going to have a silent battle as to who was the real authority in the house.

  It means, she thought a little wearily, ceaseless manoeuvring and, although the butler was doubtless very good at his job, she felt that somehow he was not the type of man she could either like or trust very far.

  “I think I had better go back to my own sitting room,” she said and realised that already she was completely lost. They had passed down so many passages, gone into so many rooms of one sort and another that now she had to wait until McDougall led her back to where she had come down from the first floor.

  She climbed the stairs and passing through a swing door that divided the staff quarters from the other part of the house, found herself once again in what already she had begun to think of as her own sanctum.

  She put her hat and coat down in her bedroom and glanced at herself in the mirror, only to feel, with a sense of dismay, that she was looking absurdly young. The excitement of her arrival had brought the colour to her cheeks and her eyes, though wide and a little apprehensive, were also sparkling.

  Try as she would she could not control the red curls rioting around her white forehead or the roguishness of those that lay against her cheeks and at the nape of her long neck.

  “I had better put on my glasses,” she told her reflection in the glass with a little grimace.

  She put them on her nose and they certainly did give a new severity to her appearance. She thought too that her white blouse, severely tailored, and her black skirt gave her a workmanlike look that was well in keeping with her new position.

  Curbing an impulse to hurry, she walked slowly from her bedroom into her sitting room.

  It was even more attractive on second impressions than it had been at first.

  Pale green walls and deep rose-coloured chintz were a fitting background for a few really nice pieces of furniture and a lovely picture, which Aria recognised as being by one of the early nineteenth century landscape artists.

  The picture made her mind fly back to Queen’s Folly.

  She wondered how Nanny was managing alone this afternoon with no one to relieve her from her post at the hall door. She felt a sudden pang of unhappiness at the thought of being away from home.

  ‘How would Charles get on without me,’ she wondered and then she remembered with something akin to jealousy that he might have Betty Tetley to talk to in the evenings.

  It was only now, she thought, that she realised how happy she had been these past years, despite the fact that she had been worried about Charles and troubled about money. Yet how infinitely preferable that was to worrying about her father.

  Looking back, she knew that even when she was a child she had been aware that he was dissolute and unreliable.

  He had had charm, no one would deny that, and yet Aria could not remember a time when she had not realised that he was uncertain and not to be trusted. He would break promises as readily as he had made them – a new interest, a new attraction, a new face and old friendships, however valuable they might have been in the past, were cast aside without a moment’s hesitation.

  Little wonder that Sir Gladstone Milborne had had many acquaintances and no friends.

  With a little sigh Aria turned away from the picture. The past was something she had to forget and yet she knew that neither she nor Charles could ever
forget that their home had been emptied to pay the bills of some luxury hotel and to buy jewels for a pretty blonde.

  Only the pictures had remained and they could have gone too if the solicitors had not, in a moment of unexpected shrewdness, persuaded Sir Gladstone to make them heirlooms under the National Trust, so that they should not be liable for death duties.

  How often he had regretted what he termed his ‘one quixotic action’. But he could not cancel or repudiate it, so although Charles had nothing else and could not sell them even if he wanted to, the best pictures of the Milborne collection were still in his possession.

  The door behind Aria opened suddenly and she started rather guiltily, her thoughts so far away that she had forgotten for a moment her new duties.

  “Can I come in?”

  It was a man’s voice that asked the question, but there was no trace of an American accent in it and it was not Dart Huron who stood there. It was, indeed, someone very different.

  A slim smiling young Englishman with fair hair and twinkling blue eyes and a mouth which, even in repose, turned upwards a little at the corners.

  “Good afternoon!” he said, advancing across the room. “McDougall told me that you had arrived. My name is Buckleigh.”

  “I am Aria Milbank,” Aria replied, shaking hands with him.

  “Yes, McDougall told me your name, but he didn’t prepare me for what you were going to look like.”

  “What – what do you mean?” Aria asked him.

  “But you’re a beauty! Dart told me that he had engaged a new lady housekeeper and that she was extremely accomplished. He didn’t add that she was also a raving beauty!”

  The newcomer had a whimsical way of speaking which made Aria want to laugh. But, remembering that she was supposed to be older and more staid than she looked, she quickly put the glasses that she had been holding in her hand back on her nose and began sternly,

  “Mr. Buckleigh – ”

  “Actually I’m a Lord, if you must be formal,” he interrupted.