The Runaway Heart Read online

  “And why should you be discussing marriage with my grandson?”

  “He brought the subject up. It seems to be something he thinks about frequently. He imagines everyone he meets is running after him.”

  She could not help the scorn in her voice and even as she spoke she realised it was the sort of thing that Felix did not want her to say.

  But Mrs. de Winton was not annoyed.

  “Well, they do, and that’s a fact,” she said. “When you have a young man with money, who has made a big name for himself, there are obviously dozens of silly young creatures who want to show him how to spend what he has earned. And think of how much publicity they would get out of being married to him!”

  “You are as cynical as he is,” Karina said. “I don’t think that ordinary girls are like that at all. They want to fall in love and get married because they want to have a home of their own and children.”

  “Is that what you want?” Mrs. de Winton asked.

  “Yes, that’s what I should want,” Karina said almost defiantly, “if I was going to get married. And I would not want someone who had so much money that he was suspicious of every woman he met or who shut up all his lovely treasures behind locked doors so that only he could look at them. I think that would only complicate life and make it much too difficult.”

  Once again she realised that she was saying too much. Cousin Felix would be angry.

  She gave a little gasp and turned a scared face towards the old lady, but Mrs. de Winton chuckled.

  “That’s the spirit,” she said. “That’s the way Garland ought to be talked to. You will be good for him, I can quite see that.”

  Karina felt a sudden panic sweep over her.

  “You will be good for him.”

  How often had she heard that expression before?

  She had heard Aunt Margaret say,

  “You will be good for Cyril.”

  “It will be good for Cyril to be married.”

  “You must tell Cyril it will be good for him.”

  She found herself suddenly clasping her hands together, clutching them so tightly that the knuckles showed white.

  “I think I ought to make this very clear, Mrs. de Winton,” she said. “You may think it a strange thing for me to say, but I have to say it – I would not marry your grandson if he was the last man on earth.”

  She heard the old lady chuckle again and saw her eyes go towards the door.

  Karina turned her head sharply.

  Garland Holt was standing in the doorway and must have heard everything she said!

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Karina could not sleep.

  She lay tossing and turning in the big comfortable bed, finding it impossible to escape from the haunting remembrance of what had happened that afternoon.

  Over and over again she could hear conversations repeating and re-repeating themselves and could see quite clearly the expressions on the faces of those who spoke to her.

  She could feel almost as if it was all still happening, the sudden thump of her heart and the dryness of her mouth as she realised that Garland Holt was standing just inside the door of his grandmother’s room, gazing at her.

  His eyebrows seemed to meet over his dark eyes.

  The very hair on his head seemed to be electric with the vibrations that appeared to pour from him, so that she was conscious of his anger and his indignation long before he spoke.

  For a moment there was nothing but silence, a silence in which Karina felt that they must hear the banging of her heart and the quick intake of her breath.

  Then Mrs. de Winton laughed, a high cackling laugh that seemed, instead of easing it, to make the situation even more tense.

  “That has put you in your place, my boy,” she said with a chuckle.

  Garland Holt advanced slowly into the room, walked to the bottom of his grandmother’s bed and stood looking at Karina.

  “I was not aware,” he said and his voice was icy cold, “that I had, in fact, asked you to marry me.”

  Karina felt the tenseness that had held her almost paralysed since she had realised that he was there melt away. A flush came into her cheeks.

  “I was not saying that – you had,” she said, speaking so hastily that she tripped over her words. “Your grandmother was just – ”

  The words trailed away. She somehow felt that it was impossible to explain. She only knew that she hated him, as he stood there so strong, so tall and so overpowering, whilst she felt small, ineffectual and miserable.

  Why had she been so silly as to speak her feelings aloud? Why had she let herself be drawn into expressing an opinion of any kind?

  “Women are all the same,” Garland Holt said in an angry voice. “They only think of two things, marriage and money. When they are not talking about one, they are scheming how to get the other. Money and marriage! Marriage and money! If there is a girl in the whole wide world who can think of anything else, show her to me! That’s all I ask, show her to me!”

  His voice had risen as he was talking to Karina and to her astonishment she realised that he had lost his temper.

  He turned to his grandmother.

  “Why do I have to be plagued with all these people continually in the house?” he said. “Cannot you speak to Mother? Cannot you persuade her that sometimes I want to be alone? You both told me that I had to live here. I wanted to be on my own. But surely I can have some privacy, some quiet, somewhere where I can work and talk to my own friends without this incessant feminine chitter-chatter.”

  He was almost shouting by this time, but Mrs. de Winton still only chuckled.

  “You are using a bulldozer to squash a gnat,” she said. “Cannot you see the child is terrified, you great bully?”

  “Terrified?”

  Garland Holt questioned and looked at Karina.

  The colour had ebbed away from her face and she was very pale. She had risen instinctively to her feet as he roared out his protest and now, standing at the side of the bed with her hands linked together, she looked like a child who had, indeed, been badly frightened.

  Her eyes, wide and big, met his, and then she looked away towards Mrs. de Winton.

  “I-I must go,” she said in a voice that strove to be steady but yet trembled. “I am sorry. May I go?”

  Mrs. de Winton stretched out her hand with its glittering rings.

  “Come here,” she ordered.

  Obediently Karina went nearer to her and put her hand in hers.

  “Listen, my dear,” the old lady said. “If you are going to run away from everything that frightens you, you will spend your life running. Stand up to things, face them and you will find that most of your enemies are made of cardboard.”

  She smiled and her eyes were kind.

  “Take Garland, for instance. He is only a big blusterer. What can he do to you? Nothing! And he is only relieving his own feelings by shouting at us.”

  Garland Holt gave a sudden laugh.

  “I am sorry, Grannie! I have made a fool of myself, haven’t I? It’s just that everything gets on my nerves.”

  “Nerves at your age!” taunted his grandmother. “You ought to be ashamed to say the word.”

  “I know it sounds silly,” Garland Holt said with a rueful grin, “but there have been some pretty complicated deals lately and I haven’t been sleeping much.”

  “I don’t believe a word of it,” the old lady said crisply. “You have always slept the moment your head touched the pillow. So I don’t believe any deal, however big, would keep you awake. Anyway, that is no excuse. You have frightened the child and that is all there is to it. You had better make your peace with her.”

  “Won’t you intercede for me, Grannie?” Garland Holt asked with a smile that seemed to illuminate his whole face, making him unexpectedly handsome and in some extraordinary way appealing.

  “That I will not,” Mrs. de Winton said firmly. “You have to be man enough to do it for yourself.”

  Garland Holt sud
denly put out a hand across the bed towards Karina.

  “What about it?” he asked. “I am sorry, I am really.”

  “Please don’t apologise,” Karina said in a low voice.

  She realised that Mrs. de Winton was still holding her left hand.

  “You have to forgive him, you know,” the old lady said gently.

  “Have I?” Karina asked almost in a whisper.

  “But, of course,” Mrs. de Winton replied with a smile. “It’s unlucky to refuse forgiveness when it is demanded of you. Hasn’t anyone told you that? And, as you are a woman, you will soon learn not only to forgive but to forget.”

  “Then, of course, I-I forgive y-you,” Karina stammered.

  She did not look at Garland Holt as she spoke, but she was conscious that his hand was still held out towards her. She still wanted to run away; she still wanted to evade both him and everything she could not understand.

  Yet it was impossible to do so. Not only was Mrs. de Winton still holding onto her but she felt as if she could not move. Her feet held her there.

  With a reluctance that she could not even explain to herself, slowly and a little apprehensively, she laid her hand in Garland Holt’s.

  His fingers closed over hers and she felt the strength of them.

  A kind of electricity came from him, almost as if she received an electric shock. She could feel the vitality of him tingling on her fingertips.

  “I am sorry,” he said again.

  He was smiling and slowly and shyly she smiled in return.

  “And now go away, both of you,” Mrs. de Winton snapped abruptly. “I am tired and all this emotionalism is bad for me. Thank Heaven I am past it. Now I just want to eat and sleep and forget what it’s like to be torn in half by one’s own feelings.”

  “You enjoy every moment of living. Grannie, and well you know it,” Garland Holt said. “You may be lying in bed, but I can feel you poking your finger into every hole and corner in the house.”

  “If that is meant to be a compliment I don’t take it as such,” Mrs. de Winton barked at him. “Run along, Garland, and take Karina with you.”

  “I have something to do in my room,” Karina said quickly.

  He laughed across the bed at her.

  “You heard what Grannie said?” he questioned. “And she always has to be obeyed. No one has ever been able to refuse her anything. She is been a dictator since the age of fifteen. Isn’t that so, Grannie?”

  “If you mean by that that I always get what I want, you are much mistaken,” she replied. “I want a lot for you that I haven’t got yet.”

  “Some day you must tell me about it,” Garland Holt said. “Now you have at last said something that persuades me to run away. Come on, Karina. I must leave this room before Grannie decides I must climb the Himalayas, be the Prime Minister or the first man to reach the moon. Her ambitions are boundless where I am concerned!”

  “It’s all very well to have ambitions,” the old lady retorted. “But one is always handicapped by the material one has to work with!”

  Garland Holt gave a chuckle not unlike that of his grandmother’s.

  “Trust you to have the last word, Grannie,” he said. “Never mind, I will surprise you one day. Then you will be proud of me.”

  There was no doubt that she was proud already, Karina thought, seeing the sudden look of tenderness in the old lady’s eyes as they rested on her grandson. But she must have touched a bell by her bed, for a second later her nurse was in the room shooing them away and saying with professional firmness,

  “Mrs. de Winton must have a rest. I think she has talked for too long.”

  Outside the bedroom door Garland looked down at Karina.

  “I am really sorry,” he said. “It was not just because Grannie made me say so.”

  “It’s all right,” Karina said in an embarrassed tone. “I should not have said what I did.”

  “Even though you meant it?” he questioned.

  “Even though I meant it,” she replied.

  She hesitated a moment and then added,

  “It is nothing to do with me, but why don’t you live on your own – if you find all these people get on your nerves?”

  He hesitated as if he intended to answer her flippantly, and then, changing his mind, said seriously,

  “There are several reasons, the first being that I think Grannie would die if I left here. She’s very old, you know, but in me she lives her youth all over again. And it’s true that she is ambitious for me. I always talk to her about my work, my deals and everything I am interested in. It was what my grandfather did while he built up his fortune. She has the quickest, most alert mind of anyone I know. I could never live alone while she is alive.”

  Karina was surprised at the feeling in his voice. She did not think that he had it in him.

  And then in a very different tone he said,

  “And then there is my mother. She is easily taken in by people, crooks, playboys and wasters. All sorts of riff-raff become her friends just because she is lonely and she likes people making a fuss of her. If I was not here, she would be bankrupt within a few weeks or else married to some fortune-hunter. So, you see, I have my uses!”

  He spoke in his usual sarcastic bitter manner and for once Karina was not disconcerted by it.

  “No, you could not leave either of them,” she said quickly.

  They had reached the top of the stairs.

  As they stood and looked down into the great marble hall below, they saw Lady Holt come through the door from the garden. She was carrying a huge bunch of carnations from the greenhouse and behind her came Felix, a basket of daffodils and narcissi in his hand.

  “You look enchanting!” they heard Felix say. “Just like a picture that I used to love as a child of Saint Elizabeth and the roses, only in your case the flowers are carnations.”

  “I don’t think, somehow, that I am a Saint, Felix,” Lady Holt said with a little simper.

  As she spoke, she passed into the drawing room and Felix’s reply was lost.

  Karina felt suddenly embarrassed.

  ‘Why must Lady Holt pretend to be so young?’ she asked herself. ‘That skittish flirtatious way of hers must seem ridiculous to her son.’

  Then Garland Holt spoke,

  “What does that man Mainwaring mean to you?” he asked.

  Karina’s eyes widened.

  “He is my cousin,” she replied.

  “I know that,” he answered. “But I thought that there was something else. He hinted at some deeper attachment.”

  Karina felt her face burn.

  So Cousin Felix had said to Garland Holt the same things that he had said to her.

  “I don’t know what he means by that,” she said. “I haven’t seen him for many years. He – he talked like that to me. B-but it means nothing to me. It’s just that I am grateful that he helped me to escape.”

  To her astonishment Garland Holt suddenly put his hands on both her shoulders and turned her round to face him.

  “Listen, Karina!” he said. “You are so young, so absurdly young and inexperienced. Do be careful what you do with your life. Don’t say yes to everything that anyone asks you. Find what is right for you.”

  “But how shall I know which is right?” she asked.

  “Your heart will know it,” he said surprisingly.

  He released her abruptly and then, without another word, turned and walked down the stairs, leaving her staring after him, the impact of his hands still heavy upon her shoulders.

  ‘Your heart will know it!’ ‘Your heart will know it!’

  Karina tossed and turned in her bed. What would her heart know? She had no idea.

  After dinner, to her surprise, Cousin Felix had taken her by the arm and drawn her away from the drawing room into the long Picture Gallery that ran the whole length of the house.

  “Come and look at the pictures, Karina,” he said. “You won’t find better even in the National Gallery.”
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br />   “I am so ignorant,” Karina said. “There are so many things I have to learn.”

  “There is plenty of time,” Felix said. “Plenty of time to learn all sorts of things.”

  They walked down the Gallery, but Felix was not looking at the pictures. Instead, when they reached nearly the end of it, he drew her towards a big sofa and, sitting beside her, took her hand in his.

  “I have been thinking about you all day,” he said.

  “Have you?” Karina enquired.

  “I am always thinking about you,” Felix said. “You are the sort of person, Karina, whom a man cannot forget. Perhaps it’s because you are so small, perhaps it’s because you are so trusting. There is a young lost look about you that I find irresistible.”

  Karina said nothing. She wondered where all this was leading. She wished too that Cousin Felix would not hold her hand. His own was rather hot and she thought that perhaps it was because he had drunk so much champagne at dinner.

  “Karina, I think you have brought me luck,” Felix said. “In fact you might almost be my mascot.”

  “It sounds like something on a car,” Karina replied.

  Felix laughed and squeezed her hand.

  “My little mascot,” he said in a rather stupid voice.

  “I wonder if things really can bring people luck,” Karina said quickly, feeling that she must go on talking. “I wonder if that lovely pink quartz elephant, for instance, is really lucky to whoever owns if?”

  “That lovely pink quartz elephant, as you call it, is famous,” Felix said. “Of course it brings the owner luck. It always has, all through its history, all through the centuries and all down the years.”

  “Well, I suppose Mr. Holt is lucky,” Karina said doubtfully. “But he doesn’t seem to be very happy.”

  “Lucky! When he is worth millions!” Felix said. “You have seen some of his possessions and he has a great many more.”

  “I don’t think possessions make a person happy,” Karina said.

  “I think that people often want what they think belongs to someone else,” Felix replied in what Karina thought was a rather crafty voice. “Haven’t you found that?”

  Karina knit her brows together.