Love Forbidden Page 7

  “Lord Buckleigh, then. I think it’s a mistake for us to talk at cross purposes. Would you please tell me what position you hold in the house? Are you a guest?”

  “Yes and no,” he answered, smiling. “Shall we say I am a long-term visitor? If you want to know what I do, well, I’m general factotum, adviser, smoother-out of troubles – in fact the perfect A.D.C.”

  “Mr. Huron employs you?” Aria asked. Then added quickly, “Please don’t think it rude of me to ask these questions, but I must understand a little of what goes on in the household, mustn’t I?”

  “Of course you must,” he said soothingly. “That’s exactly what I have come here for, to explain to you about everything. I was expecting, well, shall we say a ‘lady of uncertain age’, another Mrs. Cunningham!”

  His eyes were twinkling so much that it was hard for Aria not to twinkle back at him. With an effort, however, she turned away and picked up a block from the writing desk.

  “I was just going to jot down the approximate number of servants in this house when you came in,” she said. “I wonder if you could help me with it?”

  “Good Lord, no!” Lord Buckleigh answered. “It’s no use asking me things like that. You’ll have to get McDougall to work it out for you, although I doubt if he really knows who everyone is. Haven’t you realised by now that Dart Huron does himself en Prince? And why shouldn’t he? If one has American dollars these days, one may as well enjoy them.”

  “And let your friends enjoy them too?” Aria suggested.

  Lord Buckleigh threw back his head and laughed.

  “Touché,” he said. “I see I was mistaken. You’re not the simple girl I thought you were when I came into the room. Yes, there are quite a number of people living on Dart one way or another and if he likes us to do so, who are we to complain?”

  Aria began to write his name down in block capitals on the pad in front of her.

  “Do you spell Buckleigh with a y or a gh?” she asked.

  “Gh,” he replied. “Tell me about yourself. Where do you come from?”

  “Hertfordshire,” she replied.

  “It’s quite a big county if I remember right,” he said. “Whereabouts?”

  “Not far from Hertford.”

  “Not very communicative, are you?” he said. “Do you have to earn your own living?”

  “Naturally, or I wouldn’t be here,” Aria answered.

  “I think it’s a mistake, you know. You’re too pretty for this sort of thing.”

  Aria put down her pencil.

  “What exactly do you mean, Lord Buckleigh, by ‘this sort of thing’?”

  It was a challenge, but he did not take it up.

  “You’ll find out for yourself,” he said. “I warn you, this isn’t an easy household.”

  “You needn’t try and make me any more frightened than I am already,” Aria said.

  For the first time since he had come into the room she dropped her rather formal manner and spoke naturally. In response he seated himself on the side of the desk and put out his hand.

  “I like you,” he said. “And I think you’re lovely. Shall we be friends?”

  She hesitated a moment and then laid her hand in his.

  “I should be grateful for your friendship,” she said.

  “Well, don’t put too much accent on the word friend,” he said. “It was only in the manner of speaking.”

  The admiration in his voice made her drop her eyes and turn her head away from him. She would have taken her hand away, too, but he held on to it. She could feel the warmth of his fingers and then at that moment, as they sat there linked together, the door was burst open and Dart Huron came striding into the room.

  “Good afternoon, Miss Milbank,” he said. “McDougall told me you had arrived. I’ve three cables I want sent off to South America. Will you see to them?”

  It was as if a tornado had entered the room. There was something virile and alive about Dart Huron that seemed to galvanise the whole atmosphere.

  As he entered, both Aria and Lord Buckleigh had almost instinctively risen to their feet. And now, as they faced each other across the desk, Aria felt the blood rising in her cheeks at the thought that, as he had entered the room, Mr. Huron must save seen Lord Buckleigh holding her hand.

  ‘What must he have thought?’ she wondered and knew that there was no explanation she could possibly offer even while the embarrassment of it seemed to restrict her very voice within her throat.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Huron,” she managed to murmur at length in a low voice.

  “I’m glad you arrived safely,” he said indifferently, as if it was of no consequence. “Will you take down the cables?”

  He rattled the cables off in Spanish so quickly that Aria, who could not do shorthand, found it almost impossible to keep up with him.

  “I-I’m sorry,” she said at length, “but I am afraid I must ask you to repeat those addresses again.”

  “I thought I said them quite clearly,” Dart Huron answered, with an impatient note in his voice. “However – Señor de Palando.”

  He dictated them again and Aria scribbled away only praying that her spelling would not be at fault. When he had finished speaking, Dart Huron looked at his wristwatch.

  “It’s time for tea,” he said. “Will you come down and pour out, Miss Milbank? I’m not much of a tea drinker myself, but my guests seem to expect it.”

  “Oh, but – ” Aria began to expostulate.

  “Lord Buckleigh will doubtless show you the way.”

  Dart Huron walked quickly from the room before Aria could say anymore.

  She turned to Lord Buckleigh with a look of consternation on her face.

  “I didn’t think he would want me to do anything like that,” she said. “To mix with his guests, to – ”

  “To play hostess,” he finished for her. “If you ask me, Dart has a good motive behind that request.”

  “What sort of motive?” Aria enquired.

  “You’ll find out,” he replied enigmatically. “And hurry up, for Dart is unlike the usual American, he’s never late. This is the only house where, with American dollars paying for the meal, I get my food served on the dot.”

  “I think perhaps I had better tidy myself,” Aria said a little worriedly.

  “You’re all right. Don’t worry,” he said, smiling down at her as she stood there looking very small and young, the sunlight making a halo of her red curls.

  “Will I have to come down to every meal?” Aria asked.

  She did not know why the idea should agitate her so tremendously except that she had planned in her own mind that she would be expected to eat in her own room and alone.

  “Only when you’re invited,” Lord Buckleigh replied. “But I’ve an idea at the back of my mind that you’re going to find yourself invited pretty consistently.”

  “But why?” Aria enquired. “Mr. Huron cannot possibly want me there! He doesn’t know me. I don’t know any of his friends. You must see how terrifying it is for me.”

  “I’ll look after you,” he promised.

  There was something consoling in the thought even while Aria told herself that she should not smile back at him in such a friendly manner.

  “Come along,” he said. “I’ll lead you into the lions’ den and what’s more give you a personal introduction to each of the lions!”

  Aria found there was nothing she could say, and so, with a new shyness that she had not known for many years, she walked beside him along the passage that led to the main staircase. Despite her apprehension of what lay before her, Aria could not help but admire the panelled hall and the pictures that hung in it.

  “They are nice, aren’t they?” Lord Buckleigh said, following the direction of her eyes. “You know whom this house belongs to, don’t you?”

  “No,” Aria replied. “Although I realised that Mr. Huron has only rented it.”

  “Well, it was originally built for the first Duke of Melchester,” Lor
d Buckleigh said. “It remained in the family until the last war and by then it was in a very bad state of repair. In fact the story was that if you weren’t careful you would put your foot through a rat hole every time you got out of bed. So the present Duke sold it to Nognossos, the Greek millionaire.

  “He spent a small fortune in doing it up and uses it himself for perhaps three months of the year. The rest of the time it is let to people like Dart or to any of my friends who are prepared to pay me commission for arranging it for them.”

  “Pay you commission?” Aria questioned.

  “Yes. Haven’t you realised by this time that I’m a commission boy? I get a cut here and a cut there. How else would I live?”

  There was something so disarming in his frankness that Aria found herself almost convinced that there was nothing else for him to do. And then, before she could say anything, they had entered the drawing room and she saw the tea table with the silver tea-tray arranged at the far end by the fireplace.

  It was a long low room and the curtains and covers were of oyster satin set against eggshell blue walls. But Aria had eyes only for the people assembled round the tea table.

  One face she recognised instantly – the beautiful platinum blonde who had been with Dart Huron when he visited Queen’s Folly. She was looking lovelier than ever as she lay back in a big armchair wearing a dress of emerald green jersey, her small wrists festooned with chunky gold bracelets of every size and shape.

  “Oh, there you are, Tom,” she said to Lord Buckleigh. “We were wondering where you had vanished to. You know that we wanted to finish our game of Canasta.”

  “I’m sorry, Lulu,” he answered. “We’ll finish it after tea. May I introduce Miss Milbank?”

  Lulu Carlo turned to look at Aria and there was no mistaking the way the smile faded from her red lips or the antagonism in her expression.

  “The new secretary?” she asked, raising her eyebrows, but without extending her hand in a manner that Aria privately thought was extremely rude.

  “Miss Lulu Carlo, of course, needs no introduction,” Lord Buckleigh said to Aria. “You must have seen her in so many films.”

  Aria managed to repress a start. Lulu Carlo’s name was as well known to her as Rita Hayworth’s or Jane Russell’s, but she was not prepared to say so.

  “I am afraid I never have time to go to the cinema,” she said demurely and felt, with a little feminine glow of satisfaction, that she had paid the film star back for her rudeness.

  Aria found herself being introduced to half-a-dozen other people in quick succession. Several of them had titles and two others had names that she thought vaguely had some connection with the film world.

  Then, while she was still shaking hands with a tall young man whom she recognised as one of England’s foremost polo players, Dart Huron and another man came into the room through an open window from the garden.

  “Carl says he’s certain it’s going to rain tomorrow,” he announced. “But he’s only saying that because he knows my ponies dislike the heavy going.”

  “It’s not going to rain, I feel it in my bones,” someone replied, but Dart Huron was already addressing Aria.

  “Oh, there you are, Miss Milbank. Will you pour out the tea?”

  Aria was seating herself by the table when Lulu’s voice, low and decidedly petulant, came from the other side of the hearth.

  “I thought you would like me to do that, Dart darling.”

  “Why trouble? You know you don’t drink anything at this hour.”

  “It’s no trouble for me to pour out for – you.”

  There was a caress on the last word, but it seemed as if Dart Huron did not hear it. He was offering a plate of sandwiches to his other guests while Lord Buckleigh took the cups from Aria as quickly as she filled them.

  Lulu rose suddenly from her chair and walked across to the table.

  “Why can’t one of the footmen pour out?” she enquired in a voice that was deliberately aggressive. “After all, the butler shakes the cocktails.”

  There was a sudden uncomfortable silence, as always happens when people become aware that an emotional scene is brewing. But with deliberation Dart Huron chose a sandwich for himself from the plate that he was still holding and replied,

  “On the contrary, I usually shake the cocktails myself. It is only because McDougall keeps assuring me that he learned to mix cocktails from Old Harry himself that I am weak enough to let him do it occasionally. But I assure you that I have not yet discovered who Old Harry might be!”

  There was laughter at this, but Lulu, standing beside him, did not smile. She was not so beautiful when she was being petulant, Aria thought. Her whole attraction lay in the fact that she had an air of irresistible gaiety about her, a lissom joyfulness that even came over in her films.

  Aria had seen one film a long time ago in which Lulu had played the part of a girl who suddenly inherits ten thousand dollars and goes to Paris to spend the whole of it in one mad spree. Lulu’s wide-eyed excitement was something she could still remember.

  “Dart, you’re being unkind to me!”

  Lulu’s voice had changed completely. She was no longer sulky and petulant, but a little girl who was too young and frail to face the unkind buffets of a cruel world. One even had the illusion that there was a suspicion of tears in her big blue eyes as she threw back her head.

  “You’re hungry, honey,” Dart Huron said lightly. “I always find women who are miserable before meals need sustenance. Have a sandwich, they’re delicious.”

  “You know I never eat anything at tea.”

  The petulance was back in Lulu’s voice again.

  “Shucks, forget your figure for once,” Dart smiled. “A sandwich a day keeps the blues away. Try it.”

  “I don’t want anything, I’ve told you.”

  Lulu gave the plate he was holding out to her a sudden push. She knocked it from his hand and it fell to the ground, smashing into a hundred pieces, the sandwiches falling onto the carpet.

  “That’s entirely your fault,” Lulu said, her voice sharpening. “But doubtless Miss Milbank can pick them up for you. That’s what she’s employed for, isn’t it?”

  As she spoke, Lulu Carlo walked across the room with a sudden sweep of her skirts and jingle of her bracelets. Then, before anyone could move or speak, she had swept through the drawing room door and slammed it ominously behind her.

  There was a moment’s uncomfortable silence and then Lord Buckleigh laughed.

  “That’s another item on the dilapidations, Dart,” he said. “But not such an expensive one this time. I forgot to tell you, I broke one of the billiard cues last night.”

  “How could you manage to do that, Tom?” Dart Huron asked.

  His voice was quite natural and, if it had not been for the broken plate at his feet and the sandwiches spread over the carpet, it would have been impossible to believe that a rather ugly and embarrassing scene had just taken place.

  With an effort Aria pulled herself together. She rose and pressed the bell by the side of the fireplace.

  A dog that appeared from under one of the chairs began to eat the sandwiches.

  “Be careful that he doesn’t get a piece of china in his paw,” somebody said.

  They were all concentrating on protecting the dog when one of the footmen came into the room.

  “Will you get a pan and brush, please?” Aria said in a voice of authority that surprised even herself. “One of the plates has been broken by accident.”

  “Very good, miss.”

  The footman hurried away.

  Dart Huron looked at Aria directly for the first time since he had entered the room.

  “Can I have a cup of tea, Miss Milbank?” he enquired.

  “I’m sorry. I thought you said upstairs that you weren’t a tea drinker,” Aria replied. “Otherwise I would have poured you out one.”

  “Highballs are more in his line!” a pretty girl laughed.

  “Not tonight th
ey aren’t,” Dart Huron answered. “We have to win that match tomorrow. And if we don’t win the cup, it will be soft drinks at dinner for everyone as a punishment!”

  There was much laughter and jesting about this and while everyone was talking the footman came back with a pan and brush and swept away the debris.

  “Shall I bring some more sandwiches, miss?” he asked Aria.

  “No, thank you, I think everybody has finished,” Aria replied.

  The man disappeared. Aria sipped her own tea and felt the colour that had risen in her cheeks at Lulu Carlo’s insult beginning to die down and the beating of her heart return to normal.

  The polo player, whose name she discovered was Jim, asked her if she had seen the garden yet and what she thought of the view. It was banal, very commonplace conversation, but it gave her time to pull herself together and realise that it was possible for her to speak quietly and naturally and as if nothing had happened.

  “What about a game of tennis,” someone suggested and, as they rose to their feet, Aria realised thankfully that this was where she could escape.

  Lord Buckleigh was involved in a conversation as to who should partner whom and she thought that no one would notice that she had left.

  She had, indeed, almost reached the door when Dart Huron’s voice arrested her.

  “Miss Milbank!”

  She swung round. He had detached himself from his guests and was walking towards her. He walked like no other man she had ever seen. There was something almost feline in the grace of his body and she wondered if this was due to his Indian ancestors.

  She waited while he approached her, feeling a little nervous. Feeling, too, absurdly young and somewhat out of place in her white blouse and plain black skirt.

  “You have got everything you want?”

  She realised the question was merely a formality and yet perhaps in its way an effort on his part.

  “Yes, thank you, Mr. Huron!”

  “I may have another cable to send later this evening. You got the other ones off?”

  “No. I was going to send them after six o’clock at the cheaper rate.”

  The severity of his face relaxed a little and, for the first time since she had known him, he smiled at her.

  “I don’t usually worry myself about cheap rates.”