The Fire of Love Read online

  “Perhaps it would be better not to bother her,” Carina suggested tentatively.

  “Oh no, while you are here I may as well go and ask her,” Matthews answered, “but don’t be surprised if she says ‘no’.”

  She knocked on the door of the bedroom and entered and almost at once came back, a smile on her face.

  “She wants to see you both,” she said, “and she seems to be in a better mood, so it’s not as bad as you might expect.”

  With this cheering introduction she ushered Carina and Dipa into the room.

  Lady Lynche was looking much as she had the night before except that now she was wearing diamonds around her neck instead of her enormous pearls. Carina had never seen so many large diamonds before. She could not help staring at them as they glittered with every movement the Dowager made.

  Carina could see now that the hangings of the bed were tattered and in some places torn with old age, the ermine cover was turning yellow and everything in the room in the cruelty of daylight looked as if it had stood there for centuries.

  “Good morning, Miss Warner,” the Dowager said, inclining her head with what Carina recognised as a beautifully coiffured wig.

  “Good morning,” Carina replied and made Dipa come forward and hold out his small hand.

  “He is even yellower than I thought last night,” Lady Lynche said sharply, looking down at the tiny hand that her grandson was holding out to her.

  “He cannot help it,” Carina replied before she thought that her answer might be construed into being impertinent.

  “I am well aware of that,” the Dowager answered, “and I am well aware too that you think I am hard and unfeeling and lacking in all the natural human emotions not to be clasping my grandson to my breast with the proper expressions of filial joy.”

  Carina blushed.

  “I did not say so,” she murmured.

  “No, but you looked it,” Lady Lynche said. “And your looks are far too bold and far too frank for the role you are playing, not very efficiently, I might say.”

  “I don’t understand,” Carina said.

  “I think you do,” the Dowager insisted. This is your first situation, isn’t it?”

  Carina opened her lips to say that she had a reference upstairs and then she changed her mind.

  “Yes, it is,” she admitted.

  “I thought so,” Lady Lynche answered. “Now tell me why you have taken it.”

  “Because I need the money,” Carina answered, “and because it was the only one I was offered.”

  “Well, that is frank at any rate,” Lady Lynche said, “and now you think that you have fallen on clover? You know that we have something to hide and so you are going to make the very best of it. You were talking to my son this morning. What did you say to him?”

  Carina looked startled. She had not realised that Lady Lynche’s windows overlooked the front of the house and then, as she glanced towards the window, she saw that they did not.

  Someone had seen her and someone had already reported to this amazing old woman what had occurred.

  “Lord Lynche asked me if I was comfortable,” she replied.

  “Anything else?”

  Carina, almost hypnotised by the Dowager’s shrewd eyes, told the truth.

  “I suggested that he should go and see Dipa’s mother,” she said. “If she is alive, she might want to see him – if she is dead, there is no one to arrange for her funeral.”

  “So you took it upon yourself to do that?” the Dowager remarked.

  “I am sorry – it was wrong,” Carina said. “Lord Lynche told me to mind my own business – but Lady Lynche is dying.”

  “We all have to die sometime,” the Dowager retorted sharply. “The doctors gave me up years ago, but I am still here. Now listen to me, child, I want to tell you something and, if you are half as intelligent as you look, you will understand. This Castle has passed from father to son since the Norman Conquest. You will find the name of Lynche in every history book. They have played their part not only by serving their King, but by keeping the family alive by ensuring that the family traditions and family loyalties were carried on in every century.”

  The Dowager paused and looked round the room.

  “This room has seen generation after generation come into the world and pass from it. Every room in this Castle is filled with treasures and legends. Every Lynche has inherited not only his name but the glory and the traditions of his ancestors. Can you understand what that means?”

  “Yes, I understand,” Carina said.

  “Father to son, father to son,” the old lady said, “and now you bring this –this little by-blow from an Eastern bazaar. Do you expect us to be pleased?”

  “Your son should have thought of that when he fell in love.”

  The Dowager gave a snort.

  “Fell in love!” she said. “One does not fall in love with trollops. He was enamoured with desire for a woman who doubtless went out of her way to satisfy his lust and pick his pocket at the same time. Do you call that love? There are some very harsh names that are far more appropriate to it.”

  “But – he married her,” Carina said softly.

  “Was he drunk or crazed when he did it?” the Dowager asked and now there was an expression of pain in her eyes and in the tone of her voice, which was very different from the harshness with which she had spoken before.

  “How could he not have remembered that he is a Lynche?” she cried suddenly. “How could he have sunk to such depths that he could let us be faced with a creature like that child?”

  “Oh, poor Dipa!” Carina said quickly. “Please don’t hate him.”

  She looked across the room to where the child had scrambled into a chair at the dressing table and was playing with a gold hairbrush. He was brushing his little head with it upside down and making faces at himself in the mirror as he did so.

  “A monkey!” the Dowager said almost beneath her breath. “A little monkey from the jungle!”

  “No, no, you must not think of him like that,” Carina said. “He is your flesh and blood, he is part of your son, part of the heritage you speak about. You may resent it, but it is true – you have to accept it. You have to make him love the place as you love it.”

  “Never!” the Dowager flashed. “Never, never can that yellow face bear the title and sit at the head of the table in the dining room! ‘Lord Lynche’. Can you imagine it? Why, the very yokels on the estate would laugh if they heard it.”

  “Then what do you intend to do?” Carina asked.

  “I was thinking in the night,” said the Dowager, “whether it would be possible to send him back to where he came from. He must have relations in Java, a grandfather, uncles, cousins, they are all related in one way or another, those Orientals.”

  “And who would take him?” Carina asked.

  “Why not you?” the Dowager enquired.

  “No, no, I could not,” Carina said. “It would be wrong and I promised his mother that I would do my best to look after him.”

  “Would it not be better for him?” the Dowager asked. “Can you imagine what his life would be like here? – hated in what he would presumably call his home, out of place at any school we might send him to and finally unhappy and ill at ease in any position that might be thrust upon him?”

  “It’s no use,” Carina answered. “I know that it is difficult for you and I can understand and sympathise with what you are feeling. But the child exists, he is your flesh and blood. You cannot just throw him away and send him back to where he was born as if he was an animal with no rights of his own.”

  The Dowager gave a sigh.

  “A few hundred years ago, a Lynche, confronted as I am with this problem, would have dropped the child into the lake or left him in one of the dungeons to die!”

  “I know,” Carina said with a little smile, “but in 1901 we are more civilised. Besides, people don’t disappear, not without there being enquiries.”

  She was s
urprised to see the Dowager’s hands suddenly clench themselves together until the knuckles beneath the gaudy glittering rings turned white.

  “Yes,” the old lady muttered. “You are right about that.”

  There was silence and then Dipa began softly singing to himself a little tuneless song such as he must have learned in Java, perhaps from his mother or from children he played with.

  “A Lynche!” the Dowager said. “A Lynche!”

  There was real suffering in her voice and quite unexpectedly Carina felt herself moved.

  “I am sorry – desperately sorry,” she said. “I would help you if I could, but there is nothing to be done except to bring him up as an English gentleman and hope that he will grow more like – ” She was going to say ‘his father’, but substituted, “ – his ancestors”.

  The Dowager’s eyes rested on Dipa and then, almost as if the sight was unbearable, she looked away and towards Carina.

  “I like you, girl. You are honest and not afraid to say what you are thinking, not that I don’t doubt that you are speaking out of your place in doing so, but I like your courage. Take the little brat away upstairs and educate him. See if you can make him understand the way a Christian should behave and God help you if you think you can turn him into a gentleman.”

  “I can only try,” Carina said.

  “Why, why did he marry her?” the Dowager muttered as if she was talking to herself.

  Carina walked across the room.

  “Come along, Dipa,” she said firmly. “It’s time to go upstairs.”

  She tried to take the gold hairbrush away from him, but he clung to it.

  “Mine, mine!” he shouted.

  Carina shook her head.

  “No, it belongs to your grandmother. You must leave it here for her. You have your toys upstairs.”

  “Dipa want! Dipa want!” Dipa persisted, holding onto the brush.

  Carina took it from him firmly and he hit out at her with his small arms, uttering what sounded like a string of Javanese swear words.

  “A perfect English gentleman,” a cynical voice said from the bed.

  “He is naughty sometimes,” Carina said apologetically, “but he is always sorry afterwards.”

  As if he understood what she was saying, Dipa buried his face in her neck as she picked him up in her arms.

  Carina did not look back at the Dowager, but she knew that the old lady’s eyes followed them until they went out through the door.

  Matthews was waiting outside.

  “Is she all right?” she asked.

  Carina nodded, she could not trust her voice to answer, and then, feeling almost as if she had been buffeted about in a rough sea, she climbed slowly upstairs to the nursery with Dipa in her arms.

  “That was naughty of you,” she said as they reached the top floor, “very naughty, do you understand?”

  She hoped she was making some impression, but, as they turned towards the door into the day nursery, Dipa suddenly remembered the rocking horse.

  “Horse, horse!” he cried, struggling out of Carina’s arms and ran excitedly through the door ahead of her.

  She gave a little sigh of helplessness and then, as she entered the nursery, she stopped suddenly and the worries about Dipa flew out of her head.

  Standing in front of the fireplace, his hands in his pockets waiting for her approach, was Sir Percy Rockley.

  He saw her consternation and she knew that it pleased him.

  “I came to see if they were making you comfortable,” he said.

  “I should hardly have thought that was in your province, Sir Percy,” Carina replied.

  “Hoity-toity!” he retorted. “You look very attractive when you are angry. I like angry women. It amuses me to make them smile and say they were sorry that they were cross.”

  “If you will please excuse us, Sir Percy,” Carina said coldly, “we have to get ready for luncheon.”

  “There is no hurry,” Sir Percy answered. “It is not until a quarter past one.”

  “On the contrary, it is at twelve-thirty,” Carina said.

  He smiled and she knew that he was mocking her.

  “You think you are clever, don’t you?” he said. “Let me tell you that you do not know everything in your pretty little head. You forget that in the best houses the children come down to luncheon. I have just reminded his Lordship of the fact. He is not used to children, so he did not realise it. I suggested that the King of Singora might feel that his grandson was being slighted if he was not treated in the correct English manner.”

  “I wish you would not interfere,” Carina said. “I would much rather give Dipa his food up here.”

  “And then I should not have the pleasure of seeing you, would I?” Sir Percy said. “And, damn it all, I like looking at you. As I have told you already, you are a beautiful creature, but rather like an unbroken filly at the moment. Sooner or later a filly learns to obey her Master’s hand.”

  Carina pretended not to have heard him.

  As she walked across the room, she made a pretence of looking at Dipa’s hands to see if they were clean. She knew they were, because she had already washed them before she went down to the Dowager. Then, finding no excuse to wash him again, she started taking some toys unnecessarily from a table by the window and putting them in another part of the room.

  “Come here,” Sir Percy said suddenly.

  For a moment she almost obeyed him and then said quickly,

  “I am busy, Sir Percy, as you can see. If, as you say, we are coming down to luncheon, you can talk to me then if you wish. I have no time now.”

  “What I have to say cannot be said in front of other people,” Sir Percy replied. “Come along, girl, you know you are keeping me waiting.”

  As she paid no attention to him, he walked across the room towards her and now Carina had the horrible feeling that he was stalking her. He came closer and yet closer and, when she moved away from him, he seemed in some way to circumvent her by being just where she intended to go.

  Quite suddenly fear and indignation made her lose her temper. Instead of moving away from him, she stood still and faced him.

  “Will you get out of this room, Sir Percy?” she said. “If you don’t, I will speak to Lord Lynche. It is not right that a gentleman should come upstairs to the nursery or schoolroom, whatever you like to call it. Please go!”

  “So fiery, so spirited!” he exclaimed. “By Jove, you are a woman worth mastering!”

  “Go away,” Carina insisted. “I don’t want you here. If you think I am rude, I am sorry, but I want to make this quite clear, I don’t want to talk to you.”

  He laughed a little beneath his breath and then before she could prevent it he put out his hand and cupped her chin.

  “You are very attractive!” he said in a thick silky voice that she had begun to think she detested above anything she had ever heard.

  For a moment she felt almost paralysed by the touch of his thick warm fingers.

  Then she wrenched herself free and, running from him, burst open the bedroom door. She entered and, slamming it behind her, turned the key in the lock.

  With her breath coming quickly, she listened.

  Then she heard his heavy footsteps going across the room and heard them receding downstairs.

  As he went he chuckled and she knew that he was not in the least discomfited by her anger.

  She waited until his footsteps had completely died away and then, with her hand shaking, she opened the door and went back into the nursery.

  Chapter 5

  Dipa seemed a little feverish and Carina put him into bed, where he fell asleep immediately.

  She began to search through her luggage for a thermometer and then remembered that she had always used Nanny’s and had never had one of her own.

  She decided to ask Mrs. Barnstaple if she could lend her one and, shutting the door of the night nursery quietly behind her, she went along the passage in search of the housekeeper’s
room.

  Carina could have rung the bell, but she thought that anyone coming into the night nursery might wake Dipa. And also she felt a little embarrassed at summoning the servants to the top floor even though her request was a reasonable one.

  She could already sense a little tinge of resentment in the housemaids’ voices and manner when they waited on her. It was so different from what she had known in the past when everyone had always appeared so willing to help.

  Perhaps she was super-sensitive about it, but she felt that they were saying, ‘who is she to give her orders and why should we wait on someone who is only a servant like us?’

  ‘I will find Mrs. Barnstaple myself,’ Carina thought, ‘and, if Dipa has a temperature, she can doubtless recommend a cooling draught.’

  She felt that Lady Lynche would not wish to send for a physician for the child unless it was absolutely necessary. And she was certain in her own mind that all that had happened was that, after the long day travelling and the excitement of running about the garden, Dipa had a slight chill.

  Intent on her thoughts she realised after a few minutes that she had wandered into a part of The Castle that she had not yet seen.

  The nurseries were situated on the third floor in the very centre of the building, right above the great entrance hall on the ground floor, while from The Castle proper two huge wings had been built by successive generations of Lynches who had wanted to beautify and embellish their home.

  Carina realised now that she must have wandered into a Tudor wing. The passages were narrow and low and were panelled with exquisite linen-fold oak panelling, but from the silence she guessed that these rooms were empty.

  Finding a staircase, she descended, feeling that she had perhaps been impetuous and rather silly to look for Mrs. Barnstaple without any idea of where her room might be situated.

  To her relief Carina saw below her a valet wearing the striped yellow and blue waistcoat of Lord Lynche’s livery and carrying in his hand a loaded tray covered with a white cloth.

  Not liking to shout and ask him to direct her, she quickened her pace, only to see him to her utter astonishment disappear into what was apparently the wall itself!