Enemy Lover (13 page)

She said briskly:

“If you want to stay we’ll re-furnish the flat for you. You can’t possibly go on living in a hovel like the place I saw last night... And you must have a radio and a television set, and anything else you need. We’ll call at Snaithby’s.”

“And if I don’t want to stay?” quietly, watching her composed face.

“Then,” drawing on her gloves, “We’d drive to the station and find out about the times of trains. Or you can borrow the car and drive yourself to London. You might do one small service for me, and go to the agency where I originally intended to get someone to drive me. I’m sure you could engage a suitable man, and he could bring the car back to Giffard’s Prior.”

Sir Angus smiled with his lips, although the expression of his eyes remained somewhat peculiar

“I’ll stay,” he said “You knew I would, didn’t you?”

“No.” She glanced at him coolly. “Why should I assume anything of the kind?”

For a moment his expression struck her as slightly baffled. Standing there in his extremely smart uniform he looked handsome and arrogant, but he also looked a little less sure of himself—in her presence, that is—than he normally did.

“Did you sleep well last night?” he asked casually, as she gathered up her handbag and a few letters for the post and moved to the door.

She shot him a quick look over her shoulder. “Beautifully. Why? Should I have had a sleepless night, or something? Did you have a sleepless night?” “Touche!” he exclaimed, grinning, and held open the door for her. “So we drive straight to Snaithby’s, do we?” “We do, unless you want to change your mind,” she replied.

“I assure you I have no intention of changing my mind.”

“That will be good news for Miss Gaylord,” she murmured, as he put her into the car.

When they returned it was to find a car standing before the entrance. It was not a particularly new car, but it was slim and rakish, and violently coloured —a bright letter-box red, in fact.

“Who would have believed it,” Angus murmured. “Juliet is here! I wonder whether Aunt Clare is here, too?”

But when he entered the house after his employer was to discover that Miss Gaylord had accompanied his cousin on her journey north, and there was no one else with them apart from a tall and rather lanky young man who looked a little uncomfortable on being presented as Miss Giffard’s fiance, Mr. Justin Forbes.

“Of course, it isn’t official yet,” Juliet said, talking hurriedly and quite ignoring Tina, who was the mistress of the house. “In fact, it can’t possibly be official until we’ve had a chance to talk to you. And Kathryn thought you were the one person we ought to talk to! You might have some ideas! She said you almost certainly would have some ideas.”

“What about?” Angus enquired, and his voice sounded a little curt—perhaps because he was aware of Tina, in her slim fur coat, standing on the fringe of the group, and not attempting to break it up, although Mrs. Appleby was looking rather tight about the lips as she took up a kind of defensive position at the foot of the stairs.

So far and no farther, her attitude seemed to say . . . She had allowed the callers to get so far, but they were not penetrating the recesses of the house without the permission of Miss Andrews, to whom she now owed allegiance.

“Oh, darling, it’s such a long story—” Juliet was beginning to wail, when Miss Gaylord interrupted her.

“Angus, you can’t possibly hear all about it while we stand about in a group like this in the hall. Can’t we go somewhere and talk? Besides,” slipping her hand through his arm, “I need a drink.”

“If Miss Andrews says you can come in and have a drink, then you can,” Angus replied, to her complete astonishment, “but the first thing I must do is put the car away. And you had better say ‘How do you do?’ to the owner of Giffard’s Prior!”

Kathryn, who was looking exquisitely beautiful in a real mink coat, with her much richer fair hair than Tina’s swinging on her shoulders, giggled as if she thought he was making a joke.

“Oh, yes, of course, I forgot! She’s virtually mistress here now, isn’t she?”

“She is mistress here,” Angus snapped back at her. “And unless

you’ve completely forgotten your manners will you recognise the fact? Miss Andrews,” he said in a taut voice to his employer, “you must forgive my friends intruding like this—that is to say, two friends and one relative—”

“But how ridiculous!” Miss Gaylord exclaimed, colour flaming in her face, and staining the whiteness of her beautifully moulded throat. “A joke’s a joke, and I know you’re playing the part of her chauffeur, but do you have to behave as if it’s really true? Why, she’s just a little outsider, in any case—a school- marm—and hasn’t the least little bit of right to be here. You said so yourself!”

“If I said that I must have been drunk at the time,” Sir Angus stated coldly.

Kathryn Gaylord gaped at him.

“Such a change of tone! . . .” she was beginning, when Justin Forbes stepped forward. He made a rather elegant bow in front of Tina, and then held out his hand to her.

“Miss Andrews, my party are a little bit agitated just now, so you must forgive them,” he purred. “But of course we all recognise that this is your house, and I for one was very much against just barging in here as if it still belonged to the old chappie who died, and, incidentally, cut poor Angus right out of his will! ” He grinned sideways at the baronet, without any real commiseration. “That must have been a bit of a shock, old boy. Nasty shock, too!”

“If it was, I’ve long since recovered from it,” Angus replied. Juliet Giffard stepped forward.

“Miss Andrews,” she said stiffly, “I’m sorry we overlooked the fact that you’re mistress here now, but we’ve come all this way to see Angus, and I’m sure you’ll let us have a few words with him in the drawing-room, or somewhere like that? Perhaps the library would be better—”

“Of course,” Tina answered, and turned away as if she fully understood that anything they had to discuss could not include her. “You know the plan of the house. Go wherever you want to go.” Miss Gaylord pouted.

“But I thought we’d all go off somewhere and have lunch. The Bull in Stoke Moreton, or somewhere like that. Angus, surely you don’t have to keep up this, farce and pretend that you really take orders from this—this woman ?”

“Oh, I say!” Mr. Forbes exclaimed, apologising for her. “That doesn’t sound to me a very fair description of Miss Andrews. She looks to me very young and attractive, and not in the least like a woman? Besides, it sounds rude.” He smiled at Tina. “Forgive her,

Miss Andrews. She doesn’t mean to be as objectionable as she sounds.”

Once again Juliet stepped forward.

“She doesn’t. But we’ve some business to discuss—” she was looking rather pale and strained, Tina realised—“and we’re a bit on edge. At least I am—and Justin ought to be! Kathryn didn’t have to come with us, but we needed her influence with Angus.” She glanced round at him appealingly. “Oh, Angus, you’ve got to help us!” Angus looked as if he was keeping his temper with a certain amount of difficulty, and he responded to her appeal with a glance

of distaste.

“All right! Come in here—” leading the way to the library. “If Miss Andrews says we have her permission?”

“You have,” Tina replied, and met the look in his blue eyes with a slightly puzzled one in her own.

All four of them left her standing alone in the hall, and they disappeared into the library without a backward glance. That is to say, three of them did. Mr. Forbes glanced round at her and smiled ruefully. The glance seemed to say, ‘Sorry about this! But it is a kind of family conclave! ’

And then the door of the library shut fast, and Tina suspected that it was Miss Gaylord’s, hand that caused it to click so decisively as the stout oak barrier was interposed between her and her uninvited guests . . ; to say nothing of her chauffeur! Since that only other occasion on which she and Kathryn Gaylord had met, the golden beauty had almost certainly devoted a fair amount of her time to

thinking about her, and as a result there was no longer even a pretence of affability in her face. The teasing friendliness had gone, the amusement that had caused her eyes to dance ... It was obvious she was not amused by the knowledge that the man she intended to marry had put himself in the position of being ordered about by another woman, even though that other woman was, in a sense, aiding and abetting them in a plan to deceive her father, the owner of the chain of supermarkets.

Tina did not wait for them to emerge from the library, following upon the discussion which was apparently so all-important, but went upstairs to her room and removed her outdoor things and got ready for lunch, which she imagined she would be consuming, as usual, on her own. But when she returned to the hall she found Justin Forbes pacing up and down it and looking a bit agitated. He greeted her with an awkward:

“I say, I do apologise for bursting in on you like this, but Juliet’s

a bit upset and I don’t think she feels like facing a crowd of strangers in a pub for lunch.” If he was thinking of the pub in the village Tina didn’t think they would have to face a crowd of strangers. But she realised what was coming even before the words left his lips. “Would it be asking too much of you to let us have a scrap of something to eat here? And perhaps a drink beforehand? I’m dying for one myself . . .” His eyes wandered to the door of the dining-room, behind which, on the sideboard, he was certain there was some liquid refreshment. “Devil of a check, I know, but we’ve just had a long drive!”

“Of course,” Tina said, and rang the bell for the housekeeper. She led the way to the drawing-room, since her usual haunt, the library, was still in a sense out of bounds. “You’d better all come in here and have something to drink, and I’ll instruct Mrs. Appleby to see what she can do about providing lunch for you all, and to lay extra places in the dining-room.” Mr. Forbes muttered that she was very good, and followed her over to the fireplace where an electric fire glowed in the hearth, although the room was also warm with central heating,

“Awfully good of you,” he said, standing awkwardly and wanning his hands at the electric fire at the same time. “Jolly cold weather this, and not the time of year to put anyone about. But a kind of major crisis has arisen, and we’ve got to do something about it. Angus is usually pretty good at solving problems, so we came to him.”

“I see,” Tina murmured.

Justin Forbes’ eyes kindled as he took in the slender line of her figure clothed in an attractive soft wool dress, and the pale gold hair that covered her small head like a pale aureole.

“Daresay you’ve met Mrs. Giffard,” he said. “Doesn’t take kindly to the idea of Juliet and me marrying.”

“Oh, no?” Tina murmured again.

“Pity, but there it is!” Mr. Forbes sighed. Tina was gradually arriving at the opinion that he was a perfectly pleasant young man who felt rather strongly about this impolite intrusion, but she was not exactly surprised that Clare Giffard, whom she had also met on one occasion only, was not exactly enthusiastic about acquiring him for a son-in-law. There was a certain amiable weakness about his face that could put a lot of women off—especially if they were strong-minded, and it was a question of marrying off a daughter. But Tina who had no reason to like or approve of Mrs. Giffard, developed a sudden, impulsive liking for him.

“Is it because she wants Miss Giffard to marry somebody else?” she suggested tentatively.

“Oh, no! It’s simply and solely a question of money,” he confessed.

“You haven’t got any?” she enquired sympathetically.

“Not much.” He grinned in the way she found curiously engaging, because it offered an apology for himself and any deficiencies that could be attributed to him. “That is to say, I haven’t at the moment, although I will have one day; and Juliet’s acquired a pile of debts . . . bills, you know! Her mother won’t pay them, and she thinks she ought to marry someone who will pay them.”

“But that’s dreadful! ” Tina exclaimed. She thought it genuinely dreadful that a girl should have to marry in order that some of her extravagances could be settled for her. “I thought Miss Giffard had money of her own.”

“She gets an allowance,” Justin admitted, “but it’s usually mortgaged by the time it’s due. Hence the bills.”

“For clothes, and things like that?”

“And an occasional flutter on the racecourse. I’m afraid Ju’s a bit of a gambler.”

“That’s bad, I suppose,” Tina said, and, never having gambled on anything in her life, she thought it was also rather daring. “But if it’s a question of marrying ... You must have something more than an allowance to marry on—”

The door opened behind them, and the other three entered the room. Juliet was looking tearful and upset, Kathryn was rather flushed and stormy-eyed, and Angus’s eyes were glinting in a manner that suggested the interview had been as stormy as Kathryn’s expression. Mrs. Appleby came up behind them, and Tina requested her to see what she and Cook could manage in the way of lunch for all five of them. She also asked for a tray of drinks to be brought to the drawing-room.

“Not for me,” Angus said stiffly. “I can provide myself with a drink. I’ll go over to my quarters.”

But Kathryn tugged angrily at his sleeve.

“Don’t be silly,” she said. “We’ve come all this way to see you. We can talk over lunch. We’ve got to talk!”

“Then we’ll all go over to my quarters. It’ll be a bit cramped, but I can rustle you up some bread and cheese. And I’ve no doubt I can also find you a bottle of beer apiece,” smiling unpleasantly.

Kathryn positively glared at him.

“Since Miss Andrews is willing to give us lunch,” she said, “and willing to give you lunch—”

“I’m the chauffeur,” he interrupted. “Chauffeurs have their place, and mine isn’t here. It’s in a microscopic flat above the stables.” Miss Gaylord’s beautiful eyes developed a few sparks. “If you go on talking like that,” she hissed between her perfect little white teeth, “I’ll—”

But Tina stepped forward and put a stop to the interchange.

“I think Sir Angus is merely being awkward,” she explained. “He knows very well he’s not really my chauffeur. It was his idea, not mine! And as you have family business to discuss I’m the one who is undoubtedly in the way. I’ll arrange for you to have lunch on your own, and Mrs. Appleby can bring me a tray in the library. That should simplify everything.”