Bird of Prey (3 page)

Then the door had closed and she was left standing there, wondering what on earth she was to do next.

Cecil jingled some coins in his pocket. “Tell me, Caroline, do you have the fare back to London?”

She shook her head.

“I thought not! You were so certain Grace would take you on, weren’t you? I’m remembering that case of yours, which you said was outside the door. ”

Caroline bit her lip. Yes, the presence of her case indicated only too clearly that she had been fully certain Grace would keep her. “You didn’t mention it to Grace,” she said gratefully. “That was kind of you.”

“I’m not really a kind person, you know,” he told her. “Just experienced! You see, I too know what it is to be poor.” At her look of faint surprise, he went on, “Oh, not definitely poor, you know. I’m not complaining. But poor enough to know what it is to have to make do. To have to make do with sandwiches instead of having a meal— that sort of thing!”

“But you didn’t give me away,” Caroline told him thankfully.

“No, we poverty-stricken people have our bit of pride,” he said gravely. “We have to hang on to that. Now about getting you back to London, let me see—” He fetched a train guide.

In his unhurried way he set about straightening out her difficulties and in about half an hour she found herself seated in a taxi once more, in her purse the money Cecil had given her for her return fare, and comforted by the snack he had raided the larder for.

Once she had bought her ticket for the train, there was nothing to do but wait on the station platform. She sat watching the rails as they glittered into the distance, a dismal melancholy settling on her and gripping her whole being, so that in spite of herself tears glided down her cheeks. So all her efforts had come to nothing! What a fool she had been to think that with Grace a new life might open up for her!

It all seemed part of the nightmare in which she was now living when a big silver-grey car drove into the station yard, and a tall broad-shouldered figure stepped out, strode over to her and pronounced abruptly, “So there you are! You arrived by an earlier train, then!”

She was jerked into protest only when this figure, seizing her case in one hand, caught her by the wrist with the other and began to drag her off towards the grey car, exclaiming impatiently, “Come along! Or do you want to spend the evening sitting on this draughty platform?”

Caroline pulled back frantically. “Who are you?” she cried, her voice rising to a squeak with alarm.

He paused, his face seemingly miles above her in the darkness of the shadowed platform, his eyes, metallic grey with the steely glance of a drawn sword. “Don’t tell me you want a formal introduction!” he gritted. “I’m Randall Craig, your new employer, although possibly you don’t know my name. You wrote to Mrs. Creed in reply to her advertisement, didn’t you?”

“I certainly didn’t,” Caroline retorted. “And I’m not going anywhere with you, when I don’t know who you are, so you can give me back my case and I’m going on the London train just as soon as it comes in, and I’ll get a job in London somehow, even if it is street sweeping—although I don’t suppose I’d be much use at that either,” she ended, with a sob in her voice.

He dropped her case to the platform. “Now just what is this all about? If you’re not the new parlourmaid, then who are you?”

“I’m Caroline Downes,” she told him, “and I ran away from my guardians—at least they don’t want me any longer, so it

doesn’t matter, and I came to be nursery governess to my cousin Mrs. Brant’s little boy, but she has a woman already and doesn’t need me, and—”

While she was speaking there had been a rumbling and a long train snaked along the platform and drew to a halt. She was about to pick up her case and move towards one of the compartments, but he stopped her with an imperious gesture. “Don’t budge,” he ordered. “Anyone for Longmere?” he called out to the porter.

The porter followed with his eyes the thin trickle of people who were moving towards the exit. “No one strange this evening, Mr. Craig.”

“I think I have the answer to your difficulties,” the stranger told Caroline. “Evidently the new girl hasn’t turned up, so if you need, a job, are you prepared to work as parlourmaid for my Mrs. Creed?”

Caroline paused for an instant. Her innate honesty made her feel inclined to confess on the spot that she knew nothing whatsoever of the duties of a parlourmaid, but instantly the bitter thought flashed across her mind that she would be equally ignorant of almost any other job. “I wouldn’t mind being a parlourmaid,” she answered, truthfully enough.

“In that case you’re hired,” he told her, and as the train eased smoothly out of the platform he hustled her towards the car.

Was she being sensible? Caroline asked herself fleetingly as she got in. But already he had pitched her case into the back seat, was getting in beside her and the car was pulling out of the station yard.

Whatever she had let herself in for, it was too late to turn back now, Caroline was thinking, as she sank back against the leather-upholstered seat. To be warm and safe for a little while, that was all that seemed to matter, after the turbulent disorientation of her life which had occurred during the past few hours. A tear, half of sorrow, half of weariness, trickled down her cheek.

He spoke not a word during their drive and Caroline lost all sense of direction in the turns and twists of the country roads. She stole a covert glance at her companion, his deep piercing eyes fixed on the road ahead. His profile was like that of a hawk, she decided, the mouth sharply carved and faintly cruel.

She felt her heart beat faster and apprehension clutch her like a vice. Why had she so passively allowed herself to accompany this unknown man? she thought desperately. But whether or not he realized her growing dismay, the dark saturnine face remained impassive, as though he had forgotten her very existence. The square strong hands on the wheel were sure and expert, and somehow they too were expressive of the man, Caroline decided. Altogether Randall Craig was rather a frightening person, whether he was aware of it or not.

Eventually they stopped outside a vast, sprawling mansion. “Well, here we are. Out you get!” he instructed.

As she was about to open the door she drew back in alarm, for two huge shapes had bounded from the shrubberies which faced the house: they were two big hounds, and she had just time to slam the door shut when she saw their faces peeping in at her, their tongues lolling and their great eyes rolling.

“Here, Rex; here, Queen! ” Randall Craig called.

Immediately the dogs abandoned their inspection of Caroline and bounded around to his side of the car where he was pulling out her case. “Come on, get out! What are you so nervous about? They won’t hurt you while I’m here,” he told her irritably.

In spite of this assurance she kept close to him as they moved towards the house, the two dogs bounding and frisking around their owner.

He marched her across a vast, oak-panelled, icy-cold hall and into a room which she assumed to be his office or study from the bundles of papers that filled the open shelves against the walls and the filing cabinets in one of the corners. Here Caroline sank upon one of the deep leather chairs, feeling utterly lost and dejected.

He poked up the fire roughly, saying as he did so, “Stop snivelling. I can’t endure snivelling women.”

“I wasn’t snivelling.” Caroline sat up indignantly.

“Oh yes, you were! You were snivelling all the way back in the car.”

“No, I wasn’t,” she protested.

“Indeed you were, and there are evidences of tears on your cheeks at this moment to prove my point.” Caroline drew the cuff of her coat across her cheek, feeling the harshness of the rough, woollen material against her skin. “I wasn’t,” she muttered feebly.

He paid no attention to this, but strode out of the room to return a few minutes later with a glass of red wine and some biscuits. “Here, drink this, it will make you feel better,” he commanded.

Caroline took the glass rather fearfully. Aunt Muriel had always

frowned on wines of any sort and Uncle Trevor was accustomed to drinking his after-dinner glass of port with an air that was almost apologetic. She sipped tentatively. “It’s port,” she told him.

“That’s right, it’s port,” he agreed. “Although you seemed so scared

of it that I’m surprised you know.”

“My Uncle Trevor has a glass every evening after dinner,” she

informed him.

Somehow the fact that it was port, Uncle Trevor’s favourite drink, seemed reassuring, and Caroline sipped the glass and nibbled the biscuits, feeling her spirits rise as she did so. “Yes, you’re right, it does make you feel better,” she agreed gravely as she put the glass down on the table beside her.

“You look a lot better too,” he told her ungallantly. “I wondered if I’d be able to bring you back to Mrs. Creed alive, you seemed so done up for a while.”

“Oh, that was only because I was tired with travelling,” she told him. “Usually I’m full of energy and nothing gets me down— although I’m always inclined to be pale—but then it’s my nature,” she informed him seriously.

“Oh!” He regarded her unsmiling. “Now, Caroline—I think I’ve got your name correctly—tell me, just what were you doing sitting on the platform at Lynebeck on a bleak October evening? I heard something about Grace Brant, but frankly everything’s not quite clear in my mind. ”

Caroline drew a deep breath. He despised snivelling women, he had said, and not for a moment did she intend to tell a hard-luck story. The same tale that she had recounted to Cecil Perdue sprang to her lips. “I was anxious to get right away from London for a while and sniff the country air,” she finished as convincingly as she knew how.

His reception of this version of her adventures was strikingly different from Cecil’s. He threw back his head and burst into a roar of laughter. “Come, Caroline, you’ll have to do better than that,” he told her when he had recovered.

Caroline looked at him indignantly. “Cecil Perdue didn’t laugh,”

she told him. “And it’s rude to let people know you don’t believe what they’re saying.”

“Maybe,” he replied, “but if that’s so, you’ll find me rude on many occasions, I’m afraid, because I don’t believe a quarter of what I’m told and don’t care who knows it. Now, out with it, you’ve quarrelled with your people, haven’t you? And you ran away to Grace Brant, and—from there on, I confess, it rather beats me. Just what did you expect Grace to do for you?”

“Well, she’s a sort of distant cousin of my mother’s: she was a Perdue too, you see.”

“And you were going to throw yourself on her mercy?”

“I was certainly not going to do any such thing,” she corrected. “I went to her to ask for a job—I wanted to be governess to Robin, but she already has an excellent woman, Mrs. Wood, who’s been nursery governess to some of the best families, and—”

“And so you found yourself turned out and sitting on the cold station platform, waiting for the train back to London?”

“Yes,” she agreed in a small voice. She shivered. “Yes, it was awful!” Then remembering his contempt for women who snivelled, she added quickly, “But I was perfectly all right. Cecil gave me money to get home again and I had something to eat. ”

“So it was Cecil who gave you the money?” he asked. “Not Grace?”

“No, she had a cold and was feeling foul. And anyway, Cecil says he knows what it is to be poor and—”

“Yes, Cecil knows what it is to be a dependent,” he agreed, and she got the impression that he despised Cecil in somewhat the same way he despised snivelling women, and regretted she had recounted this.

After all, it was Cecil who had befriended her. Now that she had a job she must return his money as soon as possible, she thought, a trifle drowsily.

“One thing is clear, and that is that it’s high time you were in bed,” he told her, going to the old-fashioned bell-pull and giving it a tug. “We’d better get Mrs. Creed to fix you up.”

He said no more until there was a knock and an elderly woman, who was obviously the Mrs. Creed he had referred to, entered.

“The parlourmaid you hired didn’t turn up, as I expected. And frankly I’m not surprised. Probably she discovered that Longmere is about five miles from the nearest railway station and that the bus passes through only once a week, weather permitting, and got cold feet.”

But the housekeeper’s eyes were fixed on Caroline. “Then who is this—”

“This is a piece of flotsam and jetsam I found seated on the station platform. She’ll do nicely instead.”

An ominous tenseness crept into the housekeeper’s face. “You know something of the duties of a parlourmaid?” she addressed Caroline.

“No, I don’t think I do—not exactly, that is,” Caroline faltered. “But I’m willing to learn and—”

“Just what was your former occupation?” the housekeeper asked icily.

“Well, I used to mend broken china.”

This information seemed to amuse Caroline’s new employer—an amusement that was not shared by Mrs. Creed.

“We have no broken china in this house to be mended,” she assured Caroline stiffly.

But by this time it was clear that Randall Craig was growing bored by the situation. “Take this little mender of china away and tuck her into bed for the night,” he ordered. “You’ll be able to find her something to do, no doubt. And many hands make light work, as the saying goes.”