Читать книгу Scorpion's Dance - Anne Mather - Страница 7

MIRANDA COULD remember clearly the first time she saw Jaime Knevett.

It was on the occasion of her tenth birthday, and as a special treat, Lady Sanders had agreed to a birthday party on the lawn, out of sight of the house, of course. Miranda could recall the excitement with which she had anticipated her birthday. Until that time, birthdays had been very little different from any other day, with perhaps a trip to the pictures in the evening, after her mother had finished the preparations for dinner.

But that was hardly unusual in the circumstances. After all, housekeepers’ children should be seen and not heard, or so she had always been led to believe, and no one could deny that Lady Sanders had been kind to her mother when her father died so suddenly, leaving his wife with a three-year-old daughter, and no visible means of support.

Her father had been a farm worker and their cottage was tied to his job. Naturally, when he died the cottage was required for his replacement, and Miranda’s mother had been desperate when Lady Sanders, who incidentally owned the estate on which their cottage stood, had suggested she should come and live at the Hall. Her housekeeper was getting near retirement age, Lady Sanders explained, and reliable help was so hard to find these days.

By taking in Lucy Gresham and her fatherless little daughter, Lady Sanders assured herself of ‘reliable help’ for numerous years to come, but it was only as she got older that Miranda got more cynical. At ten, she was still young enough to take kindness at its face value, and at three she had no opinion at all.

Lady Sanders was a widow. Her husband had been killed in a road accident a year after Miranda was born, and the less charitable people in the village had been heard to express the opinion that it was fortunate he had only wrapped his own car round the tree and not someone else’s. It seemed the late Lord Sanders had imbibed rather freely, and it was chance rather than good fortune which had kept him alive as long as it did.

After his death, Lady Sanders assumed the running of the estate with an assurance that revealed she had been doing so surreptitiously for years. She had one son, the new Lord Sanders, and she was determined that his inheritance should in no way suffer through the death of his father.

Miranda saw Mark Sanders rarely during her formative years. The local prep school, followed by succeeding boarding schools, took care of his education, and in the holidays his mother took care never to let him out of her sight. Mrs Gresham explained that Lady Sanders worshipped the boy, and now that her husband was dead, she had no one else. It seemed a lonely existence to Miranda who, in spite of the strictures impressed upon her at home, led quite an active social life outside. She had friends in plenty, and she pitied the pale-faced youth she occasionally glimpsed playing by himself on the lawns.

A week before Miranda’s tenth birthday, Lady Sanders gave a dinner party. It was the beginning of June, the night of the Hunt Ball, and Mrs Gresham had worked solidly for over a fortnight getting the Hall ready for Lady Sanders’ guests who were staying overnight and going home the following day. There had been such an orgy of cleaning and polishing, and even Miranda had been roped in to fetch and carry for the domestics hired for the purpose. The meal itself had taken hours to prepare—smoked ham and melon, delicately-battered scampi, roast duckling, with peas and new potatoes, and Mrs Gresham’s special orange sauce, and peaches soaked in brandy. The wines, too, had been specially chosen, chilled to perfection, and Miranda had been enchanted by the sight of the table, its silver and crystal gleaming in the light of half a dozen scented candles.

The dinner party was a success, and in gratitude for the work she had put in, Lady Sanders had suggested that as it was Miranda’s birthday the following week, perhaps Mrs Gresham might like to organise a small party for her.

In later years, Miranda was to speculate upon the character of a woman who chose such a way to reward her housekeeper, but at that time the idea of a party had been so exciting to her that she had not stopped to think that perhaps her mother might have preferred less work rather than more.

In any event, the party was arranged, and in spite of lowering clouds which had hung around all morning, the afternoon skies were clear. Miranda helped her mother, and old Croxley, the gardener, carried a trestle table out on to the lawn at the back of the house, and when it was set with sandwiches and pastries, cakes and jellies, and a huge jug of orange juice, to her eyes it looked every bit as good as Lady Sanders’ dinner table had done. Seven little girls had been invited, and Miranda was to occupy the seat at the head of the table, immediately behind the iced sponge cake with ‘Happy Birthday, Miranda’ written in tiny hundreds and thousands.

The guests arrived and Miranda opened her presents with trembling fingers. There were books and crayons and handkerchiefs, and her best friend, Judith Masters, whose father taught at the village school, gave her a pretty pearl pendant that Miranda insisted on wearing at once. They played games and Mrs Gresham had packets of sweets for prizes, and then it was time for tea.

Miranda presided over the table proudly, aping the odd occasions when she had peeped through the dining room door and seen Lady Sanders taking lunch with some of her friends from the Rotary Club. It was her first party, and she was determined it should be a success. Then it began to rain …

Only a few spots at first, rather large spots that dropped just over Miranda’s head, and spattered on the carefully arranged inscription on the cake, making the decorations run together and partially obliterate her name.

Miranda jumped to her feet at once, disappointment bringing an anxious frown to her forehead. Her mother had gone back into the house, leaving her in charge, but surely she must see the rain from her windows. She looked back towards the kitchen, but there was no sign of either her mother or Croxley, and then when one or two of the other girls told her to sit down again, to stop worrying, that it was probably only a shower, Miranda turned her face skyward to see a cloudless arc of blue.

Then a huge drop of water fell in her eye, and she gasped and brought her hands to her face, as a veritable shower sprayed over the table and its occupants, bringing them all to their feet, gulping and protesting and giggling helplessly. Miranda didn’t giggle. Her reason told her it couldn’t be raining. The sky was clear; and besides, the leaves of the laurel hedge that shielded the kitchen garden from sight of the Hall were dry.

And yet the shower just kept on coming, and her guests were so bemused by what was happening that they paid little attention to its source. But Miranda’s sharp eyes noticed how the shower arched over the hedge, and with an exclamation of fury, she dashed towards the bushes.

Immediately there was smothered laughter, and the shower ceased as quickly as it had begun. Miranda paid no attention to that. With furious hands she tore aside the twigs and branches that held her back and burst through the hedge like a veritable virago.

Beyond the hedge was the tap which Croxley used to operate the sprinkler system on the lawns in dry weather. Presently not needed, the sprinkler had been stored away in the garden shed, but someone had got it out. Someone who was presently disappearing round the corner of the house, a tall dark figure who was as unfamiliar to Miranda as she must be to him.

She set out in pursuit, and then halted uncertainly, looking down in dismay at the pretty flowered dress her mother had made her specially for the party. Pushing through the hedge had torn the hem, and it was streaked with dirt as she was. Her hair, rust-coloured, and always unmanageably straight, had come loose from its braids and was presently straggling untidily about her shoulders, and the pearl pendant had disappeared, probably broken in the struggle.

Her friends were shouting her from the other side of the hedge, and Mrs Gresham, alerted by their excitement, had come to see what was going on. Miserably, Miranda forced her way back through the hedge, and suffered the stifled giggles and compassionate glances of the other girls.

‘Miranda!’ Her mother was not prone to unwarranted sympathy. ‘What on earth has been going on?’

At once half a dozen voices attempted to regale her with their version of the story, but Mrs Gresham waited until Miranda herself could explain. Half expecting her mother to disbelieve her, or alternatively find excuses for what had happened, Miranda was surprised to discover that Mrs Gresham seemed as angry as she was. Listening to what had happened, her face went first red, and then white, before she turned and walked silently into the house.

Miranda stared after her worriedly, but the other girls clustered around, demanding to know what had happened, and she allowed herself to be swayed by the importance the incident had granted her. She accepted their sympathy as her right, and basked in their admiration of how she had sent whoever it was packing. She scarcely looked at the table, but when she did, she felt a lump rise in her throat at the sight of the ruined cake and waterlogged sandwiches. Only the jelly repelled the moisture, green and yellow islands in a transparent sea.

Miranda was still standing there surrounded by her friends when her mother came back again, but she was not alone. With her was Lady Sanders—and a boy of perhaps fifteen or sixteen. He was tall for his age, thin, with angular features that were not enhanced by the dark pigmentation of his skin. His hair was thick and black, blacker than any hair Miranda had seen before, and she wondered what nationality he was. But she had no hesitation in identifying him as the instigator of that artificial rainstorm.

She glared at him and was infuriated to discover that she could still see amusement in those darkly-lashed eyes, although his face bore an obediently solemn expression. She wondered who he was, and what he was doing at the Hall, and found herself praying that he was an intruder and that Lady Sanders was about to have him arrested.

‘As you can see, my lady, the table is ruined,’ her mother was saying, as they walked across the lawn together, accompanied by the abominable boy, and Lady Sanders nodded her head in agreement, and murmured some words of regret.

Then they turned to the group of girls, and belatedly Miranda remembered that she should have washed her face and hands and combed her hair before appearing before anyone. As it was, she stood there, with the group of other girls, looking like a tattered parrot among so many pigeons. Lady Sanders saw her, exchanged a look with the boy at her side, and ignominy of ignominies, she started laughing. And when she laughed, the boy laughed, and that set all the girls giggling and laughing all over again. Only Mrs Gresham didn’t laugh, but that was small comfort to Miranda. With a sob of humiliation she brushed past all of them, rushing across the lawn and into the house, not stopping until she reached the sanctuary of her own room. She would never forgive them, she thought, not her friends, not Lady Sanders, and most particularly not that black-haired beast who had ruined the only party she had ever had …

Of course, she got over it. She could even laugh about it in time, only never in Lady Sanders’ presence. That day was a turning point in her life, the day she began to realise the differences between the people of Lady Sanders’ world and her own.

She learned that the boy was a distant relation of the late Lord Sanders, son of his cousin, Patrick Knevett, who had estates in Brazil, and who had scandalised his family in 1947 by marrying an Indian girl of Portuguese extraction because she was expecting his child. The boy had been brought up in South America, which would account for the deep tanning of his skin, and had been staying with Lady Sanders while his father made arrangements for him to finish his schooling in England.

During the years that followed, Miranda saw him several times. Because his home was such a long way away, he usually spent Christmas and Easter at the Hall. On the few occasions when Lady Sanders chose to confide in her housekeeper, she explained that he was company for Mark, three years his junior, and much in awe of his older cousin.

Miranda herself succeeded in passing the examination which took her to the grammar school in the local town, but when she was sixteen she left school with eight ‘O’ levels, much to the disappointment of the headmistress, who had been expecting great things of her. However, further education on a housekeeper’s pay was simply not on, and she got a job in the town library and settled down quite happily. She loved books, and working in the library enabled her to read everything that was published.

She had had boy-friends before she left school, and she continued going out with different boys and not going steadily with any of them. She had seen too much of the struggle her mother had had bringing her up to want to put herself into the same position, and she gained the reputation of being frigid and mercenary, which wasn’t strictly true. It was simply that she wanted more out of life than a mortgaged semi, and a parcel of children she couldn’t afford.

Then, when she was eighteen, she was invited to the Hunt Ball.

She had been going out with a young farmer, Dennis Morgan, whose father owned some land on the outskirts of the village, and because his land was used by the Hunt, he had been invited.

At first she had demurred, realising that Lady Sanders would attend the Ball, but surprisingly her mother took a stand.

‘Why shouldn’t you go?’ she demanded, her work-worn hands kneading together. ‘You’ve been invited. I don’t see what it has to do with her ladyship.’

But Miranda noticed she didn’t tell her employer that her daughter was attending the ball, and no one could have been more surprised than Lady Sanders when she saw her housekeeper’s daughter dancing with the son of one of the local landowners.

Miranda was enjoying herself. Her gown was new, and she was aware that it suited her. The years between that disastrous party and now had wrought a great change in her. Her hair was no longer so red, but had toned to a deep chestnut streaked with golden lights, and its straightness was used to advantage by careful cutting. Shoulder-length, it swung in a silken curtain from a centre parting, accentuating the wide depths of eyes that were translucently green. She was tall, too, but not thin, and her breasts swelled provocatively above the deep décolletage of her gown. The gown itself was green, almost exactly matching the colour of her eyes, layers of chiffon over a clinging chemise-like underskirt. What she was unaware of was that another pair of eyes, very similar to those of Lady Sanders’, were watching her with more than casual interest.

The evening was well advanced before a slender, pale-faced young man chose Dennis’s temporary absence to ask her to dance. Miranda knew who he was, of course. She had seen him frequently about the Hall in the past couple of years, just as he knew her; although he doubted he would have believed how beautiful she could be, dressed as she invariably was in denim jeans and shirts, or plain uniform dresses for work. But tonight she was sparkling, and Mark Sanders recognised that she was easily the most interesting girl in the room.

Miranda, prepared to dislike him, found her sympathies aroused by his diffidence, and his barbed humour had nothing coarse about it. He knew everyone there, of course, and his wry comments and dry wit made her see them all in a different light. Old Squire Matthews, who used to terrify her when she was a child by cracking his riding crop against his boot, was just a foolish old man who couldn’t face a kill sober; the Falconers of High Garth, much respected in the village, couldn’t stand the sight of one another outside of public occasions like this; and Canon Bridgenorth and his wife, who lived far beyond their means, would likely retire on social security.

That his comments were vaguely malicious did not really disturb her. Gossip was rife in a village like King’s Norton, and he was only relating what her mother had suspected for years. Besides, she thought, he was only trying to put her at her ease, and she was flattered that out of all the girls there, he should have chosen to dance with her.

Dennis was waiting for her when the dance was over, and he was not best pleased by what had happened. ‘You’re not interested in that pansy boy, are you?’ he demanded, unable to ignore her flushed cheeks and the unaccustomed light in her eyes, and Miranda turned on him angrily.

‘He’s not a pansy boy!’ she declared hotly. ‘He’s very nice actually. A gentleman—something you might not know a lot about.’

Dennis looked affronted, and immediately she was contrite. ‘I’m sorry, Dennis,’ she exclaimed at once, realising she had been rude. After all, without Dennis’s invitation she would not be here. ‘It’s just that—well, I liked him.’

Dennis allowed himself to be placated. He didn’t want to fall out with Miranda. He was half in love with her, and he had been beginning to hope that she might care for him. He knew her reputation. He knew she had never had a steady boy-friend, but he was hoping to change all that.

However, Dennis was to be disappointed. Within a week, Mark had started dating Miranda, much to his own and her mother’s disapproval.

‘You’re a fool!’ Mrs Gresham told her daughter, never one to mince words. ‘He’s not for the likes of you. Lady Sanders would never let her son marry the housekeeper’s daughter!’

‘Why not?’ Miranda was still riding on cloud seven. All the girls in the library had seen Mark’s super sports car when he came to pick her up after work, and all her friends envied her her good fortune. All except Judith, that was. The schoolmaster’s daughter sided with Miranda’s mother in disapproving of the affair, and had jeopardised their friendship by accusing Miranda of dating Mark because he had money. Miranda had denied it emphatically, but deep inside her she wondered if she would find him half so attractive without his sports car and the Hall behind him.

Now Mrs Gresham sank into her comfortable rocking chair by the fire and folded her hands. ‘You’re not thinking seriously enough,’ she said with a sigh. ‘Oh, I suppose I can’t blame you. You and I have always had to work for every penny we earned. But that young man—he’s too like his father for my liking. And I don’t want him smashing up that flashy car of his while you’re inside it.’

Miranada shifted restlessly. ‘Mark wouldn’t do that. He drives fast, I know, but he’s always careful.’

‘When he’s sober,’ remarked her mother dryly. ‘I doubt you’ve seen him drunk yet. But it has been known. And that’s without—well, you know what I mean.’

‘Sex?’ Miranda paced impatiently about the kitchen. ‘Is that what you mean? We don’t have sex. I—I wouldn’t, even if he asked me.’

Her mother looked sceptical. ‘What do you know about it? What do you know what you’d do faced with such a situation? Miranda, it’s no use talking. You’d never understand in a million years. But believe me when I say that there comes a time in every woman’s life when a situation gets completely out of her control …’

‘Oh, Mum!’ Miranda sighed. ‘I do know the facts of life, you know. I know about—body chemistry.’

‘Is that what you call it? They called it something else in my young day. But never mind. So long as you always remember that so far as Lady Sanders is concerned, you’re just one of the long line of girls her son will date before he settles down and marries someone suitable.’

Miranda flounced out of the room. There was more than a grain of truth in what her mother had said, she knew that, at least so far as Lady Sanders was concerned. But she couldn’t honestly believe that Mark was like his mother. He was too kind, too attentive, too much fun.

Then, two days later, she had an experience of how much fun he could be. They had been to a nightclub in the nearby town and were driving home in the early hours. Miranda, who had taken driving lessons as soon as she was seventeen and bought herself an old Mini to get to and from work, had realised Mark was drinking too much and offered to drive them home, but he had scorned her caution.

‘I’m not drunk!’ he had protested mockingly. ‘What’s the matter? Chicken?’

Miranda had shaken her head and climbed into her seat obediently. Perhaps she was being over-cautious, she thought. Perhaps she was thinking too much about what her mother had said. Whatever her private feelings, she had maintained a composed façade, and this seemed to infuriate Mark. Instead of driving with extra care, he seemed to delight in taking unnecessary risks, and Miranda’s palms were moist with sweat when they breasted a hill on the wrong side of the road and saw the headlights of an approaching car directly ahead of them.

She scarcely remembered the details of what happened afterwards. She knew Mark screamed and took his hands off the wheel, and somehow she threw herself across him and wrenched the wheel towards her. The sports car slewed dangerously across the road, but it missed the oncoming vehicle and ploughed half through the bushes on the lefthand side of the road.

Miranda was trembling violently when she brought the car to a halt, but Mark was shattered. Shaking, he had buried his head in his hands, and not until the irate driver of the other car came to ask what the hell was going on did he lift his face to reveal he had been crying. It was left to Miranda to explain how the steering had apparently gone out of control and she let the man assume that Mark had saved them. As it happened, he did know who Mark was, and in consequence was prepared to accept her explanation.

After he had left them and they were alone, Mark pulled her into his arms and buried his face in her hair. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ he said, over and over again, and although she was still shocked, Miranda had comforted him like a child.

It was only when his lips strayed across her face to her mouth and his hands fumbled grotesquely at her clothes that she drew back from him, feeling curiously repelled. Suddenly their positions were reversed, and she was no longer in awe of him. It was another turning point in Miranda’s relationship with the Sanders family.

Several days passed before she saw Mark again. She knew the girls at the library imagined that the young earl had walked out on her, but somehow she didn’t really mind. To find that your idol had feet of clay was always a chastening experience, and Miranda was glad of the breathing space to gather her thoughts.

Then, just when she had come to the conclusion that it was all over between them, she found him waiting for her one evening, outside the library. Ignoring the raised eyebrows that greeted his appearance, she got into the car and gave him a long speculative look.

‘I know,’ he said, without turning on the ignition. ‘I needed time to think. I guess you did, too.’

Miranda bent her head. ‘What was there to think about?’

‘You. Me. Us!’ He regarded her intently. ‘Miranda—will you marry me?’

Miranda was staggered. She had expected anything but this! ‘Me?’ she whispered. ‘Marry you? Are you serious?’

‘Never more so in my life,’ he replied gravely. ‘I care about you, Miranda. Enough to want to look after you for the rest of your life.’

‘But—your mother—’ she stammered helplessly.

‘Leave my mother to me,’ he said, and strangely enough she thought she could.

But was this really what she wanted? she wondered dazedly, as Mark set the car in motion. For days now she had been battling with the realisation that she did not really love him at all, that his wealth and social position had blinded her to the weaknesses in the man himself. Now, suddenly he was asking her to marry him, giving her the chance to get out of the rat-race once and for all, and she was hesitating. His mother would be furious, she knew, and her own … How could she go on being housekeeper to her own daughter’s mother-in-law?

But she needn’t. Miranda could see to it that she never had to work again. She could do that; if she married Mark.

It was a tempting proposition, made the more so by the thought of what everyone in the village would say. Miranda Gresham, the new Lady Sanders! Mistress of the Hall!

Her breathing quickened. What was happening to her? she thought disgustedly. How could she consider Mark’s proposal seriously when only hours before she had felt almost a sense of relief to know herself free of him? What had changed? He was still the same man, and she was still the same woman. Except that now she had something concrete to contend with …

Yet it was what came after the wedding that she would have to live with. Could she do that? Did she care for him enough to contemplate the intimacies of marriage without any qualms? There was no one else, and there were times when she believed there never would be. She had never been madly attracted to any man, and she had come to the conclusion that she simply did not have it in her to feel deeply about anyone, except her mother. How could she be sure she would ever feel any differently than she did today? And how could she throw this opportunity away on the fleeting chance she might? She was not mercenary, she consoled herself, just practical; but how practical might she have to be?

As expected, Lady Sanders disapproved of their engagement, although perhaps disapproval was too mild a term to use to describe the words she said to her son when he apprised her of the situation. The row they had could be heard in the kitchen, and Miranda had tightened her lips and closed the doors, and tried to ignore that she was the cause of the quarrel.

Her own mother had taken the news rather differently. She had said little beyond repeating that Miranda was a fool and that a man like Mark Sanders didn’t have it in him to make her happy.

The wedding was arranged for a week before Christmas, and the young couple were to fly out to Barbados afterwards for two weeks in the sun. Miranda got used to the other girls envying her her good fortune, and to having her picture in the paper alongside Mark’s, and to parrying the reporters’ questions about her rags-to-riches story. She found it harder to quieten her own conscience when it came to justifying her reasons for accepting his proposal.

Defeated, Lady Sanders gave in gracefully, outwardly at least. She was seen to accompany Miranda to her own dressmaker in London, pictures were taken of them shopping together, and just occasionally all three of them appeared together at some official function or other. Miranda was an apt pupil, and while she didn’t like Lady Sanders, she could respect her, and they adopted a kind of armed truce with one another. Lady Sanders recognised that Miranda was not some impressionable debutante she could mould to her own design, but a girl with definite ideas of her own. Nevertheless, she was experienced enough at dealing with people to know exactly how to approach her future daughter-in-law to get the required result. She never gave up hoping that Mark might come to his senses, but in the event that he didn’t, she was determined to hold on to her position in the household.

Surprisingly Miranda grew less apprehensive as the wedding neared. Mark was behaving particularly well, never demanding too much of her, never drinking excessively, never driving too fast; reassuring her that her first opinion of him had not been misplaced. Until the Rotary Club Ball in December …

The Ball was an annual event, and as Lady Sanders was a prominent member, naturally she was expected to attend. Her son and his fiancée were invited, too, and Miranda spent hours in her room beforehand, preparing for the last official gathering before their wedding. The wedding itself was only two weeks away, and a sumptuous function it was going to be. Lady Sanders had taken over all the organisation because, as she explained, no one could expect Mrs Gresham to pay for the kind of reception their friends would expect.

But before that, there was this evening, and Miranda was determined that Mark should feel proud of her. Her gown was made of velvet, rich cream velvet, that brushed against her skin with a kiss of silk. Her hair was about her shoulders as usual, but she had threaded it with seed pearls, which matched the pearl necklace and ear-rings Mark had given her as an engagement present. Excitement had heightened the colour in her cheeks, and her lips were parted in anticipation. She had never looked more attractive, and she knew it.

Her mother viewed her appearance without enthusiasm. These past weeks Mrs Gresham seemed to have aged considerably, and Miranda wondered if she was unhappy at leaving the Hall to retire into the comfortable cottage on the green that Mark had acquired for her. She was fifty-three, after all. Surely she couldn’t want to work all her life.

But Mark and his mother were waiting for her, and picking up her evening cloak, Miranda said a reluctant goodbye and walked along the passage which separated the housekeeper’s and kitchen quarters from the rest of the Hall.

Another door, set beneath the curve of the stairs, brought her into the main hall of the building. Here, panelled walls stretched up two floors to a magnificent carved ceiling, and a massive fireplace was flanked by portraits of earlier members of the Sanders family. The floor was polished, and briefly Miranda could remember her mother working on her hands and knees to keep it so, although now she had an electric polisher. There were skin rugs, and long damson-coloured curtains, and two huge armchairs which almost blocked the heat from the glowing log fire. The hall had an almost mediaeval charm, and Miranda had always responded to its austere beauty.

She thought the hall was deserted, and with a glance up the wide carved staircase, she made her way towards the library where Mark and his mother usually enjoyed a drink before dinner. But before she reached the leather-studded door, a man rose from the depths of one of the armchairs by the fire and said: ‘Good evening, Miranda.’

His sudden appearance startled her, and because he was not Mark or his mother she thought for a moment he must be the ghost of one of their ancestors. But no Sanders was ever so dark or so big, and her hands clenched tightly as she realised who he was.

‘It—it’s Mr Knevett, isn’t it?’ she asked, unwilling to speak to him at all but equally unable to ignore him. It was five or six years since she had seen the brutal violator of her childhood tea-party, and then only from a distance. She couldn’t recall that he had ever spoken to her, not even to apologise for what he had done. And now he spoke to her as if he knew her! How dared he? And what was he doing here anyway?