Darkwater (11 page)

‘She looks like a witch.’

Marcus’s eyes had grown enormous. Fanny said sharply, ‘Are you frightened, Nolly?’

‘Frightened?’ said Nolly, with contempt. ‘Me?’

‘Then don’t frighten your brother. Witches, indeed! Ching Mei, ask Dora to take the children to Lady Arabella. Lady Arabella. Do you understand?’

Ching Mei bowed. Marcus’s hand dragged at Fanny’s.

‘Great-aunt Arabella has sugar plums,’ Fanny murmured. ‘Run along and see.’

She watched them go. Already she had this absurd feeling that she shouldn’t let them out of her sight. Why ever should she feel like that? The lake, and the vivid memory of her near-drowning had upset her.

George strolled towards her, scowling.

‘Am I never to see you now without those brats?’

‘George! Don’t speak of your cousins like that.’

‘Isn’t it true? They’ve been at your heels ever since you brought them home. And Mamma’s quite content to make a servant of you. You know that, don’t you?’

‘I love the children already,’ Fanny murmured, uneasy beneath his intense regard. The little frown was on his forehead. His brown eyes were too bright, almost as if with a fever.

‘Come for a walk. Let’s go through the woodland on the other side of the lake.’

‘Not now, George.’

‘But you never will. I scarcely see you. You’re so pretty, Fanny. I’d like to—’ His fingers were at the neck of her dress.

‘George!’ she started back. ‘Please don’t touch me!’

He was immediately contrite. Now his eyes were dull. He suddenly looked years younger, an overgrown schoolboy.

‘I’m sorry. I wouldn’t do anything to hurt you. But Amelia said you were behaving as if you had fallen in love on your trip to London.’

‘Amelia is teasing you,’ Fanny said indignantly.

‘Yes. Yes, I thought she was.’ George passed his hand across his brow. ‘You must only love me, Fanny. I won’t let—won’t let—’

‘George, dear, isn’t it time for your rest? You know the doctor said you must rest every afternoon.’

‘Yes, I suppose it is. I get this headache. Let me walk in beside you, Fanny. I promise not to touch you. But don’t let those brats take all your time. If they do—’

‘What will happen?’ Fanny asked, smiling.

‘You know how I got this wound? That Cossack was swinging his sabre, like a devil. But I could use a sword. I still can. My sword arm isn’t hurt. I used to be the best swordsman in the regiment, did you know? You’re so pretty, Fanny. None of the girls at the regimental balls could hold a candle to you.’

‘Come inside,’ said Fanny uneasily. ‘The hot sun—’

‘Yes, yes, I’m coming. When I stop getting these nightmares I’ll be all right. You’ll have patience, won’t you, Fanny.’ ‘Of course,’ Fanny promised. What else was there to say?

In Lady Arabella’s room, with the curtains drawn against the sun because Lady Arabella loved this warm underwater gloom, Nolly stood staring with fascination at the empty birdcage.

Marcus was contentedly stuffing sweetmeats into his mouth, but Nolly held hers untouched in her hand.

‘Where is the bird?’ she demanded passionately.

‘It died, my little darling. I told you. It was ninety-five years old, I believe. And so bad tempered. Although I was dreadfully upset, I was also a little relieved to find it lying in the bottom of the cage one morning. Fanny, these children are charming. The boy’s a poppet, but this one, the questions—’

Lady Arabella shook her head pleasurably. ‘Oh, I shall have some times with her. Look at those bright eyes. They’re going to miss nothing.’

‘You’ve been telling me a lie,’ Nolly said, turning on her. ‘The bird didn’t die in its cage. It was in the chimney.’

Lady Arabella blinked and stared.

‘Oh, no, little love. You’re talking about the white bird that struggles and struggles and can’t get out. Not my scruffy old Boney. He was here, sure enough. He wouldn’t have been up and down chimneys. Had too much sense. No, that was the white—’

‘Great-aunt Arabella!’ Fanny interrupted sharply. ‘Don’t!’

‘Don’t!’ The heavy-lidded eyes looked at Fanny in amazement. ‘You suggest I can’t tell the child a story?’

‘Not that one.’

‘Because the bird fell down the chimney this morning,’ Nolly said flatly. ‘Dora carried it away on a shovel.’

Lady Arabella leaned forward, her cheeks pink.

‘
No
! The white one? In your room? But what does that
mean
?’

‘It was a starling,’ Fanny said. ‘It was black. Dora poked it down when she was trying to light the fire. It must have been caught there during the winter. It doesn’t mean a thing. And I do wish you wouldn’t tell the children these things.’

‘So why shouldn’t I tell them stories. I told you plenty when you were this size, didn’t I? And you enjoyed them. You wanted more. Besides, what is this? Are you making the rules in this house now?’

‘Of course I’m not, Great-aunt. But already Nolly—’

Fanny looked at Lady Arabella’s flushed hurt face and wondered what was the use. The old Lady was so vain about her story-telling, she would never be stopped. And now the seeds of fear were planted in Nolly. She was brooding over an empty birdcage and imagining she heard things in the night.

But the sounds she had heard in the night had come before she had heard that tiresome eerie legend…

‘Couldn’t they play with Ludwig?’ Fanny suggested.

‘Ludwig! At his age! What does he care for romping with children? He creaks with rheumatism, the same as I do. But I have it!’ Lady Arabella suddenly clapped her little plump hands. ‘We’ll have a game of hide the thimble. Now that’s something we can all play. Who shall go first? Marcus, of course. He’s the smallest. And we girls go into the bedroom while he finds a hiding place. You understand, dear?’ The old lady had put a silver thimble into Marcus’s sticky hand. ‘Dear, dear, covered in sugar already. We shall be very clever and follow your trail. Now I will tell you a secret. Everyone looks under the clock, but nobody in my workbasket. Call when you’re ready. Be quick.’

Beginning to smile, Marcus looked round the room slyly. It was clever of Lady Arabella to think of something he could do in which Nolly didn’t take the lead. There was no doubt, she could be like an enormous child herself, and throw herself with gusto into any game. This one, at least, seemed to have no pitfalls or sudden shocks.

Nolly was a little put out at not being the one chosen first to hide the thimble, but when Marcus called, she forgot to sulk and rushed eagerly into the room.

It was such a cluttered room, it was almost impossible to find anything that was well hidden. Cushions were tossed about, table-cloths lifted, vases tipped upside down. Nolly had emptied Lady Arabella’s hairpin box, disclosing a fascinating collection of buttons, pieces of false hair, pins, and unstrung beads. Lady Arabella was convinced that Ludwig, much discomposed in his demeanour, was sitting on the thimble, and had Marcus in shrieks of laughter at her antics. Nolly was lifting rugs and shaking the curtains.

‘He’s too clever, your little brother,’ Lady Arabella wheezed. ‘He’s a magician, I believe. Now where is this thimble spirited to? How am I to do my sewing this evening?’ She bustled about, looking in the same place twice, getting on her hands and knees to peer under the sofa and chairs.

‘It’s higher,’ Marcus choked. ‘It’s not on the floor, Great-aunt Arabella.’

‘Then it is on a table. Or on the bureau. Or the mantelpiece. Fanny, what are you doing?
Put that down
!’

Fanny stood still in surprise, the pincushion in her hands. She had thought the padded top lifted off to disclose perhaps a small workbox. But the change from glee to sharp command in Lady Arabella’s voice immobilised her.

‘It’s full of pins, you’ll only prick yourself.’ Lady Arabella watched until Fanny, somewhat bewilderedly, put the pincushion back on the little table in the corner. Then she said in a changed, tired voice, ‘Well, Marcus, you’ve been too clever for us. We give in. Where is the hiding place?’

‘Here it is, Great-aunt Arabella!’ the little boy cried triumphantly, taking it out of the pocket of his jacket.

‘You cheated, you cheated!’ Nolly shouted. ‘You’re not allowed to hide it on yourself. Is he, Great-aunt Arabella?’

‘He’s very little,’ said the old lady. ‘And suddenly I am very tired. Come and see me again tomorrow. Now be off with you!’

In the morning, when the mail had been brought up from the village post office, as it was each day, Uncle Edgar sent for Fanny to come and see him in the library.

He had a letter in his hands. He looked puzzled and, Fanny thought, perturbed.

‘Fanny, this young man who escorted the children from Tilbury—what did you say his name was?’

Fanny’s heart gave a paralysing leap. Had Adam written to say he was coming to the moors? Written to Uncle Edgar himself? Or perhaps to enquire after the children and Ching Mei?

‘It was Adam Marsh, Uncle Edgar.’

‘And he was a perfectly respectable type of person?’

‘Yes, indeed he was. I could swear to that, and so could Hannah. Why, what has happened?’

Uncle Edgar tapped the letter.

‘Because the shipping company writes to apologise deeply for their man failing to contact the children. He reported that there was no sign of them, and that he had made a fruitless journey.’

‘But that couldn’t be so! Why, Mr Marsh seemed to know about them—he even—’ Good heavens, Fanny thought in horror, he had even accepted her guinea!

‘Then he’s an imposter.’

‘An imposter? How could that be?’

‘
Why
could it be? That’s what I’d like answered. What was that young man up to?’

T
HE MYSTERY ABOUT ADAM
Marsh remained unsolved. Of course he had not given her any address, Fanny said indignantly in answer to Uncle Edgar’s questions. Ching Mei could give no information in her limited English except that the man had been there and offered his help. ‘Him velly kind,’ she said simply, her flat yellow face expressionless. It was impossible to tell whether she was puzzled by a complete stranger’s action, or whether she just didn’t understand what was being explained to her. Yet Fanny found herself remembering Adam Marsh pausing to have that last word with Ching Mei. Had it been as innocent as it had seemed?

‘He spoke Chinese,’ she said involuntarily, and Uncle Edgar looked at her sharply.

‘You didn’t tell me that before.’

‘I just remembered.’

Nolly and Marcus were also questioned.

Nolly said in her dispassionate voice, ‘We liked him. Marcus liked him.’

Marcus, prodded into speaking, merely repeated in his parrot-fashion what his sister had said, ‘We liked him,’ clearly without having the faintest idea who was being discussed.

‘Is he coming to see us?’ Nolly asked presently.

‘Not that I am aware of,’ said Uncle Edgar. ‘Although now I begin to wonder. Perhaps this mysterious gentleman will turn up.’

Fanny tried to keep her face as expressionless as Ching Mei’s. She knew the attempt was useless. Her mouth, her eyes, always treacherously showed her feelings.

Adam Marsh had said he loved the moors—not that the moors might be his excuse for coming to see the family from China again.

It was the children he had been interested in, not her at all. How could she keep the devastation of that discovery out of her eyes?

The Chinese windbells had been hung in the pavilion by the lake, and their delicate tinkling seemed the voice of the summer days. For one whole week the sun shone.

Then the wind changed, and the mist rolled up again. But not until the evening. In the afternoon they had their first picnic of the summer by the lake. Uncle Edgar had suggested it at breakfast. The Hadlows from Grange Park were coming to tea, and since it was such a fine day surely they would prefer a picnic to stuffing indoors.

His eyes twinkling with heavy roguishness, he added that Amelia would surely like the opportunity to take Robert for a walk through the woods.

Amelia coloured indignantly.

‘Papa, he’s only a schoolboy!’

‘Three months younger than you, to be exact. I grant you a young man hasn’t the advantage of springing his grown-up personality on the world, simply by the trick of putting his hair up. But he’ll age, my dear, he’ll age.’

Amelia pouted, but kept her next thoughts silent. At least Robert was too young to interest Fanny. In the past, young men had shown an infuriating tendency to desert her side for Fanny’s, and Fanny had blatantly encouraged them, her eyes shining wickedly. She didn’t care two figs for them, yet she thoroughly enjoyed wielding her power over them.

Now that she was grown-up, Amelia thought, tossing her curls, she would prove that she was a match for Fanny. There was this mysterious Adam Marsh, for instance, and the way Fanny had been looking so distrait ever since her trip to London. If that gentleman turned up, as Papa seemed to think he might, she intended to flirt outrageously with him, perhaps even fall in love with him, since he must be quite attractive. She intended to have her own back on Miss Fanny.

Then there was to be Mr Hamish Barlow, the attorney, arriving from Shanghai. He would be here at the time of her ball. One hoped he also would be attractive and interesting, with the glamour of foreign places on him. And he must be a bachelor. It wouldn’t do at all if he had a wife. Altogether, Amelia reflected pleasurably, it was to be an exciting summer. She might even be coquettish with Robert Hadlow this afternoon, simply to get some practice.

She lingered in her room, prinking in front of the mirror, until after the Hadlows had arrived, and their carriage been taken to the stables. She intended to saunter down to the lake in a leisurely manner, being the last to arrive so that all eyes would be on her. She would carry her parasol instead of wearing a hat. Everyone would think what a charming picture she made, Miss Amelia Davenport in her lilac muslin, strolling by the lake on a summer afternoon.

As it happened, she wasn’t the last to go down to the pavilion, for as she left her room and romped along the passage—her graceful approach could be saved until there was someone to see her—she almost bumped into her father coming out of Lady Arabella’s room.