Ever After (49 page)

Nearly all the music boxes had run down when they got back to the schoolroom. Dinah wouldn’t allow them to be wound up again, but put them away in a cupboard and made Evelyn sit down to lunch.

“Well, I’m sorry if I made trouble,” Evelyn remarked, obviously not sorry a bit. “But how was
I
to know you had secrets with Bracken Murray!”

“Oh, shut up, Evelyn, it wasn’t a secret, it started as a sort of joke at Hamley’s when I was a child, and he’s just gone on sending them. I never thought what they cost, and I don’t suppose he did either, he’s got lots of money.”

“Whatever happened between him and Clare? Rosalind was
sure
Clare was going to land him once!”

“Perhaps he just wasn’t in love with her.”

“
Me-ow!
” said Evelyn, and laughed maliciously. “Well, I’d a lot rather have him than Mortimer Flood, and I bet Clare would too!
Honestly, how she
can
! But I do think it would be very exciting to be kissed by Bracken Murray, don’t you?”

“Is that all you think of when you see a man?” Dinah asked sarcastically.

“Well, not
all
!”
Evelyn giggled. “Bracken Murray is nice and thin, I’d hate a
soft
man, wouldn’t you? I wonder who’s going to get
him finally? You’d better hurry up and come out, if you were fixed up a little, who knows! Some men
like
very young girls, and if he’s given you all these presents it must mean something!”

“Oh, do stop it, Evelyn, he’s known me ever since I was fifteen! Tears stood in Dinah’s eyes. “He’s always been very kind to me, and we’re friends, that’s all, and I hope we always will be.”

“Do you let him hold your hand?”

“
No!
I mean, such a thing would never occur to him! And I think this is a perfectly beastly conversation and it’s time we changed the subject!”

“Why, I do believe you’re
blushing
!” Evelyn cried, eyeing her cruelly. “My goodness, Dinah, it’s nothing to be
ashamed
of, I’d be wildly in love with him if he ever so much as
looked
at me! Those shoulders! And I like clean-shaven men, don’t you, not so
scratchy
! Dinah, you
are
blushing, are you going to try to make him fall in love with you?”

“I wouldn’t dream of such a thing and neither would he,” said Dinah steadily, but her palms were wet. “Have you been for another fitting? How do you think the hats are going to look? Mine is too big—”

She had no sooner got rid of Evelyn, who stayed for tea, than a footman came up to say that his lordship would like to see her in the library.

This meant Edward, because their father was still in the country—Lord Enstone hated London and had announced firmly that he would come up for the day of the wedding and give away the bride and would return to Gloucestershire the day after, and they could just get on with it. As she descended on the left of the curving double staircase which led down to the black-and-white marble tiled hall, Dinah was wishing that it had been her father instead of Edward. Lord Enstone was an indifferent disciplinarian and always got bored immediately after an interview began and one was likely to get off lightly because anything else was too much trouble. But Edward took himself seriously and behaved with pompous severity when one was called on the carpet by him. It came of having to handle all the people on the farms and so on. He was inclined to treat everybody like a recalcitrant tenant who made a habit of leaky roofs. Dinah resented being bullied, and it always made her feel like fighting back, which wouldn’t do, and so she was forced to take
refuge in a blank-faced docility much more infuriating to her brother than tears or temper would have been.

Alwyn was sitting behind the sumptuous Empire desk with its green blotter and silver inkstand when Dinah entered the library. The music box was in front of him, the bird invisible and mute.

Dinah closed the door behind her and approached the desk slowly, struggling for courage. Her hands were damp and cold, her knees shook, her tongue was dry. If he tried to take the music box away from her she was going to make a scene. It was hers. It was part of the collection.

“Sit down, Dinah,” said Alwyn, glancing up at her without a smile, and fixing his gaze again on the box while she crept silently into a chair at the end of the desk facing him. “How long has this been going on?”

“The music boxes? He bought one at Hamley’s for my sixteenth birthday. That was the first.”

“How many has he given you?”

“One for each birthday and Christmas since then—and this one.”

“But surely you realize a thing like this is much too valuable a gift for you to accept from him!”

“Well, I—he said about the first one that it didn’t matter what it cost. This one was a—just a gift from America. I knew he had a lot of money—”

“Whether he can afford it or not is not the point. He’s a married man, you know that. I told you myself.”

“He says—eventually there will be a divorce and—he will be free to marry again.”

“And you’re fool enough to believe that? Now, once and for all, Dinah, I won’t have you mucking about with a married man! It would spoil your chances to make a good marriage like Clare’s, for one thing.”

“I don’t want to make a marriage like Clare’s.”

“You could do worse, you know. Besides, you’ll never have Clare’s looks, you might as well make up your mind to that! In any case, this Murray business is finished, do you understand? You will return the music boxes to him, all of them, at once.”

“B-but what could I
say,
he—”

“Say? You know damn’ well what to say! Tell him I have
forbidden
you to keep them, if you like.”

Dinah was trembling all over now, so that she was afraid he would see.

“Oh, but, Edward, it’s not like that at all, I can’t think why you—”

“I suppose he’s made love to you?” He turned his stone-grey
eyes on her, took note of her chalky face and the hands that twisted together in her lap till the knuckles stood out. “Just like his cheek to take advantage of you! I suppose you’ve let him kiss you. What about the governess? Is she in on this too, or just a fool? Where do you see him? In the woods? Have you ever been to his chambers here in Town? Well, answer me!” And because she was silent and kept her eyes on her locked hands in her lap, he feared the worst. “Speak up, now, and tell me what’s going on here. Or shall I shake the truth out of him?”

“
No,
no,
don’t ever
dare
speak to him!” Dinah was on her feet, and her voice rose in the high, quiet room. “I shall
die
of shame if you say anything like this to him! I’m so
humiliated
to think my own brother could say such things, or
think
such things about a man like Bracken! You’re
vile,
Edward, vile and nasty, to suggest there’s anything
going
on
between Bracken and me! We’re
friends,
don’t you know there is such a thing? He’s good and kind and gentle, and he has a sense of humour and we laugh—
you
wouldn’t know why we laugh—all you can think of is beastliness and filth! You aren’t fit to black Bracken’s boots, and if you do say any of this to his face I only hope he knocks you down!” She snatched the silver box from the desk in front of him and made for the door.

“One
minute,
I
haven’t
finished
yet!”
His voice snapped after her, and she leaned against the inside of the door, sick and sobbing, clinging to the knob. “Clare says it will spoil the looks of her wedding if you aren’t present,” her brother’s hard, well-modulated tones went on. “The day after the ceremony, however, you will return to the Gloucestershire house and stay there
incomunicado,
until you come to your senses. You will leave all the music boxes here and I’ll have them packed and returned to him. In the
meantime
, I shall engage a new governess. Miss French has been lax, to say the least. Ask her to come down, I want to talk to her.”

“She’s lying down with a headache.”

“I can’t help that, I want this thing settled without delay. Tell her I’m waiting.”

While Miss French was taking her turn in the library, Dinah wrote a note to leave on the schoolroom mantelpiece:

Then she put on the hat with the brave little wing, and slipped out of the house and round the corner to Ryder Street. It was beginning to drizzle and she had brought no umbrella, so she ran for the doorway and arrived there quite breathless. Bracken’s man, about to depart for his evening off, let her in with barely concealed surprise and invited her to wait in the drawing room, as Mr. Murray wouldn’t be long now.

D
INAH
stood up as Bracken closed the door behind him, but her natural impulse to take refuge in his arms were blurred and
frustrated
by Alwyn’s accusations. So she stayed where she was, across the room from him, and stammered.

“Oh, Bracken, I know I s-shouldn’t have come here like this, p-please don’t be angry with me, I had to see you!”

“Angry? Of course not, you’re upset about something. What is it?” He came to her and took both her hands, felt how clammy they were and enclosed them comfortingly in his. But Dinah,
confused
and self-conscious for the first time, snatched them away and retreated to the other side of the divan, which brought Bracken very sharply into focus for he saw that something really serious had happened to her.

“I’ve had the most awful time with Edward,” she was saying almost inaudibly. “I d-don’t know how to tell you, but they suddenly discovered the music boxes, and then everybody went mad, I think.”

“Discovered them?” he repeated, at sea.

“Miss French knew I had them, and so did Archie. But Clare and Edward didn’t. Clare said they were too expensive for me to keep, and—and then Edward sent for me to the library, and—said the most horrible things—about us—about you and me.” At that point, realizing that she had come to Bracken’s chambers after all, and was alone with him there, shaken in her confidence of what such a thing might mean, and still aware of the warmth of his hands which had briefly taken hers, Dinah felt colour flaming up in her face and hid it from him with a gasp of shame.

The clock ticked noticeably before Bracken spoke.

“What did Edward say?” he asked her quietly, refraining with an effort from any movement towards her.

“I can’t—I’d rather not—”

“Tell me what he said, Dinah. You’ll feel better if you do. You know we can always say what we like to each other, why should you mind?”

With her back to
him, she began haltingly—

“He said it was too valuable a gift for me to accept—”

“Perhaps I should have thought of that myself. What else?”

“He—he said he wouldn’t have me m-mucking about with a married man—because it would spoil my chances to make a good m-marriage—”

“Anything else?”

“He said I must return all the music boxes to you, and—and—”

“Come on, Dinah, let’s have it all.”

“He thought you’d been making love to me. He asked if—if you’d kissed me—”

“You answered him on that, I hope!”

“But you had! That morning on the hill when you came back—”

“Oh, Lord!”

“He seemed to think—to think I had come here to your rooms—alone—and now I
have
!”

“I’m very glad you have, too. Come and sit down quietly and let’s get this straightened out.”

Dinah looked at him, where he stood motionless by main force across the room, and at the divan beside him. Waves of
embarrassment
and shock eddied through her, complicated by Evelyn’s frank remarks about him as a man. Dinah sat down on the edge of the nearest chair.

Full of pity and understanding, choosing every word and move with the greatest caution, Bracken perched casually on the arm of the rejected divan and said, without heat, “I’d like to knock Edward’s head off, first of all.”

“He’s going to sack Miss French and send me back to
Gloucestershire
with a new governess directly after the wedding. This was my only chance to see you and explain—” She choked.

“Well, it isn’t the way I wanted to say this,” he began easily from the arm of the divan, “but I guess the time has come. We have got the evidence and a grant of substitute service, and my divorce is going through, I think. So if you’ll just be patient and put up with Edward a little longer, I can ask you to marry me. Will that help?”

“Me?” said Dinah, on the mearest breath of sound. “Ask—
me
—to—?”

“Well, who else would I be asking, hm?” he asked sensibly.

“But—that morning on the hill when I said would you marry again and you said you hoped so—was that
me
?”

“It was.”

“I—never even—”

“I’m probably breaking all the laws of the Kingdom to mention it, and of course we shall have to wait out the
decree
nisi.
But
anyway
now I shan’t have any this-is-so-sudden nonsense out of you, shall I? You’ll have had a chance to get used to the idea gradually. And how does it strike you—as an idea?”

“Oh,
yes,
Bracken, but—I just can’t—believe—”

“Why on earth are you so surprised? I’ve done everything I could to let you know!”

“I thought we were just friends. I—you haven’t done anything—I mean, you’ve never—m-made love to me—”

“I’ve been a little handicapped.” Without rising from the divan, he held out his arms. “Shall I begin now?”