Master of Melincourt (9 page)

“She kept teasing Marsha about the ring she was wearing,” the child admitted, a disturbed look in her
eyes. “She asked if it was an engagement ring, and Marsha said
‘No’ ...
but she would probably be wearing an engagement ring before very long. Does that mean, do you think,” Tina demanded of Edwina, “that my uncle will be giving her an engagement ring very soon?”

Edwina looked blank.

“How would I know?” she counter-questioned. “And, in any case,” she added quietly, “it’s what you want, isn’t it
?
”

Tina didn’t answer immediately, but she went round the room touching books and papers and absent mindedly altering the position of semi-fixtures before she blurted
out:

“I—I don’t know.”

“But it’s what you
did
want.”

Tina turned and looked at her in a disturbed way. “Yes, I did, didn’t I? I wanted Uncle Jervis to get married as quickly as possible and bring Marsha back here to live. But now I’m not—not so sure.”

“Silly child,” Edwina said gently, encompassing her slight shoulders with an arm, “you can’t change your mind in such a short space of time about anything as important as that. Just because Miss Fleming was a bit irritable with you when she arrived it doesn’t mean she isn’t every bit as fond of you as she was, and the fact that she took you with her on a visit to her grandmother to-day means that she was trying to make up for hurting you. She’s probably very sorry that she was so sharp-tongued with you yesterday.”

“You think so?”

But there was nothing in Tina’s expression that conveyed an impression of relief.

“Of course. And in any case, if your uncle’s going to marry her—”

“Do you think he’s going to marry her?”

“My dear child—” Edwina was somewhat taken aback by the direct question—“I wouldn’t even presume to hazard a guess. I know little about your uncle, and absolutely nothing about Miss Fleming.”

“Do you like her?”

“I’ve had no opportunity to find out whether I like or dislike her.”

But the next day Marsha made her way up to the schoolroom about the middle of the morning, and said brightly that she thought it was far too fine a day for Tina to be confined indoors. It was much more important that she should be out in the sunshine, and she looked towards Tina as if expecting her to leap at her and hug her for putting forward such a brilliant suggestion, but Tina did nothing of the kind. She sat at the schoolroom table making large blots on a page of one of her exercise books and surrounding them with tiny dots, and from the look of concentration on her face she was wholly absorbed in what she was doing.

Marsha frowned quickly and looked impatient. “Tina!” she exclaimed. “I’ve suggested to Miss Sands that she lets you off lessons for to-day, and your uncle and I will take you out with us. We’re going out to lunch where there are several children—all, like you, in the charge of a governess—and I’m sure you’d like that, wouldn’t you
?
”

“Not particularly,” Tina answered, looking up at her with indifferent eyes.

Marsha bit her delicate pink underlip.

“But surely you don’t want to remain cooped up here on such a lovely day?” she demanded. “Apart from anything else it isn’t good for you.”

“I’d rather go for a walk with Edwina,” Tina explained. “She’s fun to go for a walk with because she knows so much about birds and things, and she’s already said that we’ll go for a really long walk this afternoon.”

“But surely you’d rather go for a drive than a walk?”

“No.”

Marsha turned away. Edwina could tell from her sudden, heightened colour that she was annoyed, and she was also afraid that Tina had not been particularly tactful in the way she had refused her invitation.

That night the two of them were invited downstairs for dinner, and although Edwina was certain it was far too late for the child to be up, let alone to partake of a particularly lavish meal, her objections were
overridden
by Miss Fleming. With tightened lips she informed Edwina that, before her advent, Tina had always stayed up for dinner with her uncle, particularly when she herself was a visitor to the house, and to-night it was her particular wish that the child should be present.

“After all,” she said, once more walking into the schoolroom at the very moment that the schoolroom table was being set for a light and nourishing repast that would have ensured Tina getting to bed at a reasonable hour, and enjoying a restful night after the right amount of exercise during the daytime, “I do happen to know Tina very well indeed, and I’m hoping that our relationship will be even closer in the future.” She looked meaningly at Tina, and asked her softly to run away to her bedroom for a short while because she wished to talk to Miss Sands without interruption, and although Tina obeyed her it was not without a lingering backward look at the fruit salad on the table, and the special flavoured junket that the cook had created especially for her.

Miss Fleming cast a jaundiced look at the junket and said she believed in young people being reared as adults from the word ‘go,’ and nowadays parents were much more broadminded about that sort of thing. The days when children were banished to nurseries and seen occasionally but heard very seldom were no more, and she was wholeheartedly thankful. She had been a ‘banished to the nursery child’ herself, and she felt very strongly on the subject.

Edwina, who agreed with her up to a point, watched her walking up and down the floor of the schoolroom, and waited for whatever it was that was coming. She observed that Marsha Fleming was looking quite determined, as if her mind was made up about something that was important to her ... and now that the opportunity was hers she was determined to get whatever it was off her chest.

She picked up a dessert-spoon and examined it casually for a moment, and then looked Edwina full in the eye.

“Miss Sands,” she said, “I want you to be clear about Tina’s future. She will not much longer be the motherless, spoiled child that she is now.” Her classically cut lips curved with a certain dry amusement as well as a touch of wryness. “Oh, I’m willing to admit that Jervis spoils her abominably, and as a result of his handling she is not all that she should be. Her clothes are not right, and in some ways she is far too adult. She can be very impertinent
...
” No doubt she was referring, Edwina thought, to Tina’s refusal to accompany her uncle and his most favoured guest on an afternoon excursion. “I have even known her be downright rude on occasion, and Jervis has simply stood by and laughed at her as if he though
t
her behaviour amusing rather than atrocious
!
I told him long ago that he was well on the way to ruining the child, but it didn’t seem to make much impression. Men are like
that ...
particularly strong-willed, essentially masculine men like Mr. Errol, who look upon the opposite sex as fragile beyond belief, and get great pleasure out of humouring them all along the line.”

“You mean that Mr. Errol believes that all members of the opposite sex are unable to cope for themselves and should be humoured?” Edwina enquired, with an air of innocence.

Marsha frowned quickly.

“No, of course not. For one thing Mr. Errol is a connoisseur. He collects books and pictures and other rare things, and he likes his womenfolk to be rare. Tina, as yet, is no beauty, but she is certainly not just an ordinary child, and with care she may develop into an appealing young woman. There is a lot of Spanish blood in the family, you know, and those eyes of hers are already rather remarkable. I think you will agree with me that everything she thinks and feels is given away by her eyes.”

Edwina, who had so often seen Tina looking sullen and brooding, and perhaps a little dangerous, was inclined to agree with her on this head, also.

“It is difficult, when a child is only eight years old, to know how she is going to develop,” she observed.
“At the moment Tina is not really very far removed from an ordinary, easily understood child.”

Miss Fleming, who by this time was sitting gracefully on one of the flowered cushions that made the old-fashioned wide window seat very comfortable and enticing, and already beautifully dressed for the evening in misty blue chiffon that made her eyes look mistily blue as well, helped herself to a cigarette from her neat gold purse handbag, and lighted it with a deliberate movement before taking up this point with emphasis.

“Ah, but that is where you are
quite
wrong! Tina is so very far from being an ordinary child that I shudder for her future sometimes. In the wrong hands she could develop into a holy terror.”

“Then let’s hope she will never fall into the wrong hands,” Edwina murmured.

Miss Fleming surveyed her through a haze of smoke.

“I give you my word that that is most unlikely to happen,” she replied with the same amount of emphasis. “In some ways Tina is very fortunate, because her uncle is not the only one who takes a great interest in her. I do. I have known her for years
—
Jervis’s sister was quite a close friend of mine, as a matter of fact—and naturally I feel I want to do everything I can for her. From the slight difference we had when I arrived here you might have gathered that we are not the close, firm friends that we are ... but I do assure you we shall be even closer, firmer friends in the future. Poor Jervis simply cannot be allowed to cope single-handed with the task of looking after her for much longer—”

“But I thought I was here to help him cope with her,” Edwina interrupted without very much expression in her voice.

Marsha Fleming smiled contemptuously.

“
You
?
But, my dear girl, you’re an outsider, a paid employee. What Tina needs is boundless affection, and someone who is closely related to him to look after her. I don’t feel that I’m giving away any secrets if I show you
this...”
And she extended her hand, on the third finger of which an exquisite opal surrounded by diamonds sent forth a delicate shimmer like softly tinted damask. It was such a very beautiful ring that Edwina, who neither coveted jewellery nor possessed very much of it herself—and certainly nothing of any value—gasped.

“Oh, but that is—exquisite!” she exclaimed.

Marsha continued to smile.

“I’m glad you like it. You’d be a strange young woman if you didn’t. And I don’t suppose I really need to tell you that it’s an engagement ring—Mr. Errol bought it for me only a few days ago in
London!”

Edwina wrestled with her expression and strove to appear as if she was merely extremely intrigued, and not in the very slightest degree dismayed
...
which, now that there was no longer any room for conjecture, she actually was.

And why she should be dismayed she couldn’t even think.

“You must allow me to—to congratulate you,” she said hurriedly, the words falling over one another slightly. “And if I’m the first to be permitted to do so ... well then, I feel very flattered.”

“You’re not the first.” Marsha looked dreamily at the ring on her finger, and her flower-like pink mouth smiled in a kind of secret fashion. “My grandmother, whom we visited yesterday, was actually the first. Not even my mother knows yet. But we shall announce the engagement very soon, of course. It’s just that for the moment Jervis—Mr. Errol,” she corrected herself, when she remembered that she was talking to an employee—“feels the same way as I do, and as becoming engaged is something that is unlikely to happen to us ever again we want to keep the excitement and the thrill of it to ourselves for a while. I don’t know whether you’ve ever known what it’s like to have a wonderful secret, and to hug it to yourself ... but that’s how it feels at the moment.” She flickered her long eyelashes at Edwina. “As if it’s too precious to share.”

“I—I see,” Edwina said rather awkwardly. Marsha flickered her eyes at her again.

“Do you? I expect you’re the kind of young woman who t
hin
ks that half the pleasure of becoming engaged lies in letting all your friends and relations know as quickly as possible.”

“Well, as a matter of fact,” Edwina admitted, “I have very few friends who would be interested in my becoming engaged—if I did!—and hardly any relatives.”

“Is that so?” But Marsha was plainly becoming bored, and she went on admiring the ring on her finger in silence, until she suddenly remembered the reason why she had taken the somewhat unusual step of imparting such a vital piece of information to a virtual stranger who did not even share the advantages of her birth and background. “I thought you ought to know because it will make it clear to you why I’m taking such an immense amount of interest in Tina,” she explained. “Naturally, as a very feminine person, I would take an interest in any case, but as the future wife of
her guardian ...
well, you do see that I’ve a right to be a
little
critical if I feel like it sometimes.”

“Of—course,” Edwina answered, and even in her own ears her voice sounded as stiff as if she had swallowed a ramrod.

“And when I said that I want her to go downstairs to dinner tonight I meant it because I really have her interests at heart, and I know what a child of her age really enjoys. So you will see to it that she wears something pretty and suitable, won’t you
?
And of course you’ll come downstairs with her,” a little grudgingly, however, and with a thoughtful look from under her long eyelashes. “Tina is a darling child, but I’m not at my best after a long day, and I wouldn’t want to have to cope with her alone. You’ll be responsible for her, of course
!”

“I’ll see that she behaves herself,” Edwina replied automatically.

“Good. Not that I think she’s in the least likely to misbehave herself, but one can never tell with a child.”

She glanced suddenly at the clock on the mantelpiece, and announced that she must go.

“Mr. Errol is waiting for me,” she said. “But I’m glad we’ve had this little talk. I feel we know one another very much better.” But long after her echoing footsteps had faded from the room Edwina wondered what she meant
by that ...
and the only thing of importance that she had gleaned about Miss Fleming was that she would shortly become Mrs. Errol. Mrs. Jervis Errol.

She wondered that Miss Fleming had considered it necessary to take her, Edwina, into her confidence, because it was no real concern of hers. But there were possibly a number of reasons why the beautiful blonde had done so.

She wanted the governess to understand that very shortly her authority would be questioned
...
indeed, it would exist no longer. And she wanted to make it absolutely clear that she was not just an ordinary guest
at Melincourt ...
like Miss Candy Shaw, for instance.

There could have been another reason
...
because she had taken a dislike to Miss Sands—at any rate, she did not entirely approve of her—and she would be glad if she handed in her notice.

But Edwina had no really sound grounds for believing that. It was rather something that she sensed and suspected.