The Song of the Siren (5 page)

I was desperately unsure, but I wanted to find out whether they were right and I suppose that was a step forward.

So I rode with Benjie; I danced with Benjie. I liked Benjie. I felt a mild excitement when he held my hand or touched my arm or now and then kissed me.

It was not that wild leaping of the senses I had felt with Beau but there was some response in me.

I imagined Beau laughing at me.

“You are a passionate young lady,” he had said.

Was I? Was it just the need for physical satisfaction which Beau had led me to appreciate that I wanted now, or was it Benjie?

I was unsure. But I had made one decision. I was going to sell Enderby Hall. Perhaps that was symbolic, an acceptance of the fact that Beau would never come back now.

Mistress Elizabeth Pilkington had come to look at Enderby Hall. She had arrived the day before and was staying with friends a few miles from Eversleigh. She said she would ride over to look at the house if someone would meet her there.

Priscilla had though Leigh should go but I had refused to allow that. They had to forget I was a child. I was a woman of means now and in any case Enderby Hall belonged to me. I wanted to show them my independence, so I would meet the lady and show her the house myself.

It was November and ten o’clock in the morning. I had suggested that time as it grew dark soon after four o’clock and if Mistress Pilkington came in the afternoon there would be little time for viewing. She agreed. She wanted to see the house in daylight of course.

I was conscious of a certain feeling of relief. I had at last come to the conclusion that once I no longer owned Enderby I should really be able to start afresh.

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There was a chill in the air. I had never liked November. The winter lay before us and it seemed a long time to the spring. The trees had now lost most of their leaves and I fancied there was a melancholy note in the snatch of song I heard from a blackbird.

He sounded as though he were trying to throw off his melancholy and couldn’t succeed.

There was a little mist hanging about the trees. It glistened on the yews and there seemed more spiders’ webs than ever. The end of the year was close; the end of a phase of my life perhaps.

She was waiting for me. I was rather surprised by her appearance. She was extremely elegant and had the most attractive reddish hair. Her riding habit was in the very latest fashion and most becoming. It was dark green in colour and she wore a hat with a little brown feather in it which matched that strikingly beautiful hair.

“Mistress Pilkington,” I said. “I am afraid I have kept you waiting.”

“Indeed not.” She smiled, showing a beautiful set of teeth. “I arrived early. I was so eager to see the house.”

“I hope you are going to like it. Shall we go inside?” “Please.”

I opened the door and we stepped into the hall. It looked different already. Much of the eeriness seemed to have disappeared. She looked up at the roof.

“It’s impressive,” she said. Then she turned and studied me carefully. “I know you are Mistress Carlotta Main. I did not expect I should have the pleasure of meeting you. I thought someone. ...”

“Someone older,” I finished for her. “No. This is my house and I prefer to deal with business matters myself.”

“Hurrah for you,” she said. “I am like that too. The house was part °f your inheritance.”

“You seem to know a good deal about me.” I move in London society. I remember the time when there was a great deal of talk about your betrothal to Beaumont Granville.”

I flushed. I had not expected this.

She went on: “It was so very strange, was it not ... his disappearance?”

She was looking at me intently and I was beginning to feel very uncomfortable indeed.

39”There were all sorts of theories,” she continued. “But he went, didn’t he?”

“Yes,” I said rather shortly. “He went. Those are the screens. Would you like to look at the kitchens or perhaps go upstairs first?”

She smiled at me as though to say, I understand, you do not want to talk of him.

“Upstairs please,” she said.

I showed her the minstrels’ gallery.

“Enchanting,” she said.

We went through the rooms and she paused in the bedroom with the four-poster bed, that room with such poignant memories.

“What of the furnishings?” she asked.

“Those are for sale too if they are wanted. If not they can be disposed of elsewhere.”

“I like them,” she said. “I have a house in London which I do not think I would want to give up, so the furnishings would suit me well.”

She went from room to room; then I took her behind the screens to the kitchens and then to the outhouses.

“Charming, charming,” she said. “I cannot understand how you can bear to part with it.”

“It has been uninhabited for a long time. There seems little reason why it should remain so any longer.”

“No indeed. My son will be delighted with it, I am sure.”

“Oh, you have a family then?”

“Just a son.”

“Your husband ... ?”

“I have no husband,” she answered.

She smiled at me brightly. I was conscious that all the time she had been looking at the house she had been casting covert glances at me. It was almost as though I were at least of equal interest.

She must have sensed that I was aware of her scrutiny for she said: “Forgive me.

I am afraid I embarrass you with my interest. You are a very beautiful young lady, if you will forgive my saying so. I am very susceptible to beauty.”

I flushed a little. Not that I was averse to receiving compliments. I liked to feel I was attracting attention and I was quite accustomed to people taking a second glance.

But there was something in her manner which disturbed me. I had a fleeting thought that she was not

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interested in the house but had some ulterior motive for coming here. She herself was a very attractive woman and I thought it incumbent on me to return the compliment.

“You are very handsome yourself,” I said.

She laughed, well pleased. “Past my prime, alas. There was a day...”

She struck a dramatic attitude almost as though she were performing for an audience.

I said: “No, no, you are mistaken. That day is now.”

She laughed and said: “I think we shall get along well together. It is good to get along well with one’s neighbors. I know this is quite close to Eversleigh.”

“It is very near. I live at the Dower House with my mother, but my grandparents are at the Court. There are three big houses fairly close together here. Eversleigh, Enderby and Grasslands Manor.”

“That,” she said, “sounds very cosy. Shall we look at the grounds?”

We went out into the misty air and together we walked through the gardens and the shrubberies.

“They are not as extensive as I thought they would be,” she commented.

“Oh, they were bigger. But when my stepfather bought the Manor he took over some of the land which had belonged to Enderby.”

“Interesting. What did he buy? It would be interesting to see what I might have had.”

“He had a wall built round it and it now joins our lands at the Dower House.”

“Is that the wall?” she asked. “Yes.”

“He seemed determined to keep people out.” “The plan at one time was to use if for growing something.... He has not gone on with the idea yet.” “It looks rather wild in there.” “It’, K-AV-J wuu in mere.”

“It’s been neglected but it will be cleared up one day, I don’t doubt.”

‘Well, I have to thank you, Mistress Main. I am enchanted with the house. I shall want to see it again.”

‘Certainly. I shall be delighted to show you.”

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“I was going to ask a favour. I am spending a week or so with my friends the Elsomers over at Crowhill. Do you know them?”

“Yes, we have met.”

“Then you know you can trust me. Would you allow me to have the key of the house so that I might come over at my leisure in a day or so and look at it in detail?”

“But of course.” I said readily. I could understand her wanting to see the place alone, and although it was furnished, it was only with the things which could not easily be removed. I had no fears of her taking anything. Although she engendered a certain uneasiness in me, I could not imagine her stealing.

Readily I gave her the key. I had another at home so that I could come back when I wished to.

We went out to our horses. She mounted with grace, bade me farewell and rode back to Crowhill.

I heard nothing for three days and one afternoon I was overcome by a longing to be in Enderby, for if I was going to sell it I should not have many more opportunities.

It was a misty afternoon; that morning it had been quite foggy and it seemed certain that the fog would descend again as soon as it was dark. Now the mist hung in swirls; everything was damp, the bushes, the trees, my hair. Christmas will soon be here, I thought. We would go to Harriet’s or she would come to us. I should be with Benjie again. He would certainly ask me once more to marry him. Perhaps I should say yes.

Selling Enderby would be one small step away from the past and Beau; marrying Benjie would be a big one.

I was thinking of Mistress Pilkington and how interested she had been in everything-no less in me and my betrothal to Beau than in the house. She had sharp, lively eyes, tawny eyes I remembered, and they matched that magnificent red hair. She had a well-groomed

look about her which suggested she was a woman who knew how to take care of her appearance

and spared no pains in doing so. I was sure that she moved in Court circles, and there must have been a great deal of talk about Beau and me before he disappeared.

I daresay there were cruel comments about my being an heiress. He had long ago attempted to abduct an heiress, Harriet told me when she was

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trying to soothe me, and had been prevented from marrying the girl by her father.

“Poor Beau!” Harriet had said. “He was unlucky in his elopements.” And then Beau’s disappearance must have meant that he would be talked of even more.

So it was only natural that this elegant Mistress Pilkington would have heard of the matter and be interested when she came to see a house which belonged to the heiress in the case.

I opened the door and went into the house. I stood for a moment looking up at the gallery. It was so quiet. I found myself listening.

I should be rid of these fancies when Mistress Pilkington was installed here with her family. I expected I should be asked to call. It would all be so different then.

That was what I wanted. I had done the right thing.

I walked up the staircase and turned into the minstrels’ gallery. Something was different there. Oh yes, one of the stools had been moved forward and there was an impression on it as though someone had recently sat there.

Of course, Mistress Pilkington had been here. Then I smelt the scent. It was unmistakable.

It gave me a shock and set my heart hammering against my side.

It was that smell of musk. It brought back Beau so clearly. I could

see his face, hear his voice. He had told me that he liked the scent

because of its strength. He was interested in perfumes; he distilled

them himself. Musk was the erotic perfume, he said. It was often

added to others to give them a touch of the erotic. It was the

aphrodisiac perfume. “Do you know, Carlotta, that it is absorbed by

everything that comes near it. It stimulates desire. It is the love

perfume.”

That was how he talked, and the strong odour of the musk smell brought him back more clearly than anything could.

My mood changed at once. If I thought I had escaped from the spell he had laid on me I was mistaken. He was back as strong as ever.

For the first few seconds I was so overcome by my emotion that I did not ask myself why I should smell this in the minstrels’ gallery. I just stood there with the longing to see him again so strongly with me that I could think of nothing else.

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Then I thought to myself: But how did it come here? Someone has been here, someone so scented with musk that it remains after he or she has left.

Mistress Pilkington. Of course. But I had not noticed she was using musk when I had shown her round the house and I could not have failed to notice if she had. I recalled there was a delicate perfume clinging to her. It was of violets as far as I remembered.

She had the key. That was the answer. Why was I standing here in this dazed fashion?

There was a perfectly logical explanation. Beau was not the only person who had used musk to scent his linen. There was quite a fashion among the fastidious gentlemen of the Court. It had come in with the Restoration. Beau said there were so many evil smells in London, and all over the country, for that matter, that a man must do something to prevent their assaulting his nostrils.

I must not be foolish and fanciful.

I would leave at once. There was no point in going through the house. I was too upset.

No matter what explanation I could offer, the scent had conjured up too vivid a picture of him. I wanted to get away.

And then suddenly I saw it glinting on one of the floorboards. I stooped and picked it up. It was a button. A very unusual button, gold, and very delicately engraved.

I had seen that button before. It had been on a coat of claretcoloured velvet. I had admired the buttons very much. Beau had said: “I had them especially made for me by my goldsmith. Always remember, Carlotta, that it is the finishing touches to the garment which give it quality. Now these buttons make this coat unique.”

And here ... lying on the floor of the minstrels’ gallery was one of those buttons.

Surely it could mean only one thing. Beau had been here.

“Beau,” I whispered, half expecting him to materialize beside me.

There was nothing but the silence of the house. I turned the button over in my hand.

It was real. This was no hallucination. It was as real as the scent which hung about the place-Beau’s scent.