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Christina sat in silence, her thoughts whirling. The temptation to take Mrs Brandon’s words at their face value and accept her offer was almost overwhelming. Almost. Yet, at the same time, her pride baulked at the idea of being handed over from one elderly lady to another. Could this be what Aunt Grace had meant when she had told her that she would see she was taken care of in the future? It was galling, to say the least, as if she was being given no credit for having sufficient intelligence or energy to carve out a life of her own.
She could not deny, however, that if she had merely seen the job advertised somewhere, she would have applied for it. A vision rose in her mind of silver sand and palm trees and softly curling surf. It was like having some cherished wish granted by the wave of a wand. Yet Mrs Brandon with her smooth white hair and air of aloofness was far from being the conventional picture of a fairy godmother, she thought wistfully.
‘You trouble yourself quite unnecessarily, you know.’ Mrs Brandon’s ironic voice cut across her inner musings. ‘Would it make it more acceptable to you if I specified that the position would be on trial at first—let us say a month on either side. In fact it might be better if you regarded your visit as a holiday at first. You have been under some strain lately, and it may be unfair to press you until you are rested and more relaxed. Well, what do you say?’
Christina hesitated, then gave a deep, sigh. ‘What can I say, madame? You are too kind. You make it impossible for me to refuse. I don’t know how to thank you.’
‘Have no fear, my child. I will think of a way.’ Mrs Brandon grimaced slightly with pain as she reached for her stick. ‘So it is settled, then—a few weeks in the sunshine, and then we can decide on some more—permanent arrangement.’
She rose slowly and carefully to her feet, waving away Christina’s proffered assistance.
‘Your first lesson, ma chère. I do not care to be helped,’ she remarked with a bleak smile. ‘I shall return to London now. But before I go, I shall settle your account here with the good woman downstairs. You will have the goodness to pack your things this evening and be prepared to join me in the morning, not later than ten o’clock. Of all things, I detest unpunctuality,’ she added almost as an afterthought.
‘But I’m quite able to pay my own bill here. I do have a little money …’ Christina began. She felt apprehensive suddenly. Too much was happening and too fast. Even Aunt Grace had never taken charge with precisely this grande dame air, and it was curiously disturbing, as if she was now merely a puppet, content to dance while Mrs Brandon pulled the strings.
‘Keep it.’ The older woman’s tone was negligently dismissive. ‘Or better still, use it to buy some cooler clothes.’ She looked with disfavour at Christina’s admittedly rather baggy tweed skirt, and the pullover she wore with it. ‘What you have seems more suitable for the sub-arctic region rather than the tropics. Choose plenty of cotton—you will find it cooler than these synthetics—and bring a swimsuit.’
Christina’s bewilderment grew. ‘But I thought—you said there would be no beach parties.’
‘Nor will there. Nevertheless the beaches are there to be used, and I imagine you were taught to swim at school. I hope that you will look on Archangel as your home, not your prison.’ Mrs Brandon’s tone was faintly derisory, and Christina flushed, feeling that she had spoken foolishly.
As she saw her blush, the older woman’s expression softened a little, and a slight warmth entered her voice.
‘Keep your money,’ she repeated. ‘Allow me to do this for you as a mark of my affection for your godmother.’
When it was put like that, she could hardly refuse without sounding totally ungracious, Christina thought.
She accompanied Mrs Brandon downstairs and saw her into the waiting hired car. She hesitated as it drew away, her hand half uplifted as if her visitor might look back, but Mrs Brandon did not turn or make any kind of farewell gesture, and Christina let her own hand drop after a moment, feeling foolish again.
She went slowly back into the hotel, hardly able to believe the events that had just transpired. In the space of an hour, her whole life had been turned upside down, and she felt quite dazed. Mrs Thurston was hovering beside the reception desk, a series of questions bursting to find expression. She had been impressed by Mrs Brandon’s icy air, and she was clearly and rather unflatteringly amazed when Christina explained what had brought her to the village.
‘Well, there’s a thing,’ she muttered at intervals as Christina outlined her rather sketchy plans for the immediate future. ‘Well, I hope you’re doing right, Miss Bennett, and no mistake. After all, you’ve only got her word for it that she even knew Miss Grantham. Don’t you go taking too much on trust now, even though she does seem to have plenty of money about her. You be careful. You read such awful things in the papers nowadays.’
Christina was torn between her own doubts which Mrs Thurston was voicing up to a point, and the ludicrous picture of the remote Mrs Brandon as a white slaver which the landlady was obviously enjoying. The doubts won.
There was a good chance that Mr Frith might still be at the sale. He of all people should know whether or not Mrs Brandon was genuine.
The sale was clearly over, and cars were pulling away when Christina trotted breathlessly up. Mr Frith was still there, and she saw with a sinking heart that he was standing beside the Websters’ car saying goodbye to them. She hesitated, but in that moment he saw her and beckoned to her, so she had perforce to approach.
‘Now then, my dear, where did you vanish to?’ He looked her over smilingly.
Christina paused. She had no real wish to discuss this latest change in her fortunes in the hearing of the Websters, so she smiled and murmured something inaudible, hoping they would drive away.
Vivien Webster, however, put her head out of the window and surveyed Christina superciliously.
‘Did you want something?’ she inquired.
‘Just a word with Mr Frith.’ Christina, to her own annoyance, felt herself flush.
‘I see.’ Vivien was silent for a moment, then she said quite gently, ‘You will remember that his time costs money, won’t you? You can’t expect a professional man to continue indefinitely giving you free consultations.’
Her face flaming now, Christina turned to Mr Frith. ‘I’m sorry,’ she stammered. ‘It never occurred to me …’
‘Or to me.’ He squeezed her arm reassuringly. ‘What can I do to help, Christina?’
She shook her head, trying to back away. ‘It doesn’t matter. I only wondered … I mean do you know …?’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake,’ Vivien Webster interrupted irritably. ‘If you have something to say, say it and get it over with!’
Christina tried to ignore her. ‘Did Aunt Grace ever mention a Mrs Brandon to you?’ she asked, but before he could reply, Vivien had butted in again.
‘The Brandons of Archangel?’ she demanded in a surprised tone. ‘But of course she’s mentioned them. She was at school with the wives—I forget their names, but they were sisters and they married two brothers—quite a romantic story. Why do you ask?’
Christina supposed she could refuse to answer, but it did not seem worth the trouble.
‘Because Mrs Brandon is in England and she has offered me a job,’ she said with a certain dignity.
Vivien and her husband exchanged glances. ‘Why on earth should she do that?’ the other woman asked coldly, after a pause. ‘You’re even less to her than you were to my aunt. Have you been writing begging letters to Aunt Grace’s wealthy friends? I do hope not, Christina. It’s so degrading …’
‘I’ve done nothing of the sort,’ Christina said hotly. Tears were not far away, but she blinked them back furiously, refusing to give way to that sort of weakness in front of her present audience. ‘I never even knew of her existence until today. Apparently Aunt Grace wrote to her when she first realised she was ill.’
‘Well, it seems most extraordinary that she should just arrive like that,’ Vivien declared. ‘Was she at the sale? I’m surprised she didn’t introduce herself.’
‘She did,’ Christina said quietly. ‘To me.’
Vivien gave her a hostile look. ‘Well, I still don’t see what interest she has in you. I suppose you spun her some sob story about being destitute. I hope no one sees fit to remind her that there’s such a thing as Social Security.’
Mr Frith touched Christina’s arm and she turned to him gratefully. ‘What kind of a job is it that she’s offered to you?’ he inquired kindly. ‘The name is well-known to me, of course. I believe Miss Grantham has known both the Mrs Brandons since her girlhood, but I had no idea she intended to contact them on your behalf. I must say it seems a godsend under the circumstances.’
‘I don’t see why,’ Vivien interrupted again. ‘I can see no need to turn to strangers. Angela Morton is looking for a reliable mother’s help again—the au pair stormed back to Sweden yesterday—and I’ve almost promised her that she could have Christina.’
Christina felt almost sick with anger. She had heard of Vivien’s friend Angela before. She had four young children and did not believe in discipline of any kind. If Mrs Brandon had indeed been a white slave trader, she thought furiously, she would still have opted for her rather than the Morton ménage.
She made herself smile, aping Vivien’s own superciliousness. ‘What a pity you didn’t think to mention it to me,’ she said with a fair degree of carelessness. ‘Then, of course, I wouldn’t have agreed to go to the West Indies.’
Vivien gave her a fulminating stare, then sat back in her seat and wound the window up in bad-tempered jerks.
Beside her, Christina heard Mr Frith give a little sigh as their car drew away.
She gave him a wan smile. ‘I do seem to have committed myself, don’t I?’
‘Perhaps that isn’t such a bad thing,’ he commented drily. ‘It isn’t easy to find work these days, and this offer seems to have come at just the right time for you.’
‘Yes,’ Christina acknowledged doubtfully. ‘It just seems so odd that she should want to do this for me. I mean, she could just have thrown Aunt Grace’s letter away and forgotten about it. Mrs Webster was right, really. I am a complete stranger to the Brandons and they have no obligation to do anything for me. As it is, I don’t even have to make up my mind yet about working for her, but can just have a holiday at Archangel.’ She repeated the name wonderingly. ‘How strange that sounds.’
Mr Frith frowned a little. ‘If you’re really unsure, Christina, I can always make some inquiries for you,’ he said. ‘Have you any reason to doubt this lady’s probity?’
‘Oh, no,’ Christina said quickly. ‘It seems she’s just what she said—a friend of Aunt Grace’s. That’s really all I wanted to know.’ She paused, then held out her hand. ‘I shall be joining her in London tomorrow, so I don’t suppose I shall have the chance to see you again. Will—will you thank your wife for me for all her kindness.’
Mr Frith took her hand and pressed it warmly. ‘I hope everything works out well for you, my dear. It seems your godmother did have your best interests at heart after all. A summer in the Caribbean at the very least. We shall all envy you.’ He hesitated briefly. ‘If you—should find yourself in difficulties of any kind, you can always write to me. I know it’s what Miss Grantham would have wished.’
‘Yes.’ Christina felt suddenly awkward. ‘Thank you for that—and for everything.’
She felt curiously forlorn as she watched his car drive off, as if she had lost her only friend in all the world. And that was nonsense, she told herself robustly. She now had Mrs Brandon, who had come halfway across the world apparently to befriend her, and there would be other people too—at Archangel. People she had not known existed, whom she would meet and learn to know in the weeks to come.
But, strangely enough, as she turned to walk back to the Bay Horse, that thought did not bring in its train quite the comfort that she had expected.
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_af892544-2702-5593-b564-e86badecbd07)
CHRISTINA opened the louvred shutters and stepped out on to her balcony into blazing sunshine. She looked down into an interior courtyard of the hotel where gaily coloured loungers surrounded the brilliant turquoise of a swimming pool and gave a little sigh of satisfaction. Mrs Brandon had been angry in the extreme when a delay in their flight to Martinique had meant that they missed the afternoon boat to Ste Victoire, but Christina herself had no regrets. She had not the slightest objection to spending some time in Martinique, even though she had resigned herself to the fact that there would be insufficient time to pay a visit to Les Trois Ilets, the birthplace of the Empress Josephine of France. On the way to the hotel, she had seen a large statue of the great lady and realised how proud the Creoles were of their famous daughter.
Mrs Brandon had retired to her room and had curtly advised that Christina should do the same, but Christina knew that she would never rest. It was all too new and exciting, and her first jet flight had stimulated her rather than induced any signs of jet lag.
It was still very much a flight into the unknown as far as she was concerned. She still knew very little about Archangel and its inhabitants, and her diffident questions had met with little response from Mrs Brandon. One thing she had elicited was that Vivien Webster had been quite right when she had said that Marcelle and her sister had married two brothers. She had also learned that Madeleine Brandon and her husband had both died in a boating tragedy a few years earlier, although she was given no details.
One thing Christina had found out for herself was that Mrs Brandon had not been unfair to herself when she mentioned her temper. After only a day in her company in London, she had learned that the older woman expected any service to be rendered both promptly and perfectly. Otherwise, a thinning of her lips and a slight spot of colour in each cheek signalled storms ahead. She was unfailingly civil to Christina, but various members of the staff both at the London hotel and later at the airport had suffered under the whiplash of her tongue. Christina decided wryly that Mrs Brandon had probably been right to warn her that a job as her companion would be no sinecure, but in some ways this made her feel better about the whole thing. At least, if she stayed, she would feel she was earning her salary, she told herself prosaically.
But her thoughts at the moment were far from prosaic. Life was suddenly too golden, too full of promise for that. It had been real and earnest, and might be again, but now she was free to indulge herself in any fantasies that occurred to her. She could even, if she wished, change into one of the new bikinis in her case and go down to join the sunbathers round the pool, just as if Aunt Grace’s rather mousy little goddaughter who had never worn anything more daring than the regulation one-piece swimsuit on the school uniform list had never existed.
Perhaps she didn’t, she thought wonderingly. Perhaps all along that had merely been a façade for this strange, excited creature, enclosed in her iridescent bubble of exhilaration. The thought that all bubbles burst eventually, she crushed down with determination, lifting her face almost ecstatically to meet the sun.
One thing was certain. No matter what Mrs Brandon had said, she was not going to spend the rest of the day shut up in a stuffy hotel room. She had gathered from her employer that visits to Martinique were rare, and she was going to make the most of this one.
Half an hour later she was descending the wide stairs to the foyer. She had changed out of the trouser suit she had worn for the flight, and was wearing a brief scarlet cotton skirt, topped by a white shirt which tied in a bow at the front of her waist, leaving her midriff bare. She had experimented with her hair, tying it back with a ribbon, and piling it on top of her head, but had finally decided to leave it loose on her shoulders, even though, she thought with a grimace, it made her look younger than ever.
She had shopped for her new clothes in London, revelling in the choice offered by the boutiques and department stores. It was such fun for a change to be able to choose things because they were becoming, and not because they were classic styles which would ‘wear’. Mrs Brandon, to her surprise, had encouraged her to pick gay clothes and up-to-the-minute styles, but when Christina had mentioned that she was planning to visit the hotel beauty salon to have her hair cut and re-styled, her employer had issued an implacable veto.
Christina supposed rather ruefully that she could have insisted, but it did not seem worth making a fuss over such a relatively unimportant matter. Besides, Mrs Brandon’s attitude had taken her aback somewhat. She would have supposed that Mrs Brandon would prefer her new companion to look slightly older and more dignified without a mass of hair hanging round her face, but it proved, if Christina had needed convincing, that her employer was not a woman who could easily be summed up, or whose reactions to anything could be confidently predicted.
She had bought a small guide book at the reception desk, and decided to confine herself to an exploration of Fort de France. Time did not permit very much else, although she would have liked to have taken one of the guided tours to Mount Pelée, and the nearby city of St Pierre which the volcano had well-nigh destroyed over seventy years before.
But Fort de France had plenty to offer in the way of sightseeing. Christina was entranced by the houses with their wrought iron grillework, so redolent of bygone eras when Creole beauties wore high-waisted Empire line dresses, and cooled themselves with embroidered fans rather than air-conditioning. She toured the cathedral, and walked dreamily through the Savane, oblivious of the other tourists and their busy cameras.
The perfume shops on the Rue Victor Hugo lured her into parting with yet more of her direly depleted stock of money, and she could not resist buying a tiny doll in the traditional foulard costume of Martinique.
There seemed to be flowers everywhere. Bougainvillea and hibiscus spilled from balconies in a riot of colour, and street sellers pressed bunches of wild orchids and other exotic blooms on her as she walked along. But she refused them smilingly, using her schoolgirl French. It would be a shame to leave them behind to wither and die in the hotel, she thought, and she could not imagine that Mrs Brandon would happily accept the spectacle of her companion boarding the morning boat, weighed down by flowers.
She was beginning to feel hungry and would have liked to sample the reality behind some of the delectable odours that drifted from the restaurants she passed, but Mrs Brandon had made it clear that they would be dining at the hotel in their suite, so she regretfully turned her steps in the direction of the hotel. Or thought she did.
Somewhere along the line, the advice in her little guide book had been misleading, she thought vexedly. Or, more likely, she herself had simply taken a wrong turning. Certainly she had never seen this particular street before, and she should have found herself in the square in the front of the hotel.
Biting her lip, she swung round, staring back the way she had come. Don’t be a fool, she adjured herself briskly, fighting a feeling of slight panic. You’re not lost. You just think you are. One of the main streets will be just around the corner, and you’ll soon get your bearings again.
But the corner merely led to another street, narrower even and shabbier than the one she had just left. The shadows were lengthening now, and the tall houses with their crumbling stucco seemed to crowd in on her disconcertingly. A dog lying on its side in the shade lifted its head and snarled at her, and she crossed the street, her heart beating a little faster, to avoid it.
This is what happens, she scolded herself, trying to regain her confidence, when you overestimate your capabilities as a tourist. The fairy-tale had suddenly degenerated into a nightmare in this grimy and unprepossessing place, and like a child, she found herself wishing desperately for the fairy-tale again—for the silken thread that would lead her out of the labyrinth and to safety, back to the bright streets and the scent shops and the flowers.
Her footsteps slowed as she gazed uncertainly around her. Somewhere in one of the high shuttered houses, a child was crying, a long monotonous drift of sound that played uncomfortably on her tautened nerves. There were other footsteps now coming steadily and purposefully along the street behind her, and she gave a short relieved sigh. At last there was someone she could ask, and surely, even with her limited French, she could make herself understood and obtain directions back to the hotel.
But even as she turned, the halting words died on her lips. There were three of them, youths of her own age or even slightly younger. When she stopped, they did the same. They stood a few feet away from her, their hands resting lightly on their hips, silent, even smiling a little, and Christina knew she had never felt so frightened or so helpless in her life. For the first time since she had left the hotel, she was acutely conscious of the length of leg revealed by her skirt, and the expanse of bare flesh between her shirt and the waistband of the skirt.
It was a war of nerves that was being waged, she thought despairingly, as they stood facing each other, but she didn’t know what else to do. Something told her that to make a run for it would be fatal. Besides, where could she run to? They were cutting off one of her lines of retreat, and who knew what might lie at the end of the other.
She tried to drag the rags of her courage around her, lift her chin, bluff them into thinking she was unconcerned, but she knew by the widening grins on their dark faces that they were not deceived.
Someone had once told her that panic affected the throat muscles, making it impossible to scream, and she thought it must be true, because when the hand fell on her shoulder from behind her, the cry that welled up inside her found utterance only as a strangled gasp. The street dipped and swayed suddenly, and instinctively she closed her eyes. A man was speaking in patois, his voice resonant, slightly drawling even. The fingers that gripped her shoulder felt like a vice.
When she opened her eyes again, the street in front of her was empty and the silence seemed to surge at her. She turned almost incredulously to look at the man standing behind her. He was tall, his leanness accentuated by the lightweight tropical suit he wore. His hair was tawny, and there were lighter streaks in it where the sun had bleached it. His grey eyes looked silver against his deep tan, and his firm, rather thin-lipped mouth looked taut, either with anger or some other emotion she could not comprehend.
She wanted to thank him, and instead she said inanely, ‘They’ve gone.’
‘Naturally,’ he said coolly. ‘Are you disappointed?’
His English was faultless, without even a trace of an accent, she thought in the few seconds before the meaning of his words got through to her.
‘You must be out of your mind!’ she flared at him.
‘I must?’ His brows rose. ‘And what about you—roaming the back streets of a strange town? Do your parents know where you are?’
‘I’m not a child.’ Infuriatingly her voice trembled. ‘And I’m here with my employer.’
‘Employer?’ He studied her for a moment, and a smile touched his mouth that flicked her, unaccountably, on the raw. ‘My apologies. I didn’t think you were old enough to be a—working girl. But the way you’re dressed should have given me a clue, I suppose. What are you—an actress or a model?’
He was laughing at her. He had to be, although she couldn’t read even the slightest trace of humour in his voice. Instead, there was a cold cynicism which chilled her.
‘I’m a sort of secretary,’ she said quickly, trying to still her sense of annoyance, reminding herself that she had to be grateful to him. ‘And I ought to be getting back. I’ll be missed by now.’
‘I don’t doubt it,’ he said drily. ‘Well, Miss Sort-of-Secretary, and what do your duties consist of, precisely? Can you type?’
‘A little,’ Christina said, her bewilderment increasing with every moment that passed. After all, he had come to her rescue of his own volition. She hadn’t even called for help, so why was he behaving in such a hostile manner?
‘Only a little? But then I suppose your talents really lie in other directions?’
For a moment, Christina remembered the advertisement she had drafted in her own mind days ago in the back kitchen of the cottage, and a rueful grin lifted the corners of her mouth.
‘I suppose you could say that,’ she admitted, then cast a distracted glance at her watch. ‘Heavens—the time! Can you—would you be kind enough to direct me to the Hotel de Beauharnais? I thought I was heading there, but I must have taken a wrong turning somewhere.’
‘What an admission,’ he said satirically. ‘You know, you aren’t running true to type at all.’ He put out lean brown fingers and cupped her chin, lifting her face so he could study it more closely. The insolent assurance of his touch unnerved her, and she jerked her chin away.
‘Please don’t do that,’ she said, making a perceptible effort to stop her voice from trembling again. ‘I—I don’t like to be touched.’ She hesitated. ‘I know I should have said so before, but I don’t know how to thank you for—for coming along when you did. I really was so frightened. If you hadn’t been there, I—I can’t bear to contemplate what might have happened.’
‘You’d have had your handbag snatched,’ he informed her mockingly. His smile widened, as her startled disbelieving gaze flew to his face. ‘Poor Sort-of-Secretary. Expecting to be another rape statistic when all they wanted was your money!’
Their eyes met and held. To her horror, Christina realised she was near to tears. The shock of her recent experience coupled with this incomprehensible attitude on the part of the stranger who had aided her was having a devastating effect on her emotions. More than anything else, she wanted the refuge of her hotel room.
‘I didn’t know what to think.’ She lifted her chin with unconscious dignity. ‘Situations like this are rather new to me. Now, if you could show me the way to the Beauharnais.’
‘Just follow the scent of affluence,’ he advised sardonically. ‘Actually you’re not too far away. You want the next left turning, and the second right after that, but unless you know them these back streets can seem like a maze. Next time you want to play tourist, stick to the boulevards. At least the people you meet there will know the rules of the game.’
