The Girl From Over the Sea Page 17

  ‘Then she said, “Why, you daren’t even mount her. Come on, I’ll help you up.” And she got her saddled and held her till I mounted. So if anybody is going to be blamed, Sorrel will have to take her share.’

  Lesley stared at her in a horrified manner. ‘She couldn’t have been so wicked,’ she protested.

  Then Rita burst into hysterical laughter. ‘Lesley, you’ll believe anything,’ she giggled.

  To Lesley’s relief there was no sign of Blake or Dominic when they arrived at the old Manor. She quickly got a tray ready and took it up to their bedroom, where Rita was lying lethargically on her own bed. She persuaded the girl to have coffee and a sandwich and quickly ate a sandwich herself as it was almost time for her to go back to the reception desk.

  ‘Better stay here for the rest of the afternoon, darling,’ she advised. The girl still looked very pale and shaken and Lesley was determined to ring the doctor and ask him to call again. She was worried about Rita’s hysterical account of what was supposed to have happened last night. Was she perhaps suffering from concussion?

  ‘I’ll go down to the beach and sunbathe a bit later on,’ Rita yawned. ‘Don’t fuss, Les, for pete’s sake. I just want to keep out of the way for a bit.’

  ‘You’ll have to see Mr. Defontaine pretty soon and apologise,’ Lesley said in a worried manner. ‘You’d better tell him the truth—about Sorrel, I mean—if it is the truth.’

  ‘I’m not going around telling tales just to get myself out of trouble,’ Rita flared, ‘and don’t you mention Sorrel either.’ Her voice changed. ‘Les, I do hope the mare isn’t badly hurt. She’s marvellous to ride and I felt I was part of her, even though I was secretly terrified. The slave-master must be pretty terrific as a rider. He always takes her so easily. I wish she hadn’t caught her foot in that hole. I don’t think I should have come off if that hadn’t happened, though she was trying to throw me all the time.’

  ‘You must have been pretty good yourself to stay on so long. Thank goodness you weren’t killed when she did throw you. But how crazy could you get, to take Mr. Defontaine’s mare? Why not one of the other horses? Even though as Sorrel says he really owns the lot.’

  ‘Even us,’ muttered Rita. ‘Body and soul. The slave-master—I never thought of a better name for him.’

  ‘Rita—’ Lesley started nervously and almost looked over her shoulder. The younger girl saw her flinch and jeered, ‘You’ll be crossing your fingers soon, every time his name is mentioned. Even Sorrel says you’re terrified of him.’

  Lesley went very white. ‘Sorrel seems to say a lot of things she’d be better not to say. But I must go new. Don’t go on to the beach. Stay here and rest and I’ll try to slip up to see you later in the afternoon.’

  ‘Oh, I’m all light. Don’t fuss,’ Rita entreated her again. Lesley went back to the office, a crease between her fine dark brows. She didn’t really know how to tackle Rita now. She was ill at ease and awkward with her, feeling she must choose her words after what Dominic had said last night.

  Had Sorrel really been there, helping Rita to saddle the mare? If so it was completely criminal. Rita might have been killed.

  Lesley rang the doctor and he was reassuring. There was nothing wrong with-the young lady, he assured her, and later, when Lesley managed to slip away from the reception desk for a few minutes, she found no sign of Rita in her room.

  ‘I seed her talking to Mr. Defontaine in the stable yard half an hour ago,’ Mrs. Piper told her, and when Lesley looked apprehensive the housekeeper went on comfortably, ‘Now, m’dear, don’t you be fretting. They seemed to be talking quiet-like, and Mr. Defontaine didn’t look as if un was taking on as you might say. Quiet, both of un were.’

  It had been too much to hope that he would leave Rita alone for this first day and let her recover from the shock of her fall, thought Lesley indignantly. She didn’t see him herself until just before dinner when he came into the hotel office to look through some accounts,

  Lesley gave him a glance from under her sweeping lashes. He didn’t seem in a good mood and she moistened her dry lips. There was that constricted feeling in her throat that was always there these days when she had to speak to him, but it was cowardly to evade, the issue that he was evidently not going to bring up first.

  ‘I ... I ... fetched Rita back from Trenewick Farm at lunch time, Mr. Defontaine. The farmer, Mr. Price, told me you’d already been and collected the mare in a horse box. Has the vet seen her yet? Will she be all right?’

  She was talking rapidly and nervously, giving him no opportunity to comment on her remarks or answer her questions. He swivelled round in his chair. ‘Shall we take things just a bit more steadily?’ he suggested, irony in his pewter-dark eyes. ‘In answer to your last two questions, yes, the vet has seen Sheba and he thinks she’ll be all right if the leg is rested for a day or two.’

  ‘Oh, thank goodness for that,’ Lesley replied, her face clearing. ‘Mr. Defontaine, Rita is really very sorry for her prank. I think she has had her lesson and she won’t do anything of the sort again.’

  ‘I’m quite certain she won’t,’ he replied, a hard gleam in his eyes. ‘I’ve told her she’s to come straight back from college for the next fortnight and she’s not allowed out once she’s back at Trevendone—not for any reason, or with anybody.’

  ‘Oh, but you can’t insist on that,’ Lesley protested. ‘She’s started going down to Penpethic Harbour most evenings with Ricky and when they’re down there together, I feel so much happier.’

  ‘I can insist on it ... and I have,’ he replied deliberately. ‘I’ve had a talk with her this afternoon and she had the grace to apologise and accept her punishment. I hope you’ll do the same.’

  ‘My punishment?’ Lesley’s green eyes blazed, wilfully misinterpreting his remark. ‘Am I too confined to the slave quarters for the next fortnight?’

  ‘My dear girl, heroics are very boring,’ he said with a lash of mockery in his voice. ‘You seem rather prone to them, and someone should have told you so back in Australia long ago.’

  She struggled for some remark equally devastating as he sat watching her with his cold, pewter-coloured eyes, but found nothing to say and he went on, ‘Naturally in your free time you can come and go as you wish. You, after all, are of age, if we agree that eighteen makes one an adult. But Rita, as you said last night, is still a child—at least in law.’

  Lesley breathed in deeply. ‘I’m sorry she apologised,’ she said recklessly. ‘She wasn’t really to blame so far as I can discover. It was...’ She paused in some confusion. Rita had begged her not to mention Sorrel and Lesley herself could scarcely believe that the Cornish girl had been anywhere near the stables last night. But she had gone too far now to draw back, especially with that horrid sarcastic expression on his face and his next hateful words. ‘So she wasn’t to blame! It was ... who, may I ask? One of our famous Cornish piskies, perhaps?’

  He obviously wasn’t expecting the name she blurted out, for he looked completely taken aback. ‘Mrs. Lang ... Sorrel, you mean? But, my dear girl, what could Sorrel have to do with it? We were both in Plymouth at the time.’

  Lesley’s heart sank when she heard his positive statement. She had been hoping that by some chance Sorrel hadn’t gone to Plymouth last night, but that was too much to expect. When would she ever cut a date with Blake Defontaine?

  He sat quite still and his stony silence was nerve-racking. How bitterly he resented even the slightest criticism of his girl-friend.

  Now very deliberately he got up and went out of the office. ‘Sorrel,’ he called, ‘will you spare me a minute?’ Lesley had no idea Sorrel was anywhere around, but she might have guessed. They were so seldom apart. She must have been in the great hall waiting for her fiancé. She never let him out of her sight if she could help it.

  Sorrel, in riding breeches and a white blouse, strolled after him into the office. ‘Hello,’ she said, ‘want any help?’

  ‘Just for you to assure Mi
ss Trevendone (not ‘Lesley ‘tonight) that you were in Plymouth yesterday evening when Sheba was hi-jacked.’

  Lesley was watching the girl carefully and she saw a peculiar expression, almost one of embarrassment, cross her vivid face. Then she was laughing up into Blake Defontaine’s grim countenance. ‘What’s all this about, Blake darling? Surely you’ve not forgotten last night already, my sweet.’ There was a soft intimacy and a wealth of implication in her voice and something almost unbearable pierced Lesley’s heart with a pain that for a moment stopped her breath. With an effort she fought it and put it aside. Her eyes glinted green as she stared accusingly at the other girl.

  ‘Mrs. Lang, if you weren’t in the stables last night, have you at any time been encouraging, daring Rita to ride Mr. Defontaine’s mare?’

  ‘Have I what? You crazy imbecile!’ Sorrel’s voice rose stridently. ‘Are you out of your tiny mind? As if I’d dream of doing any such thing!’

  ‘Sorrel, keep your voice down,’ Blake warned her quietly, and then turned to Lesley. ‘I think that’s enough, Miss Trevendone. I’ve told Rita what she’s to do. Let’s leave it at that, shall we? Sorrel, I’m ready now.’

  He held open the door for her to pass through, but as she did so she sent a vindictive barb at Lesley. ‘If this is Australian sportsmanship, please deliver me from it!’

  Lesley closed her lips sharply. She didn’t intend indulging in a slanging match, but she was pretty sure there was something in Rita’s accusations. Perhaps Sorrel hadn’t been there last night, but there had been some previous occasion when she had dared Rita to take out the mare. Was there anything she wouldn’t do to injure the Trevendones from over the sea and deprive them of their inheritance?

  And what an inheritance, thought Lesley drearily. But she wasn’t going to leave the matter there. Sooner or later she would get the truth from Rita and then she would have it out with Sorrel.

  Actually it was Sorrel herself who was not content to let the matter rest. She sauntered into Blake’s office next to his lab on the following afternoon where Lesley was working.

  She said, ‘You’re not being stupid enough to try to get Rita off the hook as far as Blake is concerned, are you? If you are, you’re just wasting your time. He never goes back on his word.’

  ‘He’d do so if he found out that Rita wasn’t really to blame,’ Lesley said bluntly. ‘But I haven’t time to talk about that now. I’ve some work to finish that has to go by tonight’s post.’

  She looked rather pointedly at the door and Sorrel strolled over to it. ‘By the way, why don’t you make up your mind about your Australian boy-friend? If you don’t want him yourself, give your young sister a chance. She’s crazy about him, you know.’

  Lesley’s eyes were a hostile green. So this was the source of Dominic’s remarks the night before last! She had suspected as much. ‘How do you know?’ she challenged. ‘Has she confided in you?’

  ‘Of course not, and heaven forbid.’ Sorrel gave a theatrical little shudder. ‘Anybody with half an eye can see it, though.’

  Lesley’s temper continued to rise, though she told herself that she was a fool to take any notice of this hateful girl. ‘Why can’t you mind your own business?’ she asked angrily.

  Sorrel gave another theatrical shudder. ‘You’re so charmingly direct, aren’t you, all you cousins from a new country. Do the words politeness and courtesy figure in anyone’s vocabulary down under?’

  ‘They don’t seem to figure in yours to any noticeable extent,’ Lesley snapped. ‘I’m all for plain speaking myself and that’s why I’m telling you to mind your own business and keep out of our affairs—Rita’s, Ricky’s and mine. We’re no concern of yours.’

  ‘But, darling, you made yourselves our concern when you blew in from God knows where claiming to be our family. That’s still to be proved, and as soon as we find you aren’t Trevendones—and I for one suspect you aren’t—out you’ll all go, and it can’t be too soon for me.’

  Lesley started up. ‘As soon as you find out we aren’t Trevendones? What do you mean?’ There was a horrified expression on her face and the other girl eyed her closely.

  ‘You look as guilty as hell,’ she said viciously. ‘I told Blake right from the beginning that you were impostors.’

  ‘Of course we aren’t,’ Lesley said, but Sorrel was staring intently at the hand holding the ballpoint pen. It was shaking perceptibly.

  ‘We’ll see about that,’ she murmured, an odd expression in her black eyes. ‘But to get back to the point we were discussing...’

  ‘I don’t want any further discussion,’ Lesley flashed back. ‘I’m busy. Just let me get on with my work, will you?’

  ‘Work or no work, there’s still this matter of your marriage.’ Sorrel was pretending to walk through the door, but she threw this over her shoulder. As she probably guessed it would, it brought Lesley to her feet again.

  ‘What has my marriage to do with you or anyone else here?’ she asked fiercely.

  Again Sorrel flung one of her inscrutable smiles over her shoulder. ‘Darling, you may remember that some time ago. I got the idea that Blake was cottoning on to this Tristan and Yseult game you and Dominic play. He has quite a conscience about, the family, you know, and I suppose he thinks if you two made a match of it, it would solve the problem of the Trevendone inheritance. Actually, you know, once Blake gets an idea it’s the very devil to shake him out of it, so my advice to you is to latch on to that strong-armed surfing young man of yours and get cracking. Naturally we’d see you had a marvellous wedding, and I might be able to persuade Blake to give you away.’

  Lesley gasped out her indignant repugnance. ‘I can’t think of anything more revolting!’ she said.

  Sorrel came back into the room, her black eyes narrowed to slits in her gypsyish face. ‘Revolting! That’s quite a strong term, isn’t it? Well, if you’re off the young man from down under, would you settle for Dominic? He’s very handsome, as you must admit, and really rather sweet. I should know.’ And she showed her teeth in a smile that was no smile at all.

  Lesley looked at her with something like horror in her big green eyes, reflecting that she had never come up against anyone quite so cold-hearted as Sorrel Lang. She must know how Dominic felt about her and indeed she gave him plenty of encouragement, especially when Blake Defontaine was away.

  ‘Last time you brought that subject up you said it wasn’t on,’ Lesley remarked contemptuously.

  ‘Oh, I can always change my mind when it suits me,’ Sorrel replied smoothly. ‘I take it you wouldn’t find marriage to Dominic revolting.’

  Actually? the word had come scaldingly to Lesley’s lips at the thought of Blake Defontaine’s giving her in marriage. Blake ... to give her to someone else! The thought came unbidden and was stamped on in passionate anger.

  ‘It’s revolting to speak of people marrying when they aren’t in love,’ she said tensely.

  ‘My goodness, you are looking fierce!’ Sorrel’s black eyes seemed to be dancing in amusement, but in their depths was something hard and watchful. ‘You can’t be such a little puritan as to be shocked. Surely even in your part of the world there are arranged marriages. Some sheep farmer’s daughter marrying another rich farmer’s son in order to unite two estates, or stations or whatever you call them out there. Mergers are the fashion these days.’

  ‘In the part of the world from which I come,’ Lesley said, gasping out her indignant disgust, ‘a man and a girl marry for just one reason—that they happen to be in love.’

  ‘And how long does that last?’ Sorrel asked in a bored voice. ‘Who would have thought you were as romantic as that? Actually I thought that sort of thing went out with crinolines and the Blue Danube. Anyway in families like the Trevendones arranged marriages have always been the rule. So if I were you I’d get cracking with your Australian. Then Blake’s mind will be set at rest about you lot when we go away.’

  ‘When you go away?’ Lesley faltered, and something ins
ide her seemed to turn like a fierce wounding blade.

  ‘You don’t suppose Blake and I are going to stay here when we’re married, do you? Once his book is finished, he’ll take another University appointment, abroad, of course, and I’m all for it. I want to see a bit of the world.’

  ‘He’ll leave Dominic and Jennifer in charge here ... of the hotel and the Home Farm?’

  ‘That’s the idea, darling.’

  ‘And what about my ... my ... Ricky? What of his claim?’

  ‘A lot of boloney, if you ask me,’ retorted Mrs. Lang vulgarly. ‘Not that you need to worry about him. He’ll be all right. He plays and sings too well not to make a hit sooner or later. As to Rita—well, as I’ve warned you, watch your step there. She’s a sexy little piece if ever there was one. I understand Rita a lot better than you do. We’ve a lot in common. She’s like me. What she wants she goes all out for, and she’ll have your precious Steve unless you keep your wits about you. And there’s another one you’ve got to watch too—Blake. I’ve got the feeling that he thinks you’ll just be right to help Jennifer and Dominic to make a go of this place. And when he gets an idea into his head...’

  Lesley had a sudden uncomfortable memory of old Mrs. Trevendone saying, ‘What Blake Defontaine wants, he usually gets.’