The Girl From Over the Sea Page 18

  Lesley’s hands clenched and her face went very tense. They were all so sure, weren’t they? But this time it was going to be different, Mr. Blake Defontaine was just not going to get what he wanted.

  She flicked the sheet of paper out of the typewriter. She hadn’t checked it and now she wasn’t going to. She was covering the machine when she heard him come in. ‘Have you finished that last sheet, Miss Trevendone?’ he demanded.

  ‘Yes, it’s here,’ she said.

  He looked at her downbent face and then at Sorrel who was standing by the window, a smile still on her lips. ‘You two haven’t been on about the mare again, have you?’ he asked in a bored voice.

  With a start, Lesley remembered that that was what the conversation had been about in the first place—that and her determination to clear Rita. But instead it had resolved into...

  ‘The mare?’ Sorrel raised her black brows. ‘Indeed no,’ she drawled. ‘Lesley has merely been telling me about love, Australian style.’ She turned to the girl. ‘All the same, Lesley darling, I don’t believe it will be love in a cottage, or a log cabin or whatever is the equivalent in Australia. Rita tells me that your young man’s father is a wealthy pastoralist, so I expect life will be pretty good for you when you get back there.’

  Blake almost jerked the papers out of Lesley’s hand. ‘I didn’t want you to stay overtime,’ he snapped. ‘You should have gone half an hour ago. I’ll see to the post.’

  ‘I’m going now,’ Lesley replied in a stifled voice, and brushed past him and ran out into the blinding sunshine.

  Even Jennifer, who usually refused to listen to criticism or complaints, had to admit they couldn’t go on much longer at this pace when the high season in a summer of unusual heat was upon them.

  Blake was on the go from dawn till dark and though he worked all the staff hard, and especially the Trevendones, it seemed as if he drove himself even harder. His dark face had grown rather thin and gaunt and there were shadows of sleeplessness under his eyes. His only relaxation just now was an early morning swim and an occasional ride on the beach on Sheba.

  One day when she and Dominic were off duty together and had come for a quick swim and then half an hour’s sunbathing, Dominic said abruptly, ‘You don’t know what it’s all about, do you, young Lesley?’

  Lesley had been idly watching the sea creaming round the great whale-like rocks and deciding that it would soon be time to move. Now she raised up on one elbow and looked at the young man lying beside her. He would be most girls’ dream-boat, she thought with a smile. Gay and laughter-loving, so easy to live with.

  ‘All about what?’ she queried.

  ‘It’s not supposed to be talked about,’ he went on, ‘but it’s something like this.’

  In a conspiratorial whisper he started to tell her that this was the crucial year so far as the hotel went. For some time a group of business men had been interested in taking over the New Manor and also developing the old manor into a similar annexe of old world charm but of superlative comfort.

  ‘It’s practically on,’ Dominic said confidently. ‘We’re doing so well this year that we shall break far more than even. But not a word. It’s still a state secret.’

  Lesley stared at him in an appalled silence. To some extent Sorrel’s remarks had revealed that Blake and she were pulling out, and going abroad when they married, but she had implied that the Trevendones would be left in possession and she hadn’t said anything about the old Manor being drawn into the orbit of the hotel.

  ‘But what about the family?’ Lesley asked now in a small voice.

  True to type, Dominic began to tell her about his own prospects. ‘The Home Farm will do me fine,’ he said cheerfully. ‘The Treswins who have managed it since my father’s time haven’t any children and they want to retire at Christmas. That’s why I’ve spent so much of my time these past few years getting the know-how there.

  ‘From the Home Farm we can supply the hotel with fresh produce. Blake is going to build a whole series of glasshouses for lettuce, tomatoes and early vegetables, and with poultry, meat and milk we should do fine.’

  Lesley wasn’t quite sure who he meant by ‘we’ and did not enquire, though she imagined he was including Jennifer in his ambitious plans.

  ‘Jennifer is going to hate leaving the old Manor. She’s much more attached to it than you are,’ she commented dryly.

  ‘But surely you know about Jen and Rodney Drew. She’s down at their farm whenever she’s free, and don’t you remember she rode one of their horses in the Cumballick point-to-point? She and Rod Drew have been sweethearts since they were at school. He took a course in hotel management in Plymouth, then he was at a West End hotel for a year and he’s in Switzerland now. He’s the likely one to take over as manager when Blake gives up, especially married to someone with Jen’s experience. There’s to be a flat in the old Manor for Great-grandma while she lives and I expect Jen and Rod will eventually take it over.’

  ‘All very nicely cut and dried,’ Lesley said now, her green eyes glinting, her lips tight. ‘And where do the Australian Trevendones come into Mr. Defontaine’s arrangements?’ Dominic, as usual, retreated as soon as he came up against any unpleasantness. He put his hands up in mock surrender and begged her not to slay him with her beautiful eyes.

  ‘There’s that brawny Aussie who seems to be monopolising one of them,’ he mocked. ‘Don’t you know I’m jealous as hell of him, little Yseult. As for Rick, within a few years he’ll be able to buy Trevendone up ten times over. If I’m not serious about anything else, darling, I am about Rick. He’s got what it takes. He’ll never need to bother about Trevendone. As to Rita, you’ve got a problem there, no doubt of that. Get her married off as soon as you can, preferably to someone who’ll beat her three times a day. That’s my advice about Rita.’

  Lesley frowned and refused to take up that challenge. Her lips were compressed. She wasn’t going to allow Rick to be cheated of what was due to him at Trevendone, and nobody need think she was.

  She got up, dusting the sand from her suntanned body. ‘Come on, time’s up, Dominic,’ she said, flinging her towel round her shoulders. ‘I’ll race you.’

  She left him still sprawling on the sands and began to run towards the steps and the pathway up to the cliffs. Within a few moments he caught her up and held on to one of her hands. ‘Les, there’s just one more thing. Blake’s been making enquiries in Australia. He’s found that Ralph Trevendone wasn’t killed in a mine disaster in Queensland as the family have believed for years, but there’s one thing nobody seems able to trace, and that’s the marriage certificate... Ralph Trevendone’s marriage certificate to your mother. I thought I ought to tell you,’ he went on hastily as he saw the way her face had gone very pale. ‘It doesn’t matter in the slightest, Les, and I expect it will turn up all in good time, but...’

  Lesley nodded, her lips very stiff. ‘Thanks for telling me, Dominic. I’ll be seeing you.’

  She raced ahead of him again, into the old Manor and up the Elizabethan staircase to the bathroom on the floor where she and Rita shared a bedroom. She peeled off her bikini, had a cold shower and then with her towel around her ran into the small bedroom. She slid quickly into her scanty underwear and the plain blue frock which she wore at the reception desk. There were still a few more minutes before she need take over from Jennifer.

  She went over to one of the small windows about which Rita grumbled incessantly, saying she couldn’t breathe, though they stood wide every night, allowing the distant roar of the surf to lull them to sleep.

  This was it, then, the tightrope she had been walking ever since she had decided to bring the twins from Australia. For among Margaret Trevendone’s papers she hadn’t been able to find the marriage certificate either. It must be somewhere, or some record of it, but Lesley hadn’t known where to enquire. She knew Margaret Trevendone far too well to think there had been no marriage. It was somewhere, that certificate. It would turn up, she was sure. Then th
ey would know she wasn’t Lesley, Trevendone, but by that time it wouldn’t matter. She would have succeeded in what she had set out to do—to bring the twins to their father’s home and see them established as the heirs to the Trevendone estate.

  And then Lesley laughed. An estate that didn’t exist ... an estate that the twins didn’t want!

  Her thoughts went again to what Dominic had said about Kick a few minutes before. Steve said very much the same thing, and even, to her surprise, Blake Defontaine was of the same opinion.

  He had spoken to her about it one morning after he and Sorrel had been with a party from the hotel to the discotheque down at Penpethic Harbour.

  ‘I might not have all that faith in my own judgment,’ he had said with unwanted modesty. ‘After all, I don’t pretend to be an authority on that sort of thing, but I talked to Tim Drage and he’s more sure of Rick’s ability to succeed than he’s ever been sure of anything in his life. I know Drage. He’s straight. He’ll give Rick a square deal. Frankly, I’ve got complete faith in both of them.’

  Lesley looked at her watch. She hadn’t time to stand brooding here. She ought to be at the reception desk ... now.

  The summer days wore on with no let-up, for Lesley at least. It was as if Blake was determined to get the last ounce of energy from her once her work in the hotel was finished.

  She realised sadly that he was working against time himself too, wanting to get the affairs of the hotel settled and his book finished before he and Sorrel were married at the end of the season.

  The twins were now on holiday and Rick was spending all his time practising with the groups down at Penpethic Harbour. Lesley lay awake some nights. It was not what she had wanted for Rick, but how could she possibly stand in his way when everybody about her predicted phenomenal success for him?

  ‘Not that you’ll be able to even if you tried.’ That was from Blake, as always, grim and direct. ‘Rick is an artist and nothing and nobody will prevent him fulfilling himself in his own way.’

  Rita was around rather more than the boy. Sulkily she gave Mrs. Piper the minimum of assistance in making her own bed, tidying their bedroom and Ricky’s and helping with the washing up. The rest of the time she spent surfing and sunbathing when the weather was kind either on the hotel beach, but more often at Penpethic Harbour with Ricky or on the St Benga Town surfing beach where the Australian rangers gave most of their demonstrations.

  Lesley had tried without success to find out Rita’s motive in taking Sheba out on that early summer evening. Sorrel had not spoken of it again and Rita always shrugged the subject off. One strange change had come out of the episode. Her animosity against Blake appeared to have vanished, either because his discipline had tamed her—and that seemed an unlikely conclusion to Lesley—or that she had come to admire him for some quality of his own.

  But so far as Lesley was concerned, one thing she was determined to do and that was to ignore the suggestion from Dominic and Sorrel that Rita was infatuated with Steve. She might have a schoolgirlish crush on him—in a way it had started in Melbourne before they sailed, but there was nothing more to it than that. Down at Penpethic Harbour at the discotheque she danced with boys of her own age and seemed to enjoy their company.

  The golden weeks worn on. In the sheltered parts of the hotel garden the palm trees rustled in the soft westerly sea-scented wind. Magnificent hydrangeas in deep pinks and blues and dark wine colour gave dramatic foregrounds to the wide windows and terraces which led down from the back of the new Manor.

  In the flower beds of the Elizabethan courtyard, Mrs. Sinkins pinks scented the air with idyllic fragrance and petunias, niesembryanthemums and a host of other flowers added colour and glamour to the lovely Manor House basking in the golden summer.

  Occasionally in her brief moments of leisure, instead of going on to the cliffs or the beach, now full of hotel visitors, Lesley would wander up the narrow winding lane which led from the Manor to the village, free of the traffic of the busy coast road. Now its high banks and hedges were dotted with wild roses and the sweet-smelling honeysuckle.

  The village itself was small, a huddle of cottages of grey Cornish stone, but the church was by contrast large and Lesley had once or twice looked round at the plaques inside, placed in memory of long-dead Trevendones, buried not in the big vault in the churchyard but at sea in naval battles, one killed by pirates on the coast of China and others lying at rest on the American continent.

  It seemed a far cry from the peace and old-fashioned atmosphere of the village and the old Manor House to the quiet comfort yet sophistication of the new Manor. One of her pleasures was to sit occasionally over a cup of tea in the kitchen and hear Mrs. Piper talk about the old Cornwall—the superstitions that were still part of village life, the whisper of witchcraft and of course the piskies.

  ‘And now we’re just praying for the good weather to hold over for the Revel,’ Mrs. Piper remarked. Lesley had already discovered that this was the patronal festival of the village church, dedicated to a Cornish St Freda.

  Even Blake Defontaine couldn’t ignore the Revel, it seemed. ‘We are all expected to put in an appearance at some of the events,’ he told Lesley. ‘It’s one of the things expected of the Trevendones, who were once the feudal lords of the district. There’s the church service in the morning, the children’s service in the afternoon and then on Monday a jamboree of sorts in the field next to the church and a supper and dance in the evening. We shall just have to split up as to when we go. A pity it comes at the beginning of August just when none of us has time for fun and games. You’d better settle for the dance. Jennifer says she’ll do reception desk duty on Monday night as she’s helping at one of the stalls in the afternoon.’

  As usual he was settling things in his own lordly manner, thought Lesley. He might say none of them had time for fun and games just now, but Sorrel was always hanging around the Manor. Of course they were engaged, if not yet officially, and you couldn’t blame her for wanting to be with the man she loved.

  Blake’s housekeeper had brought Lesley a tray of tea, for she was going to work on late into the evening. As she poured herself a cup she saw Blake and Sorrel walking across the lawn from the Lodge. A wind had risen this afternoon, driving away .the sea mist which earlier had come creeping inland, pressing up against the windows of the little office like spirits trying to get in. Now the wind sent Sorrel’s black hair flying as she raised a laughing face to Blake’s.

  It was the mist earlier on that had made her feel so depressed, Lesley told herself drearily. The sooner she came to terms with herself, the better. She had just got to get her stupid emotions under control.

  CHAPTER X

  The weekend of the Revel didn’t prove particularly kind. There was a thunderstorm on the Sunday and then it settled down to steady rain for most of the night and the next morning. But later it began to clear and in the late afternoon the sun came out, the raindrops glistening on the flowers and leaves.

  Lesley had suggested that Steve accompany her to the dance and he had said cheerfully that it sounded as if it would be fun. Then nearly at the last minute he had phoned from some place miles down the coast saying there had been trouble over the demonstration and he would have to stay down there and sort it out.

  Rita had turned up her nose at the idea of a village dance and gone off with. Rick to the discotheque. However, Mrs. Piper had come back from her duties at her stall in the afternoon in order to give her son Jeff his tea.

  Lesley had been lending Steve the Mini as she herself was using it so seldom. Jeff had a motorbike and would have given Lesley a lift up to the village hall, but there was Mrs. Piper, so the three walked along the narrow high-banked lane, the flower scents rising like incense after the day’s rain.

  Lesley was wearing a sleeveless white dress, a stunning contrast to her lovely honey tan. She was carrying her green sandals and wearing a necklace of flat green stones that matched her eyes.

  The gates which broke the
banks and the high hedge showed the ripened barley with scarlet poppies and pimpernels at the edges of the fields. In the cottage gardens bushes of buddleia and lavender and large white arum lilies with other colourful flowers gave off their evening scent all the sweeter after the rain.

  In the village hall long tables were spread and people were already sitting down to plates of luscious ham and tongue, salads, sandwiches, sausage rolls, Cornish pasties, trifles, bowls of fruit, jugs of Cornish cream and delicious cakes.

  Lesley sat between Jeff and Lennie who ran the village store and ate a larger meal than she had ever eaten in her life. ‘I shan’t be able to dance a step!’ she gasped.

  At the farther end of the table she could see Dominic, gay and laughing with Sorrel beside him, vivid and beautiful in a scarlet dress of wild silk. Dominic waved to Lesley, but Sorrel, though she looked her up and down with an insolent dark glance, did not appear to recognise her. Lesley searched in vain for one more figure, but he turned up only just before supper was finishing. She was amused by the way so many women jumped up to ply him with refreshments. The Trevendones, he had said, were expected to attend. It went back to the time when they were the feudal lords. And it was so very obvious who was the feudal lord here tonight.

  The tables were cleared and pushed aside and a three-piece band began to play, sometimes modem, sometimes old-time, for many of the dancers were middle-aged or even elderly.

  Lesley danced with one or two young men whom she didn’t know and Dominic, pausing with his partner, one of the hotel guests, enquired about Steve. He didn’t ask Lesley for a dance, for he was obviously expecting to claim Sorrel again. She was now dancing with Blake. When her dance was finished, Lesley went back to Mrs. Piper, but as the band, struck up again, she saw Blake walking across the floor in her direction. Something like panic seized her by the throat, but before he reached her, Sorrel was at his side, her hand on his arm.