Master of Melincourt Read Free Page B

dog showed its teeth. It growled, and its hackles rose. It was of uncertain ancestry, and it looked very fierce.
    Edwina unwisely turned her back on it, and it leapt at her.
    “Down!” It was Jervis Errol who came to her rescue and shouted at the dog. “Down, Bimbo! Blast the dog, hasn’t anyone succeeded in training it yet?” But although he glanced in a mildly vexed fashion at the groom and the stable lad it was at Edwina that he looked in surprise, and to emphasise his astonishment his shapely black eyebrows rose, and his deep blue eyes narrowed, and looked for a moment almost sinister. “Don’t you know better than to turn your back on a dog when it looks like threatening you?” he demanded. “It’s the very way to be savaged if you want to be savaged!”
    Edwina, who had turned very white, stammered something that sounded like:
    “I’m—I’m not very used to dogs. I’ve only seen it once or twice . .. ”
    He glanced at her contemptuously, short, cheap suede jacket, home-washed hairstyle and all. She was quite certain that for once he really took her all in.
    “Then in future I’d either make overtures of friendship, or keep away from the stable yard,” he recommended. He looked as if he simply couldn’t understand a young woman like her. “Don’t you know anything at all about the country?”
    “She’s terrified of horses,” Tina shrilled at him triumphantly.
    He frowned.
    “Didn’t you ever keep pets? You must have, at some time or other in your life.”
    “Cats,” Edwina answered. “I—I like cats.”
    The expression of contempt on his face grew. “That all?”
    “I once had a couple of budgerigars in a cage ... and a pet mongoose.”
    “Well, that could have bitten you. At least it can be said that you risked life and limb.” But Edwina understood perfectly that his opinion of her was not appreciably increased. “It’s a pity you don’t ride, because I like the infant here to have a daily canter, and she has to be accompanied. It’s not always convenient for me to accompany her, and Richards hasn’t got the time.” Richards was the groom. “Do you think you might possibly be induced to overcome your nervousness and take riding lessons while you’re here? It would be an additional accomplishment when you go looking for another job.”
    But Edwina hesitated.
    “I’ll—I’ll think about it, if you don’t mind.”
    He turned away with a shrug of his shoulders, and — although she couldn’t really see his face—a slight curl of the lip, she was sure.
    “Well, chicken, I’ll ride with you to-morrow morning,” he promised his niece, “so make sure you’re up early and ready when I throw a handful of gravel up at your window. I don’t like to be kept waiting, as you know ... not even by a charmer like you, my sweet,” with such ironical emphasis that Edwina wondered whether he really did consider his niece the complete infantile charmer.
    She and Tina went up to their rooms and for the remainder of that evening there were no violent clashes, although when Edwina was supervising her bathing arrangements Tina deliberately emptied the contents of a large jar of bath salts into the water. Without correcting her or making any complaint Edwina ran away the water and filled the bath afresh, and as the small attempt to create a diversion had misfired Tina more or less meekly submitted to the process of being cleansed under the eyes of her governess, and afterwards drank her milk and went to bed without fuss ... although as usual she took her transistor radio to bed with her, and there was the usual short argument about the cat sleeping on the bed—which always meant in the bed—and how many of its kittens when they finally arrived would be allowed to survive.
    “I shall keep them all,” Tina insisted sleepily, “and they’ll all stay up here !”
    Edwina carried off the cat to her own sitting-room, and somewhat wearily because her days with Tina had so far proved