Sweet Sanctuary Read Free

incredulous dismay.
    "I've got a job there."
    "A job?" His voice hardened.
    "Do stop repeating everything I say!"
    "What sort of job?"
    "Companion-secretary," she said smugly. "To Mrs. Butler."
    "Aunt Elaine? I knew she was up to something when she went up to London so suddenly. I might have known! And I understand her very well—this is the gauntlet,"
    "What?" Kate was bewildered.
    "You," he said impatiently.
    "What about me?"
    "You are the gauntlet, of course. Thrown down— defiance. I should have expected it."
    "I'm sorry," she said weakly. "I don't understand
what
you're talking about."
    "Aunt Elaine has been asked to leave my house because I'm getting married, but she refuses to go. To consolidate her position she has chosen to employ you. You're to be her ally. She feels she needs one. Also the very fact that she has engaged you makes her position somehow stronger, makes her a permanent fixture."
    Kate sighed. "Oh, dear, it sounds most unpleasant! Are you going to tell me to go away?"
    He looked at her in surprise. "Well, what do you think? You must see that your own position will be untenable! I own Sanctuary. I've allowed Aunt Elaine to live there rent-free for years—she isn't even my aunt, really, just an aunt by marriage. Now I want her to leave, and she's perfectly able to buy her own home. She has a private income—money her husband left. It wasn't much ten years ago, but she hasn't had to use it while she lived with me, and she has quite enough to live on for the rest of her life. She is nearly seventy, after all."
    "So old?" Kate was astonished. Then, reproachfully, "And you mean to turn her out of her home at that age? It might kill her!"
    "We would never have thought of it if she'd been prepared to accept Sylvia, but from the start she set her face against my marriage. We've been engaged for six months, and Aunt Elaine just will not compromise at all. I meant to have her live with us at first, but she quarrelled with Sylvia on sight. They're like a couple of cats. Life would be intolerable. I've done everything I can to reconcile them."
    "Perhaps Sylvia doesn't wish to be reconciled?"
    He looked irritably at her. "I don't know why I'm discussing this with you. We might as well drive on to Sanctuary as we've come so far. You can stay the night. You must leave in the morning."
    Kate said nothing. He drove on in silence, frowning. The hedge-lined lane gave way suddenly to a rough flint wall. Then they came to a high wooden gate. A row of cats sat along the top, staring down at them.
    Kate started in surprise. Seeing her face, Nicholas laughed.
    "They belong to Aunt Elaine. Didn't you know? She runs this place as an animal sanctuary. I think the name gave her the idea—it's always been called Sanctuary since the Middle Ages when it was a monastery! The house has been in my family for a hundred years."
    They passed through the gate and along a road lined with slender silver birch. The spring sunlight rippled through the new green leaves on the branches. Beyond the drive a sloping green lawn led to a calm ring of silvery water, ringed with young willows, whose slanting newly minted leaves swayed in the breeze. Beneath them glinted the gold of crocus and primrose. Behind stood the house, built of the same grey stone and flint as the encircling wall.
    "They built the house from the remains of the monastery in the sixteenth century," Nicholas told her, watching her face with deep interest.
    She stared in sheer delight, her mobile features revealing every flicker of thought and emotion.
    The house was built on a slight curve, like a drawn bow, and at the south end stood a tower, battlemented, with slit windows on all levels.
    "A wealthy nabob built the Gothic tower in the eighteenth century," she was quickly informed. "He dreamed of living in a romantic castle. I had it modernised inside—I live there myself and leave Aunt Elaine the rest of the house. My bedroom is at the top there—that Norman arched