The Quiet Heart Read Free Page B

could afford to indulge his whims, and judging by the quiet look of satisfaction on his face as he stood opposite her and surveyed her very frequently did. She stammered:
    “I wasn’t thinking of myself.”
    “Weren’t you?” The flicker of contempt was back in his eyes again, and it affected her with a sensation of being powerless. He cast his half smoked cigarette off the roof-top, turned the collar of his coat up higher about his ears, apparently became aware for the first time of the stinging wind, and suggested that it might be a good idea to go below again. “It’s not particularly clement up here,” he observed.
    “It certainly isn’t.” Mr. Minty’s voice was sharp and displeased, and it was rather bold of him as this was one of his most valuable clients. “Poor Mrs. Fairlie looks as if she’s chilled to the bone, and we really ought to have insisted that she fetched a coat.” He actually sounded so concerned that she was afraid he was going to offer her his own coat. “We can’t have you catching pneumonia, Mrs. Fairlie,” attempting a joke that misfired.
    Alison reassured him at once.
    “Oh, I’m very tough, I really am!”
    But she looked so slight, and her eyes were watering so noticeably, and the tip of her nose was such a delicate shade of harebell blue, that Charles Leydon’s expression underwent yet another change, and he frowned.
    “Why on earth didn’t you tell us that you were feeling the cold, Mrs. Fairlie?” he said sharply. “And it certainly would have been more sensible if you’d put on a coat.”
    She attempted to defend her stupidity.
    “I didn’t think ... I mean, it didn’t occur to me that you might wish to come up here—”
    “Why not? I said I wished to see over the house, and even a house the size of Leydon has a roof. The roof is a very important part of a house.”
    “Yes, of—of course.” She felt she was guilty whichever way you looked at it.
    “We’ll go back to your rooms and you can give me that cup of coffee you offered me before. You’d better have one yourself, too ... and Minty here, of course.”
    “I think Mrs. Fairlie had better have a glass of hot whisky and lemon,” the solicitor stated it as his opinion, a trifle peevishly. “It will be better than coffee.” He could have added, “And I think I’d better have one, too!”
    And then he sneezed violently, several times. The cosy, panelled room which Alison called her sitting-room was empty when they returned to it, and someone had removed the coffee-tray and made up the fire. She suspected Mrs. Davenport, who was hovering in the corridor when they made their appearance, waiting for the small remuneration which she received every Friday. Alison had forgotten that to-day was Friday, but she also knew Mrs. Davenport was an obliging soul.
    She flung her a look of appeal.
    “Do you think you could make some coffee immediately, Mrs. Davenport?” she requested. “And bring it here to the sitting-room.”
    Mrs. Davenport surveyed the new owner sourly ... not at all as if she had once acted as his nanny, or his wet-nurse, which she most certainly had not.
    “Three cups?” she enquired, her lips tightening. “You look as if you ought to take a couple of aspirins with yours, Mrs. Fairlie. It’s hardly the time of year for taking a closer look at the chimney stacks,” which proved she was very knowledgeable about the manner in which they had passed the last hour or so.
    Charles Leydon walked past her and into the sitting-room. He cast a mildly surprised glance around him, as if expecting to find the three girls there still, and then strode across to the fire and extended his hands to the blaze.
    “Oh, by the way, Mrs. Fairlie,” he called over his shoulder, “ask your henchwoman not to take her departure yet. I don’t expect it’s possible for you to provide me with lunch, and, in any case, I’ve made arrangements to return to the Leydon Arms for it. But I shall be spending the night