Victoria Holt - The Secret Woman

Redvers Stretton was actually alone with me in my bedroom and Aunt Charlotte was in the house! I must at least go downstairs as quickly as possible.

He understood and picked up the candle which he had put on the dressing table. But we could not hurry of course; we must pick our way carefully. As we came to the turn of the staircase and looked down at the hall, Aunt Charlotte saw us. Mrs. Morton was standing beside her; Ellen was there too, white-faced and tense.

“Anna!” said Aunt Charlotte in a voice which reverberated like thunder. “What do you think you are doing?”

The Queen’s House could never have known a more dramatic moment: Redvers towering above me — he was very tall and he was standing one stair up; the candlelight flickering; our shadows on the wall; and Aunt Charlotte standing there in her traveling cloak and bonnet, her face white with the strain of fatigue and pain, looking more than ever like a man dressed up as a woman, powerful and malevolent.

I walked down the stairs and he kept close to me.

“Captain Stretton called,” I said trying to speak naturally.

He took the matter out of my hands. “Perhaps I should explain, Miss Brett. I had heard so much of your wonderful treasure store that I could not resist coming to see it for myself. I was not expecting such hospitality.”

She was a little taken aback. Was she, too, susceptible to that charm?

She grunted and said: “You can scarcely judge antiques by candlelight.”

“Yet it must often have been by candlelight that those wonderfully wrought pieces were shown in the past, Miss Brett. I wanted to get the effect by candlelight. And Miss Brett kindly allowed me to do this.”

She was assessing his possibilities as a buyer. “What are you particularly interested in, Captain Stretton?”

I said quickly, “Captain Stretton was greatly impressed by the Levasseur cabinet.”

Aunt Charlotte grunted. “It’s a fine piece,” she said. “You’d never regret having it. It would be very easy to place if ever you wanted to pass it on.”

“I am sure of it,” he said earnestly.

“Have you seen it in daylight?” Her voice was ironical. She didn’t believe for one moment in this act. To her it was an absurd charade.

“No. That’s a pleasure in store for me.”

Aunt Charlotte was staring at the candlestick in his hand.

“Aunt Charlotte,” I said, “you must be very tired after your journey.”

“Then I should take my leave,” said Redvers. “And thank you for your kind hospitality.”

“And the Levasseur?”

“In daylight,” he said. “As you tell me I should.”

“Come tomorrow,” she said, “I’ll show it to you myself.”

He bowed.

“Ellen will show you out.”

But I was not having that. I said firmly: “I will.”

And I went with him to the door. I stood in the garden with him. I was talking wildly about the cabinet. “That marquetry of brass on the tortoiseshell background is really very beautiful. There is no doubt that it is genuine Levasseur …”

“Oh, no doubt at all,” he said.

It was autumn and I could smell the peculiar odor of chrysanthemums and the dampness of the ground and the mist on the river. Whenever I smell those smells I remember that night. My enchanted evening was over; and he was going away. I was shut in my prison; he would leave me for his life of adventure and I would go back to my infuriated jailer.

“I think she is a little put out,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“I thought she would be away another night.”

“I meant I’m sorry I’m going away. I’m leaving you to face that …”

“I could face it if …”

He knew what I meant. If he were there to face it with me, if I could see him now and then, even if they were stolen meetings, I would not care. I was twenty-one years of age. I did not have to be Aunt Charlotte’s slave forever.

“I wish it had been different,” he said, and I wondered what he meant by that. I waited for him to go on, and I knew I could not stay long. Inside the Queen’s House Aunt Charlotte was waiting. “Different?” I insisted. “You mean you wish you hadn’t come?”

“I couldn’t wish that,” he said. “It was a wonderful evening until the ogress returned. She didn’t believe me, you know, about that … thing.”

“No,” I said, “she didn’t.”

“I hope it is not going to be … disagreeable.”

“But the evening before she came was so very agreeable.”

“You found it so?”

I could not hide my feelings. “The most agreeable evening I have …” No I must not be so naïve. I finished, “That I have spent for a long time.”

“I shall be back,” he said.

“When?”

“Perhaps sooner than you think.”

He took my face in his hands and looked at me; I thought he was going to kiss me, but he seemed to change his mind and suddenly, he was gone and I was alone in the autumn-scented garden.

I went back into the house. Aunt Charlotte was not there. Ellen was clearing the table.

“Your aunt’s gone to bed,” she said. “Mrs. Morton’s helping her. She’s worn out. She says she’ll see you, and me, in the morning. Oh miss — we’re in for it, we really are.”

I went back to my room. Such a short time ago he had been there with me. He had brought a magical touch to my life and now he was gone. I had been foolish to imagine … What had I imagined? What did a young woman who was not outstandingly attractive have to interest a man who must surely be the most charming in the world?

And yet … there was something in the manner in which he had looked at me. Had I shown too clearly my feelings?

I took out the figurehead and set it on the dressing table. Then I undressed and when I got into bed I took the figurehead with me — a foolish childish gesture, but I found it comforting.

It was a long time before I could sleep but at last I dozed. I awoke with a start. It was the creak of a floorboard — the sound of a footstep on the stair which had disturbed me. Someone was coming up to the top of the house … footsteps and the tap-tap of Aunt Charlotte’s stick.

I sat up in bed; I stared at the door which slowly opened and she stood there.

She looked grotesque in her camel’s-hair dressing gown with the military buttons, her long gray hair in a coarse thick plait, and in her hand the ebony-topped stick which she used since her arthritis made it difficult for her to walk about. She carried a candle — in a plain wooden stick, not one of our valuable ones.

She glared at me. “You may well look ashamed of yourself,” she said. Her laughter was horrible, sneering and in a way coarse. “I couldn’t sleep for thinking of what happened tonight.”

“I have done nothing of which to be ashamed.”

“That’s what you tell me. So you waited until I was out of the way before you brought him in. How often has he been here? You’re not telling me this was the first time.”

“It was the first time.”

She laughed again. She was angry and frightened. I didn’t know it then but she needed me far more than I needed her. She was a lonely old woman who had to rely on people like Mrs. Morton; but I was to be her salvation. I was going to look after her and the business; she had trained me for just that. And what she feared was that I would marry and leave her — as Emily Beringer had.

She looked round the room. “You’re feeling lonely now he’s gone, I daresay. Don’t tell me he wasn’t up here. I saw the light from the garden. You ought to have thought to draw the curtains. But then you weren’t expecting to be seen, were you? You thought you had the place all to yourself and that Ellen, she was in it, too. A nice example to her, I must say.”