Alison Fraser - Tainted Love

‘It’s very kind of you, but I’d really prefer not. The only thing I might need is an apron or overall, for the housekeeping, and there’s probably one at the house.’

‘Possibly, but, going on Fen’s previous choices of housekeeper, any garment will go round you twice.’ Louise frowned a little as she assessed Clare’s extremely slim figure.

Clare shrugged in response. She knew how she looked—thin to the point of skinniness, shaped more like a boy than a woman. Once she would have cared. Once she’d been like any teenage girl, preening herself in the mirror, dressing to attract the boys—or at least one particular boy. And where had it led, all that wishing and hoping, believing her looks could get her anything?

Clare’s face hardened, reflecting her thoughts, and Louise added softly, ‘I wish you’d let me help...really help.’

‘You have. You’ve got me this job.’

‘I didn’t mean that. I wish you’d open up a little, tell me about yourself.’

Louise reached out a hand to touch her arm. It was plainly a gesture of compassion and understanding, but it took an effort on Clare’s part not to shrug off the gentle hand. She didn’t want to open up. She wanted to stay as she was, locked up tight, safe from thought or feeling.

‘You know why I was in prison,’ she responded evenly as she returned to her packing.

Louise Carlton dropped her hand away, recognising rejection, but persevered. ‘Yes, I know. I just find it impossible to believe you did such a thing. That’s why I haven’t told Fen yet...’ she finished in gentle warning.

‘But what if he asks me?’ Clare worried. ‘He’s bound to want to know why I was in prison.’

‘Yes, well...I did say you’d been convicted of stealing,’ Louise admitted, ‘but that was all. I feel we should wait to tell him the rest.’

‘If you think so.’ Clare left the decision to Louise, seeing no alternative. They both knew full well that, if the brother were to find out the truth, Clare would be shown the door.

As it was, she travelled up to Oxford with Louise Carlton that afternoon, almost positive that her stay at Woodside Hall would be brief and fraught enough, without the added complication of true confessions.

‘Fen is going to be surprised when he sees you,’ Louise said, when they finally drew up outside the Georgian manor house.

The big oak door opened just as they climbed out of the car. Fen Marchand stood on the threshold, ignoring Louise’s smile of greeting, looking past her to Clare.

To say he was surprised was an understatement. Shocked or, possibly, horrified was nearer the mark, Clare thought.

‘Well, brother, dear,’ Louise spoke first, ‘are you just going to stare at the poor girl or are you going to welcome her to Woodside Hall?’

For a moment longer it seemed that Fen Marchand was going to do just that—stare at her—as he continued to stand there, motionless. Then he took his sister’s hint and, leaving the doorway, approached Clare.

Dark-suited the last time they’d met, today he was dressed in a polo shirt and casual trousers. Tall and muscular, he was built more like an athlete than a college professor, but his voice and manner were those of a dry-as-dust intellectual.

‘Miss Anderson,’ he addressed her formally, ‘I assume my sister has informed you about your terms and conditions, and so forth?’

‘Yes...thank you.’ Clare kept her tone equally neutral.

‘Very well,’ he continued, ‘you may start tomorrow...if that’s acceptable?’

‘Yes, fine,’ she nodded in response.

‘Good, then I’ll show you to your room. Have you brought any luggage?’ he asked abruptly.

Clare nodded again. ‘It’s in the boot.’

Louise, keeping her distance till then, appeared with the keys. ‘Here, Fen, you fetch Clare’s case while I show her the attic you’re exiling her to. Come on.’ She smiled invitingly at Clare and led the way inside.

Clare followed with some reluctance. Although Fen Marchand had been polite and correct to her, it was just a façde. She hadn’t forgotten their last encounter at the railway station, and neither had he.

She felt his eyes boring into her back as she walked through the front door and, despite the heat of the day, shivered in the marble-tiled hall, before following Louise up the wide staircase to the galleried landing of the first floor. They passed a series of rooms, turned a corner into another corridor and went to the door at the far end. It opened out into a much narrower staircase.

Clare began to have visions of dust and darkness, with a single bed for furniture and, perhaps, if she was lucky, a candle to read by. But it seemed she’d been reading too many novels in the prison library. She was quite taken aback when they arrived at their destination.

It wasn’t so much a room as an open-plan flat, with a living area at one end and a bedroom plus shower cubicle at the other. It was furnished in genuine antique pine, with a polished wooden floor, rug-scattered, and a large old-fashioned sofa upholstered in blue velvet. Light streamed in from a series of skylights and heat was provided by a fairly modern gas heater inset in the wall.

‘A bit of a climb, I’m afraid,’ Louise apologised as Clare looked round the room.

‘I didn’t expect...anything like this.’ Clare’s uncertainty hid her delight in the place. After prison and the hostel, it seemed unreal.

‘Yes, well, the only trouble is the lack of toilet,’ Louise said, still in an apologetic vein. ‘You’ll have to go downstairs for that. A dreadful inconvenience, I know, but at least you’ll have a bit of privacy up here.’

‘It’s absolutely wonderful,’ Clare assured the older woman, her smile showing she meant it. ‘I just didn’t expect anywhere so nice.’

Louise smiled in response. ‘Well, I’m glad you like it. It used to be the servants’ quarters in bygone times—a rather dingy, depressing place—but Fen had it refurbished for my son Gerry to board in while he was up at Oxford. I don’t think it has had any use since.’

Clare frowned, wondering if she’d understood correctly. ‘What about the other housekeepers? Didn’t they stay here?’

Louise looked embarrassed for a moment as she shook her head. ‘Well, no, most of them have lived out, or occupied a couple of adjoining rooms on the first floor...but Fen thought you might prefer up here.’ Louise’s hesitancy cast doubt over her brother’s motives.

Clare was quite sure Fen Marchand couldn’t care less about her preferences. It seemed much more likely that it was his own privacy he was protecting. Having opened his house to a convicted criminal, he’d decided to isolate her as far as possible from the rest of the household.

Well, Clare didn’t object. She’d clean his house and cook his meals as efficiently as she could, and, when not working, keep to her own company. She had no wish to become a so-called ‘part of the family’. Apart from her dislike of Marchand, she believed no housekeeper was ever really such.

Her thoughts went to her own mother. She’d worked for Lord Abbotsford for over fifteen years and her ladyship had often referred to her as ‘almost one of the family’. But, even as a child, Clare had known they were just words, empty words. It had simply been a way of claiming Mary Anderson’s loyalty. When her mother had become ill with stomach cancer, the Holsteads had been conspicuous by their absence.

Clare’s mouth twisted at the memory and it was a bitter expression Fenwick Marchand caught as he walked through the attic door. His eyes narrowed; he was clearly wondering what she was thinking, scheming...

Then Louise turned and spotted him, saying, ‘This was a good idea of yours, Fen. Clare loves it. Don’t you, Clare?’