Devil at Archangel
Sara Craven

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Former journalist SARA CRAVEN published her first novel ‘Garden of Dreams’ for Mills & Boon in 1975. Apart from her writing (naturally!) her passions include reading, bridge, Italian cities, Greek islands, the French language and countryside, and her rescue Jack Russell/cross Button. She has appeared on several TV quiz shows and in 1997 became UK TV Mastermind champion. She lives near her family in Warwickshire – Shakespeare country.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

COVER

TITLE PAGE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

ENDPAGE

COPYRIGHT

CHAPTER ONE

‘LOT thirty-four—this fine pair of Staffordshire figures, ladies and gentlemen. Now what am I bid for …?’

The penetrating tones of the auctioneer were suddenly reduced to a subdued murmur as Christina quietly closed the dining room door behind her and began to walk slowly down the flagged passage to the rear of the cottage.

It had been a mistake to stay on for the sale. She realised that now. Mr Frith had warned her that she might find it an upsetting experience, seeing the place she had thought of as home for the past six years being literally sold up around her ears. She should have believed him and moved—not merely out, but away. It was only sentiment that had caused her to remain, she thought. A longing to buy just something, however small, from among her godmother’s treasures to provide her with a reminder of past happiness.

As it was, the prices that the china, furniture and other antiques were fetching had only served as a poignant and disturbing reminder of her own comparative pennilessness. She must have been mad even to think of joining in the bidding, knowing that she would be up against dealers and collectors.

One thing was certain—the Websters would be only too delighted with the results of the sale. She had seen them sitting together at the back of the room, exchanging smiles of triumph as the bidding proceeded. Everything, as far as they were concerned, was going entirely to plan. It was no good telling herself that they had every right to do as they had done. They had made that more than clear already in every interview she’d had with them. Legally, she had no rights at all, she knew, and morality didn’t enter into it.

She walked despondently into the back kitchen. Like everywhere else in the cottage, it had been stripped bare of everything saleable, and the big fitted dresser looked oddly forlorn without its usual complement of bright willow pattern and copperware.

Christina went over to the sink and ran the cold tap, cupping her hand beneath it, so that she could drink. She pressed the few remaining drops of moisture in her palm against her forehead and throbbing temples.

She still could not fully comprehend the suddenness of the change in her life and circumstances. She knew, because Mr Frith had endlessly told her so, that she must think about the future and make some kind of a plan for herself. But what? It seemed for the past six years she had been living in some kind of fool’s paradise. And for that she had to thank Aunt Grace, so kind and affectionate in her autocratic way, and so thoroughly well-meaning towards her orphaned goddaughter, but when it came to it, so disastrously vague.

After all, as Vivien Webster had patronisingly pointed out to her, what more could she expect, when she was not even a blood relation? It was a phrase Mrs Webster was fond of using, often with a delicate handkerchief pressed to her eyes, or the corner of her mouth, and if Christina thought it sounded odd coming from someone who had almost studiously held aloof from Aunt Grace when she was alive, she kept that strictly to herself.

Aunt Grace, after all, had been no fool. She had been well aware that she was regarded as a future meal ticket by her niece and her husband, yet it had made no difference, apparently. Her brief will had left everything unconditionally to Vivien Webster, while Christina who had been her constant companion, run the cottage for her with the spasmodic help of Mrs Treseder from the village, and done all her godmother’s secretarial work for the various charities with which she was connected, had not even warranted a mention.

Not that she had ever expected or wanted anything, she reminded herself. It had always been Aunt Grace who had insisted that she had seen to it that Christina would be well looked after in the event of anything happening to herself, although she had never specified what form this care would take. She had said so over and over again, especially when Christina had tried to gain some measure of independence by suggesting that she took a training course, or acquired some other type of qualification.

‘There’s no need for that, my dear,’ Miss Grantham would remark bracingly. ‘You’ll never want, I promise you. I shall see to that, don’t worry.’

And yet, Christina thought wryly, here she was without a job, a home or any kind of security—not even allowed so much as a breathing space in her old home to gather her wits and formulate some kind of plan for the future. She gave a little painful sigh and stared out of the window at the small vegetable garden where she and Aunt Grace had spent so many back-aching hours up to the time of that last but fatal illness.

Not for the first time she wondered if Aunt Grace had really known just how ill she had been. Certainly she had robustly rejected all suggestions that she looked tired, and all urgings to rest more and conserve her energy in the months preceding her death. In fact she had seemed to drive herself twice as hard, as if she guessed that she might not have very much time left, and she had driven Christina hard too.

Christina gave a slight grimace. She had a whole range of accomplishments to put in an advertisement—‘Capable girl, nineteen, can cook a little, garden a little, type a little, nurse a little …’ The list seemed endless. Yet she had to acknowledge that she was a Jill of all trades and actually mistress of none. Had she anything to offer an employer more stringent than Aunt Grace had been? This was her chief worry.

Up to now, of course, her not always expert services had been accepted, if not always with entire good humour, but she could not expect that a stranger would be prepared to make the same allowances for her.

She had been whisked off to live with her godmother when her own mother, widowed while Christina was still a baby, had herself succumbed to a massive and totally unexpected heart attack. Christina had stayed on at the same school, aware for the first time that the fees were being paid, as they had always been, by Aunt Grace. When she was sixteen, her godmother had commanded her to leave school to ‘keep her company’ and she had perforce to abandon any idea of further study and obey. Not that it had been such a bad life, Christina thought, sudden nostalgia tightening her throat. She had liked the small rather cosy village community of which Aunt Grace had been so active a member. She had learned to appreciate the changing seasons with a new and heightened awareness, and had come to enjoy the pattern of her year and its traditional festivities without any particular yearning for the discos and parties being enjoyed by her contemporaries.

Keeping Aunt Grace company had not always been easy. Her godmother was an imperious woman belonging to a very different generation. She did not believe in Women’s Lib, even in its mildest form, and it was her openly expressed view that every woman needed a man to look after her and protect her from what she darkly referred to as ‘folly’, though she invariably refused to be more specific.

Her own form of male protection, for she had never married, came in the substantial shape of Mr Frith, her family solicitor, whose advice she followed almost religiously on every problem, except apparently in one instance—that of Christina’s future. Mr Frith told Christina frankly after the funeral and the reading of the will that he had tried on a number of occasions to persuade Miss Grantham to alter her will and make some provision for her, but without success.

‘She pretended she couldn’t hear me,’ he told Christina regretfully, and Christina, who had often been subjected to the same treatment herself when presenting Aunt Grace with some unpalatable piece of information, had to sympathise with him.

All Christina could surmise was that Aunt Grace had intended to make provision for her, but had not been able to decide what form it should take. And now, of course, it was too late and there was no point in wondering what this might have been.

It was clear from the very start that Mrs Webster was not prepared to be magnanimous in any way. Christina was merely an encumbrance to be shed as soon as possible, and she did not even pretend a polite interest in the future of the girl who had been her aunt’s ward. Christina was allowed to infer that Mrs Webster thought she was extremely lucky to have lived in such comfort rent-free for so long, and that it would do her no harm to stand on her own feet for a change. Nor did she show any great interest in the cottage or its contents. She did not want to give up her life in London for a country existence, and she made it plain she was only interested in converting her inheritance into hard cash as soon as possible.

Christina had hoped forlornly that the Websters might want to retain the cottage as a weekend home, and might be prepared to employ her as a caretaker in their absence, but she was soon disabused of that notion. And when she quietly asked if Mrs Webster knew of anyone who might need a companion to perform the sort of duties that Aunt Grace had demanded, Mrs Webster had merely shrugged her shoulders and talked vaguely of agencies and advertisements.

Mr Frith and his wife had been extremely kind, and had promised to provide her with suitable references when the time came. They had even invited her to stay with them when it became clear that she would have to move out of the cottage without delay so that it could be auctioned with the contents. But Christina had refused their offer. Perhaps, she had told herself, the Websters had a point and it was time she did try to gain some independence. After all, she couldn’t be cushioned against life forever. There were other places outside this little village and outside her total experience, and she would have to find them.

It was taking the first step that was always the hardest, she decided. Her own first step had been a room in the village’s one hotel, but she knew this could not be a permanent arrangement. Her small stock of funds would not permit it, for one thing, and besides, it would soon be high summer and Mrs Thurston would need the accommodation for the casual tourists passing through the village on the way to the coast. As it was, the temporary arrangement suited them both.

Once the auction was over, there would be nothing to hold her here. It was an odd sensation. She felt as if a gate had closed behind her, and she stood alone in the centre of an unfamiliar landscape, unknowing which way to turn.

It was a lonely feeling and she felt tears prick momentarily at the back of her eyelids. It had occurred to her more than once that Aunt Grace might have expected her to marry and find sanctuary that way. Certainly she had always been quite encouraging when any of the local young men showed even a random interest in Christina. But such dates as she had had were few and far between. Christina had felt uncomfortably on several occasions as though her escorts were doing her some kind of favour, and she would not have been human if she had not resented this. After all, her mirror showed that she was not unattractive with her long straight fall of honey-blonde hair, and her thickly lashed grey-green eyes. In deference to Aunt Grace’s stated preferences, she had never worn extravagantly trendy clothes and she had wondered sometimes whether outsiders considered her dowdy.

Since Aunt Grace’s death, it had occurred to her that the attitude of some of the boys who had dated her might have sprung from the fact that they knew how poor her financial prospects were. It was an unpleasant thought, but it had to be faced. Many of the local families were well-to-do and would expect any future daughter-in-law to be drawn from approximately the same financial background and social standing as themselves. They might be kind, but they would not lose sight of the fact that she was only Aunt Grace’s companion.

It was a depressing thought and one she did not feel too inclined to pursue. She glanced at her wristwatch. The sale was barely half over as yet, but she thought it might be best if she slipped away. For one thing, she wanted to avoid another encounter with the Websters, who would be bound to inquire in carrying voices if she had managed to find another job yet. Christina sighed. She did not want to have to admit the humiliating truth—that her few diffident applications for posts so far had not even reached the stage of being invited for an interview.

Besides, she still had the rest of the day in front of her. She could catch the afternoon train to London perhaps and go round some of the agencies that Mrs Webster had mentioned. Perhaps in cases like hers, the personal approach was best. Anyway, time was growing short and she had to find some means of earning her living before her small savings ran out altogether. She had to shake herself out of this painful dream world and take up her life again. There was nothing here for her now, and maybe it had done her no harm to be convinced of the fact.

She took one last and rather sad look at the garden and turned away towards the door.

Then she saw that she was not alone and a startled involuntary ‘Oh!’ broke from her lips. She had not the slightest inkling of any approach, and there was something in the stance of the woman in the doorway that suggested rather uncomfortably to Christina that she had been there quietly for quite some time.

She was not a tall woman, but she had a definite presence, aided by the fact that she was exquisitely dressed in a hyacinth-blue Italian knitted suit. Her shoes and bag looked handmade, and she leaned on a slender ebony cane with a silver handle.

‘Miss Bennett?’ Her voice was calm and low-pitched with more than a trace of some foreign accent.

Christina hesitated for some reason that she could not herself have defined. Then ‘Yes,’ she acknowledged in a low voice. ‘But I’m afraid I don’t know …’

‘As you say, we have never met.’ The other woman smiled slowly, revealing white and even teeth. Yet I assure you, mademoiselle, that I do not in the least regard you as a stranger. In many ways, I feel we are old friends.’ She gave another faint smile at the bewildered expression on Christina’s face.

‘I see that I must explain myself more fully. I am Marcelle Brandon, mademoiselle. Did your godmother never speak of me to you?’

‘Never, as far as I can remember,’ Christina told her honestly. ‘You—you were a friend of hers?’

She found it difficult to credit in many ways even as she spoke. Aunt Grace had been so thoroughly English—never even journeying abroad as far as Christina knew. It was impossible to imagine how she could have struck up any kind of relationship with this rather exotic-looking stranger.

The other inclined her head. ‘We were at school together—also my sister Madeleine. Your godmother never spoke of her either?’

Christina swallowed. ‘No. I don’t think she ever mentioned her schooldays. It always seemed that any friends she had were here in this village.’

‘Latterly that would have been true.’ Mrs Brandon shifted her weight slightly and Christina saw with compassion that she was in pain. But it was only a fleeting impression, and when the bright dark eyes met hers again, they were calm. ‘Yet we corresponded for many years. I last heard from her some eighteen months ago.’

She glanced around. ‘I regret that I am unable to stand for long periods and there does not appear to be a chair …’

‘No, everything went for the sale.’ Try as she would, Christina could not keep that note of desolation completely out of her voice.

‘Then perhaps you know of some more comfortable surroundings where we could talk—where there will not be so many memories, hein?’

Christina paused. She could see absolutely no reason why this old friend of Aunt Grace should want to talk to her, apart from sheer kindness of heart in wishing to comfort her in her bereavement. But this she could not quite believe, although she would have been at a loss to explain why. The strongest impression she got from Mrs Brandon was one of cool self-containment. It was hard to imagine her wasting time on meaningless gestures of sympathy. She wondered why she had come now instead of for the funeral, and who had informed her of Aunt Grace’s death in the first place. She had had the task of passing on the sad news to Aunt Grace’s friends and acquaintances and she knew quite well she had not written to anyone called Brandon. Perhaps Mrs Brandon was here at the auction because she too had wished to buy some last souvenir of her friend, but again this seemed to be out of character.

But why am I saying that? she thought, appalled. I’ve only just met her. She’s a stranger to me. I shouldn’t be attributing motives or anything else to her on first meeting.

She smiled over-brightly, trying to compensate for her own guilty feelings.

‘There is the place where I’m staying,’ she said, a trace of doubt creeping into her voice. Somehow she could not visualise Marcelle Brandon among the faded tapestry covers and mock horse brasses of Mrs Thurston’s sitting room at the Bay Horse.

‘But that would be ideal,’ her visitor said smoothly, scooping up Christina’s mental arguments and dismissing them before they could find utterance. ‘Perhaps there might also be some coffee.’

‘I’m not sure about that,’ Christina admitted. ‘There’ll certainly be tea.’

And tea there was, accompanied by some rather powdery scones. Marcelle Brandon appeared to bear up philosophically under this, but Christina noticed that she barely touched her cup and merely crumbled one of the scones on her plate. Although she had said she wanted to talk, she seemed in no hurry to break the silence that had sprung up between them. She seemed, Christina thought idly, a thousand miles away, her mind fixed on some interior vision, not altogether pleasant. Then she reproached herself for an over-active imagination. After all, this woman had been a close friend of her godmother’s. It was natural that she should seem a little withdrawn. It could not be a happy experience for her to be here now, knowing that they would never meet again.

She cleared her throat. ‘You were very fond of my godmother, madame?’

Mrs Brandon seemed to return with a start to her present surroundings. She lifted one elegantly shaped eyebrow. ‘Naturellement, or I should hardly be here.’

‘No.’ Christina flushed slightly. Then she took her courage in both hands. ‘Forgive me, madame, but I don’t really understand why you have come.’ She swallowed. ‘I—I suppose it’s none of my business, but …’

But the half-expected snub was not forthcoming. Instead Mrs Brandon smiled slightly.

‘Au contraire. It is precisely on your business that I have come. Your godmother wrote to me when she first suspected she might be seriously ill. She never mentioned this to you? No, I thought not. She was concerned as to what might become of you when she died as she was aware that any financial provision she might make in her will would in all probability be contested in the courts, and this would be both costly and unpleasant for you. Her niece—is it not?—plainly resented you already and would have accused you of exerting undue influence on your godmother if she had made you a bequest as she wished.’

Christina nodded dully. ‘Mrs Webster doesn’t like me—not that we’ve met very often. She hardly came near Aunt Grace when she was alive …’ She paused, aware that she might be giving away too much, but Mrs Brandon gave an understanding nod.

‘You are very young, ma chère—Christina, is it not? And you do not yet fully comprehend the way of the world.’

‘If it’s the Websters’ way, I don’t think I want to comprehend it,’ Christina flashed back, then bit her lip.

Mrs Brandon laughed and leaned back in her chair, taking a cigarette from her bag and fitting it into a silver holder. ‘Bon,’ she approved, a little mockingly. ‘I am glad you are not wholly lacking in spirit. You are such a little pale thing. I did not expect …’ She broke off and lit her cigarette. Blowing out a cloud of fragrant smoke, she regarded Christina through half-closed eyes. ‘Tell me, ma chère, what plans have you made? You cannot, one would imagine, intend to stay here?’

‘Oh, no.’ Christina shook her head. ‘That—that would be out of the question, even if I wanted to. I have to get a job.’

‘Very commendable. Have you anything in mind?’

Christina hesitated. It was humiliating to have to admit the truth—that with her lack of qualification she would have to take what she could get and be thankful.

‘Because, if not, I have a plan to put to you,’ Mrs Brandon continued as if she had not noticed the awkward little pause. ‘I myself am looking for a secretary/companion and I think you would suit me very well, if you were willing.’

Christina set her tea cup back on the tray with a hand that shook slightly.

‘It’s very kind of you, madame,’ she said quietly. ‘But I’m sure I’ll be able to find something. I—I don’t need charity, however kindly meant.’

‘You think I offer charity? Then you do not know me very well. I do not offer a sinecure, my child. I suffer from arthritis, as you have seen, and I am not a patient sufferer—my temper has never been of the sweetest. Also there is the isolation. We have none of the entertainments or amusements that young people of your age seem to expect nowadays—no discothèques or night clubs.’

In spite of herself, Christina had to smile. ‘I should hardly miss that kind of thing,’ she returned drily. ‘The Swinging Seventies seem to have passed me by up to now.’ She sent the older woman an inquiring glance. ‘You say your home is isolated, madame? Where do you live? I gather it’s somewhere in France, but …’

Mrs Brandon shook her head. ‘I have never lived in France. I was born, as was Madeleine, my sister, on Martinique in the West Indies. We both attended a convent school in England, and that was where we met your godmother. When I married, I went to live on Ste Victoire, another island, though not so large as Martinique and belonging to the British. In fact, my husband and his brother, who is now dead, owned the greater part of it, and our family still lives at Archangel.’

‘Archangel?’ Christina’s face was alive with interest. ‘What an unusual name for a house.’

‘Yes—and the story behind it is also unusual. It is not merely a house, you understand. There is also a plantation. And because so much of it is private property, Ste Victoire has not been developed and spoiled as so many others have been. I think you would like it there.’

Christina swallowed hard, trying to hold on to reality. Was this really happening to her? Was she actually being offered a job on a Caribbean island—something she had never contemplated even in her wildest dreams? But in spite of her inner excitement, a small voice of sanity still prevailed.

‘But why me? There must be hundreds of people far better qualified than I am who would give their eye teeth for a job like that?’

‘Not as many as you would think,’ Mrs Brandon returned. ‘As I have said, the island is very remote and has few of the glamorous trappings one associates with such a place. We lead quiet lives in privacy. This is not the Caribbean of the travel posters, I assure you. I should warn you too that there are many dangerous reefs around our shores, and that in stormy weather we are often cut off for weeks on end. We have learned to be self-sufficient, because we have had to be.’

Christina shook her head. ‘I still can’t really believe this is happening,’ she said rather quaintly. ‘Nor can I understand why you think I would be suitable. After all, you know hardly anything about me.’

‘I know sufficient,’ Mrs Brandon said quietly. ‘I know from her letters that Grace was most fond of you.’ She leaned forward and placed her hand over Christina’s. ‘Would it make any difference if I told you that it was your godmother’s dearest wish that you should come to me?’

‘No,’ Christina said unhappily. ‘Or—perhaps not in the way you might think. You see, madame, it is charity after all, and I don’t want that. I’ve got to learn to be independent. It’s very kind of you, and I’m sure Aunt Grace had the best of intentions, but I would hate to think I’d been—well—palmed off on to someone …’

‘What is this “palmed off"?’ Mrs Brandon’s tone was cold and she sat back in her chair again, her brows drawn together in a quelling frown. Her glance chilled Christina. ‘You leap to conclusions, my child. If anyone performs a charity, it will be you. A young fresh face to keep me company—young, willing feet to carry messages. You imagine you will not earn your salary? I promise you that you will. There are many lonely spinsters I could choose if I wished to be charitable. But I am a selfish old woman. I wish for someone decorative, and above all someone who will not bore me with a lot of sentimental chatter about past times I have no wish to remember. The young are so impatient generally. They wish the bright lights—the beach parties, and that I cannot offer. But you, I think, have learned the art of patience.’

Christina sat in silence, her thoughts whirling. The temptation to take Mrs Brandon’s words at their face value and accept her offer was almost overwhelming. Almost. Yet, at the same time, her pride baulked at the idea of being handed over from one elderly lady to another. Could this be what Aunt Grace had meant when she had told her that she would see she was taken care of in the future? It was galling, to say the least, as if she was being given no credit for having sufficient intelligence or energy to carve out a life of her own.

She could not deny, however, that if she had merely seen the job advertised somewhere, she would have applied for it. A vision rose in her mind of silver sand and palm trees and softly curling surf. It was like having some cherished wish granted by the wave of a wand. Yet Mrs Brandon with her smooth white hair and air of aloofness was far from being the conventional picture of a fairy godmother, she thought wistfully.

‘You trouble yourself quite unnecessarily, you know.’ Mrs Brandon’s ironic voice cut across her inner musings. ‘Would it make it more acceptable to you if I specified that the position would be on trial at first—let us say a month on either side. In fact it might be better if you regarded your visit as a holiday at first. You have been under some strain lately, and it may be unfair to press you until you are rested and more relaxed. Well, what do you say?’

Christina hesitated, then gave a deep, sigh. ‘What can I say, madame? You are too kind. You make it impossible for me to refuse. I don’t know how to thank you.’

‘Have no fear, my child. I will think of a way.’ Mrs Brandon grimaced slightly with pain as she reached for her stick. ‘So it is settled, then—a few weeks in the sunshine, and then we can decide on some more—permanent arrangement.’

She rose slowly and carefully to her feet, waving away Christina’s proffered assistance.

‘Your first lesson, ma chère. I do not care to be helped,’ she remarked with a bleak smile. ‘I shall return to London now. But before I go, I shall settle your account here with the good woman downstairs. You will have the goodness to pack your things this evening and be prepared to join me in the morning, not later than ten o’clock. Of all things, I detest unpunctuality,’ she added almost as an afterthought.

‘But I’m quite able to pay my own bill here. I do have a little money …’ Christina began. She felt apprehensive suddenly. Too much was happening and too fast. Even Aunt Grace had never taken charge with precisely this grande dame air, and it was curiously disturbing, as if she was now merely a puppet, content to dance while Mrs Brandon pulled the strings.

‘Keep it.’ The older woman’s tone was negligently dismissive. ‘Or better still, use it to buy some cooler clothes.’ She looked with disfavour at Christina’s admittedly rather baggy tweed skirt, and the pullover she wore with it. ‘What you have seems more suitable for the sub-arctic region rather than the tropics. Choose plenty of cotton—you will find it cooler than these synthetics—and bring a swimsuit.’

Christina’s bewilderment grew. ‘But I thought—you said there would be no beach parties.’

‘Nor will there. Nevertheless the beaches are there to be used, and I imagine you were taught to swim at school. I hope that you will look on Archangel as your home, not your prison.’ Mrs Brandon’s tone was faintly derisory, and Christina flushed, feeling that she had spoken foolishly.

As she saw her blush, the older woman’s expression softened a little, and a slight warmth entered her voice.

‘Keep your money,’ she repeated. ‘Allow me to do this for you as a mark of my affection for your godmother.’

When it was put like that, she could hardly refuse without sounding totally ungracious, Christina thought.

She accompanied Mrs Brandon downstairs and saw her into the waiting hired car. She hesitated as it drew away, her hand half uplifted as if her visitor might look back, but Mrs Brandon did not turn or make any kind of farewell gesture, and Christina let her own hand drop after a moment, feeling foolish again.

She went slowly back into the hotel, hardly able to believe the events that had just transpired. In the space of an hour, her whole life had been turned upside down, and she felt quite dazed. Mrs Thurston was hovering beside the reception desk, a series of questions bursting to find expression. She had been impressed by Mrs Brandon’s icy air, and she was clearly and rather unflatteringly amazed when Christina explained what had brought her to the village.

‘Well, there’s a thing,’ she muttered at intervals as Christina outlined her rather sketchy plans for the immediate future. ‘Well, I hope you’re doing right, Miss Bennett, and no mistake. After all, you’ve only got her word for it that she even knew Miss Grantham. Don’t you go taking too much on trust now, even though she does seem to have plenty of money about her. You be careful. You read such awful things in the papers nowadays.’

Christina was torn between her own doubts which Mrs Thurston was voicing up to a point, and the ludicrous picture of the remote Mrs Brandon as a white slaver which the landlady was obviously enjoying. The doubts won.

There was a good chance that Mr Frith might still be at the sale. He of all people should know whether or not Mrs Brandon was genuine.

The sale was clearly over, and cars were pulling away when Christina trotted breathlessly up. Mr Frith was still there, and she saw with a sinking heart that he was standing beside the Websters’ car saying goodbye to them. She hesitated, but in that moment he saw her and beckoned to her, so she had perforce to approach.

‘Now then, my dear, where did you vanish to?’ He looked her over smilingly.

Christina paused. She had no real wish to discuss this latest change in her fortunes in the hearing of the Websters, so she smiled and murmured something inaudible, hoping they would drive away.

Vivien Webster, however, put her head out of the window and surveyed Christina superciliously.

‘Did you want something?’ she inquired.

‘Just a word with Mr Frith.’ Christina, to her own annoyance, felt herself flush.

‘I see.’ Vivien was silent for a moment, then she said quite gently, ‘You will remember that his time costs money, won’t you? You can’t expect a professional man to continue indefinitely giving you free consultations.’

Her face flaming now, Christina turned to Mr Frith. ‘I’m sorry,’ she stammered. ‘It never occurred to me …’

‘Or to me.’ He squeezed her arm reassuringly. ‘What can I do to help, Christina?’

She shook her head, trying to back away. ‘It doesn’t matter. I only wondered … I mean do you know …?’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake,’ Vivien Webster interrupted irritably. ‘If you have something to say, say it and get it over with!’

Christina tried to ignore her. ‘Did Aunt Grace ever mention a Mrs Brandon to you?’ she asked, but before he could reply, Vivien had butted in again.

‘The Brandons of Archangel?’ she demanded in a surprised tone. ‘But of course she’s mentioned them. She was at school with the wives—I forget their names, but they were sisters and they married two brothers—quite a romantic story. Why do you ask?’

Christina supposed she could refuse to answer, but it did not seem worth the trouble.

‘Because Mrs Brandon is in England and she has offered me a job,’ she said with a certain dignity.

Vivien and her husband exchanged glances. ‘Why on earth should she do that?’ the other woman asked coldly, after a pause. ‘You’re even less to her than you were to my aunt. Have you been writing begging letters to Aunt Grace’s wealthy friends? I do hope not, Christina. It’s so degrading …’

‘I’ve done nothing of the sort,’ Christina said hotly. Tears were not far away, but she blinked them back furiously, refusing to give way to that sort of weakness in front of her present audience. ‘I never even knew of her existence until today. Apparently Aunt Grace wrote to her when she first realised she was ill.’

‘Well, it seems most extraordinary that she should just arrive like that,’ Vivien declared. ‘Was she at the sale? I’m surprised she didn’t introduce herself.’

‘She did,’ Christina said quietly. ‘To me.’

Vivien gave her a hostile look. ‘Well, I still don’t see what interest she has in you. I suppose you spun her some sob story about being destitute. I hope no one sees fit to remind her that there’s such a thing as Social Security.’

Mr Frith touched Christina’s arm and she turned to him gratefully. ‘What kind of a job is it that she’s offered to you?’ he inquired kindly. ‘The name is well-known to me, of course. I believe Miss Grantham has known both the Mrs Brandons since her girlhood, but I had no idea she intended to contact them on your behalf. I must say it seems a godsend under the circumstances.’

‘I don’t see why,’ Vivien interrupted again. ‘I can see no need to turn to strangers. Angela Morton is looking for a reliable mother’s help again—the au pair stormed back to Sweden yesterday—and I’ve almost promised her that she could have Christina.’

Christina felt almost sick with anger. She had heard of Vivien’s friend Angela before. She had four young children and did not believe in discipline of any kind. If Mrs Brandon had indeed been a white slave trader, she thought furiously, she would still have opted for her rather than the Morton ménage.

She made herself smile, aping Vivien’s own superciliousness. ‘What a pity you didn’t think to mention it to me,’ she said with a fair degree of carelessness. ‘Then, of course, I wouldn’t have agreed to go to the West Indies.’

Vivien gave her a fulminating stare, then sat back in her seat and wound the window up in bad-tempered jerks.

Beside her, Christina heard Mr Frith give a little sigh as their car drew away.

She gave him a wan smile. ‘I do seem to have committed myself, don’t I?’

‘Perhaps that isn’t such a bad thing,’ he commented drily. ‘It isn’t easy to find work these days, and this offer seems to have come at just the right time for you.’

‘Yes,’ Christina acknowledged doubtfully. ‘It just seems so odd that she should want to do this for me. I mean, she could just have thrown Aunt Grace’s letter away and forgotten about it. Mrs Webster was right, really. I am a complete stranger to the Brandons and they have no obligation to do anything for me. As it is, I don’t even have to make up my mind yet about working for her, but can just have a holiday at Archangel.’ She repeated the name wonderingly. ‘How strange that sounds.’

Mr Frith frowned a little. ‘If you’re really unsure, Christina, I can always make some inquiries for you,’ he said. ‘Have you any reason to doubt this lady’s probity?’

‘Oh, no,’ Christina said quickly. ‘It seems she’s just what she said—a friend of Aunt Grace’s. That’s really all I wanted to know.’ She paused, then held out her hand. ‘I shall be joining her in London tomorrow, so I don’t suppose I shall have the chance to see you again. Will—will you thank your wife for me for all her kindness.’

Mr Frith took her hand and pressed it warmly. ‘I hope everything works out well for you, my dear. It seems your godmother did have your best interests at heart after all. A summer in the Caribbean at the very least. We shall all envy you.’ He hesitated briefly. ‘If you—should find yourself in difficulties of any kind, you can always write to me. I know it’s what Miss Grantham would have wished.’

‘Yes.’ Christina felt suddenly awkward. ‘Thank you for that—and for everything.’

She felt curiously forlorn as she watched his car drive off, as if she had lost her only friend in all the world. And that was nonsense, she told herself robustly. She now had Mrs Brandon, who had come halfway across the world apparently to befriend her, and there would be other people too—at Archangel. People she had not known existed, whom she would meet and learn to know in the weeks to come.

But, strangely enough, as she turned to walk back to the Bay Horse, that thought did not bring in its train quite the comfort that she had expected.

CHAPTER TWO

CHRISTINA opened the louvred shutters and stepped out on to her balcony into blazing sunshine. She looked down into an interior courtyard of the hotel where gaily coloured loungers surrounded the brilliant turquoise of a swimming pool and gave a little sigh of satisfaction. Mrs Brandon had been angry in the extreme when a delay in their flight to Martinique had meant that they missed the afternoon boat to Ste Victoire, but Christina herself had no regrets. She had not the slightest objection to spending some time in Martinique, even though she had resigned herself to the fact that there would be insufficient time to pay a visit to Les Trois Ilets, the birthplace of the Empress Josephine of France. On the way to the hotel, she had seen a large statue of the great lady and realised how proud the Creoles were of their famous daughter.

Mrs Brandon had retired to her room and had curtly advised that Christina should do the same, but Christina knew that she would never rest. It was all too new and exciting, and her first jet flight had stimulated her rather than induced any signs of jet lag.

It was still very much a flight into the unknown as far as she was concerned. She still knew very little about Archangel and its inhabitants, and her diffident questions had met with little response from Mrs Brandon. One thing she had elicited was that Vivien Webster had been quite right when she had said that Marcelle and her sister had married two brothers. She had also learned that Madeleine Brandon and her husband had both died in a boating tragedy a few years earlier, although she was given no details.

One thing Christina had found out for herself was that Mrs Brandon had not been unfair to herself when she mentioned her temper. After only a day in her company in London, she had learned that the older woman expected any service to be rendered both promptly and perfectly. Otherwise, a thinning of her lips and a slight spot of colour in each cheek signalled storms ahead. She was unfailingly civil to Christina, but various members of the staff both at the London hotel and later at the airport had suffered under the whiplash of her tongue. Christina decided wryly that Mrs Brandon had probably been right to warn her that a job as her companion would be no sinecure, but in some ways this made her feel better about the whole thing. At least, if she stayed, she would feel she was earning her salary, she told herself prosaically.

But her thoughts at the moment were far from prosaic. Life was suddenly too golden, too full of promise for that. It had been real and earnest, and might be again, but now she was free to indulge herself in any fantasies that occurred to her. She could even, if she wished, change into one of the new bikinis in her case and go down to join the sunbathers round the pool, just as if Aunt Grace’s rather mousy little goddaughter who had never worn anything more daring than the regulation one-piece swimsuit on the school uniform list had never existed.

Perhaps she didn’t, she thought wonderingly. Perhaps all along that had merely been a façade for this strange, excited creature, enclosed in her iridescent bubble of exhilaration. The thought that all bubbles burst eventually, she crushed down with determination, lifting her face almost ecstatically to meet the sun.

One thing was certain. No matter what Mrs Brandon had said, she was not going to spend the rest of the day shut up in a stuffy hotel room. She had gathered from her employer that visits to Martinique were rare, and she was going to make the most of this one.

Half an hour later she was descending the wide stairs to the foyer. She had changed out of the trouser suit she had worn for the flight, and was wearing a brief scarlet cotton skirt, topped by a white shirt which tied in a bow at the front of her waist, leaving her midriff bare. She had experimented with her hair, tying it back with a ribbon, and piling it on top of her head, but had finally decided to leave it loose on her shoulders, even though, she thought with a grimace, it made her look younger than ever.

She had shopped for her new clothes in London, revelling in the choice offered by the boutiques and department stores. It was such fun for a change to be able to choose things because they were becoming, and not because they were classic styles which would ‘wear’. Mrs Brandon, to her surprise, had encouraged her to pick gay clothes and up-to-the-minute styles, but when Christina had mentioned that she was planning to visit the hotel beauty salon to have her hair cut and re-styled, her employer had issued an implacable veto.

Christina supposed rather ruefully that she could have insisted, but it did not seem worth making a fuss over such a relatively unimportant matter. Besides, Mrs Brandon’s attitude had taken her aback somewhat. She would have supposed that Mrs Brandon would prefer her new companion to look slightly older and more dignified without a mass of hair hanging round her face, but it proved, if Christina had needed convincing, that her employer was not a woman who could easily be summed up, or whose reactions to anything could be confidently predicted.

She had bought a small guide book at the reception desk, and decided to confine herself to an exploration of Fort de France. Time did not permit very much else, although she would have liked to have taken one of the guided tours to Mount Pelée, and the nearby city of St Pierre which the volcano had well-nigh destroyed over seventy years before.

But Fort de France had plenty to offer in the way of sightseeing. Christina was entranced by the houses with their wrought iron grillework, so redolent of bygone eras when Creole beauties wore high-waisted Empire line dresses, and cooled themselves with embroidered fans rather than air-conditioning. She toured the cathedral, and walked dreamily through the Savane, oblivious of the other tourists and their busy cameras.

The perfume shops on the Rue Victor Hugo lured her into parting with yet more of her direly depleted stock of money, and she could not resist buying a tiny doll in the traditional foulard costume of Martinique.

There seemed to be flowers everywhere. Bougainvillea and hibiscus spilled from balconies in a riot of colour, and street sellers pressed bunches of wild orchids and other exotic blooms on her as she walked along. But she refused them smilingly, using her schoolgirl French. It would be a shame to leave them behind to wither and die in the hotel, she thought, and she could not imagine that Mrs Brandon would happily accept the spectacle of her companion boarding the morning boat, weighed down by flowers.

She was beginning to feel hungry and would have liked to sample the reality behind some of the delectable odours that drifted from the restaurants she passed, but Mrs Brandon had made it clear that they would be dining at the hotel in their suite, so she regretfully turned her steps in the direction of the hotel. Or thought she did.

Somewhere along the line, the advice in her little guide book had been misleading, she thought vexedly. Or, more likely, she herself had simply taken a wrong turning. Certainly she had never seen this particular street before, and she should have found herself in the square in the front of the hotel.

Biting her lip, she swung round, staring back the way she had come. Don’t be a fool, she adjured herself briskly, fighting a feeling of slight panic. You’re not lost. You just think you are. One of the main streets will be just around the corner, and you’ll soon get your bearings again.

But the corner merely led to another street, narrower even and shabbier than the one she had just left. The shadows were lengthening now, and the tall houses with their crumbling stucco seemed to crowd in on her disconcertingly. A dog lying on its side in the shade lifted its head and snarled at her, and she crossed the street, her heart beating a little faster, to avoid it.

This is what happens, she scolded herself, trying to regain her confidence, when you overestimate your capabilities as a tourist. The fairy-tale had suddenly degenerated into a nightmare in this grimy and unprepossessing place, and like a child, she found herself wishing desperately for the fairy-tale again—for the silken thread that would lead her out of the labyrinth and to safety, back to the bright streets and the scent shops and the flowers.

Her footsteps slowed as she gazed uncertainly around her. Somewhere in one of the high shuttered houses, a child was crying, a long monotonous drift of sound that played uncomfortably on her tautened nerves. There were other footsteps now coming steadily and purposefully along the street behind her, and she gave a short relieved sigh. At last there was someone she could ask, and surely, even with her limited French, she could make herself understood and obtain directions back to the hotel.

But even as she turned, the halting words died on her lips. There were three of them, youths of her own age or even slightly younger. When she stopped, they did the same. They stood a few feet away from her, their hands resting lightly on their hips, silent, even smiling a little, and Christina knew she had never felt so frightened or so helpless in her life. For the first time since she had left the hotel, she was acutely conscious of the length of leg revealed by her skirt, and the expanse of bare flesh between her shirt and the waistband of the skirt.

It was a war of nerves that was being waged, she thought despairingly, as they stood facing each other, but she didn’t know what else to do. Something told her that to make a run for it would be fatal. Besides, where could she run to? They were cutting off one of her lines of retreat, and who knew what might lie at the end of the other.

She tried to drag the rags of her courage around her, lift her chin, bluff them into thinking she was unconcerned, but she knew by the widening grins on their dark faces that they were not deceived.

Someone had once told her that panic affected the throat muscles, making it impossible to scream, and she thought it must be true, because when the hand fell on her shoulder from behind her, the cry that welled up inside her found utterance only as a strangled gasp. The street dipped and swayed suddenly, and instinctively she closed her eyes. A man was speaking in patois, his voice resonant, slightly drawling even. The fingers that gripped her shoulder felt like a vice.

When she opened her eyes again, the street in front of her was empty and the silence seemed to surge at her. She turned almost incredulously to look at the man standing behind her. He was tall, his leanness accentuated by the lightweight tropical suit he wore. His hair was tawny, and there were lighter streaks in it where the sun had bleached it. His grey eyes looked silver against his deep tan, and his firm, rather thin-lipped mouth looked taut, either with anger or some other emotion she could not comprehend.

She wanted to thank him, and instead she said inanely, ‘They’ve gone.’

‘Naturally,’ he said coolly. ‘Are you disappointed?’

His English was faultless, without even a trace of an accent, she thought in the few seconds before the meaning of his words got through to her.

‘You must be out of your mind!’ she flared at him.

‘I must?’ His brows rose. ‘And what about you—roaming the back streets of a strange town? Do your parents know where you are?’

‘I’m not a child.’ Infuriatingly her voice trembled. ‘And I’m here with my employer.’

‘Employer?’ He studied her for a moment, and a smile touched his mouth that flicked her, unaccountably, on the raw. ‘My apologies. I didn’t think you were old enough to be a—working girl. But the way you’re dressed should have given me a clue, I suppose. What are you—an actress or a model?’

He was laughing at her. He had to be, although she couldn’t read even the slightest trace of humour in his voice. Instead, there was a cold cynicism which chilled her.

‘I’m a sort of secretary,’ she said quickly, trying to still her sense of annoyance, reminding herself that she had to be grateful to him. ‘And I ought to be getting back. I’ll be missed by now.’

‘I don’t doubt it,’ he said drily. ‘Well, Miss Sort-of-Secretary, and what do your duties consist of, precisely? Can you type?’

‘A little,’ Christina said, her bewilderment increasing with every moment that passed. After all, he had come to her rescue of his own volition. She hadn’t even called for help, so why was he behaving in such a hostile manner?

‘Only a little? But then I suppose your talents really lie in other directions?’

For a moment, Christina remembered the advertisement she had drafted in her own mind days ago in the back kitchen of the cottage, and a rueful grin lifted the corners of her mouth.

‘I suppose you could say that,’ she admitted, then cast a distracted glance at her watch. ‘Heavens—the time! Can you—would you be kind enough to direct me to the Hotel de Beauharnais? I thought I was heading there, but I must have taken a wrong turning somewhere.’

‘What an admission,’ he said satirically. ‘You know, you aren’t running true to type at all.’ He put out lean brown fingers and cupped her chin, lifting her face so he could study it more closely. The insolent assurance of his touch unnerved her, and she jerked her chin away.

‘Please don’t do that,’ she said, making a perceptible effort to stop her voice from trembling again. ‘I—I don’t like to be touched.’ She hesitated. ‘I know I should have said so before, but I don’t know how to thank you for—for coming along when you did. I really was so frightened. If you hadn’t been there, I—I can’t bear to contemplate what might have happened.’

‘You’d have had your handbag snatched,’ he informed her mockingly. His smile widened, as her startled disbelieving gaze flew to his face. ‘Poor Sort-of-Secretary. Expecting to be another rape statistic when all they wanted was your money!’

Their eyes met and held. To her horror, Christina realised she was near to tears. The shock of her recent experience coupled with this incomprehensible attitude on the part of the stranger who had aided her was having a devastating effect on her emotions. More than anything else, she wanted the refuge of her hotel room.

‘I didn’t know what to think.’ She lifted her chin with unconscious dignity. ‘Situations like this are rather new to me. Now, if you could show me the way to the Beauharnais.’

‘Just follow the scent of affluence,’ he advised sardonically. ‘Actually you’re not too far away. You want the next left turning, and the second right after that, but unless you know them these back streets can seem like a maze. Next time you want to play tourist, stick to the boulevards. At least the people you meet there will know the rules of the game.’

With a brief nod, he turned away and continued on down the street. Christina watched him go, aware that her heart was thumping in an erratic and totally unprecedented manner. She told herself that she was glad to see him go, to be free of that disconcerting silver gaze and bewilderingly barbed tongue. She was thankful that he had not offered to accompany her to the hotel, she told herself defiantly, and if he had done so, she would have refused his offer.

No matter how odd his manner, his directions were reassuringly accurate, she found a few minutes later as she emerged into the square and saw the opulent colonial lines of the Beauharnais confronting her. She quickened her steps, instinct telling her that Mrs Brandon’s rest would have ended long ago and that her absence would have been noticed.

She crossed the trottoir quickly, swerving between the laughing, chattering groups of people making a more leisurely return to the hotel for dinner, followed by an evening’s entertainment. For a brief moment she felt envy stir within her. Her time here was so brief, and tomorrow she would set out for a very different existence on Ste Victoire, with no very clear idea what, if anything, she had to look forward to. She shook her head impatiently, tossing back her hair. She mustn’t think like that, she chided herself. It was the chance of a lifetime, and she was just allowing the afternoon’s experience to upset her unduly. After all, here she was back safe and sound, with only her pride bruised a little—and that was a condition she had learned to live with.

As she approached the hotel’s imposing portico, she noticed that a group of tourists had gathered at one side of it, and were obviously watching something that was taking place in the shade of one of the tall columns which decorated the entrance.

She hesitated for a moment, then deciding she might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb in the matter of lateness, threaded her way through the group to see what was interesting them all so closely. It didn’t at first glance seem to be too impressive. A tall, lanky Negro with grizzled hair was crouching on the ground, tossing what appeared to be chicken bones in front of him. In front of him, a matronly-looking woman with blue-rinsed hair was also crouching, oblivious of the damage the dusty ground was doing to an expensive suit. As Christina paused, she got to her feet, brushing her skirt almost absently, an expression of mingled alarm and delight on her plump good-natured face. She took the arm of a well-dressed man standing behind her and they moved away. As they passed her, Christina heard the woman say, ‘But that was truly amazing, honey. He knew everything …’ Oh, she thought, as comprehension dawned, a fortune-teller.

Momentarily, she lingered, waiting to see who his next client would be from the laughing jostling little throng that surrounded him, but no one seemed very willing to step forward. The man waited, leaning his back against the column, his calm liquid eyes travelling speculatively round the group as if there was all the time in the world. He made no effort to tout for custom, Christina noticed curiously. With a feeling of anti-climax she began to back away and to her alarm felt someone grasp her arm.

‘Now then, little lady.’ A plump, bespectacled man in brightly coloured sports shirt and slacks beamed at her. ‘Why don’t you try your luck?’

The people round him agreed enthusiastically and in spite of her protests, Christina found herself being pushed to the forefront of the crowd. She was blushing with annoyance and embarrassment. She wasn’t altogether averse to having her fortune told and she knew—of course she did—that it was all harmless fun, yet at the same time she was reluctant to take part in what amounted to a public performance. It must be her day for finding herself in situations that were none of her making, she told herself philosophically as she squatted obediently in front of the fortune-teller and added some coins to the battered tin at his side. She didn’t know what to do—whether or not to extend her palm for him to read, but in fact he seemed totally oblivious of her presence. All his attention seemed to be concentrated on the small pile of bones he was tossing in his hands. She waited rather uncomfortably, feeling that she was making a fool of herself for the second time that day, and that she did not want to be told that she would soon make a long journey and meet a dark stranger. That was the usual jargon, wasn’t it?

The bones cascaded to the ground with heart-stopping suddenness and the man bent forward to examine them. There was a long silence, and Christina felt suddenly edgy. Oh, why couldn’t he do his spiel and get it over with? she wondered, visualising Mrs Brandon’s reaction if she were to emerge from the hotel and find her new companion sitting around in the dust, waiting to hear details of an imaginary future.

‘You must take care, m’m’selle.’ The man’s voice, suddenly hoarse and harsh, recaptured her wandering attention. ‘I see evil. You must beware—beware of the devil at Archangel.’

Abruptly he rose to his feet, snatching up the bones and the tin cup, and walked off through the crowd, ignoring the disappointed protests that followed him. Christina got to her feet, smoothing her skirt, aware of the curious glances that were being directed at her. Her face flaming, she almost ran to the hotel entrance, the man’s words sounding like a warning drum beat in her head—‘Beware—beware of the devil at Archangel.’

She still had not fully recovered her composure the next day when she set out on the last lap of her journey to Ste Victoire with Mrs Brandon. But, if she was honest, the fortune-teller was not wholly to blame for this. Mrs Brandon had indeed been angry to find that she had gone out—unaccountably so—and Christina had found herself wilting under the lash of her tongue. Nor had a halting attempt to describe her afternoon’s ordeal and its strange aftermath led to any softening of her employer’s attitude. Mrs Brandon did not hesitate to imply that Christina had asked for everything she had got and more, and when Christina had tried to tell her about the fortune-teller, she had been imperiously waved to silence.

Dinner was an uncomfortable meal, with Mrs Brandon maintaining an icy reserve which boded ill for the future. It was not as if her anger had been roused by concern for Christina and the danger she had been in. It seemed simply to have been caused by the fact that her instructions had not been obeyed to the letter.

Christina was thankful when she could at last withdraw to her own room. She felt unutterably weary, but perhaps predictably, sleep would not come. No amount of logical reasoning could dismiss the chill of the fortune-teller’s warning.

She told herself over and over again that he must have an accomplice in the hotel who made it his business to acquaint him with details about guests which he could use. And Mrs Brandon was obviously well-known at the Beauharnais. The very fact that Christina was travelling with her revealed that her destination was Archangel, and the man had simply been trying to give the crowd their money’s worth by introducing a touch of drama into a very prosaic situation. It was so simple, when she worked it out. Why, then, couldn’t she believe it? She wished that she had been given the trite prediction of wealth and a handsome husband that she had originally envisaged. It would have been something to smile over in the months to come.

Instead, she was facing the journey ahead with a strange reluctance, unable to dismiss the murmurings of inner disquiet. It was not simply her discovery that Mrs Brandon’s temper was all she had suspected, and worse—she could have lived with that—but rather all the unanswered questions she had pushed to the back of her mind in the relief of having a job offered to her and some kind of future to look forward to. Again, she found herself wondering why Mrs Brandon had come personally to England to seek her. Her health, after all, was not good—far from it. As well as her arthritis, she seemed to be taking a variety of tiny capsules for other purposes, and Christina could not help suspecting that she had a bad heart. If that was the case, then why had she not appointed some kind of agent rather than put herself to all the trouble of a journey half way across the world?

She would have liked to tell herself that it was compassion and kindness that had prompted the action, but she knew that such a conclusion would merely be an exercise in self-deception.

She was forced, instead, to conclude that Mrs Brandon had some urgent reason for wanting to look her future protegée over in person, although she could not even hazard a guess as to what that reason could be.

But the feeling of elation that had gripped her on her arrival in Martinique was sadly lacking as she stood by the rail of the boat which was taking her to Archangel and caught her first glimpse of Ste Victoire. She was alone, Mrs Brandon preferring to rest in one of the air-conditioned cabins, and so she had no one to influence her first reactions to the place that was to be her home.

It was inevitably a nervous arrival. Christina’s heart was frankly in her mouth as she saw how the boat had to edge its way past the crippling reef to get into the calm waters of the harbour, and she remembered uncomfortably how Mrs Brandon had warned her that they could be cut off in bad weather. It was June now, and she had read somewhere that summer was not the pleasantest season in this part of the Caribbean, with the possibility of hurricanes ever-present.

She sighed impatiently. There was little point in thinking like this. She was just making herself miserable. She was letting an absurd prediction, uttered to impress a crowd of credulous tourists, prey on her mind too much. After all, she had suffered none of these qualms back in England, when she could have retracted if she had wanted to. And she had also discovered, on Martinique, that this smiling Paradise could have its darker side, yet it would be foolish to allow this to outweigh all the other considerations. This, after all, was where Aunt Grace had wanted her to be, and she owed it to her godmother at least to try and give this new life a chance.

She lingered on deck as the boat docked, watching with fascination as the gangplank was run out and the freight and few passengers bound for the island began to be disembarked. An opulent car was drawn up on the quayside and a coloured man in a chauffeur’s uniform was standing beside it, leaning against the bonnet. Christina knew without being told that this was the transport from Archangel, and she went below to inform Mrs Brandon.

She was surprised and somewhat gratified to receive the beginnings of a wintry smile and even the command to see that all the luggage was collected and taken up on deck was delivered in reasonably amiable tones. Perhaps Mrs Brandon was pleased to be home and would mellow accordingly, she thought optimistically as she supervised the transfer of their cases.

She accompanied the older woman down the gangplank, carefully avoiding any appearance of concern or the offer of help. When they reached the quay, Mrs Brandon stood for a moment, white-lipped and an expression of strain tautening her clear-cut features, then she had herself under control again and was leading the way towards the car.

The chauffeur snatched off his cap and came to meet them, grinning broadly.

‘Welcome home, m’dame—missy.’

‘It’s good to be back, Louis.’ Mrs Brandon relinquished her cane to him and climbed into the back of the car. Christina watched as the chauffeur, in spite of the sticky warmth of the day, wrapped a silken rug around her feet and legs.

‘You may travel in the front, mon enfant,’ Mrs Brandon decreed autocratically, and Christina climbed obediently into the passenger seat. It was very hot in the car and she would have liked to have wound down the window, but something warned her that Mrs Brandon liked to travel in the equivalent of a Turkish bath and that she would do well to accept the situation. Anyway, she thought, surreptitiously pushing her hair off the nape of her neck, Ste Victoire wasn’t a very large island and they would soon be arriving at Archangel. She began to think longingly in terms of a shower and a cool drink.

The harbour area of the island did not strike her as being particularly attractive—a cluster of whitewashed buildings with corrugated iron roofs, many of which seemed to be in an advanced state of rust. The streets leading away from the harbour were narrow and crowded with every type of traffic. A lot of people, Christina noticed, were riding bicycles, many of them wobbling along precariously with large bundles on their heads or on the handlebars in front of them. Pavement stalls heaped high with exotically coloured fruit and vegetables threatened to spill into the road, and there seemed to be children and animals everywhere. She had to admire the imperturbable skill with which Louis negotiated his route, but she had to breathe a silent sigh of relief when the township was left behind, and they emerged on to a wider, straighter road which they seemed to have all to themselves.

But after they had been travelling a few minutes, Christina realised ruefully that width and straightness were its only attributes. In other ways, it was little better than a dirt track with gaping potholes every few yards, and although Louis restricted the speed at which they were travelling to allow for this, not even the car’s luxurious springing could save them from being jolted.

The road began to climb quite steeply after a few miles, and Christina could see the sea again in the distance, a deep fantastic blue merging unnoticeably with the sky. She caught her breath at its beauty, and Louis grinned broadly as he caught a glimpse of her rapt face.

‘You wait, missy.’

They were passing through cultivated fields, where people were working. Many of them straightened and waved as the car sped by, and Christina had a vision of Mrs Brandon sitting alone in the back, acknowledging the salutations with a regal movement of her hand, but she did not dare to turn round to see if she was right. She guessed, however, that this was the edge of the plantation that Mrs Brandon had mentioned. The size of it frankly amazed her, stretching away as far as the eye could see, and interspersed with clusters of dwellings, belonging, she surmised, to the plantation workers. It was like a little world within a world and Christina found herself wondering whether she would ever be familiar with all its workings. Everything—the heat, the parched-looking ground, the vivid blossoms on the trees and shrubs that lined the road—seemed so alien somehow after the gentleness of the English countryside. In spite of the neatness of the cultivated acres, bisected by irrigation channels, Christina had a sense of wildness, of a landscape that had not and never would be completely tamed.

She took a handkerchief from her shoulder bag and wiped the perspiration from her forehead and upper lip. The car was running along at the side of the coast now, the road falling away unnervingly to the silver beach far below. Christina gazed longingly at the creaming surf curling softly on to the sands, and imagined the faint salt-laden breeze that would be blowing off the sea. The heat inside the car was beginning to make her head throb, and she was aware of a slight feeling of nausea. Surely the journey couldn’t take much longer.

She leaned back against the padded seat, closing her eyes and trying to ignore the frequent lurches as the car coped with the uneven surface of the road. Then, just as she thought she was going to be forced to ask Louis to stop the car, the ordeal came to an end. The car slowed, turned sharply and settled on to a surface that felt as smooth as silk after the horrors of the past few miles. Half unwillingly, she opened her eyes and found that they were travelling suddenly under a cool green arch of trees.

‘Nearly home, missy.’ Louis’ voice at her side was brisk and reassuring and Christina realised gratefully that her discomfort had been noticed. She could not repress a feeling of excitement as the seconds passed.

One last, deep bend and the house lay in front of them, shaded by tall encircling trees. It was painted white, a long two-storey building with a wide terrace running its full length on the ground floor and echoed by the balcony with its wrought iron balustrade outside the upper rooms. In front of the house formal lawns, and flower beds vibrant with blossoms stretched away, and Christina noticed that there were sprinklers at work. The car stopped at the foot of the terrace steps and Christina saw that a tall woman was waiting at the front door to greet them. By her dark dress and spotless white apron, she guessed she was the housekeeper. She waited at the side of the car while Louis helped Mrs Brandon out. The air was warm and filled with a dozen pungent scents. Christina breathed deeply, feeling the tension that had possessed her slowly draining away. She looked up at the housekeeper and smiled rather shyly, but the other woman did not respond. At closer quarters, Christina saw that she still bore the traces of an earlier beauty, although her face was haggard now, the cheekbones prominent under the coffee-coloured skin.

‘Ah, Madame Christophe.’ Her cane firmly grasped, Mrs Brandon began a slow ascent of the wide shallow steps up to the terrace. ‘Is everything well?’

‘Very well, madame,’ the housekeeper replied in a low voice. ‘There have been no difficulties.’

Mrs Brandon paused on the terrace to regain her breath and then gestured towards Christina who was following in her wake with Louis, who was carrying their cases.

‘This is Miss Bennett, Madame Christophe. You received my cable?’

‘A room has been prepared for her.’ Madame Christophe’s dark eyes surveyed Christina indifferently. ‘Welcome to Archangel, mademoiselle.’

Turning, she led the way into the house. The entrance hall was large and square with a floor coolly tiled in blue and green mosaics. Christina saw that the principal rooms all seemed to open off this hall, and glancing up she saw that the first floor also took the form of a gallery. At the foot of the stairs and dominating the hall was a large statue in marble. Christina gazed at this wonderingly. It was a statue of a young man wearing armour and wielding a businesslike-looking spear with which he seemed about to kill some strange winged creature lying at his feet. The young man himself also possessed wings, she saw, a splendid pair, tipped with gold.

‘That is our protector, mademoiselle—St Michael the Archangel, for whom the plantation is named.’ Mrs Brandon’s voice was cool and slightly amused.

‘I see,’ Christina said quite untruthfully.

Mrs Brandon smiled. ‘I did tell you there was a story about it, did I not? It dates from the seventeenth century when the first family built a house here and began to grow sugar. It was all slave labour in those days, you understand. Well, one batch of new slaves brought disease with them. It spread over the island like wildfire—like the plague, it was. People were dying like flies. No remedy, no precaution seemed able to check it. So, as a last resort you might say, the islanders turned to prayer and to St Michael—they were all of the Catholic faith in those days.’

‘And did it work?’ Christina asked. ‘And why St Michael anyway?’

‘Because when plague had ravaged Italy during the years of the Early Church, the Archangel was said to have appeared on a church in Rome sheathing his sword as a sign that the plague would end.’ Mrs Brandon’s tone was bored.

‘Did the same thing happen here?’

‘There was no apparition, but the plague vanished almost overnight. The islanders declared it was a miracle, and since that time the plantation has been called Archangel in honour of St Michael. It is a tradition we have maintained. The statue is very old. It was brought from France as a private thanksgiving by the family.’ Mrs Brandon spoke as if she had learned her lines from a guide book of doubtful validity.

They moved past the statue and up the stairs. Mrs Brandon halted when they reached the gallery. ‘Show Mademoiselle to her room, Madame Christophe. I am going to rest. Tell Eulalie to bring me a tray of iced coffee in an hour’s time.’

Christina followed the housekeeper’s erect figure along the gallery and through an archway. This led, she discovered, from the main part of the house to a wing running towards the rear. Two thirds of the way along the wide corridor, Madame Christophe halted before a pair of louvred double doors which she pushed open.

Christina gazed almost unbelievingly at the room within. The walls and ceiling were a warm, vibrant honey colour, but the rest of the decor—carpet, silk curtains and hangings—were in cream. Her immediate impression was that it was all much too luxurious for a hired companion who might not even be going to stay.

‘Mademoiselle does not care for the room?’ Madame Christophe had noticed her instinctive hesitation.

‘On the contrary.’ Christina made a little helpless gesture. ‘It’s the most beautiful room I ever saw in my life. But does Madame—I mean Mrs Brandon really intend it for me?’

The housekeeper gave her a calm, rather reproving look. ‘She leaves such details as the allocation of rooms to me,’ she said with a faint shrug. ‘But I can assure you she would approve my choice. Louis has brought up your cases. I will send Eulalie to unpack for you.’

‘Oh, no—thank you,’ Christina said hastily. ‘I’d really rather do that for myself. I—always have.’

Madame Christophe gave her an enigmatic look, then turned to leave. ‘But circumstances change, can they not?’ she remarked over her shoulder: ‘Perhaps Mademoiselle should also be prepared to change with them.’

The door closed quietly behind her, leaving Christina in sole occupation of her new domain. Her clothes, she decided after a hasty inspection, would occupy about a fifth of the row of louvred wardrobes which occupied the length of one wall. Guests who usually stayed in this room probably brought with them an entire Paris collection rather than two small suitcases. A door in the corner revealed a small but well equipped bathroom tiled in jade green, and for the next half hour Christina revelled in the shower she had dreamed of, then, wrapped in one of the enormous bath sheets provided, padded around putting her clothes away in the drawers and cupboards, and setting out her scanty array of toiletries in the bathroom.

Her task completed, she dressed in a chocolate-coloured denim dress with a low back and a halter neckline, and still barefoot walked out through the French doors on to the balcony. To her left, a graceful flight of wrought iron steps led downwards so that the occupants of the rooms in this wing could reach the garden below without having to go through the house. Certainly, it was a beguiling enough scene that met her eyes. An attractively paved patio lay below, with a long rectangular swimming pool as its focal point. Beyond the patio more lawns spread away to become eventually lost in a tangled riot of greenery and flowering bushes, which Christina guessed marked the limits of the garden proper. Beyond this barrier she could see the sea.

She wanted very much to go down the steps and explore the grounds—to see if there was a way through the shrubbery to the beach, but she hesitated. After all, Mrs Brandon might send for her, and if she was missing and no one knew where she was this would cause problems. And as if to make up her mind for her, a telephone buzzed sharply in the room behind her. Christina walked quickly back into the bedroom and over to the elegant bedside table and lifted the receiver.

‘Hello,’ she said. ‘Christina Bennett.’

There was someone there, because she could hear them breathing—a light shallow breath as if whoever it was had been hurrying. But they did not speak.

After a minute, Christina said sharply, ‘Yes? Who is it, please?’

No one replied, but Christina thought she detected a smothered laugh, as if the alarm in her voice had been registered and appreciated. She felt her temper rise.

‘Will you please stop playing games and tell me what it is you want,’ she said very distinctly into the living silence, and nearly jumped out of her skin as a peremptory tap sounded on the bedroom door.

She swung round with a gasp, still holding the telephone receiver as the door opened. She was confronted by a girl, not much older than herself. She was dazzlingly lovely with dark hair and eyes, and the same smooth café au lait skin as Madame Christophe. In fact, Christina thought instinctively, she was the image of what Madame Christophe must have been like at the same age.

The girl smiled—a formal, perfunctory smile revealing white and even teeth. ‘If Mademoiselle would care to descend, there is tea in the library. Or would you prefer me to bring a tray to you here?’

‘No—oh, no,’ Christina said hastily. ‘I’ll come down. You—you must be Eulalie.’

‘That is so.’ The dark eyes surveyed Christina and widened questioningly as she was holding the telephone receiver. ‘Mademoiselle desired something?’

‘No—someone phoned me, but they won’t answer.’ Christina felt foolish.

‘May I?’ Eulalie held out her hand and Christina with a feeling of faint helplessness handed her the receiver.

Eulalie listened for a moment, then turned to Christina. ‘There is no one there now, mademoiselle. This is the house telephone. It is easy if one hurries to dial a wrong number.’

‘But why didn’t they say so?’ Christina felt that she had been put subtly in the wrong. ‘They just wouldn’t speak at all. It was horrid.’

‘Mademoiselle must have imagined it,’ Eulalie said coolly. ‘There is no one in the house who would do such a thing.’

She turned and walked to the door, obviously expecting that Christina would follow her. Christina snatched up a pair of low-heeled sandals in natural leather and thrust them awkwardly on to her feet. She felt gauche and confused. She knew she had not imagined the malice she had sensed at the other end of the phone, but she was at a loss to know what could possibly have inspired it.

As she followed Eulalie’s studiedly graceful figure along the corridor towards the main staircase, she searched in vain for some topic of conversation. Her position in the household was ambiguous. At the moment, she supposed she was a guest, but no doubt the staff were perfectly aware that she had come here ultimately to work. Perhaps someone had recognised the difference in the way she was being received, compared with the rest of the staff, and resented it. But who? So far, she had only met Louis and Madame Christophe—and now Eulalie. She could not imagine either of the first two indulging in spiteful tricks, while it was physically impossible for Eulalie to have telephoned her. It was disturbing to realise that she had recognised almost at once that the other girl would be quite capable of the action. And yet Christina could think of no possible motive—for her or for anyone else.

As they descended the stairs, the tall figure of St Michael, the gilded wings gleaming in the sunlight, loomed up in front of them. Christina paused for a closer look at the statue. Somewhat to her surprise, she saw that the winged creature at the angel’s feet was not a dragon as she had supposed at first glance, but seemed to have some human characteristics. It was quite repulsively ugly, she decided, wrinkling her nose.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.