To Catch A Unicorn Read online

  Sara Seale

  TO CATCH A UNICORN

  When twenty-year-old Laura was thrust into the turbulent household of the 'dark Trevaynes' she seemed to be always overshadowed by her glamorous cousin Cleo. Yet the 'family beast' of the Trevaynes was the unicorn, a strange, wild creature who, so the legend said, could only be tamed by a gentle maiden . ..

  All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the Author, and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the Author, and all the incidents are pure invention.

  First published 1964 This edition 1975

  © Sara Seale 1964

  For copyright reasons, this book may not be issued on loan or otherwise except in its original soft cover.

  ISBN O 263 71783 6

  Made and Printed in Great Britain by C. Nicholls & Company Ltd The Philips Park Press, Manchester

  CHAPTER ONE

  She nearly missed the train owing to misjudgment of the time it would take a taxi to get from Earl's Court to Padding-ton, and pushing through the ticket barrier in mounting panic, and with only minutes to spare she found difficulty in getting a seat at all in the crowded compartment. She left her luggage in the corridor where it had been dumped by a surly porter who showed no inclination to be more helpful, and began a dispiriting expedition through coach after coach, stumbling over suitcases, bumping into passengers bent on the same search, enquiring angrily of herself why such simple matters as catching trains, dealing efficiently with taxis and porters should invariably elude her otherwise normal capabilities.

  Cleo would have said: "Because you daydream, silly Laura, and don't have enough spunk to assert yourself when it comes to a pinch."

  Cleo, of course, would have been right. Laura did not consider in all fairness to herself that she altogether lacked spunk, but her cousin did not- understand where the difference between them lay. Cleo, with her sloe-eyes, vivid looks and inborn reliance on the good will of others, had no need to assert herself, neither was she given to the sort of daydreaming that would interfere with her immediate comforts.

  "So sorry ... excuse me ... so sorry .. ."Laura murmured as she stepped on people's toes or squeezed past bodies reluctant to move for her, and finally tripped over an unobserved suitcase and fell sprawling in the corridor at the feet of a young man propped indolently against the door of a nearly empty carriage.

  "Oh, buckets of blood!" she exclaimed, reverting to an oath of her schooldays, and staring up at the man who was already stooping to help her to her feet, thought that the absurd expletive was not inappropriate. He had the swarthy look of a pirate, his black hair curled with an exuberance

  which drastic bartering could not altogether control and his dark eyes were bold and adventurous and, at the moment, bright with amusement.

  "I do apologise," he said. "I shouldn't have left my belongings strewn about in the corridor. I hope you're not hurt."

  "I could," she retorted with a spurt of defiance to cloak her disadvantage, "have broken my leg! I'm not sure I haven't!"

  He was kneeling beside her now, and his hands went, uninvited, to the knee, she was gingerly feeling.

  "I don't think so," he said with a grin as she hurriedly withdrew the leg from his exploring fingers, and he helped her up and started brushing her down, the amusement growing in his eyes.

  "You have three freckles on the bridge of your charming nose—did you know?" he observed.

  "Yes, I knew," she answered shortly, "and I expect there's a smut on my face, and my hair's a mess and I can't—I can't fight my way back again down all those frightful corridors."

  "Why try? If you can't find a seat, come in here," he said, nodding towards his own compartment.

  "It's first-class," she objected, and felt gauche when he laughed and opened the door with a flourish.

  "Who cares?" he retorted. "I'll soon sort the ticket-collector if he makes trouble. I rather enjoy scenes when it's a question of one's rights."

  Laura thought this was probably true, judging by his buccaneering looks, but she was exhausted by her fruitless battle down the length of the train coupled with a recent bout of 'flu, and the thought of having to stand in the corridor for the next five hours of that interminable journey to Cornwall weakened her resistance.

  "All right," she said, and sank thankfully into the unfamiliar comfort of a corner seat, reflecting that this was the first and probably the last occasion she was to experience the cushioned well-being of first-class travel.

  "Well," her new-found acquaintance observed, settling himself opposite her, "your misfortune is my gain. I was resigned to hours of boredom. How far are you going?"

  "To Merrynporth, a little place in Cornwall. I have to change, I think."

  "Merrynporth? Yes, you change at Truro. Do you know the West Country?"

  She shook her head, aware of a fresh alertness in his frank appraisal of her, and moved a little uneasily. That bold scrutiny, which she was beginning to think held a shade of mockery, could become embarrassing and she glanced with relief at the other two occupants of the carriage who, apart from a brief disinterested glance upon her arrival among them, had retired behind their newspapers with the polite dissociation from their fellows common to British travellers.

  The stranger saw her covert look and grinned wickedly.

  "What unladylike thoughts you have," he said, and the grin grew wider as he saw her blush.

  "That," he observed with interest, "is almost a lost art."

  "What is?" she asked, unguardedly.

  "Blushing. You must be very young."

  She was in fact still young enough to resent that embarrassing betrayal of colour, and she replied defensively:

  "I'm twenty, a—a responsible age, and I earn my own living."

  "Do you indeed? What doing?"

  "Selling flowers in one of those expensive little shops where nothing is ever fresh. At least, I was till they went broke. I mostly packed the orders, though, and filled the vases. Window arrangements were the skilled jobs."

  "Of course! I can see you among your flowers, rather like a slender stem yourself, and that serious, pale little face a muted echo of the—er—creamier variety of blossoms, if I knew what they were."

  Now she knew he was laughing at her and she blushed again, this time with indignation.

  "You clearly have no conception of work in a flower shop with your hands in and out of icy water and your complexion more blue with cold than a muted echo of anything," she said tartly. "Do you always make such extravagant remarks on first acquaintance?"

  "Always. It usually pays off," he replied with outrageous impudence. "You have a smut on your face and your hair's distinctly windswept."

  He grinned unkindly as she rummaged in her handbag for lipstick and compact as he knew she would, and idly assessed her possibilities as he watched her making repairs. She was not his type with that pale, wedge-shaped little face which seemed swamped by eyes that were too big and too lacking in guile for comfort. Her hair was mousy and probably afforded her dissatisfaction in its refusal to obey the more sophisticated rules of current fashion, but there was, all the same, something rather beguiling in the way it fell in innocent casualness about her rounded forehead and slender neck.

  "Have you quite finished?" she asked suddenly, bundling her belongings back into her bulging handbag.

  "Finished?" He was unused to being caught out in a deliberate inventory with such a lack of coquetry.

  "Weighing me up—my looks, I mean. Cleo says I have no vanity, and it's probably true, but you're stuck with the face you're born with, so why worry?" she said with calm detachment, and he laughed.

 
"Well, you're a refreshing change, if nothing else, Miss—? " he paused suggestively, and because Auntie Flo, even though she disapproved of chance acquaintances, had brought her up to answer questions politely, she replied obligingly: "Laura Smith—and it really is Smith."

  "Is it, indeed? And who is Cleo?"

  "She's my cousin, and that's where I'm going—to help out with her little boy while she's staying with her new-found in-laws."

  "Really? In Merrynporth?"

  "Well, no, I don't think so. Merrynporth is the nearest station, but they live in a house called Penzion out in the blue somewhere."

  "Really?" he said again, and she became aware that his interest seemed to have quickened, resulting in a rather puzzling gleam of devilment in his alert black eyes.

  She was about to ask him his own name when the ticket

  collector made a sudden appearance, and in the scene that followed she either forgot or decided belatedly it was best to remain in ignorance, for the young man's behaviour certainly lived up to his buccaneering appearance. He was arrogant and impudent by turn, uttered outrageous opinions of British Rail and its public servants alike, and Laura, blushing furiously again, hastily found the excess fare to end embarrassment, indignantly refusing the brash stranger's offer to foot the bill.

  "You enjoyed that," she accused him when the man had slammed the doors on them and gone on his way. "You were just putting on an act to make everyone uncomfortable."

  "Why not?" he replied, unabashed. "Come and have lunch," he said. "I'll treat you."

  "Oh, no, I couldn't possibly," she protested, remembering belatedly her Auntie Flo's strictures on scraped-up acquaintances, but he shook his head at her.

  "Too late for proper pride and decorum—we're practically old friends by now," he said. "Besides, you wouldn't allow me to pay your fare, although I insisted you stayed in this compartment, so the least I can do is buy you a lunch. Come on.

  It would, she thought, salving her conscience as she took her seat opposite him in the restaurant car, have been churlish to refuse, besides which she was hungry.

  She wholeheartedly enjoyed her lunch and the wine he insisted on ordering; the warmth and chatter and hurrying waiters made her feel rich and cherished, and the strange towns and fields and little homesteads flashing by the windows revived a pleasurable anticipation of this unexpected holiday among strangers.

  Her companion seemed unusually interested in her destination and was attentive in topping up her glass as the level of the wine sank.

  "I'm curious to know what's bringing you to Merrynporth," he prompted. "To look after a child, you said?"

  "Penzion. Merrynporth's the station," she replied meticu-

  lously. "My cousin's nanny walked out at the last minute, you see, not liking the idea of being buried alive with no telly or cinemas and things—you know! So Cleo asked me to help out as my flower shop has gone bust and I was between jobs, and it was an excuse for a holiday."

  "A holiday doing nursemaid?" he interrupted sceptically, and she frowned. How explain to someone who did not know her that when Cleo asked a favour it was difficult to refuse, that acting as temporary nursemaid to Nicky was a pleasure rather than a chore, that a break from the dull routine of earning a living was indeed a holiday, especially in such unusual circumstances?

  "You don't understand," she said, and one black eyebrow shot up in expectant enquiry.

  "Then why not elucidate? I scent some sinister motive behind all this. Are you sure you haven't got involved with white slavers or the drug traffic or something?" he said with mock seriousness, and she laughed.

  "Nothing more sinister than a dead family feud—at least, I hope it's dead," she said. "You see, my cousin Cleo and I grew up together—at least, we didn't exactly do that because there's nearly six years' difference between us, so she was grown-up and with strings of young men when I was still a' schoolgirl ... I was brought up by a maiden aunt after my parents died and Cleo's parents were in India, so when she was at school in England she used to come to us for holidays ... Cleo and Auntie Flo never got on very well, but the money for her board helped a lot because Auntie Ho wasn't well off.-Cleo, of course, was very bored with our quiet provincial life, but to me the holidays were exciting when she came to stay, and I suppose I must have had some sort of a schoolgirl crush in those days ... Cleo, you see, was everything that I wasn't; glamorous, assured and, to me, fabulously sophisticated, which, when you're still in your early teens, seems the ultimate of ambition. And then she got married, and that's really the start of the story. She made a runaway match when she was only nineteen with a dashing young man called Troilus Trevayne—isn't that a wonderful name? I never

  met him because they lived abroad and Auntie Flo and I lost touch..."

  "Trevayne?" he interrupted again. "The Trevaynes of Penzion?" "Yes, do you know them?" "I know of them."

  Laura beamed on him happily, feeling that this might almost constitute an introduction.

  "Oh, then you can tell me about them—prepare me for what to expect. Have you got pirate ancestors?" she asked him perfectly seriously, and he laughed and topped up her glass again with wine.

  "You were telling me, if you remember," he retorted, and now his bold eyes were bright with mockery.

  "I don't know much, really, except that there were three sons and their detestable old father living in this house, Penzion. There's a family business which has been handed down from father to eldest son—a mine or a quarry or something—and the second son, Troilus, was engaged to some dreary girl the old father picked out for family reasons. This was all nearly seven years ago, of course, so I'm never really very clear about the details—anyway Troilus cocked snooks at his papa and ran away with Cleo to Australia, and that started the family feud."

  She paused a little breathlessly to concentrate on her food which was growing cold, and her companion replenished his own glass and said:

  "The prodigal son was cut off with the proverbial shilling and traditionally emigrated to the colonies, and till the day he died the bitter old man had no idea he had become a grandfather. The eldest son inherited as was to be expected, the black sheep, Troilus, was killed in a motor-racing smash, and though he had obviously left a widow, it must have come as a surprise that he had also left a son."

  She looked across at him with widening eyes.

  "You seem to know the story already," she said, sounding disappointed, and he grinned.

  "I come from the same parts. Penzion affairs are pretty

  widely known and old Zachary—de mortuis—was a by-word with his fanatical obsessions and family feuds," he said, and her enthusiasm in relating a past history which was no more to her than something read in a book of adventure seemed diminished.

  "I suppose so," she said, and had a fleeting impression that this dark stranger was better acquainted with the Trevaynes than he implied. "They sound a rather spiteful family."

  "Oh, yes, spite runs in the blood, so the gossips say—spite and a goddam pride."

  "Not exactly cosy!"

  "Cosy! Is that what you expect from pirate ancestors?"

  "Well, I expect I made that bit up," she said, a little sheepishly. "I used to enjoy tales about buried treasure and pieces of eight, and bottles of rum and things, when I was small, and these Trevaynes sounded larger than life with their brawls and their grudges and their story-book names ..." She broke off as the train dashed into a tunnel, remembering how long ago those three picturesque names had caught her fancy; Dominic, Troilus and Peregrine ... names, she had thought in her schooldays, that belonged to high adventure, the names of crusaders or swashbuckling sea-rovers.

  "This Dominic—is he fair-minded?" she asked, and he cocked an eyebrow at her.

  "The predatory overlord? Well, that you'll have to find out for yourself, won't you, Miss Laura Smith?"

  "Why do you call him that?"

  He shrugged, and his mouth twisted in a wry, half-bitter grimace of amusement.

  "Perh
aps, like you with your preconceived notions, I think it fits," he said, and grinned afresh when she replied rather primly:

  "I don't think you should try to put me off with local gossip when I'm going there as a guest. Dominic Trevayne answered Cleo's letter very civilly when she wrote to tell him he had been an uncle for five years, which might, you must admit, have put anyone off, taken on the hop, so to speak. He invited them to stay in order to get acquainted, which doesn't look,

  does it, as if he intends keeping up this silly old feud?"

  "Feuds can provide.meat to get your teeth into when the fires begin to burn low, and the flames need fanning to keep one alive," he said, and though she knew he was laughing at her again, there was something in his voice and eye which caused her a twinge of foreboding.

  "That's nonsense. If you need a grudge to give you an interest in life then you're better off dead," she said in such governess-like tones of reproof that he flung back his head and laughed.

  "What a literal mind, Miss Smith! Have some more wine," he teased, but she placed a hand firmly over her glass.

  "It's made me talk too much as it is," she said. "My Auntie Flo would be scandalised."

  "Then don't tell her."

  "I can't very well, she's been dead two years," said Laura with such polite apology that he laughed again.

  "You're either a very naive young woman or a bit of a minx," he said, and Laura, who would have liked to be taken for a minx but knew wry well she was, upon occasion, distressingly naive, coloured again.

  "Not a minx, evidently, how disappointing. Do you live alone now Auntie's passed on, or does the fascinating widow provide a home?"

  "Cleo? Oh no—we tried sharing a flat for a bit when she first came home, but it didn't work, and I went back to my hostel. It suited Cleo better to have me on tap to baby-sit for odd evenings."

  "I don't doubt it did, Are you a doormat, Miss Smith?"

  "Certainly not! I'm very fond of Nicky and it's never a chore to do things for him—he's left too much to nannies. Whatever Cleo's new in-laws turn out to be it will be good for the little boy to lead a normal family life for a bit, and if bis uncle only takes a fancy to him—"