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  She broke off, and the spark of devilment was back in his eyes.

  "Don't bank too much on a sentimental streak in the head of the house of Penzion," he said with a dash of impatience.

  "From all I hear, the gentleman's pretty much on the beam if he suspects any funny business. I hope your cousin's equal to him."

  "Cleo's equal to anything, and what do you mean by funny business?" she said, rather regretting the freedom with which she had discussed her cousin's affairs with a stranger, and he gave her a placating smile.

  "Nothing, probably. There's funny business and funny business, isn't there? How come you're not travelling together?"

  "Oh, Cleo and the boy are already there. I got 'flu at the last minute, so they had to go without me," Laura said, and stared out of the carriage window, remembering how annoyed Cleo had been at the unfortunate hitch to her plans.

  "Well, I'll have to cope myself for a few days, I suppose," her cousin had said crossly. "I daren't put my newly discovered in-laws off in case they change their minds, but I'll be a wreck by the time you come—Nicky wears me to shreds."

  Laura smiled to herself remembering how unfitted the lazy, delectable Cleo was to contend with the responsibilities of motherhood. Nicky had been born too soon to afford bis irresponsible young parents anything other than a liability and a hindrance neither had wanted so early in marriage. Nicky was, thought Laura, her smile changing to a sigh as she dwelt for a moment on the waste of an unwanted child, a very manageable small boy considering all things.

  "Having second thoughts?" her companion asked, hearing the sigh, and wondering what outlandish bees were chasing round in her bonnet now, but although she shook her head, she was not sure. She felt dispirited, and unsure of what welcome awaited her the other end, and curiosity had changed to irrational foreboding.

  "It hardly matters what I think, does it?" she said. "Cleo's the only one they're interested in, and Cleo can cope with most situations."

  "She sounds a formidable young woman!"

  "Not formidable—just born under a lucky star and knows most of the answers."

  "And you, of course, don't. Hero-worship's a mug's game once you've outgrown your teens, my dear Miss Smith. See you don't get trampled on."

  "I've no intention of being trampled on," Laura retorted coldly, resenting his personalities a little too late. "And since you've never met my cousin, your advice is rather impertinent."

  "How prim you suddenly sound," he mocked, and she giggled, dismissing her tardy dignity, but aware all the same that she had been behaving with a rather lamentable lack of discretion.

  "I think," she said, trying to sound as if chance encounters were quite usual in her experience, "I would like to go back to the carriage. Thank you for entertaining me, Mr.—?"

  He did not, however, oblige by furnishing her with a name, but gave her a considering look and called for his bill.

  The daylight was already going when they regained their compartment and there would soon be nothing to see from the windows but scattered lights twinkling from the darkness and the passing glimpses of nameless stations. Presently the dark stranger left the carriage and disappeared down the corridor, and did not reappear until the train was pulling into Truro and she, half asleep herself, began collecting her belongings with the slight feeling of panic which beset her when having to change trains at a strange junction. It was a relief when the dark young man took charge of the luggage, remarking that they would still be travelling together, and if he smelt rather unmistakably of whisky, Laura was thankful for the obvious familiarity he had in regard to the correct platform for the stopping train which would take her the rest of the way on a small branch line to the coast.

  "Are you going to Merrynporth too?" Laura asked as the little train pulled jerkily out of the station.

  "I'm getting out two stops before, so don't get carried on," he replied.

  "Carried on?"

  "To Land's End—or it might be Hades with the dark Pluto

  waiting for you at the other end." "How absurd you are!"

  "Am I? But you're in Cornwall now, Miss Laura Smith. Strange things can happen in these parts. Don't say I didn't warn you."

  "Warn me of what?"

  "Of the pitfalls, perhaps, which could await unsophisticated little girls who still believe in buried treasure."

  "I'm not," she replied coldly, "as unsophisticated as that"

  "No?"

  "No."

  She was beginning to fight a losing battle with sleep. The long journey following on too brief a convalescence had, she supposed, proved unduly tiring, and her fellow traveller's personality had ceased to charm. She closed her eyes and began to drift into oblivion.

  She slept fitfully, jerked to consciousness each time the train stopped at a station with shuddering violence, until she began to wonder if she would reach the end of her journey in one piece. She was aware every so often that the dark stranger opposite watched her, and it must, she imagined uneasily, be the erratic lights, or perhaps it was the effect of the wine which lent his face a suggestion of malevolence and gave a horned twist to his eyebrows.

  When the train stopped again, her companion jumped up suddenly and pulled down the small case which seemed to be his only luggage, at the same time giving Laura's heavier suitcase a shove to greater safety on the rack above her head.

  "This is where I leave you, Miss Smith. Pleasant dreams, and don't get carried on to Hades. Yours is the next stop but one," he said, and favoured her with the now familiar derisive grin as he swung himself on to the platform.

  "Goodbye—and thank you for my lunch," she called after him, remembering that after all he had never told her his name.

  "Not goodbye, we shall meet again," he shouted back, and was gone, leaving behind him the strange impression of a

  buccaneer who could possibly claim other and more sinister connections.

  "Absurd!" muttered Laura, and slipped back into sleep until the subsequent stop warned her that she should be getting her belongings together.

  Someone opened the door for her and heaved out her suitcase, and she stumbled on to a deserted, ill-lit platform, dazed and not at all sure that this was not part of a dream and she had indeed arrived in Hades where, any minute, Pluto might materialise in a cloud of sulphur.

  The dark stranger who confronted her was alarmingly familiar and, in her befuddled state of mind, seemed to be a combined manifestation of the traveller on the train and the Prince of Darkness.

  "You're quite likely delirious," she chided herself, speaking her thoughts aloud, a bad habit which had been much deplored by her Auntie Flo.

  "Talking to yourself?" a voice behind her enquired politely, and as she jumped, then turned with her head spinning in protest, she thought for a wild moment she had raised the devil by her thoughts.

  "How can you appear like this?" she demanded indignantly. "How can you come out of nowhere?"

  "What an odd reaction to a perfect stranger," he replied, shooting up a pair of black, horned eyebrows. "Who did you think I was?"

  "The devil," she answered without any thought.

  CHAPTER TWO

  A gust of wind blew between them, making her shiver, then he moved into the feeble light of one of the station lamps and she saw her first impression had been wrong. He was older, less attractive than that other stranger, although the same buccaneering illusion persisted, making the dark, dominant features familiar; then he turned to meet her full face and she saw with a small sense of shock that his left cheek was marred by a curiously shaped scar with drew one corner of his mouth into a very slight twist of permanent derision. The devil, indeed, she thought, still bemused by that crack on the head, and was unsurprised when he addressed her by name, for supernatural knowledge was only to be expected.

  "Well now," he said with gentle irony, "no wonder you're looking at me with such wide-eyed apprehension. I haven't, I assure you, suddenly materialised to carry you off to the' nether regions, but to tak
e you home."

  "Home?"

  "To Penzion. Didn't you expect to be met?"

  "Oh! Then—then you're a Trevayne?"

  "Naturally, even though you seemed to expect a more satanic courier. I'm Dominic Trevayne."

  "It's the same thing, really—at least, I mean my original idea, pirates and things—the devil came later—" Laura replied somewhat incoherently. "I was dreaming, you see, and the man on the train got mixed up in my dream and grew horns, so when you appeared, the—the likeness confused me —the man, not the devil, I mean." She thought his expression was somewhat sardonic as he replied:

  "Very illuminating. I'm relieved the likeness turns out to be more mortal than infernal. It would seem you must have met my brother. He was expected by this train, too, but he doesn't appear to be around."

  "He—your brother—got off two stops back," she said,

  aware now that her acquaintance on the train had been enjoying a private joke of his own at her expense.

  "Oh, I see. His usual date at the Bunch of Grapes, one presumes. Peregrine was doing his stuff, I imagine—didn't he know who you were?"

  Laura sighed.

  "Oh yes, he knew. He picked me up in the corridor— literally, I mean—I fell over his suitcase. And then he insisted I travelled in his compartment because I couldn't find a seat and we got talking and it was a long journey, and I saw no harm in it—besides, he bought me lunch," she finished defiantly, and he cocked a quizzical eyebrow at her.

  "It's scarcely my place to rebuke you, Miss Smith, even though I might share your aunt's misgivings," he said, and she recognised the familiar note of mockery that was an echo of the younger Trevayne. "Did you find him attractive? Most women do."

  She was not prepared to identify herself with a nameless string of easy conquests for her host's amusement and merely observed a trifle coolly that the younger Mr. Trevayne might have seen fit to acquaint her with his identity since he already knew hers.

  "Oh, that wouldn't be Perry's way. He likes to keep them guessing, and he doubtless found the journey dull," he replied carelessly.

  She did not much care for the implication that her engaging fellow traveller had merely been relieving boredom, but her head was beginning to ache and she felt in no shape to argue. Dominic Trevayne stood looking down at her with absent attention for a moment, then asked if she felt sufficiently recovered to walk to the car. She got to her feet without replying and he picked up her suitcase and began striding along the platform.

  "Sorry," he said, and paused as he heard her stumbling after him. "Am I going too fast for you?"

  She was tired, the eventful journey ending as it had was hardly a restful follow-up of 'flu, and her head felt as if it must be swelling visibly.

  "I'm beginning to think your brother was right," she snapped with irrational inconsistency. "He told me I wasn't at all fitted for a life among pirates and smugglers and predatory overlords."

  That certainly stopped him in his tracks and he turned to look at her.

  "Did he, indeed?" he observed mildly. "What a curious picture he must have presented of Penzion."

  "The picture was mine, I suppose," she said a little crossly, aware of how childish she must have sounded. "I'd made my own imaginings, you see. The Trevaynes had always sounded as if they had pirate ancestors."

  "And the predatory overlords—where did they come in?"

  "That was your brother's invention. I wouldn't know what he meant."

  "He meant me, my dear Miss Smith, and was not, I think, indulging in adventure-book fantasy, like you. You might as well know now that the accident of becoming head of a family breeds resentment, for you'll find it out for yourself."

  He had spoken with such unexpected bitterness that Laura drew back a step, thinking that her preconceived notions of the Trevaynes had not been so misplaced after all. They were all alike in one thing, these two brothers; they shared a streak of tough arrogance and possibly other traits besides.

  "Don't look so alarmed, I was only warning you," he said on a gentler note, and she smiled a little uncertainly.

  "Your brother warned me, too—of the pitfalls that might await unsophisticated little girls who still believed in adventure tales. You seem to be a very prophetic family," she said, and he laughed.

  "On the contrary—you'll find us a hard-headed, down-to-earth lot, I'm afraid. We haven't much time for romantic fancies at Penzion. Here's the car. You'd better get in while I shove your luggage in the boot," he said, and she felt rebuked for foolishness like an importunate child.

  "I realise, Mr. Trevayne," she said as he settled himself in the driver's seat, "that I must be making a—a rather idiotic impression. I'm neither a little girl, nor completely unsophis-

  ticated—so I'm warning you."

  "Really? Well, that's fair enough; now we're both warned," he said with the same amused indulgence his brother had shown, and she was dismayed to discover that she was experiencing an ignominious desire to weep. He was unbearable, she thought, in his assumption of adult superiority, and totally without his brother's charm to cloak a sting with humour. He turned suddenly, one hand already on the ignition key, and looked down at her with a new expression which might have been mistaken for tenderness.

  "Head aching?" he asked, and the unexpected solicitude was her undoing. The tears escaped despite herself, and she turned her face into his shoulder because, what with the pain in her head and the absurd fancies which had led to her making a fool of herself, any shoulder was better than none.

  "That," he observed with a comforting lack of embarrassment, "is a much more natural reaction. Cry away the ache and the tension, Miss Laura Smith. My shoulder is reassuringly human, even though you did mistake me for the devil."

  "I didn't really," Laura gulped. "Perhaps I was concussed, or something."

  "You're rather absurd and not at all my idea of a nanny," he told her, and watched her forehead wrinkle in perplexity.

  "I'm not a nanny at all," she said, sounding surprised, "I'm only helping out with Nicky because I'm between jobs and Cleo thought a holiday would be good for me. Besides, she was rather stuck when the proper nanny walked out."

  "Oh, I see. Then you've no experience of looking after children? I understood that the boy had been your charge for a little while."

  "Only at odd times. I baby-sit for Cleo whenever possible, and Nicky took to me. He's a good little boy when he doesn't feel he's neglected.

  "Neglected?"

  "Not neglected, of course, but—Cleo can't always be with him; she likes to be gay." "Gay?"

  Laura glanced up at him, belatedly aware of the reserve in

  his two interpolations. She had forgotten for the moment that this was her cousin's brother-in-law, the man it was so important to impress with the just claims of his only nephew. Dominic Trevayne might well have that native chapel streak in him which Cleo had said was common to many Cornish-men, and take the view that a widow of only one year's standing should scarcely have thoughts bent on frivolity.

  "You shouldn't blame Cleo for—for a natural inclination," she said gently. "She's very attractive, still young, and has a great zest for life. You wouldn't want her to mourn for a past that's over and done with, would you?"

  "Is it done with?" he asked on a note of coldness. "I understand that my sister-in-law feels the past owes her something."

  "Nicky, not Cleo. He's of your own blood, after all. Don't you feel he has some claim on your family?"

  "Upon my soul!" he exclaimed. "You've been well primed, whatever your position in Cleo's menage. Just arrived, a stranger in our midst, and already you take me to task on my family obligations."

  "It's not my place to take any of you to task," she said, "but you brought the matter up."

  "So I did," he replied, and the humour seemed restored to his voice. "I'm glad to hear you remember your place, Miss Smith, though I'm beginning to wonder what that is."

  Observing the shifting play of light over that rather hars
h profile as the car passed out of the station yard, Laura reflected that her charming cousin would be well advised to walk delicately with Dominic Trevayne, for she did not think he was a man to succumb easily to feminine wiles and evasions. A hard-headed, down-to-earth lot, he had warned her, just as his brother had warned her of pitfalls ... Well, thought Laura, drifting into snatches of uneasy sleep as they seemed to speed endlessly through the darkness of narrow lanes and twisting moorland roads, the pitfalls, if any, would scarcely be lying in wait for her, a passing intruder in Trevayne affairs, and Cleo could well look after herself.

  Her impressions of her arrival at Penzion were, afterwards, a little confused, through the vast hall she found herself standing in while Dominic Trevayne fetched her luggage from the car only served to heighten her first fancies. Firelight flickered on great presses and display cabinets and armour, and other dim shapes reflecting light from glass and metal and polished wood; shields and trophies of war and the chase hung on the walls, and a massive chandelier swung so high in the vaulted roof that it afforded little light. Barking dogs, shouting voices, merged with the banging of doors and a rhythmic dull booming which must, she supposed, be breakers beating against the rocks somewhere near, and gusts of wind blew in at the open front door with eerie sounds of wailing until her host came in and shut it behind him with a slam.

  "Well," said Dominic with a tinge of mockery, observing her air of awed surprise, "is it the expected setting—devils, pirates, predatory overlords?"

  "Yes," she said, unaware in the pleasing corroboration of her extravagant fancies that he was laughing at her.

  He turned to one of the several doors which opened on to the hall, and Laura followed, thankful that Cleo would be waiting for her, impatient no doubt to hand over responsibility for Nicky without much thought for the personal reunion between them, but familiar and with both feet comfortably on the ground after rather a surfeit of improbability. At the same moment the sound of distant barking broke out again, and more voices shouting, and Dominic gave an impatient exclamation.

  "Blasted dogs! Amos has let them out again, I suppose. Come in and get warm while I go and see about that tea," he said, and she went past him into a long, low room which, though without distinction and plainly furnished, had, after the museum-like grandeur of the hall, an air of comfort and homeliness. Cleo, Laura guessed, would sniff at the masculine clutter, the indifferent paintings and the roughly patched tears in rugs and upholstery, legacies, probably, of generations of undisciplined puppies, but lights blazed with cheerful if redundant extravagance from every available fixture, and great