To Catch A Unicorn Page 9

"You don't talk to Cleo as if she was slightly half-witted," and Laura, refusing to be sidetracked, and he put a hand over one of hers.

  "Cleo doesn't need handling with kid gloves," he said ambiguously, "but I'm sorry if I've made you feel half-witted. You do, at times, test one's ingenuity rather severely."

  "Do I?"

  "Yes, you do. You are such a mixture of common sense and highly astonishing absurdity that you must forgive a certain amount of confusion in the mere male."

  She smiled, dimly recognising that confusion wasn't necessarily confined to the very young, and the thought gave her fresh confidence in herself. His hand still rested over hers and she felt again the hard roughness which would always be a legacy from those early days in the quarry.

  "I wonder what you meant by that very profound remark I overheard just now," he said, removing his hand and thrusting it under his other arm, hugging his chest.

  "About being a whole person? I suppose I meant that the perfect whole must be a shared one. To be a single entity is unfinished," she said, and his smile was a little crooked as the scar puckered up a corner of his mouth.

  "One and One and all alone? I'm not, I think, a person who easily inspires affection."

  "Dominic," she said on impulse, "—you mustn't let a—an old passion spoil the whole of your life."

  " I am desolate and sick of an old passion,' you were suggesting, since we might as well go on quoting verse," he said, and she saw at once the impulse had been merely an impertinence. "So you've got hold of that old scandal, have you? I wonder which version you've heard—not that it's of any consequence. I assure you I am neither sick, nor particularly desolate, and I'd advise you, my dear Miss Mouse, to keep your well-meaning little nose out of affairs that don't concern you until such time as might become fit for you to be told."

  She sat there with her face aflame, aghast at her own temerity, and dumb with the agonised dumbness of shame. She had trespassed unforgivably without even the excuse of long acquaintance, and his cool withdrawal was like a slap of distaste. Although his smile was quite kindly as he got to his feet, he was, thought the mortified Laura, very much the arrogant dark Trevayne as he left her and walked away.

  She avoided him after that, acutely conscious of having fallen into the trap of her own well-meaning clumsiness. It was, she thought, so difficult to judge another person's moment of truth, to know when it matched with yours.

  "He is two different people, and I get confused," she said

  to Bella once, because with Bella one could sometimes speak one's thoughts and not be misunderstood.

  "We all," said Bella, "build up our own defences, but we rarely understand the defences of others. Are you troubled about something, dear child?"

  "No, that's not what I mean," replied Laura, wondering if Bella in her roundabout fashion was dropping words of warning as Cleo had.

  "No. Very likely you are still only concerned for the little boy. What does your cousin hope for him?"

  "Don't you think Nicky has a certain claim to Trevayne generosity?" Laura said gently. "It was Cleo's money that kept them all in the end, you know."

  "Very likely," said Bella absently, and her strange eyes took on their psychic look as she paused in her task of laying the table and gazed into space. "Troy's child ... he would doubtless have been provided for had Zachary known ... he wanted a grandson to carry on ... the next generation ..."

  "Well, Nicky is the next generation and the only one left, isn't he?" Laura said, becoming impatient at so much beating about the bush over something which to her seemed simple and straightforward.

  Bella did not answer, but her eyes lost their fixed stare and travelled over Laura's shoulder to the open door, so it was no surprise when Dominic's voice spoke behind her:

  "If you're pleading your cousin's cause, Laura, it would be better to take the matter up with me," he said, and she turned away to hide her hot cheeks.

  "I Wasn't pleading any cause, unless, perhaps, Nicky's," she answered, embarrassed but prepared to stand her ground. "I was only pointing out to Bella that he carries your name and your blood and is, after all, the last of your line."

  "Very grandiloquently said, Miss Mouse, but possibly premature," he replied with gentle irony. "I may marry."

  "Oh!" she exclaimed.

  "You hadn't thought of that, had you?" he said. She could not tell him that she had certainly thought, but been misled by his own attitude.

  "Well, of course—I mean—" she stammered, and he grinned at her rather unkindly.

  "I don't think you know what you mean, and perhaps it's just as well," he said. "Did your cousin put you up to this?"

  She looked round anxiously for support from Bella, but Bella had gone.

  "Well?" said Dominic, a faintly ominous note coming into his voice, and Laura turned and looked him straight in the eye.

  "Cleo put me up to nothing. She's quite capable of pleading her own cause," she retorted, and the corners of his mouth twitched slightly.

  "So I would imagine. You, however, have a remarkable gift for interference," he replied, and she moved too hastily and knocked over a salt-cellar.

  "Now look what you've done!" she exclaimed, thankful for the diversion, but childishly dismayed by the significance of spilled salt between them.

  "I didn't do it," he protested mildly, and she missed the faint twinkle in his eye. "Are you superstitious, Laura?"

  "Yes ... oh, yes ... walking under ladders, broken mirrors, black cats, spilling salt—all terrible bringers of bad luck," she said somewhat incoherently", and threw a handful of salt over her left shoulder. "You'd better do the same, Dominic, or we shall quarrel."

  "You have a rather engaging method of sidetracking a subject," he observed. "Do I make you nervous?"

  "No—yes—oh, do throw some salt over your left shoulder or we really will quarrel."

  He obliged with a small mocking snap of finger and thumb, finishing up with an admonitory flip to her cheek.

  "If we ever do quarrel, Miss Mouse, you won't be left in any doubt," he said, and sauntered out of the room.

  CHAPTER SIX

  He returned to the subject most unexpectedly that same evening, however. Cleo and Peregrine had gone racing, to finish up, doubtless, with one of their pub crawls, and Laura found herself committed to a solitary evening with Dominic. Bella left the table halfway through supper and did not return, and Laura, used by now to the abrupt departures of the household upon finishing their meals, expected Dominic to do the same, but he sat on, pushing his chair back to relax and watch her efforts to catch up.

  "You'll choke," he said. "Where's the hurry?"

  "You all eat so fast, I'm always left behind," she complained. "Don't wait for me, Dominic, you never do."

  "Yes, I'm afraid we're somewhat lacking in table manners. No women around to make polite small talk, I suppose. Bella doesn't count. Do you dislike being watched eating?"

  "Yes, it makes me nervous."

  "I make you nervous, too, upon occasion, I suspect?" "Yes, sometimes." "And Perry doesn't?"

  "Not in the same way. I can be rude to him, you see, and that puts us on the same level."

  "Does it indeed? And you feel, I gather, you can't be rude to me. Is it my great age?"

  "Of course not. You surely don't consider thirty-five or thirty-six old?"

  "Well, perhaps not. All the same, there's fifteen years' difference between us."

  "Between us? Well, does it matter?"

  "It might," he said, and she stopped eating and sat looking at him with puzzled uncertainty.

  "It isn't," she said at last, "anything to do with age." "What isn't?"

  "Feeling nervous. You're tying me up, Dominic."

  He smiled then with Peregrine's familiar teasing mockery, and she reflected that ten years ago he must have been very like his brother.

  "I'm sure," she said uneasily, "you must have things to do. You don't sit about much in the evenings."

  "Well, this is going
to be an exception, so it's no use trying to get rid of me. I want to talk to you, so hurry up and finish your pudding," he said, and she took up her fork again and bolted the rest of her food in silence.

  "Finished?" Dominic asked abruptly, and without waiting for a reply, pushed back bis chair and went to the door.

  "I think I should go up and see that Nicky's all right," she said hurriedly, and then wished she hadn't spoken when she saw his grin of amusement.

  "A lame excuse, Miss Mouse, and one you seem fond of. The boy was asleep hours ago, as you very well know. Are you afraid I'm going to eat you?" he said, and she was glad of the dimness as she felt her cheeks grow hot. Was he imagining she thought he had designs on her?

  "Certainly not!" she retorted, taking refuge in the reprimanding tones she sometimes used to Nicky, and his grin grew broader.

  "You won't put me in my place with your prunes and prisms," he said rather unkindly, and went into the book-room, leaving the door open for her.

  The room, with its book-lined walls and tapestry hangings, was more friendly by night, she thought, her eyes beginning to rove over book titles, picking out old favourites. One desk-lamp and the firelight lent an illusion of cosiness that the rest of the house lacked, and she forgot her uneasiness.

  She sat down on a low stool by the fire and waited expectantly, and the old hound who had followed them in lay down beside her.

  "What do you want to know?" she asked as he did not at once speak. "You can see for yourself that he's quite a well-behaved little boy, considering he's so much with grown-ups, and in time—in time he'll lose that—that reserve he has with you."

  "Very delicately put," he replied a little dryly, sitting down behind the big desk and reaching for a pipe. "His reserve, as you call it, is plain dislike I'm afraid, but that can't be helped. What, in your opinion, do you consider I should do about him?"

  "Me?" She sounded surprised. "Financially, you mean?"

  "Oh, financially, of course—that was the main object of the visit, wasn't it? But there are other considerations. You seemed very ready to express your views to Bella. I'd like to hear them."

  "But my views can't matter, it's Cleo's affair. You must have discussed things with her."

  "As a matter of fact, I haven't, but that doesn't mean I haven't done some serious thinking."

  "Oh!" Laura sounded as nonplussed as she felt, and he gave her a little smile of encouragement.

  "Come now, Laura, it was you who pointed out only this morning that my family had a duty to Troy's son—the last of our line, I believe you said."

  She was not very sure whether he wasn't still mildly rebuking her for interference, but he seemed to expect an answer.

  "Well, don't you think you have—a duty, I mean?" she replied. He had, after all, invited her opinion.

  "Oh, certainly. I never shared my father's stubborn attitude, and tried, as I think you know, to contact my brother after the old man died, but Troy was as headstrong and revengeful as his father. It might have made a difference, you know, if the news of a grandson hadn't been kept from us."

  "But that, surely, could have been pride on Troy's part."

  "It was spite as well, my dear. The old man cared more about being cheated out of a grandchild than he cared about Troy marrying your cousin."

  "Yes, I see ... I don't, you must understand, know very much about those years in Australia. Cleo came home every once in a while and dumped Nicky on my aunt while she paid visits, but I was still at school and Cleo seldom wrote ...

  They were always moving about, and I think money was short..."

  "I see. Well now, what would you consider my obligations to be?"

  She was so long in replying that he tilted the lamp at his elbow to shine it more fully on her face. She looked like a little girl, he thought, sitting on the stool with her feet together, twisting her hands in her lap, and his smile was suddenly tender as he watched her.

  "I don't know how to answer you, Dominic," she said at last. "I—I think you should be responsible within reason for Nicky's future, since your brother no longer can be, and it's hard on a young widow to bring up a boy alone."

  "Your cousin is far too decorative to remain a widow long," he said with a certain crispness, and Laura gave him a quick look, wondering whether there was any deeper significance in that remark.

  "But a child can be a handicap to a second marriage," she pointed out gently. "Cleo knows only too well that a boy needs a father, but another man's child can be an added financial responsibility these days."

  "I see. So you think a settlement would clear the way for remarriage?"

  "Well, it would help to make her independent of another man's generosity, wouldn't it?"

  "You've got it all nicely worked out between you, haven't you?" he said, and spoke with such unexpected harshness that she jumped. He had jerked his chair round abruptly and the light from the desk-lamp now fell full on his face, cruelly exposing the puckered scar. As if he was aware of it he put a hand to his cheek with that automatic, defensive little gesture which had become familiar, and Laura said, her first recoil at his sudden change of manner forgotten in swift compassion :

  "Forget your scar, Dominic—no one notices it but you."

  "And the boy," he retorted, but he dropped his hand to his knee with the sheepish haste of someone caught out in an unconscious habit of betrayal and pushed his chair back out

  of the light.

  "It scared him a little at first, perhaps, but children accept physical differences very quickly. Nicky thinks you're a pirate and another pirate attacked you with a cutlass."

  His laugh was spontaneous, and held both relief and amusement.

  "And I suppose you invented that one for him! Oh, Laura, my solemn child, sometimes I think you enjoy your fantasies as much as Nicky does. Penzion will seem a duller place when you've gone."

  "Will it?" she said politely, but she looked suddenly blank. Their visit had lengthened so imperceptibly that thoughts of the morrow had been pushed aside, but she knew it must end once Cleo's affairs were straightened out, and she knew now that she did not want to go.

  "You sound sceptical. Don't you think you will be missed?" he asked, and she leaned forward, trying to see his face in the shadows.

  "I hadn't thought about it," she said. "I was a—a sort of gatecrasher really, I suppose, and it's I who will miss Penzion."

  "Laura," he said suddenly, "I'd like to bring the boy up here. Does that sound feasible to you?" Her eyes widened in surprise.

  "It would be wonderful for Nicky, of course, he loves Penzion, but—but how could you arrange that? Did you mean adoption?"

  "Well, no—he already has a parent. But there are other ways—other considerations. I just wanted to get your reaction."

  She sat silent while she considered those unnamed possibilities. Marriage? And if so, marriage of course with the boy's mother ... by what other means could one gain control of a child? She felt suddenly drained.

  "You've already made your plans, of course," she said, wondering why she should have imagined he had a use for her opinions. The Trevaynes, from what she knew of them, were not the sort to seek counsel pending their decision.

  "Oh, yes, I've made my plans—and my conditions," he said, still watching her.

  "Then you'll act on them, won't you? And your affairs are really no concern of mine," she said gently, and thought he looked disappointed.

  "I think I'll go to bed if you don't mind," she said, and he bade her an absent goodnight and made no effort to detain her. He saw her, however, reach up a hand to the shelves to finger the leather binding of a book as she passed on her way to the door, and added:

  "You're fond of books, aren't you? Yes, of course you are. Use the room when you like and borrow what you want."

  "Thank you," she said. "I'll stick to the day-time so I won't be in your way."

  She had the door open now, but before she could make her escape, the front door was flung wide and Cleo and P
eregrine entered noisily. Cleo seeing Laura in the lighted doorway of the book-room moved quickly across the hall.

  "Dom still up?" she asked, pushing past. "Oh, you are. We've had a fabulous evening—all those funny little waterside taverns, and sailors with rings in their ears, and the local floozie practically doing a strip-tease! Laura should have been with us—her eyes would have popped out on stalks, Perry, we must take my credulous little cousin with us some time," she added as Peregrine joined them.

  Dominic had risen and he spoke now with a certain sharpness.

  "You'll not take Laura to your sleazy joints—understand, Perry?"

  Peregrine grinned and gave Cleo a significant wink, to which she returned a grimace.

  "Hardly sleazy, Dom—just picturesque local colour, as you should know. Is my little cousin so innocent that she must be protected from the rougher side of life, or am I so hardboiled that it doesn't matter?" she asked, and surveyed him with provocative good humour.

  "You," Dominic replied, "are of the same stuff as the

  Trevaynes. Our rougher side of life would hardly dismay you."

  Although he spoke harshly, he made it sound like a compliment, and Cleo clearly took it as such, for she slanted her eyes at him provocatively and said, "Of course not, I belong. I do belong, don't I?"

  If it was a deliberate challenge, Dominic met it with bland-ness, though his eyes were bright with speculation.

  "Oh, yes, you belong," he said, and Peregrine, whose dark eyes had been going from one to the other of them with a hint of sullen annoyance, observed:

  "Well, you don't seem to have wasted your time either, dear brother. Was our obliging Laura helping with the office work, or were you merely keeping company? The book-room is debarred to most of us."

  He was, Laura realised, a little the worse for drink, and she trusted that he was not going to come out with one of his more embarrassing effronteries.

  "I was going to bed," she said, hoping to divert him, but although he obligingly offered no tiresome jibe, Cleo's attention was caught.

  "Well, what d'you know?" she said silkily. "Little Laura, all starry-eyed from an evening with the boss! Have we come back at an inopportune moment, darling?"