Kitabı oku: «Follies», sayfa 3

‘Well, and how did it go?’

It was easy to tell Chloe things. Helen clasped dramatically at her heart and stumbled forward into the light. ‘Wonderful. And awful. He asked me to go to bed with him and I said no. Oh God, Chloe, what shall I do?’ It was half a joke, but only half. Something intriguing had come in to fill a cold, empty space inside Helen, and now she didn’t want to let it go.

Chloe’s eyebrows lifted a fraction. ‘Horny little bugger,’ she said, amused. ‘You were quite right to tell him to get lost. He’ll be back, love, don’t you worry.’

‘I hope you’re right,’ said Helen softly. ‘I want him to be back, very much.’ She didn’t, in her preoccupation, see the quick anxious glance that Chloe shot at her.

After an hour of sitting with Rose in the impenetrable untidiness of her kitchen, Oliver stood up restlessly. He drank the remains of the dark brown sherry in his glass and made a face. Rose went on impassively with her sewing, not looking at him. ‘Before you go,’ she said, ‘what are you doing to that nice little thing upstairs?’

Oliver shrugged himself into his coat without answering, turned to go, and then as an afterthought sketched a kiss in the air between himself and Rose. ‘Doing nothing at all, darling Rose. All the treasures are kept securely locked away, as you must have guessed. Bloody boring. And now, au revoir or I shall be late for Hall.’

Rose, left alone in the kitchen, smiled a little and went on sewing.

Oliver took the steps into the misty dampness shrouding the city two at a time. He noticed the outline of a big car parked on the bridge as he came level with it, then as he swung out on to the pavement he saw that it was a white Rolls. Beside it, a man in a peaked cap was lifting a heavy trunk. Three other people were standing close together in the orange glare of the street lights, moisture from the mist beading brilliantly on their hair and clothes. The tallest was a thickset man in an expensive overcoat; one of the two women was clinging affectedly to his arm.

But it was the other woman who drew Oliver’s startled attention.

She looked very young. Over a cloud of pure white fur, the face was as innocent as an angel’s, and as expressionlessly beautiful as if carved in marble. Oliver stopped dead. At once, the face burned itself into his memory. He knew that he had never seen it before, yet it was familiar, even down to the faintly startled reflection in the depths of the immense eyes. And the girl went on looking back at him, her lips slightly parted and the street lights darting jewels of dampness among her snow-white furs.

The thickset man made an irritable sound and Oliver wrenched his attention from the girl.

‘Can I help?’ he asked politely.

The man stabbed a finger towards the square black bulk of Follies House.

‘Is this Follies House?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Jesus, will you look at those steps!’ The accent was mid-Atlantic, but beneath it were the unmistakable echoes of London’s East End. Hobbs, can you get all this down there?’

The chauffeur leaned over the parapet. ‘Yes, Mr Warren, I think so.’

The other woman clung more tightly to the cashmere sleeve. ‘Oh, Masefield, it’s so wet out here. My hair.’ Without a word her escort opened the passenger door and handed her back into the Rolls. Hobbs bent to lift the trunk again. The girl stared back at Oliver, motionless. The shroud of mist seemed to swallow all the sounds around them, so that they moved in eerie, silent isolation.

‘Can I help?’ he asked again, but the thickset man glanced at him only briefly. ‘Thanks. No.’

The girl in white ducked her head and followed her father down the steps. Hobbs bent to the trunk again and bumped awkwardly after them. The woman sat in the car, staring ahead of her and rhythmically stroking her hair.

Oliver walked away, back up St Aldate’s to Christ Church. He whistled to himself as he went, the same few, unfinished notes. Now he knew. The man was Masefield Warren. More, the white girl was his daughter, Pansy. Her face, wide-eyed and startled, was familiar from the flashbulb shots of a hundred gossip columns. Pansy Warren was not only beautiful, she was the heiress to her father’s by now uncounted millions.

As Oliver walked back under Tom Tower the rest of the little whistled tune came spilling out, unchecked.

TWO

Oliver came looking for Helen again on Sunday morning.

On Sunday mornings Oxford was always full of the peals and counterpeals of church bells, and today they sounded louder and even sweeter than usual. The skies were clear after the days of rain of the term’s beginning, and the trees without their muffling shrouds of leaves let the echoes through with extra clarity.

Helen was planning to do some reading in a library with a view over lawns and towers. It is Sunday, she told herself, as she gathered up her books. You must work as hard as you can, for Mum’s sake and Graham’s, but it can’t be flat out all the time.

When she came out of the front door of Follies House she saw Oliver at once. He was leaning on the parapet of the bridge, watching her. He made no move as she climbed the steps towards him, feeling clumsy in her thick overcoat and encumbered by her books. But as soon as she came level with him, he smiled. Helen was struck at once by the way his face, the same features that must have belonged to the parade of illustrious ancestors stretching behind him, was repossessed by the smile to become Oliver himself, unique. He stepped forward, blocking her path.

‘No work today,’ he said firmly. ‘Don’t you know it’s Sunday?’ One by one he took the books from under her arm. ‘Come with me instead.’

He wasn’t being persuasive; he was simply telling her what she must do.

‘We can go anywhere you like. The whole world’s waiting.’

Helen let him unburden her, unable to protest or insist that indeed she must work.

‘Books, books,’ Oliver was saying breezily. ‘I was sent out for tutoring last term to a man called Stephen Spurring. He kept trying to make me go to gloomy seminars with anxious girls from Colleges I’ve never heard of …’

‘Like me?’ Helen was laughing in spite of herself.

‘No. Not a bit like you. You don’t go to seminars and adopt a Marxist interpretation of Wuthering Heights, do you?’

‘Oh, all the time. Stephen Spurring’s very highly thought of, you know.’

‘Then you must stop it at once.’ Oliver stood squarely in front of her and cupped her chin so that she looked up into his face. He was mock-serious, grinning at her as he dropped his hand again so that she wanted to say, Come back. ‘It can’t be good for you. And highly thought of by whom? Hart has discovered that Spurring has got some kind of senior-member responsibility for As You Like It. Of all the tedious little men.’

So Oliver dismissed the bright star of the English faculty. How confident he is, Helen thought, as she followed him.

Oliver dropped the pile of books haphazardly into the well behind the seats of his open car. It was waiting for them at the kerbside, looking to Helen absurdly low-slung, sleek and highly polished. She had often seen Oliver driving around town in it. Now she said, ‘It’s such a pretty car. What kind is it?’

He opened the passenger door with a flourish, handed Helen into the leather bucket seat and swung him legs over the door on his own side.

‘A Jaguar,’ he said, with deep satisfaction, patting the walnut fascia. ‘XK 150. Rather old now, and quite rare.’ The engine roared throatily into life and Oliver beamed. ‘Looked after for me by a little man in the Botley Road. He just loves the innards of old cars, isn’t that lucky? Me, I don’t have any taste for sprockets and oil. I just want to drive her, the faster the better. So, really, the three of us have a perfect relationship.’

Helen watched him, fascinated. She had never met anyone so vibrantly pleased with life, and so certain of himself. The introspective moment of the other evening when he had sat staring out into the darkness of Canterbury Quad, and Helen had thought that after all he might make the perfect romantic hero, was forgotten.

They were bowling through the wide, tree-lined streets of North Oxford now, where the pavements were drifted over with golden leaves. The few people who were about were strolling with newspapers under their arms, or walking dogs who scuffled in the piles of leaves.

‘Where are we going?’ Helen asked.

‘Where would you like to go?’ Oliver countered. ‘Anywhere in particular?’

‘No.’

‘Well then, you might as well leave it to me. We’re going to have lunch, as it happens. And to see a man about a dog.’

Helen asked no more questions. Instead she sat back in her seat and let the wind blow away everything but the immediacy of this extraordinary morning. When she closed her eyes, the sunlight and the shade from the trees flashing past dappled patterns through her eyelids. When she opened them again there was the long, black car bonnet in front of her, the outskirts of the city dropping away, and Oliver beside her. He drove negligently, one hand on the wheel and the other resting on the polished wooden knob of the gear lever. They sliced in and out of the traffic on the busy road and then, suddenly, they were in the open country. Helen felt the acceleration pressing her back into her seat as the car surged forward. The shadows swept over her face, faster and faster, and the wind whipped her hair back.

Oliver glanced at her, sidelong. If Helen had known him better she might have recognised the small, secret smile with which he always congratulated himself on getting his own way. When she looked round at him again the smile had vanished and he asked, casually, ‘Warm enough? My coat’s in the back if you need something to put over your knees.’ It was the brown leather aviator’s coat which he had been wearing the other evening. Helen instinctively pulled her own well-worn duffel coat more tightly around her.

‘I’m fine. Thanks.’

The car swept on. They were in the Cotswolds now, driving through villages built of honey-coloured stone and past winter-ready fields showing countless shades of brown and ochre.

‘It’s a beautiful day,’ Oliver said, stretching back in his seat and bracing his arms straight against the wheel. ‘Better than mouldering with all that lot in some library?’ He jerked his head backwards at the pile of books behind them.

Much better, Helen told herself, shutting her mind resolutely to the niggling voice of conscience and another, much fainter, murmur of apprehension. She didn’t feel safe with Oliver Mortimore. But then, what was so appealing about safety? Helen wriggled a little deeper into her seat and stared along the low line of the Jaguar’s bonnet at the open road hurtling towards them. She thought, fleetingly, of Chloe; feeling safe wouldn’t be high on Chloe’s list of priorities, she was certain. Perhaps, after all, it didn’t come so high on her own either. Helen couldn’t explain to herself why she had been swept up by Lord Oliver Mortimore. But it gave her an unfamiliar glow of flattery and excitement. And now she was here she would enjoy it, whatever was to come. The recognition of that whatever, too, gave Helen a thrill of recklessness. She so rarely did anything without thinking very hard about it first. But there just wasn’t any leeway for thinking, where Oliver was concerned. He had just happened to her, and she was ready to accept that.

Just as he would have to accept her.

Helen was clear-sighted enough to know that there was nothing to be gained by pretending to be something she wasn’t, in the hope that would make her more interesting to him. Whatever it was that he had seen in her in the first place would have to go on being enough, and Helen lifted her chin determinedly at that. But she definitely wanted him to go on seeing something in her. Her eyes were drawn to him again as he sat negligently at the wheel. He was unusually good-looking, yes, but his attraction was more magnetic than that. It was the ease, the casualness and the assurance that drew Helen, who possessed none of those things. She felt as if she wanted to warm herself by him. And there was something else, too. She thought she detected a sensitivity in him, under all that urbane gloss, that made him doubly attractive. A little mysterious, too.

Be careful, Helen’s sane little inner voice warned her. Another, louder voice responded. I’m always careful. This time I just want to see what happens. I don’t care if it isn’t real. If it doesn’t last any longer even than today.

The Jaguar was slowing down. They had left the main road and, at the end of a much narrower road, they came to a compact little village. A cluster of stone cottages around an uneven triangle of green, a church with a squat stone tower masked by a belt of yew trees, and at the apex of the triangle, there was a pub. A mulberry tree was painted on the sign over the low door.

Oliver switched off the ignition and his smile flashed at her again.

‘This is where we’ll have lunch.’ Again there was no possibility of disagreeing with him, even if Helen had wanted to. Instead, she let him escort her across the green to the door under the mulberry tree sign. Oliver’s arm sat lightly across her shoulders as they walked. Inside, there were log fires and high-backed oak seats.

‘You’re always so cold,’ Oliver grinned down at her. ‘We’d better sit close to the fire.’ His hand touched the nape of her neck again, just briefly, under the tangle of black curls.

‘Morning, Lord Oliver,’ the man behind the bar greeted him. ‘And Miss.’ This was Oliver’s home ground in some way, Helen realised.

‘Hello, Bill. Drink, Helen?’ A quick glance round the bar confirmed Helen’s instinctive choice.

‘Sherry, please. Dry, with ice.’

‘Quite safe, but a little dull.’ Oliver’s voice was teasing. ‘I’m going to have champagne, and I think you should too.’

The drinks arrived at once, Oliver’s in a silver tankard and Helen’s foaming in a tall, narrow glass. Twice in one week, Helen thought, amused. And I’ve hardly ever even tasted real champagne before. How odd things are. She raised her glass to Oliver in a quick, half-ironic toast and there was a flicker in his eyes as he responded.

‘You are pretty,’ he told her. ‘Why do you hide it?’

‘I don’t,’ she said, quickly defensive. ‘Anyway, being pretty isn’t everything.’

‘You’d be surprised.’ He was laughing at her. ‘What else is there? Tell me with special reference to Helen Brown, please. I didn’t have a chance to talk to you at my tea-party. And we did get off on rather the wrong footing afterwards.’ Oliver took a long pull of champagne and looked at her expectantly.

‘Mmm, your tea-party.’ Helen picked the least dangerous avenue out of his questions. ‘Are those people all friends of yours?’

Oliver shrugged, not interested. ‘Acquaintances, mostly, not many friends. Except Tom Hart. He’s very different, and rather formidable.’

Helen remembered the dark, intense face among the pink-and-whiteness of the English upper classes, and smiled a little. She remembered him, too, as much less formidable to her than the closed ranks of Oliver’s social peers.

‘Don’t change the subject, anyway,’ Oliver reprimanded her. ‘Don’t you like talking about yourself? Every other woman I know adores it.’ He leaned back in his seat and clasped his hands behind his head, waiting for her to speak.

Helen was silent. How could she talk to this suave, privileged young man about any of the things that mattered to her? She knew, instinctively, that Oliver would just be puzzled, and probably embarrassed, if she told him about the problems that beset her now. She had no desire to talk to him about her father, or even her mother and brother at home in their underheated little house. And then, the things that didn’t really matter were so dull. She couldn’t hope to amuse Lord Oliver Mortimore by giving him the details of her quiet, work-filled life and the few small diversions that she allowed herself. She felt herself colouring under his stare before her resolution to stay true to herself came back to her.

‘No,’ she said coolly. ‘I’d prefer not to talk about me.’ The amiability in Oliver’s face didn’t fade, but Helen was aware that he was staring at her with a shade more curiosity in his eyes. Unexpectedly, she grinned at him. ‘Doesn’t that make me fascinatingly different from all the other women you know?’

Oliver shrugged briefly. ‘Different, anyway.’ He raised his hand in a gesture to the barman to show that he wanted more champagne.

Aware that she had dampened the conversation, Helen cast about for a neutral topic to fill the silence between them.

‘Where do you live? When you’re not in Oxford, I mean.’

Oliver frowned over his tankard. ‘Quite near here. At least, my family does. Thankfully, as a younger son, I’m not expected to involve myself too closely in all that.’ Helen could only guess at what ‘all that’ might be. She had a dim vision of a feudal hierarchy presided over in baronial magnificence by Oliver’s father. What would he be? A duke? A viscount?

‘What about you?’

Helen told him the name of her home town and Oliver looked blankly back at her. ‘Ah. Is it nice?’

‘Not especially. But then we can’t all have Gloucestershire estates.’ I shouldn’t have said that, she thought, as soon as it was out, but Oliver only smiled his brilliant smile.

‘No,’ he agreed as if she had made a telling point. ‘It’s a pity.’

Helen was realising as she sat in her corner, caressed by the glow of the champagne and the warmth of the log fire, that she and Oliver were even further apart than she had first thought. They might as well have come from different planets. Yet, surprisingly, the knowledge excited rather them depressed her. Covertly, Helen watched him lounging opposite her. He was playing absently with his silver tankard, turning it to catch the reflection of the fireglow. His fine blond hair was reddened by the warm light and his cheeks were faintly flushed by it. The aquiline features that reminded Helen of a marble knight on a marble tombstone were softened, so that he looked – as he did when he smiled – more like Oliver himself than Oliver the scion of a noble house.

I want him. The words sprang into Helen’s head unvoiced, and for an instant they shocked her. What do you want, she made herself ask. A share, came back the answer from the other, hidden Helen. To share a little bit of him, because he’s exotic and glowing and – perhaps – more than a bit dangerous. And to share through him all those things that I admire and have never had, like certainty and assurance. Not the money, or privilege necessarily, except that those things make it easier to have the others. I do want him, she thought, but I’m not making a very good job of getting what I want. If I was Flora or Fiona, I could giggle and gossip; maybe he’d think I was stupid but at least I wouldn’t be sitting here in silence.

As if to help her out, a waiter in a sleek, black jacket came over to their corner.

‘Your table is ready, Lord Oliver.’

‘Great. Are you ready, Helen?’

Under his casual demeanour, Oliver sometimes displayed beautiful, rather old-fashioned manners. His hand was under her elbow to help her negotiate the single step up into the dining room. He waved aside another hovering waiter and pulled out Helen’s chair himself, settling her into it and shaking out her thick, white linen napkin before laying it across her lap.

‘What d’you think?’ From across the starched white cloth Oliver waved around the little dining room. Helen peered about her. The light outside was brilliant, but in here it was all absorbed by dark walls and heavy oak furniture. Small, shaded lamps on each table cast pools of light, but the rest of the room was dim. There were only a dozen tables. The other diners were mostly much older than Oliver and Helen; men with port-wine complexions and silvery moustaches, women with high voices and well-cut tweeds.

‘I’ve never been to one,’ Helen told him, ‘but it looks like I imagine the dining room of a gentleman’s club.’

Oliver laughed, surprised. ‘You’re quite close. Except that the food’s a million times better. And, considering it’s really only a country pub, it has the most amazing cellar.’

He means wine, Helen reminded herself, dispelling the image of a mysterious cobwebby recess beneath her feet.

Oliver nodded to the still-hovering waiter. At once a bottle was reverently brought, wrapped in a white napkin. Oliver tasted the half-inch of red wine which was poured into his glass, frowning, intent. Then another sharp nod to the waiter gave him the signal to fill Helen’s glass. She watched, intrigued, then picked up her glass and sniffed at it as Oliver had done. The wine smelt rich, fat and beguiling, quite unlike the smell of any wine she had tried before. And a single sip told her that it was indeed something very different.

‘This,’ said Oliver, ‘is burgundy. Gevrey-Chambertin, Clos St Jacques. Not quite the very greatest, but as good as one can find almost anywhere.’ He turned his glass to the light and looked at it intently, then drank. ‘Yes,’ he said at last, and Helen knew that she was forgotten.

After a moment Oliver looked up again and recollected himself. ‘One comes here for the game,’ he told her. ‘We’re having grouse, okay?’ She nodded, not caring if they were going to eat penguin.

In fact the food, when it came, didn’t appeal to her. The meat tasted strong and not very fresh. Helen ate what she could and gave all her attention to Oliver. In response, he set out to amuse her. She realised that when he chose, he could be excellent company. He made her laugh with stories of his own casual irresponsibility, and he swept the conversation along without making any more awkward demands on Helen’s self-protective quiet. He seemed to live in a world of parties, weekends in Town, as he called London, dining clubs – and, even less intelligibly to Helen – dogs and horses.

‘Do you do any work?’ she asked.

‘Not a jot.’ His beguiling smile drew her own in response. ‘I shall get a Third, of course. Just like my father. And his father, for that matter. My brother didn’t bother with a degree at all. What difference does it make?’ He shrugged amiably. ‘More wine?’

Halfway through the meal Oliver drained his glass, tipped the empty bottle sideways, then signalled to the waiter to bring another.

‘Another?’ Helen said it out loud, in spite of herself.

‘Of course another.’ Oliver looked faintly surprised. ‘The days of the one-bottle lunch are, as far as I am concerned, ancient history.’

He drank most of the burgundy, but he took care, too, to refill Helen’s glass whenever she drank a little.

After the grouse came thick, rich syllabub in little china cups, and then brandy which made even Helen’s fingers warm as she wrapped them round the glass.

When they had finished, one of the self-effacing waiters brought the bill. Helen tried to look away, but curiosity dragged her eyes back to Oliver’s negligently scribbled cheque. It was for an amount almost exactly equal to the money she would have to live on for the rest of the term.

When they came out into the late afternoon sunshine, Oliver’s eyes were hooded and he was talking just a little more deliberately than usual, but there was no other sign of how much he had drunk.

Once again he flung open the Jaguar’s passenger door with a flourish and waved her towards it.

‘Can you drive all right?’ she asked, knowing that it was a pointless question.

‘Perfectly.’ His arm came round her shoulders again and with one finger he raised her chin so that he could look down into her eyes. ‘Don’t worry so much,’ he told her. ‘Don’t be so frightened of everything.’ His hand moved to tangle itself in the mass of black curls and Helen felt the tiny, caressing movements of his thumb against her neck. He smelt of leather and wool and very faintly of dark red burgundy. For a moment they stood in silence. Helen was waiting, half apprehensive and half eager. Then Oliver laughed softly, deep in his throat. ‘You seem so timid. But you aren’t, really, are you? What door do I have to open to let the other Helen out?’

The other Helen. She caught her breath, thrown off balance by his sudden astuteness. Ever since he had kissed her, up in her bare room at Follies House, two Helens had been sparring inside her. She had no idea which one was her real self. How could she begin to find an answer for Oliver?

He didn’t wait for one. Instead, he took her hand firmly and guided her into the car. ‘Come on. We’ve got things to do.’ Oliver hoisted his leather coat out from behind the seats and tucked it around her. Helen buried her nose luxuriously in the sheepskin lining.

‘Where?’

‘I told you. To see a man about a dog.’

The car shot forward. Oliver was driving even faster than before, but it seemed to Helen just as competently. He was very sure of where he was going.

The sun was low behind the trees now, and the shadows were thickening between the hedges in the narrow lanes. For a mile or so they skirted a long wall that looked as if it might enclose a park, then suddenly Oliver swung the wheel and the car skidded in through a gateway flanked by tall stone posts. They passed a low building that might have been a gatekeeper’s lodge, its windows warmly lit behind drawn curtains. Beyond the lodge was a driveway, arched over with massive oak trees. As they sped towards it, Helen became aware of the dark, crenellated bulk of a big house sitting squarely on a little rise ahead.

Beside her, Oliver’s face was expressionless.

To one side of the house was an outcrop of lower buildings, and Oliver turned the car decisively towards them. A moment later they were in a cobbled yard, the roar of the Jaguar’s exhaust thrown back at them by the enclosing walls. Oliver vaulted out of the car and simultaneously one of the stable doors swung open. A shaft of yellow light struck across the cobbles.

‘Evening, my lord,’ said the little man who had come out to meet them. He was toothless, brown-skinned and dressed in moleskin trousers and a coat so ancient that all the colour had been drained out of it.

‘Hello, Jasper,’ said Oliver, grinning at him. ‘Where are they?’

‘End barn, my lord.’

‘Come and see them too, Helen. This is Jasper Thripp, by the way. Miss Brown, Jasper.’

‘Evening, miss,’ said the little man, and hobbled towards the door of the end barn.

Uncomprehending, Helen followed them.

Inside the barn were the mingled smells of bran, paraffin from a heater, and warm milk. In a large box near the heater was a beagle bitch, surrounded by a warm, wriggling mass of brown, black and white-patched puppies. Oliver stooped over them, murmuring endearments to the mother as he lifted each pup in turn. His face was soft in the harsh light cast by the bare, cobwebbed lightbulb overhead. As he turned the puppies to and fro, running a practised finger over their legs and backs, Helen saw that his hands were long and sensitive like the hands in an eighteenth-century portrait. At length he nodded and smiled at Jasper. ‘Three first-rate, and a couple more pretty good. Yes?’

Jasper sucked at his toothless gums. ‘Yup. I’d say so. She’s done well this time, the old gel.’ They were talking as equals now.

When the last of the pups had been gently returned to the security of its box, Oliver moved aside briskly. The softness was gone from his face, replaced by the more familiar authoritative mask.

‘We’ll give them a couple more weeks, then pick the ones we need for the pack.’

‘Right you are, my lord.’

Master and servant again, Helen thought.

‘And now, let’s have a drink before I take Miss Brown off. There’s a bottle in the tack-room safe.’

They retraced their steps to the door from which Jasper had emerged. The tack-room was stuffy and crammed with ranks of saddles and bridles, folded horse-blankets, combs and brushes and mysterious bottles and jars. Oliver was rummaging in an ancient green metal safe. Triumphantly he produced a whisky bottle and three thick tumblers. Helen shook her head at his invitation, but Oliver and Jasper both took liberal measures.

The old man drained his at a gulp, murmuring first, ‘Here’s to ’em, then.’ Oliver tossed back his drink too, then stood up to go.

Jasper eyed him. ‘Will you be taking Cavalier or The Pirate to the Thursday meet?’

Oliver was zipping himself into the aviator’s coat. He took Helen’s hand and squeezed it.

‘Neither. Got to work this week.’ Seeing Jasper’s face, he laughed delightedly. ‘Well, rehearse anyway. I’m in a play, did you know?’

‘I’m sure you’ll be the star of the show, my lord,’ said Jasper drily and picked up a saddle from one of the pegs. It was clear that he had a low opinion of anything that took the place of hunting in his lordship’s life. Oliver was still laughing as they climbed back into the car together. Helen could swallow her curiosity no longer.

‘What is this place? The house? Who’s Jasper?’

It was almost completely dark now and she could barely see Oliver’s face. But she did see that he hesitated a moment before answering, poised with his fingers on the keys in the ignition. And she was certain, too, that after a moment’s hesitation he looked backwards over his shoulder in the direction of the big house. Then the car’s engine roared into life again.

‘Jasper is an old ally of mine,’ he told her. ‘He’s part groom, part gamekeeper and a fund of useful knowledge. He taught me to ride when I was about three. Nell – the dog you saw – is as much his as mine, and he’s in charge of the pups. I’m the Master of the House beagles this year, and I want to present the best of the litter to the pack.’ There was pride in his voice as he spoke.