Summer's Awakening (15 page)

Lurking under her outward seriousness, Summer had a sense of humour which often bubbled to the surface when she and Emily were alone. There had been little to make her laugh since James's arrival at the Castle, and her size was not usually a matter which she found amusing, although she had sometimes forced herself to make jokes about it at school and at Oxford.

'Perhaps not the kindest choice of metaphor, Mr Conway, but I'm glad you think so and I hope you're right,' she said, with a twinkle in her eye.

It was the first time she had ever seen Conway's dignity disturbed. For a moment he actually looked abashed.

She laughed. '
I
was only joking—and what I want to ask you is anything but a joking matter,' she went on, her expression becoming serious. 'In fact I'm very hesitant to consult you about it, in case you misunderstand my motives. It's not a matter of idle curiosity on my part—please believe that. But everything has happened so rapidly, and now we're about to fly to America under the aegis of someone who is virtually a stranger to us. You knew his Lordship as a boy, Mr Conway. What sort of boy was he? And why was he sent packing?'

He said nothing for so long that she thought he might be intending to remain silent until she muttered an apology for her breach of decorum and fled.

But at last, to her relief, he said, 'Lord James, as he was at that time, was never sent packing, Miss Roberts. He ran away. He and his late Lordship had never seen eye to eye; nor was Lord James on close terms with his brother, Lord Edgedale.'

'Was he fond of his mother?'

Again the butler pondered the question for some time.

At length, he said, 'Lady Cranmere was very beautiful and very gracious in her manner to everyone, high and low alike. When she first came here as a bride—we had a much larger staff and I was then the senior footman—everyone was charmed by her. The year before, the newspapers had called her the Debutante of the Year. However, as time went on, she became... less animated. Perhaps the fact that his Lordship was twenty years her senior had the effect of subduing her youthful high spirits. In those days his late Lordship was Master of the Cranmere Hunt, and they entertained a great deal. Lady Cranmere's social duties made it difficult for her to spend as much time with her sons as perhaps she could have wished. It was thought by the female staff, and from my own observations I have to agree, that both Lord and Lady Cranmere had a marked preference for their elder son.'

'Why was that, d'you think?' Summer asked. Another long pause. She sensed he was choosing his words with great care.

'Lord James was a very mischievous child, always into some scrape or other,' he said eventually. 'Lord Edgedale was of a more law-abiding disposition. He liked riding and hunting which naturally found favour with his father. Lord James was an excellent shot from an early age, but he once made his father very angry by saying that he would prefer to run with the fox rather than hunt with the pack. The activities of the anti-blood-sports factions used to enrage his late Lordship. To have his younger son taking their part was more than he could stand.'

'His Lordship told me himself that he used to go poaching with an old man called Barty Hicks. But were any of his youthful misdeeds of a more serious nature, Mr Conway?'

'Not to my knowledge, Miss Roberts.'

Was he telling her the truth? She was, after all, an outsider, whereas he was part of the household, part of the family. She remembered the nom-de-plume used by the author of the Chevalier Bayard's biography.
Le Loyal Serviteur.
The Loyal Servant. Conway was an equally loyal servant of the Cranmeres'. Would he, like Bayard's servant, tend to gloss over the defects of members of the family he had served all his life?

She decided to press him. 'He never smoked pot, or... or misbehaved with the local girls?'

'No, no, I'm certain he never had anything to do with drugs, even the so-called soft drugs,' the butler answered firmly.

'There were young men of good family who were implicated in the drug scandals at certain public schools at that period.'

He gave a disapproving sniff. 'Mrs Briars reads a daily newspaper which delights in regaling its readers with any breath of scandal involving the upper classes. I regret to say that several of Lord James's contemporaries were involved in that "scene" as the
p
apers called it. But he had too much respect for his body to abuse it with drugs or any other forms of dissipation. Quite the reverse. He was interested in physical fitness. He had a trapeze fitted up in one of the attics and he used to spend hours exercising. When he disappeared, it was thought by some of the female staff that he might have joined a circus as an acrobat. It was not a theory to which I attached any credence, I may add.'

He gave her an oblique glance before adding, 'I feel sure that, however his Lordship has occupied himself in the interim, he has had no connection with a circus.'

She repressed a smile at the smoothness with which he suggested the quid pro quo.

'I understand he's one of the leaders of the computer revolution,' she told him. 'He owns a company which makes them. So you think Lady Emily's future is in good hands, Mr Conway?'

'Based on my knowledge of his Lordship's character up to the age of seventeen, I would say yes, Miss Roberts.'

'In spite of the crippling death duties, I'm sure he has the drive and energy to keep the Castle going if he wanted to,' she said regretfully. 'You must feel very sad to see it about to be stripped of all its treasures.'

'The end of an era is always an occasion for some sadness,' he agreed. 'But perhaps it has come as less of a shock to me and Mrs Briars and other long-serving members of the staff than to you, Miss Roberts. When Lady Edgedale was very ill giving birth to Lady Emily, and several years passed without the birth of other children, it was clear that the family was likely to die with Lord Edgedale.'

'You never expected Lord James to reappear?'

For an instant, before he looked away, there was an expression in his eyes which convinced her he was concealing something.

'No,' he said. 'No, we didn't. Would you excuse me, Miss Roberts?'

With a slight inclination of the head, he left her.

Forty-eight hours before their flight to Miami, James drove them to London.

With her suitcase beside her, Summer was waiting for them outside the front gate of the cottage when, punctually at nine, the car came into view. Emily was sitting in the back. Her face wasn't woebegone, nor were there any signs that she had shed tears on leaving her ancestral home, never to live there again.

'I didn't sleep a wink,' she announced, after saying good morning. 'I was too excited. Only two more ours and well be in London!'

Summer hadn't slept much either, but her excitement had been tinged with sadness for the death of the beautiful house she had grown to love.

When James had stowed her case in the boot—in a few days' time she would have to revert to thinking of it as the trunk, and the bonnet as the hood—he slid behind the wheel and re-fastened his safety-belt.

Since the last time she had been a passenger with him, the adjustment of the nearside belt had been altered, perhaps to secure Emily's slight form. As she fumbled to loosen the straps to enclose her much larger body, he leaned over to help her.

For a moment before she withdrew them, her pale hands were entangled with his strong brown ones. His were warm but hers were cold, a fact he remarked on as he dealt with the belt.

Mortifyingly conscious that he was loosening it to its fullest extent, she said, 'My hands usually are cold, even when the rest of me feels warm.'

'That's poor circulation,' he told her. The cure for it is regular exercise. In Florida you should try swimming laps every day, morning and evening, gradually increasing the number.'

'Yes, perhaps I will.'

It was a relief when he had finished adjusting the belt and sat back in his own seat.

On the way through town, he parked outside Mr Watts' office while she hurried inside and left her labelled keys at the front desk. The cottage was to be sold furnished, there being very few possessions which she wanted to keep.

One or two things she was fond of were in her suitcase. Fitting them in had been no problem. She possessed few clothes suitable for a winter in Florida. Although he had told her there were sometimes 'killer frosts' which did much damage to the orange groves and subtropical shrubs, these were infrequent and short-lived. She would need a light coat for going out after dark, but by day the most she would require would be one warm sweater or cardigan. In general, she and his niece could expect to spend much of their time in bathing-suits and sun-dresses.

Like most overweight people, Summer had never been eager to strip off at the first sign of hot weather. Heatwaves were times of mental and physical discomfort for her. She disliked exposing her bulges to public view, and the insides of her thighs rubbed against each other and quickly became red and sore.

Large-size sun-dresses always had wide straps to conceal the straps of their wearers' no-nonsense
bras.
She knew that, as did most big women, she had nice shoulders. Yet she could never display them under ribbon ties and pretty halters because nobody made
a
strapless bra which worked, and wasn't torture to wear, for busts larger than thirty-eight inches. And she naturally couldn't go without a bra as girls with small breasts could.

If it hadn't been for her determination to lose weight, she wouldn't have been looking forward to the warmth awaiting them in Florida. However, already her clothes seemed fractionally looser. Not much, but a little; and she hoped it wouldn't be long before she could buy some new American clothes,
a
size smaller than last year's summer dresses.

They were travelling in the fast lane of the motorway when she realised that it had been some time since Emily had spoken. Twisting to peer over her shoulder, she found that her pupil was now curled in an embryo position on the back seat, catching up some lost sleep. 'Emily's dozing,' she murmured quietly. 'Were there tears when she said goodbye to Conway?'

To avoid a formal leave-taking, Emily had been encouraged to make her farewells to the staff over a period of several days. This morning, only the butler would have been present to see her off.

'Conway looked as if he might shed a few later. She gave him a hug and a kiss which pleased the old boy, but she didn't cry. Did you expect her to?'

'Perhaps not then, but I thought she might be upset when she had her last sight of the house.'

'I don't think she was. Were you, when you saw it for the last time yesterday?'

'Yes, I was a bit. As Conway said the other day, it's the end of an era. Doesn't it cause you the slightest pang to think of it standing empty, after hundreds of years in one family's possession?'

'Some men are content to rest on their ancestors' laurels, and others are driven to found their own dynasties,' he answered. 'I'm one of the latter.' She fell silent.

He was sweeping along the fast lane, at the maximum speed, and all his attention was focussed on the road ahead, with a periodic glance in his rear-view mirror. He didn't grip the wheel tightly, like Mr Renfrew when once she had driven with him. James held the wheel lightly, almost casually, the bones of his long, blunt-tipped fingers clearly defined under the taut brown skin.

After a while she asked, 'Is your house in Florida very modern?'

'On the contrary, it's old compared with most houses there. It was built in 1929. My apartment in New York is modern, and I have a weekend place in Nantucket which is only a year or two old but designed to blend with the whaling-days' atmosphere there. At present I'm rarely in any of them for long. I spend a lot of time travelling from campus to campus, preaching the computer gospel to students.'

'Why is that necessary?'

'Because today's students are tomorrow's important customers, and I want to have the edge on my competitors.'

She said, 'I see.' But she didn't. What was the point of having three places to live and not enough time to enjoy them.

It was mid-morning when they reached London. As they drove along Park Lane, he pointed out the Dorchester and Grosvenor House Hotels and, further on, a high-railinged mansion standing in splendid isolation between the green acres of Hyde Park and a whirlpool of traffic swirling round an impressive monument.