White Heat (2 page)

Karin smiled at him.

‘That’s right. I’m her companion ... and the initials stand for Karin Rosalind Hammond. It was clever of you to associate the handkerchief with me.’

He grinned at her in a cheerful cockney fashion.

‘Not really, miss. I watched you taking your turn along the deck, and the hanky fell out of your handbag. Lucky I saw it or it might have been blown out to sea.’

‘It might.’

She smiled at him again, and a kind of friendship was established between them. She didn’t at all mind the admiration in his eyes, and he thought she was one of the most delightful young things in skirts he had ever seen. He even remarked about her later on to his boss, surprising him because he had actually noted the exact colour of her eyes.

‘Grey as smoke they are,
’
he declared with enthusiasm. ‘She’s as pretty a piece as you’d ever find. You must have seen her hanging about after that old bag Mrs. Makepiece. I don’t like to see a young girl like her tied to an old nightmare like the dowager.’

Whereupon Kent Willoughby rebuked him with firmness for making impolite observations about Mrs. Makepiece, and cautioned him at the same time against the wiles of young women, particularly pretty ones.

‘In my opinion it’s safer to stick to the old ones,’ he remarked with acidity. ‘And the plainer the better! They’re unlikely to cause you any trouble!’

Rolands grinned feelingly but half-heartedly.

‘If you say so, sir,’ he replied. ‘But I still say that particular old one’s an old bag!’

Now Karin found herself meeting the insensitive green eyes of Rolands’ employer, and she felt instinctively that she could never like him. Mrs. Makepiece might rave about him, and the women on the ship pursue him, but he was an unresponsive, ice-cold type who would break a heart without flinching ... even derive a certain amount of satisfaction from witnessing the after-effects of the broken heart. She didn’t know why she was so sure of that, but she was.

‘It’s wonderful weather,’ she remarked, because he made no attempt to move on, and he simply stood there regarding her with a faintly whimsical expression in his eyes. ‘I suppose that’s because we’ve cleared the Bay.’

‘Yes. It should get steadily warmer from now on.’

‘I’m not at all sure that I like hot weather.’

His eyebrows went up.

‘Then you should go to Scandinavia, or somewhere like that. How far are you going, by the way? I’ve an
idea your journey is linked with that of Mrs. Makepiece?’

‘Yes, she’s my employer. I’m going to Australia with her.’

‘And after that?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘It all depends whether you like Australia?’

‘Yes.’

He leaned on the rail and the brisk breeze slid like silk over his hair. With the sunlight full upon it it was a strange mixture of blackness and brightness
... as if the sun had burnished it in parts, but at the roots it was still very dark. He offered a cigarette.

‘No, thank you,’ she said.

‘You don’t smoke?’

‘Sometimes.’

‘But it’s not a habit with you?’

‘I dislike habits,’ she replied.

This time, in addition to his eyebrows lifting, he looked amused.

‘A controlled young woman, is that it? If you don’t mind my saying so, you have the appearance of being rather well organized. You’re very neat and trim,’ his eyes roving over her, ‘and there’s a kind of detachment in the way you talk. Don’t you ever get excited about anything? With your hair you should.’

Without quite realizing what she was doing she looked upwards at his own hair.

‘Do you?’ she asked, with a kind of pointed sweetness.

Kent Willoughby laughed.

‘Ah, but you’re auburn,’ he said, ‘and I’m only auburn in parts. I’m a little like the curate’s egg, really, because parts of me are good and parts bad. Very bad!’ His white teeth
g
leamed at her mockingly. ‘But to get back to the subject of my hair ... I’ve lived in very hot climates for most of my life, and I’m afraid my natural colour has surrendered to the caress of the sun. You, quite obviously, were born a redhead ... or perhaps you don’t like being described as a “redhead”?’

‘I don’t mind,’ with stiffness.

‘There you go again!’ His eyes flickered over her with contempt. ‘You deal in evasions, but I suppose it’s as good an armour as any.’

‘I don’t think I quite understand what you mean.’ She spoke slowly, with widening eyes, and her whole slim body grew stiff. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever found it necessary to put on armour.’

‘No?’ But the whiplash of contempt was in his voice. ‘That’s what you think ... or you don’t think, according to how well you know yourself. With my manservant you could unbend and be friendly, full of girlish charm and unconscious wiles, but with me you put on an act. It wouldn’t be worth it in the case of my manservant, but with me
...
’
He broke off. He tossed his cigarette over the rail into the sea, and the bright tip of it was remorselessly extinguished by the heaving water. ‘And no doubt, although you work for her, and she probably pays you an excellent salary, you, like Rolands, hold Mrs. Makepiece in contempt because the one thing she never does is put on an act, and she’s exactly what she seems to be all the time ... all her wares in the shop-window, and no mistake about it! You probably think she’s vulgar, and would tell her so if you dared!’

‘Well!’ Karin exclaimed. She straightened her slim back against the rain, and looked at him with angry eyes. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr.—’ she even forgot his name for a moment
—
‘Mr. Willoughby
!
’

‘Don’t you?’ He could not have regarded her with more hostility if she had suddenly developed the outward shape of an adder, and he was anxious to remove it from his path. ‘Well, it doesn’t matter ... it doesn’t matter in the slightest! Only I might as well let you know that my opinion of your employer is far higher than it’s ever likely to be of you, or any other brash young female of your age, and the less I see of you the better during this trip
...’

He had actually started to move away from the rail, but she called after him in a furious voice:

‘And the less I see of
you,
Mr. Willoughby, the happier I’ll be!’

That night, while she was helping Mrs. Makepiece into her too-tight evening gown, and zipping it up the back, her employer asked the inevitable question.

‘By the way, dear, did you see Mr. Willoughby and give him my message? He’s usually to be found on deck at some time between lunch and tea, and you must have run into him.’

‘I did,’ Karin answered, in a small voice that became frozen almost instantly, ‘but I didn’t have any opportunity to give him your message.’

‘Why not, child?’ Mrs. Makepiece turned to her and looked for a moment surprised. ‘If you spoke to him
...’
And then understanding dawned, and she looked arch. ‘You mean he didn’t give you an opportunity to speak to him? He really can be terribly rude to some of the young things like you ... and to some of the older women as well. The bored wives and the eager widows. I expect it’s a kind of protection he finds it necessary to adopt. But I’ll have to speak to him about you, because you really are a nice little thing, and he needn’t have any fears that
you
would ever run after him ... or any man, I would say! You’re just not the type!’

‘Thank you, Mrs. Makepiece,’ Karin replied, as she sprayed her with expensive French perfume and then handed her her bracelets to put on, ‘but I’d rather you didn’t mention my name to Mr. Willoughby, if you don’t mind. I’d rather you refrained altogether from ever mentioning me to him.’

The rather sparse grey eyebrows that had had a thin black line drawn through them with an eyebrow pencil lifted.

‘But, my dear girl, why not? If he was rude to you this afternoon there’s no reason why he should go on being rude to you. Besides, it might prove inconvenient
—
if I want you to convey a message, or simply pass on a tit-bit of information. After all, that’s what you’re paid for, you know,’ with a smile that robbed her words of
any unpleasantness.

‘Yes, I know. But, as a special favour, I’d rather you didn’t mention me all the same.’

Mrs. Makepiece shrugged.

‘Very well, if you insist. I won’t say anything about you tonight, but I can’t promise I won’t mention you in the future. After all, one can’t have a companion and keep silent about her all the time, and I think you’re being ridiculously over-sensitive.’ She held out her hand for her brocade evening bag, which was lying on the bed. ‘And I think I’d better have my mink stole, because even though it’s so much warmer it’s often a little chilly on deck once the sun has set. I don’t like sitting about on deck at night
—
I much prefer playing cards; but one never knows ... If someone asks one!’ and she smiled with sudden roguishness. ‘Do you know, dear, I feel younger with every day that passes since this voyage started!’

‘Do you, Mrs. Makepiece?’ Karin murmured, and added mechanically: ‘I wonder why that is?’

Mrs. Makepiece nudged her in the ribs with her elbow.

‘Silly child! What’s one man’s meat is another’s poison ... and Mr. Willoughby is always over-poweringly nice to me. We are, I think you might say, twin souls!’

Karin shuddered.

What kind of a man was Mr. Willoughby? she wondered. He couldn’t be a gigolo, because he had no need to be anything of the kind. And gigolos were not drawn from the ranks of the rich and the tight-lipped, especially when they had green eyes as cold as frozen rivers.

Did he, perhaps, seek safety in the company of someone like Mrs. Makepiece? Or was it that he enjoyed her conversation?

Karin shook her head in some bewilderment as she followed Mrs. Makepiece out of the cabin. Mrs. Makepiece’s brand of conversation was soon exhausted ... and enough of it that was intelligent would not suffice to beguile the ears of an intelligent man throughout an entire evening. Unless, of course, the subject under discussion was bridge, and nothing but bridge.

Mrs. Makepiece was a woman of some substance, and she had more or less insisted before she made her booking that she should be placed at the captain’s table in the dining-saloon. It so happened that there were few celebrities on board, and of that number the most important pair preferred to remain cloistered in their suite on A Deck, so Mrs. Makepiece was accommodated with her seat at the one table that became the cynosure of all eyes once the captain made his appearance and joined the rest of his guests. And as Karin was Mrs. Makepiece’s companion she, also, was allotted a place at the table.

Karin would have preferred to be less in the limelight while taking her meals, and she would have preferred it if her employer had made a little less obvious effort to attract a good deal of it to herself once the captain’s steward had seen her comfortably seated. Her slightly outrageous gowns and her jewellery caused raised eyebrows and amused smiles amongst those who were not as favoured as the plump widow, and Karin could have understood it if Kent Willoughby, who sat opposite to her, had copied their example and looked at least a trifle supercilious when introductions were made on the first night, and Mrs. Makepiece acknowledged his formal bow with a beaming smile and a positive flood of inquiries concerning his background and members of his family whom she thought she might have met.

But his reaction had been that of a perfect gentleman, and he hadn’t hesitated to provide the information Mrs. Makepiece desired. Apparently his family was well known, not only in England
—
where he had an estate
—
but in Australia, and parts of Africa. They had been Empire-builders, soldiers, too. Mrs. Makepiece thought her sister might have been at school in Paris with an aunt of his, and it created a bond. They discovered there were quite a large number of people with whom they were mutually acquainted, and the talk lasted throughout the length of the meal. Even the captain found it difficult to get a word in edgeways while the discussion lasted.

After dinner Kent had accepted an invitation to play bridge, and on the following night he was quite prepared to play bridge with her only she was confined to her cabin. In fact, there were only two people at the captain’s table that night apart from the captain, and they were Karin and Kent Willoughby.

Conversation was practically non-existent — or it would have been if the captain hadn’t gallantly turned all his attention to the slim girl in the neat little black dress who was strangely ignored by the frozen-faced man opposite her
—
and on the following night, Mrs. Makepiece being at the top of her form again, she and Willoughby disappeared with Colonel Ridley and Mrs. Beaumont into the card-room.

Since then there had been one night when the programme was repeated, and now, tonight, after being insulted by him in the afternoon, Karin had literally to force herself to enter the dining-saloon and take her place opposite him.

He appeared to be in a somewhat more reserved mood than usual, and even Mrs. Makepiece could not draw him forth. After failing with a whole series of topics like diamond mines, the African situation, European hotels and winter sports centres, the widow gave up
—
albeit with a mild air of surprise and hurt vanity
—
and concentrated her attention to the captain, who responded with rather less unwillingness, and Willoughby frowned over his soup, his main course, and a savoury which he dismissed after he had barely tasted it, and left the table well ahea
d
of anyone else, to be swallowed up in one or other of the public lounges before Mrs. Makepiece could get over the shock of finding he was not always as charming as he seemed on the surface ... although, as she confided to Karin as they made their way to a powder-room to attend to their make-up, she was fairly certain he had something on his mind.