Hold Back the Dark Page 11

  Owen and Davis, the estate agents, were open. Again they parked near and Nicolas left Clarry in the car while he went in. This morning he was back almost before she could sit up and start to look up and down the high street, and from then on they wasted no time.

  He drove fast, and the road surface had to be slippery, but she felt he was always in control of the car although obviously intent on getting back to King’s Lodge as soon as possible. She was quiet. He was concentrating on the traffic flow, he had done that on the way down, of course, but now he seemed distant and unapproachable.

  He turned on the radio, and Clarry felt that was to fill the silence and shut her up. She could have been mistaken, but she could think of nothing to say that mattered much, and Nicolas hardly spoke at all.

  When he did he sounded pleasant enough—the name of a town they were passing through, a comment on an item that was being broadcast, but only a few words and then he relapsed into silence, and she dried up, and whatever was on his mind it was certainly not Clarry Rickard.

  His hands on the wheel were strong enough to tear the griffin out of the ground. Last night they had been gentle, smoothing her terrors away. She knew how it felt to press her cheek on his bare shoulder and against the rise and fall of his chest. She knew his touch. Close to him physically she would always get that buzz running through her nervous system right to her fingertips. But beneath the surface, under his skin, she hardly knew him at all.

  * * *

  Well before midday they turned into the winding lane that led to King’s Lodge, and within a few minutes they were driving through the open gates.

  Paul Burnley came hurrying to meet them, and Clarry asked, ‘Where are you putting the griffin?’

  ‘In one of the outhouses. Do you want to oversee the removal?’

  As the car drew up she said, ‘I’d better go and find Danny. He’ll be worrying, he’ll want to know we’re back.’

  ‘So run along and reassure him,’ he said, and she felt childish and knew that he was losing patience with her.

  Nicolas got out of the car, and Paul Burnley gave him his full attention with never a glance at Clarry. ‘Did you get anything?’ asked Paul, and Clarry was reminded of the estate agent and his anxious-to-please manner, the half-smile, the way he stayed on his toes as if he was waiting for an order to rush off and deal with it.

  She opened her door and climbed out of the car, and neither man looked her way. Paul was hopping around. Nicolas was still, a hand in a jacket pocket. ‘It needs repairing,’ he said, ‘but it should serve its purpose. Get it over to the brewhouse.’

  It wouldn’t have surprised Clarry to see Paul Burnley try to haul the griffin on to his back and stagger across the courtyard with it. Only he wouldn’t be able to lift the broken wing, let alone the rest, and of course that wasn’t what Nicolas had meant.

  It nearly made her smile, but not quite, and she didn’t go round the car to join them because Nicolas still seemed unapproachable. Last night she had lain in his arms, now she couldn’t even reach out and touch him, and she no longer had much faith in her flair for making him smile.

  Paul Burnley had not been the only one looking out for them. Dolly and Mrs Haines were both by a window in the hall when Clarry entered the house, and she knew they had been gossiping until she was just outside the main door. They were agog with curiosity and they both would have loved to ask her the personal questions which could be more than their jobs were worth.

  They both wished her good morning and Mrs Haines played safe with, ‘Bad weather down there, was it?’

  ‘Dreadful,’ Clarry said. ‘Like a hurricane!’ They had expected that, they had heard the weather reports. They wondered if any further scrap of information might be coming, such as just where the master and this girl had spent the night, and when Clarry closed the subject by asking, ‘Do you know where Danny Hill is?’ they both said they had no idea and went off into the kitchen.

  This was not the kind of house you could wander around shouting, ‘Hey, Danny, I’m back!’ Yesterday someone had been taking Danny to a specialist timber merchant, looking for oak that could be used repairing the frame. He could still be searching—the wood would have to be a perfect match to satisfy him. He might not be in the house at all, but Clarry opened a few doors and found him in ‘their’ little parlour.

  He had the photographs of the frame on the table, and he was sketching designs for the missing corner.

  She leaned over his shoulder to look at them. ‘They’re beautiful,’ she said. He looked and he was such an old stick-in-the-mud, and yet his work could have an ageless freshness.

  He went on shading in a leaf so that it stood out as the carving would do. ‘We went to Wales,’ Clarry said chattily.

  ‘Huh,’ said Danny, who obviously knew that, but he might not have been told about the garden, and that would have fascinated him.

  She said, ‘There was this old garden up in the mountains. The house is falling down now, and the garden’s overgrown and everything’s going wild, but there were some statues left in garden, and we were looking for something for the centre of the maze here. There’s only a seat there now, and a statue seemed a good idea.’

  She paused; he had to be listening, but she was getting no response, so she might as well cut it short. ‘Then the storm came up with trees falling across the roads, so we stayed at a farmhouse owned by the man who got the statue down the mountain for us. Him and his sons.’

  Danny would be less than interested to hear that Nicolas Dargan had rolled up his sleeves and joined the team. ‘Do come and see what we got,’ Clarry wheedled. ‘It’s a surprise, it really is.’

  She waited just outside the door until she heard Danny’s chair squeak as he stood up and knew that his curiosity was winning. Then she walked ahead, pausing at the top of the stairs until he joined her.

  He said nothing and neither did she, but doors were open on what had once been an outhouse for the brewing of ale. Two men who worked on the estate were inside with Nicolas and Paul Burnley, and there was a barrow that had transported the griffin, who now lay on the sacking on a long slabbed sink.

  Danny walked over and looked down, and Nicolas asked, ‘Can you repair it?’

  To Clarry’s despair, when Danny raised his head it was to scowl furiously at him. ‘Not me,’ he said. ‘Too big a job for me.’

  It should have been no problem, it was well within Danny’s range, and nobody could have missed the glare that went with the refusal. This was not a man who was sorry he couldn’t oblige; this was a man who was damned if he would. ‘If you say so,’ Nicolas said curtly, and turned to Paul Burnley, and the two men walked out, going towards the house, discussing something.

  In the outhouse the gardeners were getting a closer look at the statue. ‘Different, anyway,’ said one. ‘What is it?’

  Clarry said, ‘It’s a griffin. I know because Danny carved one for me years ago.’ She was mad at Danny, but she was still trying to soften him up, telling him, ‘I told Nicolas about the one I’ve got at home, and I was thrilled when we found this one in the garden and he seemed to think it was suitable.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Danny, and Clarry thought, One day you’re going to grunt at me and I’m going to scream.

  As he stomped off one of the men said, ‘Relation of yours, is he?’

  ‘Sort of,’ shrugged Clarry.

  ‘Well, he’s going the wrong way with Mr Dargan. He won’t get asked again. Somebody else’ll do this job.’

  She knew that, and she could have shaken the stubborn old mule. The statue would have to be cleaned, especially where it had lain in the earth, but left weathered. And the wing would need a metal support. She could do it herself—she wanted it to be set up in the maze before she left King’s Lodge.

  She stroked the wing for luck and went back to the house, where she intended to spend the next hour taking a warm scented shower, then putting on enough make-up to liven up her looks. Since they had got back here, and for a wh
ile before, she had felt like the invisible woman. Nicolas hadn’t noticed her, she doubted if he had even seen her.

  It was bad luck that as she was going up the stairs she met Fiona Stretton coming down. Meeting Fiona any time was never going to make Clarry’s day, but this morning, when Clarry was looking drab and dreary, Fiona looked devastating. Rich and pampered, in a suit that Princess Diana might have worn, with no lock out of place in her cap of smooth hair.

  She stopped three steps up, looking down, so that Clarry, who was climbing slowly and holding the handrail, paused too. Fiona smiled, ‘I hear you got caught in the storm.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Clarry.

  ‘How boring for you.’

  ‘You think so?’

  Fiona gave a throaty little laugh. ‘Oh, I do. No woman would look like you if she’d just made it with Nicolas. You look more like someone whose hopes came to nothing.’

  Clarry yawned. ‘I didn’t get much sleep last night,’ she said. ‘Excuse me if I don’t stay to chat,’ and she walked past Fiona.

  The woman was poison, but this time she was not ridiculous, because in a warped and wounding way she had hit on the truth.

  Danny was back at the table with his sketches. He would do a superb job on this carving repair and Clarry supposed she should be grateful for that, but he was giving Rickard Restoration a bad name. Nobody was going to recommend such a grudging worker as Danny seemed bent on proving himself.

  This wasn’t his normal behaviour. He didn’t usually glare at folk; most folk liked old Danny. His trouble here was Nicolas Dargan, and before she went up to bathe and change she had to make him understand how stupidly he was acting.

  She sat down, facing him, and said, ‘Listen to me—I want to do some good work here, and it won’t help if you get on the wrong side of Nicolas Dargan every time you meet him. Just now you practically spat at him, and that’s cutting our own throats. It’s stupid, and it’s not fair either. Give him a break, can’t you?’

  She bit her lip on a wry smile at the thought of Nicolas Dargan needing a break from Danny Hill and went on, ‘We were prejudiced, both of us. I really knew nothing about him until we came here, except that Nigel did what Nicolas told him to do, but now I have met him I quite like him.’

  ‘Like’ was hardly the word for the confused intensity of her feelings. ‘He can be very kind,’ she added.

  ‘Kind!’ Danny repeated that as if it needed thinking about. Then he said, ‘Digging for Dargan’s heart would be like hitting granite,’ and Clarry’s eyebrows shot up.

  ‘That’s the nearest to poetry I’ve ever heard from you!’

  ‘I’m not much for poetry,’ said Danny. Nor was he. ‘But I remember something about the leopard never changing its spots.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s quite poetry either,’ said Clarry, ‘But while we’re on the subject of granite-hearted beasts, what about the griffin? Are you going to mend him?’

  ‘I’ve got this to finish.’

  He was still holding the pencil he had been sketching with, and she saw the tremor in the gnarled hands that had always been rock-steady. He was old, and this was distressing him, and she said quickly, ‘That’s all right, I’d like to do it myself.’ She reached across the table to take his hand, and her voice and her face softened. ‘Only let’s forget what happened with Nigel. It was a long time ago and it might have been for the best. I don’t want you upsetting yourself.’ She grinned. ‘I don’t want you getting the pair of us chucked out of here either, so let’s try to forget it happened. Please.’

  ‘I remember more than you,’ Danny said heavily.

  Of course he did, she had been ill and two years was a longish while for her, but at Danny’s age it might seem like yesterday. ‘Please,’ she said again, and he nodded slowly, and that was as near she was going to get to a promise that he would stop antagonising Nicolas Dargon.

  ‘I need a bath,’ she said briskly. ‘There wasn’t much hot water in the farmhouse and then the power went off. I don’t think I’ll take a shower, I shall take a long soak.’

  As she stood up Danny said. ‘We’ve got to get going, you know.’

  ‘Going where?’

  ‘It’s Saturday—weekend. We don’t work weekends. We go back, see what’s going on. Get what we’ll be needing for next week.’

  She hadn’t packed much because she had planned to return home at the end of the week, and it astonished her now that she could have forgotten that. Her world seemed centred on King’s Lodge these days, but her home was Danny’s bungalow, her business was based in the unit. There would be matters there to be attended to and she needed changes of clothing. She had only brought working clothes and she would like at least one decent outfit.

  Not that she was competing with Fiona Stretton, she had nothing that would compare with anything the golden girl wore, but Nicolas had never seen her looking remotely glamorous, and maybe it was time that he did.

  But she couldn’t be away from here for a whole weekend, so she said, ‘We could go tomorrow, we can do that easily there and back and have time to deal with whatever’s waiting. There shouldn’t be much. Lucy and the answerphone have kept us up to date. Besides, there’s more work now, there’s the griffin.’

  Danny was going to protest, his mouth was opening. ‘And,’ she went on, ‘the less time we waste the sooner we finish.’

  He shut his mouth at that and picked up his pencil again. ‘Did you get the wood?’ she asked. He nodded. ‘Good,’ she said. ‘That’s very good. Matching old oak like that could have been tricky.’ Danny might not be happy, but he was working on something he enjoyed and now perhaps she could have her bath.

  She opened the door and almost fell over the girl who was about to walk in and who said, ‘Phone call for you, miss,’ and gave her the same bright-eyed inquisitive look Clarry had encountered when she was about to have lunch with Nicolas that first day and this girl was laying a table.

  Since then there had been the night away together, and here was one who did not share Fiona’s conviction that Clarry’s hopes had come to nothing. ‘Thank you,’ said Clarry, and went quickly towards the nearest phone before she started blushing.

  She had had several phone calls here and expected a familiar voice, but the soft Welsh lilt was unexpected. ‘This is Megan Thomas, Miss Rickard. I’m ringing you from a friend’s—our lines are still down, but I did want a word with you and ask you to thank Mr Dargan for me. Bryn says he’s a busy man and I shouldn’t be disturbing him phoning, that I should be writing a letter, but I thought you wouldn’t mind, and I didn’t want to wait. I’m so pleased, it was such a surprise!’

  ‘What was?’ asked Clarry when she could get a word in.

  ‘You didn’t know? Well, that was nice of him too, not making a show of it, but he told Mr Owen that I was to have the choice of the girls in the garden.’

  To Nicolas Dargan it would be like buying someone a box of liquorice allsorts, but it had been a nice gesture, and Megan was delighted.

  ‘I’m glad one of them’s sure of a good home,’ said Clarry.

  ‘I know just where I shall put her on the patio,’ Megan said happily, ‘and I know which one I want. There’s the one with her nose chipped—she’s been like that for years, I used to feel sorry for her, but now I think she’s the pretty one and she’s the one I like.’

  ‘I saw her,’ said Clarry. ‘I liked her best.’

  ‘And you’ll thank him for me? He really is a lovely man!’

  ‘I’m beginning to think he is,’ Clarry agreed.

  So now she had a message to deliver. She had to find Nicolas and say, ‘Megan Thomas phoned. She asked me to thank you and say she’s always wanted the one with the broken nose.’ That shouldn’t interrupt him too much if he was busy, and if Fiona was with him it would give her something to wonder about.

  He could still be with Paul Burnley, they could be in the agent’s office, they could be anywhere, but the office off the King’s Room was on this floor,
and Clarry went there first. The inner door was open and he sat at the desk, reading a page in a sheaf of papers. When Clarry reached the doorway he looked up. ‘Be right with you,’ he said.

  She stayed where she could see him, and when he put down the page and looked up again she said, ‘Sorry to interrupt, but there was a call from Megan Thomas.’

  ‘You’re not interrupting, I was coming for you as soon as I got through here.’

  There was what looked like a lot of work on the desk, but hearing him say that he would be with her when his time was free sent her spirits soaring. She could still make him smile, he was smiling now, and she said, ‘Bryn said not to disturb you, but Megan couldn’t wait to say thank you for fixing it for her to get a free statue, and she wants me to tell you that.’

  ‘I never did find out what Bryn thought of them,’ he said. ‘He might not be thanking me.’

  ‘He’ll be glad she didn’t want a griffin outside the window. She wants the nymph with the broken nose. She likes broken noses.’

  ‘A woman with taste,’ Nicolas remarked.

  ‘And she thinks you’re a lovely man.’

  ‘Her judgement’s not so sound there.’

  She nearly admitted she had agreed with Megan, but decided against it. Instead she said, ‘I can mend the griffin’s wing.’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Danny is—’

  ‘I know what Daniel Hill is,’ Nicolas said grimly. ‘He’s a good craftsman, and that’s why he’s here. He’s also a bloody old fool, and I don’t suffer fools gladly, so keep him out of my way.’

  Hot words trembled on her lips and her body went rigid. She wanted to leap to Danny’s defence, but he had been behaving badly, and Nicolas Dargan was not a patient man, much less a lovely man right now.