Hold Back the Dark Read online

  The next few minutes puzzled him. He had some papers for Nicolas Dargan, who read them, deleted and initialled, while Clare stood, arms folded, looking through the window. When he put the papers aside Nicolas went across to her and said, ‘Shouldn’t you be taking another look at this map?’

  She laughed. ‘I don’t need to, I could draw it for you.’ As she looked up at him he tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and she said, ‘I’ve got a very good memory for patterns.’

  ‘Except by moonlight.’

  ‘When things tend to shift. In daylight I could take you straight to the centre.’

  ‘You’re on,’ he said.

  Calling goodbye as she went, with Nicolas Dargan’s guiding hand on her arm, Clarry looked back at Paul Burnley. His face was blank and bewildered, as though he couldn’t believe his eyes.

  CHAPTER THREE

  THE maze did look different by daylight. Clarry took the two turns that should have brought her to the seat and her left-behind bag last night, and this time the seat was where she expected it to be. ‘I still can’t see where I went wrong,’ she said.

  ‘You must have missed a turn in the darkness,’ said Nicolas.

  ‘I must have done.’

  It was a fact that she had an almost photographic recall, and she stood for a moment now, eyes closed, ‘seeing’ that map on the wall again. Then she set off with the man following.

  She was almost sure, except for a few times when she stopped to consider and got silent hints from his expression, turning it into a game that had her laughing most of the time. When that last little passage opened on a small lawn of moss and another seat she had done it—followed the path in her mind and reached the goal.

  ‘How does it feel to get there?’

  He was smiling at her, and she said, ‘You should know. You usually do, don’t you, and we’re not talking mazes.’ Then she gave a ‘Tra-la!’ of triumph and a quick twirl. She was pleased with herself. That had been fun.

  The seat was set against the hedge too. It had a back and arms, and that was the only difference from the other two seats in the maze. She sat down and said, ‘There should be something more.’

  ‘Perhaps there was once, but there’s no record of it. Or the seat might be enough depending on who was waiting here.’

  There she sat, as if she was waiting, and she joked back, ‘Or who you were sharing it with.’

  ‘Exactly.’ He sat down beside her, and it was like being in a little room: green walls, green carpet, overhead a metal-grey ceiling of sky. Restful, relaxing. Clarry let the peace flow over her and wondered if he would speak first and shatter the spell. She didn’t think she would. She was content to sit here, with his arm along the back of the seat behind her, although only her hair was touching him.

  The moss carpet was thick and soft underfoot and there was something dreamlike about this little green room, with a blackbird flying across up there. Another bird followed, and she watched their flight so that her head went back into the crook of Nicolas’s arm.

  If she had shot up it would have been making too much of a casual contact, and it was pleasant, her head cradled just right. A few more seconds, she thought, and I’ll move. She kept her eyes half closed—lolling like this made you drowsy—and squinted up through extravagantly long lashes.

  She knew what Nicolas looked like, she knew his face well, and the faint smell of aftershave was familiar. Someone else had used it, possibly Nigel. Four seconds more, five seconds she let her head rest, then she said, ‘The question now is, can I find the way out again?’

  ‘You got us in, I can always get us out,’ and she grinned.

  ‘That sounds like the offer I’ve been waiting for!’ She got up reluctantly. ‘First right?’

  ‘Right,’ he said, and they came out without stopping anywhere. Clarry was not certain whether she was finding the way or just taking the turns he was indicating, but when they came out she thought, I’m sure I could do it on my own. But she was not sure she would want to.

  ‘It’s about time for lunch,’ he said, and she quipped,

  ‘The clubhouse?’

  ‘Very overrated.’ She was getting away with some barefaced cheek. ‘They do a reasonable meal here,’ he said.

  ‘So I hear.’

  ‘Will you join me?’

  ‘I’d like that. Your room or mine?’

  They were all his rooms, and he said, ‘The dining-room.’

  ‘Lovely—I’ve taken a shine to that table.’

  ‘Five minutes,’ he said, and she went into the little cloakroom on the ground floor to wash her hands.

  She was enjoying herself immensely, getting along with Nicolas Dargan so well that it was no longer surprising her. She got along with most folk. If her accident had never happened and she had been introduced to him as the girl Nigel wanted she felt he might not have stood in their way. Then she and Nigel could have stayed together. Married. That was what she had wanted then, but she had different aims now. Love left you open to hurt, and she liked her life safe, just the way it was.

  She dried her hands and ran her fingers through her hair. Maybe she had left that white streak to remind herself what it was like being abandoned, and that none of her recovery had come from a lover’s support.

  Her white streak was a warning against falling in love again, but Nicolas Dargan’s flaw hadn’t kept him out of fights. He was a born fighter, and it was the nose he should have been born with. Clarry wondered if there were any early photographs and thought she would quite like to see them. Then she went up to the first floor and the dining-room. She had had hardly any breakfast and she was suddenly ravenously hungry.

  He was there already. A girl who was laying the table for two set down a final fork and gave Clarry a very sharp look as they passed in the doorway. She was more used to seeing Fiona here, Clarry reckoned, and hoped Fiona would not decide to come home for lunch after all.

  None of the rooms in the house was large. This table could have seated eight, so dinner parties would be small intimate affairs, but it was a well preserved period piece, and the chairs, two carvers and six with twisted bobbin legs and leather backs and seats, were a matching set.

  Clarry sat down to the right of the bigger carver chair and looked at the heavy silver cutlery and gleaming glassware and almost asked, ‘Do you always dine like this, even midday?’ But she didn’t, because he probably did.

  Nicolas poured her a little white wine and she sipped, and it was delicious, going down cool and awakening her taste buds. She was not asking what that was either, because she was sure it was out of her range and if he told her she would be none the wiser. But when they brought in the first course she had to say, ‘That looks marvellous.’

  In a flat terracotta oven dish fish steaks had been grilled golden and garnished with parsley. Hot sweetcorn topped with strips of red pepper made it colourful enough for a cookery illustration, and there were lemon wedges, side salads, tiny boiled buttered potatoes and mange-tout peas.

  Clarry could feel her mouth watering as she took her helping. She was a seafood addict, and halibut was a big improvement on fish fingers. She savoured and swallowed, then wondered if she was looking greedy and started toying with her food and making table talk, asking him, ‘What are Dargan Enterprises going to do around here?’

  ‘Give local firms a shot in the arm.’

  ‘What sort of shot?’

  ‘Advice. Finance. One project is the Shire Horse Centre—a stud farm and an arena for horse shows. They’ll be selling tackle, saddles, bridles. It was a dairy farm that was going bankrupt, and the family had this idea but not enough backing to make it viable. Paul Burnley is enthusiastic about that, he’d be delighted to tell you all about it.’

  Nicolas couldn’t have seen any evidence that his agent fancied her, but he seemed to know, and she said gravely with dancing eyes, ‘He is very enthusiastic, isn’t he?’

  ‘Very,’ and somehow she was talking about herself again. Just rambling
on, about music, books, food—she was tucking into this. Work. She told him about her neighbours and friends in the units, what Rickard Restoration had done in the first twelve months, and she smiled as she said, ‘This is the first time the firm’s slept on the job. It will be lovely, living in this house for a little while.’

  ‘Where do you live?’ asked Nicolas.

  ‘In Danny’s bungalow, in Moreton-in-the-Marsh.’

  He seemed to be considering that. Then he said, ‘I wouldn’t have expected your live-in man to be your grandfather.’

  Clarry had just put down her wine glass; now she picked it up again and took a couple of sips, and for the first time her voice was as slow as his. She had been chattering away, but now she spoke very slowly and deliberately. ‘I didn’t have much luck with a man nearer my own age. One day I woke up to hear he’d taken off on an offer he couldn’t refuse.’

  Nigel had not been living with her, he had just been a welcome guest, but Nicolas knew what she meant. ‘And since then?’ he asked.

  ‘Since then they say goodnight and go home. The bungalow only has two bedrooms, and Danny is old-fashioned. Of course, anyone with a house this size could easily accommodate a live-in lover.’

  She stopped there, as though she was listening to the echoes of what she had just said, realising how it might sound and gulping, ‘I’m not offering—’

  ‘No need to stress that,’ Nicolas said drily, and in fact she had been thinking of Fiona, which was almost more tactless. But so was his questioning.

  She touched her glass. She was usually a good listener, but telling him everything had seemed so natural, and she asked, ‘Do you do business lunches? Can you get anyone babbling their secrets?’

  When he smiled at that she had to smile too, and from then on he kept up his end of the conversation. He told her more about the village, what the people round here wanted, and she never doubted that everything he was planning would be done. But he was funny too, he could tell a hilarious tale, and she laughed a lot. It was one of the most enjoyable meals she could remember.

  Dessert was served: apple pie, cheeses, fruit, and they had finished with that and were drinking coffee when there was a tap on the door. Nicolas called, ‘Come in,’ and Danny stood there.

  ‘They said you were here,’ he said, frowning disapproval of the scene he was viewing.

  When Nicolas said, ‘Come and sit down,’ he approached the table, but his expression didn’t change. He sat in the small armchair, the other end of the table, facing Nicolas and still scowling.

  The main dishes had been cleared, but this was obviously the end of a very civilised meal. There was still wine in the bottle, and when Nicolas offered Danny shook his head, and Clarry said brightly, ‘I’ve been shown over the house and round the maze, I’ve had a fascinating time, everything is absolutely—’ she paused for emphasis ‘—absolutely fine.’

  Danny sat like something he might have carved himself, silent and separated from them by the empty chairs.

  Now let’s see you get round Danny, she thought, but she didn’t get the chance, because Nicolas said, ‘Mr Hill, I want your advice. There’s a carved altar rail in the church that I’d like you to see.’

  He stood up, and Danny did too, but reluctantly, as if he suffered from arthritis, which he did not.

  ‘You will excuse us?’ Nicolas said to Clarry.

  ‘Case is outside your door,’ said Danny, following Nicolas Dargan out of the room.

  Clarry went up to put away her clothes in the cupboard and drawers, then went on with the film record she had started earlier. She was photographing the big fireplace in the entrance hall when Danny came back. He was alone, the hall was empty, and from inside the chimney alcove she called, ‘Everything all right?’

  He grunted and headed for the staircase, but this time a grunt was not enough, and she went after him, catching him before the first gallery. ‘Danny, is everything all right? We need the work, and he says he can find us more.’

  Danny’s mouth went down at the corners, and she climbed the stairs beside him, keeping her voice urgent and low. ‘I don’t want any trouble. You don’t have to like him to work for him.’

  ‘Just remember that,’ said Danny.

  His room was under the eaves too, along the passage from hers. Clarry went up beside him, wondering if she should ask about the altar rail and deciding to leave that till later.

  On the top floor she said, ‘We’ll start tomorrow. I’ve taken the pictures, I’ll take the King’s Room chimneypiece, and you could start designing the missing piece for the mirror frame.’

  She wanted to appease him, but Danny saw right through her and went straight back to the real issue. ‘He’s a hard man.’

  ‘I know that,’ she said. ‘Everybody knows that.’

  They were at the door of her room when he launched into what for him was quite a speech. ‘Then don’t you get changing your mind about him, because his sort never change.’ He stomped off down the corridor and Clarry went slowly downstairs again.

  In the early days of her recovery Danny had borne the brunt of her obsession against Nicolas Dargan. He was not forgiving in a hurry, but while Danny was here Nicolas had a craftsman who was incapable of doing less than his best work. Daniel Hill might not join the crew of the happy ship, but he would more than work his passage.

  Clarry took a final photograph of the big fireplace and was walking towards the parlour when Paul Burnley came into the hall. ‘I was hoping to catch you,’ he said. ‘I want to talk to you.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Not here.’ There was no one around, but he dropped his voice to a whisper. ‘In private.’

  ‘Sounds interesting,’ smiled Clarry.

  He waited until they were in his office with the door closed, then he said, ‘You might tell me I’m taking too much on myself, I wouldn’t be saying anything, except—’ He paused, looking hot and bothered, and Clarry prompted:

  ‘Except what—?’ She could think of nothing the estate manager could tell her that should have him hopping around like this. ‘You’re not going to warn me we won’t be getting paid? Dargan Enterprises couldn’t be on the skids?’

  ‘Lord no!’ he exclaimed. ‘Nothing like that. No, this is a personal matter.’

  Good, she thought, although personal problems she could do without. ‘Whatever it is,’ she begged, ‘do get on with it.’

  ‘In strict confidence, you promise me that?’

  ‘As the confessional. Well?’

  ‘You didn’t know Nicolas Dargan before you came here?’

  ‘We’d never met,’ she said.

  ‘You seem to be getting on very well together. You had lunch together.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘I have the greatest respect for him,’ said Paul Burnley fervently. ‘He’s a giant of a man. But there’s a reserve about him, if you know what I mean. Nobody takes liberties with him, nobody gets familiar.’

  The very thought of that silenced him for a moment, and Clarry nodded, indicating that she believed this even if she had no idea where it was leading.

  ‘With you this morning he seemed—almost matey, didn’t he?’

  ‘Almost matey? Well, I suppose you could say that,’ she agreed.

  ‘But he doesn’t carry on like that. It wasn’t—’ again he stumbled over the words ‘—it wasn’t natural for him, I couldn’t understand it at all.’

  Why should you bother about it? she wondered.

  ‘He’s a spellbinder,’ said his agent, ‘and he’s a manipulator. If he wasn’t he wouldn’t be what he is and where he is. He uses opportunities, he uses people. And when I thought about that I thought, that’s what he’s doing here.’

  ‘Using me?’ Clarry said crisply, ‘Do you mean seducing me?’ and if possible he looked even more uncomfortable.

  ‘I don’t think I do, although I wouldn’t know about that. But this is the situation you’re in.’ Now it was all coming in a rush, ‘Miss Fiona—Fiona Stretton
—is still living here, and nobody round here believes she’s ever going to leave King’s Lodge if she can help it.’

  ‘Who could blame her?’ Clarry murmured.

  ‘Yes, well,’ he looked around the empty room as if spies might be lurking, ‘she and Mr Dargan are—well—’

  ‘Very good friends?’ Clarry suggested. A more raunchy term she felt would shock him speechless, and he had started stammering again.

  ‘It does look like that. Only we all know from the way she’s carrying on that she’d like it to be official, but he doesn’t seem the marrying kind. With you on the premises and him taking up with you she might get the message.’

  ‘That he’s a womaniser who doesn’t want a wife?’

  The thought of Clare Rickard repeating all this to Nicolas Dargan hit him, and he sat down suddenly, asking himself, ‘Why am I telling you this?’

  ‘Because you think I should know?’

  ‘You’re a very attractive girl,’ he said hoarsely. ‘Dargan could have fallen for you as soon as he saw you. Why not?’ his grin was wan. ‘I could, but I’m not him. He never loses control, and he always ends up with them dancing to his tune. I don’t want you to. Not in a case like this.’ He gestured helplessly. ‘It’s just struck me as a likely reason—you must think I’m a fool.’

  ‘I think you’re a knight in shining armour,’ she said. He hardly knew her at all and he could be risking his job warning her against reading too much in Nicolas Dargan’s attentions. ‘You’re not a fool,’ she said. ‘You’re smart. I’ve met “Miss Fiona” and anyone could see what she was up to; and Nicolas Dargan hasn’t fallen for me, so if he gives that impression it could be to show her she’s never going to be a one-and-only.’

  ‘You don’t mind?’ asked Paul.

  She shrugged. ‘Why should I? It’s flattering to be told I’m attractive, but I’m not conceited enough to go after one his size.’

  Paul roared with laughter and relief, and Clarry thought, It isn’t that funny.