Hold Back the Dark Read online

  Nicolas was in the hall, talking to the housekeeper. When he saw Clarry he said something to Mrs Haines and came to the foot of the stairs, calling, ‘Come on, we’re wasting time.’

  ‘Come on where?’ Clarry asked.

  ‘There’s a sale of garden statuary. We might get something for the maze.’

  She could enjoy that. As she followed him she enquired, ‘Who else is coming?’

  ‘Do you think you might need a chaperon or a bodyguard?’

  ‘What an idea!’ she said, and managed a little laugh for Mrs Haines, who was listening as if she didn’t intend missing a word.

  Outside, a Range Rover was waiting, and as Clarry climbed in she gulped and said with what she hoped was the right tone of regret, ‘Sorry about just now.’

  ‘Like hell you are.’ Nicolas turned and looked her full in the face so that she squirmed in her seat. It was no use trying to bluff him after that. She had been rumbled, and she fell back on her only excuse.

  ‘Well, you shouldn’t have laughed at me.’

  ‘Why not? It was the funniest thing I’ve seen in days.’

  ‘You’ve got a strange sense of humour,’ she said drily.

  ‘What would you have done? If I’d been looking up the chimney and got a sootfall? Especially if I’d just snapped your head off over a perfectly inoffensive question?’

  She didn’t need to consider. ‘I suppose I might have found that pretty funny, but I tell you something. I wouldn’t have been standing so close when I started laughing at you.’

  ‘Good advice,’ he said. ‘Next time I’ll remember that.’

  ‘You’re expecting a next time?’

  They were leaving King’s Lodge behind, driving along the winding lane that led to the main thoroughfare. ‘Aren’t you?’ he said, and his smile made her smile.

  He was watching the road, which was a series of blind bends and so narrow that if two vehicles met one had to back to a pull-in space.

  But somehow he watched her too. ‘You look as if it took some getting off,’ he said. ‘You’re still damp around the edges.’

  Clarry had towelled her hair, but it was wet enough for moisture to be trickling down her forehead. She fished in her pocket for a tissue.

  ‘And if I didn’t know better I’d say there was soot on your eyelashes,’ he added. She had always had sooty eyelashes. She pretended to squint through them now and shook her head.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘All clear.’ She was not going to fight him today. She was taking a break from aggro and her spirits were buoyant. ‘Where are we going?’ she asked.

  ‘To see an old garden with some statuary that’s going on the market. We’re getting a preview.’

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘South Wales.’ That meant a long drive, but she didn’t think she would mind that either.

  ‘What sort of thing are you looking for?’ she asked.

  ‘Let’s wait and see what’s on offer.’

  She was flattered that he considered her opinion worth having, and she asked, ‘Didn’t Fiona want to come along? It used to be her maze.’

  ‘And now it’s mine,’ Nicolas said cheerfully, and she thought, It can’t have gone too brilliantly for Fiona last night. She can’t know anything about this trip or she wouldn’t have me sitting up front. In the back maybe if he’d insisted on bringing me along, but she would have been right beside him.

  She found herself grinning like a Cheshire Cat, so that she had to come up with a joke. ‘Danny works in stone too. You could have brought him. He appreciates a likely bit of statuary when he sees it.’

  ‘And how does Daniel Hill show approval?’ asked Nicolas.

  Danny would think she was mad, going off with Nicolas Dargan like this. It was a business trip and she had had no choice, but when she got back he would be very disapproving indeed.

  ‘He smiles,’ she said, and Nicolas looked dubious. ‘He can smile. Haven’t you seen him?’ Of course he hadn’t. ‘Well, I warned you he was awkward,’ and she admitted the obvious, ‘He isn’t a fan of yours.’

  ‘Judge of character, is he, as well as statues?’ Nicolas drawled, and she laughed at that.

  ‘Very much so, and when he gets it wrong it takes wild horses to make him admit it.’

  ‘We’ll look out for one.’ He smiled down at her, and she wondered if she could have been saying that Danny might have the wrong idea about Nicolas Dargan.

  She had to relax. She was sitting so close now, brushing against him when she shifted in her seat, conscious of his every controlled move driving the car. If she let his nearness get under her skin, as it had earlier, her nerves would be strung to screaming before they were anywhere near their journey’s end.

  So she had to loosen up and she did, and they took the motorway under a dark grey sky. Traffic was not too heavy, the great lorries thundered past heading for Swansea and the docks, but the season of tourists and caravanners was over. The car radio played. Clarry listened to music and news, a short story and a chat show, and watched the changing landscape when they left the motorway.

  In a strange way she was finding that faint smell of aftershave soothing. As an occasional hint of it reached her she wondered why it was so evocative. If she closed her eyes and breathed deeply it made her feel almost cherished.

  Which was crazy, because Nicolas Dargan was the last man alive to be cherishing her, but the clean male aroma was like a strong arm around her, familiar and comforting, and it had to mean she had come across it before.

  Not on Nigel, she thought, but maybe somebody she had liked had worn it. Or perhaps she had sniffed it on a toiletries counter one day when she was feeling on top of the world and thought, That’s nice, I could fancy that. Elusive and faint, it intrigued her, so that she found it hard not to sniff openly and ask, ‘What’s your aftershave?’

  That seemed too personal in this confined space, as if she was suggesting it was overpowering when it was anything but, and she hid a smile, reflecting that it would be even more impossible to say, ‘There’s a lot about you that gets my hackles up, but when I breathe in the way you smell I feel as if I’m being stroked very gently.’

  The roads were rougher now, between old market towns, as the rising hills became a mountainous panorama. She saw the ruins of a castle or an abbey on a rocky crag, and later they passed a gloomy lake with old quarry workings at its head.

  As a sightseeing run it was fascinating, but she was glad when the car drew up in a high street, outside an estate agents and auctioneers in a row of Georgian buildings.

  ‘I’ll be right back,’ said Nicolas, and while he was gone Clarry flexed her stiffening muscles.

  He was back, almost at once, followed by a dapper little man who seemed to be doing a skipping step and was smiling and talking at the same time. So that’s what’s meant by dancing attendance, Clarry thought, because when Nicolas opened the door and got into the car the man was still burbling on about showing them the way and its being a pleasure and no trouble at all.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Nicolas, ‘we’ll find it.’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course. And you’ll be in touch?’

  ‘Almost certainly.’

  ‘You managed to park right outside,’ the man said. He sounded as if that surprised him, and Clarry thought, It doesn’t surprise me. The Nicolas Dargans of this world can always find a parking space.

  She grinned at that, and he asked, ‘What’s amusing you now?’

  She was still smiling, looking back at the man on the pavement who was watching them go. ‘There,’ she said, ‘you do have a fan.’

  ‘He’s got property he wants to unload.’

  She laughed, ‘I didn’t think it was your bonny blue eyes.’

  ‘Blue eyes?’ he echoed.

  ‘Aren’t they?’

  She knew exactly what colour his eyes were. Nigel had grey eyes that could look blue sometimes, but Nicolas Dargan’s were dark as pitch, and they would never change colour. She said impulsively, �
��You and Nigel don’t even look like cousins.’

  ‘Nevertheless we are. Any bastardy in the family missed our generation.’

  ‘I wasn’t suggesting—’

  ‘But you’re right, we’re not alike. And the difference is rather more than skin-deep.’ He spoke quietly, but his voice was cold, and that was the difference. Nigel was all too human, but Nicolas could be rock-hard to the bone, and Clarry didn’t need reminding of that.

  She hadn’t wanted to spoil today, she hadn’t meant to bring up Nigel’s name. She changed the subject abruptly, asking, ‘How far is it?’

  ‘Only about another five miles.’

  ‘Good,’ she said, ‘I could use a break. I’m setting in a hairpin position.’

  ‘We could stop for a meal.’ They were nearly out of the small town and by now it was midday. ‘But I’d rather get our inspection over first. It’s up in the hills and I don’t altogether trust the weather.’

  Inside the car she couldn’t judge, but looking at the sky this could be one of those days when night came early, and anyhow it would be more fun to go statue-hunting in an old garden. Food could wait, and she would enjoy stopping somewhere on the way home and dining out leisurely. Danny was going to do his Victorian grandfather act whatever time they got back, a few hours would make no difference.

  ‘Yes, let’s go on,’ she said.

  They turned off the road, went through another hamlet of a few houses and what looked like a farmhouse, and took what seemed hardly more than a track, meeting nothing from then on but sheep perched on the hillside like mountain goats. ‘You are sure about this?’ Clarry queried as they bumped along. ‘Maybe we should have brought the guide.’

  ‘Trust me,’ said Nicolas, and she pulled a face.

  He chuckled. ‘You have such a suspicious mind! But we are on the right track. When the house was in its heyday this would be wider, the surface would be kept repaired,’ and when she looked out at the ground beneath their wheels she could see the remains of old concrete.

  ‘Old houses, old roads,’ she sighed. ‘Are you thinking of saving this one?’

  ‘This one is long past saving. I’m here for the garden.’

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘Any minute now.’

  It had been built into the mountainside. They came over a ridge and just below the next rise was a plateau, and a building standing in overgrown grounds within a grey snaking wall.

  The car stopped outside gates that were high and closed. Clarry opened her own door and jumped down while Nicolas was coming round the car, and it was so quiet that she could hear his soft tread on the grass. The silence was heavy as though everything held its breath, and she almost whispered, ‘Who lived here?’ although she knew they were quite alone.

  The gates were ornately iron-scrolled, secured by a heavy lock and chain, and she half expected the key would refuse to turn, but it slid round smoothly, and as Nicolas took off the lock he answered her, ‘One of the ironmasters built himself a home well away from the foundries. After the closures it stayed that way for a while, but there’ve been probate problems for years. Now the house has been stripped and what’s left in the garden is going up for auction.’

  The gate swung open. She thought the hinges would creak, but perhaps they had been oiled for the auction. The short driveway to the house was clear enough too, cropped grass grew between the paving stones.

  She hesitated, and knew it was a stupid remark when she muttered, ‘I hope we’re not disturbing anything.’

  ‘Come on, Clarry,’ he said, and it was as if she was hearing an echo. Then she was going with him through the gates and ahead of them was the house: windows gone, most of the roof gone, a gaping hole that had once been the ironmaster’s front door.

  She wondered about him and his family. ‘What a grim title—ironmaster,’ she said, and thought it wouldn’t be too far off the mark for the man striding along beside her.

  Again she got that speculative look as if he was reading her mind, and again she felt that she could be colouring up. ‘This one had his dream,’ he said drily. ‘He created quite a garden.’

  It was all around them, neglected and overgrown out of recognition. Trees and shrubs planted up here must have been set in soil brought up for the purpose. Most of it had been washed away since, but some roots had been tenacious enough to hold, although the bushes were wild and the trees stunted. There would have been flowers too, especially in summer, but it was late autumn now and years since anyone had tended the garden. All the flowers had gone, and Clarry followed Nicolas down a path of tangled briars and ferns, round the side of the house.

  ‘We should come on the star exhibit somewhere here,’ he said.

  ‘And what’s that?’

  ‘The ironmaster’s pride and joy, apparently.’ He stopped. ‘This has to be it.’

  She peered round him and gasped. ‘Wow!’

  ‘I can’t see this lot doing much for the maze,’ he said.

  It was a neo-classical group in stone of half a dozen women with flowing hair and skimpy draperies, sitting in a wide circle, all with downcast eyes.

  ‘They’re very thoughtful,’ she said. ‘What are they supposed to be? Witches?’

  ‘Water nymphs.’ They were more like nymphs than witches; they all had the same simper. But set here among the bracken and the broom...

  ‘Water?’ she queried.

  ‘I’m told there was a small lake. They’re weatherbeaten now, but when they were new and the sun was shining they might have brightened up the ironmaster’s outlook.’

  So that was what they were doing, admiring their reflections in the lake. ‘I’m glad you told me that,’ she said. ‘I wondered if they were watching for something to come up out of the ground. Which will you have if you decide on them? There wouldn’t be room for more than a couple in the maze, would there?’

  ‘You’d be hard pressed to choose. They’re all the same, give or take the odd broken finger, and that poor girl who’s lost the tip of her nose.’

  She went closer to see and declared, ‘You should have a fellow feeling for her, with a broken nose, but I think it’s an improvement here. They’ve all got the old Grecian nose; hers is much nicer.’

  ‘Good for her,’ said Nicolas, ‘but I don’t want any of them.’

  ‘What a rotten thing to say! Never mind, girls,’ she told them gaily, ‘there are those who will appreciate you.’ They were hardly works of art, but they would probably sell at the auction. ‘Although you might be split up,’ she added.

  ‘That’s not going to worry them.’ He moved away from the circle across what might have been a tennis court. ‘They’re a narcissistic bunch. All they’ll need is a mirror each.’

  ‘What are you looking for?’ He probably had something in mind to have dismissed the water nymphs out of hand, and he was striding purposefully now through a rusting iron archway and into a copse.

  Over his shoulder he told her, ‘There was a set of King’s Beasts, from the same quarry as the water babes. Most of them are still around.’

  ‘The lion and the unicorn,’ Clarry quoted.

  ‘That’s right.’

  Either would be splendid, and searching for mythical beasts in a secret garden was magical. This must have been a place of fantasy on the mountainside when the house was a home. She could imagine the lake, fed from mountain streams, the arbours, the flower beds, the rock gardens and dells. There were still paved paths beneath the turf, and she was picking her way carefully down a shallow flight of moss-covered steps when Nicolas said, ‘This should be the pillar garden.’

  ‘Pillow?’

  ‘Pillar. Trees were the pillars; it was a terrace.’

  Left to their own devices, the trees were no longer in neat straight rows. Some had died off, some had grown gnarled, and what must have been a smooth-lawned walk between them had gone back to scrubland. But it was still the lair of the beasts.

  The first beast was by the first tree, sitting up on its
hind legs in the pose of a begging dog. But this was no dog, this was a battered bull, lurching slightly where the ground had subsided.

  It was nearly as tall as Clarry, and she turned eagerly to Nicolas. ‘But he’s marvellous! You’ll never do better than him. He’s the next best thing to a Minotaur—’ the half bull, half man that roamed the legendary maze of ancient Crete, and Nicolas laughed.

  ‘You want the Minotaur? When they got to the middle of his maze he ate them.’

  ‘I’d forgotten that, but this one looks friendly enough.’

  ‘All the same, we’ll see them all.’

  Clarry could see more, and she said happily, ‘It’s like coming across a lost city—weird and wonderful. I’m so glad you brought me. How many are there?’

  ‘There should be ten. Some have gone.’

  ‘I hope the unicorn’s still here.’ Nicolas was standing back now, while she was darting backwards and forwards over the rough ground searching for the unicorn.

  She found a lion and a dragon, and what looked like a horse but for the broken stub of a single horn, and she called, ‘I’ve found it!’ He came then, and she said, ‘A unicorn would be stunning.’

  ‘See the rest first.’

  The figures were mostly at drunken angles. One had toppled over, dragging the roots of a small tree with it, and she knelt down by it. Then she sat back on her heels and squealed, ‘You’ll never guess what this one is!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A griffin!’ She had told him about the griffin Danny had carved for her, but she didn’t expect him to remember. ‘They’re very rare,’ she said, ‘but I’ve got one in olivewood at home that I’m very fond of. Don’t you think this one’s handsome?’

  Nicolas bent over it with her, and it was a nightmarish creature. ‘No,’ he said, but he was smiling, and she pressed on,

  ‘That’s because you’re not looking at it the right way. Griffins are a marvellous mixture. The head of an eagle and the body of a lion—how’s that for a winning combination? Sounds rather like the kind of man I’ve been looking for,’ she joked, and he chuckled.