Harriet smiled now. ‘I think we’re going to get on very well.’
‘I hope so.’
Harriet finished her coffee, and then lay back in her chair, regarding Sara with apparent affection. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘I’ve always wanted a daughter. Someone to talk to, to share my thoughts with, someone young and beautiful like you …’
‘You’re very kind.’
Sara grimaced, but Harriet was serious. ‘I mean it,’ she said. ‘Once I hoped, but—it was not to be.’ She shook her head. ‘You don’t know what it means to me, now that you’re here.’
‘I just hope I can make myself useful.’ Sara paused. ‘You still haven’t told me what you would like me to do.’
‘Oh, don’t worry about it.’ Harriet lifted her hand, as if it was of no consequence. ‘There’s plenty of time for that. Settle down first, get the feel of the place, adjust to our way of life. Then we’ll start worrying about what there is for you to do.’
Sara sighed. ‘I don’t want to be a parasite.’
‘You won’t be that, my dear.’
‘No, but—well, if there’s not a lot for me to do here, perhaps I could take a job, even a part-time one, to help support—–’
‘I wouldn’t hear of it.’ Harriet sat upright. ‘I’m not a poor woman, Sara. One extra mouth to feed is not going to bankrupt me. And besides, there’ll be plenty for you to do, you’ll see.’
Sara was doubtful. Her foolish ideas of changing library books, reading to her aunt, or taking her for drives in the country, seemed so remote now and she didn’t honestly see what she could do to earn her keep.
‘Now, you’ll need some money,’ Harriet went on in a businesslike tone. ‘I propose to make you a monthly allowance, paid in advance, of course, and deposited to your account at the bank in Buford.’
‘I do have a little money,’ Sara protested, but Harriet waved her objections aside.
‘Keep it,’ she said. ‘You don’t know when a little capital might come in handy. Take the allowance, Sara. It would please me.’
Sara shook her head a trifle bemusedly. She was grateful to Harriet, more grateful than she could ever say; but vaguely apprehensive too, although of what she could not imagine. It was like a dream come true, this house, her room—Harriet’s kindness. Surely even Laura could have no complaints in such idyllic surroundings.
Jude had not returned when Sara went to bed. Janet brought hot chocolate and biscuits at ten o’clock, and by the time Sara had drunk hers, her eyes were drooping. It had been a long day, and in many ways an exhausting one, not least on her nerves, and she was relieved when Harriet suggested she should retire.
‘You must get your beauty sleep, darling,’ she remarked, lifting her cheek for Sara to kiss, and the girl hid her slight embarrassment as she quickly left the room.
The stairs were shadowy, now that the chandelier was no longer lit, but her room was warm and cosy. Someone had been in, in her absence, and turned down her bed, the rose-pink sheets soft and inviting, folded over the downy quilt.
Sara quickly shed her clothes and replaced them with a pair of cotton pyjamas. Then, after cleaning her teeth and removing her make-up, she slid between the sheets with eager anticipation. It was so good to feel the mattress yielding to her supple young body, and she curled her toes deliciously against the silky poplin. Sleep, she thought, that was what she needed. Right now, her mind was too confused to absorb any deeper impressions.
She must have fallen asleep immediately. She scarcely remembered turning out the lamp, but she awakened with a start to find her room in total darkness, so she must have done. She knew at once what had awakened her. The sound was still going on. And she lay there shivering unpleasantly, as the voices that had disturbed her sleep continued. She couldn’t hear everything that they were saying. Only now and then, Harriet’s voice rose to a crescendo and a tearful phrase emerged above the rest. For the most part it was a low and angry exchange, with Jude’s attractive tenor deepened to a harsh and scathing invective.
Sara located the sound as coming from a room some distance along the corridor. Harriet’s room perhaps, at its position above the stairs: a likely explanation why their voices carried so well. The echoing vault of the hall would act as an acoustic, throwing the sounds back at her with unwelcome resonance.
Drawing the quilt over her head, she endeavoured to deafen herself to the exchange, but it was impossible. Phrases like: You don’t care how you hurt me! and Jude, please! were unmistakable, and Sara would have rather slept in the stables than be an unwilling witness to such humiliation.
The sounds ceased with sudden abruptness. A door slammed, footsteps sounded—descending the stairs?—and then silence enveloped the old house once again. Sara expelled her breath on a gulp, and only as she did so did she realise she had been holding it. It was stupid, but even her breathing had thundered in her ears while they were rowing, her heart hammering noisily as she struggled to bury her head in the pillows.
Turning on to her back, she now strained her ears to hear anything at all, but there was nothing. Only the haunting cry of an owl as it swooped low over the house disturbed the stillness, and her limbs trembled weakly as she realised it was over.
What time was it? she wondered, and gathering herself with difficulty, she leaned over and switched on the bedside lamp. The little carriage clock glinted in the shadows, its pointers showing a quarter to two. Goodness, she thought, switching the light out again, it was the middle of the night!
Of course, it was impossible to get back to sleep again. The first exhausted hours were over, and had she not had the proof of seeing the time for herself, she would have guessed it was almost morning. She felt wide awake, and restless, and with what had just happened to disturb her thoughts she knew it was hopeless to expect to relax.
After lying for perhaps fifteen minutes, staring into the darkness, she leaned over again and switched the lamp back on. The clock chimed as she did so, just one delightful little ring to mark the hour, and she gazed at it disconsolately, wishing it was later. It wouldn’t be light for hours and she had learned to hate the darkness since her father’s death. She remembered everything connected with that night so clearly, not least the clammy coldness of her father’s skin when she had tried to wake him …
Unable to bear the connotation, Sara swung her legs out of bed and pushed her toes into her slippers. She needed something to make her sleep, but the tablets the doctor had given her she had flushed down the lavatory. And in any case, lately, she had not needed anything. Living with Laura had helped her get things into perspective, and time and healthy exhaustion had done the rest. But tonight was different. She was in a strange house, in a strange bed—and the argument that had woken her had implications she could not ignore. Was this what her father had meant when he had spoken of Harriet having troubles of her own? Had he known of Jude’s existence? Or the relationship between them?
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