Tainted Love. Alison Fraser
out.
‘It’s fine,’ Clare assured her quickly. ‘In fact, it’s much more than I expected, with my not having any real experience.’
‘Well, don’t worry.’ Louise smiled again. ‘Fen can afford it. He has a considerable private income as well as his professor’s salary.’
‘Really?’ Clare wasn’t altogether surprised at this. Although the house was not ostentatiously large, the sheer understated elegance of Woodside Hall whispered money. Old money, if Clare wasn’t very much mistaken.
‘When does he want me to start?’ she asked Louise.
‘Oh, as soon as you can,’ Louise said with obvious relief. ‘I’m holding the fort at present, but I just have to return to London this week. There are so many things I should have done, only I was ill.’
‘You work too hard.’ Clare had some idea of Louise’s busy timetable of voluntary work from their conversations in prison.
Clare remembered how she herself had been unenthusiastic about her visits at first, but had come to like and respect Louise Carlton. She realised that it had been an act of faith for Louise to suggest her for this job.
‘I can start immediately,’ she declared resolutely, and drew a beaming smile in response. ‘I’ll just pack.’
‘Are you sure?’ Louise protested for form’s sake. ‘I’ll drive you up with your cases.’
‘It’s all right,’ Clare replied. ‘I only have the one. I can go by train.’
‘One case?’ Louise watched with concern as the younger woman packed all her worldly possessions into a single battered suitcase. ‘My dear girl, you’re going to need some more clothes. We’ll shop on the way.’
Clare shook her head, saying simply, ‘I have no money.’
‘Never mind. My treat!’ Louise announced with her usual generosity.
Clare shook her head again. ‘Thanks very much, but I’ll wait till I get my wages and buy something.’
‘Clare,’ the older woman pursued, ‘please let me get you something. I can easily afford it and I’d enjoy having someone young and pretty to dress for a change.’
‘It’s very kind of you, but I’d really prefer not. The only thing I might need is an apron or overall, for the housekeeping, and there’s probably one at the house.’
‘Possibly, but, going on Fen’s previous choices of housekeeper, any garment will go round you twice.’ Louise frowned a little as she assessed Clare’s extremely slim figure.
Clare shrugged in response. She knew how she looked—thin to the point of skinniness, shaped more like a boy than a woman. Once she would have cared. Once she’d been like any teenage girl, preening herself in the mirror, dressing to attract the boys—or at least one particular boy. And where had it led, all that wishing and hoping, believing her looks could get her anything?
Clare’s face hardened, reflecting her thoughts, and Louise added softly, ‘I wish you’d let me help...really help.’
‘You have. You’ve got me this job.’
‘I didn’t mean that. I wish you’d open up a little, tell me about yourself.’
Louise reached out a hand to touch her arm. It was plainly a gesture of compassion and understanding, but it took an effort on Clare’s part not to shrug off the gentle hand. She didn’t want to open up. She wanted to stay as she was, locked up tight, safe from thought or feeling.
‘You know why I was in prison,’ she responded evenly as she returned to her packing.
Louise Carlton dropped her hand away, recognising rejection, but persevered. ‘Yes, I know. I just find it impossible to believe you did such a thing. That’s why I haven’t told Fen yet...’ she finished in gentle warning.
‘But what if he asks me?’ Clare worried. ‘He’s bound to want to know why I was in prison.’
‘Yes, well...I did say you’d been convicted of stealing,’ Louise admitted, ‘but that was all. I feel we should wait to tell him the rest.’
‘If you think so.’ Clare left the decision to Louise, seeing no alternative. They both knew full well that, if the brother were to find out the truth, Clare would be shown the door.
As it was, she travelled up to Oxford with Louise Carlton that afternoon, almost positive that her stay at Woodside Hall would be brief and fraught enough, without the added complication of true confessions.
‘Fen is going to be surprised when he sees you,’ Louise said, when they finally drew up outside the Georgian manor house.
The big oak door opened just as they climbed out of the car. Fen Marchand stood on the threshold, ignoring Louise’s smile of greeting, looking past her to Clare.
To say he was surprised was an understatement. Shocked or, possibly, horrified was nearer the mark, Clare thought.
‘Well, brother, dear,’ Louise spoke first, ‘are you just going to stare at the poor girl or are you going to welcome her to Woodside Hall?’
For a moment longer it seemed that Fen Marchand was going to do just that—stare at her—as he continued to stand there, motionless. Then he took his sister’s hint and, leaving the doorway, approached Clare.
Dark-suited the last time they’d met, today he was dressed in a polo shirt and casual trousers. Tall and muscular, he was built more like an athlete than a college professor, but his voice and manner were those of a dry-as-dust intellectual.
‘Miss Anderson,’ he addressed her formally, ‘I assume my sister has informed you about your terms and conditions, and so forth?’
‘Yes...thank you.’ Clare kept her tone equally neutral.
‘Very well,’ he continued, ‘you may start tomorrow...if that’s acceptable?’
‘Yes, fine,’ she nodded in response.
‘Good, then I’ll show you to your room. Have you brought any luggage?’ he asked abruptly.
Clare nodded again. ‘It’s in the boot.’
Louise, keeping her distance till then, appeared with the keys. ‘Here, Fen, you fetch Clare’s case while I show her the attic you’re exiling her to. Come on.’ She smiled invitingly at Clare and led the way inside.
Clare followed with some reluctance. Although Fen Marchand had been polite and correct to her, it was just a façde. She hadn’t forgotten their last encounter at the railway station, and neither had he.
She felt his eyes boring into her back as she walked through the front door and, despite the heat of the day, shivered in the marble-tiled hall, before following Louise up the wide staircase to the galleried landing of the first floor. They passed a series of rooms, turned a corner into another corridor and went to the door at the far end. It opened out into a much narrower staircase.
Clare began to have visions of dust and darkness, with a single bed for furniture and, perhaps, if she was lucky, a candle to read by. But it seemed she’d been reading too many novels in the prison library. She was quite taken aback when they arrived at their destination.
It wasn’t so much a room as an open-plan flat, with a living area at one end and a bedroom plus shower cubicle at the other. It was furnished in genuine antique pine, with a polished wooden floor, rug-scattered, and a large old-fashioned sofa upholstered in blue velvet. Light streamed in from a series of skylights and heat was provided by a fairly modern gas heater inset in the wall.
‘A bit of a climb, I’m afraid,’ Louise apologised as Clare looked round the room.
‘I didn’t expect...anything like this.’ Clare’s uncertainty hid her delight in the place. After prison and the hostel, it seemed