“I like him well enough, but for certain attitudes. And those I don’t like at all.”
“Then he really has asked you to marry him?”
At first she thought that his sophistication must have slipped very badly to permit him to ask such a thing; then the deliberation of his voice warned her that they were on the second plane, and this was in earnest.
“Yes, he has.”
“Eight times?”
“I haven’t counted. Probably. Most times we meet.”
“Why don’t you?”
“Why don’t I what? Count?”
“Marry him.”
“Look,” she said, turning her back on the shining innocence of the sea, “even if he meant it, the answer would still be no. But he doesn’t. He’s spoiled and flippant and mischievous, and in bad need of a fall. He’s only had to smile at people all his life, and whatever he wanted has fallen into his lap. And he doesn’t care what he breaks in the process. No, that’s too steep. He just doesn’t realise that he breaks anything, all he sees is his own wants. He’s just having fun with me.”
“I shouldn’t think it much fun,” said Dominic, “to ask you to marry me and get turned down.”
“You’re not Simon, my dear. Do you think he’d be concerning himself with why I turned you down—supposing I ever did?”
“No,” agreed Dominic honestly, “but then, he’s in love with you, and—”
It was the first mistake he had made, fumbling between the two planes of his liking for her, and he was thrown out of his stride by the gaffe. To cover himself he took her rather agitatedly in his arms, gingerly in case she objected, but already almost persuaded she wouldn’t. She was laughing; she shook gently with honest amusement against his chest.
“And you’re not! Go on, say—”
He did not so much lose his head as throw it away, and without it he was much more adept. He felt gently downward with his lips to her mouth, and kissed her. It wasn’t the first time, he knew what he was doing. But perhaps it was the first of its kind, warm and impulsive and affectionate, and quite untroubled.
When it was over he held her for some minutes still, not wanting to talk.
“That wasn’t necessary,” she said in his ear.
“No, I know it wasn’t.”
“Aren’t you going to say you’re sorry?”
“No. I’m glad. I enjoyed it very much, and so did you. But I won’t do it again, because it would spoil it.”
“You,” she said helplessly, “are an extraordinary boy.”
“I wouldn’t be, if I were with an ordinary girl.”
His cheek against hers, the baffling unusualness of the day overwhelming him with the delicious conviction of complete happiness, suddenly he froze. His mind went away from her, somewhere there over her shoulder, down among the dunes. She pushed him away suddenly, and turned to look.
“Tamsin, do you see what I see? Look, there between the tamarisks.” One man, two, three, slipping along out of the landward hollow, keeping in the tenuous shade of the young hedges, moving towards the church in its deep nest.
Tamsin shivered and took his arm, turning him about and drawing him landward across the road. “Ugh, it’s getting cold. I’d better get home, Dominic. Come on, we’ve got ten minutes’ walking yet.”
George was still on the hotel terrace, smoking his last pipe and watching the sea.
“Hallo!” he said, hearing the unmistakable step of his son and heir moving up on him quietly from the garden. “How’d you make out?”
“Don’t be nosy,” said Dominic austerely, and came and sat down on the arm of the chair.
“Dad—”
“Hmmm?”
“Do you suppose,” asked Dominic very casually, “that there’s much smuggling in these parts nowadays?”
After a long and cautious silence George said weightily: “Now, look, I’m on holiday. I intend to remain that way. The local excisemen and police are quite capable of running their own show. And it’s no business of mine where Sam gets his brandy.”
“That’s what I thought,” said Dominic cheerfully. “So, quite unofficially, of course, what d’you make of this?” And he told him exactly what he had seen in the region of St. Nectan’s church, though not the precise circumstances in which he had come to see it.
“Going towards the church,” said George carefully. “And Tamsin took good care to remove you from the vicinity as soon as she realised what was going on. Yes, quite interesting.”
“Especially,” said Dominic, “since Simon made such a point of broadcasting in the bar exactly when he intended to open the Treverra vault. And then grinned at Sam, and invited him—”
“Or dared him?” suggested George.
“—to be present on the occasion. And the hint and the challenge were taken. On the spot.”
“Now I wonder just where the safe-deposit was?”
“I wonder, too. In the vault itself, do you think?”
“Now mind,” said George warningly, “not a word to anyone else. We’re only in this game by courtesy, if we’re in it at all. It’s the local man’s manor.”
Dominic rose from the arm of the chair, and stretched and yawned magnificently.
“What do you take me for?” he said scornfully, and strolled away to bed.
CHAPTER II
THURSDAY
« ^ »
IT’S TO-MORROW, then,” observed Paddy, coming in damp and boisterous from his morning swim, and plumping himself down hungrily at the breakfast table.
Tim looked up from the paper. “What’s to-morrow?”
“The big day. The day we take the lid off the old gentleman. Mummy said Uncle Simon was alerting the squad last night. Wouldn’t do if anybody got caught with his pants down, would it? Except the squire, I suppose it’s all one to him by this time.”
Not at his most gay and extrovert in the morning, Tim squinted almost morosely at his son over his coffee cup, and wondered if anyone, even at fifteen, could really be as bright and callous as this before breakfast.
“I know!” said Paddy, fending off the look with a grin. “That’s no way to talk about the dead. Still, I bet he’s the only one around Maymouth who isn’t excited about this bit of research. 7 am! And if you’re not, you ought to be. It’s your family. And just think, we may be making history.” He reached for the cereal packet as if it had been the crock of gold, and helped himself liberally. “Mummy, how’s that fresh coffee coming?”
From the corridor Phil’s voice retorted hollowly: “Being carried by me, as usual.” She came in with the tray, and closed the door expertly with her elbow.
Paddy received his cup, laced it with brown sugar to his liking, and returned happily to his preoccupation.
“Think we really shall find anything, Dad? In the coffin?”
Phil stiffened, the coffee-pot suspended in her hand. She looked from her husband to her son, and inquired in suspiciously mild tones: “And where did you get the ‘we’?”
Paddy’s eyes widened in momentary doubt and dismay, and smiled again in the immediate confidence that she must be pulling his leg. “Come off it! You wouldn’t go and spoil it, would you? Not when it’s Uncle Simon’s own personal project? I’ve got to be there, of course.” His smile sagged a little; her face hadn’t melted. “Oh, gosh, you wouldn’t make me miss the only bit of real excitement there’s ever going to be in Maymouth?” Inevitably he appealed to Tim across the table. “Dad, you didn’t say I couldn’t. We were just talking about it, and you didn’t say—”
“I didn’t say you could,” said Tim, truthfully, but aware that he was hedging. He looked doubtfully at Phil’s cloudy face, observed the set of her jaw, and could have kicked himself. He should have known that she wouldn’t think grubbing about among tombs and bones a proper occupation for her ewe lamb. Mothers are like that. Especially mothers as achingly unsure of their hold on what they love as Phil.