Scorpion's Dance

‘We went to the cottage,’ said Miranda dully. ‘My mother’s cottage. There—there was a scene. Mark left. Afterwards, Mr Knevett found me walking back to the Hall.’

‘How convenient!’ Lady Sanders’ voice was taut with malice, but her nephew intervened.

‘Convenient?’ he asked. ‘Convenient for whom?’

‘Oh, Jaime!’ Lady Sanders waved away his questioning. ‘Don’t get involved in all this.’

‘But I am involved,’ he insisted harshly. ‘However, I do believe no useful purpose is being served by standing here arguing about it. I suggest we allow Miranda to go to bed. She looks—exhausted. We can talk again in the morning.’

‘But what about Mark?’ cried Lady Sanders, aghast. ‘Aren’t you going to look for him?’

‘If you want me to, of course I will,’ he replied gravely. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll escort Miranda to her part of the house.’

‘That’s not necessary—’ Miranda began, but he ignored her, dropping his coat about her shoulders again and urging her forward with his hand in the small of her back.

Miranda was glad to escape from the accusation in Mark’s mother’s eyes. It had been a long evening, a strange evening, and one she never hoped to repeat. But it wasn’t over yet.

Jaime opened the door and accompanied her along the corridor towards the kitchens. But Miranda halted so far along, and turning to him said stiffly: ‘There’s really no need to come any further. I shall be quite all right now.’

In the dim illumination of wall-lights, his face was curiously shadowed, giving it an almost malevolent cast. His eyes seemed deeper set, heavy-lidded, the flaring hollows of his nostrils expelling the heat of his body upon her. She felt suddenly uneasy, apprehensive of the future and she could not dismiss her fears as fancies. She had the overpowering conviction that nothing was ever going to be the same again.

‘Will your mother be up?’ he asked now, and she shivered to dispel the chill that had wrapped itself about her.

‘Perhaps,’ she answered. ‘Does it matter?’

‘Will you explain?’

Miranda bent her head helplessly. ‘I don’t know.’

She heard his harsh intake of breath. ‘You should,’ he said. ‘Then perhaps your mother can bring you to your senses!’

Her head jerked up. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I think you know.’ His eyes were cold, glittering black diamonds in the muted light. ‘You can’t marry Mark now. Not after what’s happened. Not considering what might be to come. I don’t think even becoming mistress of the Hall is worth that, do you, Miranda?’

She gasped. ‘You think I’m marrying him for his money?’

‘Aren’t you?’

‘No!’

‘Oh, come on. You’re not telling me you love that little punk! After what’s happened?’

Miranda’s breasts rose and fell in her agitation, and her fingers holding his jacket in place trembled. She wanted to tear it off and throw it at his feet and trample on it, but the desire to retain her dignity was stronger.

‘You’re his cousin!’ she declared. ‘How can you speak of him like that?’

Jaime’s mouth curled. ‘Our relationship is remote, thank God! Do you think I want to be associated with someone who does this?’

Miranda’s breathing was harsh. ‘He—he didn’t mean it.’ If he did, she didn’t want to admit it. ‘He was drunk—enraged! His mother saw to that.’

‘You’re making excuses for him,’ exclaimed Jaime contemptuously. ‘My God! You’re just like her, aren’t you? His mother! She’s made excuses for him all his life! Well, I wish you well of each other. You deserve everything you get!’

Miranda didn’t know why, but she wanted to crumple up and die. She despised Mark, she didn’t love him. And she despised herself for defending him. But she hated Jaime for making her see herself for what she was.

He was turning away from her in disgust when a low groan reached them. It seemed to come from the kitchen, and with a cry Miranda whirled around and sped along the remaining length of the corridor to where a light was filtering through a crack in the kitchen door. She burst into the room with Jaime right behind her, and then stopped dead at the sight that greeted her stunned eyes.

Her mother was lying on the floor in front of the fire. Mercifully, she had not fallen into the flames, but the flags beneath the polythene tiles were hard and at first Miranda thought she had knocked herself unconscious. But then she saw how one side of her mother’s face had twisted, and spittle was dribbling out of the corner of her mouth.

The sound Miranda made was a kind of choking gulp in her throat, and then Jaime cannoned into her, unable to prevent himself when she stopped so abruptly. The hard warmth of his body dispelled her momentary paralysis, and on shaking legs she moved across the room to kneel down beside Mrs Gresham. But Jaime was there before her, brushing past her and bending to his knees, taking her mother’s wrist between his fingers, probing the rolling sockets of her eyes for any sign of life.

At first Miranda wanted to protest, but then she remembered that he had told her he was a doctor, and she sat back on her heels, staring at him mutely, beseeching him to tell her what was wrong.

‘It looks like a stroke,’ he was saying grimly, when the door behind them burst open again to admit Lady Sanders. But not the Lady Sanders they had left in the hall. This woman was wild-eyed and tearful, lips quivering, hands trembling, a shaking mass of desperation. Grief-stricken fingers tore her handkerchief to shreds, as she cried: ‘Jaime! Jaime! Where are you? Oh, God, Jaime, it’s Mark! Mark! A policeman’s just been to the door. He’s dead, Jaime, he’s dead! Oh, God, what am I going to do?’

She held out her hands towards him, but Miranda who, like Jaime, had got to her feet as Lady Sanders entered the room, reached him first as she sank into a dead faint for the first time in her life.

CHAPTER THREE (#ubbe1187c-2316-594b-a37d-9b9af4026619)

IT RAINED on the day of the funeral, exactly a week before Miranda had expected to become the new Lady Sanders. The guests who had been invited for the wedding all arrived for the funeral, as if not to be done out of a celebration of one kind or another, Miranda thought ghoulishly, numb with more than the realisation that her future which she had thought so secure was suddenly so uncertain again. Her mother was in hospital, unable to speak, paralysed by the stroke which had stricken her almost in the same moment that Mark’s car had crashed through the tollbridge into the river. The dual tragedy had shaken them all in different ways, and Miranda was guiltily aware that her mother’s illness had relieved her of the necessity to display a grief she could not feel. The mourners saw a pale shadow of the girl she had been on the night of the Rotary Club Ball, and made their own assessment of her feelings. They could not know that all her sorrow was for her mother, alone and lonely on her hour of need. Only Jaime, who thought he knew her so much better than anyone else, looked beneath the façade she was presenting and drew his own conclusions.

Lady Sanders had taken it badly, so badly that Miranda could not help but feel sorry for her. After all, she had lost her husband so early in her life, and now her only son. No one could fail to pity her. Strangely, during the past few days, Miranda had felt closer to her than at any other time in her life.

Miranda rode back to the hall in the black Rolls that had followed the hearse to its final resting place. Lady Sanders was with her as, too, was Jaime, the somberness of his clothes accentuating the darkness of his skin. Miranda had worn black as well, unaware of how becoming the dark colours were to her, or of how the burnished glory of her hair stood out against the stark austerity of the graveyard.

A cold buffet had been laid in the dining room, and the guests who had accompanied them back to the house helped themselves to canapés and vol-au-vents and slices of homecured ham. Miranda endeavoured to accept everyone’s condolences with composure, but she was well aware that to most of these people present she had become somewhat of an embarrassment. She did not fit in here, and now she never would.

Sipping a glass of sherry, she tried to assimilate her situation. What was she going to do now? Her mother’s illness had curtailed her working life, and no doubt once she had recovered herself, Lady Sanders would require a new housekeeper. So where did that leave Miranda, or her mother? They had no home, nothing, and the salary she was paid by the council authorities would not stretch to buying a house. She thought of the cottage in the village. Perhaps Lady Sanders would allow them to rent that. It was of no use to her.

Miranda moved towards the buffet tables. Lady Sanders was there, talking to Canon Bridgenorth. Dared she take this opportunity to speak to her? If she didn’t, when might she get the chance again?

A solid object stepped into her path, and about to apologise and step aside, she looked up into Jaime’s hard features. They had said little to one another since the night of the accident, but now he put out a hand to detain her when she would have passed by.

‘I want to talk to you,’ he said, in a low voice.

Miranda glanced apprehensively about her. ‘Oh?’

‘Yes.’ He tucked his thumbs into the waistcoat pockets of his dark grey suede suit. ‘Now we can do it here, or we can go into the library. As you wish.’

Miranda’s cool eyes challenged him. ‘I don’t think we should leave the room again, do you?’

He returned her stare narrowly. ‘I see. Perhaps you consider I was to blame for what happened with Mark.’

She gasped. ‘I didn’t say that!’

‘You didn’t have to.’ He paused. ‘But as a matter of fact, you’re wrong. In one of her—how shall I put it?—more emotional moods, my aunt confessed to—er—encouraging Mark to think the worst, you understand?’

Miranda took an unsteady breath. ‘I have only your word for that.’