Tainted Love

‘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 unreal.

‘Yes, well, the only trouble is the lack of toilet,’ Louise said, still in an apologetic vein. ‘You’ll have to go downstairs for that. A dreadful inconvenience, I know, but at least you’ll have a bit of privacy up here.’

‘It’s absolutely wonderful,’ Clare assured the older woman, her smile showing she meant it. ‘I just didn’t expect anywhere so nice.’

Louise smiled in response. ‘Well, I’m glad you like it. It used to be the servants’ quarters in bygone times—a rather dingy, depressing place—but Fen had it refurbished for my son Gerry to board in while he was up at Oxford. I don’t think it has had any use since.’

Clare frowned, wondering if she’d understood correctly. ‘What about the other housekeepers? Didn’t they stay here?’

Louise looked embarrassed for a moment as she shook her head. ‘Well, no, most of them have lived out, or occupied a couple of adjoining rooms on the first floor...but Fen thought you might prefer up here.’ Louise’s hesitancy cast doubt over her brother’s motives.

Clare was quite sure Fen Marchand couldn’t care less about her preferences. It seemed much more likely that it was his own privacy he was protecting. Having opened his house to a convicted criminal, he’d decided to isolate her as far as possible from the rest of the household.

Well, Clare didn’t object. She’d clean his house and cook his meals as efficiently as she could, and, when not working, keep to her own company. She had no wish to become a so-called ‘part of the family’. Apart from her dislike of Marchand, she believed no housekeeper was ever really such.

Her thoughts went to her own mother. She’d worked for Lord Abbotsford for over fifteen years and her ladyship had often referred to her as ‘almost one of the family’. But, even as a child, Clare had known they were just words, empty words. It had simply been a way of claiming Mary Anderson’s loyalty. When her mother had become ill with stomach cancer, the Holsteads had been conspicuous by their absence.

Clare’s mouth twisted at the memory and it was a bitter expression Fenwick Marchand caught as he walked through the attic door. His eyes narrowed; he was clearly wondering what she was thinking, scheming...

Then Louise turned and spotted him, saying, ‘This was a good idea of yours, Fen. Clare loves it. Don’t you, Clare?’

‘Yes,’ Clare answered as promised, but her tone was leaden.

Not surprisingly, Fen Marchand looked sceptical. ‘I must say you contain your enthusiasm very well, Miss Anderson,’ he muttered in dry sarcasm.

It wasn’t lost on Clare but neither was his position as her boss; she managed to contain her temper.

It was Louise who said, ‘Don’t be such a sourpuss, Fen. You don’t want to scare off Clare before she’s even started, do you?’

From his deadpan gaze, Clare suspected that was exactly what Fen Marchand wanted. When their eyes met and locked, and she refused to look away, he said, ‘I don’t think Miss Anderson scares so easily.’

‘Possibly not—’ Louise totally missed the silent exchange of hostilities ‘—but you could still try to be a little pleasanter. Clare isn’t used to your sense of humour, and, if she were to take to her heels, then where would you be?’ she asked rhetorically.

Her brother answered her all the same, with a dry, ‘Housekeeperless, I presume.’

‘Precisely.’ Louise felt she’d just made her point. ‘And you know you can’t manage on your own, Fen, so try to be nice, hmm?’ she appealed.

If Fen Marchand’s less than nice expression was anything to go by, the appeal fell on deaf ears. But Louise seemed oblivious, taking his silence as assent.

‘Good, so that’s settled,’ she announced with totally unwarranted optimism. ‘Now I must dash. I have a charity do this evening and I simply can’t miss it... Clare, any problems, just give me a call,’ she invited kindly.

‘Thank you.’ Clare smiled, knowing already what her biggest problem would be.

He chimed in, ‘I don’t suppose this advice service extends to me?’

Louise gave a brief laugh. ‘My dear Fen, the last time you took my advice on anything you were five years old. I can’t believe you’ll start wanting it now.’

‘You never know.’ He actually smiled for a moment, but it was solely at his sister and didn’t reach the eyes flicking back from her to Clare.

Once more Clare returned his stare, her eyes telling him she understood. She was here only under sufferance and it was going to be no lifelong career.

‘Well, you know the number,’ Louise replied, and, with a last smile for both of them, stopped her brother from following her by adding, ‘No, it’s all right. I want a last word with Miles, then I’ll show myself out. You stay and tell Clare what her duties are.’

So saying, she went back down the steps, leaving Clare and Fen Marchand to trade hostile stares.

It was he who broke off first, walking past her to place her suitcase on the bed. ‘If you give me the address, I’ll send for the rest.’

‘The rest of what?’ Clare was slow on the uptake.

‘Your luggage,’ he said patiently.

She shook her head. ‘There’s no more. That’s it.’

His eyes widened in surprise. ‘You believe in travelling light. Or aren’t you planning to stay long?’

‘That’s up to you, Mr Marchand,’ she replied coolly. ‘I’ve brought all my possessions and given up my room at the hostel.’

‘In that case,’ he countered, ‘we’d better try and make this work. Firstly, we need some ground rules.’

‘Yes?’ Clare waited for him to continue, assuming all the rules were going to be made by him.

‘Right.’ He slanted his head on one side, studying her for a moment. ‘You don’t smoke, I hope.’

‘No,’ she answered simply.

‘Good, I can’t abide the smell of stale tobacco... What about drink?’

‘Drink?’

‘Alcohol,’ he added with some impatience. ‘Do you drink and if so, how much?’

Clare’s brows lifted. He certainly believed in being blunt and to the point. ‘I haven’t had a drink in three years,’ she stated with absolute honesty.

He was unimpressed. ‘Well, that tells me how long you were in prison,’ he commented drily, ‘but what about before? Was your crime drink-related?’

‘No.’ Clare held in a sigh. ‘I don’t have a drink problem, if that’s what you’re asking...I don’t take drugs, either,’ she added, before he could ask any awkward questions on that line. Questions she might not be able to answer honestly.

‘You don’t smoke. You don’t drink. You don’t take drugs. So, are there any vices you’d like to admit to?’ he asked in a tone that suggested he wasn’t taking her word for anything.

Clare gave a shrug that he could read how he liked. She wasn’t about to tell him the one vice that had led her to prison—her blind, obsessive love for John Holstead, the son and heir of the fifth Earl of Abbotsford.

‘What about men?’ He got on to the subject without any help from her. ‘Is there some boyfriend in the background?’ His lips formed a curve of distaste, as if he imagined any boyfriend she’d choose would be an unsavoury character.

It was too much for Clare, trying hard to keep her temper under control. ‘If I have,’ she rallied, ‘I think that’s my business, Mr Marchand.’

His face darkened at her answer. Free speech was obviously considered his prerogative, and his alone.

‘On the contrary,’ he argued, ‘it would most definitely be my business should you intend that this boyfriend visit you here, at my home.’

‘Well, I don’t,’ Clare declared abruptly, meaning to close the subject.

She felt no obligation to go further and state that there would be no boyfriend, now or later. She’d only ever loved one man. She’d worshipped him from the age of twelve, humiliated herself for him more times than she cared to remember, made love with him in beds of straw and backs of cars, and, through everything, remained blind to the point of stupidity.

‘Good.’ Fen Marchand’s chilly tones brought her back to the present. ‘Because I value my privacy and would not appreciate it being invaded by some male stranger staying overnight in my attic. I trust you take my meaning, Miss Anderson?’

Clare nodded and kept her opinion to herself. She really didn’t want to lose this job before she’d even begun. She had something to prove first.

‘Right, well, you can start tomorrow morning. Breakfast,’ he announced briskly, and had walked past her to the door before he thought of asking, ‘You can cook, can’t you?’

‘Just about.’ She gave him the answer she felt the question deserved.

His face clouded over once more, but he said nothing, as he turned on his heel and marched off downstairs.

Clare could guess what he was thinking. Here he was, giving a chance to one of his sister’s no-hopers, and getting precious little gratitude in return. He was right, too. Clare felt nothing towards him except a growing dislike.

But she had to make an effort, Clare told herself, at least try to be the polite, colourless housekeeper he wanted. If only subservience were a more natural part of her character. She grimaced as she thought of her mother. Yes, your ladyship. No, your ladyship. Of course, your ladyship. In all those years, had her mother ever wanted to say, Go to hell, your ladyship?

Possibly she had, but circumstances had made her dependent on the Holsteads. She’d been a nanny to another county family when she’d met Clare’s father, Tom Anderson. He’d been an assistant trainer at Lord Abbotsford’s racing stables. After a fairly brief courtship, they’d married and were given one of the cottages on the estate. Clare had arrived a year later and, within months of her birth, her father had been killed in a riding accident. Lord Abbotsford had made no offer of financial compensation, but, ‘out of the goodness of his heart’, had allowed Mary Anderson to remain in the cottage in return for some help in the nursery.

The Holsteads had two children, Sarah and John. Sarah had been two years older than Clare but the two had played together until Sarah had gone away to boarding-school at eleven. Johnny had been five years older and a complete tyrant to the two girls.

Eventually her mother had transferred to the position of housekeeper. At the same time, Clare had grown apart from the children of the house. On the few occasions Sarah or John had been home from school, they’d usually been accompanied by friends and had treated Clare very distantly.

Clare had been a little hurt but understood. She might have the same accent, acquired in those nursery days, and she might dress similarly, albeit in Sarah’s discards, but the social gulf between them was a chasm.

It had been different later, when Clare had flowered from an awkward, mop-headed tomboy, with sticks for legs and a chest flat as a board, to a suddenly beautiful redhead, with a swan-like neck and a slim, curving figure and the face of a model, all huge green eyes and hollow cheeks. Then one of the Holstead children had taken notice of her again, only this time he hadn’t played tyrant.

Clare caught the drift of her thoughts and stopped them dead. She wasn’t going to go up that road another time. She had cried enough for Johnny. She wasn’t going to cry any more—not for him or any man.

She bent to start her unpacking. It didn’t take long. Her clothes took up a tiny corner of the wardrobe. She caught sight of herself in the mirror on the reverse side of the door and pulled a face. She still appeared young, remarkably so after three years inside, but her looks had gone. She was thin to the point of emaciation, like an anorexic schoolgirl, with a complexion of paste. She recalled how she’d looked the summer she’d turned seventeen, how she’d felt, and for a moment she mourned the loss of that beauty. Then the film rolled on and she saw how it had really been a curse, not a gift, and she called herself a fool for even minding.

She firmly closed the wardrobe door and jumped a little when she turned to discover herself no longer alone.

‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded of Miles Marchand, standing there, quite coolly spying on her.

He shrugged. ‘Nothing. Why shouldn’t I be here?’

‘Because it’s my room,’ she said very clearly, ‘and you don’t come in without an invitation. OK?’

Clare wasn’t kidding and she gave him a look that said as much.

‘OK,’ Miles muttered back, ‘there’s no reason to get uptight. I got you the job, you know,’ he claimed in an arrogant tone, reminiscent of Marchand senior. ‘He didn’t want to employ you. He said you were too young. You don’t look particularly young to me.’

‘Thanks.’ Clare grimaced but didn’t take offence. No adult looked young to an eleven-year-old. ‘Would you like to sit down?’ She sat herself in the wicker chair.

He was slow to accept the invitation but eventually he slouched down on the velvet settee, hands stuck in his pockets. He wanted to make it clear that he was doing her the favour.

‘Can you swim?’ he asked after a minute’s silence.

‘Yes.’

‘Well?’

‘Moderately.’

‘Can you bowl?’

‘Ten-pin?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Then no.’

The boy looked disappointed. She’d failed that one.

‘I don’t suppose you can ride a horse,’ he said disdainfully.

‘As a matter of fact,’ Clare responded, ‘I can.’

He looked sceptical, much in the same way his father did. ‘A proper horse, I mean. Not a pony or anything.’

‘A proper horse,’ she echoed, picturing the beautiful animals in the Earl’s stables. She’d mucked out, washed down and brushed up, for the privilege of exercising the less important racers.

‘I had a horse once,’ the boy announced. ‘A bay mare.’

‘What was her name?’ she asked.

‘Flash,’ he replied. ‘She was called that because she was fast. I mean really fast. Her sire was a Derby winner,’ he declared proudly.

It was Clare’s turn to look sceptical. The fact did not go unnoticed.

‘You don’t believe me, do you?’ he accused. ‘But it’s true. My grandfather bought her for me. Then she sold him.’

‘Your mother?’ Clare guessed.

He nodded. ‘After Grandpa died, she sold everything she could—houses, cars, paintings, the lot, so she could follow Ricky boy round the world.’

‘Ricky?’ Clare echoed automatically before she realised it might not be a good idea.

‘Her boyfriend Ricardo,’ he said disdainfully. ‘He was an Argentinian polo-player. When he lost a match, he used to beat his horses.’

‘Did he hurt you?’ she asked quietly.

He pulled a slight face, then shook his head. ‘He used to shout at me sometimes. I didn’t care. Mostly it was in Spanish and I only know a little... He shouldn’t have hit his horses, though.’

‘No.’ Clare agreed with this solemn judgement.

Then he added matter-of-factly, ‘Never mind. He’s dead now.’

‘What?’ Clare wondered if she’d heard properly.

‘He died in a car crash,’ Miles relayed, ‘with my mother.’

‘Oh,’ Clare murmured inadequately, then added a quietly sympathetic, ‘You must miss her.’

It drew a belligerent look and an immediate denial. ‘No, I don’t! Why should I? She didn’t care about me.’

Clare shook her head. ‘I’m sure she did, Miles. Sometimes grown-ups are too busy with their own lives, but that doesn’t mean—’

‘What do you know?’ Miles cut in abruptly and jumped to his feet. ‘You’re just a servant!’

It was intended as the ultimate insult but Clare didn’t take offence. She could tell from the colour suffusing his face that he regretted his words the moment they were out, but didn’t know how to take them back. Instead he turned and ran.

Clare heard him take the stairs two at a time, clattering noisily down the plain wooden treads, and sighed aloud. It hadn’t taken her long to upset Miles, and he had been the one to secure her the post. But did she want this job so badly that she was willing to let herself be ruled by the moods of an eleven-year-old boy?

The answer was no, but that wasn’t exactly the correct question. She might not want the job, but she needed it—at least until she found something else.

Perhaps she should put an advert in the paper:

Female ex-con, twenty-six, with drugs and theft convictions, no good with children, no good at being humble either. Anything considered. Apply Box...

Somehow she didn’t think she’d get much response, yet there seemed little point in lying about her past when it would inevitably be found out.

Plainly, this was her best chance. If the Marchands, senior and junior, would just let her get on with the cooking and cleaning, without expecting anything else from her, she could be reasonably content here. She’d work hard for them when on duty, and, when not, she’d escape to her attic sanctuary.

She looked round the room again with an appreciative eye. As bed-sits went, it was beautifully furnished, comfortable without being over-fussy, nothing too valuable to use, but nothing cheap and nasty either. Louise’s son had been lucky to have such a place to study in.

Clare stretched out on the bed and, as in prison, let her imagination wander to better things.

How different it would all be if she’d come to Oxford to study, not skivvy—to work for a degree that would be her passport to a new life. It wasn’t so fanciful. She’d been considered fairly bright at school. She’d gained eight O levels, and gone on to do A levels...only that same year Johnny Holstead had been sent down from university, and her studies had flown out the window, along with her common sense.

She couldn’t believe now that she’d been such a fool. To give up a future for a few meaningless words of love and a summer of stolen meetings. He’d never once taken her out, never shown her his world, yet she’d turned her own life upside-down for him, believing he meant his ‘forever’ promises.

Their engagement had been announced in The Times, on September the fourteenth. Clare remembered precisely, because a good part of her had died that day. Their picture had been in the tabloids, too. The Earl of Abbotsford’s son, John, was marrying the daughter of a duke, Lady Elizabeth Beaumaris.

Clare had refused to believe it at first. It was she who should have been standing at his side, a smiling, radiant bride-to-be. Not some stuffed dummy of a deb.

Johnny had agreed, even as he’d told her that he had to marry the duke’s daughter. Love was one thing, money another, and the Holsteads’ declining fortunes required him to take a rich wife. It had always been that way among the upper classes. It didn’t have to affect their relationship, he’d explained, seriously expecting Clare to accept the role of mistress.

He’d had no idea how he’d destroyed her life and she hadn’t stuck around long enough to tell him. She’d abandoned school and home, and fled to Brighton where she’d found work in a hotel. She’d lost that job five months later and been forced to seek refuge in a women’s hostel. She’d kept in touch with her mother but had been unable to return home.

Her eighteenth birthday had come and gone without celebration, unlike Johnny’s wedding which had been splashed all over the newspapers. It had finally killed off her dreams. Till then she’d hoped Johnny might break his engagement and come looking for her, his true love. But that only happened in books. In real life, he married the heiress and lived richly ever after.

She’d been twenty-two before she’d returned to Abbotsford Hall. Her mother had fallen ill, the first stage of the cancer that would kill her, and she’d come back to look after her. She’d had no other choice but it had proved a mistake. Having got over Johnny, she’d believed that he too would be happy to ignore her return. Instead it had led to a chain of events that had ended in tragedy for the Holstead family and prison for her.

Now she was starting again, and this time it was going to be different. She neither needed nor desired personal attachments. Prison had equipped her for surviving without such luxuries and she preferred it that way. She’d never love again, or have a child, or tear herself inside out—not for any man.

Nothing was worth that much pain.

CHAPTER THREE

‘OH...GOOD morning,’ Fen Marchand greeted her in surprise as they met on the gallery landing, she fully dressed, he in a towelling robe and little else besides.

‘Good morning.’ Clare looked through him, unembarrassed.

‘I’ve just woken Miles,’ he relayed. ‘We’ll be down at eight o’clock.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Clare took it as an order. ‘Do you prefer a cooked or continental breakfast?’

He frowned slightly before saying, ‘Cooked, but nothing too heavy. Scrambled eggs will do, plus coffee and toast.’

‘Very well, sir,’ Clare responded, again with leaden politeness, and left him staring after her as she descended the staircase.

Obviously he hadn’t expected her to know how to act the part of formal housekeeper, but she had a fair idea. She should do. She’d watched her mother present an inscrutable face to the Holsteads and their frequent rudeness. Now, in a similar position, she saw why. If she wanted to keep this job, being unobtrusive was probably as important as being efficient.