Galleon House Page 2

  It was so stupid, Andrea told herself stormily. Even if she was a girl, what did that matter? She could navigate as well as Luke—better, in fact, and she was a capable helmsman. She knew every inch of the coast and she hadn’t a scrap of fear in her slim body. Quite often Leo would take her out for a night’s fishing and would put her in command. Yet at other times—the very times when Andrea most wanted to go out—he would blandly ignore all her pleadings. Andrea experienced not only the humiliation of knowing that Leo did not really trust her but of seeing the triumphant amusement in Luke’s swarthy face.

  But if Luke went there wasn’t another St. Finbar man who could take his place, and they would never stand for the importation of a “foreigner.”

  And now, just when her hopes were at their highest, when Leo had categorically stated that Luke must go, this other Trevaine was arriving, a man whom Leo at least was willing to trust. It was infuriating. She hated Simon—hated him so much that when he arrived at Galleon House her nerves were as taut as fiddle strings and her brain felt as if it was on fire.

  He drove down from London, and as they heard the sound of his approaching car along the driveway, Leo went out to greet him.

  Madam had elected to receive her grandnephew in the long gallery where the family portraits hung. She sat in an imposing chair which had once been a cardinal’s throne, her white head draped with a scarf of priceless Mechlin lace that was looped and fastened to the shoulder of her black silk dress with a glittering diamond heart. There were diamonds at her ears, too, and on the thin, tense hands that rested on the arms of her chair. An erect, regal figure.

  By contrast, Andrea, standing at her right hand, could not have been more simply dressed. Her white linen dress was plainly tailored, her low-heeled white sandals as unremarkable as it was possible for them to be. Only her hair, tied back at the nape of her neck with a black ribbon, flamed in the sunshine, and her eyes, narrowed by suspicion and mistrust, were as hard and green as emeralds.

  They waited in silence while time seemed to hang motionless in eternity. Then the door of the gallery opened and the spell was broken.

  The two men came slowly toward the great chair, Leo with his rolling sailor’s gait, their guest with an easy, loose-limbed stride. And for once neither woman had attention to spare for Leo. It was directed entirely at the stranger.

  Simon Trevaine was fully as tall as Leo, but that merely served to emphasize the hard leanness of the man. His face, which like the rest of him carried not a superfluous ounce of flesh, was tanned a clear, even brown, and with his straight black hair he looked strangely colorless among these red Trevaines.

  “Madam, may I present our kinsman, Simon Trevaine?”

  Leo’s voice boomed in Andrea’s ears like the roll of a ceremonial drum. He was smiling a little as his shrewd eyes watched the little tableau. He knew Madam far too well not to be aware that she had quite deliberately set this imposing stage. She was curious to see just what effect it would have on this Trevaine who was yet a stranger, and she would measure him by the skill with which he adapted himself to his surroundings. Andrea, too, watched breathlessly.

  Madam held out her hand, her diamonds flashing with the movement.

  “I am delighted to meet you, Simon,” she said graciously.

  For a second Simon met her brilliant yet entirely unrevealing eyes unflinchingly. Then, instead of shaking her hand, he put his own beneath it as Andrea had so often seen Leo do and lifted it gallantly to his lips.

  “I am enchanted, Madam, to be here,” he told her gravely.

  Madam gave a little cackle of laughter and turned to call Andrea to his notice.

  “And this,” she told him with a peculiar edge to her voice, “is your cousin Andrea.”

  But he should have been presented to me. Andrea thought indignantly. I’m not a child! And to prove it, she held out her hand, as Madam had done, with the palm turned very slightly downward. He should see that she too expected deference and gallantry as her right.

  The next second she felt her hand grasped in a cordial but perfectly ordinary handshake.

  “How do you do, Cousin Andrea?” Simon asked cheerfully.

  Andrea gasped and snatched her hand away. A little intoxicated, perhaps, with the baroque atmosphere that Madam was so easily able to evoke, she had sought to impress this man—and he was laughing at her efforts! She could see it in the slight twitch of his firm lips, the deepening of the minute tracery of lines around his eyes.

  Fortunately no one appeared to notice her confusion. Simon had immediately returned his attention to Madam, who was impatient for news of his family. Leo had stooped to caress Gil, the old amber spaniel who was rarely far away from Madam.

  “Only two of you left? Yourself and a sister?” Madam said regretfully. “And your sister has married a foreigner.”

  “A New Zealander,” Simon corrected. “As we are.”

  “Indeed, you are nothing of the sort!” Madam’s eyes flashed indignantly. “Your branch of the family has lived abroad for three generations, but nonetheless you belong here. St. Finbar, Galleon House, the sea and the danger—they are part of you as they are part of every Trevaine—”

  As they are part of her, of Leo, of me, Andrea thought, the winged words stirring her so that for the moment she forgot her resentment as she listened to them.

  Madam’s voice dropped to a crooning tone that held an almost hypnotic quality.

  “You will forget every other place you have ever known for this,” she told him, staring straight ahead as one who peers into the future. “It will be the heart of all that you hold dear, and when you leave it, that will be the end of life itself for you.”

  Her voice trailed to silence, a silence that seemed to hold the past, the present and the future in one unbroken strand for all to see. Then, shatteringly, an aircraft passed overhead and the spell was broken. Madam passed her hand over her eyes as if she was brushing sleep away.

  “I think that you have given me a very wonderful welcome, Madam,” Simon said gently. “One that I shall never forget. And I can well believe that here a man might well find a happiness beyond all others.”

  Leo laughed his big, hearty laugh and clapped his new cousin on the shoulder.

  “Madam, you’ve turned our kinsman into a courtier in a matter of moments,” he declared.

  Madam smiled blandly.

  “You will want to show Simon the house, Leo.” It sounded no more than a suggestion, but actually it was command. “But mind,” she held up an admonishing finger, “Not the Cormorant tonight. On Simon’s first night, we dine en famille.”

  Motionless, she watched the two men walk the length of the gallery together. The door closed behind them.

  Without turning Madam said:

  “Well?”

  “Disappointing!” Andrea declared in an aloof, disparaging way. “One can hardly believe that he’s a Trevaine. So gauche! So stupid!”

  “Stupid!” Madam spat the word at her so viciously that involuntarily Andrea retreated a pace. “Because he did not kiss your hand? You little fool, if you think that, then it’s you who are abysmally stupid! The man has a brain like a rapier—as sharp and as deadly. He can use words not only to reveal his thoughts—which is easy—but to hide them, which is quite another matter. A dangerous man indeed!” Her fingers tapped restlessly on the arm of her chair. “I wish he had stayed on the other side of the world!”

  CHAPTER TWO

  With the deliberate forethought that these new-found relatives of his were to discover was characteristic, Simon changed for dinner with all possible speed. He wanted—he needed—a space of time in which to assess the swirling confusion of impressions he had acquired in the last few hours before he met that amazing trio again.

  It had not really startled him that his first reaction on entering Galleon House had been: I’ve been here before. For all that his branch of the family had made a new life in a new continent, a minutely detailed knowledge of St. Finbar and Galleo
n House had been his from boyhood. As a child he had listened entranced while his grandfather told him, with the living elaboration of a man who knows that he will never see these things again, of the paneled rooms, the priceless tapestries, the tall altar candlesticks that were not made of brass but of solid gold, the jewels the Trevaine women wore, the chests of treasure that lay hidden beneath the house itself in the heart of the stony headland that was its foundation.

  Simon had never known whether he quite believed it all, for the story had the magic, unreal quality of a fairy tale. He had even hesitated before writing to Leo lest in seeing the actuality he should break the spell. But he need not have worried. It was just as he had pictured it. To his first reaction he could have added: Nothing has changed. It was as if he had come home.

  And the feeling had excited him, had stimulated every instinct for adventure that was in him as no other experience ever had.

  But it was not the wild Cornish scenery that had stirred him so. Nor even the house itself. It was the people who lived in it.

  They were fantastic. Such people as he had never met before, as he had never imagined existed. Like the house, but to an even greater degree, they had the quality of changelessness that defied the passing of time.

  Leo, with that burly frame of his, the smiling bearded face, the wary eyes—in other clothes he could have taken his place in the era of the First Elizabeth to the manner born—another Raleigh or Drake. Gentleman adventurer, pirate...

  Then there was Madam. Such women as she had held castles inviolate while their lords went to battle. Had steeled their hearts and done their share in training sons to follow where their father had led and their daughters to breed another generation in the same tradition.

  As she had trained the girl, Andrea? As she had intended to, certainly—Leo had told him casually of their engagement and he had seen the huge pigeon’s-blood ruby, the Trevaine betrothal ring, on Andrea’s slim left hand.

  But from the moment he had set eyes on her he had sensed an untamed quality in the proudly set head, the contemptuous green eyes. Sure of herself—and yet, because at heart she was perplexed at the message of her own dawning womanhood, so easily routed.

  She had expected him to kiss her hand as he had done Madam’s. He was reasonably sure that she had wanted him to—but for no other reason than that the gesture would have titillated her young vanity. It would have been an admission on his part that he found her a beautiful and alluring woman.

  Yet he was prepared to swear that there was nothing of the coquette in her. Then why? Because she wanted to be reassured that there was in her that subtle something that commands a man’s gallantry? Oh, nonsense! Surely a girl who had captured the heart of a man like Leo need have no doubts about her desirability. Unless, of course ... he pursed his lips in a soundless whistle. More than one Trevaine had married a girl of his own blood. “The only ones they could trust!” he remembered his grandfather had once said with an unregenerate chuckle. But he had always refused to explain what lay behind the remark.

  Was this a marriage of expediency rather than of romance? If so, that would explain a lot. Andrea, a girl born for high romance if ever there was one, would instinctively realize that something was missing. He might be wrong, but his first impression of Leo was that here was a man who would never bend the knee to any woman—with, of course, the exception of Madam. Arrogant-taking what he wanted from life as if it was his just due, a law unto himself.

  Simon roused himself from his meditations with a shrug of the shoulders. Well, supposing Leo was all of these things. What of it? He, Simon, would be at St. Finbar for a few days, a week at the most. Except that the fairy story he had known since his childhood would now be illustrated with the colorful pictures of memory, how could Galleon House and those who lived in it really affect his life? He and they belonged to different worlds.

  You will forget every other place you have ever known for this. He heard the echo of Madam’s pronouncement and drew a deep, sighing breath. No, it was no good trying to fool himself.

  That proud, disdainful girl in her simple white dress had seized his heartstrings in her slim hands the moment he had entered the gallery. She did not know it—he had taken good care of that. Nor did Leo. But Madam did. And she had warned him.

  But he was too much of a Trevaine to take a warning as anything but a challenge.

  For a moment, as Andrea floated downstairs, Simon could almost have believed that she was a ghost from their common past.

  She was still dressed in white, but now it was the shining white of a heavy brocade that glistened with silver threads. Though the dress itself was strapless, her shoulders were framed in a pleated fichu of the same stiff material. Her red curls were piled high on the top of her small, regal head and diamonds glittered at her throat and ears.

  Slowly she peacocked across the hall to where Leo and Simon were standing. She would have given a great deal to know what effect she was producing, but her eyes were downcast as she approached the two men. Nonetheless, she was convinced that each was waiting for the other to speak first. The faintest smile curved her demure lips.’

  It was Leo who spoke first.

  “You’re quite adorable, my Andrea,” he said softly, and lifted her hand to his lips. “Do you wonder that I’ve lost my heart to this lovely lady, Cousin Simon?”

  Was there a faintly ironic note in his voice? Andrea was not quite sure, but her knees seemed suddenly to buckle, and to hide her loss of self-confidence she sank into a deep, billowing curtsy and deliberately lifted her eyes—to Simon’s face.

  “You are excused, cousin, from answering that question,” she declared regally. “Since to you, fresh from your new world and its wonders, such charms as I may perhaps possess can make so little appeal as to be invisible to you!”

  She heard the faint hiss of Leo’s indrawn breath and her blood tingled with excitement. She was playing a dangerous game, challenging Simon to pay her a compliment in Leo’s presence and at the same time wresting the initiative from Leo. The point had now become not an issue between the two men but between herself and Simon. She waited breathlessly.

  Simon smiled and bowed to her.

  “I’m quite sure that my cousin’s betrothed would command admiration no matter what occasion she graced with her presence,” he said gravely, using the same formal, rather antiquated idiom that she herself had used.

  Rather hurriedly, Andrea stood erect, her cheeks flushed with sudden anger. How dare he taunt her like that? In one short sentence he had made it clear that not only did she not appeal to him, but also that he was perfectly well aware that she wanted to provoke his admiration—and that he considered her guilty of a breach of good manners.

  The brief, tense silence was broken by Leo’s soft laugh.

  “You’re discretion itself, cousin!” he declared dryly, and turned sharply at the sound of a soft, sighing rustle from the direction of the staircase. Madam stood halfway down, one hand gripping the banister rail, the other pressed to her heart. Her hawk eyes showed clearly that she had heard the entire passage of arms, and Simon, for one, did not doubt that she realized its significance completely.

  He moved quickly across the hall and cleared the intervening stairs in two bounds. Then gently he took Madam’s hand and drew her arm through his.

  “May I have the privilege, Madam?” he asked deferentially.

  “It would seem I have no choice,” Madam commented dryly. “Can I rely on your strength, nephew?”

  “Entirely, Madam,” he assured her gravely, and felt the tight, nervous clutch of her fingers relax slightly.

  “In this house,” Madam explained, “we dispense with the use of a gong to announce our meals. Each has its established hour—and we adhere rigidly to them. You will please take me to the table, Simon.”

  Andrea and Leo followed them, Simon presumed, but he was too occupied with the scene before him to have time to spare for anything else.

  Leo had shown him this ro
om by daylight. Now, though dusk had not yet fallen, the crimson velvet curtains had been drawn. And though, as Simon had discovered in his bedroom, the house was supplied with electricity, this room was lit entirely by candles. Hundreds of them, he thought. In metal wall sconces, in a massive crystal chandelier and on the table itself, each one no more than a pinprick of light, yet combining to make a soft, all-pervading radiance.

  It was breathtakingly beautiful. Simon took his place at table feeling—not for the first time since he had entered Galleon House—that he was taking part in a play. It could not be real—yet it was. Exquisite lace, wonderful old silver, delightfully arranged flowers—and something else that for him was the realization of a dream. Two gold candlesticks of perfect workmanship, each with a slender fluted column that divided into three twisted branches.

  Unconscious of three pairs of watching eyes, Simon leaned forward, fascinated, feasting his eyes on their beauty.

  “The Armada candlesticks!” he breathed reverently.

  “So you recognize them!” Leo commented, and it was difficult to know whether he was pleased or the very reverse.

  “Of course,” Simon replied simply, without lifting his eyes. “Grandfather never tired of talking about his old home and its treasures, you see. And I was such a willing audience that I very much doubt if there’s anything about Galleon House that I don’t know.”

  For a moment there was silence. Then Madam nodded slowly.

  “So, though my brother Philip never returned, he could not forget!” she mused. “But why did he never come back?”