Free Dorothy Eden by Sinister Weddings Page A

found the letter pushed beneath her door. It was printed in the familiar heavy printing. It read, Paul Blaine is no good for you. Don’t be a fool.
    Julia scarcely had time to thrust the slip of paper into her dressing-gown pocket before Nita burst in.
    “Julia, have you got Timmy? Oh, there he is! I got the most terrible fright when I saw his empty cradle.”
    She swooped over to the bed and gathered the baby, who had just awoken, into her arms. Then she turned and faced Julia. She was smiling with relief, but her eyes were definitely hostile. With her thin brown face and black dishevelled hair she had a gipsy look about her, something flashing and wild that was barely held under control. She was not going to be an easy sister-in-law, yet Julia sensed that there would be loyal friendship in her if one could arouse it.
    “I brought him in here in the night,” she explained. “He was crying so badly. Where were you that you didn’t hear him?”
    Nita’s lashes dropped over her eyes. Then she said primly, “Kate put me in that room right at the end of the passage, I was afraid it was too far from Timmy, but usually he never wakes. And I sleep like the dead myself.” She looked down at the smiling baby. “Were you crying then, my pet?”
    “He’s sweet,” Julia said warmly.
    Nita flashed her a look of unguarded friendliness. Then almost at once the tenseness came back to her face, the hungry-cat look that represented something more than physical hunger.
    “He is rather nice. He’s all I have.” Then she said. “Do you like it here?”
    Julia felt the crumpled piece of paper crackling in her pocket. She said gaily, “I love it. Come out on the balcony and look at the view. I stand out here in the mornings just to breathe in this wonderful air. But, of course, you will have been here before and seen it.”
    “I’ve never been here before,” Nita said. She added as an afterthought, “Harry and I lived in Australia. I’m an Australian. I’m not used to these sort of mountains.”
    She followed Julia out on to the balcony, and stood clutching Timmy as the fresh morning wind, like cold water, swept over them. The sun was shining and every crevice and scree slope was as clear as if the mountains were not more than half a mile distant.
    “They seem to brood,” Nita muttered. She looked at Julia leaning on the rail of the balcony. “That doesn’t look very safe. I should think half the wood in this house is rotten. Who’s that down there?”
    Julia looked down and saw Dove Robinson taking a short cut across the lawn on her way home. She must have been over to bathe Paul’s ankle. Her hair shone like a burning bush in the sun. She had a slow voluptuous walk, the movements of her body visible beneath the flimsy material of her cotton dress.
    “That’s Mrs. Robinson, the wife of one of the shepherds. She’s a nurse and has been looking after Paul’s ankle.”
    “Has she?” Nita murmured. “She looks decorative.”
    Dove, thought Julia, could have slipped upstairs with that letter and pushed it under her door before anyone was about. She had come over particularly early. She even doubted if Paul were up yet.
    “Kate tells me you have some fabulous clothes,” Nita was saying. “I should think they would be wasted up here. But I don’t suppose you knew what you were coming to. What on earth are you going to do with the house?”
    “Oh, I have thousands of ideas,” Julia said airily.
    Nita went inside and looked round the room.
    “There are some marvellous bits among this old furniture. They could be polished and renovated. That chest of drawers, for instance. It looks like mahogany. These high ceilings give you scope, too. A satin-striped wallpaper would be nice in here and an off-white carpet. I adore white carpets in bedrooms, even if they aren’t practical.”
    Her hungry eyes went on assessing the room, and Julia realised with a sudden shock of surprise that she was talking as if she were