Free Master of Melincourt by Susan Barrie

I’ve always told him so !”
    “I know you have.” But Jervis Errol looked momentarily embarrassed because he was not accustomed to discussing the amount of remuneration he made to his staff before his guests and one very new member of that staff itself. He tried to treat the matter lightly. “Don’t you know that nowadays a cook can demand far more than a politician if she’s a really good cook? And that goes for young women capable of handling the Tinas of the world.”
    He tweaked his niece’s ear again.
    “Why are you all dressed up like that? Didn’t I buy you that dress in Paris, or somewhere like that?”
    But Tina was behaving as if she had suddenly lost her tongue, and she couldn’t even remember why it was that she had dressed herself up as she had. While her Uncle Jeremy bent over and whispered in her ear and the other two guests attempted to make a fuss of her, she kept her face averted, and Edwina suspected she was even ready to cry by the time the slight turmoil had died down, and the library door had been opened to receive the new arrivals, and a tray of refreshments was carried in by the butler.
    “Would you like to go upstairs?” she whispered to Tina, and the latter nodded, gripped her hand and made for the staircase.
    “Yes, let’s,” she said, and Edwina understood that she wasn’t prepared to say any more. Also—and for the first time—she wanted someone apart from her uncle and Mi s s Fleming to cling to, and it was largely because of the treatment meted out to her by Miss Fleming.
    She had thought more of her stockings, and her faultless silk suit, than she did of receiving an eager childish embrace.

 
    CHAPTER VI
    NEVERTHELESS, when a summons arrived for both Edwina and her charge to present themselves in the drawing-room after tea that same day, Tina could so far forget the snub of the morning as to insist on being dressed up once more in something fresh from her wardrobe, and to dance about happily while Edwina was striving to comb her hair because she felt sure that, this time, Miss Fleming would welcome her with open arms.
    She had been feeling tired on arrival... possibly a bit scratchy. But after lunch and a rest in her room she was almost certainly feeling quite refreshed and therefore thoroughly amiable once more.
    But disillusionment set in as soon as they entered the drawing-room, where Marsha was flirting outrageously with Jeremy Errol because Jervis had singled out Marsha’s friend, Miss Candy Shaw — another brilliantly attractive blonde—to be the recipient of his particular attention. He had already shown her all over the house and grounds while Marsha was resting, and now that tea had been wheeled in on an enormous trolley loaded with rich gateaux and flowery china he pressed Candy to preside behind the teapot and act the part, as he phrased it, of ‘mother.’
    Marsha’s eyes were smouldering with resentment as she watched the graceful Candy manipulating the silver cream-jug and the sugar-tongs with poise and the right amount of detachment, and it was unfortunate for Tina that she chose the particular moment when the woman she admired above all other women had just coldly declined to have her cup refilled because Miss Shaw would be the one to refill it to rush up to her—once more impulsively—and perch herself on the arm of her chair without first asking permission, to the imminent danger of a piece of cream cake that promptly left the plate and the arm of the chair on which it reposed, and alighted in Miss Fleming’s lap.
    Miss Fleming’s complaints were immediate, and very much to the point. With scarlet ears, Tina listened to herself being described as ‘an awkward, and extremely clumsy child,’ and although her uncle just as promptly came to her rescue it didn’t seem to ease the situation one bit. Miss Fleming’s hard but very beautiful blue eyes blazed with unassumed wrath, and she accused both the uncle and the niece of living too much in one