A Civilised Arrangement Read online




  A CIVILISED ARRANGEMENT

  Catherine George

  There was one fly in the ointment

  Carey loved her job as nanny. Tiny, motherless Alice Savage was a darling. And at present, the solitude of an isolated castle in Wales suited Carey perfectly.

  But then there was Patrick Savage, the writer and father of little Alice. An arrogant, dictatorial man, he lacked the smallest particle of paternal feeling. Would he ever look at his baby?

  Carey was determined to bring father and daughter together--even if it meant losing her own heart in the process.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Carey woke, as she always did, at the first faint wail of protest. In a flash she was out of bed and on her way into the adjoining room, her smile indulgent as she lifted the baby out of the cot to cuddle the small, warm body close for a moment or two, murmuring, soothing, before beginning the familiar ritual of making her dry and comfortable. The diminutive Alice made soft bubbling noises, thrusting minuscule fingers in her mouth as Carey changed her and cocooned her securely in her blanket then sat down with her little bundle on a low chair near the cot.

  'Now,' she said softly, 'this is just a drink of water, honeybun. No more two o'clock feeds, remember. Supper at ten, then nothing until breakfast. OK?' She smiled as the baby began sucking voraciously on the teat of the bottle. The little face crumpled for an instant as Alice tasted water instead of milk; Carey held her breath, but the sucking resumed, and eventually the eyelids drooped silky fans of lashes on petal-soft cheeks, the little body relaxed, boneless, and at last the rosebud mouth relinquished the teat and Alice was asleep again.

  With practised deftness Carey lowered the baby into the cot and covered her up, then stood for a while, watching over her until she was sure Alice was asleep before she crept from the room, feeling ominously wide awake now, as she so often did at this hour. She put on her dressing-gown, took another look at the sleeping baby, then went silently from the room, knowing of old that a hot drink was the only hope of getting some rest before Alice's interior alarm clock went off again at six.

  The silent house felt very empty as Carey stole down the stairs. There was scarcely need for a light. Moonlight poured through the stained-glass window in the hall, creating jewelled lozenges of light on the mosaic floor. Unfortunately it also transformed the suit of armour in the corner into a disturbing figure of menace, and Carey scurried down the last three steps to turn on another light, in sudden need of man-made illumination, solely, as she knew perfectly well, because it was Dilys's night off and her own first time alone at night in Llynglas. As she fled in silent retreat down the long passage towards the kitchen, she badly missed having the housekeeper on the premises. Which was totally illogical, she told herself firmly, since Dilys slept in a self-contained apartment over the kitchen, in a different wing of the house altogether. Nevertheless tonight, with only the baby for company, Carey felt a lot more vulnerable than usual.

  Laughing at herself, she flung open the kitchen door then stopped dead in her tracks. All her amorphous fears knotted together in a ball of terror which stuck in her throat, rendering her dumb at the sight of the room ablaze with lights and a man sitting on the large table in the middle of the room, a mug of steaming coffee in one hand and an enormously thick sandwich in the other. He stared at her in blank astonishment, equally dumbstruck. Time seemed suspended. Then Carey's common sense resumed its normal service, pointing out that no self-respecting burglar would take time off for a coffee-break in the middle of breaking and entering. After which it also pointed out that the man was very good-looking in a haggard sort of way, and that bare feet, a thin cotton dressing-gown and hair hanging down her back were not exactly the best of wear for repelling intruders.

  'Who the hell,' said the man, in a drawling, husky voice, 'are you?'

  Carey squared her shoulders, standing her ground. 'Shouldn't I be asking you that?'

  He eyed her up and down in a leisurely sort of way, then put down his coffee and sandwich and slid off the table to walk towards her. Carey dodged back instinctively, but he shook his head in mock reproof.

  'I don't bite, girl. And I don't really need permission to make myself a snack in my own kitchen, either. You must be new here. Do you come in from the village to help Dilys?'

  Carey's heart plummeted to somewhere near her knees. 'I'm so sorry,' she managed, her voice hoarse with dismay. 'You must be Mr Savage.'

  He nodded thoughtfully. 'The very same. Patrick Savage, newly arrived from California, stupid with jet lag and rather hungry. Otherwise quite harmless, I assure you.'

  'How do you do?' replied Carey with what dignity she could muster. 'I'm the nanny your mother engaged to look after your daughter, Mr Savage.'

  The change in Patrick Savage was startling. His face, tanned to the colour of old leather by the Californian sun, set in harsh, ageing lines, and his eyes, deep-set and of a surprising soot-black against his sun-bleached hair, filled with pain for an instant then drained of expression as he turned to pick up his mug of coffee.

  'Ah, yes,' he said, his back to Carey. 'My daughter. I came straight here—I haven't contacted my mother yet. I thought the child was still in hospital.'

  Carey eyed the broad back without favour. She had learned the bare facts of the tragedy of Alice's birth from the baby's grandmother, but up to now had firmly believed Mrs Savage to be exaggerating her son's lack of interest in his child. Evidently not.

  'Although born prematurely Alice has made rapid progress, Mr Savage,' Carey informed him crisply. 'She was able to leave hospital much sooner than anticipated.'

  He turned to face her. 'Odd that my mother saw fit to keep me in the dark about it.'

  'I gather,' said Carey, choosing her words with care, 'that she thought it best for me to travel here to Llynglas and settle Alice in before you came home.'

  'Best for whom, I wonder?' he said bitterly. 'My mother, young woman, is an incurable romantic— quite convinced that one look at the child will transform me into a besotted, doting father.' He gave a short, unamused laugh. 'Sorry. Not fair to embroil you in family arguments.' He gazed at her in silence for some moments. 'What on earth possessed a girl like you to bury yourself in a place like Llynglas? You can't have been short of more tempting prospects. I thought trained nannies were scarce as hens' teeth.'

  'I don't consider it "burying", Mr Savage,' she said coolly. 'I've worked in London for several years. I welcomed a post in the country for a change.' To her embarrassment a yawn got the better of her, and Patrick Savage frowned.

  'Go back to bed,' he said shortly. 'You must be a hell of a sight more exhausted than I am. What sort of time does the child get you up in the morning?'

  'Alice,' said Carey pointedly, 'generally wakes at six.'

  Patrick Savage shuddered. 'Barbaric—and why Alice, for heaven's sake?'

  Carey didn't even try to hide her disapproval. 'Your mother chose it, Mr Savage. Elinor Alice, after herself.'

  Elinor Alice's father was so patently uninterested in this piece of information that Carey bade him a very formal goodnight, overcome with sudden longing for her bed.

  'Just a minute,' he said as she opened the door. 'While we're on the subject of names, how am I supposed to address you? Nanny?'

  'If you wish.'

  'How about your last employers?'

  Carey turned to look at him. 'I was with an American family. They preferred first names.'

  He returned the look for rather longer than Carey would have liked, rubbing a hand over his dark-stubbled jaw. 'I see. Goodnight, then. Leave the child with Dilys some time tomorrow afternoon, would you? I've got a few ground-rules I'd like to lay down, so come up to my study about four.'

  Patrick Savage dismissed her with a cool nod and turned away, leaving Carey to take herself out of the kitchen and trudge upstairs to salvage what remained of the night.

  Sending up a silent prayer of thanks when she found Alice still sleeping peacefully, Carey slid into bed, then lay staring at the moonlight through the window, feeling restless and thoroughly irritable after the surprise encounter with her new employer. The hot drink had never materialised, either, she thought crossly. All in all, her first meeting with Patrick Savage had been a total disaster. She knew something about him, of course, mainly because he was a writer whose novels and plays were consistently successful. And at the interview Mrs Savage had made it clear that her son's motive for burying himself in the wilds of Wales was a commission to write the teleplay for his latest blockbusting novel.

  Carey turned over restlessly, punching her pillow. Odd, really, she thought. He wasn't a bit what she'd expected—years younger, for a start. No photograph ever appeared on the dust-jackets of his novels which, of course, Carey thought wryly, was why she'd conjured up a man somewhere between Heathcliff and Mr Rochester, all tormented features and wild black hair and eyes. Patrick Savage's eyes filled the bill admirably, but otherwise her first startled impression in the kitchen had been of a California beach-boy, all sun-bleached hair and deep-dyed tan and those long, long legs which -had swung to and fro as he'd sat on the kitchen table staring at her. Admittedly the torment in his eyes had been plain enough when she'd mentioned Alice. Only of course it hadn't been for the baby, Carey thought with compassion. Poor little Alice was only a reminder that her birth had cost Patrick Savage his wife, Stephanie.

  Elinor Alice Savage proved just how model a baby she could be by sleeping until almost seven next morning, for which Carey was deeply grateful. Num
b with sleep, she was all fingers and thumbs for once, and took much longer than usual to bathe and dress the baby, after which it was a blessed relief to sit down to give Alice her first bottle of the day. By the time Carey had taken the baby downstairs and installed her in the large, old-fashioned perambulator in the courtyard, Miss Dilys Howells was just descending from a muddy pick-up at the other end of the causeway on the shore of Llynglas, which this perfect June morning was doing its best to live up to its translation of 'blue lake'.

  The buxom, dark-haired little woman came hurrying along the causeway and under the portcullis of the gate-tower, her round face beaming as she greeted Carey then bent to inspect the small face beneath the white net protecting Alice from the local insect population.

  'There's my beautiful,' said Dilys dotingly, then turned to Carey. 'Which is more than I can say for you, my girl. Terrible shadows under your eyes! Bad night with the baby?'

  Carey explained as they went inside. Dilys was incensed when she heard that 'Mr Patrick' had arrived unexpectedly during the night.

  'Must have frightened you to death, cariad— whatever was he thinking of, not letting me know he was coming?'

  'He didn't even tell Mrs Savage,' said Carey, as she sliced bread for toast. 'Nor did he know anything about me.' She described her own shock at finding Patrick Savage enjoying a snack on the table she was now laying for breakfast.

  Dilys was deeply put out by her employer's unexpected arrival at Llynglas. 'No help for it—I'll have to take something out of the freezer for his dinner,' she said with annoyance. 'I was going to make shepherd's pie for you and me, Carey, from the remains of that leg of lamb, but I can't give Mr Patrick that.'

  Carey grinned teasingly as she spread marmalade on her toast. 'I don't see why not.'

  Dilys's rosy face flushed a deeper hue. 'He can have some for his lunch, certainly, but I can't give Mr Patrick shepherd's pie for his dinner, girl!'

  Carey laughed, assuring the bustling little woman that whatever she cooked was delicious, but that any preparations for dinner would have to be disrupted during the afternoon, anyway, to include a session of baby-sitting at four, when Mr Savage required an interview with the nanny. 'Wants to check my credentials, I expect—I don't suppose I impressed him in my dressing-gown with my hair all over the place.'

  After breakfast Carey wheeled Alice into the rose garden below her bedroom window, with the aim of keeping an eye on her while she tidied the rooms allotted to her use. By the time her few chores were done Carey noticed that Alice was showing signs of waking up, and she ran downstairs to give her a drink in the kitchen with Dilys, then set off with the baby for her usual walk.

  Carey pushed the big perambulator under the portcullis of the gate-tower then along the causeway which led from the Savage household across the blue waters of the lake to the shore. Pine-trees and deciduous woodland edged the perimeter of the lake, but where the causeway met the shore the woodland parted to give way to gardens laid out in park-like splendour, with smooth green lawns and brilliant, flower-filled beds with never a weed in sight. Carey pushed the pram past lilied pools and cascading waterfalls, then along the famous walk where classical statues languished between tall sentinel yews en route to a fountain where apocryphal fish spouted jets of glittering water high into the air.

  Carey never ceased to marvel at the extravagant bravura of the man who had dreamed up the gardens of Llynglas, which for the moment she had to herself, except for the men working in them. She waved as she passed, receiving shy smiles in return, the friendliest from Gwilym Davies, the head gardener who lived in the lodge and acted as watchman and caretaker and even money collector when the gardens opened to the public in spring and summer.

  'Mr Patrick's back, then, Miss Carey,' he observed, as he bent to smile at the baby. 'What did he think of this young lady?'

  'He hasn't seen her yet. He's still sleeping off his jet lag.'

  Carey exchanged a few pleasantries, then continued with her walk, wondering just how much was known locally about the background to Alice's birth. All she knew herself was that Patrick Savage's wife, Stephanie, better known on stage and television screen by her professional name of Drake, had not survived Alice's premature birth, and Patrick, bereft and grief-stricken, had fled to America to a California beach house loaned by a friend in the film industry. And there he had stayed, leaving all arrangements for his daughter to his mother, remaining incommunicado right up to his startling appearance in the kitchen of Llynglas the night before.

  Mrs Savage had been very frank with Carey at the interview in her handsome Knightsbridge flat. At seventy-five, troubled with arthritis, she was, she had said firmly, not the right person to take charge of the baby herself. And even if she had been, she had added, sighing, she still felt it was by far the best thing for Patrick to have care of the child himself, with the right help.

  Carey, Norland College training and several years' experience apart, had proved to be just what Mrs Savage had been looking for, not merely because the other woman had taken to her on sight, but because of her willingness to live in a remote part of Wales far from the most modest of city lights.

  'The other applicants,' Mrs Savage had informed Carey wryly, 'more or less turned tail and ran when I came to that bit. I hope very much that you won't, Miss Armitage, because I fancy you're just the person I'm looking for to take care of my granddaughter.'

  One way and another the job had been very much to Carey's taste: an excellent salary, only one small baby to take care of, no mother to interfere and— most important of all—a complete change of scene.

  And no scene could be more different than this one, thought Carey in amusement as she turned the pram in the direction of the actual dwelling of Llynglas. Mrs Savage had refrained from any precise description of her son's country retreat, her dry sense of humour leaving Llynglas to make its own impact on Carey on her arrival. Its extraordinary beauty was still breathtaking after seeing it every day for the past fortnight, but that first evening, as the hired car had conveyed Carey and her tiny charge through the gardens of Llynglas and along the carriageway to the water's edge, she had gazed in utter wonder at the miniature ruined castle floating in the middle of the lake. Carey had looked about her in vain for the country house she'd been expecting, her eyes almost starting from her head as the chauffeur had driven straight on to the causeway linking the castle to the shore, taking his passengers under the portcullis of the gate-tower dominating the ruined walls, before drawing up in the courtyard of a miniature castle complete with crenellated roof and adjoining tower.

  'Somewhere between Walt Disney and Ruritania,' Carey had written later to her brother and his wife. 'I thought I was dreaming when I actually laid eyes on Llynglas—as though I'd actually brought Alice to live in Wonderland! It's actually a custom-built ruin—a folly built by a Victorian forebear of my present employer. Mr Theophilus Savage made his fortune in iron and built Llynglas as a monument to his success. It's quite unbelievable. I wouldn't be at all surprised if a hand came up out of the lake any moment, brandishing Excalibur, or even if Owain Glyndwr materialised out of the mist to defend his beloved Wales from the English intruders. If he does, of course, I'll tell him my mother was a Carey from Pembrokeshire, and I'll be as safe as home-grown Dilys, housekeeper par excellence and spinster of this parish.'

  Which last bit, thought Carey bleakly as she pushed the pram across the causeway, could just as well apply to me. Not this particular parish, of course, but a single lady she was likely to remain, just the same, for the term of her natural life.

  'Mr Savage still asleep?' inquired Carey casually as she ate her lunch in the kitchen with Dilys.

  'I took him up a tray, but he wouldn't touch a thing. Proper grumpy, he was,' said Dilys disapprovingly. 'Told me to wake him at three-thirty and send you up at four.'

  . 'So he hasn't forgotten I'm here, then.'

  'No, indeed. Mr Patrick never forgets a thing. More's the pity,' added Dilys, sighing. 'There's some things better forgotten, believe me.'

  Carey changed the subject hastily. The last thing she wanted was any involvement with the Savage family's private concerns. She was here solely to look after Alice. Nothing else. She felt sorry for Patrick Savage, of course. Anyone with a shred of humanity would feel the same. An image leapt in her mind, unbidden, of her first sight of Patrick Savage, seated here on this very kitchen table with the overhead light gleaming on his bright blond hair. He was, she admitted reluctantly, a very attractive man, but as far as she was concerned this was merely a point in his disfavour. To her the term 'attractive man' was synonymous with grief and heartbreak; something—or someone—to avoid like the plague. She came to with a start as she realised Dilys was offering her some damson tart for pudding.