Fallen Angel

‘Yes, Mr Tarrant.’

Jason replaced the receiver on its rest thoughtfully, flexing his shoulder muscles as he contemplated the interview ahead. This wasn’t quite his line—interviewing a prospective tutor for the boy, particularly a female one, but there seemed few male tutors willing to abandon the bright lights of London for a remote ranch house in the Sierra Grande. He hoped the woman wasn’t too young, although these days appearances could be deceptive, and Estelita wouldn’t approve of him taking any female under the age of thirty-five into his home.

As he waited he crossed the room again, catching a glimpse of himself in the long Chinese mirrors that flanked the marble fireplace, an anachronism now in the centrally heated hotel. A wry smile crossed his lips at the image of the dark-suited businessman they reflected, his lean frame encased in the mohair jacket, pants and waistcoat which the tailor in Valvedra had assured him was the latest fashion. Certainly his attire gave the illusion of a man accustomed to city ways, but Jason couldn’t wait to don the mud-coloured shirts and Levis which were his usual garb back home. Instead of fine suede, he would wear leather gaucho boots, and his dark hair, so smoothly combed, would be rough beneath the wide brim of his slouch hat. His lips twisted as he wondered what Charles Durham would think if he could see him now. The older man would no doubt have been proud of his success, and he regretted the carelessness which had lengthened the distance between them all these years. Still, it was too late now to feel remorse. Instead, he would do everything in his power to give the boy the home he himself had lacked.

He surveyed the luxurious hotel suite with critical eyes. Was this the most suitable place to conduct an interview of this kind? he wondered. Ought he to have had another woman present? But who? He knew few people in London. The hotel receptionist perhaps. She had certainly shown sufficient interest in him when he arrived, but without false modesty he admitted that the kind of interest she had shown was hardly appropriate to the occasion. No, this was something he was going to have to do alone, and trust his own judgment in assessing the woman’s capabilities.

He paced a trifle restlessly across to the fireplace. The two men he had interviewed for the post had both laboured under the misapprehension that because he was a wealthy man he must needs live in Puerto Novo or Valvedra. When they learned that his estancia was over a hundred miles from the coast, they quickly lost interest in working in such remote surroundings. So why should a woman feel any differently? His eyes narrowed. Unless she was some dried-up old spinster, who saw this post as a golden opportunity to ingratiate herself with the master of the household. He grimaced. He was cynical, he admitted it. But years of hard living and fending for himself had taught him never to trust anyone’s motives at face value. Only Charles Durham had ever helped him, and now he was dead Jason was determined to do what he could for his son—but not at the cost of his own freedom. He had had one taste of so-called connubial bliss, and like the use of methadone in drug addiction, it had cured him of the craving. He liked women, he couldn’t deny it. He was like any normal healthy male in that respect. But marriage no longer figured in his plans—a circumstance that fired Estelita’s hot Latin blood.

A knock at the outer door of the suite brought him upright with a certain tightening of his flat stomach muscles. Stretching the long brown fingers at his sides, he strode purposefully across the room and swung open the door. Then he stood back aghast as a smiling girl of perhaps sixteen years of age stepped forward and, reaching up, bestowed a kiss on each of his taut brown cheeks. A little above medium height and slender, she was only slightly boyish in her fringed suede pants suit, the long curtains of silvery fair hair which fell from a centre parting easily decrying such a supposition. Silky gold-tipped lashes framed wide eyes of a smoky shade of violet, while the smiling mouth was full and generous.

‘Jason!’ she said, and her voice was low and husky. ‘Yes, it has to be. You’re exactly as Daddy described you.’

‘Daddy!’

Jason was feeling distinctly confused now, particularly when the girl passed him to enter the suite uninvited, looking about her with evident fascination.

‘Look—who are you?’ he exclaimed, but even as he asked the question he knew, and a sinking feeling invaded the lower regions of his abdomen. ‘You … can’t be …’

‘Alex Durham, yes.’ The girl turned, unconsciously graceful in all her movements. ‘Weren’t you expecting me?’

Jason’s mouth opened and closed on an ominously thin scowl. ‘Alex Durham?’ he repeated tersely, and her smile gave way to a grimace of uncertainty.

‘Alexandra, actually,’ she admitted. Then, adopting a defiant stance, she added: ‘Everyone calls me Alex.’

‘Do they?’ Realising the door was still standing open, Jason closed it, albeit reluctantly, with a definite click. ‘But you knew I thought you were a boy, didn’t you?’

‘Did you?’ She lifted her shoulders in an offhand gesture. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t think it would make that much difference.’

Jason moved away from the door, annoyed to find that it was he who was disconcerted here. The correspondence he had had with Durham’s solicitors had not been explicit. Obviously, in the circumstances, they had assumed that he would know the age and sex of the child. Child? His lips tightened. Even after so short an acquaintance, Jason could see that Alexandra Durham was not a child. How old was she? Charles had never mentioned a wife in all the time he had known him, and consequently Jason had assumed he had married after returning to England. That would make the boy—girl!—twelve at most, whereas this girl was obviously fifteen or sixteen at least. A shorter guardianship than he had expected perhaps, but what a complication!

‘Do you live here?’ the girl was asking now, and Jason forced himself to concentrate on what she was saying.

‘No, of course not,’ he retorted, rather snappishly. ‘You know my home is in Santa Vittoria.’

‘I meant while you were in England,’ she explained politely, her reasonableness irritating Jason even more. ‘I’ve never stayed in an hotel. The nuns didn’t approve of that sort of thing. Some of the girls used to spend holidays with their parents, you know, at places like St Moritz and Chamonix in the winter, or Nice or St Tropez or Cap d’Antibes in the summer, but I’ve never been to those places. Daddy was always on some dig or other——’

‘Just a minute.’ Jason halted this monologue with a curt intervention. ‘Don’t you think you ought to explain why you chose to leave me in ignorance of the fact that you’re female, and what the hell you expect me to do about it as you are?’

She frowned then, a furrow appearing on the smooth brow. ‘What I expect you to do about it?’ she repeated softly. ‘What do you mean? You’re my guardian, aren’t you? Whatever sex I happen to be.’

Jason expelled his breath on a heavy sigh. ‘I can’t believe you’re that naïve, Miss Durham. You know as well as I do that I expected a boy!’

‘So you keep telling me, but I don’t see what I can do about that,’ she retorted, half laughingly, and her amusement was the last straw as far as Jason was concerned.

‘Then I’ll tell you,’ he snapped angrily. ‘Your father was a good friend to me when I needed one, and I’ve never forgotten it. When I heard that he’d died leaving his—child—in my care, I was prepared to do everything in my power to give the boy a decent start in life——’

‘I know,’ she exclaimed, covering the space between them and laying a hand on the sleeve of his mohair jacket, but he brushed her away, continuing:

‘My correspondence with you was addressed to Master Alex Durham, and you know it. All my arrangements, all my plans, have been for a boy of perhaps twelve, thirteen years of age——’

‘Well, I can’t help that,’ she protested now, the movement of her head spilling the swathe of silky hair across the dark green suede of her jacket. ‘I didn’t ask to be willed to you. I couldn’t choose what sex I was. If I could, believe me I’d have satisfied you in every detail!’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Only that my father never wanted a daughter, any more than you want me now,’ she retorted, and Jason felt a twinge of remorse for the pained anguish in her eyes. ‘I’d have been a boy all right. Then perhaps Daddy might have taken me with him on his trips to Greece and South America, instead of leaving me in the convent until I thought I should die of boredom!’

Jason’s eyes narrowed. ‘Exactly how old are you?’

‘Seventeen!’

‘Seventeen?’ He stared at her disbelievingly. ‘But—but——’

‘Daddy never mentioned me?’ She shrugged, but he could tell she was fighting her emotions. ‘That doesn’t surprise me. He never wanted to get married, you know. He never should have. Then—then when my mother died when I was born—well …’ She shrugged again. ‘He put me in the care of the nuns at Sainte Sœur.’

Jason shook his head. ‘You speak very good English. But the convent was in France, I gather.’

‘Yes. Just outside Paris, actually. My mother was French, you see. But many of the nuns at the convent were English, and my father insisted that as he spoke little French, I should be educated in his language.’

‘I see.’ Jason ran an impatient hand round the back of his neck, trying to restrain the sense of injustice that was threatening to erupt once more. How could Durham have ignored his child’s existence to the extent that never once in the two years he had known him had he mentioned the fact that he had a daughter? It was cold and callous; and totally out of keeping with the man he had thought he had known. But perhaps that was exactly why Durham had helped him, out of a sense of guilt towards this—girl, this child, who could have been little more than an infant when Durham was excavating at Los Lobos. Then: ‘You say—your father mentioned me?’

‘Yes!’ Animation entered the girl’s features again. ‘I don’t know whether he wrote you about his expeditions, but towards the end, when he was confined …’ she faltered, ‘… confined to his bed, he spoke about you a lot.’

Jason drew a deep breath and gestured towards one of the low comfortable couches that faced one another across the width of the hearth. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘I think you’d better sit down. We have to talk, and I guess—I guess it would be easier if we at least tried to understand one another.’

‘Of course.’ The girl’s smile reappeared, and she subsided obediently on to cushions of dark blue brocade. As she did so, the lapels of her jacket parted to reveal the dusky hollow between her breasts, and their rounded fullness pressing against the soft suede was an added indication of her burgeoning maturity. Jason hesitated a moment, and then, with some reluctance, took the couch opposite her, stretching his long legs out in front of him, his fingers curving loosely over the cushions on either side of him.

‘Now,’ he said, when she raised inquisitive eyebrows, ‘tell me a little about what happened to your father—after he returned from Mexico.’

‘Oh …’ Alexandra frowned. ‘Well, that isn’t too easy. I didn’t always know where he was or what he was doing. I think he financed an expedition to Egypt, but I’m not sure.’

‘But the institute,’ said Jason patiently. ‘What about the research institute?’ The girl looked puzzled now, and his own frown returned. ‘Your father intended to use the money he gained from our successful excavation at Los Lobos to create a research institute,’ he explained, but Alexandra clearly had no knowledge of this.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘If—if you think my father died a wealthy man——’

‘I didn’t say that!’ retorted Jason shortly, stung by the implication, and she went on:

‘Every penny he had went to finance his last expedition. It was to Turkey—a remote valley in the Taurus mountains. That was where he was taken ill, you see. A chill, followed by a lung infection. They’d been living in tents at the dig, and by the time they got him down to the hospital in Maras it had developed into pneumonia. He recovered, of course, but he wasn’t strong enough to go on, and he was flown back to London. That was when he sent for me.’

‘And how long ago was that?’ asked Jason, watching the play of emotions across her expressive features.

‘Six months, I guess,’ she answered at once. ‘Perhaps he realised the lung infection had weakened the muscles of his heart, and that he hadn’t long to live. Or maybe he just wanted to get to know his daughter …’ The words trailed away as a trace of emotion brought a slightly higher note to her voice, but she controlled it. ‘I didn’t know he’d written to the solicitor—until after—after he was dead. He knew I wouldn’t have wanted him to. I mean—I’m quite capable of taking care of myself, you know.’

‘Are you?’ Jason’s tone was dry, but inwardly he admired her spirit. It could not have been an easy six months, whatever way you looked at it.

‘Yes.’ She squared her shoulders now and looked at him. ‘Well? Are you going to disown me?’

‘No!’ Jason’s denial was abrupt, and pushing himself up with his hands, he stood over her, tall and dark and slightly menacing, although he was unaware of it. ‘I just need some time to—to revise my plans.’