Whisper Of Darkness

‘Recognise it?’ Jake said, reaching round into the back of the vehicle and pulling out a pair of thick leather gloves. ‘Here; put these on. You may have to use your hands, and I’d hate that soft white skin to get blistered.’

Joanna pursed her lips and looked at him, but he merely dropped the gloves into her lap and thrust open his door. The draught of cold air his exit permitted to enter the car made her realise how much colder it was here up on the fell, and with a grimace she put on the gloves and joined him outside.

‘Ready?’ he asked, looking down at her quizzically, and she nodded her head.

‘As I’ll ever be,’ she responded, holding out her hands for his inspection. ‘Aren’t you afraid I’ll have a major accident with these? They’re far too big for me!’

‘They’re not for climbing,’ he retorted, turning up the collar of his jacket. ‘Going up it’s quite easy, but coming down on loose shale can overbalance you. It’s easier if you squat on your hands.’

Joanna hunched her shoulders. ‘If you say so,’ she submitted, and with a faint arching of his brows he strode away.

They climbed a rocky incline and started up a steeper slope of scree, where tiny springs provided natural irrigation for the gorse and heather that grew on the lower slopes. A few stray sheep voiced their objections as they trotted out of their path, and a hawk hanging in the air some way above them seemed to be speculating on their possible destination.

Joanna was panting before they had climbed a hundred feet. Shopping expeditions in Oxford Street and disco dancing until the early hours were poor substitutes for real exercise, and she was glad Jake was ahead of her and therefore could not hear her laboured breathing.

About halfway up the slope, another outcrop hid the roof of a wooden hut, and Jake glanced round to see if she was with him before vaulting over the projecting face. The mist was still lingering above them, veiling the upper slopes like a shroud, and it was not difficult to imagine how easy it would be to miss their way in its blanketing folds. Struggling up behind Jake, Joanna was selfconsciously aware of her red face and trembling knees, and she guessed he was not deceived by her attempt at composure.

‘This is it,’ he said, and she glanced round automatically, alarmed to see how small the Range Rover looked from their superior height.

‘Is—is she there?’ she asked, striving to regain her breath, and he shrugged his broad shoulders before swinging down the narrow gully.

Joanna heard the dog barking as Jake approached, and presently a small figure appeared from behind the hut. Her own relief was tempered by the realisation that she was about to be properly introduced to her charge, but Jake had evidently no such misgivings. He swung the child up into his arms as the dog appeared to leap excitedly about them, and then after a brief conversation which Joanna could not hear, he turned with the child still in his arms, to climb the track back to where she was waiting.

Joanna felt an unbearable sense of disquiet as they approached. She half wished she had not succumbed to the anxiety in her employer’s face and had waited back at the house, but it was too late now to have such thoughts. Instead she endeavoured to adopt an expression that was neither severe nor ingratiating, and squashed the unworthy suspicion that in Jakes’s shoes she would have shown a little more anger and a little less understanding.

He set the child on her feet beside Joanna, and she looked down at her somewhat unwillingly. She could not forget their previous exchanges, in the copse and in the hall at Ravengarth, and she was quite prepared to meet aggression with aggression. But Anya’s expression was almost angelically mild, and encountering wide blue eyes, innocent of all malice, Joanna wondered if she could have mistaken the child’s character entirely. But how was that possible? She had been greeted with a shotgun, and no matter how obedient Anya appeared now somewhere behind that disarming gaze lurked another, less agreeable, personality.

‘Anya wants to apologise, don’t you?’ prompted Jake now, pushing his hands into his jacket pockets, and the girl, if she really was of the feminine gender, nodded.

She was smaller than Joanna remembered, or perhaps in retrospect she had just appeared taller, and her night in the shepherd’s hut had not improved her grubby appearance. The cap she had been wearing the previous afternoon was still pulled down about her ears, making the ends of her dark hair stick out almost comically at the sides. She wore an old anorak, with leather patches at the elbows, jeans, and an old woollen sweater, with cuffs that hung down over her wrists. Wellington boots completed her outfit and Joanna found it amazing that a girl of her age should care so little about how she looked.

‘I’m sorry, Miss Seton.’ Anya was speaking now, and Joanna was amazed at the attractiveness of her voice after the coarse language she had used the day before. ‘It was silly, running off like that. It didn’t solve anything.’

Joanna digested these words rather doubtfully. There was something wrong here. She didn’t know why she felt so sure, but she did. Last night Anya had been slapped and put to bed after behaving quite appallingly. She had sobbed and screamed, and shown every indication of anger and resentment, even to the extent of actually running away. Now she was apologising, saying she was sorry, that she had been silly, that it hadn’t solved anything. Solve was a curious word to use. Finding any kind of solution in the circumstances had an ominous ring to it, and Joanna looked rather blankly at her employer, wondering if he had detected anything unusual about his daughter’s behaviour. But he apparently had not. He was obviously waiting for her to make the next move, and with a grimace she said:

‘You didn’t expect me to leave, did you, Anya? I’m not that easily deterred. Your father and I only want what’s best for you, and I’m sure you’re not going to disappoint us.’

Joanna didn’t quite know why she used that particular approach, or indeed why she should attempt to antagonise the child with her first words. She was aware that Jake was looking at her in some irritation, and evidently he would have preferred a more conciliatory tone, but Joanna had already sensed that with Anya, one had to stay one jump ahead. Even so, she felt a certain ripple of apprehension slide along her spine as she glimpsed the sudden anger that filled the child’s eyes, and guessed that her deliberate linking of herself and Anya’s father had aroused that instinctive response. So she was right, she thought, without any of the exhilaration she should have been feeling. Anya was only bluffing, but what kind of an advantage did that give her?

‘I think Anya is beginning to realise that these stupid, childish pranks are just a waste of time,’ Jake pronounced heavily, his breath vaporising in the chilly air. ‘She’s growing up. She has to learn to take responsibility for her actions. And now I suggest we go back to the car. Anya needs some hot food and a change of clothes, and then perhaps we can start behaving like civilised people.’

Joanna was glad of the leather gloves going down the hillside again. She was not used to the steepness of the slope, and she soon learned the advantages of squatting down on her heels and controlling her slide with her hands. Anya, of course, had no such fears. She and the dog, Binzer, bounded down the loose shale with complete confidence, and even Jake kept his balance without apparent effort. It was a little annoying for Joanna to have to complete her descent under Anya’s intent appraisal, but she managed to get to her feet near the bottom and meet the girl’s gaze with bland enquiry, hoping the trembling uncertainty of her knees could not be detected.

There was no argument about who should sit where in the Range Rover. Jake ordered Anya and the dog into the back, and Joanna got into the seat beside him with some relief. It had been quite an exhausting trip, one way and another, and she slumped rather wearily against the upholstery as he started the engine. The journey back to Ravengarth was completed almost in silence, but Joanna was aware all the way of the physical presence of Anya’s knees digging into her back, and the not-so-physical awareness of her resentful gaze boring into the back of her head.

As they neared the house, however, Joanna remembered she was still wearing the gloves he had given her, and tugging them off her now sweating palms she dropped them on to the shelf in front of her.

‘Thank you,’ she murmured, glancing sideways at her employer, and a vaguely amused quirk tilted his eyebrow.

‘I saw you made use of them,’ he said, with a wry grimace. ‘You’re no fell-runner, I think.’

‘I’m not the outdoor type,’ retorted Joanna shortly, forgetting for a moment that they had an audience, and the amusement deepened in his eyes.

‘That’s the truth,’ he confirmed, turning off the lane on to the track for Ravengarth, and she was dismayed to find she wanted to laugh. It had been such a curious morning, and it wasn’t half over yet, and she could picture her friends’ reaction if she confessed to them that she had been climbing grubby hillsides before nine o’clock and sliding down them again on the seat of her pants.

‘You’re supposed to run down the shale,’ said a clear scornful voice behind them, that completely dissipated the humour of the situation. ‘That’s how you keep your balance. Only dogs and babies slide on their bottoms!’

‘Thank you, Anya, that will do.’

Jake’s curt remonstrance was immediate, and Joanna wondered why the girl had so quickly forgotten the role she had intended to play. If she imagined she could delude her father into thinking she was a reformed character one minute, and then revert to her objectionable self the next, she was very much mistaken.

However, Anya was already restoring her image. ‘I’m sorry, Daddy,’ she was saying, adopting a wounded tone. ‘I didn’t mean to be rude. But it’s true, isn’t it? You are supposed to run down the shale. It’s not half as dangerous as it sounds.’

‘Experts run down the shale, Anya, inexperienced climbers don’t,’ Jake retorted, pulling up at the gate that gave on to the copse and pushing open his door. ‘No one could call Miss Seton an experienced climber, and I expect you to show a little more respect.’

He went to open the gate, and Joanna waited resignedly for the retaliation she was sure would come. She wasn’t disappointed. Anya only waited until the door had closed behind her father before saying in a low, venomous voice:

‘Don’t think I’m going to let you stay here, just because you think you’ve won the first round! I can get rid of you any time I like, and I will!’

Joanna listened, but as she did so her own anger flared, and she turned on the child without consideration for her age or her inexperience. ‘Now you listen to me, you little hellcat,’ she spat furiously, ‘no one, but no one, speaks to me like that! Just who do you think you are? Dressed like a scarecrow, with brains to match! Do you think I want to teach you? Do you think I want to stay here in this hole, living in a house that pigs would find offensive? You’re a joke, do you know that? A living, breathing joke, and if it was up to me, you wouldn’t be able to slide down shale on your bottom! You wouldn’t even be able to sit on it!’

Anya shrank back in her seat as she spoke, and if Joanna had been less incensed, she would have seen much sooner how her outburst was draining all the colour out of the child’s cheeks. As it was, she had barely registered the fact before another angry voice broke into her tirade.

‘What in God’s name do you think you’re doing?’ Jake had jerked open his door and was climbing savagely back into the Rover. He glared incredulously at Joanna before turning to look at his daughter, and then shook his head disbelievingly as she took advantage of the situation and burst instantly into tears. ‘Heavens above, I get out of the car for two minutes to open the gate, and you take leave of your senses! If this is your idea of gaining a child’s confidence, I suggest you pack your bags right away. This isn’t Dothegirls Hall, Miss Seton, and I do not condone adults acting like children, whatever the provocation!’

Joanna pressed her lips mutinously together, hunching her shoulders against the acidity of his stare. What was the point of staying here, as he said? Anya didn’t want to learn; she didn’t even want to behave civilly. They were all just wasting their time trying to change her. What she needed was a keeper, not a governess, and Joanna simply hadn’t the patience to humour her.

‘She said our house was a pigsty,’ Anya sniffed indignantly, and Joanna was forced to defend herself when Jake demanded if this was so.

‘It’s true,’ she declared, holding up her head. ‘Your—your housekeeper doesn’t know how to keep house, and the food she serves is appalling. I don’t know what you pay her, but whatever it is, it’s too much!’

Jake was gazing at her as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing, and Joanna acknowledged to herself that the situation was unique. He had obviously never had to rebuke the governess before, but if he expected her to apologise and beg to be kept on, he was very much mistaken. It might be pigheaded, it might be a case of cutting off her nose to spite her face; but she was not some mealy-mouthed spinster, willing to suffer any kind of humiliation in order to keep her position. No eleven-year-old was going to make a fool of her, and if it meant her having to take a job in a shop or a factory, then so be it. Anything was better than struggling to save her self-respect with this little savage. In consequence, she was able to meet Jake’s steel-hard eyes with almost insolent indifference, and sensed that he had never been so near to striking a woman before.

Without another word he swung round in his seat, slammed his door, and drove through the gateway. Then, standing on his brakes so that she was almost projected through the windscreen, he got out to close the gate again, leaving his door open this time so that he could hear any exchange there might be. But Anya was either too clever, or too distressed, to be caught that way. She continued to sniff rather plaintively in the back of the vehicle, not responding to Binzer’s mournful whining, or blowing her nose as Joanna could have wished.

When Jake climbed in again, Joanna avoided his gaze, staring rather disconsolately out of the window. She remembered the anticipation she had felt on the outward journey, and her mouth turned down rather cynically at the corners. There should be a union for governesses, she decided, pursing her lips half indignantly. Unfair dismissal, that was what she was being given, and just because she had no desire to stay, was no reason to force her to leave. All right, so she had spoken her mind—wasn’t that better than pretending a liking for the girl she didn’t feel? At least she and Anya understood one another now, even if the next female to be employed was bound to suffer the consequences of her outburst.

She sighed, casting a surreptitious look in her employer’s direction. His profile, set against the shadows of the copse, was hard and unyielding, yet she suddenly knew an illogical feeling of sympathy for him. It couldn’t be easy, trying to bring up a rebellious child like Anya single-handed, particularly in his personal circumstances. Losing his wife like that, losing his career; she and her mother had thought the world had come to an end when her father had died and left them without any money. Money! Money couldn’t solve Jake Sheldon’s problems. They were much more complex than that, and her conscience pricked her at the suspicion that she had perhaps added to them.

Jake parked the Range Rover in the yard and climbed out rather aggressively, Joanna thought. ‘Indoors, bath, and hair washed,’ he ordered the still sniffing Anya, and after she had departed trailing the confused Binzer, he turned back to Joanna.

‘I want to see you in the library in five minutes,’ he told her curtly, before striding away towards the stables. ‘Please don’t keep me waiting.’

Joanna stared after him in some amazement, and then with a helpless shrug she thrust open her door. She almost stood on a chicken as she put her foot to the ground, and it ran squawking away as she drew a steadying breath. Well, he wanted to give her her notice, didn’t he? she argued with herself, as she picked her way towards the house, and then felt a wave of weariness sweep over her as she saw Mrs Harris waiting at the door. She could tell from the housekeeper’s face that Anya had not wasted any time in relating her comments, and she squared her shoulders a little defiantly to bolster her fast-fading confidence.

‘I want a word with you—miss!’ Mrs Harris declared, as she approached, and for a minute Joanna thought she wasn’t going to let her into the house. But although she was slim, she was quite strong, and evidently the housekeeper decided her grievances fell short of physical violence.

Joanna brushed past her into the hall of the house, her upbringing deterring her from conducting any kind of argument outdoors, and Mrs Harris had no choice but to follow her into the library.