Island Of The Heart

It was a big room, filled comfortably with sofas and chairs in faded chintz. A turf fire blazed on the hearth, and a woman was sitting beside it. She was dark-haired, with a vivid, striking face, lavishly made up, and was wearing a smart dress in hyacinth blue silk, with a wool tartan scarf wrapped incongruously round her neck. Sandie recognised her instantly and nervously.

‘Here’s the young lady come to play the piano for Mr Crispin,’ the woman who’d shown Sandie in announced, setting the tray down on an occasional table.

Sandie found herself being scrutinised from several directions—by the woman beside the fire, by a tall, dark girl, bearing a strong resemblance to Crispin, and also by two children, a boy and girl barely in their teens, bent over a jigsaw puzzle at another table.

‘Oh, dear,’ Magda Sinclair said at last. ‘Oh, dear. This is too bad of Crispin. This really won’t do at all.’

Sandie knew an ignominious and overwhelming urge to burst into weary tears. She’d set out with such high hopes, and come all this way, and now Crispin wasn’t here, and his mother disliked her on sight. She remembered Crispin had said she was temperamental.

‘Now, now, Mother.’ The dark girl got up from the window seat where she’d been sprawling, and came forward. ‘The poor kid will think she’s landed in a lunatic asylum!’ She held out her hand. ‘Hello, I’m Jessica Sinclair. Welcome to Killane. This, as you probably realise, is Magda Sinclair, and the brats are James and Steffie.’

Sandie swallowed. ‘How do you do. I’m Alexandra Beaumont.’ She was beginning to feel like something in a zoo.

Magda Sinclair seemed to shake herself, and got up. ‘I’m sorry, my dear, if we seem a little odd, but we just didn’t expect you to look so—so …’

‘Young,’ her daughter supplied, with a hint of dryness, giving Sandie the impression this was not what Magda Sinclair had intended to say at all.

‘Yes, of course,’ Mrs Sinclair said. She gave Sandie a brief smile. ‘I expect you’ve had a terrible journey. Why don’t you let Bridie show you your room, then come down and have some tea with us.’

Sandie had been expecting to be shown the door, rather than the place where she was to sleep.

She said, ‘Thank you. That would be marvellous.’

Bridie led the way back into the hall. As Sandie followed, the strap of her bag caught on the ornately carved doorknob, and she paused to disentangle it.

Through the half-open door, she heard Jessica Sinclair say in a low voice, ‘Don’t look so worried, Mother. Everything will be fine.’ She paused, adding flatly, ‘Just as long as Flynn stays a thousand miles away.’

CHAPTER TWO (#u32e01b3f-c075-5665-a2e2-c0ec292d9315)

SANDIE’S ROOM WAS at the back of the house. Vast and high-ceilinged, it contained a cavernous wardrobe in walnut with elegant brass handles, and a matching dressing-table, tallboy and old-fashioned bedstead of equally generous proportions. Sandie felt almost dwarfed as she unpacked and put her things away.

Tea had been an awkward meal. Having behaved so strangely when she arrived, the Sinclairs now seemed embarrassingly over-eager to put her at her ease, Sandie found ruefully. In spite of that, she’d managed to drink two cups of the strong, fragrant tea, and sample some of Bridie’s featherlight scones, and rich, treacly fruit loaf.

Bridie, she’d learned, was the cook-housekeeper, and the mainstay of the household.

‘She came here as a kitchenmaid when I married Rory Killane,’ Magda Sinclair explained, ‘and she’s been here ever since. She knows more about this family than we do ourselves, and she’s incredibly loyal.’

‘She likes Flynn best,’ said James, passing his cup to be refilled.

‘What nonsense,’ his mother said coldly. ‘She adores us all. Anyway, Flynn is never here.’

‘Bridie says he’ll be here soon. She saw it in the tealeaves,’ put in Steffie, heaping jam on to her fruit loaf.

Sandie saw Magda’s exquisitely reddened lips form something that might have been ‘Damnation’ and hastily looked elsewhere. She hadn’t intended to overhear that brief snatch of conversation before she went upstairs, but she couldn’t help being intrigued by its implications.

Flynn Killane, she thought. Crispin’s non-musical half-brother, who, for some mysterious reason, needed to be kept at a distance.

But what difference can it possibly make to him if I’m here or not? she asked herself in bewilderment.

As soon as she could, she’d excused herself from the tea-party round the drawing-room fire, on the grounds that she needed to unpack. But with that task accomplished, she needed to find something else to do until Crispin came back from Galway, and she was reluctant to return to the drawing-room with its spurious bonhomie, interspersed with silences.

She wandered over to the window and stood looking out. It was raining harder than ever, she noticed with a sigh, and the wind had risen, bending the trees and shrubs that fringed the lawn. Beyond the formal part of the garden was a white-painted fence, dividing it from a paddock where several horses grazed.

‘Have you got everything you need?’

She swung round to see Jessica standing in the doorway, her smile friendly.

‘Yes, thanks. This is a charming room.’

‘I think it’s totally bizarre, like all of them.’ Jessica cast a droll glance towards the embroidered runners that masked the polished surfaces of the chests and bedside table, and the pin tray and trinket jars in rose-painted china which ornamented the dressing-table. ‘It’s like being caught in a Thirties timewarp. Fortunately, the plumbing is bang up to date. Flynn saw to that, although all our water comes from the lake.’

‘It does?’ Sandie’s eyes widened, and Jessica grinned.

‘Sounds rather primitive, eh? But it’s the norm round here. It would cost a fortune to bring mains water to this scatter of population. We have a rain tank as well,’ she added, nodding towards the streaming window. ‘As you can see, it’s rarely empty.’ Her tone became brisker. ‘Mother wondered whether you’d like to see the music-room, where you’re going to be working.’

‘Yes, I would—very much.’ Sandie forced a smile. ‘I began to wonder if I’d be staying, or whether I’d be asked to leave. Everyone keeps—staring at me as if they’d seen a ghost.’

‘How rude of us,’ Jessica said lightly. ‘The fact is, you’re the image of someone we used to know. The resemblance is quite amazing.’

So that’s all, Sandie thought with relief. She said, ‘Well, they say everyone has a double.’

‘So they do.’ Jessica’s tone was faintly ironic. ‘Come on, and I’ll introduce you to the piano.’

The music-room was on the ground floor, at the side of the house.

‘It used to be the morning-room,’ Jessica explained as she led the way in, ‘but Flynn had it converted to make the most of the view.’

Sandie gasped with pleasure. The entire end of the room had been extended out over the lake, and the walls and ceiling glazed so that sky and water formed the backdrop for the magnificent Steinway grand that stood there.

‘It’s fantastic!’ she exclaimed.

‘I’m glad you approve. You’re going to be spending a lot of your time here.’ Jessica paused. ‘Crispin can be a hard taskmaster, but I suppose you know that.’

‘I don’t really know very much about him at all,’ Sandie returned. ‘But he thinks I have promise as a pianist, and I want to work hard for him.’ She swallowed. ‘I hope Mrs Sinclair will let me try and play her accompaniments. I need to justify my existence here.’

‘I should find your feet before you start looking for extra jobs,’ Jessica said quite kindly. ‘This room is completely soundproofed, by the way, so you can come and practise any time when no one else is using it. I tend to work in my room, so you’ll only have Mother and Crispin to compete with.’ She gestured towards the piano. ‘Go on, try it. I can see you’re dying to.’ She disappeared, closing the door behind her.

Sandie sat down and ran her fingers experimentally over the keys. She began mutedly with scales, and a few loosening exercises, then broke into the last movement of the concerto she’d played at the festival.

When she finished, there was a burst of applause from behind her, and she glanced round startled to see Crispin standing in the doorway, smiling at her.

‘Don’t get up,’ he directed, walking towards her. ‘You look just as I imagined you would. This room is the perfect background for you.’

Sandie flushed. ‘I didn’t come here to be ornamental,’ she protested, with an awkward laugh.

‘Of course not,’ he said soothingly. ‘But you can’t escape the fact, sweetheart, that you are—amazingly decorative. I’m surprised your parents allowed you out of their sight.’

Her blush deepened, and she searched frantically for some casual and sophisticated response. I’m not very good at flirting, she thought despairingly. I’ve been so immersed in my music that there hasn’t been time for men—or even boys. Of course, I know he isn’t seriously interested in me in that way—he’s just being—nice to me.