‘All your little girl would say was, she wanted to save the children. So plucky of her. No reason for her to have known about the steps, of course. It’s impossible to see them if you don’t know where to look.’
Beatrice knew now that a secret set of steps, cut into the cliff, led up from the second cove to the grounds behind Carlyon Manor. The Wincanton children had simply climbed them and had been home safe and dry twenty minutes after they’d disappeared from Beatrice’s sight. How foolish she felt.
She slumped against the panelling and hurt her elbow on a shelf. ‘Ow!’
‘Who’s there?’ Her mother’s heels tapped on the wooden floor. Beatrice scrambled into the dining room just in time.
‘Béatrice?’ her mother’s voice called into the hall.
‘She’s in there, the minx,’ Cook said, appearing at the kitchen door with a fresh pot of tea. She scowled at Beatrice.
‘O ma fille,’ Delphine Marlow said, scrutinizing the girl. She never frowned – frowning caused wrinkles, she liked to say – but Beatrice felt her frown. ‘Run up and brush your hair, mignonne. Madame Wincanton would like to see you.’
In the drawing room, Beatrice wasn’t sure where to put herself so she hovered by the fireplace, standing first on one leg, then on the other, and peering at the visitor from under her lashes. Oenone Wincanton looked Beatrice up and down with an amused expression. She was so lovely and elegant, the girl thought; you could see where Angie got her good looks. Mrs Wincanton’s hair was honey-coloured, but a couple of shades darker than her daughter’s, and piled up in an artless coil – not fashionable at all, but beautiful all the same – and her eyes were a pure blue, like pieces cut out of a sky. Beatrice realized where she’d seen her before: racing a dainty bay mare across the shoreline, with an older, soldierly-looking man on a great black hunter in hot pursuit.
She wasn’t wearing her riding habit today, but a trim tea costume in navy and white. Pearls gleamed at her ears and her throat. She laid down her cup and saucer and patted the sofa beside her. Beatrice shuffled over and slid onto the edge of it, her hands hot under her thighs until, seeing her mother’s moue of displeasure, she took them out and folded them on her lap. The moue transformed itself into the faintest of smiles.
‘Your mother tells me you like horses,’ Mrs Wincanton said, her eyes merry. ‘We have two. Perhaps you’d like to come and see them sometime?’
Beatrice glanced up at her mother for guidance. Her mother looked away. What was going on?
‘What else do you like, Béatrice?’ Mrs Wincanton pronounced it in the French way, as her mother did. ‘Such a pretty name. Your mother says you do your lessons well.’
Beatrice recalled the disinfectant smell of the rooms above the dentist’s surgery in the town, where Miss Tabitha Starling had been teaching her and two other local girls at a big round table in the window overlooking the back of the inn.
‘I like natural history,’ she said haltingly, not used to undivided adult attention.
‘Ah yes, Angelina told me about your rockpools,’ the woman replied. ‘Very commendable. You speak French, of course, you lucky thing. And I gather your governess lived in Germany for a while before the war? I wish Angelina took more interest in languages. Now that would be useful. Miss Starling’s lessons must have been rather pleasant.’
Their lessons – arithmetic, English, geography and history, with a little German and natural history thrown in – were interestingly taught but were occasionally interrupted by chilling screams of pain from the surgery. But now poor Miss Starling was ill with her nerves again, and with the start of the long summer holiday upon them, had decided to go and live with her widowed sister in Weston-super-Mare.
Mrs Wincanton pulled on a pair of white gloves and remarked, above Beatrice’s head, ‘Mrs Marlow, I imagine she’ll do rather nicely. Speak to your husband about the matter and let me know what you decide. The sum involved will be quite modest, I assure you.’
Beatrice, bewildered, stumbled out a reply to Mrs Wincanton’s, ‘Goodbye, dear,’ and trailed out behind them into the hall. Cook opened the front door, and beyond the garden gate could be glimpsed the sleek black wing of a motor car. After they’d watched it bear Mrs Wincanton away, Mrs Marlow touched Beatrice’s hand and whispered, ‘Well, ma petite, I can’t think what your father will say.’
‘Say about what, maman?’ Beatrice asked. ‘I don’t understand.’
Her mother pressed her palms together, as though in prayer, though she wasn’t outwardly a very religious woman. ‘Mrs Wincanton would like you to go to Carlyon Manor every day to be a companion for her daughter Angelina.’ She went on, ‘You would join her and her little sister in their studies from September. A Miss Simpkins lives at the house and teaches every morning. The boys will naturally be away at school and Mrs Wincanton says Angelina needs the company of suitable girls of her own age. There is only one month between the two of you.’