The pretty witch Page 2

  CHAPTER TWO

  AFTER a week of working for Lucifer Bennetti, Isobel was still uncertain just what her feelings were towards him. He was not an easy man to know or to like, she thought, but at the same time there was something almost magnetically attractive about him and she had no difficulty in believing Nigel's rather sour comments about the number and variety of his brother's women friends. His grandmother adored him, that much was obvious, although she saw much less of him than she would like to have done, despite his living so near at hand. Isobel had to admit to being very curious about the Vanessa that Nigel had referred to as Lucifer's usual companion at the County Show. She had got as far as discovering that her name was Vanessa Law and that she and Lucifer had been friendly for quite a long time. Indeed, more than friendly, if Nigel's raised brows were anything to go by. 'She's quite a character in her own way,' Nigel informed her on the day that Vanessa Law departed for Germany and the antique fair. 'You'll probably meet her sooner or later, working for Luke, although she doesn't go to his place very often; he believes in keeping work and play strictly apart.' He would never, Isobel had discovered, use his brother's more exotic first na'me, and she could not help wondering if he did it with the express purpose of bringing Lucifer down to a more everyday level like himself. The older man's bland self-confidence, combined with his darkly foreign appearance, obviously discomfited Nigel, a fact which surprised Isobel who had, until now, known S3 him always as a self-sufficient, rather unimaginative business executive. 'Is she pretty?' she asked, and Nigel shrugged. 'I suppose so, if you like that sort,' he allowed. 'Although more accurately I'd have called her eye-catching, stunning, something less feminine than pretty.' Isobel laughed. 'She sounds rather formidable.' He did not treat the remark as lightly "as she expected, but frowned over it thoughtfully. 'In a way, she is. I suspect she's as foreign in origin as Luke is, although her name's British enough.' It was difficult to believe, she thought, that he was talking about his own brother. The other's Italian father seemed to have condemned him as a foreigner in Nigel's eyes and nothing could redeem him. 'Is she dark like he is, then?' 'Dark as a cat,' Nigel declared, as if even darkness itself was suspect. 'Black hair ,and the most weird yellow eyes.' 'Yellow?' Isobel looked startled. He nodded, still serious. 'They are yellow, especially in some lights, although she prefers to call them amber, I believe.' 'I - I don't think I've ever seen a human being with yellow eyes, it sounds uncanny.' He laughed shortly and completely without humour. 'She gives me the creeps, and God knows I'm not fanciful.' Isobel laughed, trying to shake off the strange feeling of uneasiness he had aroused in her at the mention of the woman whose place she was to take at the County Show. Somehow he had managed to make Vanessa Law sound not only striking but uncanny, and not the kind of woman who would take kindly to being replaced, however temporarily. 24 'She sounds most unusual,' she said, and he looked at her for a moment thoughtfully, as if he debated with himself whether or not to say something that was on his mind. 'I don't suppose you've ever heard of the Elgin Circle, have you?' he asked at last, and Isobel frowned curiously, shaking her head. 'No, I don't think so. What is it? A club of some sort?' 'I suppose you could call it that,' Nigel agreed cautiously. 'They meet fairly regularly and discuss - well, their own particular interests.' He looked at her again, warily, as if he was still making up his mind whether or not to confide in her. 'Actually they're a group of people who are interested in the ancient arts of witchcraft.' 'Oh!' She looked at him uncertainly. 'I know - at least I've heard about people who take an interest in that sort of thing, but I never thought I'd be this close to it.' 'Oh, you don't have to be worried about it,' Nigel assured her. 'They keep pretty well to themselves, though they make no secret of their existence. They make a study of the old methods and the ways and means of explaining some of the seeming miraculous spells that the old witches worked.' 'It sounds spooky.' 'Not really,' he said. 'In fact they're rather bent on explaining that things weren't as spooky as they were made to appear. The group caused quite a stir at the time they started a couple of years back, but that was mainly because of the pe'ople who formed it. They were all either well-known or wealthy and therefore anything they did that was the least bit out of the ordinary was news, even if it didn't last long. It was mentioned in most of the more . sensational dailies at the time.' 'And Vanessa Law belongs to them?' 'She certainly does,' Nigel informed her. 'She founded 25 the group.' Some uneasy warning tingle shivered along Isobel's spine and she knew the answer to her question even before she asked it. 'And your brother?' He nodded, reluctantly, she guessed. 'Luke was roped in by Vanessa right from the start,' he told her, 'although he mostly treats it as more of a joke than a serious study and sometimes I think Vanessa gets furious with him.' That was something Isobel could well believe. 'Of course this part of the world was once quite well known for - well, goings-on, wasn't it?' she asked. 'I mean the idea of witches and witchcraft died hard in some parts of the country.' 'In more parts of the country than you might suspect,' he informed her, sounding defensive. 'But I suppose the Cotswolds lend themselves to ancient beliefs and superstitions; there's a sort of atmosphere here that one doesn't find anywhere else.' 'It's quite the most beautiful countryside I've ever seen,' Isobel said, and meant it. 'It's so soft and pretty and so - so old somehow.' 'Exactly,' Nigel remarked. 'There's no doubt that it does have a - a feeling about it, despite the beauty of the scenery - or perhaps because of it, it's all slightly unreal somehow.' 'Does Mr. Bennetti find the atmosphere helps with his writing?' she asked, and laughed apologetically when he looked at her with raised brows. 'I have to admit,' she confessed, 'that I've never read any of his books.' To her surprise he laughed, a rather short humourless one, it was true, but he so seldom even smiled that she was encouraged. 'That's marvellous,' he told her, taking her hand in his. 'I quite thought you'd be a fan of Luke's, and here you are admitting that you've never even read one of his wretched books!' He leaned across and kissed her 26 lightly beside her mouth. 'Isobel, you're wonderful, and very refreshing.' 'I never have much time for reading,' she said, feeling a bit guilty about the admission and his pleasure at it. After all, it would do no harm to read one of Lucifer's books and then she would not feel quite such a fool if he asked her about it at any time. 'I must get one and read it,' she said, 'out of curiosity if nothing else.' Nigel smiled wryly. 'Well, don't bother buying one,' he told her. 'Gran has them all in her room, I'm sure she'd be only too delighted to lend you as many as you want.' They were alone in the big sunny room with the french windows open to the garden and the heavy scented warmth of summer. Isobel could just see Mrs. Grayson at the far end of the lawn, busy among her precious roses, her white head bare in the bright sunlight and shining like silver as she moved. Just being here in the old house one felt more than ever the quiet serenity of the country; it seemed to envelop the old, mellow stone building, even encroaching into the beautifully kept garden where foxgloves and periwinkles grew along the hedge beyond the bordering trees. 'It's wonderful here,' she sighed. 'Almost too good to be true, and I'm so looking forward to moving in tomorrow.' Nigel still held her hand, smiling at her, with his serious blue eyes alight with something it was all too easy to interpret. 'I'm looking forward to it, too,' he told her softly. 'I shall have you right here where I can see you as often as I like.' 'Only when I'm not working,' Isobel reminded him with a laugh. 'Don't forget I'm still a working girl.' 'With you working for Luke I'm not likely to be given the chance to forget it,' he said shortly, then squeezed her hand. 'But at least you'll -be here where I can see you.' He 27 sighed. 'If only you could drive,' he told her, 'we could go out sometimes and really see the countryside. Just the two of us, Isobel. I'd love to show you some of the places I knew when I was a small boy.' 'You lived here when you were little?' She could think of no reason why that should surprise her so much, but it did. Perhaps because he had always seemed such a town man that the thought of him belonging among these soft hills and sunny meadows seemed out of character somehow. 'Of course, it's my
home, didn't you realise that?' She shook her head. 'No, no, I hadn't realized it.' 'I spent all my time here when I wasn't at school,' he said. 'Both of us did. Kanderby and Gran have always been our - our haven, if you like. We'd have been pretty badly off without them too, especially without Gran.' 'She's a very sweet person,' Isobel said sincerely. 'You don't know how sweet until you owe her as much as we do. She brought up both of us for most of our lives.' 'Oh, I see, I didn't realize that. You - you didn't see much of your parents?' It was the first time they had ventured on to such personal ground and she was unsure how willing he would be to talk about it. 'Almost nothing.' He sat back in his chair, his eyes lazily half-closed, still retaining his hold on her hand. 'Madge, my mother, was married before, you know. She was only recently divorced from Giulio Bennetti when she married my father. They'd travelled all over the world, she and Bennetti, and Luke went with them, but' when she remarried and I arrived, the idea of carting two children from one racing circuit to another, wherever my father happened to be racing, was too much for them, so we were left with Gran here at Kanderby, although Luke was at school by then, of course. I was about a year old 28 . and Luke was around seven.' Oh, I see.' He laughed shortly and entirely without humour. 'I'm sure you do. Whenever my mother and father were in England I saw them; but most of the time I played second fiddle to a very busy social and motor-racing calendar.' He shrugged. 'Not that either of us bothered all that much, although I suppose Luke must have missed her more than I did he'd spent a lot more time with her.' 'He must have done,' Isobel agreed softly, thinking how much less resilient Nigel had proved than his half. brother. Or perhaps he just showed his resentment more obviously. 'Once we were both at boarding school,' Nigel went on, apparently nothing loath to talk now that he had started, Sve seldom saw each other except during holidays.' 'Weren't you at the same school?' 'Oh, lord, no! Luke spent most of his early days at some fancy place in Rome, and only came over here permanently when he came to university;' 'Oh yes, of course, I suppose he was near his father.' Nigel pulled a face. 'Bennetti was no more of a natural parent than mine was. Madge has a talent for-finding unlikely fathers and giving them children. No, Luke's father paid tile bills and that was as far as parental interest went. Gran was the centre of both our worlds, although we're so different.' 'And you certainly are different,' Isobel agreed ruefully, remembering her own initial shock at the sight of Lucifer. 'Of course,' Nigel said, 'six years is quite a big gap between children anyway, too much for them to be really close, even if they're full brothers and share a common outlook.' 'Which you and - and Lucifer don't?' 29 'Certainly not!' He sounded so bitter that it came as a shock to her. She had always known, or at least guessed, that they did not see eye to eye on most things, but she had not realized quite how much he resented his brother, and resent him he undoubtedly did, although she could not imagine why. His own position as a child had surely been no more unstable than Lucifer's, rather less so in fact since Lucifer must remember being with his mother and father for the first few years of his life. 'What I don't understand,' she said slowly, looking down at their clasped hands, 'is why you persuaded me to come and work for him if you dislike him so much.' He looked up sharply, as if her choice of words startled him, holding her gaze steadily for a moment before shaking his head. 'I don't know that I dislike him, actually,' he denied, though he sounded uncertain, as if the idea had not occurred to him before. 'Does it sound that way to you?' 'In a way,' Isobel admitted. 'Although I'm probably quite wrong,' she added hastily. 'I don't know. I never have been sure how I felt about Luke, he was always such a ' He laughed shortly. 'He's so different, I suppose,' he admitted. 'I never quite understood him.' 'Why did you want me to have this job with him?' He smiled, faced with something he was certain of for a change. 'You know why - because I wanted you here, where I could see you. You were so far away in town.' He raised her face to him with a hand under her chin. 'You'll like it here, won't you, Isobel?' Isobel smiled. 'Oh yes, I'll like it here, who wouldn't? It's so beautiful and I love the country, I always have.' She did not venture to ask what would happen when he was fully recovered and returned to London and to work again. Whether he would expect her to leave here and her 30 very lucrative job with Lucifer to go back with him to Frome's. That was something that would no doubt have to be faced some time or other, but better, at the moment, to leave-things as they were. 'You get on with Luke?' Nigel asked, breaking into her muse. 'I mean he doesn't drive you too hard?' She laughed, shaking her head. .'On the contrary, he just leaves me to get on with my work and say* very little. It's very easy, much easier than I expected.' "That's O.K., then.' He sighed, apparently satisfied for the moment. 'At least I don't have to bother about him ' He shrugged, looking a bit sheepish and as if he was ashamed of his own thoughts. 'Well, I know you'll be all right,' he said, as if convinced at last. 'He never takes much of an interest in girls of your age, he always sticks to the sophisticated thirties, they're his type.' 'Are they?' She wondered if Nigel really believed that or if he was deliberately closing his eyes to the possibility of Lucifer finding her attractive. 'Anyway,' Nigel added, 'he'll never be really serious about anyone, he's too much of the Latin lover to let anyone get near enough to mean anything to him.' 'I can see what you mean.' Isobel thought of the dark, Satanic-looking face and the black eyes of Lucifer .Bennetti and wondered if it was possible for anyone to get close enough to him to touch his heart. Perhaps Nigel was right, after all he was his brother and perhaps knew him as well as anyone did. 'Are you going with him to the County Show on Thursday?' Isobel blinked hastily, realizing how deep in thought she had been. 'Yes - yes, I think so, Nigel.' She looked at him, wide grey eyes curious and a little anxious. 'You do'n't mind if I go, do you?' He did not answer for a moment, but ran a caressing 3i finger over the back of her hand. 'Yes, I mind,' he admitted at last. 'I mind like hell, Isobel, but as Luke says, I'd be utterly selfish to deprive you of the pleasure of going just because I'm out of action.' He glared down at his legs, still encased in plaster. 'I feel so damned helpless like this.' 'I know,' Isobel consoled him, 'and I wish there was something I could do to help. Maybe,' she added, suddenly inspired, 'I could stay here with you, while my boss goes to the show on his own.' Nigel pulled a face, shaking his head. 'You don't know Luke. He's made up his mind he's taking you to the show and he will, or neither of you will go. I'm as bad scalded as burned; either way he has your company and I don't.* Isobel had been wondering just how to broach the subject of her moving into the garden cottage the following day. With two suitcases to carry it would be so much easier if she caught the later bus which would not be so crowded, but she was hesitant about asking Lucifer for the requisite time off, especially in view of the fact that she would be doing no work at all the following day after that, when she would be at the show with him. To her surprise, however, it was 'he who raised the matter as they were finishing work for the day. 'I'll come and fetch you tomorrow morning,' he informed her as she finished off a page prior to packing up, and she looked at him for a second or two in silence. 'Oh! Oh no, there's no need, Mr. Bennetti,' she managed at last. 'I can manage quite well on my own, I only . have two cases.' 'But you don't want to have to lug them on and off a crowded bus at that hour in the morning,' he told her. 'I -1 was going to ask if I could come on the later one,8 32 Isobel confessed. 'So that it wouldn't be quite so crowded.' 'Why catch a bus at all when I've said I'll fetch you?' The black eyes attributed all sorts of discomfiting reasons to her hesitation and she was forced, at last, to nod agreement. 'It's very good of you, thank you.' He came over and sat on the edge of her desk, looking down at her with that same disconcerting gaze. 'You just don't trust me, do you?' 'I didn't say that,' Isobel objected. 'I've never even suggested it.' He grinned wickedly. 'N0, but I'll bet Nigel has and you've taken his word for it.' 'Taken his word for what?' She determinedly began to type another line, not waiting for him to answer, but he put a finger on the carriage release lever and sent the platen shooting along out of her control, grinning at her fr
own of frustration.. Tor the fact that I'm no better than I should be,' he told her, unconcernedly. The black eyes drew and held her gaze no matter how hard she fought against it. 'And you believe it, don't you?' She refused to be flustered by his deliberate shock tactics and shrugged with apparent unconcern as she re-gained control of the machine and prepared to finish her line, despite the way her heart was hammering, almost in panic, against her ribs. 'I think it's quite possible you lead a very busy social life,' she agreed primly, and he ex. ploded into laughter. 'What a delightful way of putting it,' he told her. Isobel got on with her typing. 'I'm glad you approve,8 she told him as she reached the end of the line. 'Now if you don't mind, Mr. Bennetti, I'd like to finish this page before I leave.' T-PW-B 33 'Are you in a hurry to leave?' She sighed resignedly, looking up at him still perched on the edge of her desk. 'No more than I usually am,' she said, 'although I do have things to pack if I'm moving in the morning.' 'And you are moving in the morning,' he said. 'Nigel worked it very neatly, didn't he?' Isobel frowned. 'Worked it neatly?' He nodded, grinning in such a way that she could cheerfully have hit him before she even heard what he had to say. 'I recognized his tactics that first day,' he told her, and Isobel remembered that knowing smile he had worn while Mrs. Grayson was making her the offer of the cottage. 'I suppose he told you to get that particular bus that morning, didn't he?' Isobel nodded, seeing his reasoning at last and disliking the idea of the old lady having been tricked into making her the offer. 'And he said himself,' Lucifer went on, 'that it was always crowded and therefore took longer than usual to get here. He knew you'd be late that morning.' 'Oh, he wouldn't do a thing like that!' Isobel objected, knowing he was right but not prepared to admit it. 'He knows I hate being late.' 'He also knows that the cottage has been standing empty,' Lucifer insisted. 'And he knows that Grandmama has a very soft heart and would offer you the cottage to save you that journey every morning and evening.' Isobel kept her eyes lowered, typing forgotten for the moment. 'He - he wouldn't do anything like that,' she insisted. 'He would, you know.' His smile teased her, as he recognized her unwillingness to admit it. 'I know my little brother better than you do, don't forget. I've seen him work crafty little schemes like this before.' 'But why?' she asked, still unwilling to face it. 'Why 34 didn't he ask Mrs. Grayson in the first place if he wanted me to have the cottage?' He shrugged, leaving his perch on her desk and walking across to the window. 'Grandmama knows it too,' he said. 'He probably gets more satisfaction out of manoeuvring people without them realizing it.' 'Oh, you have no call to say things like that about Nigel,' she protested. 'I know "he's your brother - your half-brother, Mr. Bennetti, and you claim to know him well, but you shouldn't say things like that about him. It isn't as if you were ever really close, and ' 'Who told you that?' he interrupted, and she bit her lip on the indiscretion. 'Well - well, I can imagine you weren't,' she said. 'You're so different.' ; 'For which Nigel thanks God, I imagine,' he said, with such startling accuracy that she wondered for one crazy minute if he could possibly have overheard Nigel's words to her. 'It's obvious you wouldn't get on,' she insisted. 'It's it's like ' ' 'Chalk and cheese?* he suggested softly, and laughed again at her discomfiture. She lowered her eyes before the gaze that both teased and disturbed her. 'Will you let me get this page done?' she said. 'Certainly.' He grinned at her over his shoulder. 'You don't like the idea of your Nigel doing anything underhand, do you?' 'I don't believe he - he intended it to be underhand,' Isobel declared. 'I've only your word for it and, if you'll forgive me saying so, I don't know that I care to rely on that too much.' 'Why, you cheeky little ' He stared at her for a moment, then burst into laughter again, shaking his head 35 at her. 'I should either sack you or slap you for impudence,' he told her, 'but I suppose you have some revenge owing to you, so I'll let you get away with it this time.' 'Also,' Isobel went on, determinedly righteous, 'I wish you wouldn't refer to him as my,Nigel. It's an incorrect assumption.' 'An incorrect assumption.' He rolled the words round his tongue. 'What a grand phrase for telling me that you and Nigel aren't ' He used one hand to such expressive purpose that Isobel flushed. 'Well, we're not' she retorted indignantly. 'You may not be,' he allowed calmly, 'but Nigel definitely is.' 'Well, either way it's no concern of yours.' 'It will be if he talks you round to marrying him,' he declared with embarrassing bluntness. 'Mr. Bennetti ' 'And if he does,' he went on as if she had not spoken, 'that will make you my sister-in-law - half-sister-in-law,' he corrected himself hastily, 'so in the circumstances I think it would sound much more matey if you called me Lucifer.' 'I don't agree,' Isobel argued. 'For one thing you're my employer and I've never called my employer by his Christian name.' 'Not even Nigel?' She shook her head firmly. 'Not during working hours,' she said. 'I always called him Mr. Frome then.' 'How very proper,' he taunted. 'It's quite usual in business, Mr. Bennetti. It's not really good for discipline to call one's employer by his Christian name.' His black eyes glittered wickedly at her for a moment. 'I'm surely exempt from that rule, aren't I?' he suggested. 36 'My name's more pagan than Christian, isn't it?' By about nine-thirty the following morning Isobel was beginning to think that Lucifer Bennetti had forgotten his promise to fetch her and her suitcases, and she had just decided that she would catch the later bus as she had first intended, when he arrived. She 'heard the front door bell ring loud and insistently and then her landlady's voice in the hall downstairs and Lucifer's deep quiet one. She was already half way out of her room when the woman called up to her, 'Gentleman for you, Miss Hendrix.' 'Thank you.' She put her suitcases out on to the landing and closed the door, turning in time to see a bemused and flattered landlady disappearing into her own sittingroom and Lucifer just starting up the stairs with a wide grin on his dark face. 'Did you think I'd forgotten you?' he asked as he picked up her cases and started downstairs again, without waiting for an answer. 'I was just going out to catch the bus,' she told him. 'I did think you'd forgotten, or else changed your mind.' 'I seldom change my mind,' he told her, putting her cases into the boot of his car. 'Not once it's made up.' He saw her into the car and closed the door on her. 'Your landlady thinks the worst,' he declared as he slid behind the steering-wheel, and directed a wicked smile at her straight face. 'The worst or otherwise, depending on your point of view.' 'Judging by the expression on her face just now,' Isobel said, 'she suspects the worst and looks upon it as otherwise.' He laughed softly, taking the long powerful car easily up into top gear as they picked up speed. 'I rather think she fancied me herself,' he informed her, nothing loath to 37 boast of his conquest, and Isobel looked at him specu-' latively. 'I expect you gave her. the full treatment,'. she remarked. 'She would be impressed.' 'But you're not?' She wished she could have sounded more convincing when she answered him.. 'I'm not easily impressed, Mr. Bennetti.' 'Lucifer.' She sat silently, refusing to be drawn, but feeling some strange, magnetism forcing her, quite against her will, to look at him, and when she did the black eyes gleamed at her in triumph briefly before turning back to the road ahead. 'Lucifer,' he repeated. 'Lucifer,' she echoed obediently, and clenched her hands at the soft sound of his laughter. 38