Means to an End Read online

  For a moment or two, Alison stood there, trying to do something about the erratic and quite illogical way her heartbeat was tapping away at her side, then she turned, hesitated briefly, and walked down to join Aunt Celia under the old elm tree. Her aunt looked up at her with a smile as she approached, her grey eyes perhaps a little curious too.

  ‘I’m glad to see you and Stefano getting along a bit better the last couple of days,’ she observed, by way of greeting, and Alison shrugged.

  ‘Are we?’ she asked, unwilling to pursue the subject.

  Aunt Celia put her neatly coiffured head to one side and studied her for a moment thoughtfully. ‘I thought you seemed to be,’ she said. ‘Maybe I was wrong.’

  Alison sat down opposite her, wondering just how frank she dare be with her aunt. After all, Aunt Celia had made it pretty clear lately that she saw eye to eye with Stefano on most things, and she did not want to risk having hers and Danny’s plans to get the money, relayed to the object of their plan.

  ‘I don’t think I’ve been any different, have I?’ she asked, studiously avoiding the watching eyes.

  ‘Oh, you have, darling,’ her aunt insisted. ‘In fact Stefano was remarking on it to me, only just now.’

  ‘Oh, was he? Is that what you were laughing at?’ She knew she sounded almost spiteful when she asked that, and Aunt Celia looked at her wonderingly.

  ‘No,’ she said quietly. ‘That wasn’t to do with you.’

  `I—I’m sorry.’

  They sat for several minutes in the shade of the old trees, an uneasy silence between them, then Aunt Celia reached out a hand and gently squeezed her fingers. ‘I wish you liked Stefano,’ she said. ‘It seems so—so unfortunate that you should be always quarrelling with him.’ Grey eyes looked at her almost appealingly across the narrow table. ‘Couldn’t you try to like him, Alison, even tolerate him? That would be a start.’

  Alison met her gaze steadily, remembering her earlier thoughts about her aunt and Stefano, and wondering how much the plea was influenced by her own feelings for him. ‘Is that what you do, Aunt Celia?’ she asked. ‘Tolerate him?’

  Aunt Celia shook her head. ‘No,’ she said quietly. ‘I like Stefano, darling, and I make no secret of it.’

  `Better than you do Danny,’ Alison guessed wryly, and her aunt smiled.

  `He’s an older man, darling, and if I may venture to say it, much more attractive than your Danny. To me at any rate.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘I doubt if you do, my dear,’ her aunt told her gently. ‘I’ve never been very drawn to the student type, even when I was of an age to be, and quite frankly I’m surprised you are.’

  Alison stuck out her chin, refusing to hear any ill of Danny. ‘Danny isn’t exactly a student type,’ she denied, wondering in what other category she could place him. ‘He—he’s different, that’s all.’

  ‘And you love him?’

  Alison nodded. ‘I’m going to marry him.’ ‘With or without the garage?’

  She nodded, but this time a lot less certainly. ‘II wish I hadn’t to ask Stefano for every penny,’ she said bitterly. ‘I sometimes wish Great-Grandfather hadn’t left me anything at all rather than made me go to Stefano for everything—it’s—it’s humiliating! It isn’t my money at all, it’s his, and I can’t touch a penny of it without asking him. I hate having to ask for any at all, and this time he’s so—so stubborn about what is very important to Danny and me.’

  Aunt Celia looked at her for a long moment, a half amused, speculative look in her eyes. ‘You could try coaxing it from him,’ she said at last, and Alison stared at her for a moment in disbelief. It had been surprise enough when Danny suggested more or less the same thing, but to hear Aunt Celia proposing such tactics was quite staggering.

  ‘You—you mean—you’re suggesting that I should—’

  ‘Oh, I don’t mean anything improper,’ Aunt Celia interposed hastily. ‘But if you were to try being a little more—’

  ‘Amenable ?’ Alison suggested wryly, seeing two minds with but a single thought, and not at all sure that she liked being thought of in such a light by either of them. ‘I’m surprised at you, Aunt Celia.’

  ‘Are you, darling?’ Her aunt’s dark brows flicked upwards in elegant comment. ‘I should say that Stefano is very open to a bit of feminine persuasion.’

  Alison pursed her lips thoughtfully, taking the plunge and hoping she was not being too precipitate. ‘You wouldn’t mind if I—tried to persuade him?’

  Aunt Celia smiled. ‘Why should I mind, darling? It’s all in the family, after all.’

  They had almost finished lunch and Alison looked at Stefano from the concealment of her lashes, as they sat over coffee. He had changed into a light suit and a pale blue shirt and she thought, yet again, how attractive he looked and how easy, even pleasurable, it should have been to make herself pleasant to him, but always that niggling resentment sat in the back of her mind.

  ‘I thought I would drive out to Peggs Bay this afternoon,’ he was saying to Aunt Celia, and something in Alison urged her that this was the moment to take advantage of. The time to make the most of the opportunity presented to her.

  ‘Alone?’ she asked, before Aunt Celia could speak, and they both turned and looked at her

  curiously, silent for a moment.

  Then Stefano smiled, one brow tilted questioningly. ‘I was hoping for company,’ he said. ‘I was going to ask Celia if she would come with me.’

  Alison felt her stomach crawl with embarrassment and she wished the floor would open and swallow her up. It was obvious what she had been going to suggest and he had pointedly ignored the suggestion and invited Aunt Celia.

  ‘Oh, I’m sure she will,’ she said brightly, as if her own inclusion had never even entered her mind, and got to her feet. ‘Well, I’d better go and write to Grandmama. I should have done it days ago, so I’d better strike while the iron’s hot.’

  ‘Alison!’ Aunt Celia called after her as she reached the door, and she turned, rather reluctantly.

  ‘Don’t stop me,’ she begged with exaggerated fear. ‘If I don’t go and start right away, I shall only get sidetracked again.’ She waved a hand as she closed the door, ‘Have fun ! ‘

  She closed the door rather hastily behind her and knew without a doubt that she left an uneasy silence in the big, sunny room. But at least, she thought wryly as ‘she went upstairs to her room, they would now be aware that she realised how things were between them.

  The letter to her grandmother was a short but affectionate one, as it always was, the old lady bore with her laxity as a correspondent, as long as she knew she was all right. It took her no more than half an hour and while she was writing it she thought she heard the sound of a car leaving, but did not bother to look out of the window to see them go.

  It would kill two birds with one stone, she decided as she licked a stamp, if she took it down to the nearest post box and posted it right away. She could do with a breath of fresh air and a spell away from the house, so the walk would do her good.

  As she came downstairs it seemed there was no one about, so it had evidently been the two of them leaving when she heard the car, and she thought a little enviously of the warm sandy peace of Peggs Bay on such a lovely sunny afternoon. It was only about three miles further round the coast and Stefano kept a recently acquired motor launch there, although she had never yet seen it. No doubt they would soon be skimming over the bright water and enjoying the cool breeze their speed created, content in each other’s company.

  She walked down the steep, green slope to the few straggling buildings that made up Creggan Bay, and posted her letter at the unbelievably tiny post office. Coming away from the letter box she spun round sharply, when a car horn shattered the quiet, her eyes wide with alarm.

  Stefano smiled at her from behind the wheel, dark glasses obscuring his eyes and the light jacket he had worn at lunch slung carelessly on to the back seat of the car. While she hesitated, he lea
ned across and opened the passenger door.

  ‘Get in,’ he told her.

  `But—’

  ‘Please, I am blocking this narrow street.’

  It could scarcely have mattered, she realised too late, for there were no other cars in sight and only two pedestrians, strolling along on the other side of

  the road, but she got into the car beside him, and said nothing for several minutes as they drove off. She could not imagine what had happened or why he was alone, unless Aunt Celia had simply decided not to go with him, and that was unlikely in the circumstances, she thought.

  ‘I thought you were going to Peggs Bay with Aunt Celia,’ she ventured, after several minutes, and he shrugged eloquent shoulders without taking his eyes off the road.

  ‘If you had been in less of a hurry to run away,’ he told her, ‘you would have heard that your aunt has an appointment with her dentist in Skarren.’

  Alison frowned. She had quite forgotten that her aunt had the appointment, and she should have stayed and listened to her when she called her back. Not that it would have altered her own feelings in the matter, for he had quite plainly snubbed her in favour of Aunt Celia and she could still feel resentment when she thought of it. What she was now doing with him in his, car, she could not quite understand, although she had had very little choice in the matter, it was true.

  ‘I’d—I’d forgotten,’ she said, and he smiled.

  ‘You were in such a hurry to get out of the room,’ he reminded her, rather tactlessly, she thought. ‘As if you were anxious to escape for some reason.’

  ‘Nothing of the sort,’ she denied hastily. ‘What on earth should I be escaping from?’

  Again he shrugged expressively, and he was heading straight for the coast road to Peggs Bay, she noticed. ‘Who knows with you, piccolo ?’ he asked lightly. ‘But you will come with me to see my boat,

  won’t you?’

  ‘Do I have any choice?” she asked tartly, and he laughed.

  ‘Not much, bella mia!’

  They drove on along the coast, the road some-

  ‘ times running at the same level as the sea, and at others swooping upwards to look down over a drop of

  nearly a hundred feet, and all the time the sparkling ocean and yellow sanded beaches lay invitingly in warm sun, so that it was all too easy to slip into a sensuous, relaxing lethargy that made her heavy eyes almost close as she sat back and enjoyed it.

  Stefano was a good driver—a little flamboyant perhaps, but she felt perfectly safe with him as they took blind, hairpin bends at speeds that would normally have kept her on the edge of her seat. The wind they created whipped her cheeks into soft, bright colour and tossed her hair into gamin-like confusion round her face. It was a beautiful day and she could think of no better way of spending it than like this.

  Perhaps sensing something of her mood, Stefano turned his head briefly and smiled at her, and it was a smile that stirred something responsive in her so that she lay back her head on the seat and laughed softly for no real reason at all.

  ‘You like driving?’ he asked, and she realised suddenly that this was the first time she had ever ridden with him.

  ‘I like it when someone else does the driving,’ she told him.

  `Ah, I see.’ He smiled knowingly. ‘You are lazy, huh?’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ she denied, with surprising mildness. ‘I’ve just never had the inclination to drive, that’s all.’

  ‘Would you like to learn?’

  The question was unexpected, and she considered it for a moment. ‘I don’t know,’ she said at last. ‘I’d probably be useless.’

  ‘You could try.’

  ‘I could.’ She turned her head lazily and looked at him through her lashes. ‘Are you offering to teach me?’ she asked.

  He said nothing for a moment or two, then he laughed softly. ‘Would you let me?’ he countered, and she considered it for a moment carefully.

  ‘You’re a very good driver,’ she said then, without committing herself either way.

  ‘Grazier She ignored the hint of sarcasm.

  ‘Have you done a lot of driving?’

  ‘Quite a lot,’ he said with a wry smile. ‘I have done some racing in my time, although not recently.’

  ‘Oh ! ‘ She wasn’t quite sure how to react to that. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t realise.’ It came as something of a surprise to realise that he had had an existence before coming to Creggan Bar, and she supposed it only went to show how narrow her own outlook was.

  ‘You would not have heard of me,’ he told her with a smile. ‘I was not one of the big names. Only an—an—’

  ‘Also-ran?’ she suggested, and wondered if she was being too derogatory, but he only laughed quietly at the suggestion.

  ‘That is it—an also-ran.’

  ‘But you raced often?’

  ‘Quite often.’ He turned his head briefly and smiled at her. ‘Quite often enough to be capable of teaching you to drive,’ he told her.

  ‘Oh, I don’t doubt it,’ she said hastily, and he laughed again.

  `But your—friend would not like it,’ he suggested.

  ‘My fiancé,’ Alison said firmly.

  ‘Does he have a car?’

  ‘Not at the moment.’ She made the admission reluctantly.

  `Ah, I see. But if I allow you to buy this garage for him, he will then have one, hmm?’

  Alison flushed, seeing all too plainly the way his mind was working, and seeing too the end of any hopes of introducing the matter of the money in her own way and in her own good time. ‘Not necessarily,’ she said, trying not to sound too annoyed about it. ‘The garage will be our means of earning a living, not a luxury, as you seem to think, Stefano.’

  An expressive brow flicked upwards. ‘You would work in the garage too?’ he asked.

  ‘Why not?’ she challenged, and he smiled.

  `Why not?’ he echoed. ‘You would be very good for sales, piccola.’

  ‘There won’t be any sales,’ she retorted, ‘if you

  don’t let me have the money to buy the garage.’ `And you really want to be a greasy little meccanica, huh?’

  ‘Not particularly,’ Alison said tartly. ‘And you don’t have to sound so blessed condescending, Stefano.’

  He laughed softly. ‘Forgive me, piccola, but I just cannot see you poking around in the insides of a car, with your pretty face covered in oil and grease, and covered from head to toe in dirty overalls.’

  She said nothing for a moment, not particularly enchanted with the idea herself when it was put as bluntly as that. Then she shrugged. ‘I could cope,’ she said.

  ‘And he would let you?’

  She immediately resented the implied criticism of Danny, and rued the loss of her pleasant lethargy of a few minutes ago. ‘You don’t know Danny at all, Stefano,’ she told him. ‘And I don’t think you should make snap judgments without seeing the person concerned.’

  ‘Then why do you not bring him to house?’ he asked. ‘He could come to dinner one night, could he not? You would like that?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, of course I’d like it,’ she said, but was not at all sure that Danny himself would share her enthusiasm. He was unused to such surroundings as Creggan Bar, and certainly he would not be very enthusiastic about sitting down at the same table as Stefano. Especially if he thought there was some ulterior motive behind the invitation, and he was bound to suspect there was.

  ‘Then ask him, piccola.’

  She was silent for a while, trying to decide what would be best to do. Refuse the idea outright and make Stefano suspect her reasons, or ask Danny and almost certainly have him refuse. ask him,’ she said at last, as they ran down into Peggs Bay, and he glanced at her briefly, as if he guessed something of her indecision.

  They parked on a pull-in just off the narrow road, and she looked across to where a sleek, shiny motor launch was moored to the quay, bright and new and impossible to overlook. Peggs Bay was a rather unsuitable se
tting for such ostentation and the expensive-looking craft stood out startlingly amid the mellow, everyday practicality of the little fishing village, and the trawlers, dark and tubby, bobbing on the rising tide, a beautiful dove among the crows.

  ‘This is yours?’ she asked, as he led the way, dropping down nimbly into the white-painted boat with its gleaming brasswork, warm as gold in the sunlight, and surrounded by the smell of newly varnished wood.

  ‘It is,’ he affirmed, and she felt a sudden quickening of her pulse when she noticed the name Piccola painted in gold along the bow. ‘She is beautiful, is she not?’ he asked softly, a smile in his black eyes as he reached up to lift her down into the boat beside him. ‘Just like her namesake.’

  ‘She—she’s lovely.’

  ‘You like boats?’

  She nodded. ‘Although I’ve never been in anything as—as luxurious as this.’ She looked around her, impressed in spite of herself, and feeling suddenly more light hearted as she stood there, swaying gently with the motion of the boat on the tide. Some strange, inexplicable excitement was already stirring in her and the urge to be away, speeding across the water with the wind in her face.

  Stefano was watching her, smiling as if he understood exactly how she felt, and shared her excitement. ‘We will run along as far as the creek and back,’ he decided, evidently not deeming it necessary to consult her as to whether she wanted to go or not. ‘It is a beautiful day and we will make a breeze as we go along.’

  It was very tempting indeed, and she was honest enough to admit to knowing of no good reason why she should not go with him. After all, who could object? Both Danny and Aunt Celia had suggested that she should be amenable, and by going with him in the boat that was exactly what she would be, so she nodded.

  Not, she realised a moment later, that it would have made the slightest difference whether she agreed or not, for Stefano had already set the powerful engine purring richly into life, and was casting off under the critical but apparently satisfied eye of a couple of local fishermen. They nodded their heads in acknowledgment when Alison looked up and smiled at them, and she felt suddenly very rich and pampered as she sat on the long leather seat while Stefano guided them out to sea.