The Glass Castle Read online

  THE GLASS CASTLE

  Violet Winspear

  A woman's mind is a jungle

  Heron Brooks recalled Edwin Trequair's words and what he'd said afterward. “It's the one jungle in which a man should never get lost.”

  Why, then, had he asked her to marry him? And why had she accepted? True, she'd be living in the fabulous house she had loved all her life ... but there had to be more to a marriage than mere comfort.

  Yet her feelings for him were more of fear and curiosity than any other emotion. How could she hope to make him a successful wife?

  CHAPTER ONE

  Heron knew he was looking at her. She could feel his gaze upon her red hair and her pale hands upon the keys of the black piano. He was tall and lean, with the heavy-lidded eyes of a hawk, and she knew from her cousin Sybil with whom she was staying at Memory that he was a man of means who had recently bought a house high on the Turret, the steep hill that overlooked the estuary.

  Because Heron was usually a girl of composure she didn’t like the feeling he gave her of trying to bend her will to his, so that she would look up from the keyboard and betray her awareness of him. He seemed so arrogant that he didn’t bother to make small talk with the other guests at the party. It would be ridiculous to suppose him shy when he was so well-tailored, so much a man of discernment that he refused the champagne and drank Uncle Saul’s best brandy.

  She smiled reluctantly to herself, and then turned her head in the other direction as a young man spoke her name. ‘Heron, play some Chaminade! A pretty girl shouldn’t play music composed by a man like Liszt. His passionate nature will do you no good.’

  ‘Fool!’ she retorted, but because he watched she gave Ben an extra fond smile. He was supposed to be in love with Sybil, but these days young men seemed to flirt with love rather than to burn with it.

  I’m old fashioned! The thought amazed her, for to all outward appearances she knew herself to look the height of modernity. I’d like love to be like a shock of lightning; a bolt from heaven; an eagle-like thing, tearing my heart and feeding on my soul.

  The realization was good for the music and she played as never before. The applause was gratifying. Usually at a party nobody bothered to notice the entertainer, but Uncle Saul had paid for her music lessons and it seemed only fair to repay him by showing the party guests what a dutiful and grateful niece he had.

  ‘Don’t you think our Heron plays champion?’ she heard her uncle say jovially to the tall individual with the gaze of a banker who rarely gave credit. ‘That’s quite a drop of brandy, eh, Mr. Trequair? Bought up the contents of an old lord’s cellar and that bonded Napoleon was included.’

  ‘You were fortunate—and do call me Edwin.’ The voice was cultured, sure of itself. That of a man who didn’t care a rap what a mere girl thought of his opinion of her talents. He would know all about music, and all about living, and to let him know that she had overheard her uncle’s remark she ran her hands along the keyboard in a frilly finale to her performance. Then she jumped to her feet before he could pass an opinion and made for the terrace beyond the open French windows. It was a soft night and several couples were out in the garden swaying to their own inner rhythms of youth and longing. Heron ran down the steps between the balustrades that were like wide-stretched arms to the lawn. The silver tips of her shoes darted through the grass to the edge of the lake that was broken into a thousand gleaming ripples by the moon.

  When she was a child and this had been her father’s house, Heron had fallen into the lake. She always remembered the occasion whenever she came to stay at Memory as a guest. Someone had dived in and brought her out, a thin, youthful employee of her father’s who, after handing her over to her parents wet and howling, had slipped away before he could be properly thanked for saving her life. She never recalled seeing him again; the years had slipped away, but a house called Memory could not help but bring back memories.

  The lawn was cut close as a thick carpet and footfalls were silenced on its pile ... Heron almost fell again into the lake when a voice spoke suddenly above her head. ‘You need not have been afraid that I found your playing that of a pretty dilettante.’

  ‘Afraid?’ She whirled to face the man and temper flashed in her grey eyes as they met his eyes in the moonlight. ‘Do you imagine I care tuppence what you think of me?’

  ‘A subtle slip of the tongue, Miss Brooks. I was referring to your musical ability, not your person. But if you would like my opinion on that—?’

  ‘No, thanks!’ She tossed her head and the moonlight set shimmering the hair that was more rose-gold than the red described by people when discussing Heron Brooks, the only child of a man who had gone bankrupt of money and life when his wife had died of one of those fatal illnesses that sometimes befall angelic women.

  I’ll be a heathen! Heron had sobbed the words when they had told her at school, and she knew she had been kept from her mother’s bedside by that distant man, her father. Distant as the stars now, both of them, yet when she looked angrily at this guest of Uncle Saul’s she had the curious feeling that her parents were close by, and she shivered, and clutched her own arms, as if they were wet with water.

  ‘Shall I fetch your wrap?’ He had sharp eyes, and fingers that came swiftly to the pleated silk of her dress, softly shaped to a young figure lightly clad beneath the silk.

  ‘No—I’m all right. It’s a fine night—the lake is very still.’

  ‘It appears to be still,’ he said, ‘but beneath the surface there are secrets in hiding, and reeds that whisper together of things past.’

  ‘Are you trying to unnerve me?’ Heron drew delicately away from him, with an instinctive awareness of being in some sort of peril from this dark stranger who seemed so out of place at the birthday party of a carefree girl like her cousin Sybil. He was older than the young men who had been invited, and here in the light of that golden, almost gothic moon he seemed very tall and saturnine ... the moonlight slanted on to his face and showed her what she had not dared to look at in the drawing-room where the lights were more cruelly bright. He was deeply scarred from his left eyebrow to his jaw, and the mutilation made him seem more sinister, suggesting things in his life which she had only read about in books, or heard spoken of in whispers. He had gambled on four continents, people said, before settling down to respectable business in the East Indies. Someone, somewhere, had awaited him in the dark and ruined with a sharp knife what once had been a classic profile.

  ‘I am sure I do unnerve you.’ When he lifted his cigar and drew upon it, a gleam of pure mockery showed itself in his eyes, as if his sole purpose in coming to this party had been to select a girl upon whom to practise his diabolic charm ... Heron resented being his choice, for she had heard the rumours which had followed him to the Glass Castle, the fantastic Victorian house which had been built long ago for a Northern wool merchant with more money to spend than any real taste in architecture.

  Heron was puzzled that Edwin Trequair should buy such a house ... unless the rumours were true and he had a mysterious wife whom he kept under lock and key at the Glass Castle.

  He looked the sort who might regard women as mere objects of idle amusement, or displeasure, and Heron’s temper began to smoulder. She was very much a girl of independence, who took a pride in being good at her job. She worked as clerk to a woman barrister at Temple Court in London, and was not amused at being picked upon by this saturnine East Indies man and told she was nervous of him. She was nettled by his casual elegance in a single-breasted dinner jacket worn with a silk evening shirt; she desired to prick his self-confidence.

  ‘Do you always assume that you know everything about people you’ve only just met?’ she asked coldly. ‘You’re a stranger to me and I don�
�t presume to know your feelings ... in fact I don’t presume to know anything about you.’

  ‘That is hardly a true statement, Miss Brooks.’ He spoke quite deliberately, and fixed her grey eyes with his, as if for years he had dominated people with just a look. ‘I am sure your pretty cousin has regaled you with tales about my mysterious past, and the exotic Eastern mistress whom I keep locked up in my Glass Castle.’

  ‘Is the woman your mistress?’ Heron flashed. ‘I heard she was your wife—’ There she broke off and flushed to the roots of her red hair as Edwin Trequair gave a laugh that was like a softly rasping purr in his throat.

  ‘You should beware of your redhead’s temper,’ he said, ‘for it will always lead you headlong into the blushing truth unless you learn to control it. My dear Miss Brooks, I have no wife, nor have I a mistress under the roof of my Castle. Really, the things young girls will talk about when they get their heads together, and they manage to look so sweet and innocent even as all this lurid speculation is going on in their curious minds. Out in the East they say that the mind of a woman is a jungle, and it is the one jungle in which a man should never get lost.’

  ‘How interesting,’ Heron rejoined. ‘I suppose the mind of a man is a perfectly controlled highway, with all his logical thoughts speeding along the track without a single hitch. No wonder men are so complacent ... and boring!’

  ‘Which I take to mean that you have not yet found a man who sparks you off ... as I believe the expression used to be? Having been out of England for a good many years I am no longer conversant with the slang of courtship. I imagine, in fact, that even courtship is out of fashion in this age of the permissive female.’

  ‘You would pick on the female to blame,’ said Heron.

  ‘She is to blame, Miss Brooks, for men have always been promiscuous.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear you admit it.’ Heron pulled her gaze from his and looked at the great splashes of moonlight on the lake. The light of the moon was also on her own figure, setting off the air of delicate distinction which some people took for a cool reserve, so that she was less popular with people than her cousin Sybil and yet was warmer at heart than her grey eyes revealed. In some measure her childhood had helped to make her wary of giving away the affections locked up inside her; her father had adored her mother too much to be able to transfer that love to Heron when she alone was left to him. And so she had grown up knowing that it hurt to love too much. It was better to be in control of your feelings, and so as a young woman she had a self-contained air that was deceptive. She wore a finely woven armour that no man had yet penetrated ... even her classic hairstyle added to the illusion that she was not to be ruffled or shaken by the hand of a mere man.

  ‘You gaze at this lake as if it holds a great fascination for you,’ said Edwin Trequair. ‘All the other girls at the party are gazing into the eyes of a young man and seeing there the mystery and the promise which you seem to see in the lake of Memory.’

  ‘Oh, I’m not like other girls.’ She gave her slightly husky laugh. ‘My cousin says I’m a changeling because I fell into the lake as a child and I almost died there. Sybil says I “listen with my eyes” when I come here, as if I’m searching for something I lost all those years ago. Sybil is rather like her name and not nearly as giddy as she appears. Her mother was sister to my mother, you see, and so we’re close cousins rather than kissing cousins.’

  ‘You don’t kiss frequently, Miss Brooks?’

  ‘No!’ She gave him a rather affronted look. ‘Did you follow me out here in the hope that I was the kissing sort and would be only too eager to oblige the tall, dark stranger from the East?’

  ‘Hope is the hardest diamond to find,’ he drawled, but with a dangerous edge to his voice. ‘And I may be the spanking sort, who feels you are long overdue for some of the discipline you obviously lacked in your formative years. Be careful of me, young woman, I’m not yet attuned to the cutting wit of today’s emancipated female.’

  ‘I fully realize, Mr. Trequair, that you come from a land where the women speak with their hands in a praying attitude, heads bowed to the mighty tuan. It must be quite a shock for you to find English women so outspoken.’

  ‘Brazen is the word,’ he cut in. ‘More brazen than the idol and more painted than the courtesan.’

  ‘Thank you! I shall sleep all the easier tonight for knowing what Tuan Trequair thinks of me.’

  ‘Your vanity, young woman, must be inordinate. You take a man’s every remark as personal, as if only you were in occupation of his thoughts and his opinions.’ The dark-blue eyes swept her from head to toe, and never had she suffered a scrutiny that felt so much like an actual touch. ‘As a matter of fact I can tell that your hair is truly red, and because you know that you have the fine white skin that goes with such hair you’re wise and vain enough to refrain from using too much make-up. Your mouth is like Kate’s—scornful and scorning. Your slim neck has never bowed to a punishment or a pleasure. You suit your name—you’re a wild bird, cool as water.’

  Never ... never in her life had Heron been treated to a summary of her looks and her character in such a concise fashion, and she didn’t know whether to be outraged or slightly flattered. He made her sound ... interesting, and she was vain enough to like the idea of being an interesting individual.

  ‘You’re arrogant and outspoken, Mr. Trequair, and I suppose that’s another sign of the way you’ve bossed it over your plantation workers for years. Well, I’m not one of them and I don’t like being spoken to as if I have no right to my own temper and my own opinions. I’m not a doormat!’

  ‘Indeed not.’ Again that mocking laugh seemed to purr in his throat and it seemed to reveal a side to him that was more primitive than suavely cultured. It was a sound that played on Heron’s nerves in the most curious way ... as if for an instant she caught the sound of the jungle in the very English garden of Memory. As if the lake held the scaly shape of a crocodile and a tiger rustled the foliage of the elm and lilac trees. Oh, what nonsense! She tossed her head as if to clear her mind of such thoughts, and announced that she was going indoors.

  ‘I shall be leaving soon,’ he said, and he fell into step beside her slim, silk-clad figure. ‘I’ve enjoyed our meeting, Miss Brooks, and I hope to see you again.’

  ‘I shall be going back to London on Monday, so I don’t think it very likely that we shall see each other again’

  ‘You never know.’ He paused at the head of the terrace steps and stood a moment in her path. ‘In the East there’s a saying that if two people are curious about each other, then they are bound to cross each other’s path again. Curiosity is like the tiger following the scent of the doe—’

  ‘You are the tiger, I am the doe?’ Heron stood there in a drift of light from the French windows of the house and the look in her wide grey eyes was that of scornful youth. ‘Really, Mr. Trequair, you don’t make me eager for another meeting if I’m to be torn limb and silk in order to satisfy your appetite. I shall avoid you when I come again to my uncle’s house.’

  ‘You go on Monday, so there’s yet another day in which we might meet, Miss Brooks.’ He gave her a saturnine smile, and then before she could stop him he reached for her hand and drew it to his lips. They felt warm and hard as they brushed across her skin, and the shock of their touch was running through her as her cousin Sybil appeared in the centre of the open French windows, to stand there with amazed eyes fixed upon the tall, dark figure of the mysterious Edwin Trequair as he kissed the hand of Heron.

  ‘Goodnight, Miss Brooks,’ he said, and the lids of his eyes drooped with lazy mockery as he ran his gaze over her face. ‘Don’t dream of tigers, will you?’

  He released her hand, bowed his head to Sybil in passing, and then was gone leaving in his wake his words and a drift of cigar smoke.

  ‘We-ell,’ said Sybil, ‘you are a dark horse, Heron, running off with the fascinating East Indies man and letting him kiss you in that deliciously foreign way. Dad says he’s Eng
lish, but he looks almost Italian with that dark skin and that hawkish profile.’

  ‘He’s probably Cornish if his name is anything to go by,’ said Heron. ‘And I didn’t let him kiss me—he grabbed my hand in his high-handed way and I found the whole procedure hateful. And don’t give me that old-fashioned look, Sybil! That man does not impress me!’

  ‘Well, I think he’s awfully impressive, and for someone who has lived in the Indies he wears his clothes like a lord. I say, wouldn’t it be exciting if he invited you to tea at the Glass Castle—is he married, by the way?’

  ‘He probably has a harem,’ Heron said cuttingly. ‘Tea at the castle, indeed! I’d be a little fool to go up there without a couple of tough chaperones!’

  ‘Surely you’re exaggerating.’ Sybil gave a trill of laughter. ‘You know what’s happening to you, Heron, you’re getting like that woman you work for. You put everyone on trial before they’re proved guilty. I bet the truth of the matter is that Edwin Trequair is rather lonely. Why else would he have come to my party?’

  ‘Did you actually send him an invitation?’ Quite without realizing it Heron was rubbing the fingers of her right hand backwards and forwards against the back of her left hand, as if she were trying to erase the feel of those warm, hard lips.

  ‘No. Dad invited him over the phone. They have some sort of business connection, and you know Dad! He’s always ready to oil the wheels when it comes to making deals. I didn’t think the Indies man would turn up, and you could have bowled me over when he strolled in looking as if he’d just come off the set of High Society.’ Sybil pouted her pink painted lips. ‘I wish he’d sloped off with me and kissed my hand, but I never seem to attract dangerous men. Only boys like Ben Blake seem to go for me.’