A Strange Likeness. Paula Marshall

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СКАЧАТЬ me wait over two hours in a dam’d uncomfortable chair and enduring your insolence while I did so. I’ve a short fuse, which anyone who works for me soon finds out.’

      This was a lie, but Phipps was too agitated to care.

      ‘Works for you! I don’t work for you! I work for Mr Johnstone.’

      ‘And he works for me,’ said Alan gently. He picked up the clerk’s quill pen, and with the whole office and Johnstone watching him silently, breath drawn in, he rolled it in the ink and negligently wrote his initials on Phipps’s forehead.

      ‘Yes, he works for me, and so do you now. You’re mine, Phipps. Alan Dilhorne’s property so long as you’re in this room. Unless, of course, you care to resign.’

      The silence in the room grew more deathly, broken only by the clerk’s whimpering while he scrubbed at his face with his handkerchief. ‘This can’t be true, Mr Johnstone.’

      ‘Oh, but it is,’ said Alan. ‘Now clean up your disgusting person and your disgraceful work and do it again: properly this time.’

      ‘It’s not fair,’ said Phipps tearfully. ‘You should have told me who you were.’

      Alan’s face was suddenly like stone. ‘Ah, but you see, I needed to know how you would treat someone whom you didn’t know was your employer’s son, and I found out, didn’t I. Didn’t I, Phipps? And if you can’t see what was wrong with what you’ve just said, then we shall never get Dilhorne and Sons’ London branch straight again, shall we?’

      He swung round and addressed his staring staff. ‘The rest of you can get down to it immediately, and do an honest day’s work for once. You’re none of you fit to work in my Sydney office. Mr Johnstone will tell you what I expect of you by tomorrow, and God help you all if it’s not ready by ten.’

      He walked to the door before turning and delivering his parting shot.

      ‘Oh, and by the by, mid-morning porter is out, from today!’

       Chapter Two

       T hat afternoon Eleanor left the schoolroom, where she had been working with Charles and young Mr Dudley, and decided that, four-thirty being almost upon her, she would not trouble to change her clothes in order to meet Ned’s Australian friend. She was still wearing her deep blue walking dress and that would have to do.

      She had reached the last step of the graceful staircase which spiralled to the top of the house when she met Staines, the butler. He bowed and said ‘Mr Ned is in the drawing room, Miss Eleanor, awaiting his friend, and asks you to join him there.’

      Somehow Eleanor gained the impression that he was enjoying a small private joke. She immediately dismissed this notion as fanciful and walked across the stone-flagged hall to the drawing room door.

      She should have trusted to her instincts. Ned had spent the afternoon avoiding her. He had also given orders to Staines for Mr Alan Dilhorne to be taken straight to the small drawing room with the message that Mr Ned Hatton would shortly join him there.

      He had taken care to tell Staines of the likeness and to warn him not to inform anyone else of it before Alan arrived.

      ‘For,’ he had said ingenuously, ‘I wish to tease the family a little and you must not spoil the fun.’

      Staines had agreed to be discreet. All the servants liked Ned: he was so easy, jolly and kind, although some worried what would happen to the Hatton fortune when Sir Hart had gone to his last rest.

      Eleanor said over her shoulder to Staines, in a sudden access of her old impetuous spirit, ‘Australian, is he? D’you think he’ll be wearing his chains?’

      Staines, bowing his head again, opened the double doors for her, and she entered the drawing room to find not the Australian guest but Ned, standing in front of the fireplace studying Lawrence’s portrait of Great-Aunt Almeria in her youth, which hung above it.

      Eleanor resembled her father’s aunt a little, but Almeria Stanton was sterner-looking, and even her airy draperies and the posy of flowers which she was holding did not soften her austere expression. Ned had his sandy head tipped back, the better to inspect it, which struck Eleanor as amusing—as did the outlandish clothes he was wearing.

      She gaily continued teasing him when he turned towards her, his back to the light so that his features were a little obscured. ‘Wearing fancy dress so as not to discommode your new friend, are you, Ned? Why didn’t you put chains on, too? Then he would have felt really at home.’

      Ned looked at her. His eyes seemed bluer than ever, and they roved over her in a manner which, had he not been Ned, would have made her blush.

      Alan found her enchanting. She did not resemble Ned in the least, either in manner or appearance. She was a tall girl, beautifully proportioned, elegantly dressed, from the crown of her glossy head to the toes of her well-shod feet. Ned had spoken of a sister and this must be her. Her colouring was deeper and richer than Ned’s and her hair was a raven-black in colour.

      It was very plain that naughty Ned had told her of a visitor from Australia but had not seen fit to mention the likeness. His mouth twitched in involuntary amusement, but before he could identify himself Eleanor spoke again.

      ‘I understand that you’re taking him to Cremorne Gardens. Tell me, don’t you think that your colonial friend will be overset by such worldly sophistication?’

      Before she could commit herself further, and add to her ultimate embarrassment, Alan spoke at once, privately deciding to reproach Ned for putting his pretty sister in such a false position. He had already learned enough about him to know that what had been done was deliberate.

      ‘You mistake, Miss Hatton,’ he told her, ‘I am not Ned.’ And he deepened the accent which he had not known he possessed until he reached England.

      Eleanor’s hand flew to her mouth in an embarrassed reversion to childhood.

      ‘Not Ned? Then you must be the Australian visitor of whom he spoke. Oh, dear, I have been so mannerless, so gauche. How can I apologise? On the other hand you are so like Ned I can be forgiven for being tactless. Only your voice is different, and, yes, I do believe that you are even bigger than he is.’

      Alan decided not to favour her with his wickedly accurate imitation of Ned’s light drawl.

      ‘Yes,’ he said, smiling. ‘It’s too deep. The voice, I mean. It’s the chains. They weigh it down, you know. They took them off…’

      He paused tantalisingly, still smiling. He had two sisters whom he liked to tease gently, and he wanted to see how this poised and pretty girl would react to similar treatment.

      Eleanor took the bait.

      ‘The chains? Took them off?’

      ‘Yes, when we boarded the ship for England. They said that if we wore them during the journey they’d slow us down too much. The weight again.’

      ‘They did?’ said Eleanor, fascinated by this young man who looked so like Ned but who was yet utterly unlike him when he teased her. On closer inspection he looked very much more severe than Ned, but there was a gentleness in his manner to her which her wild brother had never possessed.

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