A face appeared over the white gate. Sapphire blue eyes spat furiously at Emma. 'Who threw that?' The eyes skimmed over them all, settled unerringly upon Robin, peeping sheepishly out from the security of Emma's shadow. 'You? It was you, you little…'
'Hey!' Emma put in sharply before the angry expletive could escape from those scarlet, enamelled lips. 'Hey, not in front of the children, if you please!'
The other girl switched her gaze back to Emma. She was exquisite, Emma noted dispassionately, her pink-and-white complexion assisted by cunning artifice but nonetheless clearly based upon real beauty, her delicately moulded features framed between the smoothly brushed wings of silvery blonde hair. She wore a timelessly elegant suit in palest sand-colour. The blouse beneath it was the same vivid red as her lips. She would have looked superb, had it not been for the splash of mouldy apple juice which lay across the left shoulder of her suit.
'Oh, dear, I am sorry,' Emma lamented. 'If we had known you were there…it was an accident…'
'My suit is ruined! I shall have to go home and change…it really is too bad!'
'Of course, I'll pay to have it cleaned,' Emma assured her. 'And we are really sorry, aren't we, Robin?' looking down at him commandingly, her eyebrows lifted.
'Sorry,' he whispered, clutching her skirt with one tight little fist.
The sapphire blue eyes were studying Emma. 'Who are you, anyway? The nanny, I suppose?'
Emma hesitated. It was too complicated a story to go into again. 'I'm in charge of the children,' she hedged.
'You d
on't look much like a nanny,' the other girl said coldly. 'Far too decorative.' Her eyes were hard, her mouth unsmiling. 'Don't get any ideas. It won't do you any good. He's impervious. Better women than you have tried and failed, and I warn you, if you queer my pitch, I'll make you sorry!'
Emma was baffled and angered. 'What are you talking about?' she asked.
The other laughed. 'Oh, come off it! You know who he is, and I wouldn't blame you for getting ideas, but take a gypsy's warning and keep your hands off.'
'Who is he?' Emma repeated. 'Do you mean their uncle? He's the local vet, isn't he?'
The other gave a sharp, unamused crack of laughter. 'You're kidding!'
Emma stared at her without replying, completely bewildered.
The other girl's hard blue eyes searched hers, a narrow pencil of light focussed on her. Then, very slowly, the other smiled. It was a strange little smile. Emma did not like it at all.
'Well, well, well!' murmured the other girl ambiguously. There was a pause, then she said softly, 'Least said, soonest mended.'
'Look,' Emma began sharply, 'what are you talking about? I haven't the foggiest idea…
'Never mind,' came the reply crisply. 'I must rush back and change. Just remember, in future, look where you're throwing things!'
The girl disappeared, leaving Emma staring after her.
Tracy was standing at the hedge, quietly picking elderberries. 'That's Amanda Craig,' she now said in a flat voice. 'She lives at Queen's Daumaury.'
Emma looked at her interestedly. The name was familiar. The house frequently featured in magazines as a perfect specimen of the English country house, set in a tiny park in which roe deer roamed, with silver pheasants and peacocks wandering along the rose-embowered terraces. It belonged to old Leon Daumaury, the financier, a bitter recluse who disliked publicity yet, necessarily, attracted it by shunning it so fiercely. Was Amanda Craig related to him, or employed by him? Her expensive appearance could indicate either. But what was her interest in their uncle, and what had she meant by her odd remarks about him?
Donna had slid through the gate and was running off along the lane on her short legs, heading for the inviting shade of the wood.
'Come on,' Emma called to the other two children. 'Catch up with Donna!'
On the far side of the cottage, in the shadow of the wood, Donna was peering over a fence at some donkeys, their great eyes curious as they stared back at her.
'Barnaby and Jessie,' cried Tracy delightedly. 'They belong to Mrs Pat.'
Emma looked back at the cottage as they climbed up the steep side of the wood. It lay below them, the low creamy stone roofed with a thatch a shade deeper. The walls were thick, and bulged here and there, beneath the eaves and window-sills, yet they had a look of enduring strength. The windows were latticed, diamond-leads, twinkling back in the morning sunlight as though the house was pleased to have them beneath its thatch. Roses, pink and plentiful, climbed everywhere around the walls, scenting the morning air.
'It looks like the cottage the Three Bears lived in,' said Emma to Donna.
The little girl chuckled, nodding.