Kingfisher Morning

'I won't,' Emma said grimly. 'What could I tell them? I've never known anything.'

Mrs Pat grimaced, hearing the underlying reproach. 'It wasn't my place to tell what Ross didn't want told, m'dear.'

'I feel such a fool,' Emma sighed.

'Why should you? You've been a tower of strength to Judith in her hour of need.'

'I've been deaf, dumb and blind ever since I got here,' Emma said hotly. 'I took Ross for an ordinary run-of-the-mill vet. Instead of that, he's the son of a multi-millionaire who will inherit an enormous fortune very soon. Ross is about as ordinary as gunpowder.'

'Even gunpowder is ordinary if you work with it long enough,' said Mrs Pat, chuckling with amusement. She gave Emma a shrewd look. 'You sound disappointed to find he's going to be a rich man?'

Emma flushed. 'It's no business of mine,' she said with an evasive look.

'Isn't it?' Mrs Pat smiled.

When she had gone, Emma tidied the cottage with the sort of obsessive attention to detail one gives when one needs to drug one's mind with work. Just as she was about to go to bed, the telephone rang. She answered it warily, remembering what Mrs Pat had said, but it was Ross, not a newspaper reporter.

'How are things down there?' he asked abruptly.

'Fine,' she said. 'How is your father?'

'Holding his own,' he said in a comparatively cheerful tone. 'Judith is here, and wants to come down to you for the night, since it looks as if there isn't going to be any sort of emergency here after all. Would it be convenient?'

'Of course it would. This is your house, not mine,' Emma told him.

'Judith can have my room,' said Ross. He paused. 'Are you sure things are all right? You sound a bit uptight.'

'I'm tense, I suppose,' she said. 'I was concerned about your father.'

There was another silence. 'Angry with me for not telling you?' he asked her shrewdly.

'It was none of my business,' she said.

'I can tell that you are,' he said. 'I'm sorry, but I had my reasons.'

'I'm aware of that. You told me at the beginning—if I'd known who you were I might have chased after you like all the other girls you've ever known.' Because of her own hurt she spoke with stinging mockery, hoping to make him angry, as if his anger might ease her own pain a little.

'It wasn't like that,' he said.

'No?' She was icily incredulous.

'Not the way you put it,' he said, beginning now to get angry. 'You're putting a totally false construction on it.'

'It doesn't matter,' she said, wanting to end the conversation. 'Really, it's a matter of indifference to me whether you told me or not.'

'I see,' said Ross. 'Well, goodnight, then.'

She heard the crash of the receiver at his end and stared at the telephone dumbly. He had hung up.

The sleek Daumaury limousine delivered Judith at the cottage half an hour later. Emma heard the car purring down the lane, and met her at the gate.

Judith kissed her on the cheek with almost sisterly warmth. 'Oh, it's so good to see you, so good to be here!'

'You look tired,' Emma said with concern. 'Have you eaten?'

Judith smiled. 'More than enough! You've no idea what it was like at the house…the servants have nothing else to do but make meals and serve them, and they ke

pt trotting out food all evening, as if only by feeding us could they stop themselves sinking into melancholy. They're fond of the old man, you know.'