The Secret Woman by Victoria Holt

found amusing.
    Oh, the dreariness of the Queen’s House with four women growing old and sad, all waiting for something to change their drab and dreary lives. I knew what it was: Aunt Charlotte to die. Ellen could marry Mr. Orfey. Mrs. Morton was no doubt waiting for what she would get. And I…At least I thought I should be free. Why didn’t I go away? Could I have found a post? Perhaps somewhere in England there must be an antique dealer who could make use of my services; and yet much as I hated her—for hate her I did at times—I felt a responsibility toward Aunt Charlotte. If I went she would be bereft. I was doing more and more of the essential work. I could run the business alone—except of course that I was never allowed to see the accounts. But in my heart I believed that I had a duty to her. She was my father’s sister. She had taken me in when my parents left me in England; she had looked after me when I became an orphan.
    The clocks ticked on. There was a very special significance in their ticking now.
    ***
    Aunt Charlotte had grown worse; she could not move from her bed. The injury to her spine aggravated her complaint, said Dr. Elgin. Her bedroom had become an office. She still kept a tight hold on the books and I was never allowed to see them; but I was taking over all the selling and a great deal of the buying, though everything had to be submitted to her first and accounts passed through her hands. I was very busy. I devoted myself passionately to my work and if ever Ellen or Mrs. Buckle started to talk about what was happening up at Castle Crediton I implied that I was not interested.
    One day Dr. Elgin asked to see me; he had just come down from Aunt Charlotte’s room.
    He said: “She’s getting worse. You can’t manage her without help. There’ll come a time very soon when she’ll be completely bedridden. I suggest you have a nurse.”
    I could see the point of this but it was, I said, a matter I should have to discuss with my aunt.
    â€œDo so,” said the doctor. “And impress on her that you can’t do all that you do and be an attendant in the sickroom. She needs a trained nurse.”
    Aunt Charlotte was against the idea at first but eventually gave in. And then everything changed because Chantel Loman had arrived.

Four
    How can I describe Chantel? She was dainty and reminded me of a Dresden china figure. She had that lovely shade of hair made famous by Titian, with rather heavy brows and dark lashes; her eyes were a decided shade of green and I thought her coloring the most arresting I had ever seen. She had a straight little nose and a delicately colored complexion which, with her slender figure, gave her the Dresden look. If she had a fault it was the smallness of her mouth but I thought—and this had occurred to me with some of the finest works of art I handled—that it was the slight imperfection which added something to beauty. Perfect beauty in art and nature could become monotonous; that little difference made it exciting. And that was how Chantel seemed to me.
    When she first came into the Queen’s House and sat on the carved Restoration chair which happened to be in the hall at that time, I thought: “She’ll never stay here. She’ll not come in the first place.”
    But I was wrong. She said afterward that the place fascinated her, as I did. I looked so…forbidding. A regular old maid in my tweed skirt and jacket and my very severe blouse and my really lovely hair pulled back and screwed up in a way which destroyed its beauty and was criminal .
    Chantel talked like that—underlining certain words and she had a way of laughing at the end of a sentence as though she were laughing at herself. Anyone less like a nurse I could not imagine.
    I took her up to Aunt Charlotte and oddly enough—or though perhaps I should say naturally enough—Aunt Charlotte took a fancy to her on the spot.