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“And bop you on the head?”

“Laugh all you like, I’m not going to be left alone!” she told him.

He gave her hand a squeeze. “All right, we’ll be intrepid together. But stand well behind me, Sarah!”

The back door had been left on the latch and fell open in response to the touch of his hand. The light from the kitchen came flooding out into the darkened garden making Sarah blink. But the room was empty, and so was the hall beyond.

“There doesn’t seem to be anyone here,” Robert whispered. “Are you sure you didn’t leave the lights on yourself?”

“Of course I’m sure! If I did leave a light on, I’d remember! Besides, I wouldn’t have left them on all over the house!”

Robert braced himself and walked down the hall, throwing open the door into the sitting room. He stood stock still, with Sarah peering over his shoulder with frightened eyes. Then slowly Madge, swaying a little, rose to her feet.

“I thought you’d never come,” she said.

Sarah felt her breath leave her with the suddenness of a pricked balloon. “Madge!” she gasped.

Madge turned and looked at her, a hint of disapproval on her face as she took in the dress Sarah was wearing. “Have I seen that dress before?” she asked. “It isn’t quite what I had expected you to be wearing so soon—” Her voice trailed off dramatically. “No one wears
black
any longer, but such
bright
colours, darling? People are old-fashioned in the country, you know.”

Sarah said nothing, but she couldn’t help her eyes straying over her stepmother’s scarlet and white linen coat and skirt, crushed from travelling, but as vivid and startling as it had been when she had first put it on.

“Shouldn’t you be at the theatre?” Robert asked her stiffly.

Madge laughed. “Are you worrying about the rent? One night’s truancy wouldn’t make any difference to that, my sweet, sweet landlord!”

“I didn’t think Madge Dryden ever played truant!”

The harshness in his voice caught Madge on the raw. “Perhaps that’s why I’m the one who always does pay the rent! ”

“Robert isn’t renewing our lease!” Sarah put in, hoping to divert her stepmother.

“Oh?” Madge cast Robert an arch look. “Has Sarah been stepping on your preserves?”

Robert looked bleak. “I think I’d better be going,” he said. “We thought you were a burglar, Mrs. Blaney.”

“And instead you found me celebrating my latest triumph all on my own! Were you really going straight home, Robert? I’m sure Sarah wouldn’t have allowed it!”

“Madge,” Sarah began with a touch of desperation, “if Robert wants to go—”

“Of course he doesn’t! I’ve got something to celebrate and the more people to celebrate with me, the better I like it! It’s been worth it, all of it! Going on with that dreary play night after night! Everything!”

“I’ll make the coffee,” Sarah said abruptly.

Her stepmother giggled. “Not for me, darling. Nothing but champagne for me tonight!”

“I’m surprised you’re not celebrating with your friends in London,” Robert put in.

Madge’s smile wavered. “I wanted to include Sarah!”

“Why?”

Sarah had a sudden vision of how Robert must appear to a recalcitrant client. It was not an aspect of him she had seen before and she was not sure that she liked it. She leapt to her stepmother’s defence with a defiance that had nothing to do with Madge Dryden’s hurt, bewildered expression.

“Why shouldn’t she want me to celebrate her success with her?”

“That’s what I want to know,” he said dryly.

Madge pouted. “I don’t like your friend,” she said to Sarah. “I much prefer Alec Farne!” She raised her glass of champagne. “Don’t you?”

“I’ll make the coffee,” Sarah said again.

“Nonsense! We’ll all have champagne! Alec wouldn’t come with me, but he told me to tell you that everything would come right. Silly, because it already has! I
adore
Alec, though!”

Robert’s grey eyes flickered over Sarah’s astounded face. “Do you adore him too?” he asked. “Or is Mrs. Blaney in a minority of one?”

Sarah gave him a speaking look. “Why aren’t you on stage, Madge?”

“Because the play folded last night!” Madge declared, triumphant.

Sarah bit her lip. “But you knew it had to happen, didn’t you? It was so bad, and you can’t have enjoyed it very much.”

Madge shrugged. “I hate doing nothing, and nothing was the alternative when I was first offered the part. Daniel told me something else would turn up, but it never does unless you make it happen. And you didn’t mind, did you, Sarah?”

“It was your decision,” Sarah said gently.

“Daniel thought I ought to have come down here with him. But once you’re out of the public’s eye, you’re dead!”

“I didn’t mind that!” Sarah exclaimed.

Robert’s quizzical look brought the colour flooding into her face. “But there was something that you did mind?” he suggested sweetly.

Sarah made an odd noise of protest and rushed out of the room. In the kitchen she filled the Cona coffee machine and lit the paraffin wick underneath it, bitterly conscious of her shaking knees and an aching longing for Robert’s touch.

She put off going back into the sitting room for as long as possible, but when the coffee was made and was only going to get cold if she delayed further, she put the cups and some cream on the tray with the coffee and carried it into the sitting room, her face averted from the interested looks that both Robert and her stepmother cast in her direction.

“Are you feeling all right?” Madge asked her.

“Yes, thank you. Why?” She sounded completely poised to her own ears and allowed herself to relax a little.

“You haven’t asked me why I’m celebrating!” her stepmother complained.

Sarah smiled at her. “Have some coffee and tell us all about it,” she invited.

Madge made a face. “I’m sticking to champagne! I told you, darling!”

Sarah poured out two cups of coffee and handed one to Robert, offering him the cream and sugar, neither of which he accepted.

“I’m going to be in a new play!” Madge announced with suitable drama. '

“What is it?” Sarah asked. Her caution made her stepmother frown. “Have you discussed it with anyone?”

“I’ve never discussed my parts with anyone but Daniel, and he isn’t here!” A faint smile played about Madge’s lips. “I’ve talked it over with Alec.”

“I should think his advice would be pretty sound,” Sarah agreed, satisfied.

“I don’t think I’d care to follow his advice about much!” Robert snorted. “If I ever saw anyone out to feather his own nest, it’s he!”

“About some things,” Sarah agreed. “But he knows about the theatre.”

“He’s a genius!” Madge breathed.

Revolted, Sarah frowned. “He’s been fairly successful—” To her surprise, Robert threw back his head and laughed. “What’s the matter with you?” she demanded, her eye kindling.

“Not a very loverlike assessment!” he taunted her. But if he had hoped to embarrass her, his barb missed its mark. It was Madge whose eyes widened in dismay, two tears perched on the lower lids and waiting to fall.

“Oh, darling! You’re going to be so cross!” she confessed. “Though why you should be, I don’t know, because you never were very successful with boy-friends, were you?” She turned mournfully to Robert. “They all came flocking after me,” she explained. “Poor little Sarah used to get so cross! She left home because of it!”

“Madge!”

“You never admitted it,” Madge went on. “But I knew! You can’t hide your feelings about things like that from another woman, can you? I mean, I knew that you didn’t like Alec much, but I truly thought that he was interested in you, or he wouldn’t have offered you that silly part.” She frowned. “I wonder why he did? I must ask him.” She brushed the question aside like a tiresome fly. “I’m sure he must have felt
something
for you, though he absolutely denies it now. But then he would, wouldn’t he? Sarah, did you tell him that you were my stepdaughter? That would explain everything if you did !”

“No, I didn’t. But I never hid the fact either.”

“Well, it doesn’t matter. The thing is that I’ve been
longing
to work with Alec for more than a year now, and I couldn’t resist encouraging his connection with you because I thought it might be useful. How else was I to keep in touch with him, if not through you? You
had
to go up to London to keep his interest alive, though I don’t know when I’ve spent a more miserable evening, thinking about poor Daniel all the time!”

Sarah turned her back on her stepmother, her cup of coffee in her hands. “Did you see Neil at the station when I missed the last train?” she asked quietly.

“Robert’s brother? Yes. What was he doing there? He was running about like a half-wit, and he followed you and Alec right back to the car! I was afraid that he would see me, so I hid in the shadows while you got in.”

“I could have come back to Chaddoxboume with him,” Sarah said tonelessly.

“Oh, darling, I’m sorry about that! But you do see that I had to keep in touch with Alec? It hurt like anything when I discovered that it had all been unnecessary because he would have contacted me anyway just as soon as that dreadful show folded. But I didn’t know that then! It
was
important, wasn’t it?”

“Then Sarah did have supper with you,” Robert said from a long way off. “I particularly asked you if she had, Madge, and you denied it.”

“I thought you’d be cross because I’d landed you with looking after Daniel,” Madge explained casually.

“So I was!” Robert remembered grimly.

“But I had to have Alec as my next producer!” Madge said tearfully. “I just had to! And he’s going to find me something that will put me right back on top, so it was all worth while, wasn’t it? I was beginning to think I was over the top. In fact I know I am, so I have to have a bit of his glory to keep me going, or it will all be over, and what should I do then ?”

Robert said nothing. He swallowed his coffee down with a gulp and walked slowly out of the room. A long time later Sarah heard the front door shut after him and, if her stepmother had not been there, she would have run after him. But Madge was there, crying as if her heart would break and, out of habit, Sarah comforted her just as she knew her father would have done.

“It will be so exciting doing a new play!” she said.

Madge sniffed and looked more cheerful. “I’m not over the top! There are years more in me yet! You do think so, don’t you, Sarah?”

“I know so,” Sarah said.

MADGE had always been resilient and in a few minutes she was as gay as ever. “Darling, it is so exciting! Alec will be so good for me! At last I shall be allowed to grow up. He says one doesn’t have to be young all the time. Ethel Merman doesn’t take young parts, so why should I?”

A little startled by the comparison, Sarah murmured some suitable response, but her thoughts were with Robert. She wished he had stayed. Why had he gone so quickly? Was he still unconvinced?

Her stepmother watched her. “You’re not listening, Sarah. What bad manners that young man of yours has, by the way. I suppose he is your young man ? He’s not very loving, is he? Have you failed to keep your man again?”

“At least I haven’t lost him to you!” Sarah snapped.

“You won’t. Not him. Didn’t he say his stepmother had been in the theatre? I think she must have given him a bad time, because he disapproves of the lot of us, which is very boring of him.”

Sarah was surprised by the shrewdness of Madge’s comment. “I think his father was unhappy—”

“Probably wanted to be first, last and all the time with his wife. You want to look out, Sarah. The son is very like his father in that.”

“I’m not afraid,” Sarah said gently.

Her stepmother looked at her as though she were a stranger. “You’ve never had much time for me, Sarah, but don’t grow too far away from me. I need you, especially now. I can’t help the way I am.”

Sarah grinned. “You wouldn’t change anyway! You like being the beautiful Madge Dryden—and why not?”

Madge preened herself with obvious pleasure. “I am still beautiful for my age! And now Alec is producing me, it’s all been worth all the trouble. Tonight, I think I’m truly happy! Have some more champagne, darling, and be happy too !”

It was late when they went up to bed. Sarah went round the house turning out the lights and then she followed her stepmother slowly up the stairs.

“By the way,” Madge said when they gained the landing, “did Daniel leave you much money?”

“I don’t know yet. It wasn’t a set sum, and all his debts and other bequests have to be paid first.”

“But it’s more than ten thousand pounds—apart from what your mother left him?”

“It may be. Does it matter?”

“Not to you, evidently. It does to me. I think Daniel should have left it all to me. I was his wife!” Madge stood in the doorway of her bedroom, actually smiling. “I don’t think Edwin will help me upset a will he helped to draw up, but I think I may get Robert to act for me. What do you think of that?”

Sarah met the malice in her stepmother’s eyes squarely. “You can have the money,” she said, suddenly tired. “Uncle Edwin need never know.”

“Don’t you want me to employ Robert?”

Sarah turned away, feeling sick. “Why do you want to humiliate me, Madge?” she asked. “I can’t believe that the money means anything to you.”

“Humiliate you? Darling, what an idea! I only want what is right. Daniel had no right to leave it all to you over my head like that!”

“He left you ten thousand pounds. Isn’t that enough?”

“No, it’s not! So don’t take that holier-than-thou attitude to me, my girl! You’re like your father in that, just like in everything else. But I won’t be looked down on by you! What makes you think you’re so much better than I am?”

“Oh, Madge, I don’t!” Sarah protested.

“You think you’ll marry Robert Chaddox, don’t you? He won’t have you! He doesn’t like
your
stepmother any more than he liked that stepmother of his! You think you’re too good for the theatre now—”