The Devil at Archangel Read Online Free PDF Page A

members of the staff both at the London hotel
    and later at the airport had suffered under the whiplash of her tongue.
    Christina decided wryly that Mrs Brandon had probably been right to
    warn her that a job as her companion would be no sinecure, but in
    some ways this made her feel better about the whole thing. At least, if
    she stayed, she would feel she was earning her salary, she told herself
    prosaically.
    But her thoughts at the moment were far from prosaic. Life was
    suddenly too golden, too full of promise for that. It had been real and
    earnest, and might be again, but new she was free to indulge herself in
    any fantasies that occurred to her. She could even, if she wished,
    change into one of the new bikinis in her case and go down to join the
    sunbathers round the pool, just as if Aunt Grace's rather mousy little
    goddaughter who had never worn anything more daring than the
    regulation one-piece swimsuit on the school uniform list had never
    existed.
    Perhaps she didn't, she thought wonderingly. Perhaps all along that
    had merely been a facade for this strange, excited creature, enclosed
    in her iridescent bubble of exhilaration. The thought that all bubbles
    burst eventually, she crushed down with determination, lifting her
    face almost ecstatically to meet the sun.
    One thing was certain. No matter what Mrs Brandon had said, she
    was not going to spend the rest of the day shut up in a stuffy hotel
    room. She had gathered from her employer that visits to Martinique
    were rare, and she was going to make the most of this one.
    Half an hour later she was descending the wide stairs to the foyer. She
    had changed out of the trouser suit she had worn for the flight, and
    was wearing a brief scarlet cotton skirt, topped by a white shirt which
    tied in a bow at the front of her waist, leaving her midriff bare. She
    had experimented with her hair, tying it back with a ribbon, and piling

    it on top of her head, but had finally decided to leave it loose on her
    shoulders, even though, she thought with a grimace, it made her look
    younger than ever.
    She had shopped for her new clothes in London, revelling in the
    choice offered by the boutiques and department stores. It was such
    fun for a change to be able to choose things because they were
    becoming, and not because they were classic styles which would
    'wear'. Mrs Brandon, to her surprise, had encouraged her to pick gay
    clothes and up-to-the-minute styles, but when Christina had
    mentioned that she was planning to visit the hotel beauty salon to
    have her hair cut and re-styled, her employer had issued an
    implacable veto.
    Christina supposed rather ruefully that she could have insisted, but it
    did not seem worth making a fuss over such a relatively unimportant
    matter. Besides, Mrs Brandon's attitude had taken her aback
    somewhat. She would have supposed that Mrs Brandon would prefer
    her new companion to look slightly older and more dignified without
    a mass of hair hanging round her face, but it proved, if Christina had
    needed convincing, that her employer was not a woman who could
    easily be summed up, or whose reactions to anything could be
    confidently predicted-
    She had bought a small guide book at the reception desk, and decided
    to confine herself to an exploration of Fort de France. Time did not
    permit very much else, although she would have liked to have taken
    one of the guided tours to Mount Pelee, and the nearby city of St
    Pierre which the volcano had well-nigh destroyed over seventy years
    before.
    But Fort de France had plenty to offer in the way of sightseeing.
    Christina was entranced by the houses with their wrought iron
    grillework, so redolent of bygone eras when Creole beauties wore
    high-waisted Empire line dresses, and cooled themselves with

    embroidered fans rather than air-conditioning. She toured the
    cathedral, and walked dreamily through the Savane, oblivious of the
    other tourists and their busy cameras.
    The perfume shops on the Rue