Читать книгу The Bartered Bride - ANNE WEALE - Страница 6

CHAPTER ONE

EXPECTING him to be a middle-aged toad, Francesca was surprised when the man who rose from behind the large orderly desk was a tall dark thirtysomething, not precisely handsome but undeniably personable.

‘Ms Turner...please sit down.’ He gestured to the chair on the outer side of the desk and waited until she was seated before resuming his own seat.

She knew nothing about him, except that his name was Reid Kennard and he occupied a large office on the highest floor of a prestigious office block in the City.

This area of London was one of the world’s great money markets. Judging by his discreetly luxurious surroundings, this man was one of the market’s moguls.

To Fran, until very recently, money had been something she spent with careless extravagance on clothes for herself, presents for others and anything else she wanted. Now the supply had dried up. That was why she was here in the formidable presence of this well-built six-footer whose physique didn’t match her mental image of a top-level financier.

All she knew about him was that Mr Preston, her late father’s lawyer, had said that Reid Kennard wished to see her and might be able to help her and her mother out of their predicament.

Predicament being the understatement of the year, Fran thought wryly, leaning back in the comfortable leather chair and automatically crossing her legs, remembering a moment too late that this was a no-no in the books of advice on how to impress interviewers.

The movement caused Mr Kennard to shift the focus of his cold grey gaze from her face to her shapely knees and then to her slender ankles.

Fran was accustomed to men admiring her legs furtively or openly according to temperament. Reid Kennard belonged to the latter group, but whether his frank appraisal was appreciative, critical or indifferent it was impossible to tell. He had the most deadpan expression she had ever come across. It made her nervous. She wasn’t used to being nervous. She didn’t like it.

The appraisal didn’t last long, perhaps not more than three seconds. Leaning forward, his forearms resting on the edge of the desk and his long-fingered hands loosely clasped, he returned his gaze to her face.

‘You’re in trouble, I hear.’

Lacking any regional or social accent, his voice gave no clue to his background. Self-assured and brisk, it was a voice she could imagine giving decisive orders people would jump to obey.

Had she met him in surroundings not indicative of his occupation, and been asked to guess it, she would have surmised that he held a senior rank in one of the special units of crack fighting men called to the world’s trouble spots when drastic action was the only solution. He had an air of contained physical power. A man of action rather than a desk-bound number-cruncher.

‘Yes,’ she agreed, ‘we are. Since my father’s death, my mother and I have discovered that instead of being comfortably off we’re extremely hard up... virtually penniless.’

‘Not penniless,’ he said dryly. ‘The watch you’re wearing would pay the grocery bills of an average family for several months.’

‘I shan’t be wearing it much longer.’ She looked down at the stylish Cartier watch her parents had given her for her eighteenth birthday. ‘But I don’t mind that. I can cope with the change in our circumstances. It’s my mother I’m worried about. She’s not young. She has never worked. She—’

He interrupted her. ‘Nor have you, I understand. The press describe you as a playgirl.’

‘The press puts labels on everyone...not always accurate. It’s true I’ve never had a job. There was no point. My father was rich...so we thought. I wasn’t brainy enough to train for one of the professions. I don’t have any special bent. The most useful thing I could do was help to keep other people employed, not take a routine job someone else needed.’

‘You don’t have to justify your butterfly existence to me, Ms Turner. But without any work-experience, you’re not going to find it easy to start supporting yourself, particularly not at the level you’re accustomed to.’

‘Presumably you didn’t ask me here to tell me what I already know,’ she replied, with a flash of irritation.

There was something about his manner that put her back up. He hadn’t smiled when he greeted her. Beyond standing up when she was shown in by his secretary, he hadn’t done anything to put her at ease.

‘Why did you send for me?’

Rising, he picked up a file lying on the top of his desk. He walked round to hand it to her. ‘Have a look through that.’ He strolled away to a window looking out on a vista of rooftops. He stood with his hands behind him, the right hand clasping the left wrist.

The file held plastic pockets containing illustrations taken from magazines and the glossier kind of catalogue. Mostly they showed pieces of sculpture, paintings and other objets d’art. There were also several photographs of horses, an aerial view of an island off Scotland and a picture of a small French château.

Half turning from the window, he said, ‘They’re all things that caught my eye over the last few years. Some of them are now mine. I’m in the fortunate position of being able to indulge my acquisitive impulses...as I expect you did before your father died.’

‘Not on this scale,’ said Fran. She couldn’t see where this was leading.

As she glanced enquiringly at him, Reid Kennard returned to his desk, resting one long hard thigh along the edge of its polished surface and folding his arms across his chest.

‘There’s one picture in there you’ll recognise. Carry on looking.’

Intrigued, she obeyed, turning the pages more rapidly than before. Suddenly, with an indrawn breath of surprise and puzzlement, she stopped. She hadn’t expected to see a photograph of herself.

It had been taken at a party for socialites. She was wearing a figure-hugging dress of black crushed velvet and showing a lot of sun-tanned cleavage, having recently returned from a winter holiday in the Caribbean.

‘What am I doing here?’ she demanded, baffled.

‘You, I hope, are going to be my next major acquisition, Ms Turner.’ For the first time a hint of amusement showed in the hard steel-grey eyes and flickered at the corners of his wide, chiselled mouth.

Inconsequently, it struck her that his mouth was at variance with the rest of his features. It was the mouth of a sensualist in the face of a man who otherwise gave the impression of being supremely self-disciplined.

But it was the meaning of his extraordinary statement, rather than the contradiction between his mouth and his eyes that preoccupied her at the moment.

‘What do you mean?’ she said warily.

‘I need a wife. You need financial support. Do you understand the word fortuitous?’

‘Of course I do,’ she retorted, her long-lashed green eyes sparkling with annoyance at the implied aspersion on her intelligence.

It was true she had been considered a dunce by most of her teachers and had never done well in examinations. But that was because she hadn’t been interested in the things they wanted her to learn...grammar, maths, physics and incredibly tedious bits of history, all of them taught in a way guaranteed to send most normal teenagers—particularly the sort of restless, hyperactive teenager she had been—into a trance of boredom.

She said, ‘It means happening by chance...especially by a lucky chance. But I can’t see anything lucky about my father dying of a massive coronary in his middle fifties with his business on the rocks and his wife destitute,’ she added coldly.

Matching her coldness, he said, ‘In my experience, most people make their own luck. Your father’s lifestyle wasn’t conducive to a long healthy life. As a businessman, he took too many risks for a man with responsibilities.’

‘Did you have dealings with him?’

She knew next to nothing about her father’s business life. Since her late teens he had spent little time with his family. It was years since he and her mother had shared a bedroom. Fran knew there had been other women.

‘Not directly. But after seeing that picture, I made a point of finding out more about you. I was on the point of making contact when your father died and I put the matter on hold. In the light of subsequent events, I’ve adapted my original plan to deal with things more expeditiously. If my information is correct, you have no relationships with men in train at the present time?’

‘How did you find that out?’

He said coolly, ‘I had you investigated...a reasonable precaution in the circumstances. Marriage is a very important contract. When people are buying a house, they have searches made by surveyors and lawyers. I had you checked out, very discreetly, by a private detective. You may want to run a similar check on me. For the time being my secretary has prepared a file which will give you most of the information you need.’

Retrieving the file she was holding, he placed another slimmer folder on the edge of the desk in front of her.

‘I can’t believe I’m hearing this. I thought this was a merchant bank...not a marriage bureau.’

Fran’s eyes were both baffled and angry. He didn’t look like a crazy person. In his expensive suit and diagonally striped silk tie—perhaps the emblem of one of those old boys’ networks which still wielded so much influence—he looked eminently sane and sensible. But he must be out of his head to believe he could buy a wife as casually and easily as everything else in the file he was putting away in a drawer.

‘It is a bank and I am its chairman,’ he said calmly.

‘You wouldn’t be for much longer if your shareholders heard what you’re suggesting. They’d think you were out of your mind. You can’t buy a wife.’

‘It isn’t the usual method of acquiring one,’ he agreed, going back to his chair. ‘But these are unusual circumstances. I have neither the time nor inclination to follow the traditional course. You are in urgent need of someone to straighten out the financial shambles you find yourself in. If you agree to marry me, your mother won’t have to move and you won’t have to worry about her future. I’ll take care of that. Think it over, Francesca. When you’ve had time to assess it, I think you’ll agree it’s an eminently sensible plan.’

For some reason his use of her first name detonated the anger which had been building inside her. Despite the red glints in her chestnut hair, it was rare for Fran to lose control of her temper. But she did now.

Jumping up, she said fiercely, ‘I don’t need to think it over. Nor would any sane person. I’m furious you’ve made me come here, thinking I’d hear something useful. This trip to London has been a complete waste of time. I’ve a damned good mind to write to your board of directors and tell them they’ve got a nutcase in control.’

Without waiting for his reaction, she marched to the big double doors of solid mahogany and yanked one of them open. Glowering at the startled secretary at her desk in the outer sanctum, she slammed it resoundingly behind her and returned to the private lift which had brought her up to this rarefied level of the building.

‘Is everything all right, Mr Kennard?’

His PA didn’t know why he had sent for Francesca Turner, but she knew there could be no justification for the girl to emerge from his room scowling like one of the snake-haired Furies in classical mythology.

A conservative fiftysomething who had been promoted to PA while the late Sir Miles Kennard was chairman, Miss Jones knew enough about Ms Turner to conclude she was thoroughly spoilt.

Perhaps Mr Kennard had told her a few home truths. Although diplomacy was one of his many skills, when it was appropriate he could be outspoken, even ruthless. He was a much tougher man than his father. And needed to be. The world was a harsher place now than when she had joined the bank as a junior secretary almost thirty years ago.

‘Everything’s fine, Miss Jones, thank you.’

Although he was always formal, sometimes he gave her a smile which was far more rewarding than the casual use of her first name. That he should smile now surprised her. She had expected Ms Turner’s ill-mannered exit from his presence to leave him in one of his forbidding moods.

As his visibly baffled PA withdrew, it crossed Reid’s mind that Barbara Jones and Francesca Turner were about as dissimilar as any two women with roughly the same background could be.

The only child of middle-aged parents, Miss Jones had spent her adult life caring for them in their old age. She was the most selfless, reliable, deserving person he knew. The only rewards she could expect were the satisfaction of duty well done and a modestly comfortable pension.

Francesca represented the opposite extreme. It seemed likely she had never performed an unselfish act in her life. Unfairly, she had all the assets his PA lacked: a beautiful face and figure, a vibrant personality and a high degree of self-confidence, partly inborn and partly the result of an expensive élitest education.

Although Reid could usually predict how most people would react to any given circumstance, not having met Francesca he hadn’t been sure how she would respond to his proposition. On the whole her spirited reaction had pleased him.

It showed that she was hot-tempered, impulsive and combative. At the same time it revealed that she wasn’t a coward, willing to clutch at any straw to save herself from having to grapple with the gritty realities of switching from rich girl to poor girl.

From the moment she had entered the room, he had known that the shots in the social pages of the glossies hadn’t given a false impression. In reality she was even more attractive than she looked in her photographs.

Although his main motive for marrying was not the customary one, it wasn’t his plan to have the kind of relationship where physical pleasure was something found outside the marriage. The extra-marital liaisons engaged in by many of his peers were not on his own agenda. In his view there was no reason why a practical marriage shouldn’t include good sex.

Taming that pretty firebrand until she ate out of his hand was a challenge he hadn’t foreseen but expected to enjoy.

Contrary to what she had angrily told Reid Kennard, Fran had another reason for coming to London: to pack all the personal belongings in her father’s London pied-à-terre. This was now in the hands of an estate agent who expected to sell it quickly. Whatever price it fetched wouldn’t help Fran and her mother. It would go towards paying off George Turner’s numerous creditors.

The flat was near Marble Arch, part of a low-rise block built on the site of a large private mansion. All the trees had been carefully preserved, making the gardens surrounding the block seem an oasis of peaceful greenery in the heart of the noisy metropolis.

After her father bought the apartment, Fran had supervised the redecoration and chosen the furnishings. She had done the same at their home in the country. Her mother, a dedicated gardener, had no interest in interiors.

Occasionally Fran had toyed with the idea of taking a course in interior design and starting a business. But always something had happened to distract her. Anyway her most serious and important ambition had been to be Julian’s wife.

As soon as she got back to the flat, she changed out of the businesslike black suit she had chosen for the interview with Reid Kennard. Under it she was wearing a white bodysuit, a flesh-coloured bra and sheer black pantyhose over micro-briefs. She stripped them off, stuffed her thick mane of hair into a plastic cap and took a long hot shower.

After putting on fresh underclothes and the apricot sweatshirt and jeans she had brought in her overnight case, she began to feel better, calmer, capable of reviewing the episode more rationally.

Coming back in the taxi, too upset to remember that taxis were a luxury she could no longer afford, she had found herself trembling with rage...and some other emotion not as easily defined. Now the most sensible course was to put the experience out of her mind. Forget it. Get on with the job in hand, clearing the flat of her father’s things and her own.

Her mother had never come here. Daphne Turner disliked London. Big cities had nothing to offer her. Even the famous Chelsea Flower Show didn’t appeal. She was a country person. Which was just as well because sometimes George Turner had entertained other women at the apartment.

Once, five years ago, Fran had arrived in London unexpectedly and found him in bed with an unknown woman at four in the afternoon. She could still remember the horrified looks on their faces when, thinking the flat was empty and puzzled by the strange noises coming from her father’s bedroom, she had disturbed a scene deeply shocking to a seventeen-year-old virgin.

She had already guessed that her father was unfaithful, but to catch him in the act had been traumatic. Her affection for him, never as strong as her love for her mother, had turned to revulsion.

Her own experience of sex had been limited to a few kisses. By that age most of her friends had gone all the way, but Fran had been saving herself for Julian. She had known since she was fourteen that he was the love of her life and also that he wouldn’t like it if she let other boys do more than kiss her.

The day his mother had told her he was engaged had been the worst day of Fran’s life. She had always believed that he loved her but, because he was the son of Jack Wallace, her father’s chauffeur, was keeping it under wraps until he had established himself.

Two months ago, she had been a guest at Julian’s wedding. By the day she heard him say ‘I do’, she had pulled herself together enough to get through the service and the reception without showing the misery she felt. A week later her father had died. Soon after that, when the truth about his business came out, her mother’s world had caved in.

Recently, life had been a series of disasters. But that was the way it went. One damn thing after another. And it wasn’t over yet. She had to find somewhere affordable for her mother to live and the means to support them both. A tall order.

She was on her way to the kitchen to make a cup of coffee when someone pressed the front-door buzzer. Answering it, Fran found a motorbike messenger outside.

‘Ms Turner?’

‘Yes.’

‘Package for you. Would you sign for it, please?’

Fran wrote her name on the form and took the padded bag. There was nothing to indicate where it came from, only a plain white label with her name and address printed on it. Perhaps it was something she had ordered and forgotten about?

She closed the door and, walking back to the living room, pulled the tab that opened the bag and peered at the contents, immediately recognising the file Reid Kennard had said was a résumé of his life. Now there was a sheet of headed paper clipped to the cover.

Aiming at the sofa, Fran flung the package from her. Bloody cheek! Infuriating man! As soon as she’d had her coffee, she’d find some sticky tape and a label and send the file back, unstamped, with UNSOLICITED, UNWANTED BUMPH written large above the address.

She went to the kitchen, half filled the electric kettle and perched on a stool at the breakfast bar. Usually she drank herb tea, being on a more or less permanent health kick. But sometimes, on days like this, she allowed herself a shot of caffeine.

Postponing dealing with the package, she spent the next hour going through her father’s wardrobe, making sure there was nothing in the pockets of his suits before she folded them. Rather than giving them to a charity shop, she hoped to sell them. The chaos he had left behind him made it essential to raise money in every way possible.

With the hanging cupboards empty, the next job was the drawers...but after another cup of coffee, or maybe a glass of white wine.

She opened a bottle of Muscadet and filled a glass. Instead of taking it back upstairs, she couldn’t resist her curiosity about the letter that man Kennard had sent with the file.

Later she debated going to a movie to take her mind off her problems for a couple of hours. But there was still a lot to be done and she had already wasted half an hour reading the contents of the file.

She decided to phone for a pizza and concentrate on the job in hand. Some time during the evening she would telephone her mother. Mrs Turner didn’t know about the interview with Kennard. Fran had felt it best not to mention it. She’d been trying to play down the financial side of their situation.

Her supper arrived sooner than she expected. But when she opened the door, it wasn’t a pizza delivery man who stood outside. It was Reid Kennard.

Fran’s friendly expression froze into a mask of dislike. ‘What do you want?’ she said curtly.

‘I thought you might have calmed down a little by now.’

‘I haven’t...and I’m busy.’

She started to shut the door but he put a foot across the threshold and the flat of his hand on the door to hold it open.

She had never expected to hear herself saying, ‘How dare you?’ to anyone, but it was what sprang to her lips, followed by, ‘Get out!’

‘I’m not inside yet,’ he said blandly. ‘We have things to talk about. May I come in?’

‘We have nothing to say to each other. You have no right to pester me like this. If you don’t go away, I’ll call the security man and have you thrown off the premises.’

‘On what grounds?’

‘Making a nuisance of yourself.’

Reid Kennard smiled, but it wasn’t a kind or amused smile. It was the sort of expression she associated with sadists about to do something which would give them pleasure but cause excruciating pain to their victim.

‘I think you’re bluffing.’

He stepped into the hallway. To her chagrin, Fran let him. Not that she had much option. He was far too large and muscular for her to use physical means to deny him access. She had muscles of her own, but not in the same class as his.

He had looked a strong man in his office, but that might have been partly good tailoring. Now that he had changed out of his city suit into chinos and a dark blue cashmere sweater over a cotton shirt, it was clear that the breadth of his shoulders owed nothing to clever padding.

‘This is outrageous,’ she snapped, while instinctively backing away to avoid coming into contact with that tall and powerful male body as he closed the door.

‘Don’t pretend to be in a panic. You know perfectly well I’m not going to harm you.’

‘How do I know that? You’ve already shown signs of derangement.’

‘Not really. I’ll admit to being unconventional. You’ll get used to it.’ He glanced round the hall and then, with a gesture at the open door of the living room, said, ‘After you.’

Having no choice but to act on her threat or let him speak his piece, Fran walked ahead of him. If he expected to be invited to sit down, he could think again.

Grinding her teeth, she saw that she had left the file on the low glass-topped table in front of the sofa. Even worse, it was open, proving she had looked through it.

But the first thing that caught his eye wasn’t the file. It was the half-full glass of wine—her second—she had left by the telephone.

‘A bad habit...drinking alone,’ he remarked, with a sardonic glance at her hostile face.

‘I don’t as a rule. It’s been a trying day. I’m not used to dealing with people who think they can trample roughshod over the rest of the world.’ She folded her arms and glared at him. ‘You have to be the most objectionable person I have ever met.’

‘Because I want to marry you? Even if they don’t wish to say yes, most women regard a proposal as a compliment.’

‘Not when it comes from a stranger who regards women as chattels.’

‘There are cultures where it’s the custom for girls not even to see their husband’s face until after the marriage ceremony. Marriage is a practical institution. It’s because our culture ignores that that we have so many divorces. Wouldn’t you rather stay married?’

‘I’m not interested in marriage...certainly not to you.’

‘Why not, if there’s no one else in your life? Or did my investigator slip up there?’

At this point the buzzer sounded again. She saw him looking displeased by the interruption as she went to answer the door. This time it was the takeout delivery man. She took the box to the kitchen before paying him the money she had ready in her pocket.

Rejoining Kennard, she said pointedly, ‘My supper’s arrived. I’d like to eat it while it’s still hot.’

Ignoring the hint, he said, ‘You ought to keep your door chained until you see who your caller is.’

‘Normally I do. It’s only because I thought you were the man with the pizza that you were able to barge in.’

‘That was lucky...for me.’ He began to look round the room, taking in the colour scheme, the books and paintings, and the mirrors. Fran loved mirrors, especially antique ones. As a child, her favourite book had been a copy, inherited from her grandmother, of Through the Looking-Glass. Somehow the wrong-way-round view seen through a mirror always looked better than what was really there. She had often wished she could step through the frame of a mirror into a world where things were the same but different; her parents’ marriage a happy one and herself a model pupil like her elder sister.

‘Nice room. Who designed it?’ asked Kennard.

No one had ever remarked on the way the room looked. She couldn’t help feeling a slight sense of gratification that someone had finally noticed the effect she had spent a lot of time and thought achieving.

‘Nobody well known,’ she said. ‘Please...I want to get on with my supper and I have to have everything packed by tomorrow afternoon. I really don’t have time to talk...even if we had anything sensible to talk about.’

‘A pizza’s a poor sort of supper...especially if you’re eating alone. Let me buy you a decent dinner and try to convince you that my plan makes a lot of sense. Then, if you like, I’ll give you a hand with the packing.’

‘Absolutely not! No way!’ Fran said emphatically, but not with much hope he would accept her refusal.

He didn’t. ‘No to dinner, or no to help with the packing?’

‘No to both...no to everything. Have another look through some magazines and pick out some other woman. I’m not for sale, Mr Kennard.’

‘Do you like music?’ he asked.

Disconcerted by the seemingly irrelevant question, she said, ‘Some music...yes.’

‘How do you feel about Smetana?’

‘Never heard of him.’ It was an exaggeration. She had heard the name but that was the limit of her knowledge.

‘He was a Bohemian composer who lived in the last century. His most important work was done in Prague, helping to form a national opera. He had a nasty end...went deaf and died insane.’

‘If I wanted to know about the lives of obscure composers I’d borrow a book from the library.’

‘Is reading one of your pleasures?’

‘Yes, as it happens it is, but—’

‘That’s good. It’s one of mine and I have a large private library.’

Feeling her temper starting to simmer, Fran said impatiently, ‘I shouldn’t think it includes the kind of books I enjoy and if Smetana is one of your favourite composers your CDs would send me to sleep. I had enough of that stuff in musical appreciation sessions at school. I only like pop music.’

It wasn’t true. Julian had taught her to share his love for classical music, but if Kennard thought she was what he would define as a Philistine so much the better. It might put him off this insane determination to marry her.

Not visibly deterred, he said, ‘The reason I mentioned Smetana is because his most famous opera is called The Bartered Bride. Barter, the exchange of goods, was how people traded before money was invented. I’m not trying to buy you, Francesca. I’m proposing a trade-off...things I need for things you need. Are you sure you won’t change your mind and come out to dinner?’

‘Definitely not!’

‘In that case I’ll leave you to your pizza and take myself off for some Arbroath smokies at Scotts, or maybe their Loch Fyne smoked salmon.’ As he mentioned two specialities of one of London’s best restaurants, the hard eyes warmed with malicious amusement.

Could his private detective have found out that she adored fish and seafood?

On his way to the door, Kennard added, ‘I’ll call you in the morning. After you’ve slept on the idea, you may find it more appealing.’

‘Thanks for the warning. I’ll take the phone off the hook,’ she snapped, as he let himself out.