Читать книгу A Guilty Affair - Diana Hamilton - Страница 8

CHAPTER THREE

‘I SUPPOSE he thought he was being funny,’ Tom muttered, following Bess out to the kitchen.

‘I suppose so,’ she shrugged, tight-lipped. She hadn’t bothered to dignify Vaccari’s remark by making a reply. She’d be a much happier woman if she knew she would never have to speak to him again.

Then, swept by a wave of contrition, she turned and wound her arms around Tom’s waist. ‘I’m sorry I was snappy.’

‘Me too.’ His arms enfolded her briefly. ‘There’s a funny atmosphere this weekend; it’s getting to both of us.’

He dropped a kiss on the top of her head and Bess thought, We both know who’s to blame for that, don’t we? and held onto him with quiet desperation until he untangled her arms and offered placatingly, ‘Tell me about your job offer after lunch. But I warn you, I don’t think you should give it any real consideration—’

‘Fine, we’ll just talk about it.’ Miffed, Bess swung briskly away, cutting him off before he could repeat his opinion that she was not, and never would be, high-flyer material.

He was probably right, and she shouldn’t feel hurt because he’d voiced his opinion. This time yesterday she would have agreed with him and possibly even felt a little bit smug about being the sensible sort of woman who knew her limitations and was perfectly content with what she had.

So why was she feeling hurt and undervalued for no reason? No good reason, she amended swiftly, pushing the things Vaccari had said to the bottom of her mind. She couldn’t imagine why. And wasn’t even going to try to work it out.

She became quite cynical when, over lunch, Helen said with sugary surprise, ‘This is perfectly cooked. Well done, little sister. You should have woken me; I could have helped. This is supposed to be your weekend—and Tom’s, of course.’

She was toying with a small slice of beef and looking spectacularly golden in a daffodil-yellow sweater, and her belated offer of help had to be for the Italian’s benefit. Any reply Bess might have made was swamped by Jessica’s, ‘Bess needs the practice. Twelve months from now she’ll have to give Tom three good meals a day. And you need your rest. You told me how tiring your assignment in the Bahamas was—you have to look after yourself. Don’t you agree, Luke?’

‘How awful for you.’ Bess didn’t want to hear gooey, solicitous sentiments from Vaccari, especially not if they were directed at her got-it-all sister. She helped herself to another roast potato. ‘Personally, I’d love the opportunity to tire myself out in the Bahamas.’

And, so saying, she effectively silenced the lot of them.

The afternoon walk with Tom hadn’t been a success either, Bess ruminated as she drove herself back to London on Bank Holiday Monday afternoon.

As soon as they’d set out she’d explained it all. How Mark Jenson, her former boss at the agency, had set up on his own six months ago, renting elegant premises in Knightsbridge, working hard to establish the kind of travel agency that specialised in holidays for the discerning, seriously wealthy traveller.

‘He’s offering off-the-beaten-track unadulterated luxury to people who are willing to pay top whack to be pampered,’ she’d explained. ‘It’s really taking off, and now he needs an assistant to seek out and vet new venues in the more exotic parts of the world to make sure everything meets his high standards. And do you know what? He thought of me! The job’s mine if I want it, but he needs to know by Tuesday.’ Her face had lit up. A little squirm of excitement had built up inside her. It was there whenever she thought about the offer.

But she’d said honestly, ‘The only downside is the newness of the venture. He’s got more prospective clients than suitable places to send them—so he needs new venues and more employees. But to get them he needs more capital, and if he can’t get it the agency will stagnate and probably sink.’ She’d tucked her arm through Tom’s and reassured him happily, ‘But he’s a fighter. He’ll raise the capital somehow.’

‘You must be mad.’ He’d walked steadily on, staring straight ahead. ‘You’re secure where you are. Where will you be if you join him and the whole thing fails? Because fail it will. You’ll be unemployed. Safe jobs aren’t easy to come by. We’ve decided you’ll work for two years after we’re married. Or had you forgotten? We’ve agreed to invest your earnings to create a nest egg before we start trying for a family.’

He’d given her a scathing look, shaken her hand from his arm and turned to go back to the house. ‘You can’t seriously consider jeopardising your chance to contribute to our future comfort and security? In any case, from the job description, you’d have to be out of the country looking for places to send people who probably wouldn’t want to go there anyway. We’d see even less of each other than we do now.’

She’d had the definite impression that this last had been a complete afterthought. That the investment nest egg was of far greater importance.

Still aggrieved, she parked her car outside Brenda Mayhew’s terraced house in Battersea, reached her luggage from the back seat and rummaged in her handbag for the doorkey.

If he’d said, Go ahead and take the job if you want to try your wings, but I’ll hate having to see even less of you than I do now, she wouldn’t have given Mark’s job offer another thought. As things stood, though, she had the strongest urge to phone him right now and ask when she could start!

Sighing over her contrariness, she unlocked the door and walked inside. Brenda shot out of her sitting room, all middle-aged, grey disapproval, and stated the obvious.

‘Oh, it’s you. I didn’t expect you back yet. You’ll have to go out for supper. Wasn’t expecting you; I haven’t catered.’

‘Don’t worry about it.’ Supper each Monday was fish fingers and mash. Bess wouldn’t pine over missing it. And not for the first time she regretted having agreed to board here during the week.

When she’d first announced her intention of looking for a bedsit in the sprawling suburbs of the capital to avoid the daily drive into work and back, Barbara Clayton had come up with the perfect solution.

A local woman, Brenda Brown, as was, had been her domestic help until she’d married and moved to Battersea. They’d kept in touch—just a short letter tucked in with a card each Christmas. And it was just as well, Barbara had declared, because since she’d been widowed Brenda had taken in a lodger from time to time to help make ends meet. It would be ideal for Bess—a sort of home from home, someone to keep an eye on her, look after her...

Home from home it wasn’t. But Bess hadn’t felt uncomfortable enough to move out. She wouldn’t find anywhere cheaper, and if the suppers Brenda provided were unusually dreary at least she was saved the chore of having to cook for herself.

She lifted her case and began to walk up to her dismal room, and Brenda called, making it sound like an accusation, ‘A Nicola something or other phoned. If you call her back, work out the cost and leave the money on the table. And don’t leave it too late. You know I don’t like being disturbed after I’ve settled down to watch telly.’

Bess knew the older woman hated to miss a moment of her evening’s viewing. She’d paid her licence fee and meant to get her money’s worth. And when Bess used the phone she couldn’t resist turning down the sound, ungluing her eyes from the moving images and applying her ear to the opened door...

Smiling wryly, Bess carried on up, looking forward to talking to Nicola. They’d been at school together before Niccy’s father had made his millions and spirited his adored only child away to some select boarding-school. But they’d kept in contact—closer contact since Niccy had been promoted to assistant producer on one of the more popular TV soaps and her father, in celebration, had bought her a long lease on a sumptuous apartment near Belgrave Square which she currently shared with a chronically out-of-work actress with the improbable name of Dearie.

A nice long natter with her friend would help to cheer her up, she decided, tossing her case onto the narrow bed. She hated this new and unexpected feeling of being at odds with herself and Tom. It was as if the official engagement had unleashed a pack of demons neither of them had known were there, lurking in the background, waiting to pounce.

On her way back downstairs, she wondered if Helen and Vaccari had left Braylington yet. They’d been closeted with her father all morning—with her mother bustling in and out—and when they’d emerged for lunch Helen had looked radiant. She had no idea what the Italian’s expression had been. She hadn’t looked at him.

Annoyed with herself, she caught the thought and buried it deeply. He had no place in her head. Dialling her friend’s number, she heard the sittingroom door creak open. She ground her teeth, swung round and said coolly, ‘I’m timing the call, Brenda. You needn’t trouble to check. I don’t cheat.’ And she sucked her lower lip between her teeth as the door closed again with a thunderous clunk.

She had never voiced her annoyance over the lack of this particular privacy before, enduring it grimly because her phone conversations were always innocuous. She didn’t know what had come over her. And put it out of her mind as she heard Niccy’s voice.

‘Well, was it all wonderful—the engagement party? What did you wear? What’s the ring like?’

Her spirits lifted immediately. Niccy was fun. And because she didn’t want to sound like a misery she refused to say that the weekend had been far from wonderful, that her dress had looked dowdy against Helen’s glitter, that her sister had produced a fantastic man who had made her think and do things that were totally alien. So she concentrated on the ring.

‘A diamond cluster,’ she said, automatically holding out her left hand. But the ring wasn’t there and she went cold all over. Had she lost it already? Oh, how could she have done? Tom would be livid! Then she went limp with relief because she remembered now that she’d put it on the drainer when washing up after lunch. Jessica would find it and keep it safe. She would phone her later, just to make sure.

‘And?’ Niccy prompted. ‘A central stone?’

‘Just a cluster,’ Bess answered quickly, recovering from the shock of thinking she’d lost it and squashing the disloyal thought that the diamonds were few and very tiny. Tom wasn’t mean, she reminded herself. He simply disliked ostentation in any form—witness his disapproval of Helen. How often had he scathingly said that she looked like a Christmas tree with all the lights switched on?

‘Really?’ Niccy snorted. ‘If I’d been Tom I’d have given you a whacking great emerald to match your eyes! Some men don’t have a clue, do they? Listen, you must stop hiding him out in the sticks; get him up to town one of these weekends. We could have fun. I’ll have to meet him some time, won’t I?

‘And talking of fun—which is why I called you in the first place—Dearie’s moving out. She’s met this guy—fabulous to look at, all teeth, muscles and long blond hair. But he obviously keeps his brains in his pants—it will all end in tears, I told her. But she’s besotted—won’t listen. The point of this being, will you move in?’

Bess’s fingers tightened round the receiver. It was very tempting. Niccy’s huge apartment was sumptuous yet homely, the atmosphere wonderfully relaxing. But...

‘Thanks for offering, but I couldn’t afford it. I’m saving to get married, remember. Sorry.’

She was sorry, too. The apartment, never mind being a world away from Brenda Mayhew’s linoleum-covered floors and ugly furniture, was so much nearer her workplace and, far more importantly, Niccy was so much nicer to be around than her present landlady.

‘Of course you could afford it,’ her friend argued lightly. ‘Peanuts. Just half-shares of the service bills. I like company—Daddy knows that; he doesn’t expect me to ask my friends for rent money. If Dearie could find her share of the bills on her meagre income, you could! Think about it. Promise?’

‘Yes. Promise.’ The only thing stopping her jumping at the opportunity there and then was the certain knowledge that Tom would disapprove. He liked to think that Brenda was looking after her and had once said, only half-jokingly, she now suspected, that her landlady would soon let his mother know if she was leading a double life—kicking over the traces while she was out of his sight.

Ending the conversation after a few more minutes of light-hearted chat, Bess went up to fetch her purse to pay for the call, plus the one she intended to put through to check on her ring. But, the ring forgotten, she found herself sitting on the hard narrow bed pondering Niccy’s offer.

Tom didn’t own her. He couldn’t dictate where she should live during the week. He was happy enough while she was under Brenda’s watchful eye, but she knew he would feel uneasy if she moved in with the bubbly, fun-loving Niccy because she, Bess, might find herself having a wonderful time. Without him.

So she couldn’t decide if moving in with her friend for the next twelve months would be worth all the aggro. And it was strange, she thought, her teeth worrying at her lower lip, how Tom and Vaccari had both told her to be herself. Yet their concepts of that were wildly different.

‘Just be yourself,’ Tom had said. ‘That’s good enough for me.’ Thrifty and sensible Bess, thankful for what she had and was, making no waves, never yearning for the impossible or trying to make it happen. Excellent, dutiful, undemanding type wife material.

Vaccari had put it differently, telling her to break away, find herself, realise her full potential. In other words, forget Tom.

She made a sad little snuffling sound, feeling miserable. She had been so contented until this weekend—settled in her job, enduring her weekday lodgings because they weren’t worth making a fuss about, looking forward to her future with Tom. She asked herself why things had changed and angrily pushed away the thought that Vaccari had a lot to do with it.

Utter nonsense. For some reason the wretch got his kicks out of tormenting ordinary, decent people. Throwing a spanner in the works was probably his idea of a fun thing to do. She could safely dismiss him and his troublemaking taunts from her mind. She would pretend he didn’t exist. And if and when he ever married Helen, well, she’d—well, cope with having him as an in-law somehow.

What she had to do was examine her relationship with Tom, reinforce it in her mind, concentrate on his good points, forget the silly pique his remark about her not being high-flyer material had conjured up and get back to being sensible and reasonable again.

And she would never again give Vaccari room in her head.

But that wasn’t going to be easy.

An irritated rapping on the bedroom door heralded her landlady’s formidable presence.

‘There’s someone to see you. He’s waiting downstairs. See what he wants and get rid of him. You know I said no visitors unless by arrangement. Answering doors and running up and down stairs isn’t my idea of a peaceful evening.’

Waiting downstairs he wasn’t. When Bess saw the Italian looming behind Brenda something intensely primeval lurched deep inside her, and her heart flipped over in her chest then dropped like a stone. Wearing an impeccably tailored business suit now, he was enough to stun anyone, and she gaped at him stupidly as he said to Brenda, ‘My apologies, signora. My business here will take moments only.’

The smooth voice was warm enough to melt frost, the purring quality making Bess’s skin curl. And it had an obvious effect on the other woman too, because her, ‘I don’t allow callers, especially not upstairs,’ had lost a hefty dose of vitriol.

‘I congratulate you on your good sense.’ His white smile seemed to light up the gloomy landing, and Bess couldn’t be sure but she thought she saw her landlady simper. She would have found it highly amusing if she hadn’t been desperately wondering why she reacted to him the way she did, and trying to work out why he was here, knowing that, whatever the reason, it wouldn’t be good. Not for her.

Vaccari said, as if he was sure there could be no objections, ‘As I said, my business won’t take long. And please don’t put yourself to the inconvenience of waiting. I’ll see myself out.’ And he smoothly inserted his magnificent body into the room, gently but firmly closing the door behind him.

Bess shot to her feet, her heart beating erratically, watching him with wide green eyes as he weighed up the room: the clumsy furniture, the narrow bed.

‘A suitable hole for a mouse.’ He finished his minute examination and turned tarnished-silver eyes on her, the flickering gleam showing cool amusement. ‘Complete with a dragon to make sure the little mouse doesn’t stray.’

She made herself ignore that. ‘Why are you here?’ Her throat felt tight. ‘Is Helen with you?’ She was probably waiting in his car. Her glamorous sister wouldn’t be seen dead in such dull surroundings.

‘She’s still in Braylington.’ His white teeth gleamed. ‘She and your mother are deep in portfolios of wedding-dress designs. I don’t think either of them will come up for air for at least a fortnight.’

‘Oh.’ That was all she was able to say. She was drained-suddenly and totally drained. For no good reason. Except that what she had feared had come true.

This man was about to become part of her family. This morning’s session with her father made sense now. They had been formally announcing their intention to marry, making plans, setting dates.

She wondered acidly if he would be faithful to Helen. Or would he still go around kissing and manhandling all and sundry when the mood took him?

Probably.

Marriage didn’t make people change.

‘Congratulations,’ she forced out, her tongue feeling thick and heavy in her mouth. ‘I hope things work out for you both.’ She couldn’t bring herself to say, I hope you’ll be wonderfully happy; she didn’t know why, she only knew the words would choke her.

He gave her an odd look then shrugged, as if he thought her stupid. Which, privately, she thought she probably was.

‘I wouldn’t have agreed to sign the contract if I hadn’t been sure,’ he said drily. ‘Unlike most women, Helen is intelligent, totally trustworthy and single-mindedly dedicated to making a success of the coming change in her life. And so, yes, it will work out. For both of us.’

Suddenly, and for the first time in her life, she felt sorry for Helen. This man would be easy to fall obsessively in love with—provided you didn’t look too far beneath the surface, she reminded herself quickly. Did her sister know he regarded their marriage as a contract? That he had only decided to commit himself because he could trust her to devote herself to making him the perfect wife—properly dedicated and single-minded about it?

‘Helen apart, you seem to have a very cynical attitude to women,’ she told him gruffly, wondering waywardly if he regarded her, along with the rest of the female sex, as stupid, false and vacillating. Wondering why it should hurt.

She saw something hard and sharp in his eyes as he looked at her. ‘I have reason to, believe me.’ Then he shrugged slightly, as if the subject bored him—or she did—and pushed a hand into his jacket pocket and produced her missing ring.

‘Jessica found it in a pile of dirty dishes.’ He took her nerveless hand in one of his and dropped the ring into her palm. ‘Now, I’d call that a Freudian slip, wouldn’t you? Think about it. And think about the things I’ve said to you. Or not. It’s your life.’

He swung gracefully round on the balls of his feet and left, and whether it was because he’d looked as if he was bored silly or because she wanted to call him back and slap him for calling her a mouse she wasn’t sure, but she was agitated enough to want to scream the walls down.

Instead, after counting to fifty, forcing herself to calm down a notch or two, she stamped down the stairs and made two decisive phone calls.