Читать книгу Dangerous Deceiver - Lindsay Armstrong, Lindsay Armstrong - Страница 6

CHAPTER ONE

‘HE WAS——’

Martha Winters paused for two reasons: because she’d been about to describe Simon Macquarie as beautiful and because she was about to confide things she’d never told anyone before. But as she glanced at her friend Jane’s woeful, tear-drenched face she sighed inwardly, and continued, although on a slightly different tack. ‘He was extremely arrogant as a matter of fact. We didn’t like each other much at all. Well...’ She shrugged her slim shoulders and reflected that it was almost impossible to explain what had happened between her and Simon Macquarie, and that if Jane hadn’t just been painfully ditched by her boyfriend she wouldn’t even be trying to, in an effort to offer some consolation.

To make matters worse, Martha and Jane had shared a flat for two years and had become really close, but Martha was leaving for London in the morning and Jane, who was as tender-hearted as she was often gullible, was in a bad way about that as well.

‘And he ditched you, Martha?’ Fresh tears slid down Jane’s face. ‘You poor thing.’

Martha smiled slightly. ‘It was three years ago, Jane. Do I look like a poor, abandoned thing?’

‘No,’ Jane replied consideringly. ‘You always look wonderful and I know you’ll be a sensation in London but I also happen to know there hasn’t been a serious man in your life for the last two years, which is a bit incredible for a girl like you. Do you still love him or have you sworn never to be taken for a ride by any man again?’ she asked dramatically.

Martha hesitated because despite stringent denials to herself over the years she still couldn’t be sure that there mightn’t be a grain of truth in both those propositions. So finally she said rather drily, ‘If it was love it was also highly uncomfortable and the kind of love you’re probably better off without; it was certainly one-sided and yes, you’re right, I’ve been a bit wary ever since. But that’s not to say,’ she added briskly, ‘that I’ve lost all faith in the right man coming along one day—and neither should you.’

Jane sniffed and blew her nose. ‘But that’s what I keep thinking. I was really sure about Stuart!’

Martha grimaced. She’d privately thought Stuart was painfully pompous and overbearing and that Jane was much better off without him, but all she said gently was, ‘Chin up, love. You will make some man a wonderful wife one day.’

Which set Jane into a fresh paroxysm of tears for several minutes and it was awfully hard to resist when she got over it bravely but said, ‘Tell me more about this man you can’t forget, Martha.’

Martha winced inwardly but her voice was quite normal, even casual as she said, ‘He was from the UK and out here on promotional tour. His family has produced a very famous liqueur—in France as a matter of fact—for centuries.’

‘So was he one of those frightfully upper-crust Englishmen? Or a French Don Juan?’

Martha laughed. ‘As a matter of fact he was a Scot, although you wouldn’t have known it from his accent. And he wasn’t frightfully posh, although...’ she paused ‘...well, you could tell straight away he was very upper crust but not because he talked loudly or sounded as if he had a plum in his mouth.’

‘I know what you mean,’ Jane agreed knowledgeably. ‘It’s more of an aura, isn’t it?’

‘Exactly.’ Martha glanced at her wryly.

‘So what did he look like? Was he wildly handsome? Was he Gallic? I presume if they’ve been making this stuff in France for centuries there has to be some French connection. Was he dark and dangerous or red-headed and given to wearing kilts?’

Martha laughed. ‘No. And yes, there is a lot of French blood in the family apparently but he wasn’t dark and dangerous to look at——’ She stopped a bit abruptly.

‘Well, then—fair but still dangerous?’ Jane ventured.

‘Not fair either,’ Martha said slowly. ‘Light brown hair, grey-green eyes, big and tall, thirty-two then——’ Again she stopped.

‘And devastatingly handsome.’ Jane grimaced.

‘No. It’s hard to pin-point it with some men, isn’t it?’ Martha mused. ‘Some of them seem to have it all without being devastatingly or pin-up handsome. It’s something to do with their eyes, I think, and their hands and what they say and how they say it. It’s to do with being grown-up and relaxed, yet in command when they need to be—all those things. But he was quite capable of being damning and dangerous.’ Yet his body was beautiful, she thought with an odd little wrench of her heart. Strong and fit, wide shoulders...

‘So, arrogant but nice in between times? Good-looking without being embarrassingly so? Wealthy and assured—definitely dangerous for a nineteen-year-old girl almost straight from the bush,’ Jane said softly with such a look of heartfelt concern in her eyes that Martha moved uncomfortably. ‘How far did it go and how did it start?’ Jane added.

Martha thought ruefully, I’m not going to get away without spilling most of the beans to Jane, having come this far...

‘How did it start?’ she said slowly—and it was suddenly like being transported back in time...

She could remember exactly how she’d felt the day it had started. How disenchanted with life, how bitter she’d felt about the way fate had provided a crippling drought that had seen her parents have to walk away from their sheep property with nothing. Had seen her suddenly transplanted to city life with no qualifications and being reduced to waitressing on a contract basis, at a plush Sydney hotel on that occasion, to promote a famous French liqueur—dressed up, as she thought of it, like a tart. She could feel, almost as if she were wearing it again, the discomfort of a too short skirt, the black and gold sash with the company name on it, the pinch of her obligatory stiletto-heeled shoes as well as her disapproval of black, fish-net stockings.

She could feel again the way men had devoured her with their eyes and how one short, balding man with a paunch had got bolder and touched her intimately. It was almost as if she had once more in her fingers the long-stemmed rose she’d plucked from a vase and had presented to this man, with what she’d hoped was a seductive wiggle, at the same time as she’d raised her foot with every intention of driving her stiletto heel into his shoe and thereby pulverising some of his toes.

She remembered so clearly the tall man who had materialised at her side before she could do it, and taken her arm and marched her out of the room...

‘Look here——’ She wrenched her arm free.

‘No, you look here,’ he said coolly and cuttingly. ‘Who ever gave you the impression that this job provided the opportunity to importune and proposition the guests misled you entirely.’

‘I...’ Martha closed her mouth and stared up into a pair of grey-green eyes beneath medium-brown hair and was conscious of a good physique beneath a beautifully tailored suit. She was also aware that the man was extremely well-spoken and English, not Australian, and finally that he was appraising her from head to toe with a sort of casual arrogance that was nevertheless quite damning—and it incensed her. ‘Is that so?’ she said before she stopped to think, and wiggled again. ‘Thought that’s why I was all dressed up like a tart—what a waste! Still and all——’ she realised she’d made her accent deliberately ocker ‘—I did get your attention. Are you the big boss?’

Those grey-green eyes hardened although he said gently enough, ‘May I make a suggestion—why don’t you try your services in a brothel?’ and walked away.

I don’t believe I did that, Martha was still saying to herself several days later, and going hot and cold with the embarrrassment of it all; but there was worse to come. A week to the day later she was doing the same kind of job, serving champagne and canapés at an art show this time, in an even more revealing outfit if anything, when who should she encounter but the same man.

What she hadn’t bargained for, however, was that the shock of laying eyes on him again would be rather like an electric shock. And making the discovery of how his hands, his clever eyes, his tall, easy carriage and air of assurance—that could so easily turn to such civilised yet doubly damning contempt—how all of those things had been just under the surface of her mind. How, although she hated him, there was something about him that was tormentingly attractive...

What broke the spell was the way he’d taken a glass of champagne, looked her over meditatively and in a way that had made her horribly conscious of her tight skirt and low-cut top, before he’d said only audibly to her, ‘Once a tart always a tart, I guess,’ and turned away.

Oh, no, you don’t! was Martha’s first coherent thought, and she deliberately twisted her heel, cannoned into him and, as he turned back, staggered and spilt six full glasses of champagne over him.

‘Dearie me—I’m so sorry,’ she said with utterly false contrition. ‘How could I be so clumsy? Here, let me clean you up!’ And she started to dab at him with the napkin she had over one arm.

But he took her wrist and restored her hand to her, murmuring, ‘Thank you but I’d rather you didn’t—it’s a bit public here for the kind of message you’re trying to get across, and anyway, perhaps we ought to have dinner first?’

‘Dinner?’ Martha stared at him. ‘First?’

‘Before we go to bed,’ he said patiently. ‘It might just give us the opportunity to exchange names—first,’ he added with a grave, totally mocking little smile.

‘I...’ Martha tossed her head, and her mother or father might have recognised the glint in her blue eyes. ‘OK, I’ll get my coat!’

‘Don’t you think you should finish up here before we——?’

‘No way! After last week and now this I’m bound to get the sack,’ she said prosaically. ‘Not that I mind,’ she hastened to assure him, and smiled dazzlingly up at him. ‘I’ve got the feeling I’m on to bigger and brighter things. Let’s go, mister!’

They went, Martha collecting the sack at the same time as she collected her coat, but she was too angry to care.

They went to a small Italian restaurant that was not, as she’d expected, cheap and nasty, but chic and tasteful. She hid her surprise and made a big thing of discarding her coat and smoothing the low-cut neck of her dress, refreshing her lipstick and combing her hair—things she would normally never have dreamt of doing at a dinnertable.

‘What is your name, then?’ she said brightly when she’d arranged herself to her satisfaction, and was confident that a number of other diners were looking at her with either amused curiosity or raised eyebrows.

‘Simon,’ he said.

‘Pleased to meet you, Simon. I’m Martha.’ She stood up and extended her hand. ‘You know, I’m not too sure if you’re a hotel executive or—well, whatever the hell you are is fine with me.’ And she sat down, having shaken his hand vigorously and made her comments audible to all.

‘You should be on the stage, Martha,’ he replied with a considering look that took in the golden glints in her long fair hair, her deep blue eyes, the curves of her figure—a purely male summing up of a member of the opposite sex that was at the same time quite relaxed.

‘Believe me, Simon——’ she sat forward with her elbows propped on the table, her cleavage more exposed than it had ever been in her life, and that tell-tale little glint in her eyes again ‘—I’m sure I could be. It’s only a matter of being noticed. But you haven’t told me what you are.’

He said nothing for a long moment and she just knew he was laughing at her, which incensed her all the more. So that when he did start to tell her she oohed and aahed, appeared suitably impressed, even quite dazzled. And she kept up a flow of bubbling, suggestive chatter throughout the meal until her teeth started to feel on edge.

Then the bill came and he said, ‘Well, Martha, would you like another cup of coffee or should we go somewhere more private?’

Whereupon she gazed at him narrowly, laughed harshly and said in a way that she hoped was both world-weary and incredibly common, ‘Oh, no, you don’t, mister. It takes a bit more than some pasta to get me to bed!’ And she stood up and folded herself into her coat with a flourish.

He made no move to rise; he appeared to be amused if anything and he said only, ‘How old are you, Martha?’

‘Nineteen—what’s that got to do with it?’

‘Nothing, necessarily,’ he drawled. ‘Goodnight, then.’

She glared at him and swung out of the restaurant.

Two days later she opened the door of the dingy bedsitter she rented to find him on the doorstep. And she didn’t have to simulate surprise and annoyance; she was in fact quite stunned, then furious, because two days had been ample time to discover how ashamed she felt of herself. Conversely, she was prepared to admit it to no one, least of all Simon Macquarie.

‘What are you doing here?’ she said rudely. ‘And how did you find me?’

His lips twisted. ‘It was quite simple. Don’t tell me it didn’t occur to you, Martha, that all I had to do was make enquiries from the catering company that used to employ you?’

That did it. ‘Hey!’ She rearranged her features into a cheeky smile. ‘You are a bright boy, Simon! Not that I really doubted it. It’s just that you’ve caught me with my hair down.’ She had in fact just washed her hair. ‘But never mind—come in. And you can tell me,’ she added, with a wink, ‘what you’ve thought up now to get me to sleep with you.’

He took his time answering. He looked around the depressing room and then looked her over thoroughly. She was wearing faded jeans and an unexceptional white cotton top and had a towel slung round her neck with which she’d been drying her hair. And at last he said, with a faint quizzical smile touching his lips, ‘Before we go into that, can I buy you lunch? I know, I know,’ he said wryly, coming to stand right in front her, ‘that the price of a meal is not going to do it—I think I might have learnt that lesson.’

‘Then what?’ she said before she could stop herself.

‘You might have to tell me that, Martha. In the meantime, it’s a nice day, there are some nice beaches on Sydney Harbour—why don’t you bring a swimming costume? We could have a dip before lunch.’

He drove her to Watson’s Bay and they did just that—had a swim before a fine seafood lunch at Doyles. And Martha worked conscientiously on her tart act, setting her teeth on edge again but aware that this man aroused two things in her—a troublesome attraction and a deep sense of hostility. But he didn’t attempt to touch her and he delivered her home without making any arrangements to see her again.

Suits me, she thought, and for the next few days applied herself diligently to getting another job. The trouble was, she couldn’t get Simon Macquarie out of her mind. She kept thinking of his tall body slicing through the water beside her, thinking of the fact that for an Englishman—well, a Scot in fact, as she now knew—he wasn’t all pink and lily-white but lightly tanned, and there was something quite beautiful about the strong, lean lines of him that tended to take her breath away. Thinking how adult he was, how obviously cultured and sophisticated, how it would be a pleasure to drop her act and just be herself, wondering what he’d make of her true nineteen-year-old self. But when he reappeared on her doorstep five days later she was furious with herself because of it.

‘Oh, it’s you again,’ she said flatly. It was a chill evening, her feet were sore from walking to half a dozen job interviews, none of which held out much hope, and what lay ahead was an evening alone, making herself toasted cheese. ‘Come up with anything new but lunch or dinner?’

‘Yes, this,’ he said quietly, and took the door-handle out of her hand, closed it and took her in his arms. ‘Let’s see how we enjoy kissing each other, Martha,’ he said, barely audibly and with soul-searing little glints of amusement in his grey-green eyes.

Shock held her suspended for a long moment. Shock and the feel of him against her body, the way it made her heart start to pound suddenly, how she shivered involuntarily at the feel of her breasts against the hard wall of his chest. Shock as she wondered whether she was not much better than the role she was trying to play anyway...

It was this thought that made her toss her head and say, ‘OK—let’s see what you can do, mister! But only a kiss, mind.’

‘Whatever you say, Martha,’ he murmured. And then, quite a few minutes later, ‘How did I do?’

She had to swallow as she stared up into his eyes, swallow and desperately try to compose herself. Because what she’d been determined should be a light-hearted, shallow, give-nothing-away experience had been anything but. Instead, the feel of his fingers on the skin of her throat and the curve of her cheek before his mouth met hers had produced a kind of rapture she’d not before experienced. And the feel of his arms around her had evoked a consciousness of her body that had been quite stunning. And the way she’d melted against him as he’d kissed her had been anything but shallow and light-hearted...

‘You did OK,’ she said with an effort. ‘But hey, I learnt a long time ago not to get too carried away doing this. Could you let me go? My feet are killing me and I’m as hungry as a hound!’

What she saw in his eyes, though, startled her because it appeared to her to be sheer, wicked enjoyment. And he said gravely, ‘Of course. I too learnt long ago not to get carried away doing this. Can I say just one thing before I do?’

Martha opened her mouth, closed it then said, ‘Fire away, mister, but I haven’t got all night.’

He lifted a wry eyebrow. ‘My apologies. I was merely going to say that you’re...beautiful.’

‘Thanks, mate!’ But she tore herself away from him before she added, ‘You’re not so bad yourself. Mind you, I generally go in for Latin types—don’t know why; there must be something about dark hair and eyes that turns me on. Care for some toasted cheese? It’s about all I’ve got.’

‘No, thank you, Martha. I have a dinner appointment shortly, but perhaps I can help out in the matter of toasted cheese.’ And he pulled a fifty-dollar note from his pocket and before she was aware of his intentions opened a gap between the buttons of her cardigan and tucked it into her bra. ‘For services rendered,’ he said gently, and left.

Martha took a deep, furious breath, plucked the note out and tore it up.

‘I don’t know why you keep popping up like this,’ she said coolly, the next time he called, a Saturday lunchtime.

‘Is that your way of saying, Make me an offer I can’t refuse or go away?’ he queried with a dry little smile.

‘Probably. Fifty bucks doesn’t go far,’ she retorted, and stuck her hands on her hips. ‘So what’s it to be today?’

He studied her rather pretty floral skirt, thin white jumper and the simple knot she’d tied her hair back in. ‘We could go to the races.’

Despite herself a spark of interest lit her eyes, something he obviously noted because he said, ‘Do you like the horses?’

‘They’re OK,’ she conceded. ‘But I’m not dressed to kill.’

‘As a matter of fact I prefer you when you’re not,’ he said wryly.

‘You’ve never seen me dressed up.’

‘Well, no, but I’ve seen you dressed down, which was what I thought you might have meant—my apologies.’

Martha cast him an angry look beneath her lashes, and went out of her way for the entire afternoon to be as common as she possibly could. But, far from being perturbed, he took her to dinner and took her home without attempting to lay a finger on her.

Which provoked her, although she could have killed herself, into saying, with her hand on the car door-handle, ‘I see you’re not flashing any fifty-dollar notes around tonight, mister.’

‘Would you like me to?’

‘Suit yourself.’ She shrugged. ‘’Night, then!’ And she slipped out of the car. He made no attempt to stop her.

But over the next few weeks it wasn’t always like that. In fact, over the next few weeks she reminded herself of a cat on hot bricks. She would wonder if she’d ever see him again and tell herself she didn’t care, but knew she did. She hated the way he could, simply by arriving on her doorstep, make her heart start to pound like a drum and all her nerves quiver. But if he left her without touching her she felt incredibly bereft, even while, when he did kiss her, she tried to go out of her way to let him know she didn’t give a damn. Which only amuses him, she reflected once, and had to amend that, Well, not always. Sometimes he gives me back more than I bargained for; sometimes he can be much cleverer and more cutting in what he says, as if there’s a darker side to him than he normally displays.

So this is really crazy, she told herself angrily. It’s as if I don’t know myself any more. Why am I continuing this farce? Because he believes it, an inner voice answered, and you can’t forgive him for that. And that’s even crazier, she thought miserably. But that very evening when he turned up out of the blue and she resolved to have done with Simon Macquarie he all but routed her completely.

‘It’s a beautiful night. Would you like to drive to South Head? We could watch the moon over the sea.’

‘No,’ Martha said ungraciously. ‘Look here, mister, don’t think you can turn up whenever it suits you and expect me to be all sweetness and light and availability.’ She had, in fact, just got home herself from the job she’d at last got—curiously with an opposition catering company and doing exactly what she’d been doing when they’d met. Although this time she wore a conservative black dress and a frilly voile apron.

‘I see,’ he drawled, leaning his broad shoulders against the wall and watching her lazily as she pulled the apron off and threw it over a chair. ‘Has one of your Latin lovers claimed you for the night? You know, Martha, there’s not a great deal of evidence of men splurging on you.’

‘There will be,’ she said flatly. ‘I just haven’t yet met the type who can afford to splurge. Barring you, of course. I don’t know why, but I’ve got the feeling you’re something of a miser, Mr Simon Macquarie. Either that or the world’s not drinking much cognac these days.’ She grimaced. ‘And don’t,’ she said curiously tautly as he moved his shoulders, ‘give me that old spiel about concentrating on my beautiful soul.’

‘No,’ he murmured. ‘I won’t. To be honest, I’m not sure what kind of a soul you have, Martha, but you do have an exquisite body: skin like smooth satin, lovely bone-structure beautiful eyes...Have you ever been in love?’

‘You’re joking,’ she said scornfully.

‘So you don’t believe in it?’

‘Right at this moment, no.’ She turned away with a toss of her hair. ‘But don’t let that keep you awake at nights!’

‘Martha.’

She stiffened as he spoke from right behind her, and said, ‘Why don’t you just go away?’

‘I will, when I’ve done this—no, don’t fight me. We both know now that you quite like it despite the lack of a commercial, paying aspect to it that’s obviously dear to your heart.’

She turned and said fiercely, ‘You’re so clever, aren’t you?’

‘Not always, no, otherwise I wouldn’t be here doing this,’ he drawled. ‘But since I am ...’

What prompted her to kiss him back with sudden tense, angry fervour was not entirely a mystery to her. What it led to was...

They’d turned no lights on but the moon he’d spoken of was enough to illuminate the old settee they sat on, the curve of her breasts where her button-through dress lay open and had slipped off her shoulders, her front-opening bra laid aside, her head on his shoulder.

Nor did it hide how she trembled as he drew his fingers down her skin and touched her nipples in turn, and how she mutely, at last, raised her mouth for his kiss in a gesture that told its own tale.

But although he did kiss her it was brief and strangely gentle, and then he moved her away and closed the edges of her dress for her, before standing up.

‘You don’t want to go any further?’ she said in a strained, husky voice that wasn’t much like her tart voice.

‘Yes, I do.’

‘Then ...?’

‘I think we should resist it, Martha,’ he said abruptly. ‘And I probably don’t have to tell you why. I don’t make a practice of buying love.’

Martha closed her eyes then glanced down and started to do up her bra and her dress. He said nothing but watched her bent head.

‘OK,’ she said at last, and stood up herself.

‘Just ...OK?’ he queried drily.

‘What do you want me to say?’ Some of the colour that had drained from her cheeks was coming back—too much of it, she thought shakily but made an incredible effort. ‘Cheers, it’s been good to know you—that kind of thing? Why not?’

‘Martha——’

But she turned on him suddenly like a tigress. ‘Go away, mister. I know that you’re trying to tell me I’m not good enough for you—well, you don’t have to make a picnic of it! Just go away and stay away and see if I care!’

It was at that moment that her downstairs neighbour who lived with his invalid mother and, despite his dark hair and dark eyes, was a very sober, serious-minded twenty-three-year-old dentistry student, knocked on the door to ask for a couple of teabags, only to get the surprise of his life as Martha opened it.

‘Vinny, darling, come in,’ she said delightedly. ‘Simon’s just leaving. Couldn’t have worked it out better if I’d timed it with an egg-timer, could I?’

So that’s that, Martha said to herself several times over the next days. I’ll never see him again, for which I should be profoundly grateful.

But she couldn’t help but be shocked by the pain this brought to her heart.

In the event, she did see him again. Three days later, just as she was about to leave for work, he came with a bunch of daisies.

‘Oh, now look here,’ she began, but discovered her heart was beating erratically with, of all things, hope.

‘Could you just ask me in, Martha?’

She hesitated, then with an inward tremor thought, Have I got another chance? Could I tell him how this all happened, how it got out of hand?

‘Well, I have to go to work in ten minutes but I suppose so.’

‘Ten minutes is all it will take.’

‘I could make a quick cup of coffee,’ she said, trying to keep her voice steady, trying for anything that would give her courage.

‘No. No, thank you. These are for you.’ He held out the daisies. ‘I’m going home this afternoon. I...’ he paused ‘...I felt I should come and say goodbye.’

‘Going home—to the UK?’ Her voice seemed to her to come from far off. ‘How long have you known that?’

He shrugged. ‘Weeks. Martha, there are some things——’

But she took the daisies and clenched her fist around the stems. ‘Well! You’re a fine one, aren’t you, mister? In fact I don’t think you’re any better than the dirty old men who pinch me on the bottom.’

‘That’s something I haven’t done, you must admit, Martha,’ he objected wryly.

‘No, you’ve gone a lot further, you must admit, Simon,’ she parodied angrily, ‘and all in the cause of amusing yourself at my expense. If you must know I think you’re a right bastard.’

‘Oh, come on, Martha,’ he said roughly, ‘what did you expect—a diamond bracelet? Or were you trying to hang out for a wedding-ring? Trying,’ he emphasised, ‘not terribly successfully a couple of nights ago.’

The sheer, soul-searing memory of his rejection that night fired her poor abused heart to fury. ‘I hate you,’ she gasped, and slapped his face with all the force she was capable of. ‘What’s more, if all you can afford are daisies——’ she tore some heads off the offending flowers, totally ignoring the fact that she rather liked daisies normally ‘—I’m much better off without you.’

‘I wonder,’ he murmured, and wrested the battered bunch from her grasp, pulled her into his arms and started to kiss her brutally.

‘Oh ...’ she whispered when it was over but could say no more and he didn’t release her.

He said instead, ‘I came here to try to talk some sense into you, Martha. To tell you to stop this dangerous game you’re playing with men, but I guess my earlier conviction was correct—once a tart always a tart.’ He smiled unpleasantly as she moved convulsively in his arms and added, ‘God help any man who does fall in love with you, my little Aussie tart; they’ll probably regret the day they were born.’

He released her then, picked up the remnants of his flowers, closed her hand round the tattered bunch and left.

‘Oh, Martha ...’

Martha came back to the present with a bump as she observed the new tears in Jane’s eyes. ‘Janey,’ she said ruefully, ‘you wanted to know—now you do. And I was supposed to be cheering you up, not the opposite!’

‘But it’s so sad,’ Jane protested.

‘No, it’s not, not any more.’ Martha jumped up suddenly and strode over to the window. ‘I made a fool of myself; I guess we all do that sometimes but I’m much wiser now.’

‘And you just can’t forget him, can you?’ Jane said softly. ‘Is that why there’s been no one else?’

Martha was silent for a long moment, then she said wearily, ‘Jane, wouldn’t you hate to think of yourself reduced to that by a man who was no more in love with you than——? I can’t even think of a comparison. So yes,’ she said shortly, ‘there are some things that are hard to forget.’

‘But you didn’t give him much of a chance to fall in love with you by the sound of it, Martha,’ Jane objected.

‘I wanted him to, though. I can’t tell you how much... Oh, what the hell?’ She turned back from the window defiantly. ‘The thing was, despite all those wild hopes and dreams, do you know why I kept up that appalling act? Because I knew deep down I was so way out of his league that he would never do more than amuse himself with me.’

‘But why?’ Jane asked intensely. ‘You’re beautiful, you’ve got spirit, you’re intelligent, you——’

Martha held up a hand. ‘All that’s——’

‘True!’ Jane insisted.

‘Pretty girls are a dime a dozen,’ Martha said scornfully. ‘If I fell by the wayside no one would even notice. The thing is, in those days I was raw,’ she said baldly. ‘Oh, I don’t mean I was uncultured or uneducated but I was certainly unsophisticated,’ she added impatiently. ‘I had lived all my life on a farm not quite beyond the black stump but not far from it and I only knew about sheep and horses and motorbikes—don’t you see?’

‘Yes, I do,’ Jane replied. ‘Not that I agree with raw, except perhaps in your heart.’ She stopped and waited.

Martha paced around a bit then tossed her long fair hair back with something like a shiver.

. ‘Displaced, dispossessed, dumped in a big city with no qualifications—of course you were raw,’ Jane said quietly. ‘With pain and anger, with a huge chip on your shoulder against life and all those who lived it with wealth and ease and assurance—and hungry for love. You were also nineteen,’ she added prosaically as Martha cast her a look that told her clearly she was verging on the dramatic, then grinned. ‘Don’t forget your hormones, ducky. Every magazine you ever read tells you they can make a girl’s life hell!’

Martha stared down at her, then her beautiful mouth curved into a reluctant smile and she plonked down on the other end of the settee. ‘Promise me something—don’t let’s lose touch——Oh, no,’ she said helplessly as more tears fell but Jane started to laugh through them and protest that this was the final shower...

It was an eight-hour flight to Singapore, then nearly twelve to London, which gave Martha a lot of time to think, and she sighed several times and wished rather devoutly that she hadn’t unburdened herself so to Jane because it had brought it all back and made her wonder how long it would take to forget Simon Macquarie.

I suppose I should take my own words of wisdom to heart, she thought with irony once, and remind myself that if it hadn’t been for him I mightn’t be where I am today. She laid her head back in the dim cabin as the 747 flew through the night and most people slept around her, and acknowledged that as a direct result of that stormy encounter she’d made a pledge to herself that one day she would be the kind of girl a man like Simon Macquarie could fall in love with. Assured, sophisticated, worldly and certainly not a hot-tempered, rash spitfire who had to wear abbreviated clothes to make a living.

Yet it had been clothes that had got her started towards her goals. Not that she’d even considered modelling clothes as her chosen career; it had chosen her one day out of the blue when at yet another wearying cocktail party a young man with a ponytail and two cameras slung round his neck had touched her on the shoulder and told her in broken English that he could make her into the next Elle MacPherson.

He hadn’t, of course. But she’d slowly worked her way into both photographic and catwalk modelling with André Yacob’s help, not only photographically but because he’d been able to impart to her some of his almost uncanny love and understanding of fabrics and clothes—and in the process enhanced both their financial positions quite considerably. Which had given her the leeway to go about sophisticating herself, as she thought of it, and to help her parents after the awful tragedy of losing their farm, until they both died within months of each other. That was when she’d decided to fulfil her longheld dream of travelling abroad, and although André had nearly burst into tears and had begged her to stay he’d finally succumbed to her determination and come good in a surprising way. Since she’d had a pair of English-born grandparents and was able to get a work permit, he’d said she might as well keep her hand in at the same time and had written to a friend of his mother’s in London—a dress designer, Madame Minter—introducing Martha. Consequently, Martha had an appointment to see Madame Minter the day after she arrived. Although not well-known in Australia, Martha had heard the name and heard it spoken with some reverence.

But if it comes to nothing I’ll just start my holiday, Martha thought for the umpteenth time somewhere over India; now why don’t you go to sleep?

But even when she did fall asleep she dreamt about Simon Macquarie watching her with that dispassionate, lazy amusement he was so good at, or occasionally with something darker in his eyes and mood that she detected but couldn’t understand—as she systematically pulled up beds and beds of daisies...

‘Well?’

‘Dear, oh, dear!’

Martha took a deep breath in the rather barn-like studio above an exclusive Chelsea shopfront that featured only one exquisite black silk dress in the window behind the gold scroll on the glass that said simply ‘Yvette Minter’, and thought, This is all I need! Because, on top of jet-lag, her luggage had been lost, she’d had to cope with her first dizzying experience of London, buy herself some clothes and now, only twenty-four hours after landing, was confronted with this angular, autocratic French woman who’d looked her up and down and, in only slightly less fractured English than André’s, commanded her to strut her stuff in a strapless gold evening gown with a huge, billowing, unmanageable skirt. And now she was shaking her head sorrowfully.

Martha’s chin came up. ‘Look, I know I might not be looking my best, Madame Minter, but I can’t be that bad,’ she said drily.

Madame Minter pulled a scrap of lace from her pocket and applied it to her eyes, still shaking her head sorrowfully.

‘OK!’ Martha tossed her head. ‘Say no more, love!’ And she reached behind her to unhook the dress.

‘Stop, you foolish child,’ Madame Minter commanded, and put the hanky away. ‘I only express thees emotion because I wonder where you ’ave been all my life—ah, the ‘auteur, the wonderful disdain. I ’ave not seen the like of it for years!’

Martha’s mouth fell open.

Madame Minter continued, though, ‘And just a leetle touch of vulnerability now and then! Plus the athleticism, the legs, the river of gold ’air, the eyes like deep pansies, the delicate bone-structure so sometimes you will look like a great lady, sometimes like a tomboy. Ah, when I ‘ave finished weeth you, Miss Martha, London will never know what ’as heet eet. And we’ll sell an awful lot of my clothes, you and I,’ she added in brisk, perfectly unaccented English.

‘I...I’m...’

Yvette Minter smiled. ‘I cultivate my French accent for clients, you know. And sometimes under strong emotion it cultivates me. But tell me, why has André been keeping you to himself all this time?’

‘I...Do you mind if I sit down?’ Martha said. ‘When I’ve taken the dress off, of course. One thing: I refuse to pout, I always have, but it upsets some photographers.’

‘Who’s asking you to pout? I loathe pouting women myself!’

Which was how, later, she came to be sitting in a cramped office wearing a silk kimono, drinking strong coffee and listening dazedly to Madame Minter.

‘You will be my in-house model,’ she was saying. ‘I sacked the last one, silly cow. I mean to say——’ as Martha blinked ‘—she actually began to remind me of a stately bovine. She had these large unblinking eyes and she never moved with any...flair. Naturally, when I show my collection,’ she went on without pause ‘I employ other models, but you will be assured of a place. I have a showing coming up in about a month—dear, oh, dear!’

Martha frowned. ‘What?’

‘I could have designed it all around you. Never to mind, the next one——’

‘Madame, this is all very flattering but——’

‘You wish to discuss terms and so on?’ Madame eyed her shrewdly. ‘What kind of a contract I intend to put you under? One year minimum,’ she said succinctly.

Martha blinked. ‘Well, I’m not sure,’ she said slowly. ‘This is supposed to be a holiday, really, and I want to travel——’

‘Travel! You will! I take showings abroad. I also intend to make you famous—what’s one year when you’re——’ Madame gestured in a very French way ‘—twenty-two? My dear Miss Martha, when you’re thirty and starting to get leetle lines and your ’air don’t ’ave quite same bounce and gravity starts to attract the bust—that’s the time to travel!’

Martha had to laugh.

‘And this is quite an organisation I’ve built up,’ Madame added proudly. ‘You theenk this is some teen-pot outfit?’ Her black eyes flashed and her accent came back.

‘No, no,’ Martha said hastily.

‘Thees is good,’ Madame said proudly, and switched accents adroitly once more. ‘I’m just about to bring out an exclusive off-the-rack range which will be seen in all the best fashion magazines. Seen,’ she said dramatically, ‘with you inside them. But only if you put yourself in my hands, Martha Winters,’ she added sternly. ‘You think I’m flattering you? I’m only flattering the raw material.’ Martha flinched but Madame flowed on unaware. ‘Certainly some fine raw material but still a very great lot to learn. You have somewhere to live? No? You will come and live with me——’

‘No, Madame, thank you very much but I must insist that I find my own place.’

Deep pansy blue eyes stared resolutely into snapping black ones and for a moment Martha expected a Gallic explosion but Yvette Minter laughed suddenly. ‘I like it, I like it, but you see, you silly girl, I have a perfectly private little basement flat under my house that I will rent out to you for a perfectly normal amount, where you will be able to take your boyfriends without me even seeing them. Mind you, while a certain amount of sex is marvellous for the looks, men do complicate one’s life, much as I love ’em.’ And an oddly penetrating black glance now came Martha’s way.

‘Point taken,’ she said calmly.

Whereupon Madame raised her eyebrows. ‘What does that mean? Don’t you like men?’

‘It means I’m not looking for any complications at the moment,’ Martha said.

‘Ah. Hmm. I see. Yes, indeed. So.’

It was Martha’s turn to raise an eyebrow.

‘I see only that some man ’as ’urt you,’ Madame explained, causing a faint tinge of pink to rise to Martha’s cheek and causing her to curse herself silently. ‘But never to mind,’ Madame continued, ‘it is you who will be going round breaking hearts soon. In the meantime, are you on, Martha Winters?’

‘I...oh, well, they say faint heart never won anything. Yes, I’m on,’ Martha heard herself say.

Two weeks later she still felt like pinching herself.

Her basement flat below Madame’s elegant Chelsea terrace house, with its window-boxes and tubs of pansies, black enamelled front door with a polished brass knocker facing a quiet leafy garden in the centre of the square, was small but comfortable. And although at first she’d felt a bit like a rabbit living below street level, she’d soon adapted. Who would not, she thought sometimes, to vibrant, stylish, historic Chelsea? And she was gradually finding her way around the King’s Road and Fulham Road, Sloane Square, Cheyne Walk and the river.

She’d been to the Natural History Museum, the Albert Hall, Harrods, seen the Grinling Gibbons carvings in the chapel of the Royal Hospital, guided by a delightful ninety-year-old, scarlet-coated Chelsea pensioner, and, rain or shine, she walked up to Hyde Park or Kensington Gardens every morning. For there hadn’t been much rain—everyone agreed it was a marvellous spring so far. Of course, she realised there was a whole lot more of London to see, but the truth of the matter was that Yvette Minter might make amazing gestures but she was also something of a slave-driver—Martha had never worked so hard in her life. But she found herself enjoying it, even if she changed clothes fifty times a day or was cajoled, coaxed and screamed at by temperamental photographers, by everyone at Minter’s, in fact, all unable to avoid being affected by Madame’s histrionics at the forthcoming début of her off-the-rack range.

Then one afternoon, about two weeks after her arrival, Martha donned a blue fitted waistcoat that left her shoulders and arms bare and matched her eyes, a coffee-cream straight silk skirt that fell to just above her ankles and had a slit up the front to above her knees, gold suede shoes, clustered pearl earrings and a chunky gold and pearl bracelet, swept a brush through her hair, which she was leaving long and loose, and walked through to the elegant room where Madame’s haute couture clothes were shown to clients.

There was no one there apart from Madame herself, who proceeded to walk around Martha, dressed in her inevitable black, but this time definitely a cocktail dress, with her mouth pursed. ‘Yes,’ she said finally, ‘we did right with the ’air; those subtle lighter streaks are very good and a little shorter and all one length so you can toss it around and it settles just a little wild as if some man has been running his ‘ands through it but still looking très bon—it’s very good. And the ’ips under the silk—quite delectable!’

Martha said, ‘Thanks,’ casually but eyed her warily for she’d learnt that it wasn’t only when Madame was with clients or in the grip of emotion that her French accent surfaced; it was also when she was being devious, and she was capable of being extremely devious at times. ‘So?’ She looked rather pointedly at the empty gilt chairs.

Madame put her hands on her own hips. ‘So?’ she repeated arrogantly. ‘I’m having a little cocktail party at home this evening, just friends, and you are coming, Miss Martha, that’s what!’

Martha sighed. ‘Madame—look, you’ve been wonderful about renting me out your basement; you haven’t bothered me in the slightest and I hope I haven’t bothered you at all—but I think we should keep it that way.’

A flood of genuine French greeted these words which Martha endured stoically, enraging Madame even more until she burst into English, saying finally, ‘It’s business, you stubborn, ungrateful child!’

‘I thought you said it was friends.’

‘Friends, yes, but friends who will talk about you—don’t you understand anything? Is Australia such a hick place they don’t even——?’

‘Now look here...’ Martha broke in.

‘No, you look here; it’s part of my campaign to make you famous and what do you do? Throw eet een my face!’

Martha grimaced. ‘It so happens I hate cocktail parties.’

‘This one you won’t. That I guarantee. I have never given a party in my life that anyone has hated! Martha Winters—please,’ Madame said, changing tack so suddenly that Martha blinked. ‘I would like you to come with the very best intentions in my ’eart. I would like everyone to see this fabulous girl who is so soon going to become a sophisticated, wonderful woman——’

‘Stop. I’ll come,’ Martha said, laughing at the same time, as she shook her head a little dazedly.

‘So you jolly well ought to,’ Madame said severely. ‘This place Australia—are they all like you over there, so wary, so stony-hearted, so——?’

‘Madame, I said I’d come!’

It was Martha’s first glimpse of the first-floor reception-room of Madame’s house, and she couldn’t fail to be impressed by the looped, draped, tasselled yellow velvet curtains about the tall windows that overlooked the square; by the palest eau-de-Nil wall-to-wall carpet that was dotted with exquisite Chinese and Persian rugs; the beautiful, spindly, inlaid pieces of furniture; the flowers and lamps; the vivid pink silk-covered chairs.

But of course it was still an ordeal—to be introduced and overlooked by an ever-growing number of people, to try to make conversation with complete strangers without sounding gauche and, particularly, colonial. I really should have got over these kind of nerves, she told herself once, sipping a very dry sherry. How many times have I paraded before hundreds of strangers? But that’s different; I can detach myself then—not something I can do now at the same time as I’m hearing my accent stand out so obviously—not that I care what they think about my accent, so why do I feel like this? Martha asked herself impatiently. Perhaps, she went on to think with a slight shrug, looking round the room suddenly, I can concentrate on the possibility that one day I could own a room like this...

‘Miss Martha?’

Martha turned as Madame’s voice penetrated her reflections.

‘I ’ave a very special guest to introduce you to—my nephew. Simon, this is my new protégé, Martha Winters—is she not stunning?’

Martha froze, her lips parting and her eyes widening as she looked up at the tall man beside Madame who was wearing a beautifully tailored grey suit that sat superbly across his broad shoulders. She took in his quiet air of assurance and authority, his brown hair, his long-fingered hands which had once made her shiver with delight to think of them upon her body—and looked at last into Simon Macquarie’s grey-green eyes.