by Rose elver
He got in beside her. 'Discretion,' he tapped the side of his nose, 'is my middle name.' He winked at her and switched on the ignition.
The red and gold foyer of the Oberon was bathed in light from a magnificent crystal chandelier, and the air was heavy with the scent of flowers banked around. Walking over the opulent pile of the carpet to the lounge Amelia ran her tongue over her lips, her mouth suddenly dry, and felt grateful for Max's hand under her elbow. The lounge was a semicircular room furnished in Regency style with gilt and old-rose suites arranged in small, separate groups, some already .occupied. Branches of pink-shaded candelabra softened the formality with a roseate glow, and glasses chinked against a buzz of conversation and laughter.
`Oh, Amelia my dear!' Polly, swathed in floral crêpe-de-chine quite unsuited to her plump figure, came to meet them followed by her husband. 'How lovely you look,' she said warmly, then with the slightest stiffening and change in manner : `Ah yes ... Max, how are you? Nice to see you again.'
Max caught the tone and threw Amelia a quizzical glance, but Bill Austin intervened with a welcoming handclasp. 'What'll you have to drink?'
As he passed on their choice to a hovering waiter, Polly led them to where a man and a woman were
sitting together. The man rose and Amelia's fluttering pulse subsided. It was not Don, but the broad, pleasantly ugly face of a stranger. The woman seated on the narrow gilded sofa smiled at her and Polly said, 'Amelia, this is my sister-in-law, Marguerite, and her husband, Tom Anderson,' and the introductions went round.
So this was Marguerite! Donovan's first love—and only love? Amelia could almost feel that scrap of paper in her hand ... Flowers for Marguerite. With a stab of envy she looked at the woman in the misty yellow gown, her glossy black hair curling in little tendrils around a small face and large dark eyes. A fragile, bird-boned woman most men would want to cherish and protect. No wonder Donovan had felt he couldn't subject her to the strenuous life he led. Did seeing her still disturb Don—like the sweet torture she herself had felt? She came back to what Polly was saying. 'Would you like to leave your stole in the cloakroom? I'd come with you, but Jeanie and Don will be here in a minute. Margo, take Amelia, there's a dear.'
He was coming—as she had known he would. And partnering the guest of honour ! With a fixed smile Amelia accompanied Marguerite across the lounge to the powder room. A neat, grey-haired attendant took her stole and she sank on to a seat in front of the mirrors and tucked the counterfoil into her purse. To give herself time she made a pretence of tidying her hair, only to find that her hands were rather unsteady.
Marguerite tilted her head and said with a roguish look : 'He's very good-looking, Amelia, your—friend, Max Hall. Mmm, working for him must be quite different from slaving for a hard taskmaster like Donovan! '
The coy innuendo was irritating. 'I wouldn't call working for Professor Lyne slaving. I enjoyed it very much. And I don't work for Max Hall, we're colleagues.' Firmly Amelia changed the subject. 'Do you have any children, Mrs Anderson?'
'I'm always called Margo by my friends.' She darted a smoky glance at Amelia's reflection in the mirror. 'No, I can't cope with children. My health, you know,' she pouted prettily. 'As a matter of fact I didn't know if I would feel up to this tonight, but I couldn't miss the chance of meeting you.' She meant it, and not as a compliment. She bent towards one of the mirrors and started to examine her piquant little face. 'I do look a bit washed out, don't I?' she observed, and took a lipstick from her purse.
Although she was retouching her lips carefully, Amelia had the impression that she was still studying her surreptitiously and felt a prickle of disquiet. Soft and kittenish she might be, but tiny claws could draw blood.
`Oh, Amelia, I admire a woman like you so much!' She flicked the lipstick down and capped it. `So strong and capable. You must have had a dreadful time nursing Donovan through that last bout of fever—all on your own with him in the flat,' she emphasised sweetly.
Amelia gave het a direct look, and her dark eyes
gazed back, the irises as sharp as pinpoints. 'Tell me, is it true about Don?' Marguerite slid a pink tongue over shiny lips. 'You've been so—er—close to -him, and talked to the doctor, so you would know.'
Amelia raised her brows, coolly questioning, and Marguerite leaned towards her and spoke in a low, husky tone against the subdued voices of other women in the room. 'I believe this fever he picked up is more serious than anyone admits. Polly says he'll probably be going back to Sarava instead of taking the top job at the Fenn Foundation. Why should he throw away a wonderful opportunity like that?—unless he's a very sick person and knows he hasn't long ...' Her voice faded significantly.
Amelia sucked in her breath, as if her throat had been squeezed tight for a second. Such a possibility had never occurred to her. Was this why he had made that businesslike proposal? A competent wife he could trust to look after him, no emotional upheavals, a child of his own to fulfil his life until ... No !--her heart rebelled. She rose jerkily to her feet.
`I'm sure you're wrong.' She smoothed her skirt, deceptively calm. 'He made a quick recovery. If he decides to return to Sarava it will be because he prefers the field-work of anthropology to being cooped up in an office dealing with administration. He ... he values his freedom, Mrs Anderson.'
`He does indeed,' Marguerite's eyes narrowed, 'as I imagine we both have cause to know.' A fleeting glitter, very like spite, was shuttered behind her thin, bluish lids. She shrugged and said : 'I do hope you're right.' She became absorbed in her own face again.
`I'm such a peaky mortal—just a touch more blusher, do you think? I won't keep you a minute.'
Amelia waited, concealing her impatience, trying to shut her mind to the appalling notion Marguerite had implanted, and to the conviction that it had been done quite deliberately to upset her. Incredibly it seemed that the woman had been waiting for this chance, was even jealous of her perhaps. For what conceivable reason?—unless Polly had been romanticising.
Marguerite clicked her guise shut, turned and bestowed a creamy smile. 'That's a gorgeous dress, Amelia, and you wear glasses with such panache ! Don't laugh at little me, but from what I'd heard I've always imagined you as—well—a trifle grim. It's wonderful what clothes can do for a girl!'
`Thank you,' Amelia interrupted with chilly insincerity. 'Shall we go?'
Donovan Lyne was already in the lounge, immaculately tailored in evening dress, twirling a glass restlessly in his long fingers as he stood talking to Max. Even at a distance he seemed to dominate the small group. He looked up as the two of them approached. Over the dark head of her companion his eyes caught Amelia's with a flash of brilliance that stopped her in her tracks. But this was not the bright blaze of anger of their last meeting, and she suddenly felt shy and disconcerted. Then he was smiling urbanely, and Marguerite fluttered towards him and hung on his arm.
Watching him greet her as indulgently as he would a child, putting his glass out of her reach and laugh-
ing, all the petty animosity drained out of Amelia. Although she refused to believe Marguerite's conjecture about his health, she knew that the shock of it had drastically altered her own attitude towards Donovan. Whether he loved her or not no longer mattered; pride no longer mattered. What mattered was that she loved him—that he had needed her and she had failed him. How could she make amends now?
She was hardly aware that he had detached himself from the others and clasped her hand. Something of the ache of compunction that filled her must have shown in her face, for his fingers tightened around hers and jolted her into the realisation that he was staring at her with a strange expression.
`Amelia?' he said deeply; the inflection almost dissolved her limbs.
She wondered if he could feel the erratic throb of the pulse at her wrist; it was irrelevant whether he could or not, since he could have read in her shadowed eyes what she would somehow have to put into words before long. As soon as she could speak to him privately and tell him
with honesty. If he would listen to her ... if it wasn't too late ... oh, the enormity of that 'if', which meant her whole future now !
`My God,' he said softly with a wry grimace, 'you look as though you expect me to tear you apart again! I was an unmitigated brute to you at the Manor House, I know it, I had no right. There's no need for you to tremble like this.'
She longed to silence his mouth with hers; she put
her fingers on their clasped hands instead. 'No, you mustn't think that.' She sought his eyes once more. `Don, I want to talk to you. It—it's important—to me anyway.'
`About your job,' thin lines of tension deepened around his mouth, 'or is the boy-friend becoming too importunate? Looking at you, I can't say I blame him. Is it advice to the lovelorn you need, or a dour, fatherly academic to protect you?'
Amelia winced and withdrew her hand, stung by the sardonic change of tone. 'Neither,' she said helplessly. Advice to the lovelorn! The irony pierced her with its exact truth. Right deduction, wrong man, she thought numbly.
He scanned her face, puzzled by a vulnerability she had seldom betrayed except under the weight of his anger that day at Whimpleford. 'I was being flippant, I'm sorry. Amelia, what is it? What's worrying you?'
She glimpsed the misty yellow gown, the large dark eyes watching them avidly. 'Later, Don—some time when you can spare me a few minutes ...'
`But not here,' he said as if something had dawned on him, 'not here.'
`Now then,' Marguerite demanded gaily, 'what are you whispering about? Don, it's too bad of you. Amelia hasn't met Jean, or had a drink yet ! '
A vibrant rapport held them together for another few seconds, then he slowly turned and impelled Amelia into the group, pressing his hand into the small of her back and moving his fingers against her spine in a way that ran fire through her nerves. Bill
Austin proffered the dry sherry she had asked for; Max grinned at her and raised his glass in a silent toast, a knowing glint in his eye. The hand at her back tensed and fell away abruptly. The physical link was broken, leaving her exposed, and all her senses cried against it.
`Amelia, this is my aunt ... Jean Laski,' Donovan's voice had reverted to dead-level urbanity, 'on a brief holiday from Los Angeles.'
The slim, vivacious elderly woman sitting on the sofa, very elegant in black velvet and lustrous pearls, drew Amelia down beside her. Her wide, humorous eyes lifted at the corners. 'Matchless Amelia! Oh, yes, at my age I can Say it straight out and get away with it. I scarcely recognised the lordly, tyrannical being I used to know, and I hear tell it's your doing! Honey, you've humanized Don after his spell among the savages. How come?'
Amelia flushed scarlet at the ripple of laughter, not daring to look at Donovan, and murmured an inadequate protest. Donovan remarked dryly : 'Those savages, as you call them, have better party manners than you have, my dear, highly-civilized Aunt.'
Uh-huh !' she chuckled meaningly, and plunged into a lively discussion about delving into old documents, skilfully drawing Amelia out of her shell until she succumbed completely to the older woman's extrovert personality. She remembered Donovan telling her that he had only one living relative. And she was as magnetic as he was, for she soon had everyone enthralled. She sat like a queen holding
court, thought Amelia, sipping her drink and listen
ing to her, fascinated, as the conversation became general.
Max had come to lean over the gilt back of the sofa, contributing his buoyant wit, and when Jean Laski had ended a particularly funny anecdote with a flourish, he leaned his head against Amelia, convulsed with merriment. She was laughing too, so were they all. All except Donovan Lyne. He looked at Max, then at Amelia, a hard, enigmatic glance that made her shrink away from Max and stop laughing. What now what had become of that unexpected understanding which had bemused her mind
and heated her blood? Don ... Don ...
She was still meshed in the cold grey scrutiny when, in a lull in the conversation, Jean Laski slanted a mischievous smile from Donovan to Max.
`Well, young feller, is Amelia taking you in hand as my nephew's successor?' she teased in a clear drawl. 'No, I guess you're up to all the tricks already. Maybe you could teach her a thing or two at that.'
`Chance would be a fine thing!' he retorted with a blatant wink.
Donovan sharply averted his head. 'You're incorrigible, Jean,' he sounded off-hand and faintly amused. 'Perhaps it's just as well you're going back to Los Angeles.' He tossed back his drink and jabbed his cigarette out in the nearest ashtray.
Amelia gripped her hands tight on her purse, the lump in her throat effectively preventing her from making a light comment to relieve the sudden strain. Marguerite said with girlish facetiousness : 'Oh, Don,
don't scowl so—think of all the beautiful Saravan maidens you must have deserted!'
Amelia rose to her feet with some kind of blind urge to walk out as the others laughed again, but Bill Austin gently took her glass from her and nodded at Polly, who stood beside him looking cross.
`Shall we go in to dinner?' said Polly in a high, hostessy voice.
CHAPTER TEN
THEY went into the dining room through a pair of ornate double doors at the back of the lounge. There were a few dining tables around an oval dance floor, but for the most part guests were accommodated along a wide pillared balcony surrounding the room. Each alcove was divided from the next by shaded lights and an arrangement of indoor plants which gave a discreet illusion of privacy. A small dance orchestra had begun playing soft rhythmic music from a dais at the far end, and three or four couples were swaying moodily over the polished floor.
Polly, all smiles and unshakable determination, insisted that Amelia should sit between Donovan and Tom Anderson, and placed Max on the other side between Marguerite and Jean Laski. Although she did not have to face the cold inspection of Donovan's gaze, sitting next to him in a small space was a bitter-sweet distraction for Amelia. The black-clad arm, so near her own, brushed against her flimsy silk chiffon, and the close, hard muscle of the thigh against hers unnerved her.
The Oberon was appropriately renowned for its superb English cuisine and impeccable service. Thick, creamy oyster soup was followed by sirloin of beef, with roast potatoes and scalloped artichokes, accompanied by an excellent claret. Amelia joined in
a discursive conversation with Tom Anderson. He was a quiet, agreeable man, but Amelia could sense that, like herself, only half his mind was engaged. The rest was occupied in keeping track of Marguerite, whose large dark eyes were responding coquettishly to Max's light-hearted sallies. She had the art of flirtation and was busy using it to provoke her husband. And Donovan, no doubt, thought Amelia.
Tom Anderson was the impassive type who could watch and accept, knowing that Marguerite would always need the security he could give her. But Donovan was too highly-strung and assertive to be a passive spectator. Was she set on baiting him? Jean's tactless suggestion that Amelia herself had been playing Max off against Don had already annoyed him; if Marguerite was trying to irritate him further she was succeeding, because Amelia could feel the tautness in every movement he made.
She glanced at Tom Anderson. As their eyes met he broke off his rambling conversation, and she said impulsively, 'Marguerite is very beautiful. Have you been married long?' and could have bitten her tongue out for her crassness.
`We were married twelve months after Donovan went out to Sarava,' he supplied laconically, as though Donovan's departure had been crucial.
Amelia stared down at the delicious orange syllabub which had been set before her, covering her wine-glass with her hand as the waiter offered a Sauternes to go with it. Her head was inclined to swim, and not only with the wines she had been drinking—it required a great effort to be serene and
sociable with her mind constantly reverting to that poignant moment of shock in the cloakroom and the transitory warmth in Donovan's eyes and touch.
Donovan had not exchanged a word with her at the table s
o far, but when Tom turned away to answer a question from Polly, he bent his head and said in a mocking undertone, 'Don't take Max Hall's apparent defection too much to heart. Marguerite is essentially feminine and relishes masculine attentions, but that's as far as it goes.'
`Max is an expert,' she said lightly. 'And most women enjoy attentions.'
`You too, Amelia? How much you've changed. I seem to remember mine were not welcome.'
`How can you say that?'—what attentions? she wondered sadly—'We never had that kind of relationship, Don.'
She picked up her spoon; the whipped cream and wine of the syllabub melted on her tongue. Against the noise of voices and cutlery and the beat of the music he spoke again, still low but with a harsher inflection.
`Is that why you refused to marry me? Had I known you were open to the preliminary gallantries Max Hall is so expert at, I might have made the effort. Then perhaps the attentions I was threatening you with would have been more acceptable.' Under the mockery he was distinctly testy.
He meant his rights as a husband; she knew it and could almost hear him promising he would not be `too tiresome and inconsiderate'. Colour ran up into her pallid skin.
`I didn't feel threatened, Don.' She looked into his eyes, saw the grey pupils widen and felt breathless. `Never with you.' She put her spoon down.
`Not even alone one particular morning?' sardonically. 'I think you did.'
`It wasn't like that!' She swallowed convulsively, remembering the intimacy of his bedroom. 'Don, I couldn't—I mean, I wanted to explain
`You wanted out, Amelia,' was the pithy rejoinder. `No!' she had spoken loudly, sharply, out of the fullness of her heart.
Immersed in each other as they were, the sudden pause around them went unnoticed. He said tersely `This is a hell of a conversation for the dining table, but let's get one thing straight
