A Suitable Mistress

by Cathy Williams

‘Don’t be utterly stupid,’ he grated, unsmiling. ‘You’re invited. There’ll be about forty people.’

  ‘Is it to do with work?’ she asked, and he shook his head.

  ‘Quite a few people from America,’ he said. ‘The rest are friends and colleagues of mine from London.’

  Would he have asked her if he had had a choice? She couldn’t envisage him sending out a gilded invitation to the daughter of his father’s chauffeur to meet his friends and colleagues, but she didn’t voice her thoughts.

  ‘And what will everyone be wearing?’

  ‘I have no idea.’ He shrugged as though he didn’t really give a damn, but then he would look good in anything. It was different for her, though. She didn’t want to turn up dressed in a suit, to find everyone else in jeans and a shirt, nor did she want to come in informal wear and be mistaken for a bag lady who had lost her way.

  ‘Should I wear a dress?’ she asked bluntly, and he looked at her.

  ‘Do you possess any?’

  There was an implied insult there somewhere, she felt sure, and her hackles rose.

  ‘I could buy one,’ she said coldly. ‘As a matter of fact, I’ve been thinking of investing in one lately.’ She hadn’t really. She was quite happy to carry on as she was, in her jeans and jumpers garb, but now that she had voiced the thought it occurred to her that brightening up her image might not be a bad idea at all.

  ‘Why not? It might be interesting to discover whether you have legs under those jeans you’re wearing every time I see you.’ He raised one eyebrow and grinned but she wasn’t in the mood for grinning back. ‘Oh, dear,’ he said with heavy pretence of woe. ‘Was that a misdirected remark?’

  He was laughing as she flounced off to her bedroom and she didn’t lay eyes on him the following morning because he had already gone by the time she dragged herself out of the house, only coming alive once she had reached her office and gulped down a cup of coffee.

  Robert was intrigued at the thought of a party at the big boss’s house.

  ‘How come I wasn’t invited?’ he asked. ‘What’s wrong with me?’ He sniffed under his arms and grinned at her from across his desk. ‘Would you tell me if I had a body-odour problem?’

  Suzanne returned his grin and said, ‘Of course I wouldn’t. I would just ask for your desk to be moved to another part of the building. Anyway, the only reason I shall be going along is because he has no choice, short of asking me to vacate the premises between the hours of eight and one, and he wouldn’t do that.’

  ‘Wouldn’t he?’ He appeared to give this some thought. ‘He could teach my girlfriend a thing or two in that case. She’s always asking me to do that.’ Which made Suzanne laugh.

  She found over the next day that she was actually planning quite seriously what she would wear to Dane’s wretched party. She had never been to a party where casual wear hadn’t been the dress code. What did people wear to more formal things? What was the dividing line between nicely sophisticated and brassily dressed to kill?

  Angela would know. She seemed to know everything there was to know about clothes, but Suzanne had no intention of asking for advice. The more she saw of the other woman, the less she liked her, and apart from necessity she made sure that their paths did not cross.

  She spent the Friday lunchtime shopping—a pastime she so irregularly indulged in that it took her twice as long to find anything because she didn’t know where to begin. Big stores confused her and small boutiques she found threatening. The sales assistants all looked like models and she had to resist the temptation to find a convenient rack of clothes and hide behind it.

  So it was after one by the time she returned to her desk, flatly refusing to let Robert have a look at her purchases.

  ‘Anything sexy?’ he asked in a suggestive tone of voice, which was like water off a duck’s back to her, and she replied absent-mindedly, not looking at him, already involved in columns of figures and reports on company accounts for a firm they were hoping to acquire.

  ‘Hardly. I’m not exactly Brigitte Bardot, am I?’

  ‘You might be if you stopped wearing unflattering suits all the time.’

  ‘And wore what instead?’ She glanced up at him, disconcerted that he found her clothes unflattering. As far as she was concerned, there was nothing wrong with them. Some were a bit loose now because she had lost quite a bit of weight, but on the whole they did their job. ‘Mini skirts and boots?’

  Robert ran his fingers through his bright hair, which made it stick up in various directions. ‘Yes, that might work.’

  ‘Not for me. I’m not that type.’

  ‘You’ve never tried.’

  ‘Nor do I feel tempted to.’

  ‘You can be very boring at times,’ he told her, which produced an involuntary smile on her lips.

  ‘What a joy you are.’

  The sight of Angela standing at the doorway, looking at them, reduced them to immediate silence. She was dressed in a striking black suit and as she stood there Suzanne thought uncharitably that she resembled some kind of venomous insect. Beautiful and deadly, probably belonging to a species that ate its young.

  ‘I see you two are hard at work,’ she drawled.

  ‘Yes, we are,’ Suzanne said seriously, her eyes wide and innocent. ‘Actually, I was just putting the finishing touches to my report on Algiban. I shall have them typed and ready for you by the end of the afternoon.’

  ‘Good.’ Angela paused. ‘And those accounts I asked you to have a look at?’

  ‘Done.’ Suzanne gave her an efficient, helpful smile and Robert was trying to suppress his mirth.

  ‘You’re ahead of schedule.’ The perfect mouth cracked into a smile of sorts.

  ‘Yes, I am,’ Suzanne agreed, smiling back, ‘although I’m just working at my own pace.’ She was, she knew, a quick and thorough worker. She enjoyed ferreting out bits of information and putting the pieces together. She found it fascinating. She hadn’t for a long time, but working here had revitalized an interest in figures and deductions and company accounts which she had believed to be dead and buried.

  ‘That’s good. I’m just on my way to a meeting with Bill Cooper from Sales, but if you could spare a few moments, Suzanne...?’

  Suzanne stood up and wondered why she’d bothered to phrase the command as a question. She saw out of the corner of her eye that Robert was busy shuffling papers and lighting a cigarette. He had cut down his intake to five a day but he always made sure that he lit one whenever Angela walked in because he knew that it irritated her. On cue, she was wrinkling her nose and looking at the cigarette with distaste.

  She strode off in the direction of her office and Suzanne followed, clutching her reports, comfortable in the knowledge that there was no question that she couldn’t answer.

  But reports were not, she discovered as soon as she had sat down, to be the object of the exercise. Angela gave them a cursory glance and then said, out of the blue, ‘Dane tells me that you’ve been invited to the little bash tomorrow night.’

  ‘Yes, I have,’ Suzanne replied obediently. She had learnt fast that volunteering information was a wasted exercise. Any attempts at friendliness had met with a stone wall of tight-lipped non-communication. Angela didn’t like her. She had been forced to employ her but she had no intention of being amicable about it, and since the feeling was mutual Suzanne was quite happy to endure the stony looks. The job was the consolation. It was well paid and invigorating and more than made up for the hostility.

  ‘There’s absolutely no need for you to attend,’ Angela said, trying to sound kindly but not succeeding very swell. ‘I expect you’ll find the whole thing very boring.’

  ‘It might be fun,’ Suzanne told her perversely.

  ‘You’ll be far and away the youngest person there,’ Angela informed her. She linked her fingers together on the desk and sat forward, which made Suzanne feel as though she was attending an interview. Did that observation require an answer of sorts? she wondered. She smil
ed and didn’t say anything.

  ‘I’m sure you’d be happier going out with your friends. You’ve made a few since you arrived in London, I take it?’

  ‘Yes, quite a few.’ She had become quite friendly, in fact, with several of the girls from the company. She had also renewed contact with her old friends. They had acted as though there had been no time lapse at all, for which Suzanne had been instantly and immensely grateful.

  ‘It would be churlish of me to turn down Dane’s invitation, though,’ she added, knowing that this was the very last thing Angela would want to hear, and she could tell from the tightening of the lips that she had struck bull’s eye. But what could the other woman say to that?

  ‘Of course it would be. And I’m sure that Dane would be quite disappointed if his favourite little protégé wasn’t there. We thought, though, that you might enjoy helping out with the serving of the drinks. The caterers will be doing the food, and there will be a waiter, of course, but I’m sure you’d rather help him instead of having to mingle with fuddy-duddies reliving old times.’

  This had been a joint idea? She doubted that, but as always with everything Angela implied there was still that tenacious shade of uncertainty tugging away at the back of her mind, undermining all her logical reasons for disbelieving everything the other woman said.

  ‘Of course,’ Angela continued hurriedly, ‘it’s up to you, but at least if you’re being useful you might be able to wriggle out of the dull small talk.’ She gave a high, tinkling laugh. ‘I can remember when I was your age my parents’ parties always seemed so tedious.’

  ‘Did they entertain a lot?’ Suzanne asked, biting back some caustic retorts, and Angela’s eyes slid away from hers.

  ‘Quite a bit, yes,’ she said, standing up. ‘Not that you would be interested in hearing about my parents.’ She moved towards the door and said briskly, ‘Now, I do hope you won’t run back to Dane and mention any of our little conversation?’

  ‘Why should I?’ Suzanne smiled sweetly. ‘I’m awfully grateful to him for doıng what he’s done, but I know my place.’

  ‘You’re a sensible thing,’ Angela said, and even in high heels she still had to look up at Suzanne as she said this. ‘It’s reflected in your work. You’re very switched on. Now, I must dash. If John Grieves calls, could you take the message? It’s important. I’m hoping to net him as a very big customer indeed.’

  ‘Of course. And I’ll see you tomorrow.’ She could hardly get the words out because she felt so bitter and angry.

  How dared Angela imply that she would be better off serving drinks? she raged to herself that evening. And even if Dane hadn’t said a word of the sort, was that what he thought too?

  She knew what she was going to do now, though. It had come to her in a resentful, blinding flash as she’d taken the tube home after work, and she headed off on Saturday morning, walking quickly, head down, fists clenched. To the shops.

  There was certainly no need for her to be around during the day. The place was full of caterers, who were preparing vast quantities of food. It was to be a cold buffet but with very fancy salads, cold meats and various varieties of bread, and then lots of puddings.

  The kitchen counter, when she returned later in the afternoon, was groaning under the weight of food. Suzanne drifted past it and was instantly given a guided tour of each dish by the chef, who was a dark-haired, effeminate man with an appealing manner.

  ‘Normally,’ he whispered to her confidentially, ‘I would be able to leave the running of the show to my assistant, but Derek—naughty boy—has gone on holiday, and this one—’ he flicked his dark eyes in the direction of a gangling youth who was earnestly putting the finishing touches to the sherry trifle ‘—can’t be relied upon. I’ve seen the way he did some of the carrot roses to decorate the smoked salmon. Most unprofessional.’

  His finishing touches to the trifle seemed highly professional from where she was standing, but who was she to voice an opinion on the subject? She was only just coming to terms with the simplest of dishes.

  ‘Well,’ she said, after having admired everything, as tact dictated, to excess, ‘I shall see you later, no doubt. I shall be helping behind the scenes. Serving drinks, actually.’

  ‘But... You don’t live here?’

  ‘I do. Temporarily. I’m a lodger. I think it might be fun to play the waitress, though. Get away from ageing businessmen and polite chit-chat.’

  And she left the chef standing with a look of complete bemusement on his face.

  Later she heard Dane’s voice, talking in that authoritative manner, then some low laughter, and later still, just before the guests were due to arrive, he knocked on her door and asked her whether she intended to emerge from her bedroom at all that evening, to which she said, through the closed door, that she was just about to get dressed.

  She hadn’t even stepped into the bath as yet, in point of fact. She intended taking her time and making her grand entrance once the guests had all arrived.

  At eight, she stepped into the bath, where she soaked for as long as she possibly could without emerging looking like a wrinkled prune. Then she carefully brushed her hair. She had had it trimmed since she’d begun working for Angela, though it hadn’t been noticeable, since she always wore her hair tied back. It would never be straight, but it rippled quite attractively now that it had been rescued from her lack of attention.

  Then she applied her make-up. This was trickier. She normally didn’t use a great deal of it, so she took her time. Not too much, she decided. No eye-shadow at all, just mascara. Some blusher. Some lipstick, but not bright red. She didn’t feel comfortable with bright red lipstick. If she had had the time, she would have done her nails as well, but she had left it too late. She could hear the low hum of conversation drifting along the corridor to her bedroom, which meant that the guests had probably all arrived.

  She finished dressing quickly. She didn’t want Dane striding to her bedroom and impatiently hauling her out. That would spoil everything.

  When everything was in place, she stood back and looked at herself in the mirror, and the first thing that crossed her mind was that she had lost a great deal of weight over the weeks. She wasn’t skinny—she never would be—but she could actually see a waist now and her stomach was flat once again. Her legs looked pretty good too. She had always had good legs—long with slender ankles—and right now there was a good deal of them to be seen. Well, Dane had sarcastically remarked that he never saw her legs, hadn’t he? He was about to get an eyeful of them now.

  She grinned and walked out of her bedroom.

  CHAPTER SIX

  EVERYONE had arrived. The apartment was big, but forty-odd people filled it out at the seams, and there was the steady, high noise of voices trying to rise above each other. Two waiters were manfully doing the rounds with trays.

  Suzanne’s gaze roved across the room and met Dane’s eyes just as he caught sight of her. He had been talking to a group of four people but he’d looked straight across the room almost as soon as she’d walked in. As had nearly everyone else, including the group around him. There was a brief lull in the conversation—time enough for her to absorb the effect that she had had in her small black waitress’s outfit, with the tiny white frilly apron in front, and the black high heels which put her on eye-level with most of the men there.

  She couldn’t remember ever having had this effect on a roomful of people before. The initial heady effect began to wear off and she smiled weakly at the sea of faces staring at her. Should she say hello? She was spared the decision because Dane announced, without a trace of humour in his voice, ‘While all your attention is riveted on the girl by the doorway, I might as well take this opportunity to introduce her to you. Suzanne Stanton is an old friend of the family and is staying with me temporarily. ’

  There were some appreciative murmurs, the conversation resumed and she hesitantly approached Dane and his group of friends.

  The high heels felt uncomfortable.
She wasn’t accustomed to wearing anything but flat shoes, and she had to move slowly, even though she was aware that that gave her a certain swaying walk. She could feel eyes following her progress across the room and she tried to be oblivious to them.

  She finally, after what seemed like hours of weaving through the crowd, managed to make it to Dane’s side and she politely listened while he made introductions.

  ‘When I mentioned that it was to be informal,’ he said in a hard voice, ‘I had no idea that you would take me so literally.’

  She met his eyes and realised that he wasn’t in the least amused at her get-up. He was mad, coldly angry, his grey eyes cool and shuttered, his mouth a narrow line.

  Angela, standing next to him, didn’t look particularly impressed either, but Suzanne didn’t care about that. She smiled brıghtly and said to no one in particular, ‘It was suggested that I might like to help out with serving drinks, so I thought that I’d dress for the occasion.’ It had seemed like a good idea at the time, but she was rapidly beginning to revise her thoughts on the matter.

  ‘I’m glad that you did,’ one of the men said to her, and she looked at him with a gush of relief. He was young, American, with sandy-coloured hair and blue eyes. He was smiling at her, his arms folded with a half-empty drink in one hand.

  She looked at him and said brightly, indicating his drink, ‘I might as well get the ball rolling with you.’

  She reached out to take his glass and Dane said in a voice that could cut through steel, ‘There are waiters hired to serve drinks, Suzanne. There is no need for you to help. If you’re happy staying in that ridiculous outfit, then by all means do so, but I will not have you fetching and carrying.’

  There was nothing she could find to say to this and she continued to smile through the uncomfortable silence that followed.

  ‘I personally think you look magnificent,’ the young American said, and the woman standing next to him murmured something along similar lines, but Angela clearly didn’t agree. Her blue eyes were pale and icy and her red mouth was sucked in. She looked like a tiny statue, perfectly painted but as untouchable as marble.