She made a half-hearted attempt at breakfast, made them both cups of coffee and strolled in to find him still heavily involved on the telephone. He waved for her to put the coffee on the table and she left the room again, feeling a bit like a waitress, someone to be seen and heard only when necessary.
He didn’t emerge until a little after eleven and she immediately asked, without beating about the bush, ‘What exactly is going to happen?’
‘Thanks for the cup of coffee.’ He strolled over to the kitchen table, sat down and ran his fingers through his dark hair in a weary gesture.
‘You haven’t answered my question.’
‘You are an extremely persistent creature,’ he told her, looking at her.
‘It takes one, I suppose, to know one.’ She sat down opposite him. ‘You look half-dead. How long have you been up?’ She sipped some of her coffee, her fourth cup of the day, because she couldn’t seem to get her mind round anything at all and drinking cups of coffee gave her something to do. It also steadied her nerves. There had been a time, she thought, when chocolate would have been the only substitute, and that time seemed like a million light years away.
‘Since five,’ he answered, rubbing his eyes with his fingers.
‘On the telephone?’
‘That’s right. Waking people up and getting them to work for their money.’
‘I’m sure they all appreciated that,’ she answered with a smile. It felt quite unreal to be sitting here, talking to him, when she should have been at work. It was a relief not to have to face Angela after the accusations of the night before, that much was true.
‘Right.’ He stood up and absent-mindedly tucked his shirt back into the waistband of his trousers. ‘Are you ready?’
‘I’ve been meaning to ask,’ Suzanne said awkwardly, ‘whether it’s absolutely essential for me to come. This is all to do with you, plans you made a long time ago. Do you really want me tagging along?’
‘I’m giving you the chance of a lifetime,’ he said with a lazy smile which wasn’t directed at her, she knew, but at some thought flitting through his head. ‘I’m taking you back to the source of your bitterness. Don’t you want that? Don’t you want to see Martha and have the opportunity to give vent to the anger which you’ve misdirected at me all these months?’
See Martha. The thought of that made her go a little shaky at the knees. She had never actually confronted Martha with any of her bitter grievances. At the time of her father’s death she had been too confused and lost to think, and afterwards she had moved to London and thoughts of Martha had been little more than fantasies which conspired to make her life hell, and which she had never thought of putting to rest by paying the woman a visit.
‘I suppose so,’ she said doubtfully, and he laughed—a hard, humourless sound that made her feel even more nervous.
‘You suppose so? Is that the best you can do?’
‘What would be the point of throwing recriminations at her?’ she asked. ‘She’ll just deny everything anyway. She’ll just tell me that my father could have left any time he wanted to, that it was necessary to get rid of those workers, that she’s looked after the house and grounds to the best of her ability. And I shall just get tongue-tied and inarticulate with rage because she’ll be patting that dyed blonde hair of hers and looking at her painted fingernails and wondering how she can shift me out of her house.’
‘My house,’ Dane corrected her.
‘Yes, I know, but she’s been there for three years and you never once went back. She must consider that she has right of ownership now.’
‘Then she’ll be making a big mistake.’ He consulted his watch and then said, ‘Time to go.’ At which Suzanne sprang to her feet and gave him a weak smile of agreement.
‘No need to look as though you’re about to be delivered to the sharks,’ he told her on the way down to the car. ‘It’s a bright, sunny day and you’re not at work.’
‘No, work might have been a little awkward with Angela after yesterday.’
He laughed and looked at her sideways. ‘What mastery of understatement.’ He opened the passenger door for her, slammed it once she was sitting and then let himself into the driver’s seat.
‘When did you decide to...?’ The words fizzled out as the car moved smoothly out of the courtyard and into the congested streets of London.
‘To repay Martha for fleecing my father?’
‘He was happy.’
‘She used him, and what goes around comes around.’
His expression was unforgiving and she looked out of the window. Had Angela been right? Was every ounce of his considerable personality devoted to this one thing so that there was nothing left over for anything or anyone else? She didn’t like to think along those lines because that would be to deny any camaraderie between them, to admit that she had been nothing to him—nothing at all.
She closed her eyes and rested her head against the back of the seat and sighed. ‘I could get used to this,’ she murmured.
‘To what? Being driven in a BMW or being driven by me in a BMW?’ He laughed under his breath and she shot him a look from under her lashes. Why did he have to ask sexy questions like that, she wondered, when he must know how much they disturbed her equilibrium?
‘Public transport can be a bit of a headache,’ she told him blandly. ‘All those bodies and the smell of stale sweat.’
‘Charming. Why don’t you get a taxi to work in that case?’
‘And why don’t I fly to Mars for my next holiday?’ He laughed, relaxed and they drove for a while in companionable silence. London was packed with people and cars. Suzanne watched them idly and wondered whether she would miss it if she decided to go back to the Midlands to live. She had been desperate to leave at the time, but now she seemed to have come to terms with her father’s death and with the fact that her own life had to go on, and returning to the peace of her home town wasn’t the same frightful proposition that it had been even a few weeks ago.
‘Talk to me,’ he said suddenly from next to her, and she opened her eyes reluctantly.
‘What about?’
‘Anything. I like the sound of your voice.’
She felt a flush of pleasure rush through her. ‘We could discuss Angela,’ she began, and he frowned.
‘Talk to me about anything but work.’
‘I think I might go back home to live,’ she said eventually, and the flush of pleasure died as soon as she saw him nod in agreement.
‘That’s a good idea. I knew you would eventually.’
‘Thank you very much,’ she said coolly. ‘Do I detect a note of relief there?’
‘Why are you nettled because I intimated that it would be a good idea for you to go back to the country?’ There was a small smile playing on the corners of his mouth.
‘Because I can feel one of your speeches coming on. About how I never really was cut out for London, that I belong in the country where the pace is slow enough for a dimwit like me to cope.’
‘You weren’t exactly a dimwit when you exposed Angela,’ Dane contradicted her smoothly, and it didn’t escape her that he had successfully manoeuvred his way around her question. They were now out of London and on the motorway, which was similarly clogged with traffic.
‘I would never have suspected a thing if I hadn’t found that folder stuffed behind the filing cabinet.’
‘But you did, and you worked away at it until you found out what was going on.’
‘I know. I’m a genius.’
‘What a loss to that company when you left to move to London.’
‘Indeed. I’m sure they’re still weeping and wailing and wringing their hands over it.’
‘Will you go back there to work?’ he asked conversationally.
So now, she thought, he was assuming that she had already made up her mind to move back. He couldn’t wait to get rid of her.
‘No,’ she said abruptly. ‘It’s too small.’
‘Thought you’d say
that.’
‘I wish you wouldn’t act as though you know everything about me,’ she muttered crossly. ‘Why do you bother to ask questions if you already know the answers? ’
‘Are you hungry?’ he asked, and she scowled at his profile. He certainly had simmered down since this morning, she thought. He looked like a man, in fact, without a care in the world. Or maybe he only looked like that because he knew that he was going to be rid of her shortly. Was that what had put him in this jaunty mood? That and the fact that the inevitable was now going to become the inescapable?
‘No.’
‘We’ll stop at one of the service stations. Sausage, beans and chips.’
‘Yummy,’ Suzanne said sulkily, and he ignored her.
The service station was crowded and in the end they had two hamburgers in the car with two cans of drink precariously propped on the dashboard. She ate her food with vigour, licking her fingers afterwards, and when Dane gave her his opinions on the quality of the meat in the hamburger she rapidly pointed out, in as lofty a voice as she could manage because she was still irked at the speed with which he wanted to dispatch her out of his apartment and back to the dubious thrills of the countryside, that he would grow into an old, cantankerous, know-it-all, predictable bore.
‘Good.’ He laughed loudly. ‘I shall look forward to that.’
‘Why are you in such a good mood, anyway?’ she asked tartly, after he had disposed of the debris and returned to the car. ‘Shouldn’t you,’ she persisted like a dog with a bone, ‘be tense and nervous? You were this morning.’
He eased his car back onto the motorway and into the fast lane, overtaking everything in front of him. Suzanne looked at the long fingers deftly manipulating the gear stick, at the faint smile on his lips, and felt like hitting him.
‘Well?’ she demanded, and he looked at her briefly, then back at the road.
‘I’m in a good mood, darling, because everything is beginning to fall into place. The chase is almost over and the quarry is now in sight.’
‘How nice that you can see into the future, make the right moves and end up exactly where you want to be.’
It was a far cry from her, she thought, who couldn’t see further than her nose—or else she would never have fallen in love with him—had no long-range plans, and was buoyed along on the vague hope that everything would turn out all right.
‘It is, isn’t it?’ They were cruising steadily in the inside lane now, and the car was eating up the miles. Soon they would be there, back at the grand house which held such bitter memories for her, back at the cottage which had probably been remodelled into a gaudy, tacky self-contained unit for when there were too many guests for the main house.
‘There’s no need to sound so smug about it. Smugness isn’t a very pleasant trait.’
‘But, according to you, I haven’t got any pleasant traits,’ he pointed out. He paused and said in a voice that sounded surprised, ‘So why have you fallen in love with me?’
Suzanne looked at him with stiff-faced shock, then she felt as though her blood had turned to fire and was burning a path through her from the inside.
‘You’re crazy,’ she whispered. She wanted to look outside at the passing traffic, but she felt compelled to look at his face, to try and glean something from that amused, satisfied expression.
‘Am I? There was no man in your room the other night, was there, Suzie?’ he asked softly, and when she didn’t reply he prompted again, ‘Well? Was there?’
‘I never said that there was. You did.’
‘Ah, but you didn’t deny it. Why not? Did you want to make me jealous?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘You were reading all those papers about the company that Angela fabricated so that she could defraud my company. When I came in, you stuffed them somewhere out of sight and that was the reason that you looked so guilty.’
Suzanne could hardly hear him. There was a buzz in her ears and her joints seemed to have solidified. If she had been the fainting sort, then she would have fainted, but since she was not delicate enough for such theatrical responses she contented herself with staring blindly ahead of her.
‘I knew for a while that you found me attractive,’ he continued, when she would have rather that he had shut up, ‘but I’ve only now put two and two together.’
‘I am not in love with you. And I don’t want to be listening to this.’
‘Of course you’re in love with me.’
‘If you want to think that, then go right ahead. Who am I to stop you?’
He began to whistle under his breath and it dawned on her that the reason why he was so light-hearted about the whole thing was that he now thought that he had her where he wanted her. In the palm of his hand. He hadn’t forgiven her for turning him out of her bedroom and now he would have her. His male pride would be restored. She felt tears of anger and humiliation prick her eyes and she dragged her attention away from his face and to the road.
They had left the motorway and were driving along back roads—country roads surrounded mostly by open fields full of sheep and cows. In the sharp sunlight, the greens looked iridescent and the sky was a clear, untainted blue.
‘I shall never sleep with you,’ she said in a low, shaky voice. ‘Never!’
‘So you admit that what I’ve said is true.’
He stopped the car in a lay-by and Suzanne watched him apprehensively, feeling like a trapped rabbit.
‘I’ll get over it,’ she said in a strangled voice. She didn’t know whether she hated that gleaming look in his eyes—like that of a bird of prey contemplating its next kill—more than she would have hated long sermons about how he’d never meant to hurt her. She couldn’t imagine Dane Sutherland giving long sermons of remorse about not having wanted to hurt or offend, so at least that horrifying prospect was ruled out.
‘Why have we stopped here?’
‘Because we’re very nearly at the house and we might as well talk while we can.’
‘There’s nothing to talk about,’ she muttered bitterly. ‘I suppose you’re well and truly satisfied? Why couldn’t you have left me where I was?’ The words were wrenched out of her and she still wasn’t looking at him.
‘You were miserable.’
‘I was happy to be miserable!’ She would have eventually coped with that kind of misery, but this kind of misery was beyond her.
‘I still want you,’ he said in a matter-of-fact kind of voice, although she could feel his eyes burning into her. One hand was on the gear stick, his other rested lightly on the driving wheel, and no one seeing them from a distance could have guessed that they were having this urgent, surreal conversation. ‘It galls me to think that I do, but there it is.’
‘I don’t want to hear about want! You’re like a fisherman intrigued by the one that got away! Why can’t you take yourself off to another bed and another woman? There must be hundreds out there who would climb into bed with you before you’d even finished asking the question.’
‘But none of them provide the challenge that you do.’
‘Is that why you dragged me up here?’ she flung at him. ‘Because you thought that you might catch me with my guard down, vulnerable back on home territory? Did you think that you could take me before I left London once and for all?’
‘I’m not a complete monster.’ He sounded so calm and controlled. She, on the other hand, knew that she was beginning to border on the hysterical and she resented him bitterly for exposing her vulnerability.
‘Aren’t you?’
‘You’ve come to terms with your father’s death.’
‘And for that you magnanimously take all the credit?’
‘Of course I don’t, but I did give you a purpose in your life.’
‘A million thanks,’ she said sarcastically. ‘You’re obviously in the wrong profession. You should be out there on the world stage, working toward universal peace.’
He laughed drily and his eyes, when they reste
d on her, were warm and lazy; she turned away abruptly and stared straight ahead.
‘You’re very amusing, do you know that?’
‘I think you’ve mentioned that before.’ While she stared, white-faced, through the window, her fingers fidgeted nervously together on her lap.
‘And desirable.’ The word hung provocatively in the air, just, she realised, as he meant it to, conjuring up all sorts of images and emotions with which he no doubt hoped to undermine her resolution. He didn’t lay a finger on her, though, and that was the cleverest ploy of all. To hear him speak like that without touching was like being sucked into somewhere dark and soft and inviting. She had to grit her teeth together to fight the temptation to look at him and give in.
‘Think about it,’ he said softly, and then started up the engine, which purred into life like a big beast ready to run.
She thought about it. In fact, it was all she thought about for the remainder of the journey and she only found her thoughts moving along when the car swung up the familiar tree-lined avenue, with its fields stretching placidly away as far as the eye could see, and turned into the drive that led towards the house.
‘Is Martha expecting us?’
‘No.’ His expression was grim but there was a sense of anticipation about him that gave him a sort of restless energy which she could feel rather than see on his face. ‘But she’ll be there.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I have arranged it.’
They passed the cottage on their left as they drove slowly up, and Suzanne’s eyes lingered hungrily on it. It looked the same. Small, red-bricked, with small windows and ivy creeping up the front. Her father had fought an amicable battle with the ivy to prevent it from taking over, and presumably the gardener now did that little duty.
Thoughts and memories of her father which had lain dormant resurfaced in confusing profusion like snippets of films disjointedly thrown together and played back at high speed.
Brief images of childhood—holding her father’s hand and going for walks, listening to him explain to her about the different types of flowers in the fields and the different types of birds that swooped down for bread thrown out by them religiously every morning. Visions of adolescence—her first grown-up dress awkwardly presented to her by her father on her thirteenth birthday. She half expected to see him walk out of the front door and wave at them, but, of course, he didn’t.
A Suitable Mistress Page 15
