A Vengeful Deception

by Lee Wilkinson

  He rose to his feet and stretched leisurely. ‘I’ll go and check, and while I’m at it I’ll take your case up.’

  When he’d gone, warm and comfortable now, her head resting against the back of the chair, her eyelids drooping, Anna sat and stared into the flames.

  Half-asleep and half-awake, she listened idly to the blizzard still raging outside, while thoughts drifted in and out of her mind.

  This wasn’t at all how she’d visualised herself spending Christmas Eve. But since the break-up with David, and her return to Rymington, nothing had gone according to plan.

  As far as her business life was concerned, she had failed dismally. The same with her private life.

  Nursing her hurt, her sense of betrayal, she had avoided making any new relationships, and gone back to freezing off any man who had tried to come too close.

  But over the past few months she’d thought about David a great deal less, and in consequence had gone a long way towards regaining her equilibrium…

  Only to meet Gideon Strange and be rocked afresh by that elusive likeness, and the power of his attraction.

  Unlike David, he had strength and depth and maturity, and though his mouth showed a disturbing sensuality, that sensuality was balanced by an austere self-control.

  Though she scarcely knew him, she knew with a sure and certain instinct that he was everything she had thought David was.

  She closed her eyes with a sigh. It was as though fate was playing some kind of game with her. A game she stood little chance of winning…

  Something made her stir and open her eyes.

  Gideon was standing gazing down at her. There was a look on his face that made her heart start to race with a swift urgency. A look that, innocent as she was, she couldn’t fail to recognise. A look of naked desire.

  The following second his expression showed nothing but faint amusement.

  Had that look of desire been only a trick of the flickering light? Or, just waking from a doze, had she dreamt it?

  No, fleeting though it had been, she was certain she’d neither dreamt it nor imagined it.

  ‘I—I think I must have dropped off,’ she stammered.

  ‘Does that mean you’re ready for bed?’

  ‘No!’ She was remembering that look, and her voice was shrill with panic. Endeavouring to take a grip on herself, she peered at her watch. ‘It’s only a quarter to eleven. That’s far too early.’

  ‘Well, if you don’t want to go to bed, I’d better make sure we stay warm enough.’

  He picked up a large iron poker and stirred the fire, making it crackle and blaze and sending a shower of bright sparks up the chimney, before throwing on a couple of fresh logs.

  Resuming his seat, he asked, ‘What time do you go as a rule?’

  ‘Not before eleven,’ she lied. ‘And then I always take a book. In any case, this is Christmas Eve.’

  ‘So are you planning to wait up for Santa Claus?’

  ‘I used to want to as a child, but I was always sent to bed.’

  ‘So you believed in him?’

  ‘Oh, yes, until I was about six or seven. My mother used to leave a glass of brandy and a mince pie on the mantelpiece, and they were always gone by morning.’

  Picking up his own glass, Gideon remarked, ‘Speaking of brandy, you haven’t finished yours.’

  She had thought she had, or very nearly, and was surprised to see how much was left.

  As she drank, he remarked, ‘With no make-up on and your hair loose like that, you look about fifteen. How old are you now, Anna?’

  ‘Twenty-four.’

  ‘Tell me about yourself. Apart from the fact that you once believed in Santa Claus and now you’re a qualified librarian—’

  There it was again, that subtle mockery.

  ‘—I know very little about you.’

  ‘There’s not much to know. I’m afraid I lead a very dull life.’

  ‘No live-in lover to share your bedsit?’

  ‘No. Which is just as well, as I’ve only got a single bed.’

  Gideon grinned. ‘Well, that in itself could lend a touch of excitement.’

  ‘With a four feet by four feet bathroom, excitement would hardly be the word,’ she commented drily.

  ‘Oh I don’t know!’ He leered theatrically at her. ‘I can think of worse things.’

  ‘Such as being alone at Christmas?’

  Ignoring the dig, he pursued, ‘But if there’s no live-in lover, you must have a boyfriend? Someone special, perhaps?’

  Wishing he’d drop the subject, she said shortly, ‘No.’

  ‘How long have you been back in Rymington?’

  ‘The best part of a year.’

  He lifted a well-marked brow. ‘Well, unless all the men are blind round here, there must be plenty of eager males only too willing to fill the role?’

  There was certainly one. Though, being fairly staid and having just turned forty, Paul would hardly fit in the category of boyfriend.

  ‘So why haven’t you got a boyfriend?’

  Goaded, she snapped, ‘Because I don’t happen to want one.’

  ‘Ah…’ Gideon murmured softly. ‘Perhaps you see yourself as an elusive enchantress in a fairy story. Alluring and hauntingly beautiful. A woman every man wants, but who wants none of them…’

  Made uncomfortable by the comparison, she objected, ‘You make me sound cold and heartless.’

  ‘And you’re not?’

  ‘No, I’m not!’ she cried angrily.

  Yet even while she denied it she remembered guiltily that some of the would-be lovers she had kept at bay throughout her college years had used those exact words.

  But while most of her fellow students had been falling in love—or lust—and bemoaning the fact that the Hall of Residence cramped their style, no man had really turned her on.

  Because of her looks, there had been plenty willing to try. With one or two she had dabbled in a little light romance—like someone cautiously testing the temperature of the bath water—until they had started to want more.

  But all she had really looked for from any of them had been companionship, someone to share things with when Cleo had become totally wrapped up with the man who was to be her future husband.

  ‘Now I’ve made you mad again,’ Gideon observed without any apparent remorse. ‘But it seems a little…shall we say unusual for a woman of twenty-four never to have had a boyfriend—’

  ‘I didn’t say I’d never had a boyfriend,’ she broke in crossly. ‘As a matter of fact, I’ve had quite a few.’

  With smooth effrontery, he asked, ‘And were you serious about any of them?’

  ‘Mainly they were just friends,’ she admitted. ‘There was no one who meant anything to me until—’

  She stopped abruptly. The last person she wanted to talk about was David.

  But Gideon wasn’t to be put off. ‘Until someone special came along?’ he suggested.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So tell me about this special man.’

  When she stayed silent, he hazarded mockingly, ‘I dare say he was tall, dark and handsome?’

  ‘He was tall, fair and handsome,’ she corrected.

  ‘When I first got into your car, you looked quite shaken, and you remarked that I reminded you of someone you used to know. Was that him by any chance?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said tightly.

  ‘So are we very much alike?’

  ‘No, not really. It’s just that at odd times I can see a fleeting resemblance.’

  ‘What kind of man was he?’

  ‘Charismatic, well educated, well spoken and utterly charming.’

  ‘What did he do?’

  ‘He worked for Drombies, a firm of auctioneers and valuers, but he hated it. He said he shouldn’t have had to work.’

  ‘Does that mean his family were wealthy?’

  ‘Not that I know of. I got the impression his parents were dead. I don’t think he had any other family. If he had, he ne
ver mentioned them.’

  His face curiously devoid of expression, Gideon queried, ‘Never?’

  ‘No, never.’

  ‘Didn’t he ever tell you about his background? Or ask about yours?’

  Puzzled by his persistence, she said, ‘No. The nights we saw each other, we always went out. I suppose we didn’t get much chance to talk, and when we did it was always about his plans for the future rather than about the past…’

  Getting to his feet, Gideon stirred the logs. His broad back was to her, and she saw tension in his muscular neck and shoulders.

  Returning to his seat after a moment, he asked, ‘So what happened? Did you get tired of him?’

  ‘No.’

  He pursed his lips. ‘I refuse to believe he got tired of you.’

  Uncomfortably, she said, ‘I’d rather not talk about it.’

  She hadn’t even told Cleo the full story, simply that she’d had a boyfriend and they’d split up.

  ‘If by any chance you’re still stuck on him,’ Gideon remarked practically, ‘it might help to talk about it, to get it out of your system.’

  No, she wasn’t still ‘stuck on him’. Just knowing that brought a feeling of release, of freedom, made her able to let go of the past.

  But it was still something she didn’t want to talk about.

  Reading her reluctance, he pressed, ‘How long had you known him? Was he a fellow student?’

  ‘No. It was quite a while after I’d left college. I’d been working in London for almost eighteen months.’

  ‘Then how and where did you meet him?’

  ‘I met him in Sussex. The contents of a county mansion, including an extensive library, came up for auction, and I went to bid for some of the books.’

  Perhaps it was the amount of brandy she’d drunk that loosened her tongue, or maybe, as Gideon had suggested, she needed to get it out of her system.

  Whichever, she found herself embarking on the whole sorry tale.

  ‘I was waiting for the sale to start when he came over to ask if I had a catalogue. We got talking, and he invited me to have a bite to eat with him at lunchtime. I said yes. Later, though he was supposed to be working, he managed to slip away and take me for a meal in the nearby town. He was pleased to find that, like himself, I lived in London, and he asked me to have dinner with him that same evening.’

  ‘So you were, in effect, swept off your feet?’ Gideon asked a touch cynically.

  With a sigh, she agreed, ‘You could say that. Less than a week later he told me that he loved me…’

  And, believing him, she had walked on air.

  ‘Go on,’ Gideon prompted.

  Her head felt light, as though it were floating, and she had to concentrate. ‘He started to press me to sleep with him. He said it was the norm these days…’

  ‘And did you?’

  ‘No.’

  His level brows shot up. ‘Why not? Aren’t you in favour of any grown woman having freedom of choice in matters of sex?’

  ‘Yes, I am,’ she said after a moment. ‘But freedom of choice means being able to say no as well as yes.’

  An expression she couldn’t decipher flitted across Gideon’s face before he asked, ‘So sexually he didn’t turn you on?’

  ‘Yes, he did.’

  ‘Then why did you hold back? Did he prove to be married or something?’

  ‘No, he wasn’t married. He was only twenty-two at the time, a year younger than I was, but he made no secret of the fact that since the age of fifteen there had been a string of women in his life, and sometimes more than one at a time. Which wasn’t surprising, I suppose. He was very good-looking and had loads of sex appeal.’

  ‘Presumably his previous girlfriends were all happy to jump into bed with him?’

  ‘Apparently the one or two who weren’t didn’t last long. He described it as “wasting his time”.’

  ‘You make him sound like a shallow, selfish young swine,’ Gideon observed coldly.

  Though she hadn’t really meant to, that was a fair summing up, Anna thought sadly, but it had taken her until now to see it. No wonder people said that love was blind.

  ‘So what did you do?’

  Sighing, she went on, ‘I kept saying no. I didn’t like the idea of casual sex. It wasn’t what I wanted…’

  ‘You were hoping for some kind of…shall we say, commitment?’

  ‘Yes.’ She tried not to yawn.

  ‘And eventually he gave in and bought you an engagement ring?’

  She shook her head, then wished she hadn’t when the room began to whirl.

  ‘He didn’t buy you a ring?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did he say he was going to?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But he led you to think he might?’

  ‘Not even that. I can never say he wasn’t honest. He told me straight that if it was marriage I was after, I’d fallen in love with the wrong man. He said something like, “Men are naturally polygamous. The idea of tying myself to one woman for life fills me with horror. In my opinion, marriage is an outdated, outmoded, institution.”’

  ‘But you didn’t agree?’

  ‘No.’

  Unlike David, and perhaps because of the example set by her own loving parents, she had always believed in marriage, for better or worse, and a lifetime’s fidelity to one man.

  ‘What happened?’

  She was forced to stifle a yawn before going on, ‘He was infuriated by what he called my old-fashioned attitude, but he still wanted me…’

  ‘So, instead of ditching you like the others, he kept trying to persuade you to change your mind?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did he succeed?’

  ‘Yes and no.’

  She saw Gideon’s lips tighten before he said, ‘You might need to explain that.’

  Anna was finding it difficult to think clearly, and despite all her efforts her speech was becoming a little slurred as she went on, ‘One Friday night, when we’d been to an early show and gone back to his flat for coffee, he made another attempt to persuade me to stay. When I refused, he said, “Look, you know I’m mad about you and, just to prove there’s nothing casual about all this, I’m asking you to move in with me.”’

  She had wanted to, but, a woman at war with her own standards, she had still hesitated.

  ‘When I didn’t immediately say yes, he promised, “If you’re worried about other women, I give you my word that you are the only woman in my life and will be from now on.” He sounded as though he meant it, and I thought he might have changed…’

  ‘But you didn’t seriously expect someone like David to change?’

  Stifling yet another yawn, she asked thickly, ‘How do you know his name was David?’

  ‘You must have mentioned it.’

  She couldn’t remember mentioning David by name, but she must have done. No doubt the unaccustomed alcohol, as well as encouraging her to talk, had made her just a little bit woozy.

  A log flared and sputtered briefly, then broke, settling into white ash. In the hall, the grandfather clock began to chime midnight.

  Watching her eyelids start to droop, Gideon rose to his feet, remarking, ‘I think it’s high time we went to bed before you fall sound asleep in your chair.’

  She looked at him owlishly. ‘I was waiting up for Santa Claus.’

  ‘Didn’t your mother ever tell you that he won’t come while you are up? But if you go to bed like a good girl you may hear his sleigh-bells.’

  He brought the candle and lit it from the fire before asking, ‘About ready?’

  Having struggled to her feet, she swayed, lost her balance, and sat down again abruptly.

  ‘Dear me,’ he said with a touch of wry amusement, ‘it seems we’ve overdone the brandy. Oh, well, I’m sure we’ll manage.’

  Blowing out the candle, he put it on the table and, stooping, scooped her out of the chair and into his arms.

  The flickering fire lit their wa
y across to the door, and he used an elbow to press the handle. Once in the hall, the high mullioned windows let in enough snowy light to mitigate the darkness and make climbing the stairs relatively easy.

  Through the leaded panes, Anna could vaguely see that the blizzard was still blowing. Snow had piled up on the sills in white drifts, while a myriad snowflakes went swirling past.

  Gideon’s prediction that they would be snowed up by the morning looked as if it would come true, yet somehow the thought had ceased to alarm her.

  Her head felt light, buoyant and floating. The sensation, in itself a quite pleasant one, was accompanied by a feeling of unreality.

  Peering into the face so close to hers, she said accusingly, ‘We should have had a candle, you know.’

  Walking along the wide landing, Gideon asked, ‘Don’t you think we’re managing quite well without one?’

  ‘You said going to bed by candlelight would be romantic.’

  He glanced down at her, and she saw the glimmer of his teeth as he smiled. ‘Don’t you think being carried to bed is equally romantic?’

  ‘It only happens in stories.’

  ‘It’s happening now.’

  ‘But this isn’t real, is it?’

  ‘Well, I’ll tell you what, so you won’t be disappointed, I’ll light the candles in the bedroom.’

  ‘Yes, that would be nice,’ she said solemnly.

  Along the wide passage it was darker, but still he moved unerringly. Part-way along, he stooped a little to open the door into a large bedroom, then used his foot to close it again behind them.

  In the wide stone grate a goodly pile of logs burnt and flickered, lighting the room and gleaming on the old polished furniture. Though the fire had taken the chill off the air, it was still far from warm.

  Gideon put her down in a high-backed cushioned chair close to the hearth, and proceeded to light a pair of three-branched candelabra.

  Raising a quizzical brow, he asked, ‘Happy, now?’

  ‘Yes, thank you,’ she said politely.

  ‘I’d better put one of these in your bathroom, so you can see to clean your teeth.’

  ‘Have I got a bathroom?’

  ‘This is the master suite, so there’s one at each end. A his and hers.’

  For some reason this struck her as funny, and she giggled. She felt happy, almost euphoric.