Lucie's eyes filled with tears, remembering the last time she had seen him, how he had taken her in his arms and kissed her. It had been a reconciliation of such promise. If only they had had more time together—
She stood looking out of the big picture window as the storm raged. Lucie had never been afraid of thunder, and she watched the swirling rain with a kind of fascination. As soon as the storm was over she would go back. She should never have come this far; she should never have given another thought to the lies of a vicious, jealous woman. She loved Guy and she must believe that he loved her. So many memories of his lovemaking, of his tenderness for her, of his obvious happiness on their island honeymoon, came back to her as she stood at the window, and her mouth softened into a smile as she remembered.
The adjoining villa was the one belonging to Steve and Dorothy Maddox. Beyond that, and standing at an angle, overhung by a huge palm tree, was the third in the complex. Was that where the Blunts were living? A car was parked at one side under the tree. A dark-coloured car.
Lucie caught her breath. Not Guy's car? The window was blurred and misty and she rubbed it with the palm of her hand, peering out. It could equally well be another hired car, she told herself, one of the same make. It meant nothing, nothing at all.
Then a man appeared on the verandah, looking back to speak to someone inside the villa. Lucie froze. Even at this distance Guy was unmistakable, she knew every inch of him, the way he stood, the way he moved, the height and darkness of him. He lifted a hand as if in farewell, then a woman appeared, wearing some floating white garment, and, apparently oblivious of the rain, flung her arms round the man's neck, clinging to him as if parting was agony. Their bodies were locked together in a long, long lovers' kiss.
Lucie closed her eyes and gripped the metal handle of the door as nausea struck. She lurched across the room and into the bathroom and was horribly sick.
Later, somehow, she dragged herself back along the sodden beach. The storm had passed over now, but the palm trees dripped coldly on her head and shoulders. She couldn't stop shivering and her legs felt as if they didn't belong to her.
Back at the condo she stripped off her soaking garments and got under a hot shower. She mustn't get ill—not now when there was so much to do. She towelled dry and got into jeans and a jumper and went to the telephone to look up the number of the airport, turning over the pages feverishly, bent on only one thing—to get away from here as quickly as possible. If Guy wasn't back before she left she would ring his office at the bank and tell him she was going.
Yes, there was a seat on the flight leaving for Miami at five-forty. It seemed as if Fate were on her side, helping her once again to escape from an intolerable situation. She rang the taxi firm and booked a car, then started to pack her bag.
Guy returned before she had finished.
'What are you doing?' He stood in the doorway, very straight. For a fleeting moment Lucie thought he looked like a man facing a firing squad, but that was just her imagination, of course.
'I'm leaving,' she said. 'There doesn't seem much point in staying on here, and I want to get back to my work. I've got my return flight back to England, and—'
'Work?' he broke in. 'What work?'
She folded a woollen jumper neatly and laid it on top of her case. It would be cold back in the flat in London. 'I'm an artist of sorts,' she said. 'Didn't I mention it?'
'No,' he said, 'you didn't. Why didn't you?'
'I suppose I didn't think it would be of much interest to a chairman of a bank,' she said coolly, and saw the way his mouth tightened at the jibe. 'But I've had a small success in my own way. I've had a children's book published and another one accepted, to come out later this year. I want to get going on my next one. I have a studio flat, you know, where I lived and worked before—before you blackmailed me into marriage. I've left the address beside the telephone where you can get in touch with me later. As I don't intend to go on with this marriage any longer I shall go back to the flat, to live and work.'
Guy crossed the room in two strides. His face was dark with anger, the blue eyes pierced like steel blades. 'The hell you will!' he forced the words between his teeth. 'You're my wife and you stay here with me. I need you.'
Of course you do, she thought bitterly. If it wasn't for me your best friend might begin to wonder what was going on between you and his wife.
He lowered his voice and said, 'What's got into you, Lucie? I thought you understood—I've got a big job to do—responsibilities—' He ran a hand through his smooth dark hair, ruffling it until it stood up in little peaks. Oh God, Lucie thought wildly, staring at it. I want to feel his hair under my fingers, I want to throw myself in his arms and tell him I love him and long for him and I don't care about anything so long as I can stay in his life, in his bed—
I mustn't, I mustn't, she thought desperately, and pushed down the lid of her case. 'I always told you I hated your way of life, and now I see for myself all that it leads to. Money—deals—manipulating people—that's all that you think about, and it's—it's callous—heartless—' She choked over the final word.
'Lucie, this is crazy! I don't recognise myself in what you're saying—'
'Don't you ?' She closed her hands over the back of a chair and stared up at him with accusing eyes. 'What about my father? Why didn't you tell me that it came out at the enquiry that he had a serious heart condition? I had to hear about it from Steve Maddox!'
Puzzledly he said, 'James and I agreed that there was no point in your knowing that and—'
'No point!' Her voice rose tremblingly. 'Of course there was a point. You could have helped him—he'd relied on your bank for years—but you refused.'
He clicked his tongue in exasperation. 'My dear girl, you don't know what you're talking about. There's a limit to what any bank can do for a. customer. Your father owed us millions—there wasn't a chance in hell that he could have ever repaid us.'
She went on stonily, as if he hadn't spoken. 'He must have been at the end of his tether when he went down on that dive. He must have known that he wouldn't come up again—'
Guy's face was ashen. 'Great God, Lucie, what are you saying?'
'I'm saying that if it hadn't been for you my father might have been alive today!'
'And that's why you want to leave?' His voice was dangerously quiet now.
'Partly,' she said, biting her lip hard.
'And may I enquire what the other part is?' He was at his most sarcastic. Lucie hated his sarcasm, it made her cringe inside. But she had started this now and she must go on.
She said, 'I know now why you wanted to marry me, and it's squalid and beastly.'
He said very quietly, 'Perhaps you'll be good enough to explain.'
'You and Cynthia Blunt, of course. I saw you together down by the harbour, the day of our wedding, when you said you had work to do—and I couldn't help wondering then—but I told myself not to be silly and suspicious. But Cynthia herself came to see me today. She told me that you and she had been lovers for some time and intended not to make any change.'
'And you believed her?' he said icily.
'I—I didn't know,' she faltered. 'It seemed to—to fit in.'
'To fit in with what?'
'I know that people like you think nothing of it-it's all part of your life-style—having a wife and a mistress—but I think it's degrading and I refuse to be—to be used like this. She said she and her husband were divorcing soon and then you wouldn't need me as a—a cover-up.'
She stopped, trying to find some message in the hard, expressionless face, but he was looking at her as if she were a stranger. Oh, please say something, she willed him desperately. Deny it, or admit it or explain. Just say something!
'I didn't want to believe her,' she rushed on, and now the words seemed to be pouring out of her. She had a terrible feeling that she was losing him, but she couldn't stop. 'But I was on the beach this afternoon—I went into my father's villa to shelter from the storm, and
I saw you and her together—she was in your arms—'
'You were spying on me?' She flinched at the contempt in his voice.
'No, I—'
'That's enough!' Guy lifted a hand and she thought he was going to strike her, but it dropped to his side again and his words, when they came, had a cold finality that was more frightening than any anger would have been. 'So that's what you think of me?' His face was a hard mask. She felt that it was a stranger standing before her. 'Of course you wouldn't want to remain married to a blackmailer and a murderer and an adulterer, would you? So you may as well go. Go back to your bedsitter and paint your little pictures. Go quickly—now, and don't come back!' He turned and strode out of the room, and the violent slamming of the door was the only sign of the rage that she had seen ready to erupt inside him.
She heard the engine of the hired car, the squeal of brakes as he pulled up at the entrance to the road. Then the noise dying away.
Later that day mist lay over the island as the plane rose into the evening sky, and all Lucie could see as she looked down was a vague, greenish shape. Her last thought before it disappeared altogether was, 'I wonder what will happen to the Canard a l'orange.' And then she began to weep.
London was grey and bitterly cold. The last of the snow still lay in dirty piles in corners. The flat was chilly and unwelcoming and the African violet in its pot on the windowsill was past hope. Lucie lit the gas fire and made tea, then pulled up a chair and sat, feeling utterly dejected and hopeless. Less than three weeks since she had left here: it seemed impossible that so much happiness and so much misery could be crammed into three short weeks. But she must try to put it behind her now. She would go to ground here and work—work—work. Always before, her remedy against depression and loneliness had been her work. Now, more than ever, it must come to her help. She wondered whether to let James know she had come back, but she couldn't face his surprise, his worried questioning. Sooner or later he would have to know, but not yet. She would get into her work first, that would turn her into a human being again.
The appalling fact, which began to dawn on her days later, was that her work wasn't going to help this time. She had planned to paint the tiny coloured fishes against their home of coral, but that was out of the question. She would have to think of something that didn't remind her of Guy and their honeymoon island. But nothing came, and her pencil refused to draw even a doodle that might turn into something interesting, and the floor heaped up with crumpled sheets of discarded paper.
From the moment she had run away in the storm from the sight of that woman in Guy's arms she had ceased to think. She had lashed out blindly against him, wanting to hurt him as much as he had hurt her. She had left him without even beginning to think the thing through.
But now she couldn't stop thinking. The thoughts scurried round in her brain like ants all day and most of the night. Perhaps he could have explained about Cynthia, but she hadn't given him a chance. Or could it possibly not have been Cynthia and Guy at all, but two other people? The rain had been sheeting down, blurring their figures. Had her suspicions made her imagine something quite, quite wrong?
And she had practically accused him of being responsible for her father's death. What a dreadful thing to do! No wonder he had looked at her as if she disgusted him. Of course he wasn't responsible, he was only doing his job. The fact that she was prejudiced against everything in the world of big business, of which he was a part, was no excuse for making such a terrible suggestion.
He wouldn't forgive her, ever. 'Get out of my life,' he had said, coldly and contemptuously, and he had meant it. His face, white with rage and disgust, haunted her every moment. Surely, though, he would have to get in touch with her soon?
He didn't get in touch. Day after endless day she sat alone in the flat with a blank sheet of paper in front of her, creeping out only to buy food that she couldn't eat, lying awake at night until her misery pressed on her like a great lump of stone, and finally she buried her head in the pillow and wept. But the days passed and there was no letter, no phone call for her, although she left her door open all the time in case the phone rang in the hall below.
It was eleven days after her return when she heard a man's step on the stairs, and her heart almost stopped beating. The door was pushed further open and a voice said, 'Lucie? Is this the right place?'
Not Guy's voice. All her breath left her in a long sigh.
Giles Blunt was standing in the doorway. 'I am right, then. Hello, Lucie, may I come in?'
He had come from Guy, of course he had. The bank's lawyer. He had come to discuss proceedings for the divorce.
'Yes—what a surprise! Do come in and sit down.' Her voice was high and uneven. She pulled out a chair for him and he sat down, his thin, clever face faintly embarrassed. 'Can I get you anything? A drink?'
'No, thanks.' He looked down at his shoes. 'I've come on a rather strange errand, Lucie. I'm not sure if I'll be welcome.'
She was icy cold now. 'Of course you are. How are you?'
'I'm fine,' he said, and waited a moment. 'It's Guy, you see. In a way I'm here on his behalf, if that doesn't sound strange.'
'Not at all,' she said politely. From a lawyer, come to arrange a divorce, the wording might be correct.
'How is he?' she heard herself ask. You were dying and yet you could keep up a conversation like this. It was very odd.
'Much better,' said Giles. 'He's out of hospital now and back at the condo, but you know, Lucie, I really think he needs looking after. He knows you left Grand Cayman because you have a deadline for your next book and he made me promise not to tell you about his accident in case you worried, but—'
'No!' her hand went to her throat. 'What accident? I didn't know—'
Giles looked surprised and more embarrassed than ever. 'Oh lord, have I really put my foot in it? I thought you'd have been notified.'
She shook her head numbly. 'What happened?'
He was regarding her rather strangely. 'In his car—about ten days ago. The usual thing—someone just in from Europe forgot that you drive on the left in the Caymans. Guy's usually wary about that, but this time his concentration must have slipped a bit.
He sheered off the road and the car hit a tree. He was lucky, actually. Slight concussion and a broken left wrist. The usual bruises, but nothing really serious. He says he's going back to work on Monday, but I don't think he's fit really. He looks pretty low. I've left my partner out in the Caymans and as I was coming back to London I thought I'd drop in and tell you the score.'
Lucie licked her dry lips. 'Guy didn't ask you to see me?'
'No, he didn't. He says he's quite OK and there's no reason to take you away from your work. I expect that's why he didn't want you to know.'
But a newly-married couple would be in touch every day, as a matter of course. So why hadn't she bothered to find out what was happening when she didn't hear from him? She could almost see the question posing itself behind Giles Blunt's clever grey eyes.
She shook her head helplessly. 'That wasn't the reason, Giles. You may as well know—Guy and I have split up.'
'So soon?' he said, but she could see that that was what he had guessed.
'Yes,' she muttered, clenching her fists to stop herself from breaking down. 'The shortest marriage on record,' she said bitterly.
There was a long, uncomfortable silence. Giles broke it at last. 'I'm sorry, Lucie, it's pure hell, isn't it? Fellow-feeling, you know,' he added, looking out of the window at the tall houses opposite. 'I'm in the same boat myself—my own marriage has come to an end, finally. Cynthia came back to London with me—unwillingly—but tomorrow we both see our solicitors. So that's that,' he added grimly. 'We join the club.' He stood up. 'I'm not going to stay and play for sympathy, Lucie. These things happen and we have to get over them.' He walked to the door. 'But I'm glad I came. At least you know the score now and you can do what you think best. It was wrong of Guy not to let you know, and I'm not going to apologise for
going behind his back and coming to see you.'
He held out a hand and looked deeply into her eyes. 'Good luck, Lucie. Guy's a fine chap and you're a very nice girl. I only hope the two of you can work something out.'
'Thank you,' she whispered, putting her hand in his. 'And thank you for coming.'
When Giles had gone Lucie took out her building society book and turned over the pages with shaking fingers. Then she pulled on a mac and went out to catch a bus to the West End. Here she found the agents that she and Peter had dealt with before. If she used every penny she possessed, including what was left of her advance from the publishers, she could afford a return ticket to Grand Cayman. She would probably have to wait three days for a flight, the exquisite young lady behind the desk told her.
'Oh, isn't there anything sooner?' Lucie wailed. 'Please, couldn't there possibly be a cancellation or something?'
'We-ell.' The clerk looked with faint interest at the white face of the girl before her. 'Urgent, is it?'
'It's my husband,' Lucie swallowed hard. 'He's out there on business and he's—he's had an accident.'
'Oh, too bad!' The girl's maroon-tipped fingers fluttered over the booking records. 'There might just be one seat on a flight via Houston tomorrow morning. We're waiting for confirmation now. Would you like to sit down, and I'll try to get in touch.'
'Oh, thank you.' Lucie shrank into a huge soft lounge-seat and prayed hard.
God was listening at last. Next morning Lucie was in the huge jet that rose into the air from Heathrow, en route for Houston, Texas, USA.
Guy would reject her again—why should he want her when Cynthia was going to be free? But that didn't seem to matter now. All that mattered was that she should see him again, and the need was a physical pain inside her.
She laid her head back and closed her eyes and pictured his face close to hers after they had made love on their honeymoon island. Saw the way his blue eyes were soft and his mouth relaxed into happiness, felt the weight of his arm flung across her body as if he didn't want to let her go. He had felt something for her more than just physical need, she tried to persuade herself.
Honeymoon Island Page 13
