A Marriage Has Been Arranged

by Anne Weale

  The interior was ‘ye olde worlde’ but not off-puttingly kitsch.

  ‘If you want to go and tidy up, the Ladies’ is over there,’ said Pierce, spotting the discreet sign before she did. ‘What would you like to drink before lunch?’

  Holly felt that his manner had suddenly changed to the avuncular attitude of a worldly man finding himself in charge of an exceptionally gauche teenager, like a long-suffering godfather taking an awkward sixth-former out to lunch in the absence of her parents.

  She said, ‘A vodka and tonic with ice but no lemon, please,’ and headed in the direction of the loos.

  There she discovered she didn’t have a lipstick with her, only some colourless salve and a tube of cream, protections against chapped lips and hands. There wasn’t much she could do to boost her self-confidence other than release her hair from the band tying it back at her nape. Swinging in a loose bob just above shoulder-level, it made her look slightly more sophisticated. But she would have given a lot to have some eye make-up, scent and a pair of earrings with her. Not because she wanted to look more attractive, but simply as boosts to morale.

  Why did I let myself in for this? she asked her reflection in the mirror. Why didn’t I say no?

  With a thrust of annoyance she faced the vexatious answer to both those questions. In spite of what he had done to Chiara, in spite of her own strong dislike of him, she had come because Pierce intrigued her. She was drawn to him in spite of herself. Moths didn’t know they would burn their wings by being lured by the light inside a lampshade. She knew Pierce was dangerous, and yet she couldn’t resist this closer contact with him.

  Chiara had been attracted by his wealth and his lavish lifestyle as much as by his looks and his powerful sex appeal. But Holly was drawn by the man behind the public mask. She wanted to know what made him tick and if, behind his appearance of total self-confidence, there were hidden weaknesses, parts of him which could be hurt.

  Not normally cruel and revengeful, she found herself wanting to wound him, to exert the same sort of power he exerted on the women he made his playthings. She knew it was completely mad, but she wanted to have Pierce Sutherland in her power and make him know what it felt like to be treated the way he had treated Chiara. At the same time she knew she had none of the weapons she needed to achieve that objective: not beauty, not a brain to match his, not irresistible sex appeal...none of the things she needed to be able to play him at his own game.

  Her only resource in dealing with him, the one thing which set her apart from all the other women he had known was her resistance to him. And how long would that be a safeguard if he decided to undermine it? She would be like the commander of a city under siege. She would have only two options, one of them to surrender.

  Pierce was not at the bar when she rejoined him. He was sitting at a corner table, glancing at a copy of The Times which he had taken from a selection of newspapers and magazines on a table in the centre of the room. When he sensed her approaching, he tossed it aside and stood up, taking in her loose hair.

  ‘I’ve already made my choice,’ he said, indicating a menu lying on the table next to her drink.

  After sating herself, Holly picked up the glass. She didn’t say ‘cheers’ or anything similarly friendly before she took her first sip.

  ‘I’ve a casserole ready for my supper so I won’t have much lunch. I’m used to a sandwich and an apple at this time of day.’

  ‘Do you like cooking?’ he asked.

  ‘I like eating. Where I’m living at the moment, it’s cook or go without. The nearest take-away place is six miles away. Anyway, I’m not into junk food.’

  ‘I can see that. You glow with health. I should think your breath is like sea air, even first thing in the morning.’ As he said it, he smiled into her eyes.

  The effect on Holly was catastrophic. Immediately, she had a vision of lying in a half-acre bed, under the lightest and most luxurious swan’s-down duvet, with Pierce stretched out close behind her, propped on one elbow, both of them naked. And what she saw in her mind’s eye caused such a strong reaction that she gave an audible gasp as sensations she wasn’t prepared for shot through her insides like an electric charge.

  To make matters worse she was almost certain he knew what was happening to her, had set out to have this effect and was amused and pleased at having achieved it.

  ‘It’s not difficult to stay fit when you’re leading a natural life,’ she said, trying to sound composed. ‘If I worked in a city office, I would never feel well. I don’t know how people survive that sort of environment, especially offices with no natural ventilation.’

  ‘I agree.’ Pierce picked up his glass and drank some lager. ‘Given no other options, I would rather sweep leaves in the park than be a commodities broker. The lives those guys lead is inhuman. At the end of a twelve-hour day, all they’re fit for is propping up a bar or snorting cocaine. And for what? Only money. No job satisfaction. No security. No esteem worth mentioning.’

  ‘“Only money” is easy to say when you have plenty of it,’ said Holly. ‘I can’t see you as a park sweeper; I really can’t.’

  ‘Neither can I,’ he said, smiling. ‘But luckily I was born with more than two options...almost unlimited options. All you need in this world is some brains and a lot of ambition and you can’t go wrong. Whatever you want you can have, but you have to work for it. Look at you. You wanted to be a garden designer and you are. But I doubt if what you’ve achieved fell into your lap. You had to strive for it.’

  ‘I haven’t achieved much so far. I’m only at the beginning. But I think it’s the kind of career which will mesh with the other things I want.’

  ‘Which are?’

  She gave him a level look. ‘A husband and children. That old-fashioned thing called marriage which people like you despise.’

  ‘Where did you get that idea? Because I didn’t marry Chiara, it doesn’t mean I don’t want a wife when the right woman comes along.’

  ‘And will you be faithful to her?’ she asked. ‘Or will you continue to have affairs on the side?’

  He didn’t reply immediately but gave her a long, thoughtful look which she found quite hard to hold.

  ‘On the basis of very little evidence, you’ve jumped to a lot of conclusions which are about as accurate as the stories in the tabloid press,’ he said. ‘Tell me, are you exactly the same as you were five years ago?’

  ‘Of course not, but five years ago I was still in my teens.’

  ‘Yes, I remember you well,’ he said, smiling faintly. ‘You were wearing a dress that didn’t suit you and your hair was badly cut, but even so you had something about you...the promise of how you are now.’

  The caressing tone of his voice and the look in his eyes, which were not as cold as she had thought—or, at least, not when he chose to soften the expression in them—made Holly lower her gaze in the hope of masking her response.

  Did he really remember her as clearly as he made out?

  ‘The whole evening was an exercise in over-the-top pretentiousness,’ he went on reminiscently. ‘If there were a prize for bad taste, your stepmother would certainly be on the short list.’

  ‘And you would be on the short list of guests who have no compunction about running down their hostess,’ Holly said frostily.

  ‘Oh, come on, Holly; I’m only speaking the truth. It was making you cringe. I watched you. You wanted to sink through the floor.’

  She couldn’t deny it. She had cringed. But her father never had. Unlike Mr Bennet in Pride and Prejudice, Professor Nicholson had never by the flicker of an eyelid revealed the embarrassment his second wife’s affected, snobbish behaviour had caused him. Only sometimes, alone with his daughter, had he permitted himself some wry comment which he knew he could trust her not to repeat to anyone. But, of course, by the time of the party under discussion, he had already died of a massive heart attack.

  ‘I was having a bet with myself,’ Pierce went on, ‘that when all those piddli
ng courses of second-rate food finally came to an end Mrs Nicholson would rise to her feet and sweep you all off to do whatever women do when they leave the men to drink port and “put the world to rights”.’

  The accuracy of his memory and the exactness with which he mimicked the arch inflection of her stepmother’s voice when she’d made this remark made Holly smile in spite of herself.

  ‘You are very unkind.’

  He shrugged. ‘I was massively bored by it all. You can’t expect me to be kind about someone who put me through several hours of acute boredom. I was tempted to get up and walk out. Life is too short to sit through that sort of nonsense. It was only when we joined you in the drawing room that the whole thing was made worthwhile.’

  Suddenly his face was alight with warmth and humour, his grin revealing the fine teeth she had only glimpsed while he’d talked.

  ‘You were sitting by yourself on an uncomfortable chair, looking as if butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth. And then, when the coffee had been passed round and the woman with the double-barrelled surname was holding forth in that falsely plummy accent, you suddenly crossed your legs and lifted your long skirt a little...revealing those huge hairy feet with claw-like toenails.’

  He gave a deep bay of laughter, clapping his hand against the hard length of his thigh. ‘I should think they could hear her shriek at the other end of the street. For a minute she thought those appalling great feet were real. Her eyes were on stalks. It’s a wonder she didn’t have hysterics.’

  Remembering the expression on the face of the woman he was talking about, Holly began to smile and then to dissolve into laughter.

  ‘But you weren’t amused then,’ she reminded him. ‘You couldn’t have looked more po-faced.’

  ‘I was clenching my back teeth so hard, it’s a wonder they didn’t fuse. Inside I was breaking up. When I laughed about it later, Chiara was very annoyed with me. She didn’t share your sense of humour. In fact I don’t ever remember her belly-laughing at anything. The best she’d manage was a breathy little giggle. Now don’t flare up and bite my head off. If we can’t speak frankly to each other, we’re never going to get anywhere. The bedrock of friendship is truth.’

  ‘If that involves running down my sister, we’re never going to be friends,’ Holly informed him.

  ‘I’m not running her down. I’m being honest. She’s a beautiful girl but she has no sense of humour. Never in a million years would she have worn those feet in those circumstances. Where did you get them, anyway?’

  “They were a present I’d bought for my best friend’s younger brother’s birthday. I’d always wanted a brother and Dan was the next best thing. When the others went up to my stepmother’s bedroom, I went to mine, where the feet were waiting to be wrapped up. The reason I put them on was to test whether you had a sense of humour. I didn’t think you were going to ask Chiara to marry you, but in case you did I wanted to run through the checks my father advised me to make on anyone I thought I was in love with.’

  ‘And what were they?’ Pierce enquired.

  ‘The first was a good sense of humour. The others...I don’t want to discuss.’

  ‘Which means, I suppose, that they have to do with sex... a subject you aren’t comfortable with...or, at least, not with me...not yet,’ Pierce remarked drily.

  His shrewdness was disconcerting. He made her feel he could see inside her head and read her thoughts, like someone illicitly accessing the files stored on another person’s computer.

  It was a relief when he said it was time they ate, if she had decided what she wanted.

  Holly had half expected that his lunch would be the T-bone steak with French fries and grilled tomatoes and mushrooms. But when one of the barmaids had come to take their orders and Pierce had told her that his guest would have the cottage cheese salad with pineapple, his own order turned out to be stuffed peppers with a baked potato and a side salad.

  To drink, he ordered spring water, asking Holly if she preferred it still or sparkling.

  ‘Still, please.’

  When the waitress had left them, he said, ‘If I weren’t driving, we could share a bottle of wine. But if you’re working this afternoon you probably don’t want to drink much either. By the way, I bring a message from Fujiko. If I succeed in healing the breach between us, she would like me to bring you to a party she’s giving on the twenty-fourth. Her parties are always first-rate. I know you’d enjoy it. Will you let me be your escort?’

  ‘Do I need an escort? Wouldn’t I be acceptable on my own?’

  ‘Of course, but rather than putting you to the trouble and expense of going to London by train Fujiko felt it would be easier if I fetched you in my chopper. The invitation includes a bed for the night...a bed in Fujiko’s apartment. I can imagine your reaction if I offered you one at my place. Although if I did you would have nothing to fear,’ he added quizzically. ‘I never make passes unless I’m sure they’ll be welcome.’

  Holly ignored this sally. Did she want to go to a party under Pierce’s aegis? What did her wardrobe include that would do for a smart London party which might be black tie? Nothing. Not even a little black dress, because she had never had that sort of social life.

  ‘The reason she’s giving the party is because her grandson’s coming over,’ Pierce went on. ‘Did she tell you about Ben? He’s the apple of her eye, and deservedly so. He’s a sweet guy. You’ll like him. He’s the antithesis of me,’ he added drily. ‘Kind, gentle, deeply chivalrous towards women. Ben is a combination of all that’s good in two very different cultures. People like him are our best hope for the future. So...will you come?’

  Holly took a deep breath, knowing instinctively that she could be about to make the worst mistake of her life.

  ‘All right...yes...yes, I will.’

  CHAPTER THREE

  THE day before Mrs Shintaro’s party, Holly went to London by train, intending to spend the next two nights with Chiara.

  Two days after lunching with Pierce, she had telephoned him to say it wouldn’t be necessary for him to fetch her in his helicopter. She had made other arrangements.

  He accepted this decision without argument. Nor did he quibble when she added that she would also get to the party under her own steam and meet him there.

  Perhaps he suspected she might be staying with her stepsister and preferred to avoid an encounter with his ex-girlfriend.

  Chiara, when she opened the door of her Chelsea flat, was sporting a golden tan acquired on a recent visit to southern Spain where Eric, her current ‘close friend’, kept a yacht berthed at Sotogrande, a glitzy resort at the Gibraltar end of the Costa del Sol, or the Costa del Golf as it was sometimes known.

  ‘Darling...lovely to see you.’ She embraced Holly warmly. ‘You look a bit peaky. Are you all right?’

  ‘Couldn’t be better,’ said Holly. ‘Just not as suntanned as you are. How was Spain?’

  ‘Oh...not bad,’ said Chiara, shrugging. ‘I got a bit bored with the wall-to-wall wrinklies. The average age on the Costa has to be seventy at least. You hardly ever see a woman who isn’t on her fifth or sixth face-lift...apart from a scattering of bimbos.’

  It didn’t seem to occur to her that many people would regard Chiara herself as a bimbo, Holly thought, with a pang.

  Since her stepsister had been with Eric, she had taken to having her hair done an even lighter shade of blonde and to wearing increasingly outré clothes. Obviously Eric liked her to attract attention, but it wasn’t the kind of notice which would have pleased Pierce when she had been with him. Under his aegis, Chiara had worn clothes by Armani and Calvin Klein, clothes in subtle good taste which Holly had had to admire even if she hadn’t approved of Pierce paying for them.

  But now Chiara was buying creations by the wilder, most way-out designers, and although they cost a lot of money somehow they made her look cheap.

  ‘I didn’t expect you to come up again so soon after using the flat while I was away,’ she remarked on the way
to the living room. ‘What brings you here this time? More research work?’

  ‘I want to do some Christmas shopping...and I need to find something to wear for a party tomorrow night.’

  ‘A party in London? How come?’

  While Chiara made coffee, Holly explained about meeting Mrs Shintaro at New Covent Garden and being given a lift because it was raining heavily. For the time being she left Pierce out of it.

  ‘How exciting!’ Chiara’s pansy-dark eyes glistened with interest. Parties, and planning what to wear to them, were the breath of life to her. ‘But you don’t need to buy anything, silly. Have a look through what I’ve got. There’s bound to be something you’ll like.’

  Although it was seldom apparent to other people, because they presented themselves in totally different ways, Chiara and Holly had almost identical vital statistics.

  Later, after coffee and when Holly had unpacked in the spare bedroom, Chiara took her to her own bedroom where a long bank of built-in closets housed her extensive wardrobe.

  One of Chiara’s most likeable characteristics was her generosity. She had always been happy to share her things with her sisters and stepsister.

  Now, for Holly’s delectation, she showed all her most recent buys, including a selection of what she called ‘LBDs’, meaning little black dresses, but not of the discreet, undating standby variety. The ones she had picked out all made strong, sexy statements which Holly lacked the panache to carry off.

  For a moment, as Chiara held against herself a barely-there sheath of clingy crushed velvet which would mould to every curve of her body in explicit detail, Holly wondered how Pierce would react if she went to the party showing maximum cleavage and leg.

  But it wasn’t her style. Never had been and never would be. She didn’t want men’s eyes crawling all over her as they mentally stripped off the little she was wearing. She wanted to look alluring, but not to flaunt her sexuality.