by Penny Jordan
One slip… one mistake could easily cost him his life, as Jake well knew. The identity he had been provided with had to fit him so comfortably and so easily that no one could penetrate its deception.
Not even when he was alone at night in his hotel bedroom dared he allow himself to think of Beth. If he thought of her he might dream of her, and he had a shrewd suspicion that his room was bugged. He didn’t think he talked in his sleep, but one never knew.
The work he was doing was mentally exhausting and draining, and as his opposite number in Miami had said frustratedly the last time they had met, no matter how many of the small fry they managed to pull in and convict, the really big ones were virtually untouchable, safe behind the guarded walls of their Colombian estates, living lifestyles of unimaginable luxury, running the country from behind the scenes.
All Jake could hope for at this stage was to be tested out; that was to be allowed to either carry a small amount of drugs through British Customs or be used as a decoy to enable someone else to smuggle something through.
The really big shipments, the ones they were interested in, were not carried into the country in the false base of someone’s briefcase. It would be a long time, if ever, before the organisation trusted him enough to allow him access to the kind of information he wanted.
They knew from the amount of drugs reaching London how skilled the organisation was; they knew the names of some of the smaller pushers; they knew the names of the big suppliers. But the all-important network of people linking them together still had to be revealed.
In Colombia there must be someone with direct responsibility for the British ‘market’; in London there must be someone the organisation trusted sufficiently to put in overall charge of their operation; and it was these two vitally important key figures, and perhaps one or two others, whose identities Jake wanted to uncover.
He was under no illusions. What he was doing was very, very dangerous indeed. In the past that hadn’t mattered, he had had no one other than himself to consider, but now it was different. Now there was Beth.
He remembered a fellow agent once remarking bitterly that the worst thing one of their numbers could do was to fall in love. Now he was beginning to understand why.
Over and over again he asked himself if he had the right to expect Beth to share the dangers of his life. She was so very young in so many ways… still half child and half woman and so very vulnerable. But she had told him that the last thing she wanted him to do was to abandon his work because of her.
‘It’s so important… so necessary…’ she had told him with shining eyes. ‘Without people like you…’
And he had realised ruefully that she was looking at him as though he were some sort of knight in shining armour… Very tarnished armour, he reflected tiredly, and likely to be more so before this present mission was over.
Because it was too dangerous for him to risk reporting second hand to London, he would be flying back there just before Christmas to report directly to his superiors… After that it would be up to the organisation to contact him. Whether they did or not depended on how he convinced them that he could be of use to them.
A great deal of painstaking preparation had gone into his new identity. In London he had an ailing business, desperately in need of cash, and the kind of lifestyle to support that made him eager for money. That lifestyle came complete with an ex-wife—a fellow agent. His disappearance from London over Christmas would be covered by the need to ‘disappear’ for a few weeks to escape from his creditors and his ex-wife.
The operation was a long-term one, and Beth would ultimately have to be part of the deception… As his wife…
He sighed a little, remembering the forcefully blunt reactions of his superiors to the information that he intended to marry. That had angered him. Beth was too important to him for him to be able to ask her to wait, possibly many months, until the operation was over.
He wanted her with him now… wanted to establish clearly to Gloria Pilling the nature of their relationship. It wasn’t going to be easy, he knew that, but somehow they would find a way.
The telephone beside his bed rang and he tensed; this was the signal he had been waiting for… the first step on the road that would take him eventually into the heart of the organisation.
He picked it up and listened.
Three weeks later, when he flew into Heathrow, he was carrying the briefcase that his contact had given him. Customs had been given instructions to treat him with kid gloves.
From the airport he drove to the apartment he rented following the break-up of his ‘marriage’ and, once there, waited for the contact he knew would come.
The woman who came to see him was brisk and impersonal, elegantly dressed and slightly disdainful as she took the case from him, and calmly unlocked the small hidden cavity inside it.
She smiled grimly at the expression on his face when she opened the small bags concealed inside and then poured their contents on to the coffee table.
‘It’s salt,’ she told him, and then added mockingly, ‘Surely you didn’t think we’d really trust you with anything more valuable?’
‘But I was told I’d be paid ten thousand pounds for bringing this stuff in,’ Jake told her blusteringly, playing up to his role.
‘So you will be,’ she agreed, opening her shoulder-bag and removing a neatly folded roll of bank notes. She dropped them on the table beside the salt. ‘It’s all there… count it if you wish.’
Jake gave her a suspicious, surly look and did just that. She hadn’t lied, and the notes weren’t counterfeit either.
‘What the hell’s going on?’ he demanded angrily. ‘You pay me ten thousand quid just to bring in some salt?’
‘We were testing you,’ she told him coolly. ‘After all, if this had been coke, it would have been worth far more than ten thousand pounds…’ She turned round and walked towards the door, pausing there to say casually, ‘We’ll be in touch with you if we need you…’
‘Not for the next few weeks, you won’t,’ Jake told her truculently, picking up the money. ‘I’m going somewhere where I can enjoy this before anyone else tries to get their hands on it.’
He left London three days later, ostensibly to join a house party of like-minded ‘friends’ who were spending Christmas and the New Year cruising the Bahamas.
Two days after that, after a draining debriefing followed by discussions on future tactical plans, he drove down to Fitton Park.
The changes were apparent the moment he drove in through the gates. Fresh gravel covered the drive, the lawns were immaculate… and in the distance the late afternoon sunlight glinted on the cleaned and repaired mullioned windows.
He had stopped in Chester on his way to Fitton Park, to call on his solicitor. His call there had had two purposes; the first had been to collect Beth’s letters.
What he had read in them angered him. It was plain that Gloria was making her daughter very unhappy, and that knowledge helped to ease Jake’s own feelings of guilt that marriage to him might be placing an unfair burden on Beth’s frail shoulders.
His second purpose was to collect the old-fashioned emerald and diamond ring that had been given to Fitton brides since Regency times. On his instructions his solicitor had removed it from the bank’s safety deposit box and arranged for it to be cleaned.
It was heavy and ornate, and something smaller and more delicate would probably have suited Beth’s tiny hand far better. But it was traditional that all Fitton brides were given this ring, and Jake had surprised within himself an odd need to continue that tradition.
He slowed his car down to a crawl as he headed down the drive, his mind registering all the subtle and infinitesimal changes wrought by skill and an inexhaustible supply of money.
Whoever had been responsible for ordering the restoration of the gardens had done so with sympathy and care, and he fancied that he detected Beth’s gentle touch in their renewal.
He knew from Beth’s letters t
hat he was not going to be Gloria’s only house guest.
When she had first demanded from him that he attend her New Year’s Eve party he had been angered and loath to accept her invitation to stay at Fitton as her guest.
But once he had met Beth… he was smiling as he parked his car with the others and removed his bags from its boot.
Even as he approached the front door it was opening, but it wasn’t Finks’ familiar lop-sided figure that stood there.
The man opening the door to him bore all the hallmarks of a traditional British butler: grey-haired, stern-faced, straight-backed. When Jake gave him his name, saying casually, ‘Jake Fitton,’ he corrected him loftily, greeting him with,
‘Good afternoon, Sir Jake. I’ll inform Mrs Pilling that you’ve arrived. Lucy will show you up to your room; the other guests are in the conservatory. Mrs Pilling asked for tea to be served there at four o’clock, but if you would prefer something in your room…’
Tea in the conservatory. Jake suppressed a grin. The conservatory as he remembered it had been a cold, dank place, its framework rusting and many panes of glass missing. He wondered what it looked like now. Probably full of green, shiny plants and uncomfortable wrought-iron furniture.
The thought of mingling with Gloria and her guests wasn’t a particularly inviting one. There was only one person he wanted to see, but he guessed that Beth would be far too apprehensive of being discovered by her mother to risk trying to see him alone.
‘I’ll join the others, thank you,’ he told the butler, turning to follow the trimly turned-out maid who was waiting to escort him upstairs.
Following her up the cleaned and restored carved staircase, noting the delicate perfection of the plain cream-washed walls and the heavy richness of the polished oak, Jake felt a small pang of regret, and he paused, one hand on the balustrade, feeling the familiar warmth of the oak beneath his skin, studying the oils grouped on the cream walls, and noting how well their sombre colours toned in with the patina of the wood.
Someone had gone to immense trouble over Fitton’s reawakening, and if the other rooms were as carefully and sympathetically restored as the hallway and stairs he knew that Gloria Pilling must be receiving many compliments on all that she had achieved… Or all that her money and Beth’s taste had achieved, he reflected, recalling the carefully detailed letters Beth had sent him, each one full not only of her love for him and of how she missed him, but also of the work she was doing at Fitton.
From the top of the stairs he paused to look back down into the hallway.
The huge stone fireplace had been restored and opened up again, and if the fire that burned there was fuelled by gas and not by coals, then at least this modern addition did not smoke and belch as the old one had.
Beneath the soft gleam of dulled pewter light-fittings the parquet floor glowed liquid gold, the sombre darkness of the wood highlighting the richness of the antique rugs.
The carpet on the stairs had been specially woven, Beth had told him, adding apologetically that she had not been able to dissuade her mother from having the devices of their own family’s arms woven into the design.
The effect was surprisingly pleasing, even if he rather suspected that his grandfather would have had apoplexy at the thought.
At the top of the stairs where they branched left and right into the galleried landing were more oils, and beneath one of them a polished chest holding a bowl of richly scented pot-pourri.
In the darkness beyond the lights a floorboard creaked, and softly a familiar voice said quietly, ‘Thank you, Lucy. I’ll show Sir Jake to his room.’
‘Beth.’
His heart leaped tumultuously. He barely saw the maid slip discreetly away. So she had come to him after all… too late now to regret saying he would join the others. As she came towards him out of the darkness, he couldn’t help reflecting how well her surroundings became her quiet beauty.
She could have been a Puritan Fitton, all demure graces and quiet, glowing innocence. Her soft hair was pulled sleekly back off her face, her skin glowed with happiness, and as he watched her Jake ached to snatch her up into his arms and carry her away somewhere where they could be completely alone.
He heard her laugh shyly and saw the colour flood her face.
‘I’ve missed you,’ he said thickly as she put her finger to her lips and whispered,
‘Wait… not yet… it’s this way…’
He followed her along the gallery, frowning a little when she led the way to the flight of stairs that led to the upper storey.
When he hesitated she turned round to look at him.
‘I thought you’d prefer to be up here, away from the others,’ she told him softly.
The room she took him to was the old one he had shared with Justin, but so miraculously altered that for a moment he could only stand and stare.
It was her hesitant, ‘Don’t you like it?’ that broke his concentration.
He turned to her, smiling. ‘You did all this…?’
She laughed self-consciously. ‘Well, I chose everything… Mother thought I was mad…’ She moved over to the window. ‘I couldn’t help thinking how it must have been for you and Justin when you were boys, and I wanted to make it different… to make it warm and cosy… and besides, when I was up here I felt closer to you somehow…’
She had completely transformed the cold, monastic room, turning it into the sort of bedroom-cum-study that invited the user to feel cherished and so completely at home that they would never want to leave.
‘There’s a bathroom… here,’ she told him shyly, indicating a new door, ‘and… my room’s up here as well…’
His head swung round and she flushed again, her eyes uncertain and a little afraid.
‘Oh, God, Beth, I’ve missed you so much!’ He took her in his arms and kissed her, fighting to temper his need and hunger. ‘Do you still love me?’ he demanded unsteadily, framing her face in his hands.
Her expression gave him his answer. He kissed her again, loving the frantic pounding of her heart against his own, aching to pick her up and carry her over to the bed, so soft and inviting with its coverings of rich silk and damask… He wanted to love her here, on that bed of dark silks, with the firelight playing over their bodies, with the rest of the world shut away… He wanted to show her all the rare treasures their loving would bring. He wanted to cosset and indulge her.
‘Mother’s told everyone that you’re spending Christmas and New Year here,’ Beth told him huskily, adding, ‘Gregson will have told her you’ve arrived. She’ll be wondering where you are…’
The words, ‘I don’t give a damn what she’s wondering,’ trembled on his lips and were forced back as he saw the anxiety showing in her eyes.
He had few illusions about himself, and he doubted that Gloria Pilling would welcome him as a son-in-law, but he loved Beth, and, even if life with him would deprive her of the material luxuries that her mother could provide, he would at least see to it that that look of hesitant anxiety was banished from her eyes for ever.
‘I’m going to show you the house,’ she whispered palliatively to him, and suddenly his throat hurt for her that she should be so insecure, so afraid of incurring his displeasure that she felt the need to offer something in exchange for his unspoken acceptance of her fear for her mother.
‘Not before I have managed to show you how much I love you,’ he told her softly, and then took her hands in his and added firmly, ‘Beth, if for any reason you’ve changed your mind about us, please don’t be afraid of saying so. You must never be afraid of me, because I promise that, no matter what you might say or do, I’ll respect that as your wish.’
‘I do love you,’ she responded fervently. ‘I’m sorry to be like this… so afraid of Mother…’ She pulled a face. ‘It’s ridiculous, isn’t it?’
‘And you’re still happy with the idea of our announcing our engagement before I leave.’
Her fingers tightened convulsively in his. ‘Yes,’ s
he croaked. ‘If you still want me…’
‘Want you…? Come on, we’d better go downstairs before I’m tempted to show you how much. You can’t imagine how tempting it is to carry you over to that bed and make love to you. You’ve transformed this room completely. The fabrics, the colours—they’re so sensual…’
She didn’t tell him that she had chosen them deliberately, or that she had spent hour after hour up here dreaming of being with him.
Instead she said quietly, ‘We’d better go down separately…’
And before he could stop her she pulled away from him, hurrying quietly out of his room.
Lucy, the maid, was waiting for him when he went back downstairs. There was nothing in her expression to betray the fact that she knew he had been with Beth.
The conservatory was down a long passage which he remembered as dim and damp, lined with discarded riding paraphernalia, and smelling of wet dog and even less pleasant things.
Now, with the panelling cleaned, and hung with framed hunting cartoons, the floor polished and the vaulted ceiling restored to its original strap and plasterwork, the corridor was a different place.
As was the conservatory. There were plenty of green shiny plants there, but no uncomfortable wrought-iron furniture.
Instead the other guests were sitting very comfortably in Lloyd loom chairs, reclining against vibrant chintz cushions.
Gloria Pilling, presiding over a huge silver tea samovar when he walked in, was dressed in an outfit designed to make the most of her stunning figure. She stood up when she saw Jake and came over to him, raising herself on tiptoe, so that she could brush her over-glossed lips against his cheek. She smelled of expensive perfume and money. The light in her eyes was cold and calculating. She drew him forward, linking her arm through his.
‘Jake, I think you know everyone, don’t you?’ she asked.
He did, only vaguely, but he saw from the expressions of curiosity and anticipation on their faces that the others all knew about him.
