by Penny Jordan
She saw that he was pleased. How vain he was… how self-assured.
He rewarded her with the kind of smile that would have once dazzled her.
She added questioningly, ‘I didn’t realise you were invited to this reception. You didn’t say…’
She wondered how he would respond, if perhaps it would have been wiser to say nothing, but he was still smiling at her.
‘How could I not be here once I knew you were going to be?’
He was still holding her hand; he raised her wrist to his mouth a second time, deliberately lingering over the kiss he placed there. This time she was prepared. She laughed softly, breathlessly, as a woman aroused by his touch might. He had as good as admitted that he had come to the reception to see her. She watched the way he reacted to her response… saw how easily her pretend desire deceived him.
How right Jake had been. A man will always respond more to a beautiful woman who desires him than one who doesn’t, he had told her, and she could see from the look on Charles’s face how much it pleased him that she should seem vulnerable to him physically.
And then, while she was still looking at him, a flash of light exploded, startling her.
Glancing up, she saw a woman holding a camera and she frowned briefly in recognition, while Charles swore briefly under his breath, released her and strode over to where the woman was standing.
It was obvious that he was annoyed, and Silver thought cynically that she could imagine there would be any number of reasons why Charles would not want their photograph appearing in one of the gossip columns.
The woman didn’t look particularly concerned. She was older than Silver, almost masculine-looking in some ways; very authoritative; very sure of herself. She was also alone. Silver had recognised her immediately. As well as covering society events, she did a great deal of freelance work in other fields. She had at one time done fashion photography.
Whatever she was now saying to Charles, it obviously didn’t please him. He was looking as sulky and sullen as a small boy, Silver reflected, studying them surreptitiously. She was a little surprised at the woman’s obvious control of the situation. She would have expected her to be a little more intimidated by Charles’s maleness and good looks. It was several minutes before Charles returned, looking both angry and very on edge.
‘An old friend?’ Silver mocked, and was a little surprised by the sharpness of his response as he snapped,
‘No. What makes you think that? She’s a photographer. She works freelance for some of the Fleet Street rags… I’ve seen her around, but no, I don’t know her…’
Silver shrugged, a little perplexed by his vehemence, and by the extent to which the incident had disturbed him.
She wondered if she dared risk taunting him a little more, flexing her claws, so to speak, and then decided that she did.
‘Anyone would think you didn’t want to be photographed with me,’ she said softly, watching him.
For some reason her comment had the effect of easing his tension. He smiled at her, the easy, triumphant smile of the self-assured.
‘Not at all,’ he told her smoothly. ‘In fact, I was thinking of you. Who on earth let that woman in here I have no idea…’
‘I suppose she’s only doing her job,’ responded Silver absently. She had just remembered something—something that puzzled her.
Charles had claimed not to know the photographer, but Silver, who had recognised her, had just recalled that she had once seen Charles looking at a photograph of the woman in a magazine and had been told by him at the time that they had been at school together. So why was he now pretending he didn’t know her?
She shrugged the question aside. What did it matter? Charles lied about everything, as she had good cause to know.
‘What are you doing after this?’ Charles was asking her, bending towards her so that he was almost breathing into her ear—an accident… or a deliberate ploy to make her aware of him?
She stepped back from him and said calmly, ‘Nothing; I—–’
‘Let me take you somewhere for supper.’
When she raised her eyebrows, he added softly, ‘Surely you’ve realised that the only reason I’m here tonight is to see you?’
It should have meant so much, should have gone so far towards assuaging her old pain, but to her surprise it meant nothing; less than nothing.
‘This lunchtime you were with someone else,’ she pointed out coolly.
Charles shrugged, unfazed. ‘A relationship which was over long ago…’
‘Your companion didn’t seem to think so…’
Charles shrugged again, the look he gave her saying smugly that it was hardly his fault if women made fools of themselves over him.
‘Have supper with me,’ he repeated.
Everything was falling into place just the way she had planned it. A quiet, intimate supper would give her the opportunity to draw Charles even further into her net, but the thought of spending more hours with him, stroking his ego, flattering him, merely being with him when already she was so bored with him that she was amazed he couldn’t see it, made her feel profoundly tired.
What she really wanted was to be alone so that she could assimilate her progress so far. Her time in Switzerland and the life she had lived before it had given her a taste for solitude which must be the reason she was feeling so eager now to be on her own.
‘I’m afraid not,’ she heard herself saying, and saw as she looked at him that Charles was not pleased, and that she had made a grave error. Refusing him once had been one thing; refusing him a second time, and after he had taken the trouble to attend the reception… But it was too late to call back her refusal… Anger was glittering in Charles’s eyes. Anger and the same bitter resentment that she had seen in those blue eyes before… it struck her that for all his many affairs Charles was not a man who liked her sex. Rather, he preferred to dominate women, to hurt and destroy them… it hadn’t just been her, Geraldine Frances, he had hated. As she looked at him, half of her was tempted to let him go, to let him walk away from her, and she could even feel the first stirrings of an odd sense of relief that he might do so. Deliberately she forced it to one side. She could not afford to give in to such ridiculous emotionalism. She was being stupid… perverse… and why? Because being with Charles was making her face up to the realisation of how much she was physically dreading having to touch him… be touched by him.
But why? Why, when she had gone through the torture she had endured with Jake Fitton to prepare herself for just that purpose?
She could not afford this ridiculous emotional vulnerability… if she couldn’t do it for her own sake, then she must do it for her father’s.
Stifling her feelings, she said palliatively, ‘I really am sorry, but I have an early morning meeting tomorrow with my financial advisers…’ She smiled ruefully. ‘I never realised that having money would be such a problem.’
Her smile invited Charles to share her amusement. ‘Your late husband was a wealthy man?’
‘Very wealthy,’ Silver agreed, knowing that Charles had probably by now checked up on her, and that the information she had arranged to be carefully leaked concerning her background and her past would have included the fact that her husband had been a wealthy Swiss industrialist.
‘He was a lot older than you?’ Charles added.
‘More of a father to me than a husband,’ Silver agreed, smiling at him and then adding pettishly, ‘It is such a bore having to attend these meetings. When Heini was alive I never had to bother, but now that I am responsible for his wealth…’ She gave Charles a soft-eyed look and said, ‘I cannot have supper with you tonight, for I am very tired. I moved into my new apartment only this afternoon. But perhaps if you were to invite me to dinner another night…’
She waited, half holding her breath, wondering how Charles would react.
He reacted much as Jake had suggested he would, flattered by her interest and made arrogant by his belief that he had regained
the upper hand.
‘I’d like to,’ he told her. ‘But I’m pretty fully booked for the rest of this week. Look, why don’t you give me your telephone number, and I’ll give you a ring?’
Calmly Silver did, knowing even as she gave it to him that her reactions were wrong. By rights she ought to be feeling nervous now, anxious to see if she had pushed him too far… if he would respond or simply lose interest. But instead all she was feeling was a tremendous surge of relief… of escape… as though she had succeeded in putting off something unpleasant and unwanted.
She left the reception before Charles, having made sure first that he had seen her receiving the flattery and attention of several other men.
Their interest amused her. It was as though they were flirting with someone else… as though it wasn’t she who was receiving their compliments, and in a way it wasn’t… It was her face that dazzled them… a set of perfect features at which they looked and saw nothing else.
Were all men like this… wanting only beauty in a woman… needing to see physical evidence of her perfection before they would allow themselves to be attracted to her?
Even her father, who had loved her dearly, had been vulnerable to beauty…
What was the matter with her? she mocked herself on her way home; her looks were simply the means to a specific end; they had not been created for her own pleasure… nor had they been created to enable her to fulfil a child’s dream of perfect love… of high romance. A fairy-story in which she had been the frog hoping to be transformed into beauty by the eyes of love.
She paid for the taxi and went to the entrance of the block which housed her apartment, taking the lift to the second floor.
Her heels tapped sharply on the black and white lozenge-tiled floor of the foyer. The heavy scent of fresh flowers displayed there made her wrinkle her nose a little in rejection.
She dealt with the complex lock system and opened the door.
It was just gone eleven o’clock, and the last thing she felt like doing was going to bed, but the iron discipline she had instilled in herself warned her that her body was exhausted even if her mind wasn’t.
Tomorrow there would be fresh reports for her to read on Charles; and she must find out from her agents if she was right about the connection between the photographer whose name she remembered as Helen Cartwright and Charles… She was sure she was.
By tomorrow Charles should have found out the extent of her supposed fortune; if he hadn’t done so already… He was desperately in need of money; desperately. Her wealth should bring him back to her side, if nothing else, and yet as she stood tiredly in the hallway she was conscious of having done less with the evening than she might.
She need not have had supper with him, but she could have given him more encouragement; she could have allowed him to believe more than she had that she desired him. And in fact she should have done so… So why hadn’t she?
It wasn’t a question she wanted to answer.
She opened the drawing-room door and then froze.
The man seated on the chair opposite the door looked up towards her and smiled. ‘No Charles?’ he remarked sardonically, standing up.
‘Jake!’ She was too stunned to do anything more than gasp his name and stare at him in disbelief.
‘I did warn you that it might not be as easy as you assumed, didn’t I? That he…’
All at once anger rolled over her, catching her up in a heavy, crushing wave that crashed through her self-control.
‘How dare you break into my apartment? How dare you? And if I had brought Charles back with me…’
‘You wouldn’t have found me here,’ he told her drily, ‘but you didn’t, did you? I wonder why not…’
Now that she was over the first shock of seeing him, her brain was starting to function again. Several unpleasant facts were being assimilated as she stood and stared at him.
‘What are you doing here, Jake?’ she demanded coldly. How had he found her? And why? In Switzerland he had been as keen as she that once their business relationship was at an end, they never saw one another again… In Switzerland he had also seemed completely indifferent to her as a woman; and yet, during that last night they had spent together…
Her body went hot, her thoughts and memories shaming her, making brilliant colour sting her skin. It had all been an act… an act, that was all… that desire, that tenderness, that caring… they had meant nothing… nothing at all.
‘You’re wearing my perfume.’
Silver glared at him, wondering as she had wondered so often before why it was she found it so impossible to remember that he couldn’t see her.
‘I asked you a question,’ she reminded him tersely, wishing she had the courage to threaten him with the police, but knowing that he would only laugh at her. She wanted the police here as little as he would, and he knew it.
‘Surely it’s obvious,’ he told her, shrugging. ‘I wanted to talk to you…’
‘About what?’
She and Jake had already said all they could possibly have to say to one another. She had bought a specific office from him and, having paid for it… Her heart twisted sharply, an unsuspected pain that made her catch her breath. Unless, of course, he was going to try to blackmail her.
‘About what?’ she repeated, a hard edge creeping up under her voice.
For a moment she thought he wasn’t going to reply, and then he said quietly, ‘Why, about Geraldine Frances Fitzcarlton, Countess of Rothwell, of course.’
The words hit her like stones. How could he have found out? She had been so careful… so sure… Too sure, her brain mocked her. He had found out, and it was pointless wasting time wondering how. She had other, more pressing matters to worry about now.
She knew there was no point in denying it, her very silence had already betrayed her, and so she said bitterly, ‘How much do you want, Jake? I take it that is what you’re here for,’ she demanded scornfully. ‘To blackmail me into buying your silence, in the same way that I paid for the use of your body…’
He looked at her, that disconcerting, direct look that always threw her, because she knew he couldn’t possibly see her.
Her taunt had failed to rouse him to anger… to any kind of response other than a certain thoughtfulness that made her wince inside for her own folly and how much she had already betrayed to him.
‘You didn’t buy my body,’ he told her calmly. ‘You bought my expertise, and if you feel you’ve been short-changed in any way you should have said so at the time. And I haven’t come here to blackmail you…’
‘No? Then why have you come?’ Silver demanded trenchantly. ‘Not for the pleasure of my company…’
There was another brief, telling pause. She had turned her back on him and now she wished desperately that she had not been so rash. With her back to him she couldn’t see him… couldn’t judge how he was reacting… not that he ever allowed his face to give very much away. Why was it, when he was so obviously disadvantaged, that she should always feel he had the edge on her… that he was always one step ahead of her?
‘No, not for that,’ he agreed, and for some reason her stomach plummeted downwards. ‘I’ve come to talk to you about your cousin Charles.’
Now she did turn round.
‘Charles… what connection do you have with Charles?’
His voice hard, he derided, ‘You’re not a fool, Silver, whatever else you might be.’ He didn’t tell her how much he knew about all that she was and all that she had been, and that the knowledge had been like the opening of a door into a hitherto unsuspected place. A door which he had been very quick to close… and lock.
‘Why didn’t you tell me about your cousin’s involvement with drugs? You do know he’s a pusher, of course… of course you do,’ he mocked gently, answering his own question. ‘How could you not? You don’t use them, of course—–’
He was almost speaking to himself, but Silver cut across his soft, musing words, demanding flatly, ‘What a
re you trying to say? If you think I’m involved in any way—–’ she broke off, angry with herself for trying to justify her error. ‘I didn’t mention it because it wasn’t important… at least, not to me…’
He wondered if she knew how much she was betraying her upbringing with that cool, haughty little voice, that upper-class arrogance that was so effective.
‘No,’ Jake agreed, less than pleasantly. ‘Your own feelings mattered far more. You’ll forgive me, I’m sure, if I tell you however that to me it is important. If, of course, you are lying to me, and you deliberately suppressed your knowledge once you realised how important it might be to me… Why would you do that, Silver? A female settling of some imagined score against me?’
‘No!’ She had made the denial without even thinking of what she might be giving away, truth echoing through the vehemently uttered word.
Jake’s mouth thinned.
‘Odd, don’t you think, that you should be so horrified at the thought that I might accuse you of seeking revenge for some imagined slight when you’ve already told me that revenge is exactly what you intend to exact from Charles?’
The words ‘that’s different’ trembled on her tongue and were suppressed.
‘Why didn’t you tell me about Charles’s involvement with the drugs scene?’ Jake demanded hardily.
Silver shrugged, turning away from him, affecting a bored, careless tone of voice totally at variance with what she was feeling.
‘Why should I?’ she asked.
‘Why indeed?’ Jake agreed, and then warned softly, ‘Has it occurred to you that your cousin might tell a different tale. If you are implicated…’
‘I’m not,’ Silver told him fiercely. ‘And as for Charles… whatever he tells you, if he tells you anything, will be lies. Charles lies about everything. He even lied to me tonight about knowing Helen Cartwright,’ she added cynically.
Jake frowned. Helen Cartwright. The name rang a bell. He repeated it questioningly, and Silver told him.
‘She’s a well-known freelance photographer. She and Charles were at school together; I’d forgotten for a moment. She photographed me with Charles tonight. He was furious… so furious, in fact, that he went over to her to object. They were talking for some time, but when I asked him if he knew her he denied it. It was only later that I remembered about their being at school together.’ She gave a small shrug. ‘You see, Charles is a congenital liar. He can’t seem to help himself. There was no need for him to lie about Helen.’
