Princess

by Alison Fraser

  Thrusting the white linen back into the pocket of the black cords which moulded his long muscular legs, Adam looked directly at her and said with a strangled harshness, ‘You remember me, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’ One word, but it held a note of fierce defiance against what Serena imagined to be his anger. Maybe the notion that he had returned to destroy her fragile peace wasn’t pure fantasy. The girl who had come through years of her stepmother’s emotional battering trained expressionless green eyes on her new adversary, and her very stillness, like a lifeless doll, became a weapon in the silent battle of wills that followed.

  It lasted minutes and could have lasted hours if the sound of gravel being thrown up in the front driveway had not cut into the building tension that threatened to enclose them in their own private world.

  Adam was the first to find his voice, and with the echo of the past filling his mind he gave a commitment, muted with intense feeling, ‘I am with you. Believe me, Serena, this time I am with you.’

  Serena understood neither the words nor the tone, but concentrated on one thought. Adam Carmichael was her enemy.

  She didn’t wait around to witness his startled reaction as she broke free, and with her mind on flight rather than direction, she slammed the front door behind her and cannoned blindly into John Saxon’s arms.

  ‘Hey, what a welcome!’ he muttered appreciatively as he held her at arm’s length. ‘I must come late more often!’

  ‘Late?’ Serena repeated distractedly.

  ‘Yes, ten minutes,’ John smiled down at her. ‘We’d better rush. The table’s booked for seven-thirty.’

  He didn’t have to hurry Serena into the car. She almost threw herself into the passenger seat of the large sedate Daimler that had belonged to John’s late father. John didn’t notice her urgency, however, nor did he remark on her monosyllabic replies as he drove them to the country hotel which boasted the best cuisine in the neighbourhood. The young farmer was used to her spells of quietness, rather liked their undemanding nature.

  But long after they were settled to their meal, less than half of Serena’s attention was centred on the plush, old-fashioned dining room of the Rippondale Royal.

  ‘Penny for them,’ John Saxon teased as he realised his monologue on Continental grain prices had fallen on deaf ears. Sometimes he wondered if he really knew the captivating girl who sat opposite him, toying with her food.

  Serena started guiltily, raising her eyes from the tablecloth. Kind, uncomplicated John—she wondered how he would react if she gave voice to the chilling disturbance that was still rioting through her brain. My wicked stepmother—no, honestly, no fictional character from my once fevered imaginings—drove me to the edge of her madness and her nephew, the big bad wolf—yes, he really does have white teeth—has returned to help me make the last leap. Maybe it would sound absurd. It was absurd!

  ‘Are you all right, darling?’ John queried, frowning helplessly at the quicksilver emotions flitting across her face.

  With a conscious effort, she arranged her mouth into a bright smile that effectively dispelled his anxiety. ‘I’m sorry. Term exams, I’m afraid.’

  ‘You’ll pass,’ John immediately responded to her hastily improvised excuse.

  Serena caught his look of pure adoration and her guilt increased at her deception—not the little white lie she had just told, but the months she had allowed to pass without revealing any of her past, intent on living up to his image of her.

  ‘Who was your visitor?’ John gave way to curiosity, since Serena had failed to bring the subject up. ‘The owner of the white Porsche?’

  Serena’s hesitation was fractional before she shrugged. ‘Nobody important... a friend of Nancy’s.’ She wanted to belong to John’s world, safe and predictable as the coming of the seasons. John, I was wondering if you still wanted me to come over to the house in the evening and help you clear up your backlog of accounts. Over the next month, say.’

  ‘Your exams?’ he reminded her in all fairness, although he was tempted to leap at her offer, because he was sure he would enjoy the loathed task if he had the right company.

  ‘I’ll pass, remember?’ she laughed with a forced brightness, and at his evident pleasure, regretted using him this way. ‘But if you’d rather not...’

  ‘No, I’d love to have you over,’ he broke into her objections, placing his hand on hers. ‘It might help you decide. You know, being at the house. Us working together...’ He trailed off, leaving the question he had asked weeks ago hanging in mid-air.

  Serena, as usual when offered a place in his secure undemanding life, couldn’t find the certainty which she knew she was supposed to feel. For the rest of the evening, however, she managed to keep her mind on his conversation, smiled at his boyish enthusiasm for his plans to improve the sizeable farm his father had left him. And when they parted in the porchway of Simmonds Hall, she allowed him a greater intimacy when his mouth eagerly covered hers, and again felt that sharp disquiet when his breathing told her he was becoming aroused while her brain still clicked away with a quiet cool precision. Unwilling to feign passion, she pulled gently away as his hand came nearer her breastbone.

  ‘I have to go in,’ she announced without anger.

  John’s disappointed but sincere, ‘OK, I understand. I can wait,’ followed her upstairs to her bedroom, and her unease grew as she stood in front of her mother’s portrait.

  ‘Never marry anyone you don’t love,’ her father had once warned her when they had climbed the hill behind the house. Up in their sanctuary he had been trying to explain the atmosphere back at the house which had touched her without giving her an understanding of the gathering storm which electrified it. But he hadn’t been there when the lightning flashed, and without his loving protection, she had to do her own adapting.

  She had survived, but she was now counting the cost, for she seemed to have lost the capacity to love anyone again. What she gave Nancy was a pale reflection of the love that flowed for the beautiful young woman who smiled at her. And the feeling she had for John never passed beyond a deep affection. So was it wrong to offer him the slightest encouragement, even if spending more time at his home provided her with a means of escape in the coming weeks?

  Serena didn’t know, but she had no choice if she wanted to avoid Adam Carmichael till he left—back to his mistress in America. Away from him, she could appreciate that any intentions lurking in his sleek black head were strictly directed at her body, not her mind. But she sensed a cool intelligence behind the façade of lazy charm that might be keen enough (if it chose to amuse itself at her expense) to detect and expose matters best left buried. Not that she was scared of him. She wasn’t, she assured herself. It was just that she didn’t want to upset Nancy who so obviously cherished hopes that theirs would be a friendly relationship.

  Cousins!—it was laughable when her ‘cousin’ proceeded, the moment he got her on her own, to earn the reputation that his books and kitchen gossip had already established. His technique could not be faulted, nor its effects. For, even when she had been in John’s arms, it was his lingering gaze that remained.

  How many women had fallen for that old trick? Dozens probably, made suddenly, acutely aware of their own attraction. Stupid women who wanted to believe that they were special to the man who used his looks and studied charm as weapons.

  And with this scathing dismissal of Adam Carmichael, she rose from the blanket box at the end of her bed, moved to the dressing table and brushed her hair till her scalp tingled from the vigorous strokes of the stiff bristles.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Adam’s days settled into a pattern, and the peace and quiet of the country proved very conducive to his writing. The novel, a satirical fiction on the movie capital of the world, went well; it was, to him, his best work in years. His mother gave over the study to him as it was at the far end of the house, and most afternoons, sometimes well into the night, he spent banging away at a typewriter with quick two-fingered
efficiency. The sound was music to his ears after the literary stagnation in Hollywood.

  Although his mother seemed to lead a very full social life, he made a point of dining at the table every evening. After his mother’s warning on the first day and that brief, disastrous interchange with Serena, he had determined to be polite, to adopt a brotherly attitude to the girl and prove that he was no more affected by her than by any other of the beautiful women he had met in his life. But things did not work out the way he had planned. Instead his obsession with her grew, fed not by her continuous presence but rather by her elusiveness—for in the weeks he had passed in Yorkshire she had not once sat down to dinner with him.

  His sole contact with the girl was the brief meetings in the corridor or on the stairs when she bestowed on him an automatic impersonal smile. On these occasions she appeared always to be rushing somewhere, but when he caught glimpses of her through the study window as she crossed the yard to the studio her pace was more leisurely. Dressed in formal evening wear, riding clothes or her casual college clothes, her fresh and flawless beauty never failed to have an effect on him, although he had learned to disguise the fact with an immobile, cold expression.

  He should have been grateful that she had removed the burden of having to convince his mother that he had no evil intentions; in fact, Serena’s contrived avoidance infuriated him. Strangely, this fury drove him to work even harder until the novel begun at the end of his days in California was finished in a few short weeks. Its completion, however, did nothing to quieten that taut, restless energy.

  Within days he received word from his publisher, and although he said nothing to his mother save that he had to go down to London, he packed a large suitcase and took what he hoped was one last long look at the house before swinging in a wide arc and out of the gates.

  He arrived late, stayed overnight in the Kensington house which had a neglected air after being shut up for two winters, and devoted the next day to the business that had ostensibly taken him away from Yorkshire.

  After a preliminary discussion on money matters, he reached an easy agreement with his publisher and, the business settled, they went out to celebrate what Gary Hammond maintained, with his editor’s sixth sense, was a sure-fire bestseller. Adam’s enthusiasm was more restrained, but nevertheless he set out to get drunk over the lunch. Despite his abstinence in Yorkshire, several hours later he was still sober and rational enough to bundle a fuddled Gary Hammond into a taxi and wend his way back through a windswept Hyde Park. The walk was invigorating, but he didn’t particularly want a clear head.

  Stripping the dust-sheet off the drinks cabinet, he accidentally sent crashing to the floor one of his mother’s innumerable photographs. He looked again at himself aged twenty and laughed at the absurd direction his thoughts took. He might have aged, but that diffident boy posing self-consciously for the camera would not have possessed the remotest idea of the complex creature he sensed Serena Templeton to be. And yet with utter certainty he knew it would have been the same—the youth he had been would have been just as fascinated. Only he might have called it love. And what did one call it? Desire, yes, but more... much more than that, he wanted to know all of her.

  The next day he woke with a mild hangover and a strong compulsion to return to Yorkshire. It was insanity and he knew it, but being aware of it didn’t stop him.

  When he arrived, his mother had already left for her regular Saturday afternoon bridge game at the local club. He left his suitcase in the boot of his car and going straight to the lounge, unstoppered the whisky decanter. Again he found no solace in staring at the bottom of an empty glass, and the black cloud that had hung over his head as he shrugged off his suede jacket seemed only more ominous.

  He went out by the bay window and found the ground hard under his feet. The spring day held a distinct chill as he skirted the glasshouse and headed for the white brick studio. Looking through the end window, he felt no relief that he had been able to find her; he knew he was about to behave very badly.

  She was clothed in a surprisingly white smock, and tight blue jeans. Her hair was tied in a high ponytail, making him acutely aware of how young she was.

  She didn’t look up when he knocked, but her air of abstraction was not convincing, because he knew she must have either seen or heard him approaching the studio. He didn’t speak but wandered round the room, picking up her canvases and examining her work—more out of a desire to annoy her into breaking the silence than out of genuine interest. Nevertheless he was struck by the rampant talent to which they testified. And they told him more clearly than words that the demure front she presented to the world was just that—a façade. They were mostly of people—not fixed lifeless portraits but real human beings revealing the whole range of their emotions.

  ‘Did you miss me?’ His question was sardonic and went unanswered. Serena’s face in profile was a study of calmness and concentration as she continued to ignore him. ‘No, I suppose not. Still, it must have been nice to be able to stay home for dinner.’

  With a slight movement she presented her back to him and began to mix her paints. The gesture, rude and deliberate, snapped Adam’s control. The palette snatched roughly from her grasp spilled its contents as he threw it angrily to the floor. He tensed for her response, the silence stretching his nerves. Slowly she bent to retrieve the wooden board, her eyes not having once moved in his direction. He pulled her upright and with a relentless grip on her chin, forced her head up.

  ‘Damn you, say something!’ he demanded harshly, and held on to her until she did.

  She stared back at him, unblinkingly. ‘I have nothing to say to you, Mr Carmichael.’ Her voice was chilling.

  ‘What happened to Adam?’ Since the first day, she had addressed him by his first name during their infrequent short exchanges of pleasantries. ‘Or are the little courtesies you occasionally bestow on me solely for my mother’s benefit?’

  ‘I have no wish to upset Nancy,’ she acknowledged evenly, and reaching out for a cloth began to wipe away the paint that had spilled on her hands and arms. ‘I assumed you wouldn’t either.’

  ‘So the house is designated as neutral territory,’ he replied tightly when she confirmed his supposition without a trace of discomfort.

  She slid him an oblique glance before retorting in her maddeningly cool, superior way, ‘I didn’t know we were at war.’

  ‘Didn’t you?’ She was trying and, to a certain extent, succeeding in putting him at a disadvantage. He leaned back against the edge of the table and adopted a relaxed pose, before saying, ‘You should, you know, because you initiated the hostilities from the very first day we met, and nothing’s changed, has it?’

  Her long lashes lowered fractionally, but she was all calm, slightly bored reason when she came back with, ‘Really, Mr Carmichael, I don’t know what you’re talking about. One only fights over something one covets—or in self-defence. You have nothing I would ever want,’ she declared disdainfully, and as though she could sense the further damage she could do, added a malicious, ‘And I ceased being a frightened screaming child a long time ago.’

  ‘I can see that,’ he returned with an insolence as deliberate as her Cruelty, his eyes resting meaningfully on her upper body where the cotton material stretched across her high breasts. Colour seeped into the slant of her cheekbones, and if anything, it made Adam feel worse.

  ‘If you’ve come to insult me, Mr Carmichael, I suggest you do it now so I can get back to my work,’ she muttered, half turning to her painting. The air was thick with her hostility towards him.

  ‘The perfect little ice-maiden, our little princess has turned into!’

  ‘Why do you call me that?’ she swivelled round again.

  ‘Little princess? Because that’s what you are. A regal personage beloved by all her subjects—my mother, Mrs Baker...’

  ‘But not by you,’ Serena sliced into his explanation, picking up the harsh resentment behind it.

  ‘Oh no, I’m
a republican. Merely a guest at court,’ Adam bantered back with the first trace of humour.

  ‘Or the royal fool?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ he mused laughingly. It had been an attempt to put him in his place and she looked slightly disconcerted when it bounced off him. ‘But remember, the jester, for all his apparent stupidity, often spoke the truth.’

  ‘His or absolute?’ Serena challenged bitingly.

  She came back so quickly he wondered where he had ever got the idea that she had to be treated with kid gloves. He dropped his eyes from the glitter of hate that was in hers, and positioned himself in front of her current painting that leaned on the easel. It was technically competent but lacked the vibrancy of her other work.

  ‘They have more than a smattering of brilliance.’ He gestured at her other efforts haphazardly strewn about the studio. ‘But this one’s insipid—Maybe it’s the model.’

  His first comment tightened her mouth with disbelief, but the second had her sneering, ‘From court jester to art critic in two easy moves! Is there no end to your talents?’

  ‘Or yours?’ he threw the accusation back at her. ‘What are your qualifications for the role of literary critic?’

  She frowned darkly at him before admitting loftily, ‘I’m afraid, not having your quickness of intellect, Mr Carmichael, I can’t follow that remark.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that, Miss Templeton.’ He was finding her conversation, despite its asperity, a heady stimulation, sharpening his own blunted wits. ‘My mother informed me of your opinion on one of my screenplays. She believes you’re one of my biggest fans—but then she didn’t understand your criticism, being basically a sweet soul.’