This Man's Magic

by Stephanie Wyatt

  Only when Tammy had extracted every detail did she lean back with a satisfied beam of suppressed excitement. 'Now we've got some news for you. Charlie, you tell her.'

  Charlie shifted his great bulk and grinned sheepishly. 'We've 'ad a visitor, chap called…' he looked questioningly at Tammy who supplied, 'Colin Armstrong,' then went on, 'Anyway, Luc asked 'im to take a gander at my work, and guess what?' Before he could supply the answer, Tammy, unable to hold back any longer, broke in, 'He's offered Charlie an exhibition, Sorrel!'

  Caught up in their excitement, she shot upright. 'He has? But that's wonderful! Congratulations, Charlie. Your talent's being recognised at last. Where? When?'

  'At the Amorcenti Gallery, of course,' Charlie said as if she ought to have know that, 'In nine months' time.'

  The gallery Luc owned. Well, of course she should have known, as soon as Charlie had let slip that it was Luc who had asked this man to see his paintings. 'He never breathed a word about it, though I knew he was very impressed by those two paintings of yours that I have, Charlie,' she said, for just a few moments feeling a little hurt that he'd kept her in the dark, and then realising that this way Charlie would know the offer had been on the merit of his work and not because of her connection with the owner of the gallery. It was the kind of thoughtfulness that made her love him all the more.

  After they had gone, Sorrel lay for a long time in a scented bath, wondering how long Luc would be, or even if he would be able to come at all tonight. Knowing from the way he had spoken about his father's extramarital liaison that his sympathies lay with his mother, she resigned herself to the possibility that he might not be able to leave her if she was very upset.

  Getting out of the bath she patted herself dry and slipped on her bathrobe, brushing out her hair and just touching her eyes with shadow and mascara and her mouth with lip gloss. Feeling very much a spare part and vulnerably lonely, she stood for a while at the high windows watching the life on the river before pulling herself together and making for the kitchen. The least she could do would be to have some sort of meal ready if he did come.

  It was after ten o'clock and she was dozing on the sofa when at last the sound of his key in the lock had her swinging her feet groggily to the floor. 'Luc…' The grim expression carved into his face brought back that damnable feeling of guilt. 'How—how is she?'

  'Under sedation, as if you care!' he ground out savagely, then gripping her upper arms, 'Why? Why did you do it?'

  She had expected him to be angry with her for her unwilling part in the events that had caused his mother such humiliation but she recoiled from the sheer savagery of this attack. Licking her dry lips she said guiltily, 'I know you would rather I hadn't spoken to your mother, Luc. I mean, that was obvious when you didn't introduce us, but—'

  'Is that why you did it?' His eyes bored into her with angry incredulity. 'Because you thought I'd slighted you?' He flung her away from him as if he could no longer bear to touch her.

  Stumbling to regain her balance, Sorrel looked at him in bewilderment. 'I—I didn't deliberately seek her out,' she defended herself, 'but Miriam Gee insisted on introducing us and—'

  'And you couldn't wait to get back at me by betraying my confidence,' he finished for her in fierce disgust.

  At last she began to realise just why he was so savagely angry. Obviously his mother had been in no state to explain exactly what had happened and he had jumped to the conclusion… Shaking her head in vehement denial she began, 'Luc, you can't believe that I—'

  'Who else could have told her?' he snarled. 'I didn't, and Bianca certainly wouldn't. You were the only other person who knew. And you were still with her when I found her in a state of collapse.'

  White-faced and stunned, Sorrel realised how bad it must have looked to him, and frantic denials were crowding her tongue, only to die unspoken as he went on with ice-cold savagery, 'My God, what a fool I was to trust you! And for what? To gain a few weeks' access to your delectable body.'

  She had known, of course, right from the beginning, how ephemeral their relationship was, but his cruel words, his icy self-disgust drove the message home like nails striking into her heart. What for her had been the deepest expression of her love for him had been nothing more than a passing pleasure, something that could be had from any woman.

  Everything that was in her wanted to cry out, to tell him he was wrong, that his accusations were unjust, but even if he believed her, what good would it do? The happiness she had cherished, believing in spite of everything that it had the value of pure gold, had shown itself for what it was, fool's gold, shining briefly like the real thing but crumbling and worthless.

  As she was worthless to Luc, merely his mistress, to be enjoyed while his passion lasted and then easily dismissed. While his relationship with Bianca was permanent, something he truly valued. And if she really loved him, this was one thing she could do for him, leave that relationship undamaged. So winding her arms around her midriff to hold in the pain, she said nothing, staring down at the carpet, her hair falling loosely to hide her face.

  'Why did you do it? What in hell did you hope to gain by it?' His fury had undergone a metamorphosis to an angry anguish that shook Sorrel's determination to hold her tongue because he sounded as if he was hurting, too.

  'It—it was an accident.' The defence was forced out of her.

  'An accident!' he derided. 'And just how did you 'accidentally' tell my mother that Bianca is her husband's bastard?' His contempt seemed to strip the skin from her and, as she had no answer that would satisfy him without giving Bianca away, she let him do it to her without protest.

  But her silence only seemed to infuriate him further and he seized her, hard hands gripping her chin to force her to face him, uncaring how much he hurt. 'No, don't hide your face in shame, you bitch. Let me see you for what you are.'

  Her lashes fluttered upwards, her eyes feasting for the last time on his beloved face. Even in anger and bitter disillusion he could move her, stir the desire to take him into her body to comfort him. Comfort he would no longer accept from her, and the knowledge that never again would she experience that soul-deep fulfilment filled her with despair.

  'How you can look like that—like a lost soul who despairs of ever being found… I thought what you've thrown away today was something good, but now I'm beginning to think I had a lucky escape.' He forced her chin up higher, his fingers bruising her jaw. 'Maybe your father wasn't to blame after all for disowning you. Maybe you destroyed that relationship, too.'

  Sorrel closed her eyes, no longer able to watch the avid eagerness with which he saw his barbs strike home. The bruising fingers tightened still further until she thought she would faint from the pain. 'Defend yourself, damn you!' The anguished demand seemed to be torn from him, 'We had something good, so give me an explanation I can accept.'

  Even if she had been prepared to give him the true version of what had happened behind the scenes at the hotel that afternoon, she was incapable of speaking. At last he let her go, and she swayed as the blood rushed back into the veins that had been constricted.

  'I don't understand you.' He sounded bewildered, bewildered and defeated, and somehow pleading. Sorrel swallowed hard to moisten her dry tongue but no words would come.

  Something dropped on to the carpet at her feet, two keys, one to the building and the other to her door. 'I'll no longer need these, and I think for both our sakes we'd better forget the clause in your contract concerning further designs.'

  The clipped words jerked her head up and she watched him walk away, feeling as raw and maimed as if half of her had been cut away without an anaesthetic. 'Luc…' Cracked and hoarse, tinny like the voice of a mechanical doll, she couldn't hold back his name.

  He turned, his gaze so contemptuous her hand dropped to her side. 'That finally got through to your mercenary little soul, did it? Tell Charlie from me, he got it wrong. There's no little girl lost behind that mask of yours. Whatever it is, it's twisted and ugly.'<
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  The door slammed behind him and she listened to his receding footsteps. After a long time she bent and picked up the keys he had tossed at her feet, then moving like an old woman she went to the door and slid across the bolt. A touch of the switch plunged the apartment into darkness.

  Huddled into a foetal ball on the sofa, she knew her brief happiness was over, dying, not from growing boredom and indifference as she had feared, but assassinated by anger and hatred and unjustified contempt, and she was afraid she would never recover from the pain of it.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The sun was shining through the curtains when the doorbell pealed. Still in the same position she had assumed after Luc had left last night, Sorrel ignored it. But a few minutes later it pealed again and was followed by a hammering and Tammy's voice asking if she was all right.

  Stiffly Sorrel uncurled herself, staggering because at first she couldn't feel her feet, then shuddering from the pain of pins and needles as the blood started to flow again. Lurching, she made it to the door and after a struggle with numb fingers, unbolted it.

  'D'you know what time it is?' Tammy demanded. 'My God!' She did a double-take at Sorrel's transparent pallor. 'You look like hell! Are you ill?'

  'Just a bad headache,' Sorrel said warily and with truth. 'I won't be working today.'

  'In that case, I'm sorry I disturbed you, only when we hadn't heard any movement…' She hesitated. 'Luc's gone to work, has he?'

  'He—he didn't stay last night.' Her jaw still hurt when she talked and in case the bruises might be visible she drew the collar of her bathrobe higher. It hurt even more, though in a different way when she said, 'You may as well know, it—it's over, Luc and me…'

  'Over!' Tammy eyes popped. 'Oh, come off it. I recognise a besotted man when I see one. You mean you've quarrelled? Well, Charlie and I are always spatting, it doesn't mean anything.'

  Sorrel shook her head. Tammy meant well but she didn't think she could bear it. 'It was more than a spat. I shan't be seeing him again,' she said flatly, and when she saw Tammy was about to argue, 'Please, Tam, no platitudes, and I can't talk about it, not yet.' Her voice cracked revealingly. 'Just give me time to get my act together, huh?'

  'If you're sure…' Tammy agreed reluctantly, really worried now.

  'I'm sure, please…' She managed to get the door closed before the first tears fell. Blindly she crept up the spiral staircase, crawled beneath the duvet and let the floodgates open.

  For three days and nights she stayed incarcerated inside her apartment, fending off Tammy's worried sympathy, pretending she was working, but though she sat at her drawing-board, it was only to stare into space, remembering. And if the days were bad, the nights were worse. Long, dark hours when her body burned and writhed for the pleasures it had known, the fulfilment it cried out for. She began to lose weight. From being a slender girl she became positively wraith-like, and Tammy's round face became permanently creased with worry.

  'You can't go on like this, Sorrel,' she said at last. 'You'll make yourself ill, and no man's worth that, not even Luc Amory. Don't think I'm prying, pet, but don't you think it would be better to talk about it instead of bottling it up?'

  But Sorrel knew she couldn't tell Tammy the full story without betraying Luc's confidence about Bianca's kinship with him. 'Let's just say I loved too well and not at all wisely,' she evaded with a wan smile. But she knew Tammy was right. Twice Bianca and once Hywel had phoned her but she had put them off by telling them she had caught some bug. But hiding away, pining for lost dreams that could never have come to anything anyway was pathetic. Somehow she had to find the courage and the will to get a grip on her life and start again. Not that she could risk seeing Bianca and Hywel, but she could at least stop being such a pain to Tammy and Charlie.

  'Nobody died of a broken heart that I know of,' she declared with an attempt at a smile. 'I'll get over it, and for starters, how about you and Charlie joining me for a meal tonight?' At least it would give her something useful to think about, she told herself at Tammy's relieved acceptance.

  And the following morning saw her down in her workshop by nine o'clock where a heap of repair work waited for her. For the next two weeks she filled every daylight hour—and most of the night hours, too. When there was nothing requiring her attention in her workshop she went out to haunt the museums on the pretext of looking for new ideas but really to get away from Wapping. For one thing the place seemed imbued with Luc's presence, and for another, Bianca was still trying to reach her on the telephone. So far she had managed to avoid speaking to her, for how could she explain that it would be better for them both if they let their acquaintance drop? Bianca would want to know why, and if Sorrel told her, she would almost certainly want to put it right with Luc. And that was something Sorrel wanted to avoid. Risking Bianca's relationship with Luc wouldn't do anything to mend her own with him. Their affair was over, even if he did learn the truth.

  And out of working hours she became an inveterate party-goer, accepting every invitation that came along and staying talking into the small hours because it kept her away from the apartment where the ghost of those all too brief weeks of happiness with Luc lay in wait for her. And all the time, behind all the frantic filling of her days and the frenetic evenings was the hope, the prayer, that she might be pregnant with Luc's child.

  The day that Bianca finally caught up with her was also the day when this last hope was dashed. She had woken with the ominous niggle in the small of her back but she tried to ignore it. By mid-morning the familiar cramps in her stomach denied her wishful thinking and she finally had to come to terms with the fact that there would be no child, no compensation for losing the one man she could love.

  That was her nadir, when she knew the true meaning of desolation, and her grief was as abandoned as her loving had been, dry, racking sobs shaking her too-slender frame, tearing harshly through her chest, a grief too deep to be softened by tears. She didn't hear when Tammy called to her or feel her touch on her arm. Only when she was gathered to that motherly bosom was she aware that she was no longer alone, and at last her terrible grief was able to find the relief of tears.

  Tammy rocked her, crooning wordlessly, her own round cheeks wet with tears of sympathy, but when the storm of weeping was finally over and Sorrel lay inert against her, sympathy turned to anger against the man who was responsible. 'I could kill him!' she said fiercely, 'doing this to you.'

  Sorrel managed to sit upright. 'You mustn't blame Luc,' she said drearily. 'Honestly, none of this is his fault.'

  'But I thought—I mean, that he must have been in touch with you again to upset you like this.' Tammy was bewildered.

  Sorrel shook her head. 'Oh, no. He won't be getting in touch with me again—ever.'

  'I wish I knew—' Tammy sighed. 'So what brought all this on? It's more than a fit of the blues.'

  'I—I'm not pregnant,' Sorrel explained with a tremulous mouth.

  'You're not pregnant? Well, most girls would find that something to be thankful for,' Tammy suggested cautiously, not understanding.

  'But I wanted to be. I hoped, I prayed I would be, so that I'd have something…' Her voice broke revealingly and Tammy's motherly heart ached for her.

  Tammy stayed for the rest of the morning, and would have cancelled an appointment in order to stay longer had Sorrel not insisted that she was all right now. And indeed she seemed to have reached a state of numbness, so that when the telephone rang she answered it automatically.

  'Sorrel!' Bianca's voice held a note of triumph. 'At last I've managed to get you. What on earth are you and Luc playing at, hiding away from everyone?'

  'I—we—' Feeling trapped, Sorrel wondered how she was going to explain. 'I've been very busy,' she managed lamely. 'As for Luc…' the crack in her voice demolished her attempt to sound indifferent. 'I—I haven't seen him since the night of the launch.'

  'You haven't seen—' Bianca began incredulously.

  'Then where is he? What's he
doing? I've tried to reach him at the office but he's never there and Peter keeps saying he's not at the apartment, so I naturally assumed he was with you.'

  'You must know Luc has many other women friends beside me,' Sorrel managed to say with difficulty.

  'Oh, come off it.' Bianca was openly derisive. 'I've seen him with a lot of lady friends in my time, but he's never looked at one of them the way he looks at you.'

  There was a fraught silence because Sorrel couldn't think of a thing to say, then Bianca broke it, saying intuitively, 'Something's happened! Sorrel, has some bitch made mischief between you?'

  'No!' It was the last line of thinking Sorrel wanted her to take, that some outside influence had split her and Luc. 'No, no one's made mischief, Bianca. We—it's just that Luc and I aren't seeing each other any more.' Her throat ached.

  'I don't believe it! He was so—so happy! And if you've just decided to go your separate ways by mutual agreement, why isn't he talking to me, either? I haven't even been able to tell him about Hywel and me yet. There's something more to this than you're telling me, and I mean to find out what it is. I'm coming round to see you, Sorrel.'

  'No!' Panic-stricken, Sorrel cast around for an excuse to divert her, any excuse to avoid seeing Bianca face to face. 'I—I've got to leave here inside the hour, a—a potential client in—in Birmingham,' she extemporised. She wished she could say she was emigrating to Australia, and even as the thought formed she realised she had a perfectly legitimate escape route. 'Once that's sorted out I'm going abroad.'

  'Abroad!' Bianca sounded stunned and Sorrel rushed on, 'That's right, a jewellery house in New York wants me to design for them and I've—I've accepted.'