‘OK, OK, it’s just the maids pushing a linen cart through some swing doors, I’ve heard them do it before,’ Steve quickly said, but she couldn’t stop shaking. He put his arm round her and pulled her close. ‘Your nerves are shot to hell, aren’t they?’ he said, just above her head, one hand stroking her smooth, silky hair. He grew deeply conscious of the body he held, and his own body stirred with arousal, heat burned under his skin.
Sophie felt it, taken aback to pick up the tension of his muscles, the beating awareness inside him, and even more disturbed by an answering heat deep inside herself.
Alarmed, she pulled away, relieved when he let go of her at once and stepped back, his face flushed, his eyes restless, picked up the hotel telephone book and scribbled a number on top of it.
Without looking at her now he said, ‘If you need me urgently you’ll get me at this number – network headquarters. Ask for extension 650. My secretary will know where to find me in a hurry.’
He glanced at his watch. ‘Now I really must get moving. I can’t be late for this meeting.’
At the door he gave her one swift backwards glance from those grey eyes. ‘Come and put the chain on! And remember, don’t open the door until you’ve checked out who’s outside!’ Then the door closed and he was gone, leaving her wishing he would come back, because in going he left her alone, and she was afraid of being alone.
Oh, don’t be so pathetic! she told herself as she obediently crossed to the door to slip the chain through. Only a few minutes ago she had been bothered by having him touch her hair, hold her, because she couldn’t cope with the way he made her feel. Now she didn’t want him to go. Why couldn’t she make up her mind?
She was still suspicious of him, he was far too quick to ask questions, probe, watch her every move – but the more she got to know him the more she wished she could trust him enough to confide in him. She couldn’t, though. If he was being kind and sympathetic it was only because he wanted to get her to open up to him. But her natural instinct was still, disturbingly, to trust him and like him. Listening to him talking about his home and family had made her envy him. He must have had a happy childhood.
She walked back and sat down on the bed, staring around the impersonal hotel room; comfortable, pastel-painted in pale peach, with a warmer shade of apricot for curtains and bedcovers, an even darker shade for the carpet and a matching set of four rose prints, one on each wall. It could be any room anywhere in any hotel in the Western world, and normally she would have dismissed it as boring, but the very impersonality was somehow comforting at this moment.
As his secretary came into the suite, Don Gowrie was speed-reading a thick wad of documents, wintry sunlight glinting on his silver-flecked hair. Glancing up over the edge of his gold-rimmed spectacles, he smiled at her.
‘Fascinating stuff, this, Miss Sanderson, especially the private backgrounds of all the British politicians I’ll be meeting. I hope I shall remember it all.’
‘Don’t worry, sir, I’ll be there to remind you of anything you forget.’
‘I know you will. I rely on it.’ There was a touch of glibness in his immediate response. That was what he always said and it had once been true, he had trusted her completely, but lately he was having to be careful what he said to her. He was holding back, hiding some of his thoughts; there were some things he could not risk saying to her now. To anyone, he thought, his eyes bleak. A month ago he had thought he was a happy man; he had everything, well, almost everything, he wanted in life, including ambition, an excitement at the thought of how much higher he might climb.
Now his entire life was balanced on a knife-edge, and all because of one woman. Rage surged through him. He swallowed it, controlling himself. He must keep calm.
Emily Sanderson looked down at the pad she held. ‘Two messages, sir, I think you should know about. First, the governor called to say he would be a little late for luncheon, he was sorry, something urgent had come up and not to wait for him, he would skip the first course. Secondly, the British prime minister’s private secretary rang to warn that he had a touch of flu and might not make the Thursday evening dinner but was sure he would be well enough to see you at lunch on Saturday at Chequers.’
Don swivelled in his chair, his face sharply thoughtful. ‘That will give me an extra day with Cathy.’ A free day, he thought; that could be very useful.
‘Yes, sir,’ she murmured unrevealingly. ‘Oh, and this report just arrived.’ She handed a sealed envelope to him and he slit it open, flicked his eyes down over the couple of typed pages inside. Emily Sanderson watched his face tighten, his mouth turn into a thin white line.
‘Anything wrong, sir?’
He looked up, his face shuttered again, no expression visible at all.
‘No. Is there a précis of these notes on the British opposition?’
‘Of course – shall I get it for you?’
‘Please.’
The secretary walked away without looking at him. Slim, with cropped dark hair, horn-rimmed spectacles over hazel eyes, broad cheekbones, a wide mouth, she gave an impression of cool efficiency. Her clothes emphasized that; today she wore a crisply ironed man’s white shirt, with a dark blue silk tie, and a dark grey pinstripe tailored suit; a straight skirt and a fitted jacket which she wore open. She would be forty next birthday. She had been twenty-four when she came to work for Don Gowrie; he had come to trust her over the years since then so that now she knew most of his secrets. Not all of them. But it had been folly to let her know so much, he thought, frowning. It wasn’t safe.
He picked up the typed report he had just received from his most trusted security man and skimmed his eye over it again. Sophie Narodni was staying here, in this hotel? That was a development he hadn’t expected. What should he do about it?
Maybe he had better do nothing. Let her make her move. Once he knew what she meant to do he could decide how to silence her, and it would have to be final. He wasn’t going to go on being blackmailed all his life. And even when he had dealt with her, there would still be another threat hanging over his head. Sophie was not the only one who knew his secret. How was he going to silence the other woman?
But you could always do what you had to do – all you needed was the will to do it. Ways and means were easy.
He slid the report into his inside jacket pocket. He didn’t want to leave it lying around for Emily Sanderson to see. He was going to have to be even more careful from now on.
Maybe it was time he had Jack Beverley update Emily Sanderson’s security clearance. She was given a routine check once a year, along with everyone else who worked for him – but he decided to have Jack take a closer look at her. You couldn’t be too careful, he was being forced to realize. He had been foolish once, had taken a stupid risk, let emotion rule his head and acted before he had thought about the possible future consequences; well, from now on he wasn’t taking any more risks.
From the front steps of the great house, Cathy Brougham watched her husband’s black Rolls head down the drive at the regulation five miles an hour that he, himself, had decreed for vehicles which visited the house. Any faster and the wheels churned up the gravel, depositing it on the cherished turf of his parkland.
Paul left at the same hour every morning, summer and winter alike, as regular as clockwork, after the same breakfast: prunes, orange juice and wholemeal toast with marmalade, followed by black coffee. He ate the meal in precisely ten minutes while skim-reading some of the newspapers folded beside his plate. He would finish reading the papers on his way to London and would be at his desk in his riverside offices by eight.
Cathy had a lot to do today herself, but she, too, had a routine which she was not going to vary. She hurried upstairs to change out of her ivory satin nightdress and matching dressing-gown, which she had worn for breakfast with Paul, into her smooth-fitting pale biscuit jodhpurs and a lemon polo shirt, over which she slid a warm yellow cashmere sweater. Sitting down on the bed, she pulled on her boots, then wen
t downstairs to the back hall, where she found her riding hat on a table covered with riding accessories; she clipped the elastic under her chin, picked up her tan leather crop and went out to the stables, where Mr Tiffany was contemplating the early morning sky over the top of his half-open stable door. As he heard her footsteps on the cobbled yard, he deliberately yawned, his head back and his great yellowing piano-teeth on full display.
‘No, you aren’t tired, you lazy great oaf,’ she told him firmly, walking past into the tack room to collect his saddle and bridle. So, it was going to be one of those mornings, was it? Every so often Mr Tiffany got up in a mood to make an issue of having to do anything other than stand in his stall and eat his beautiful, glossy head off.
As she walked back, her arms full of polished leather and jingling metal, the big chestnut backed, shaking his head, his long mane over his eyes, determined to make a fight of it, but Cathy could be just as stubborn.
‘Don’t even think about arguing – we are going for a ride!’ she said as she approached him with his bridle. His head shot forward. He took the bridle out of her hand with his big teeth and threw it into a corner.
‘You awkward bastard,’ Cathy said, going to get it, and felt him lunge for her behind. His teeth grazed her jodhpurs as she jumped away. Picking up the bridle, Cathy turned round and smacked Mr Tiffany on the rump. ‘Do that again and you’ll be sorry!’
He laughed and she couldn’t help laughing back. Paul always made fun of Cathy when she said Mr Tiffany could laugh. Horses can’t laugh, Paul teased. You’re sentimental where that horse is concerned! But Cathy knew she was right; when Mr Tiffany put his head back and bared his great teeth, making a low whinnying noise, he was laughing at her. He just didn’t do it when anyone else was around. It was purely private – between him and her.
‘You love that animal more than you love me!’ Paul often said in mock grief, not believing it, and of course it wasn’t true. Cathy did love Mr Tiffany and knew he loved her; it was a different sort of love, that was all. Paul was more than her love, he was her whole life.
As they rode out into the parkland around Arbory House the sun broke through low cloud, illumining the landscape: the great bare oaks, a few remaining elms, a cluster of green holly bearing glistening red berries, and, rolling away towards the iron fencing, the flat turf cropped by sheep which could be seen here and there, grazing slowly as they moved. Beyond that the green fields and woods of rural Buckinghamshire. Pied wagtails flickered among the trees; a robin was singing defiantly from a fence post; high above a hawk hung on the air, focusing downwards, watching for a movement among the grass. Cathy watched it – a sparrow-hawk? she wondered. Was that a little speck of white at the tail?
Mr Tiffany blew through his nostrils with sudden excitement at the smell of the countryside and the great, open expanse before him, then he began to canter and Cathy stroked his powerful, gleaming neck with an adoring hand.
For November, it was a beautiful morning. When Paul left it had only just been light, but now the sun was up, a fresh wind had blown the clouds away, and Cathy’s heart lifted, even though the landscape was faintly elegiac, with that mournful colouring left over from autumn, before winter arrived to lay a dead hand on everything.
Her father was coming; would be here, soon, at Arbory. She wished Grandee could have come too, but the flight would be too much for him. He was so frail now. Thinking about him disturbed her. She would have to go home soon, to Easton, to see him while she still could.
She sighed with a premonition of grief to come. Oh, why did people have to get old and die? She wanted to keep them all, just as they were now, the three men she loved – her grandfather, her father, and Paul. Her life was perfect now, at this moment. She did not want anything to change. If only you could order time to stop.
She paused to look back at the house, elegant, white, a Palladian echo from the Georgian era, but designed by an eccentric architect who had let his fancy roam. As always Sophie felt a jolt of déjà vu, staring at the dome above the great library which was the centre of the house. The first time she saw it she had felt that jolt – had known she had seen it before, although she could not remember where. The memory was impossible to pin down; it came and went so fleetingly that she never had time to work out where she could have seen the dome before. Paul said it wasn’t Arbory’s dome she remembered – it was the domes of Brighton Pavilion, which she must have seen illustrated in a book sometime. He had driven her down to Brighton to see the Pavilion, but when she saw the Prince Regent’s domed palace she did not get that immediate sense of déjà vu she got at Arbory. The mystery still nagged away at her.
When her father came, maybe he might get the same feeling? She didn’t remember him mentioning it when he came shortly after their wedding, but he would have had other things on his mind, as she had had.
She had forgotten to ask him then. She must remember this time. She had very few memories of her early childhood, and those she had were very vague. Her earliest memory was of her mother crying for some reason, and holding her too close, so that Cathy got scared. She couldn’t remember anything else about the occasion, only that she had begun to cry too. Her mother had probably been in one of her strange downward spirals. You never knew how she would be when you saw her; one minute she seemed perfectly normal and cheerful, the next she would either sit silent and blank-faced for hours, or would scream and turn violent.
It had made Cathy’s home life uneasy and uncomfortable. Her father had sent her off to one of the best girls’ schools in New England as soon as she was old enough to go away, and although she loved her parents she had been relieved. Her life was calmer, happier, away from the unpredictable mood swings of her mother.
Later still her mother had gone to Easton to live with Grandee and Grandma, and the atmosphere at home had changed so much that Cathy had eagerly waited for vacations and a chance to spend more time with her father. With her mother at Easton, Cathy was the one who went on the campaign trail with him, canvassed, stuck up posters, sat beside him on platforms, taking her mother’s place, shook hands, talked to voters. She had loved it, had talked about going into politics herself. She could remember long evenings discussing the idea with Steve Colbourne, whose family were as obsessed with politics as her own.
She frowned at the thought of Steve. He was part of a past she preferred to forget. All that was before she met Paul and discovered other dreams.
Mr Tiffany snorted and danced sideways impatiently, eager to be off again. ‘OK, OK,’ Cathy said, strands of her dark hair blowing across her face, and they began to gallop.
She had to get back, anyway, to make a final check on the arrangements for her father’s visit. Security men had already been to inspect the security system of the estate; the electrified fence surrounding the entire park, the alarm systems on the gates and walls, the doors and windows of the house, on the stairs and corridors inside. Not a mouse could move at Arbory at night without setting off alarm bells. Paul was just as much in the public eye as her father, and just as protective of his own privacy, but, naturally, her father’s staff wanted to make absolutely certain he would be safe there.
She smiled, staring at Arbory as she rode towards it. It looked so tranquil, a quiet haven of peace in this dreaming countryside. In a few days it would be alive with people, telephones would ring, faxes chatter, cars come and go, helicopters land on the immaculate turf. She still found it hard to believe that all those years of work and planning and dreaming might be about to pay off. Soon, her father could be the president of the United States, and then nothing would ever be the same again, for him or for her.
Sophie woke up, surprised to find that she had been asleep for two hours. She went to the bathroom, used the lavatory then took a leisurely shower, enjoying the warm water sluicing down her body, washing away the hospital smells, the panic and fear she had felt over the last twenty-four hours. When she stepped out, she put on a towelling robe, dried herself, lightly towelled her w
et hair and went back into the bedroom to unpack. Choosing bra and panties, a pair of well-washed old jeans she had bought at Camden Market in London when she first arrived in Britain, and a thin ribbed cotton sweater she had bought a month ago at a fleamarket in Greenwich Village, she dressed, then put the rest of the clothes away and sat down to flick through Room Service. Chinese stir-fried chicken and vegetables sounded good; she rang down and ordered that, with a bottle of mineral water and a pot of coffee.
‘Regular or decaff?’ asked the girl who took her order, and would have begun one of those endless multi-choice questions, but Sophie interrupted. ‘Regular, please. And could you send up some fresh fruit?’
‘You got it,’ said the girl. ‘Your order should be with you in twenty minutes.’
Replacing the phone, Sophie switched on the TV and curled up on the bed to watch cartoons, but she couldn’t concentrate on anything. Her mind was running along the same track all the time: Don Gowrie, her mother, the subway last night, the woman lying so still in the hospital bed this morning. Each time a new image leapt into her mind she winced and tried to think of something else. The cartoons were no help; she had to find something more interesting to watch. She flicked through the channels. Coming upon the hotel’s own advertising channel she watched that for a minute. They seemed to have a whole shopping mall downstairs: hairdressing salon, news-stand, fashion boutique, gift shop, florists.
Florists, Sophie registered on a double-take. Jack-knifing upwards, she reached for the phone again, dialled the number of the florists downstairs and sent flowers to the hospital for the woman she had unwittingly pushed under the train. There was no real recompense she could make. The gesture made her feel a little better, though, lightened the burden of her guilt.
A sharp tattoo on the door made her jump. She froze, briefly, her heart running so fast it hurt.
‘Room service!’ a voice outside the door said, and Sophie gave a sigh of relief and hurried to let in the waiter after she had checked him out through the fish-eye spy-hole in the door. He was a small, angular Puerto Rican with a few pock-marks on his olive skin; there was nobody else around so she opened the door.
Walking in Darkness Page 11
