by Liz Fielding
She longed for him to deny it, but he just laughed. ‘I might think it, but I wouldn’t dare say it. Not the way you’re looking tonight.’
‘Really?’ She hated his laughter, but she’d learned not to let her feelings show around Gil; it wasn’t his fault that she was in love with him, so she kept her voice light. ‘Was that a compliment? I couldn’t be quite sure.’
‘Don’t fish, brat. You’ll have every man in the country leering over your picture in the papers tomorrow. Isn’t that enough?’
No. Of course it wasn’t. There was only one man she had ever wanted to leer at her. Unfortunately he was married to her stepsister.
‘Only if it encourages them to write to the Department of the Environment and demand a planning enquiry,’ she said briskly. ‘Is Kitty with you?’
‘No, Harry’s got the sniffles and you know how she fusses about him, but she sends her love.’ He paused. ‘Actually, she’s a bit tired…’ Nyssa, not exactly panting to hear about his domestic life, smiled politely and made a move towards the door. Gil put his hand on her arm, stopping her. ‘I wanted you to be the first to know, Nyssa. She’s expecting another baby.’
He had wanted to tell her himself. Before someone else did. That was why he’d come tonight.
He’d never said a word, yet it was obvious that he knew all about the schoolgirl crush she’d had on him. A friend of her father’s, albeit a younger one, he had tried to be kind, walking on tiptoe around her feelings, taking care not to hurt her. It was why he still treated her like a schoolgirl, because he suspected, as Kitty did, that it wasn’t just a schoolgirl crush. Well, it couldn’t be, could it? She wasn’t a schoolgirl any more; she was twenty-two. And kindness was the last thing she wanted from him.
‘I’m very happy for you both,’ Nyssa said, brightly enough. ‘Have you told James and Sophia?’ She hadn’t been able to bear calling her mother anything but Sophia since she had married Kitty’s widowed father—the memory of her own father was still too precious. ‘You’re going down for James’s birthday, I imagine?’ Nyssa asked.
‘We thought we’d tell everyone then. You’ll be there, won’t you?’
‘If I can,’ she hedged. ‘The feeling is that Parker will attempt to demolish the cinema quickly, before we can get it listed.’ She frowned. ‘He’s been very slow off the mark.’
‘Sophia will be terribly disappointed if you don’t come,’ Gil said, distracting her. ‘We could give you a lift down if you don’t want to drive yourself.’
‘No. I’ll try. Really.’ And then she’d discover something desperately important to do. The alternative was to go and smile and hide her feelings, as she had been doing ever since Gil and Kitty’s wedding. Except that if she stayed away Kitty would know why and feel sorry for her. And her mother would know why and worry about her. And Gil would know why and feel guilty. She couldn’t win. But at least she had an excuse to send him away now. ‘You shouldn’t be here, Gil. You should be at home with Kitty.’
‘She wanted me to come. She worries about you, too, Nyssa.’
Did he really think that knowing his wife had sent him would help? ‘The entire Lambert clan appear to have cornered the worry market on my behalf, but it really isn’t necessary. I’m among friends here, Gil. The worst thing that’s going to happen is the slide projector jamming in the middle of my presentation.’
As if to confirm the truth of her words, someone beat a lively tattoo on the door. ‘Nyssa? Are you ready? We’re all down in the bar waiting for you.’
‘I’ll be right with you, Pete. Get me an orange juice, will you?’
‘Who’s that?’ Gil asked. ‘Your boyfriend?’ He sounded hopeful.
‘Boyfriend?’ She laid her hand against her breast and managed a laugh. ‘What a quaint, old-fashioned word. You might still think of me as a schoolgirl wearing pigtails, Gil, but in case you hadn’t noticed I’m all grown up.’
‘Actually I had noticed. In that dress it’s impossible not to,’ he added, dryly. Then, ‘So why don’t you give your mother a treat and bring him home for the weekend?’
Pete, stick-thin and with a stud through his nose, would hardly be her mother’s idea of a treat, she thought. But if she had a man with her it would help to defuse the tension that seemed to be in the air whenever she and Gil were in the same room. ‘I’ll make a deal with you, Gil. I’ll come to the party, and maybe I’ll invite a friend for the weekend, but only if you stop fussing and go home. Right now.’ Please. Before I do something stupid like cry.
Matt was impressed. He’d watched the videos of Nyssa Blake’s previous press conferences, given to him by Charles Parker’s secretary, but they had just been snippets, put together to be distributed to the media and to likely supporters groups: the edited highlights.
He was impressed by the professionalism, but sceptical too. The camera could lie and frequently did; a competent editor could make anyone capable of stringing together a coherent sentence look like Churchill on a good day. He wanted to see the woman in action, see how she looked before all the fluffs and fumbles had been edited out. So he had used his contacts and got himself a press pass and an invitation to the campaign launch at the Assembly Rooms in Delvering.
And he was still impressed. The Assembly Rooms were straight out of a Jane Austen novel. Georgian and decaying grandly in the manner of some great old actress, with charm and elegance. They would look wonderful on television. A picture was worth a thousand words, and this, Nyssa Blake was saying, was the England they were going to save from the Philistines. Not quite true, of course, but the cinema, a masterpiece of art deco design that should have been cherished, had instead fallen into the kind of decrepitude that was unlikely to induce the ‘aaaah’ factor in the average viewer.
It seemed to Matt that there were some very sharp brains handling this organisation. Brains sharp enough to recognise that an idealistic young woman would make a great spokesperson. Maybe, he thought, as his credentials were checked at the entrance, Parker had a point.
‘Thank you, Mr Crosby.’ He clipped the identification label to his ancient denim jacket and took the press pack he was offered by a well-preserved woman wearing a flowing dress, her long hair loose about her shoulders and with a New Age name pinned to her embroidered bodice.
‘Thank you,’ he said, and smiled. ‘Sky…’
‘Just go through. We’ll be starting in a minute or two. There’ll be drinks and a buffet afterwards.’
‘That’s very generous,’ he said, inclined to linger. He wasn’t interested in propaganda; he wanted gossip. ‘Who’s paying for all this?’
‘Our supporters are very generous.’ She gave him a warm, earth-mother smile. ‘Of course we hope you’ll make a donation towards your supper.’
He’d walked right into that one, but he found himself smiling back, even as he stuffed twenty pounds of Charles Parker’s money into the tin she offered. ‘Is there any chance of an interview with Miss Blake? After the press conference?’
She consulted her list. ‘You’re a freelance, aren’t you?’
‘I am, but I have a commission to write a piece on Miss Blake.’ Well, he did. Of course whether the results ever saw print rather depended on what he unearthed in his investigations.
‘It’s always difficult to arrange private meetings at this kind of occasion, Mr Crosby…’
‘Matt,’ he said.
‘Matt.’ Her smile took on a new depth and he realised he had her undivided attention. Which could be useful. ‘Nyssa will be mingling afterwards; maybe you could catch her then? I’m afraid that’s the best I can do today. Shall I ask her to call you and arrange a time when you’ll be able to talk undisturbed?’
‘I’ll leave my number.’ He produced a card that simply bore his name, and on the back he wrote the number of a new mobile phone acquired for the investigation. She stapled it to a folder, along with half a dozen similar offerings, then turned to a new arrival. ‘Can I catch you later?’ he suggested. ‘For a drink? Maybe
you could fill me in on the background?’
‘Ten o’clock in the Delvering Arms?’ she offered, rather too eagerly.
He really needed to look for a new career, Matt thought as he moved on into the foyer, glancing at the press pack he was holding, complete with glossy colour photographs and ‘sound-bite’ notes.
The whole thing was well organised and very well attended, he realised as he looked about him. Nyssa Blake was news. It took more than a free glass of wine and a sausage roll to tempt the press pack out of London on a summer’s evening.
Even if they had no intention of joining her, their readers were eager to know how this young woman intended to set about stopping the developers in their tracks. Youth and innocence against entrenched power always made a good story.
But apart from the local radio and television crews, who were too busy checking equipment and recording their leadins to socialise, the newsmen had gathered in small groups, more interested in the latest media gossip than the blown-up photographs of the cinema in its heyday.
Only three or four latecomers were, like him, looking at the photographs and apparently totally absorbed by the notes pinned alongside them. Except the latecomers weren’t totally absorbed. They were giving the appearance of deep interest in the exhibition, but their eyes were everywhere as they checked out the gathering crowd. He recognised the type. Minders. Nothing, it seemed, had been overlooked.
Matt watched them for a few moments and then turned as the inner doors were opened. There were chairs put out in rows, a slide projector in the centre with a screen at the front, and a small lectern with a lamp on a slightly raised dais to the side.
Nyssa Blake clearly wasn’t relying on the photographs to get her message across. She had a captive audience and they were going to listen and learn before they got to the free food. Sky began to usher people towards the seats.
Two of the men with the restless eyes took seats on either side of the projector. Another sat in front of the lectern. A fourth leaned against the wall, near the entrance. They were covering all the vantage points.
Matt settled himself in the end seat of the back row and, out of habit, looked about him to check for an alternative exit. If trouble was expected he had no intention of being caught up in it.
Nyssa waited in the corridor behind the main hall, her throat dry, her pulse beating too fast. She was always nervous before a presentation, afraid she wouldn’t be good enough…
‘Ready?’ Sky asked, joining her. ‘It’s showtime.’
‘How many…?’
‘It’s a good turnout. You’re big news these days.’
‘Right.’ She took a deep breath, opened the door, walked up to the lectern, set to the side of a projection screen, and spread out her notes. For a moment the burble of noise continued and then, as she waited, looking around, acknowledging people she recognised, the room gradually grew quiet. That was when she saw him.
He was sitting right at the back, almost as if he didn’t want to be there. She knew most of the journalists who covered this kind of story but, wearing antique 501s, and with a mop of thick dark hair that looked as if it had been combed with his fingers, he didn’t look like any kind of small-town newspaper man she’d ever met. He looked like a man made for a much bigger stage. Casual he might be, but he made the elegant main hall of the Assembly Rooms look small.
She was smaller than he had imagined from her photographs, and reed-slim, but the neat burnished cap of bright hair, the pale delicate skin, the elegant black dress were pure drama, and every eye in the room was fixed on her, waiting for her to speak.
Matt was not easily impressed, nor, he suspected, were the journalists who had gathered there, and yet he felt a quickening in the air, a stir of anticipation as she looked around the room, acknowledging acquaintances with the briefest of smiles.
Then her gaze came to rest on him, lingering in a look that seemed to single him out, to hold his attention, and just for a second he had the disconcerting sensation that she could see right through him, recognise him for what he was.
He had wondered, looking at her photograph in Parker’s office, if her eyes could really be that impossible shade of blue, or whether, like her hair, the colour had been enhanced for effect.
But there was no need to enhance anything. The effect came from something that lit her from within and he knew what it was. Passion.
And her look, he discovered, as for just a moment their gazes locked and held, had a kick like a mule.
Matt hadn’t been affected in that way by a woman since Lucy Braithwaite had kissed him in the vestry after choir practice, cutting short a promising career as a solo treble.
He was still struggling to recover his breath when Nyssa Blake took a sip of water before finally beginning to speak.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, thank you all for coming to Delvering today,’ she began.
Her voice, unexpectedly low and slightly husky, rippled through him, stirring the small hairs at the nape of his neck. Was that how she did it? How she drew supporters to her, twisted cynical newspaper hacks around her dainty fingers, walked past security guards without let or hindrance? Did she just turn on the lamps behind her eyes, murmur in that low voice and turn them into her willing slaves?
He rubbed his hand over his face in an attempt to pull himself together. He hadn’t come to the press conference to join the Nyssa Blake fan club. He simply wanted to get the measure of the girl…woman…
Well, he was doing that all right. But it sure as hell wasn’t what he had expected.
‘I do hope you have all taken advantage of this opportunity to look around Delvering, to talk to local people, to discover for yourselves what exactly is at stake here,’ she continued. Then quite unexpectedly she grinned, and for a moment he saw the girl, still there behind the sophisticated veneer. ‘But don’t worry if you haven’t,’ she said, indicating the projector with a wave of her hand. It was a gesture that would have done justice to a geisha, controlled, exquisitely graceful, and for just a moment his body seemed to do a loop-the-loop as he imagined what that hand could do to him. ‘I’m about to enlighten you, so save your questions until after the show.’
There was a murmur of laughter as the light dimmed until there was just a small shaded lamp over the notes on the lectern, the powerful beam from the projector directing all eyes to the screen with its aerial view of the small market town of Delvering.
As if this was a prearranged signal, several people leapt to their feet in the darkness. There was an angry yell that turned into a cry of pain from the man standing by the projector as it was overturned, hitting the floor was a crash that blew the lamp, plunging the room into darkness.
The heavies. He didn’t have to see them to know. He’d recognised them for what they were, despite their suits and their careful interest in Nyssa Blake’s work, and he’d assumed they were minders. He’d been wrong.
And there was one right in front of the lectern.
Without pausing to consider the wisdom of his actions, Matt Crosby hurled himself towards the shaded light that illuminated nothing but Nyssa Blake’s small hands, frozen in the act of turning over the first page of her notes.
CHAPTER TWO
STARTLED by the crash, Nyssa looked up. The room was dark beyond the small circle of light illuminating her notes and for a moment she froze. Then, as her confused wits began to make some sense of the sounds coming out of the darkness, she began to move.
Too late.
She stepped straight back into the waiting arms of a man who, as he seized her from behind, clamped his hand over her mouth, cutting off her instinctive shout for help.
Matt was still feet away when she let out a startled protest, instantly muffled, and it didn’t take much imagination to supply a picture of a large hand covering her face, a burly arm pinning her arms as she was lifted from her feet.
Surging forward, Matt carried them both down onto the floor and, just to make sure he’d got the message, crashed his f
ist into the man’s nose. It was something he’d regret later, when he had time to feel the pain. But not now. Now he simply had to get Nyssa Blake out of there.
He leapt to his feet and, without stopping to waste time or breath in explanations, caught hold of her as she scrambled up, determined on escape. Assuming he was her attacker, renewing his assault, she struck out at him and her bunched fist connected with the side of his face as he lifted her to her feet. Ignoring the dizzying blow, not stopping to explain, he shouldered her and carried her through a small door that led into a corridor, blinking in the sudden light.
Ignoring the main entrance, he headed for the rear of the building and burst out into the fading light of the late August evening, crossing to the narrow side street where he’d left his car.
Nyssa Blake was yelling and kicking all the way, but all hell appeared to have broken out on the pavement in front of the Assembly Rooms and no one was taking any notice. Anyone whose business it was to notice undoubtedly assumed he was the guy now trying to put his nose back together.
Neatly done, Parker, he thought grimly as he opened the driver’s door of his car, pushed her in and, still hanging onto her, followed. She immediately stopped struggling, and as his grip was hampered by the awkward angle gave a deft wriggle and escaped his grasp. Matt slammed the door behind him and pressed the central locking switch before she reached the door handle.
Small she might be, but when she turned and lunged furiously at him, nails outstretched, it was all he could do to hold her off. And the mule kick effect wasn’t confined to her eyes.
‘For crying out loud, will you stop that? I’m not trying to hurt you,’ he said sharply, then swore as the toe of her fashionable shoe connected with his shin for a second time. She wasn’t listening. As she came at him again he was forced to abandon passive defence and instead grabbed both her arms, pinning them behind her as he dragged her hard against him so that she could no longer strike out. His leg thrown over her, pinning her to the seat, dealt with her feet.
