by Penny Jordan
She had telephoned Camilla on a couple of occasions but her sister had been abrupt almost to the point of rudeness to her which made it all the more surprising to arrive at her rooms one afternoon to find a message waiting for her saying that her sister wanted to speak to her urgently.
She got through to the Manor straight away. Laura answered the ‘phone and, while she waited for her to find her sister Emma ran through all the possible reasons why Camilla wanted to speak to her.
‘Emma?’
‘Yes, it’s me,’ she confirmed. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘It’s David,’ Camilla told her flatly, causing Emma’s heart to drop. ‘He’s being so unreasonable.’
‘What about?’ Emma had long ago learned that there was little point in reasoning with Camilla until the full story was known. Camilla was not above enjoying a little self-dramatisation, and Emma waited patiently for the story to unfold.
She was not disappointed. ‘He’s got this crazy idea that I was involved with Drake. He’s furious about it Emma,’ Camilla continued when Emma didn’t respond. ‘He’s practically accusing me of being unfaithful to him with Drake that time I was in London. Of course I’ve told him he’s being ridiculous,’ Camilla complained petulantly, ‘but he just won’t listen to me. You’ve got to help me.’
‘By doing what?’ Emma asked. ‘If he won’t listen to you why should he pay any attention to me?’
‘He would if he thought you and Drake were back together again,’ Camilla astounded her by saying.
For sheer selfishness her sister really took the biscuit Emma thought, too stunned to speak.
‘Emma? Emma are you still there?’ Camilla’s voice sharpened with anxiety. ‘Look Emma you’ve got to help me. It’s really serious. I’m afraid that he might even divorce me…’
‘Oh Camilla, don’t be so ridiculous,’ Emma started to say, but Camilla broke down in noisy sobs, interrupting her.
‘You don’t understand,’ she wept. ‘I think I could be pregnant, and we’d already planned that we wouldn’t have a family just yet, David will probably start thinking the baby isn’t even his, the way he’s acting at the moment. I’m so miserable about the whole thing Emma… I’ve even thought of abortion.’
‘No… no Camilla you mustn’t do that.’ There was genuine panic in her sister’s voice and Emma remembered that Camilla had always had a deep-rooted fear of childbirth. Recently it had not been mentioned and Emma had thought she had got over it, but obviously she was wrong. Her sister was highly strung and emotional enough to cause problems for herself and the baby she carried, if she was not cosseted and cared for all through her pregnancy, and if David genuinely did believe that she had been involved with Drake… while her mind fought to grasp all the ramifications of what might happen, Camilla was still crying.
Fighting for self-control Emma spoke quietly, soothing her into mere sobs.
‘You will help me won’t you…? God Emma I’m so scared.’ She wasn’t acting, Emma could hear the fear in her voice.
‘What can I do? Do you want me to talk to David?’
‘No… no that won’t do any good.’ Camilla was almost feverish in her anxiety. ‘No Emma, the only thing that will work is for him to see you and Drake together.’
‘But that’s impossible,’ Emma protested, her stomach muscles contracting painfully at the mere thought of seeing Drake again. ‘Our engagement is over,’ she reminded Camilla, ‘I could hardly go to Drake and ask him to pretend that we’re still together. Besides, David would never believe it… he knows that we’ve decided to go our separate ways.’
‘You could make him believe it.’ Camilla was on the edge of hysterics, Emma could feel it, and her own fingers tightened tensely round the receiver.
‘Camilla, please…’ she began placatingly, but her sister would not be soothed.
‘You won’t help me will you?’ she sobbed angrily. ‘You want David to divorce me.… You’ve always hated me… I…’
‘Camilla, Camilla stop it, please,’ Emma begged fighting against panic and the knowledge that she would have to give way. ‘Try to relax…’
‘How can I relax, when David is virtually on the point of demanding a divorce? Emma I’m so frightened…’ It was a little girl wail and Emma responded automatically to it.
‘All right Cam, I’ll do what I can…’
‘You’ll get in touch with Drake and get him to come down here then?’ Now that Emma had given way, Camilla was curiously practical. ‘We’re having a dinner party next week, if you could just bring him to that…’
‘Oh Camilla… I… Surely David will guess the truth when he realises we aren’t still engaged…’
‘He won’t know will he,’ Camilla said impatiently. ‘You’re working in Cambridge; Drake’s in London, he’ll just assume that you’ve made it up and…’
‘And what? You can’t preserve the fiction of our engagement for ever.’
‘I won’t need to. Once he’s got over this ridiculous jealousy and I’ve told him about the baby, everything will be all right, I know it will. Oh Emma, I promise you I’ll never ask for your help again if you just do this for me.’
What could she say? If it hadn’t been for the fact that Camilla was pregnant she might have said no, but she couldn’t rid herself of her fear that her impulsive, over-emotional sister might do something very silly if she turned her down.
‘Very well,’ she said quickly, ‘I’ll telephone Drake and ask him if he will come to this dinner party with me, but Camilla,’ she cautioned her sister. ‘You must remember that he could refuse.’
* * *
She rang him at his apartment that night. Although he was ex-directory he had given her his number during the days of their ‘engagement’ and for some reason she had kept it. ‘For some reason’, who was she kidding; she derided herself. She knew quite well why she had kept it; because it was a last link between them that she had not been able to bring herself to destroy.
He answered almost immediately, and it struck her as she announced herself that he didn’t sound in the least surprised; quite the opposite. It was almost as though he had been expecting her call. Sheer nerves, she told herself, fighting against an impulse to hang up. Her stomach was alive with nervous butterflies. Was he alone she wondered or was there someone with him… Another woman…? Stop it, she warned herself, you’re doing this for one reason and one reason only—to help Camilla.
‘Emma… how delightful to hear from you. What can I do for you?’
‘I need your help,’ she said baldly, cursing herself seconds later as she heard a sound that could have been a muffled curse. ‘Emma, you’re not trying to tell me that you’re pregnant are you?’
Humiliation washed over her in a burning wave. She almost hung up there and then. ‘No, I am not,’ she retorted through gritted teeth, ‘and if I were you would be the last person I…’
‘Is that so? My goodness you have been busy since we came back to England haven’t you?’ he taunted. ‘So if you’re not ringing to break the news to me that I’m to become a parent, what do you want?’
He wasn’t making it easy for her, but somehow Emma managed to outline the situation.
‘And…?’ he questioned smoothly when she had stumbled into silence,
‘And I have promised Camilla I’d do what I could to help,’ Emma told him at last. ‘She’s giving a dinner party next week and she feels that if you and I attended it together it would…’
‘So you’re ringing up to ask me out to dinner is that it? Emma, how delightfully modern of you.’
He was tormenting her deliberately, Emma knew that. Forcing down her panic and embarrassment she said curtly, ‘I’m sure it isn’t the first time you’ve received an invitation from a woman, Drake, so don’t pretend it’s so unusual.’
‘Ah yes, but normally with an ulterior motive,’ he responded softly, ‘Is that why you’re telephoning me Emma? Because you want me to go to bed with you?’
Oh God,
why was he doing this to her? She had a vivid and acutely agonising mental image of him as he had been that morning after they had made love. A surge of need and hunger swept through her body leaving her aching, shivering with the force of it; heartsick because she knew that nothing in her life would ever compensate her for not having his love.
When she didn’t say anything he continued drily, ‘But then of course I’m forgetting that making love with me isn’t an experience you want to repeat, or so you say. That pride of yours must be a heavy burden to bear at times, Emma. It has to be appeased at all costs hasn’t it? No matter what.’
His words forced her into retaliation. ‘If you have to believe that quite simply I didn’t find your love-making pleasurable enough to want to repeat the exercise, then by all means do so Drake,’ she told him, holding her breath as she prayed to be forgiven the enormity of the lie. Her body still ran hot and tremulous now even at the thought of his hands upon it.
‘Really? Permit me to tell you that you have the oddest way of signifying your lack of pleasure,’ he told her sardonically, ‘I have a distinct and very vivid memory of the way you cried my name when you abandoned yourself to me, Emma—and of the way you responded to me. But you aren’t ringing me up so that we can discuss old times are you?’ he continued smoothly before she could react. ‘Very well Emma, I will come to Camilla’s dinner party with you. What time do you want me to pick you up?’
She told him seven-thirty and, having thanked him formally for his assistance, hung up.
It was sheer reaction that made her dream of him that night, she told herself on waking; sheer chance that she had woken heavy-eyed and headachy, knowing that she had been crying in her sleep.
Don’t be any more of a fool than you already have, she chided herself over breakfast. You’re fathoms deep in love with the man; so much so that… that the mere thought of seeing him sent her into a tense panic. She could only pray that from somewhere she would find the strength not to betray to him how she felt. Cursing her sister, she finished her cup of coffee and reminded herself that she was here in Cambridge to work—supposedly the most powerful panacea there was.
Hours later, she admitted that either because of the strength of her love or the quality of her job it was a panacea that did not work for her. She could barely go five minutes without thinking about Drake; without aching for him. Fool, fool, she derided herself. Forget him, forget everything about him. But that was far easier said than done.
CHAPTER TEN
SEVEN twenty-five; just five more minutes to go. Emma paced the floor tensely, half of her praying that Drake would arrive soon and the other hoping that he would not. How was she going to live through the evening ahead? How could she, without betraying to him how she felt? You’ll find a way, she told herself stoically, reflecting rather wryly that if nothing else, love was a great leveller; her present behaviour was rather more Camilla than Emma.
He arrived at seven-thirty on the dot; the sound of a car drawing up outside and then the door slamming making her stomach nerves clench in on themselves. She wasn’t going to the window to look she told herself firmly; fighting against the impulse to rush to the door and open it before he knocked.
Seeing him brought a flood of pain and aching need. She wanted to touch him so badly that not doing so required a positive effort of will. He was dressed formally in a dinner suit, and he looked so urbane and polished that had she seen him like this at their first meeting she might have been deceived into thinking he was simply another smooth dilettante.
Watching him move towards her was an education though; how could she have forgotten that powerful economy of movement; in many ways he reminded her of a jungle predator forced to assume the guise of a domestic cat.
‘Ready?’
Something glinted in his eyes as she moved towards him, almost in a state of trance. She had agonised for hours over what to wear—very unlike her—wanting to appear at her best and yet anxious not to give him the idea that she had dressed to impress him. In the end she had settled for a simple silk two piece, which was both elegant and restrained. It had also cost her far more than she had intended to spend, but it was worth every penny simply to see the masculine appreciation in his eyes as his glance lingered on her slender shape.
‘You’ve lost weight.’
His observation startled her.
‘Have I?’ How tense and clipped her voice sounded. She shrugged casually.
‘You’re not suffering from a broken heart then?’
For a moment her heart almost stopped beating. She forced herself to look at him, determined to withstand the cruelty of his deadly barb and then realised as she met his eyes that his remark had simply been a casual comment. There was no special knowledge or mockery in his eyes as they rested on her pale face; no indication that he knew exactly why she had lost weight; in fact if anything he too looked thinner, Emma reflected, at liberty to study him at close quarters for the first time since his arrival.
‘Well?’ The harsh grittiness of his voice startled her.
‘Well what?’ she asked lightly.
Instead of responding he touched her face lightly; holding it so that she couldn’t avoid his eyes. The mere brush of his fingers against her skin burned like fire, she wanted to pull away; to retreat before she humiliated herself completely by turning her lips into his palm and betraying exactly what she was suffering from.
‘Don’t play games with me Emma,’ he warned her, his voice still faintly harsh. You know exactly what I mean. Have you actually found a man to whom you can give both your heart and your body?’
He sounded so tauntingly derisive that she was betrayed into immediate retaliation.
‘Yes,’ she told him simply, forgetting for a moment how much she had to be on her guard against him, and remembering only how he had mocked her for wanting to love and be loved by the man with whom she shared her body.
Her response seemed to throw him slightly. His hand dropped away from her face, a frown creasing his forehead.
‘Camilla will be wondering where on earth we are,’ Emma said brittly into the tense silence. ‘We’d better be on our way.’
‘By all means, let’s not keep Camilla waiting.’
The tension inside the car was something that could almost be felt, Emma reflected silently, wondering what on earth it was she had said to provoke Drake’s almost bitter withdrawal.
It didn’t take long to reach the Manor. Camilla greeted them half sullenly; it was almost as though she resented their being there Emma thought in some surprise, which was ridiculous when she remembered that Camilla had been the one to suggest their meeting.
David welcomed her with an awkward hug and a brief kiss, before turning to shake hands with Drake. Her brother-in-law was masking his suspicions well, she thought watching the small inter-change. There were no signs of jealousy or distrust on David’s face as he led the way into the drawing-room, and it occurred to Emma that as always her sister could have been guilty of some degree of exaggeration.
On the pretext of offering to help with the meal she left the two men together and followed Camilla into the kitchen. Her sister was talking to Mrs Berry when Emma walked in. She frowned petulantly when she saw Emma.
‘Mother isn’t at all pleased about tonight,’ she told Emma crossly. She wanted us to go out to dinner with her—with some old friends who could help David if he decides to go ahead and enter local politics.’
Who was doing whom the favour here? Emma wondered wryly surveying her sister’s flushed and tense face. Stepping out of earshot of Mrs Berry she said coolly, ‘Tonight wasn’t my idea, Camilla. You were the one who begged me to get in touch with Drake to assuage David’s jealousy—remember?’
‘Oh that was only because…’
‘I can’t promise to hold this soufflé for much longer.’ Mrs Berry’s faintly anxious voice cut in to their conversation.
She would have to try to speak with her sister later on Emma promised herself, head
ing back to the drawing-room. Camilla was behind her, urging the men to head for the dining-room. Neither of them looked particularly hostile to the other. David was obviously a better actor than she had imagined. Local politics would probably be his metier Emma thought cynically.
A little to her surprise the dinner table conversation flowed quite freely. She had drunk two glasses of wine before she realised that David was pouring her a third. Nervous tension she decided, sneaking a brief glance at Drake, and wishing she hadn’t, as he became aware of her scrutiny, his eyes locking with hers. Dark colour burned up under her skin, and she turned away, shivering slightly, becoming aware as she did so that David was launched on one of his favourite hobby horses.
‘A woman’s place is in the home,’ Emma heard him saying, ‘and there’s no getting away from that fact, especially when she has children…’
‘I’m afraid I can’t agree with you.’
Emma was startled to hear Drake speak so categorically. ‘Some women work through necessity and would love nothing more than to be at home with their children; other women although excellent mothers, need the stimulation of a career.’
‘That’s all very well in theory, but would you let your wife work?’ David demanded quite heatedly.
‘I doubt it would be a question of “allowing”.’ Drake shrugged his shoulders. ‘In my book, a good marriage is a true partnership and if my wife felt the need to have a career independent of me then I would support her in that decision. After all, I would scarcely expect her to demand that I gave up my career or my interests.’
‘But if you had children,’ Camilla put in, ‘surely then you would want their mother to be at home with them.’
