'You made it yourself, I suppose.' She was gently sarcastic, but the smell of it was making her mouth water and unconsciously she was grasping her knife and fork.
Charles cut the pie in half and slid one piece on to her plate. 'There's nothing to go with it, so don't scowl at the size of the portion. And no, Miss Smarty Pants, I didn't make it myself. As you know, I have a very efficient secretary/receptionist and she's a good cook. It's part of her duties to see that I don't starve.'
Roz ate slowly, savouring every mouthful; it was a very good pie. Of course, as she had pointed out, there was far too much for her, but with a slight surprise, she found herself chasing the last crumbs of pastry around the plate with her fork. Charles didn't speak while he was eating, so there was no need for her to think up polite conversation; she could be utterly relaxed and enjoy what she was eating, an enjoyment enhanced by the fact that she hadn't had such a filling or sustaining meal for a long time.
She was, after three months, heartily sick, of living in the small Sussex village and following the regime laid down by Stephen. She supposed that had Eve been able to get about there would have been a greater variety and mealtimes would have been a little more interesting; she wasn't a bad cook herself, but Stephen was occupied with health and his waistline. All food was non-fattening, low in cholesterol, full of natural fibre and vitamins and free from artificial fertilisers; which meant that the evening meal usually consisted of thin slices of lean meat with a salad, on which Stephen would allow no dressing which contained oil. All bread was of the wholemeal variety and the meal always ended with yoghurt. Coffee, sugar and alcohol were out, since they all constituted a danger to health, being full of poison!
Roz would sit, watching Stephen champing on lettuce while her temper rose. Salads were all right, but not every evening; she wanted, she dreamed of big, thick, juicy steaks with loads of French fries or buttered new potatoes, or, better still, both. She liked her sweets to be fruity with lots of whipped cream and she longed for coffee, cups and cups of it, thick with cream and sweet with sugar. She had denied to Charles that she had been dieting, but it wasn't quite the truth; she was being dieted, and no amount of corned beef sandwiches, which was what she made for herself when she felt the pangs of hunger gnawing, made up for all the healthy food. She was beginning to believe that this was partly to blame for her unaccustomed meekness. She didn't usually suffer the pricks so tamely.
'Go into the lounge,' Charles suggested as he stirred himself to plug in the coffee machine. 'I'll bring this in when it's ready.'
The coffee seemed to take a long time to make. Roz curled up on the cushions of the divan and closed her eyes. There was a peace here which had nothing to do with there being no traffic noise—there wasn't any of that in Sussex; no, this peace was an intangible, fleeting thing which begged to be enjoyed, and she was enjoying it. When she opened her eyes again, evening shadows were everywhere, to set her blinking in disbelief.
'This man,' Charles's voice came out of the gloom, 'he's not only putting you off your food, he's giving you sleepless nights as well. If you want to stay in this game, sweetie, you'd better start getting over him.'
Roz was feeling better; she had eaten half an enormous pie so that she had felt comfortably full, she had slept peacefully for a couple of hours with no interruptions and she was ready to fight.
'I told you, there's no man, not in the way you mean, but of course you won't believe that. Your mind is sex-orientated, and I suppose that's why you have this mad idea that I've been indulging in an immoral affair for the past three months.'
'Too much passion can make a girl thin,' he sounded bored. 'On the other hand, if you were fighting a battle with your conscience, that could do it as well.'
'And what do you propose?' she queried sarcastically. 'What cure do you recommend for this mythical lover of mine? The one who's either wearing me out or who I'm pining for.'
Charles smiled in the gloom, and, perhaps it was a trick of the light, but she didn't like the quality of that smile. 'The cure for one man is another, darling; I was about to offer my services.'
'You!' She choked back an hysterical laugh. 'You're mad, insane, you've lost your marbles!' Then she let a little of the laugh out and wished she hadn't; it was high, thin and creepy. 'You, the great Charles Maine! But you've hinted at this sort of thing before, haven't you? And surely you remember the answer that time. It was "no", and it hasn't changed. Besides, you've got your image and reputation to consider.'
'Mmm.' This time his smile was a real one. 'We could be discreet. As you say, I wouldn't like to damage my reputation.' She watched as he put aside the book which he'd been reading while she slept. He came across the room to sit beside her on the divan, and it was then that the funny side of it struck her so that she found herself stifling a giggle.
'Your reputation!' Her eyes twinkled. 'Charles, you haven't got one, at least not the sort anybody'd be worried about losing. For that, you'd have to be pure, and I don't think you could manage it. I've heard the most dreadful stories about your affairs, I'm told that they're pretty hectic but that they never last long and you always return to the arms of your secretary. The girl must be a saint, something very special.'
'You are so right, darling.' He shared her amusement. 'She is, very special.'
'Not to mention forgiving and broad-minded,' she chuckled. 'But what you're suggesting wouldn't do. I live in a little Sussex village where the mere holding of hands is considered to be a sign that the girl is weakening past the point of no return, and it's not the place to which you could bring your secretary.' She watched his mouth tighten and then relax as though she had hit a tender spot which he was quick to cover up.
'Why not? It's the first time anybody's suggested that my secretary isn't socially acceptable.'
'And I'm not suggesting it either.' Roz flushed with embarrassment. 'We're not snobs, but the villagers aren't what you'd call diplomatic, and they do love a good scandal; they'd embarrass the poor girl.'
'But don't you think she'd be rather superfluous?' His eyes gleamed and he deliberately turned the subject away from what she thought must be a private point of view. 'What is it you want to do? Bring this man up to scratch, discourage him completely, or would you rather I turned your thoughts into an entirely new channel, like this?' His arm came about her shoulders and his smooth dark head was lowered to hers. 'Just a sample of the wares on offer,' he murmured some time later as he lifted his mouth from hers.
Roz looked down at her hands while she tried to cope. What had started as an odd, quite pleasant joke wasn't a joke any longer, and she thought that 'pleasant' was a weak word to describe what she had just experienced. Charles had kissed her before, of course, or rather she had kissed Charles, as she had kissed quite a few men. She had always thought of it as a nice way of saying thank you for a pleasant dinner or an enjoyable evening's entertainment. Everybody kissed everybody nowadays, it meant no more than shaking hands, but this had been different. This was the first time she had been aware of enjoying it, the first time that she hadn't wanted it to stop.
Charles had not only kissed her thoroughly, he'd made her kiss him back, and he'd been very expert about it—although, as she realised with a sinking heart, such expertise didn't come from living a monastic existence. His mouth had been cool and firm on hers, he hadn't bruised her lips or slobbered and he had gentled her lips apart without force while his hand had slid down to her hips to pull her firmly against him. She felt his other hand now, warm on her back, exploring until his fingers hooked into elastic. He pulled and let the stretchy material snap back so that she yelped.
'I told you,' he was whispering it into the hollow behind her ear, 'you're better without that bra. Did you like the sample?'
Roz drew a deep breath and collected herself, forcing her voice to a cool, analytical tone. 'Too passionate!' She gave her verdict after a moment's consideration. 'I don't think you'd fit the bill; you're not sufficiently detached. And now, if you've finis
hed playing games, I'll go. There's no way what you're offering would help me and there's no way I'd accept it. I don't go in much for emotional involvement; frigid, that's the word to describe me.'
His hands had slid up to her shoulders and he was holding them firmly, his grip unrelaxing as he turned her to face him. 'You're a liar, darling. A beautiful one, but still a liar, and I've a good mind to teach you not to lie to me.'
'No,' she shook her head at him firmly. 'As I said, you've got it all wrong. I'm having problems, who doesn't? But it's nothing to do with a man. It's my sister.' She made a vague gesture which dismissed Stephen as being only a minor source of trouble. 'It's all complicated stuff, families always are, but I can handle it easily, I assure you.'
'And you're lying in your teeth!' Charles sounded angry as though he couldn't bear to be wrong. 'You've got man trouble written all over you. Maybe you have a sister…'
'…I have!'
'…and maybe she is part of your worry. But the rest of it, my lovely, wears trousers and shaves every morning.'
'Not so.' Roz crossed her fingers although she was telling the truth. Stephen didn't shave, he only combed and trimmed his red-gold beard. She shrugged herself out of Charles' slackened grasp, swung her feet to the ground and stood up, smoothing her skirt down over her hips. 'Did I leave my things upstairs?'
'I brought them down here,' he nodded to where her small case and holdall stood by the door. 'And you're turning me down flat? Will you also turn down an invitation to dinner?'
'Mmm, flat!' she agreed with him, as she picked up her jacket and slipped her arms into the sleeves, disregarding his proffered help. She didn't want to touch him and she certainly didn't want him to touch her. Roz was a realist and honest enough to admit it when she came up against anything she couldn't handle. Just a few seconds ago, she had realised that she couldn't handle Charles. As she had often said, he was the cat who walked by himself, he was unpredictable and she didn't trust him. Or was it that she didn't trust herself?
Had she allowed him a few more minutes to continue with his cozening ways, she thought she would have been putty in those long, strong fingers; he'd have been able to do just what he wanted with her. She straightened her jacket, walked over to where her things were standing, picked them up and took a deep breath.
'I shan't be seeing you again, Charles. If I ever need another photograph, I'll find another photographer; one who doesn't have seduction in mind.'
'Seduction?' Charles looked innocent, or as innocent as it was possible for him to look. 'You've a depraved mind, darling, I was only offering to help.'
'The two words are synonymous where you're concerned,' she called over her shoulder, and went out, giving the door a hearty slam behind her.
Back at the small hotel, she ate dinner without much appetite and then retired to her room with the neglected paperbacks. They remained neglected, although one of them, thick and with an excitingly illustrated jacket, was listed as being hot from the pen of a best-selling author.
Her thoughts went round and round, like a squirrel searching for a hoard of nuts hidden and forgotten. It was a wearying form of mental exercise and it made her too exhausted to do anything but tumble into bed. Once there, she lay in the darkness, unable to sleep for the thought of Charles' careless mouth which had reduced her to a willing pulp and which had decimated her moral standards. She could still hear his voice in her mind—'Just a sample of the wares on offer'—and she could still feel the warm satisfaction of his arms about her. The best thing she could do with that feeling of warm satisfaction was to strangle it at birth! But it wouldn't be strangled, it wouldn't lie down and be dead! Not even when she went over all the things which should have killed it.
If Charles had a 'permanent' commitment, it was to his secretary, who called herself 'Mrs Smith', who was attractive without being strictly beautiful and who made no secret of the fact that she lived with him and had done so for five years that Roz knew of.
All the same—and at this point she tried to cheer herself up—in a way, it was a feather in her cap to be propositioned by Charles Maine, if she wanted that kind of feather. Charles wasn't indiscriminate, he didn't spread himself around too much. Roz couldn't recall ever meeting any girl who had actually had an affair with him, but everybody seemed to know somebody else who had. Perhaps it was shop gossip, perhaps he hardly ever strayed from Mrs Smith, just the occasional little adventure. Mrs Smith seemed to be the permanent part of his life.
Which put her, Roz, in the category of an 'occasional stray adventure', a humiliating thought; nothing to be proud of, so she could take that feather out of her cap straight away. She groaned, heaved herself over in bed and thumped the pillow in a rage of self-disgust. She wasn't feeling in the least humiliated, she was feeling chilly and deprived so that if, by some miracle, Charles had opened her hotel room door and walked in, she would have welcomed him with open arms. It was a blessing that she was leaving London early the next morning.
Charles would ring her, she supposed, if the shots hadn't turned out satisfactorily, but she was almost sure they would be all right; he always said that he didn't like wasting film. She would go back to Sussex, spend a few more weeks with Eve, coping with the children and trying to get it through Stephen's thick head that she would never again be the worshipping acolyte, that the time when she had prostrated herself before the altar of his charm and beauty was long gone. The effort involved would stiffen her moral fibre.
Stephen; her brain took that bone and worried it in an effort to stop thinking about Charles. What was it that Stephen wanted of her? She didn't think it was an extra-marital relationship. No, she had escaped from Stephen, she was no longer on her knees before him; she was a defector, and she didn't think he could stand the thought of that. He was looking on her as some sort of lost, strayed sheep and he was going through the motions of trying to bring her back to the fold because her defection had upset his great big golden ego!
Her night of thought, which achieved exactly nothing, caused her to sleep late, so that by the time she had showered, dressed and breakfasted, any hope of catching the early train back to Brighton was out of the question, and as it was Sunday, that was the only train which would get her there in time to catch the one Sunday bus which ran anywhere near Blackboys. She was further delayed by a call to the telephone in the foyer.
Charles' voice came over the wire, cool and rather amused. 'The pictures are OK, I thought you'd like to know.'
'Thanks,' she was terse. 'But you needn't have bothered. I think I'd have preferred it if you'd waited and got in touch with my editor. After all, she's the most interested party.'
'My, we are in a bad temper this morning, aren't we, darling?' Charles didn't sound in the least put out and she thought that he must have some psychic qualities. 'Didn't you sleep well?'
'I slept perfectly, thank you.' Roz could imagine him, lounging at ease, smiling in his mocking way, and she grew exasperated with him, with herself, with everything. 'And I wish you wouldn't call me darling,' she heard herself spit into the mouthpiece.
'Why not?' He was even more amused. 'It's a general form of greeting nowadays, there's nothing unpleasant about it and it's perfectly safe.'
Bitterness swamped her so that she abandoned her normally good manners. 'Oh, yes, and I suppose that where you're concerned it's not only safe, it's damn convenient. It saves you having to remember who you went to bed with!' And she slammed the phone back on the hook, aware that the young male receptionist was giving her a most peculiar look.
The little exchange didn't help her temper or her sense of ill-usage, but, once aboard the train, she simmered down and gave her mind to the practical problem of getting from Brighton out to Blackboys. As far as she could see, she had three alternatives.
She could book into a Brighton hotel and wait until Monday morning; she could get a hire car to take her the ten or twelve miles, or she could ring her home and have Stephen come and fetch her. The first two choices would
be ruinously expensive considering that she hadn't earned a penny for the last three months, but, even so, either of them was infinitely preferable to having Stephen collect her. That way wouldn't cost her a penny, but it could cost her goodwill.
At present, matters between her and her brother-in-law were on a strictly sister and brother-in-law footing; she had purposely kept it that way by avoiding any really close contact. But a half hour's journey in the confines of a car was another thing. Stephen would take advantage of it, he'd start on his 'togetherness' and his 'Wasn't it wonderful in the old days' themes. She would become exasperated with him and lose her temper, at which he would become kind and understanding until she screamed with frustration and possibly said all the things which she'd been bottling up since she had come back home, and they would finish the journey snarling at each other like a couple of Kilkenny cats.
Finally she decided on the taxi option. It would give her time, when she arrived in Brighton, to go on a hunt for the one chemist's shop which would be open on Sunday and she would buy Eve a very large bottle of perfume. She hoped the gift would boost her sister's morale and help her to get over the disappointment of never having more than three children.
Roz paid off the taxi and ran straight up to her sister's bedroom, only to halt inside the door with dismay. Sitting on a chair drawn up to the bedside, and looking as though sick visiting was part of his usual scene, was Charles. He was bandbox-neat and smart in a beautifully cut sports jacket and cord trousers which toned with it precisely; he was smiling at her in a very mocking way, and she glared back belligerently. This was an unwarrantable intrusion in her private life and she didn't like it. Her sister gave a glad cry of welcome.
'Roz, isn't this splendid? Isn't it a lovely surprise for you?' Eve was crowing with delight as though she had done something very splendid all by herself, as though she had personally magicked Charles out of thin air just for Roz's benefit. 'We've been waiting ages for you, but Charles is such good company, the time's flown.'
Tame a Proud Heart Page 3
