'
`But you broke your promise,' said Reggie, not that it seemed all that important. More important was the fact that Clive had kept her in ignorance of his children.
`I didn't mean to, honestly I didn't. But I've had it on my mind all day about me refusing to consent to a divorce. Then I got to wondering if you were pregnant...'
`Pregnant!' The exclamation was out before she could hold it back.
`Forgive me,' said Irene, instantly apologetic, making Reggie feel more like a worm than ever that she should be apologising, to her! 'But I was carrying Tommy when Clive and I were married, so I couldn't help wondering, since he's so keen to marry you if the same ... I don't want to divorce him, but if there was a child on the way—don't you see, I had to know.'
`I'm not pregnant,' Reggie had said woodenly, and there had seemed very little to say after that. Irene Walker had apologised once more for calling and a more than ever mixed up Reggie had gone with her to the outside door, to return to her flat with her mind not knowing where to start with this latest development.
She was definitely in no mood for tomfool telephone calls. The ringing of the phone greeted her as she went into the sitting room, and a sigh escaped as she picked up the phone and gave the number.
`Am I speaking with Regina Barrington?' asked a tough-sounding, foreign-accented voice.
`Yes, I'm Regina Barrington,' she said tonelessly, not twigging yet that one of Bella's theatrical friends was up to a practical joke.
`This is Severo Cardenosa,' the voice said, his tones hardening on hearing he was speaking with the party he wanted. There was a pause as though he expected the name to mean something to her.
`Yes,' she said, not having a clue who Severo Cardenosa was—and very few people ever called her Regina.
`Do not pretend you have forgotten me,' the voice said threateningly, 'or the bargain we made.'
`Bargain?' As she said the word light began to filter in. For Bella's sake she would have to play it through, but she felt more like crying than keeping her end up with one of Bella's nutty friends.
`You have been well paid for the part you are to play.' The voice was coldly angry now, earning full marks for top grade acting from Reggie, who had too much on her mind to want to participate. Then she found she didn't have to participate, for all the instructions were coming from the other end. 'It is most inconvenient for me to come to get you,' the voice said ominously, 'but make no mistake, Regina Barrington, unless you get here by the end of the week, then at some date in the very near future I shall come personally to collect you.'
Whether she would have answered anything to that, tried to play it along further, though the man was playing at being some horrible-sounding Severo Cardenosa up to the hilt—never had she heard such a threatening tone—she never discovered. For just then, without warning through where she had forgotten to draw the curtains, lightning forked in the sky, thunder cracked about her head and panic she despaired of ever losing in thunderstorms had her by the throat. The phone was back on its rest before she knew it, whether dropped from her hand or placed there she had no recollection. All she knew was that from somewhere she had to find .the courage to go over to the windows and shut out that lightning.
Ten minutes later Bella burst into the room, her eyes straightway going to the settee where a white-faced Reggie sat with her fingers in her ears.
`Oh, love!' she exclaimed, going quickly over and
taking hold of her hands. 'I put my foot down as soon as it started to thunder.'
Reggie was relieved to see her and offered what she could in the way of a smile, her trembling body showing what she was going through.
`It will get better one of these days,' Bella tried to comfort her, knowing her sister's terrible fear stemmed from the day thirteen years ago when her parents had left her, their elder daughter, to stay with her grandparents and had driven away with young Reggie waving happily from the back window of the car. On their way' they had run into a violent storm, and when lightning had bounced off the car it had aqua-planed on roads that were a river of water, coming to a standstill by crashing into a tree. Reggie had seen the broken, lifeless bodies of her parents just before she had lost consciousness. 'It's passing over,' she said, striving for a bracing note. 'Let's have a cup of tea.'
Loath to touch anything electrical, Reggie fought hard to get herself under control while Bella busied herself in the kitchen.
`How did your day go?' she asked when Bella returned with the tray, trying for normality but keeping a wary ear alert for thunder.
Bella's face took on a secretive smile. 'Lovely,' she said, almost purring, not attempting to cover the pleasure of her day by the pretence of measuring.
`You're back early.'
`We had thunder in Wellesbourne. My intuition told me it might be travelling this way.'
`Oh, Bella, you cut short your day for me! Didn't James mind?'
Briefly her sister frowned, then grinned, saying airily, `Well, you know how possessive James is. He seems to want my complete and undivided attention at all times.
But as I told him, from Boxing Day onwards I shall devote all my time to him. Until then I have a little sister whom I soon won't be seeing so much of.'
Bella kept up bright chatter for another ten minutes as they sipped their tea. Reggie knew it was to keep her mind away from the thought that the thunderstorm, which had now departed, might yet return.
Having run out of amusing incidents, Bella ceased talking for the sake of talking, and suddenly asked, 'Did Clive ring before he went? I suspected you were hoping he might.'
`No.' Reggie felt no amazement that the thunderstorm had taken all remembrance of Clive and Irene Walker from her mind. Her fear of storms tended to freeze her thinking power. 'Clive didn't ring. But his wife called.'
`His wife!' Bella exclaimed, astonished. 'You mean she actually telephoned you!'
Reggie shook her head, 'She called in person,' and went on to relate, watching as her sister's mouth firmed into an unforgiving line, everything that had passed between her and Clive's wife, ending with a bruised, 'I can't think why he didn't say anything about the children last night.'
`I can,' said Bella promptly. 'He knew damn well any chance of you going to live with him when you knew about them would be right up the Swanee.'
She was right, of course. It would be bad enough even if she was able to take 'living the wrong side of the broom', as her horrified Gran would have put it, without having her conscience nagging at her, as she knew it would, that somehow she was depriving Clive's children of time they should have with their father. What happiness would there be for her then? And yet, as underhand as it might seem Clive had been, she still loved him.
Suddenly, without her being aware the decision had
been made, words were leaving her, the air upon them cementing the conviction of what she had to do.
`I'm going away, Bella,' she said.
`Away? Where? What are you talking about?'
`I've got to get away from London,' said Reggie, realising at last that it was the only course open to her. 'I've got to be where Clive can't find me when he returns.'
`You love him that much?'
`I feel strong now,' she explained. 'Able to pack up my job, give up this flat, try and make a new life for myself. But I have to do it before Clive comes back.'
`The weakness of love,' Bella put in thoughtfully. 'You think all your resolves will vanish the moment you see him again?'
`I—I just don't know,' Reggie answered hopelessly.
`It's not going to be easy for you,' Bella said gently, and Reggie knew she was referring to her own separation from James and how, after a month away from him in South America, the love she had for him had been stronger than all her independence and assertions before she went that no man was going to tell her what to do.
From then on it was Bella who became the more practical of the two. 'You can hand in your resignation at the office tomorrow,' she i
nstructed. 'I'll see the landlord about the flat. You've got a couple of weekends in which to decide where you want to live and do something about finding accommodation.' She broke off, a thought suddenly occurring to her. 'Hey, why not come to Warwickshire? You might be able to find somewhere near to James and me. You're a good secretary, you shouldn't have any trouble getting a job in Stratford. You ...'
Reggie stopped her right there, James' possessiveness uppermost in her mind. He liked her, she thought, as she liked him. But with James wanting Bella all to himself, he wouldn't take very kindly to having her living on his doorstep.
`No,' she said. 'It wouldn't work,' and when Bella looked as though to argue why wouldn't it, she told her, `Beside any other consideration, the first place Clive is going to start looking for me is with you.'
`I'd forgotten he'd been to the house in Wellesbourne.' Bella backed down, taking her point.
By the time they went to bed it had all been worked out that whether they liked it at the office or not tomorrow, Reggie was going to tell them she was leaving—for obscure family reasons, which they couldn't very well question—on Christmas Eve.
Yawning, Bella got into bed, freely admitting to being bushed, and Reggie was about to turn out the lamp on the low chest of drawers that separated the two. beds when Bella asked casually:
`Nobody rang for me, I suppose?' She had a whole host of friends, but was gradually dropping out of circulation and wasn't too unhappy about the situation.
About to say 'No', Reggie remembered the oddball telephone call cut short by the thunderstorm. 'Only some nutty friend of yours rang asking for me—though why he asked for me I don't know, other than that he probably knew you'd rumble him straight away.'
`Nutty friend of mine?' Bella sounded intrigued as she propped herself up on an elbow. 'Well, they're not in short supply. Which one was it—any idea?'
Feeling slightly amused now where amusement had been far from her at the time, Reggie grinned, and was in no way prepared for the shock with which Bella received what she said next. It was startling.
Not a clue. He adopted a fake foreign accent, called himself,' she paused, wanting to get it right, then brought out the name, 'Severo Cardenosa,' and felt her own colour drain as Bella went ashen.
`Severo Cardenosa!' The horrified expression on her sister's face as she repeated the name, without her loss of
colour, was enough to have Reggie leaping out of bed and going to her.
`There is such a person?' she questioned urgently, fast coming away from being the little sister who looked to Bella for guidance, and suddenly taking charge as Bella buried her head in her hands and rocked as she cried:
`Oh, my God—oh, my God! Severo Cardenosa has the power to ruin my life!'
CHAPTER TWO
`RUIN your life?' Reggie echoed, her mind darting all ways in the face of her sister's distress, but coming up with nothing other than that the dark threatening tones she had heard in that coldly angry voice had been for real. It hadn't been the joke she had assumed it to be!
`Who is he?' she asked quickly when it looked as though Bella wasn't going to come out of her state of near collapse. 'What's it all about, Bella?'
Her face still ashen, Bella raised her head from her hands. 'I met him in Uruguay.'
`He's a South American?'
She nodded. 'I never for a moment thought he'd find me once I'd left the country. He's got loads of charm once he cares to use it, I'll bet one of the girls gave him my address and phone number.'
`But why should he come looking for you? And is it Uruguay he wants you to go to before the end of the week?' It all sounded crazy to Reggie, but before she could say as much, Bella was rapidly firing the question:
`Is that what he said? That he wants me to go there?'
`He said if you didn't, though it was inconvenient at
the moment, to make no mistake, he would come to collect you.'
`Oh no!' Bella groaned, if possible looking whiter than ever. Then, urgently, 'Tell me word for word what he said.'
Trying to remember everything, Reggie repeated as much as she could recall, and in doing so remembered something she had forgotten since Bella's transition from a happy young woman to the frightened person she looked at the moment.
`What did he mean by "You've been paid for the part you're to play"? And why on earth did he use my name? I might have got a word wrong here and there, but he definitely said, "Make no mistake, Regina Barrington ...'
She stopped speaking as everything she had repeated became too much for Bella, who suddenly burst into tears. Unable to remember the last time she had seen her cry, she was appalled and in a moment had her arms around her.
`You'd better tell me everything,' she said gently, and, winningly, 'It can't be as bad as all that.'
`Oh yes, it can,' sobbed Bella.
Reggie's mind was most definitely not on her work the next day. Her own problems, her need to leave London before Clive returned, had to take a back seat. Though since it was still her intention to put herself out of his orbit, she did remember to type out her resignation. Mr Elford, her boss, was not too pleased that she was leaving at such short notice, but with so much else on her mind,' Bella's revelations having shaken her rigid, his sulky manner with her for the rest of the morning was the lesser of her worries.
At lunch time she took herself off to a park bench and
wondered yet again how Bella could have done such a thing. No wonder she was scared stiff! If James ever found out, aside from his possessive manner, that upstanding, no-nonsense streak in him would put an end to all their plans to marry.
It was so out of character for Bella to have done what she had, so against the way they had both been brought up. Yet there was no disbelieving it. From Bella's own lips Reggie had heard that not only had she broken her contract to stay with the dance troupe until the end of the South American summer, but the worst part of all was that she had made a contract with Severo Cardenosa, unwritten though it might be a contract none the less, and had broken that contract too. No wonder he had been angry!
Astonished, unable to credit what she was hearing, she had questioned Bella, and was still having difficulty in believing what she had heard.
Her sister had been visiting one of the girls who, because she had been involved in a motor accident in Montevideo, had been taken to hospital there, not to the glamorous resort of Punta del Este some eighty or so miles away where they were working.
Bella admitted she had been miles away as she neared the hospital, her thoughts with James, anger at his bossy ultimatum pulling against a longing to be with him, when turning a corner she had literally been knocked· off her feet by a man with his mind on his own problems.
`He helped me up,' Bella had told her, 'and I suppose I must have been looking a little winded, because he straight away offered to take me for refreshment. At first I thought he was just trying his luck—that was until I realised when he didn't follow through that he was just expressing the courtesy that's common to all Uruguayans.'
`So you went with him?'
`Normally I wouldn't have done, I'd already got my breath back, but there was something about this Severo Cardenosa I found intriguing. It wasn't until we were sitting drinking tea that I realised what it was.'
`He was good-looking?'
`He's that all right. But it wasn't his looks that had me going with him, so much as the fact he didn't appear to notice me as a woman. Oh, I'm sure he'd already registered that I had everything in the right place—he's very much a man in that direction, of that I'm certain. But, apart from his obeying all the politeness of his nationality, his eyes didn't make a meal of me as I'm used to happening.'
Reggie accepted that as fair comment. Bella was beautiful, in ways as well as manner, it was only natural for men to want to stare at her.
`Well, it piqued me to find that though he was observing all the niceties of such an occasion he just wasn't seeing me, so without really thinking too much abou
t it I decided to try my hand at seeing how long it would take me to thaw him out.'
`You were piqued, weren't you?'
`I'm not used to being ignored,' Bella responded, her voice taking a slight edge.
`Of course you're not,' Reggie agreed honestly.
Bella's face softened before she continued. 'Anyway, to get him talking I told him I was staying at Punta del Este, not mentioning that I was a dancer because if he did start to breathe heavily then I would have achieved what I wanted and I intended to duck out.'
Reggie felt slight shock on learning that Bella had a man-teasing streak in her, but she loved her too much to think of it as something she shouldn't possess. 'How long did it take you—to get the heavy breathing, I mean?' she asked, covering her surprise.
`I didn't. To be courteous, he in turn told me he came from the interior, and then he asked if I was enjoying my holiday. Then he enquired if I would like more tea. It seemed to me then that he was impatient to be away, for all he was covering it with politeness, and for my sins I let it niggle me that he was barely seeing me. I was determined then that he would see me as a young and attractive female. So I said I was rather thirsty, telling him the shock of cannoning into him must have lowered my sugar content. He couldn't do any other then than order more tea, which I took my time about drinking while I got in there with all the leading questions.'
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