“He usually is.”
“So they’re going to drag the young woman who found him in for questioning again.”
Ella’s heart tightened. “I heard that she was in the clear.”
“No, not yet. But I’m afraid, my dear Ella, it’s time for you to lose your bodyguard. We’ve made the decision that the situation with the labor bosses is stable now, thank God, and presents no further threat to our women. Anyway, Lindop is pulling his men back from other duties to concentrate on the murder inquiry. Quite a relief for you, what? It can be damned annoying to have one of those chaps hanging around all the time, don’t you think?”
He didn’t notice that her eyes had frozen wide open, that her jaw had grown slack as she sought for words.
The band started up with “That Old Black Magic” and that was when she saw him. A gap in the crowd of dancing couples opened up, a narrow ravine leading straight from him to her across the dance floor. Ella stared at him greedily. At the way his muscular frame was barely comfortable within the ill-fitting evening jacket as he bent his attention on the woman laughing in his arms.
He was dancing with Tilly Latcham.
* * *
“Enjoy your dance with HRH?” Freddie de Marigny asked. Sir Harry’s son-in-law was plowing through yet another cocktail.
“Yes, thank you.”
Reggie treated her to an approving smile.
“He looked very earnest,” said Hector.
Tilly’s husband was seated at their table with Reggie and Freddie, wreathed in cigar smoke and brandy glasses. Ella sat down and reached for a glass of wine.
“Not boring you, was he?” Hector asked jovially. “With a stroke-by-stroke account of his golf this afternoon?”
He laughed good-naturedly. Hector was rather good at the sport, whereas it was common knowledge that the duke was something of a duffer at it. She accepted a top-up to her glass and drank it down quickly.
“You okay, old girl?” Hector murmured. “You don’t look too good.”
She nodded. “I’m fine.”
She was fond of Hector. He was one of those men who kept life simple. He believed in black and white, had no time for Reggie’s grays, yet oddly the two men hit it off well together.
“Where’s Tilly got to?” he asked.
“I’ll find her.”
Ella rose to her feet and pushed her way through the crowded club, scrambling to get as far away from the dance floor as she could.
* * *
How can you look in a mirror and see the eyes of a stranger? A person you have never seen before. How can that happen?
Ella leaned over the washbasin in the powder room and splashed water on her cheeks, but it made no difference. Her face was so hot she thought it would melt. It was shock. She knew that. Not shock at seeing Tilly Latcham laughing in Dan Calder’s arms or at knowing his hand rested snugly in the center of her back with nothing but a shimmer of silk between their two bodies.
No. Not that shock. Though even that was enough to knock holes in her.
Worse, far worse, was the shock of how much she cared. How much it hurt. How much she’d lost control of who she was.
She shuddered.
* * *
“Ella, I’ve been looking everywhere for you, darling. What are you doing hiding in here?”
Tilly had breezed into the powder room on a wave of perfume and cocktails. Her mouth was bright red, as though someone had been kissing it.
“I’m just taking a breather, Tilly. It’s so hot on the dance floor.”
Tilly inspected her quizzically. “You do look a bit flushed.”
Ella rinsed her hands again and took a towel to dry them. She refused—absolutely refused—to ask her friend about the dance with Dan Calder. Instead she combed her hair a little too roughly and pinned back a blond lock that had escaped its pearl grip.
“Hector is on good form tonight,” she commented.
“He’s been in an odd mood all day. I think he’s planning a surprise of some kind, silly chap.”
“A trip to New York?”
“Maybe. Who knows? I’m always happy to go shopping for a new gown. Have you taken a good look at the duchess’s Schiaparelli? Must have cost a fortune but she hasn’t got the figure for it.”
“It looks stunning. But she does seem awfully out of sorts tonight.”
Tilly patted her own dark waves and trailed one curl artfully over her freshly powdered cheek. “What do you mean?”
“She looks”—Ella sought for the right word—“. . . hungry.” Wolfish, she thought, but didn’t say.
Is that what I look like now? Hungry. Wolfish. Prowling after what I cannot have.
“Well, darling, that’s hardly surprising, is it?” Tilly shrugged. “She’s always wanting what she hasn’t got.”
Tilly was not a fan of the duchess and regarded as inexcusable her habit of issuing blatant reprimands to the duke in public.
“It’s not easy for her,” Ella pointed out.
Both Ella and Tilly were aware that it was whispered behind closed doors that the duke had a sexual problem, that he was premature when it came to the delights of the bedroom, and only with the duchess had this handicap been contained somewhat. How true the rumor was, Ella had no idea. But it would explain some things about the relationship—his total dependence on his wife, the neediness in his eyes whenever he looked at her, his unwillingness to renounce Wallis Simpson even for the throne of Britain. And it was common knowledge that Wallis had spent time in Shanghai, where—so the rumors went—she had learned certain sexual techniques, including the extraordinary Shanghai Grip.
All tosh, probably. But sometimes Ella was conscious of an unsteadiness about her as though she was wound too tight. Exactly as Ella felt now.
Reggie, take me home, take me home now.
Tilly looped her arm through Ella’s and started to march her to the door. “Come along, my angel, I want to dance with His Royal Highness . . . and there’s someone who wants to dance with you.”
* * *
How could she dance with him and not devour him?
Wolfish. On the prowl. Teeth glistening with saliva.
Ella shut her mouth and kept a respectable distance between their bodies so that she could not reach out and take a bite. A sliver of decency remained to her and she clung to it so that he would have no inkling of the workings of her mind, of the slippery slope down which her thoughts were falling headfirst.
“So, Dan,” she said in a voice that grated on her nerve ends, the tone of a colonial matron patronizing her pet servant, “I hear I am to lose you. What a shame.”
Gray eyes. Streaked with the palest of blues. They stared at her as if she were a stranger he had never met before, one he didn’t particularly like. “I have heard nothing about that, but I wouldn’t be surprised. The station is very overworked right now.”
Her hand lay lightly in his. No clinging. No sliding up his arm to touch the clean sharp edge of his jawbone.
“Because of the Morrell murder, I suppose,” she said.
“Exactly.”
And then they ran out of conversation. It just stopped. Something that in all their hours spent together in the car had never happened. She didn’t look away at the other dancers or at the band swaying to the music on the stage, but stared at Dan Calder’s face mutely, until he abruptly released his hold on her and stopped dancing in the middle of the floor. The crowd surged and swirled around them and the singer crooned, “Don’t go walking down lovers’ lane with anyone else but me . . .”
“This is no good,” he said softly. She barely heard it above the music.
“No.”
“Better to stop now.”
He turned on his heel and walked away from her, wrenching something out of her. How had this happened? How had she been reduc
ed to this so fast that she didn’t see it coming? How? She watched him swerve between tables and disappear through the exit doors.
“Ella? Are you all right?”
She had no idea who spoke. She started to move and then she was running, pushing through the doors and calling his name. When his arm seized her and pulled her into a dark corner behind the cloakroom, she knew it was wrong. When his hand caressed her face and the lean hard length of his body crushed against hers, she knew it was insane. That it was what cheap and nasty girls did behind their husbands’ backs.
But her body was out of her control. It was doing things that shocked her—touching the warm full flesh of his mouth with her fingertips and pressing her thigh tight against his, until suddenly his lips were on hers, his tongue driving into her mouth.
* * *
“Reggie?”
“Mmm?”
“Are you awake?”
“I am now.” His voice was thick with sleep.
“Reggie, we’re all right, aren’t we?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean we’re happy, aren’t we?”
He rolled over in bed to face her, though in the darkness they were nothing more than vague shapes, featureless and anonymous.
“Of course we’re happy,” he said, but she could hear a ripple of alarm in his voice. “What’s got into you?”
She ran a hand over his naked chest, feeling the familiar baby softness of the well-padded waist, coming to rest just short of the dense bush of hairs at his groin. “There is so much unhappiness out there, I could feel it tonight at the club, as if it was dripping from the ceiling, all those young lives at risk. I want us to be always happy. I want us to be always . . .” Her throat was so full of tears she couldn’t finish the words.
“My own sweet Ella.” He scooped an arm around her, drawing her close. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.”
He kissed her forehead. A gentle reassuring kiss that made her feel worse. She pulled his mouth to hers, desperate to have his stamp on her, his ownership marked plain for her to see, and he obliged. He lifted himself on top of her and carefully, considerately inserted himself inside her. She listened to his muted grunts, felt the warmth, inside and out, of his desire to please her and she told herself it was enough. She didn’t need more.
When it was over, the dull restless ache between her legs was still there, unsatisfied and unforgiving. Reggie fell asleep with his face tucked in the crook of her neck, his breath warm and relentless on her breast. She lifted the sheet and pressed it down on her mouth to silence her cry.
* * *
“Emerald, I want you to prepare a picnic for me today, please,” Ella said breezily.
Emerald looked up from her baking, floury hands flapping. “I’m busy. Bakin’ a tart for Mr. Reggie. All them blueberries goin’ to waste. Mr. Reggie likes a nice tart.”
Ella was feeling self-conscious, which was unreasonable really. She’d let Dan kiss her last night, but that was all. What was a kiss? Nothing. A moment of fun. Over in a heartbeat. So now they could get on with their lives. It was absurd to contemplate otherwise. She was just going out for a lazy day away from the bustle of Nassau, somewhere quieter and cooler, where she could get her thoughts in order.
“What you want in this picnic of yours?”
“Just a few simple sandwiches and a flask of tea,” Ella said, offhand because it really was an unimportant little jaunt. A picnic. “Oh, and maybe some cake for Detective Calder.”
“Detective Calder goin’ to drive you on this here picnic?”
“Yes, of course.”
“There ain’t no ‘of course’ about it. You want blueberry pie for Mr. Reggie or a picnic for you?” Emerald stood with her floury hands on her hips, her broad face all screwed up.
Ella smiled sweetly at her. “Oh, Emmie dear, you know I want both.”
“Don’t you Emmie dear me.” She sniffed loudly. “You is just plain greedy, Miss Ella.”
“Greedy?”
“Yep. You want what you cannot have.”
Ella found a smile from some distant cupboard and stuck it on her face. “Just make the blasted picnic.”
* * *
Dan Calder opened the door of the Rover for her with his usual exquisite politeness, last night’s kiss safely in a locked drawer somewhere. He slid in beside her, his expression friendly and professional. He smelled nice in the confined space of the car, some kind of aftershave or hair oil, something with sandalwood in it. She tried to breathe deeply without letting it show.
“Where today?”
“Let’s go inland,” she suggested.
He slid the big vehicle into motion, and to keep her eyes from staring at his hands on the wheel, Ella turned her head and glanced out. They were driving past the front of the house. Emerald’s face was at the dining room window, scowling fiercely. Her bosom was pressed like a giant white cushion against the glass, her heavy lips moving.
In her head Ella could hear the sound of her maid’s words. “You is just plain greedy, Miss Ella.”
Chapter 37
Flynn
Flynn wanted a drink, a real drink, though it was scarcely midafternoon by the old grandfather clock leaning against the wall. The office fan was efficient, ensuring that the warm air rippled over his skin. They had been welcomed, seated, and offered tea. Tea? In this heat? What was it with the British and tea? As though it ran in their veins or something.
“Or can I offer you something stronger, Mr. Hudson?” Harold Christie asked amiably.
“A beer would do.”
Christie produced a beer. It was warm.
Flynn didn’t take to this man. His smile was too sincere, his charm was too easy, his manner was too damn relaxed. Any more relaxed and the guy would be splayed out on his own floor with his face on his fancy Persian rug. And what made him think that Dodie was a fool?
Because that’s how he was treating her. From the moment they walked into the room, Christie had her marked down as someone he could bamboozle, and she just sat there, reeling him in with her soft-spoken words and her sweet smile. That smile of hers. Flynn wanted to tell her to put it away, to roll it in a ball and tuck it out of sight in her pocket. It distracted him.
She had introduced him. “This is my friend Mr. Hudson.”
Christie had accepted Flynn’s presence because he had no choice, but that didn’t mean he had to like it. His handshake was wary and the accompanying smile barely made it past the corners of his mouth.
Flynn had tried to dissuade her from this meeting. He didn’t think it was a good idea, but she had insisted and he was learning that he was no good at saying no when she was saying yes. Not when her lips were brushing his lips and her fingers were twisting his hair as easily as she twisted his heart. Better that he was here on one of Christie’s big comfortable chairs than that she came alone and had the land dealer thinking she was fair game. It was significant that just the mention of her name gained them admittance to this inner sanctum upstairs on Bay Street. Her fame marched before her among these guys of wealth and position in Bahamian society, and that scared Flynn. They all wanted to know what exactly was inside that pretty head of hers.
“Well, Miss Wyatt, what can I do for you?”
Dodie hadn’t touched her cup. Flynn watched Christie observing her the way a magpie eyes a fledgling that has tumbled from a nest. Flynn exhaled a string of smoke across the desk.
“Thank you for seeing me, Mr. Christie,” Dodie said, giving him a smile. “Your reputation in Nassau is well known and you are greatly respected. You took me by surprise when you turned up at the Arcadia the other day, but I’ve thought about what you said and you were right. We must all take care of the good name of the Bahamas.”
Christie smiled, caught off guard. He hadn’t expected that, but he recovered ea
sily. “That’s pleasing to hear, young lady.” He drew hard on his cigarette. “I was sure you’d see it my way.”
“I do indeed. That’s why I think we can work together.”
“Work together?”
“Yes. I’ve come to you—with my friend Mr. Hudson—to learn more.”
“Learn more about what?”
“You know everything there is to know about land on New Providence Island.” She shook the loose waves of her hair and they rippled like silk around her shoulders, catching the light, drawing Christie’s gaze. Flynn had an urge to prize his eyeballs out. “I thought,” she continued, “you could tell us something about it.”
“Something like what? Are you interested in buying land?” His green eyes brightened at even the faintest prospect of a sale. He turned to Flynn with expectation. “Or you, Mr. Hudson?”
“No,” Flynn said firmly.
“Mr. Morrell mentioned,” Dodie explained, “that he was here in Nassau to do a land deal. We thought you might know about it.”
A pause. It vibrated in the room. Like beans in a tin. That loud.
Christie moved his stare to Flynn. “Mr. Hudson, what exactly is your role in this conversation?”
“My role is simple, Mr. Christie.” Flynn stabbed his cigarette into an onyx ashtray.
“There has been a murder, Mr. Christie, as you are aware. I am a friend of Miss Wyatt’s and it is my business to make certain she doesn’t trip over any more dead bodies.”
“In my office?”
Flynn gave an easy chuckle. “Most people have a skeleton or two rattling in their cupboards.”
It could have sounded like a threat, a civilized one, but still a threat. He wanted Christie focused on him, not on Dodie. What the hell was she up to? Using herself as bait? She hadn’t warned him.
“So,” Flynn said, “we are on the hunt for something about the sale of land that might have caused Mr. Morrell’s downfall.”
“Really? Found anything?”
“Nothing definite.”
“Have you mentioned this theory to the police?”
“Not yet.”
“I know nothing about any deal.”
The Far Side of the Sun Page 22