Substitute Engagement

by Jayne Bauling

  His perspicacity infuriated her still further. ‘You enjoyed being the messenger!’

  ‘Someone had to be.’ He didn’t deny the accusation, but his expression had hardened. ‘I’ll keep this for you.’

  He had slid the ring from her finger quite easily, and Lucia couldn’t honestly feel its removal as a loss since she wasn’t really accustomed to its light embrace, having preferred not to wear it on campus, especially as her course had entailed so much laboratory work.

  ‘Give it to me,’ she demanded, seeing him slip it into the breast-pocket of his dark green shirt.

  ‘I will when you’ve calmed down sufficiently not to make it a prop in a public performance.’ He ignored the hand that she stretched out to him while her other one was busily opening the small bag that hung on a strap from her shoulder. ‘Then you can give it back to Olivier some time when my sister isn’t around, or throw it back at him if that’s what you prefer. Unless you’d like me to do it for you?’

  ‘He’s not getting it back,’ Lucia stated tautly. ‘He gave it to me. It’s mine and I’ll do as I please with it.’

  ‘Ah! You’re going to be theatrical and hurl it into the sea,’ he guessed, a gleam of amusement appearing in his mysteriously coloured eyes.

  ‘I’m going to flog it and keep the money,’ she correct him impulsively. The reasoning behind her defiance was somewhat confused, except that if Thierry really had done this to her he didn’t merit any grand gestures.

  Rob’s amusement had increased. ‘Very practical. Now, try to look as if we’ve just enjoyed a passionate reunion and we’ll join the party.’

  Lucia hesitated, making a business of closing her bag to give herself time to think, although she already knew that she had no option. Intense pride was reminding her that several people who knew her had seen her arrival. If she failed to reappear they would guess why with some accuracy, and she could no morè bear the idea of being the subject of pitying gossip than she could have endured public ridicule.

  Lifting her head, she looked at Rob Ballard and said tightly, ‘The act is unnecessary—I couldn’t enjoy a passionate anything with you—but all right, let’s go.’

  ‘Then smile,’ he adjured indifferently, and stood aside to allow her to precede him.

  The only passion he aroused in her was passionate dislike, she reflected, with rather desperate humour. It occurred to her that she ought to be grateful to him for saving her from making a fool of herself by intercepting her search for Thierry. Lucia’s face burned as she entertained a picture of herself finding Thierry, innocently inviting his embrace and being publicly rejected, but the fact that she had something for which to thank Rob Ballard only exacerbated her resentment.

  As they joined the crowd in the beautiful, big courtyard she felt his arm slide about her waist, and she stiffened.

  ‘I said there was no need for that,’ she reminded him stiltedly. ‘Let go.’

  ‘When I’m sure I can trust you to behave.’

  ‘Won’t your wife or girlfriend object?’ she asked tartly, chagrined to find herself curious about his personal situation. Her reaction was partly in response to the looks that he was drawing from just about every woman around—those who caught his attention offering smiles of unmistakable invitation and a favoured few winning themselves answering smiles that were undeniably charming.

  ‘I don’t have a wife, and my girlfriends are all very understanding,’ he murmured smoothly.

  ‘I suppose they have to be,’ she countered, thinking that his answer told her a lot, ‘or they rapidly become ex-girlfriends.’

  ‘I travel a lot,’ he offered dismissively, as if in explanation.

  Lucia was having difficulty with her breathing. She knew that it was because she was on edge, dreading the moment when she saw Thierry and would know if he had really done this thing to her, but it was easier to blame Rob for the tight, breathless sensation afflicting her.

  ‘Don’t hold me so tight,’ she muttered angrily.

  ‘Don’t worry, Lucia, it’s not personal,’ he responded in a low voice for her ears only. ‘I’m not especially attracted to girls like you.’

  ‘And I don’t like men like you,’ she retaliated promptly.

  ‘Great.’ He gave her a sharply scintillating smile. ‘We should get on perfectly.’

  ‘Or not at all—’

  She broke off as her eyes encountered a bright red-gold head some distance away, and a tiny sound of acute distress escaped her as she looked for and found the young woman clinging to Thierry Olivier’s arm. The nightmare was real.

  The arm about her waist tightened, reminding her of the urgency with which Rob’s fingers had grasped her shoulders when he had first accosted her.

  ‘You’ll be all right,’ he asserted in a hard voice.

  ‘I know I will,’ she flared.

  ‘And your heart isn’t breaking.’ Rob was openly taunting now, as if he actually wanted her furious.

  ‘No!’

  Inwardly she was coming apart, but she would never admit it, never show it to anyone, and least of all to this man who had already seen too much of her, who had seen her openly disbelieving when he had told her the truth, and who must now feel only pity or contempt—either of which were anathema to all that was proud and sensitive in her.

  ‘Because you didn’t really love him.’ His smile was savagely derisive this time.

  ‘Because I know I can get him back,’ she contradicted, in an absolute rage with him and the world, and saying just anything. ‘If I want him. I’m not sure that I do.’

  Rob’s eyes had narrowed, and it was a moment before he spoke, observing idly, ‘You definitely don’t need him.’

  ‘I don’t need anyone!’

  It was pride driving her to make these wild claims, because it was all she had now, and no one must guess at the humiliation that was scalding her.

  ‘That’s one thing I knew about you before I’d even set eyes on you,’ Rob commented in a tone of agreement.

  Lucia ignored that, forcing her lips into the shape of a smile as she became aware that several people nearby were regarding them curiously, although Thierry was not yet aware of her presence.

  ‘So that’s her—your sister?’ she prompted in a low, taut voice, staring at the woman whose colouring was the only thing she appeared to have in common with her brother, and whose oval face was still and serene.

  ‘Nadine,’ he confirmed, ‘who does need Olivier. So you’re going to let her have him, aren’t you? Your hands, Lucia.’

  Only then did she become aware that her hands were clasped in front of her, their tense fingers twisting and turning agitatedly again, and she flushed, forcing them free of each other and letting them drop to her sides.

  She didn’t care; she wouldn’t care, she told herself frantically. She wouldn’t let these people destroy her—Thierry and that woman, and this man who saw too much and knew how devastated she really was.

  ‘How did they meet?’ she asked, managing a netural tone despite the unevenness of her breathing.

  ‘Nadine has been working here at the hotel.’

  ‘Nepotism,’ Lucia accused smartly, intent on keeping him the main focus of her anger because somehow it seemed safer that way under the present circumstances.

  ‘She knows the business. She did a course at the hotel school in Johannesburg.’ Rob made it sound as if he was being incredibly magnanimous, bothering to enlighten her that much, but then he gave her a hawkishly challenging look.

  ‘Strange! Hassan Mohammed didn’t mention gratuitously opinionated and critical. “Such a vivacious, sunny-natured, loving girl” were his exact words, but perhaps something is traditionally blinding him.’

  Lucia knew Hassan well. He had clearly been exaggerating, but she supposed that the description could apply loosely. When she wasn’t wounded in pride and heart, she liked and got on with people.

  She had felt a pang of envy when Rob had mentioned his sister’s training. Because it involv
ed dealing with people, the hotel industry had always attracted her, and she had been looking for some unhurtful way to tell her father that she wanted to go to the hotel school rather than getting her degree when the unexpected, fatal heart attack had hit, and there had only been time for a loving urge to ease his final minutes with a promise to go for the degree that meant so much to him.

  She had done it, confident that when the results came out she would have passed. And she had come back to the Comoros to fulfil her promise to Thierry, knowing that she was unlikely ever to have to use her qualifications for a number of reasons—including Thierry’s reactionary dislike of the idea of a wife who worked, unless it was to help him on the estate.

  Nevertheless, she had come intent on requesting a few weeks in which to unwind after the mental pressures of the last year before they started planning their wedding, and she’d been hopeful that he would be agreeable to her at least taking a temporary job at one or other of the new hotels’ which had been erected on the island in proof of international faith in the Comoros’ burgeoning popularity as a holdiay destination.

  However briefly, she yearned to experience more of the sort of contact for which she had acquired a taste in South Africa, earning her air fares between Johannesburg and Grande Comore by waitressing at a restaurant in the evenings and working on the tills of an up-market chain store on Saturdays and Sunday mornings.

  Now it occurred to her that, without Thierry, a job was a dire necessity as she hadn’t bothered to save a full return fare this year. In effect, she was stranded here, and not even a national. She could only have become Comorean when they’d married, gaining a proper national identity at last, plus the sense of belonging that she imagined must come with being settled and part of a pair.

  Lucia sent Rob Ballard an oblique look from behind her sunglasses.

  ‘She won’t be working once she marries Thierry,’ she ventured.

  ‘She has quit already.’ His glance was slightly curious.

  ‘Then—’ She hesitated, but the urge to phrase it antagonistically wouldn’t be suppressed. ‘She has got my man, so can I have her job? Or any job?’

  ‘You’ll have to apply to Personnel, or ask Chester Watson—the manager here,’ he elaborated, seeing her blank look. ‘They do the hiring and firing and I don’t interfere. I’ll introduce you to Chester in a minute as I’ll have to leave you to announce this engagement for the happy couple, and I don’t want you anywhere near them until you’ve got yourself under better control than you have now.

  ‘But why don’t you go back to South Africa and get a job? The Comoros aren’t really your home.’

  ‘They were going to be. Neither is South Africa, and I barely remember England because we moved around the Indian Ocean most of my life. My mother tried to persuade me to go back with her and study in England after my father died, but Johannesburg was nearer and cheaper, and by that time Thierry and I had fallen in…’ Her words faded as Lucia realised that what she was describing was an illusion. ‘My father was—’

  ‘Ernest Flanders, the marine biologist,’ Rob supplied, when she broke off again as she wondered why she was bothering to confide anything at all. ‘He made some impressive discoveries, and it seems that you’re set to continue his work eventually as it’s marine biology you’ve been studying, isn’t it? Johannesburg always strikes me as an incongruous place to do it, inland as it is, but, of course, Wits degrees are recognised worldwide.

  ‘Hotel work seems a bit of a waste for you. Why don’t you go back and find something that will utilise your specialised knowledge?’

  She was surprised that he should know so much about her, but she didn’t dwell on it, riled by an awareness that his advice was far from being disinterested—proffered for his sister’s sake rather than hers. He wanted her off the island.

  ‘Why? Are you afraid I’ll embarrass Thierry and your sister if I hang around?’ she challenged defiantly. ‘That I’ll cause trouble—try to get Thierry back?’

  ‘And succeed? Haven’t you learnt anything this afternoon about the dangers of being over-confident?’ Rob derided with deliberate cruelty, and Lucia was very glad of her darkened lenses, because while she could keep her mouth in the shape of a smile she had no control over anything her eyes might be revealing.

  ‘Go back to South Africa or home to England, Lucia. There’s no suitable work for you here, and at this stage of your career, fresh out of university, no research organisation or publisher is going to give you the sort of funding your father must have had to be free to roam around the ocean for so many years.’

  ‘I’m staying,’ Lucia insisted, wishing that she could come up with some dignified reason for doing so, hating the idea of his knowing just how stupidly over-confident she had been in coming back to the island without giving any consideration to the possibility that Thierry might no longer want her and that she would be left trapped here, unable to afford to leave.

  ‘If I can’t get a job here, I’ll try somewhere else—one of the other hotels, probably.’

  He studied her in silence for several seconds, his eyes very hard. Then he shrugged. ‘Do as you please, but I think you should bear in mind that if you make any attempt to sabotage my sister’s relationship with Thierry Olivier I will make you regret it.’

  The arm round her waist took on the quality of steel, so she was perplexed by his sudden, flirtatiously caressing smile until he added authoritatively, ‘Don’t stop smiling, Lucia. Olivier has just seen you, and he and Nadine are both looking this way now.’

  ‘I don’t want to speak to them yet.’

  She couldn’t keep a panicky note out of her voice. Even if no one else guessed what she was going through, Thierry should, and the thought was unbearable. She couldn’t even bring herself to look in his direction for the moment

  ‘Until you’ve planned your strategy?’ Rob mocked. ‘You won’t have to speak to them. I’ll take you over to meet Chester Watson now, and then I’ll go and make the great announcement for them, as that’s the way my sister wants it. But just remember what I’ve said. No trouble—no spoiling her day, please, Lucia.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  LUCIA’S face ached from smiling and smiling as she pretended that she didn’t care, but the glass of champagne that Rob had taken from a tray borne by a passing waiter and handed to her had a tendency to shake if she didn’t concentrate.

  It was difficult to concentrate on anything at all when her inner turmoil was so distracting, but she was determined not to let anyone know how shaken she was so she kept on smiling, forcing herself to talk sociably when she was introduced to Chester Watson—an attractive, stocky Englishman whom Rob said the Ballard Group had poached from one of Kenya’s most famous hotels.

  It was obvious that Chester held his employer in high esteem, and Lucia saw why. Their conversation touching briefly on hotel business at one point, Rob became very much the high-powered tycoon, decisive and commanding, but without being condescending, looking at Chester as he spoke, using his name and soliciting his opinion.

  They were soon joined by the young woman in whose company she had first seen Rob. Madelon Brouard was a few years older than Lucia, glamorous and sufficiently sophisticated to be able to reveal her interest in Rob without being crass about it in any way, even when he had his arm round another woman’s waist.

  ‘Incidentally, Chester, Lucia thinks she’d like a job here,’ Rob mentioned after the introductions were completed.

  ‘You would love it, Lucia,’ Madelon immediately put in enthusiastically. ‘I work in the hotel shop. It is the best employment I have had, and I have done most sorts of work. I was infected so badly by the wanderlust that I could not go home to take up my place at university when the one year of travelling I promised to myself ended. So here I stand, unqualified for all but casual labour to this day. But I have learned several languages and had many wonderful experiences. Did I say, Rob? Chester talks of moving me into Nadine’s post.’

  ‘So you won
’t be replacing Nadine, Lucia,’ Rob said significantly, with a mocking smile that added silently, Although Nadine has replaced you in another area.

  ‘In fact, I’ve an idea that we might have something unique for you, Lucia,’ Chester told her. ‘In view of who you are—Ernest Flanders’ daughter—and your own special interest and abilities. Oh, yes, I’ve heard a lot about you since I’ve been here. You have fans on the island, it seems, and, of course, your father is remembered with admiration.’

  ‘I’m sure I can be useful,’ Lucia submitted eagerly. ‘And, while I can’t match Madelon’s several languages, I am as fluent in French as in English, because when we weren’t living in the Comoros we’d often be in places like Mauritius, Réunion and the Seychelles, and I usually had to attend French schools.’

  ‘And you get on with people?’ Chester probed.

  ‘Very well,’ she claimed confidently, and was piqued by Rob’s sceptical smile.

  Well, of course he was an exception. What else did he expect when he had been the bearer of bad news, delivering it with more sadistic enjoyment than compassion? Not that she wanted his sympathy, or anyone else’s either—

  It was at this point in her angry thoughts that Rob removed his arm from around her waist, and Lucia was subject to a moment’s sheer, unreasoning panic in response to the loss of its warmth and, she realised belatedly, its support.

  ‘Will you excuse me, please? Nadine is sending out agitated signals so I’d better go and play my part. I won’t be long, angel,’ he added to Lucia, his tone indulgent. ‘Chester and Madelon will look after you.’

  Furious, she would have told him that she didn’t need looking after if it hadn’t been for the inhibiting presence of the other two.

  So it was shaming that his departure should leave her feeling so oddly bereft, but she would have died rather than show it. She watched him go, attracting as he always did much feminine attention and rewarding it with the occasional smile when eye contact was made, but she thought that she knew where his real interest lay, as it was with Madelon that she had first seen him.