His lips twitched unpleasantly. ‘Good. You can join us tomorrow.’
‘Thank you, but we’ll be leaving right after breakfast.’
‘Perhaps next time.’
‘Sure, why not.’
‘So what’s it like being a hypnotist?’ There was a smug chuckle in his voice.
‘Not much different from selling hundred-year Mexican government bonds denominated in euros, or ten-year Swiss bonds at negative yields, I suppose,’ I said quietly.
His eyes narrowed. I had just pulled his superiority rug out from under his feet.
‘Does that mean it’s not going well with Olivia?’ he asked coldly.
I looked him squarely in the eye. ‘Olivia’s case is complicated. Not that I am at liberty to discuss it with you.’
He appeared suddenly amused. ‘Is that code for my sister’s bonkers?’
So he was jealous of his stepsister. ‘No. It could be code for don’t believe all you are told.’
He widened his eyes sarcastically. ‘What fun! A mystery.’
I refused to be baited. I smiled coldly. I knew his type. He was an unpleasant, selfish, spoilt brat, and I didn’t like him, so it was weird that it was he who should then give me the biggest clue of all to solving the mystery that was Olivia.
‘Do you think she’s making it all up?’ he asked.
‘Why would you think that?’
‘Well, it’s a bit careless to lose one’s memory twice in one’s lifetime, wouldn’t you say?’
I frowned. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Didn’t anybody tell you?’ he sneered triumphantly. ‘The first time my sister lost her memory was when she was five years old.’
Alarm was crawling in my belly. ‘Under what circumstances?’
‘She fell down the stairs, hit her head, and completely trashed five years worth of memories. Had to start from scratch. Of course, I know only the barest facts. I was only three.’ He delivered his speech with an aloof, deadpan expression, his mouth hardly moving, keeping his upper lip very stiff.
I stared at him, shocked. Why had no one told me?
‘Are you familiar with the effects of closed head injuries?’ he asked cordially, as if he was asking if I had read the weather report for tomorrow.
I nodded curtly. Depression, personality changes and psychiatric issues.
Chapter 15
Marlow
More rattled than I wanted to admit, I glanced away from him and saw Olivia and Beryl returning.
‘We’ll be having dinner in a minute,’ Olivia said. ‘And Ivana was wondering if you’d like to take Lady Calthrope in.’ I followed her glance to a tight-lipped, bone-thin woman in her mid-sixties seated on one of the sofas.
‘Of course,’ I said, just as dinner was announced.
I walked over to Lady Calthrope and she looked up at me with pale, hooded eyes. ‘Are you taking me in?’ she demanded.
‘Unless you don’t want me to,’ I said.
She raised a thin, blue-veined hand imperiously. I grasped it and helped her up. She stood for a moment staring boldly at me. ‘So you’re the American hypnotist.’
‘Yes.’
She linked her hand through my arm and without the least trace of embarrassment said, ‘That’s good. I was rather afraid you might be one of those ghastly Americans.’
There was nothing to say to that so arm in arm we followed the tasteful procession in to dinner. The State Dining Room was everything a State Room should be: blended strawberries wallpaper, seventeenth-century ceiling murals, a dining table that spanned from one end of the room to the other, massive chandeliers, heavy gilt mirrors, museum-size paintings, and a stunningly carved marble fireplace. We took our seats amid the flowers and candelabras.
I looked for the waiter and nodded at him. He returned speedily with my American measure of whiskey.
I had Lady Calthrope on my left, which, according to etiquette, meant that I was to talk to her until the first course was cleared away. There was no sharing platitudes with her—it was more like bouts of blunt trauma with an eccentric twist. Between rounds I glanced at Beryl and she smiled or raised her eyebrows at me from across the table, but I quickly realized that she was sitting next to a man who had decided that no conversation at all was possible with her. After a few failed attempts to engage him, poor Beryl was spooning her buttery leek and Stilton soup in stony silence.
Although I was intensely aware of Olivia sitting three guests away on my left, I never let my gaze travel to her. When the places were cleared, as custom required, I turned to converse with the guest on my right.
The Baroness Wentworth was a straight-backed woman with sharp blue eyes and pale lipstick. She smiled mildly at me. ‘So, you’re a hypnotist.’
‘Yes,’ I said politely, and catching the waiter’s eyes, nodded.
She glanced sideways at me. ‘Is it dangerous to look you in the eye?’
‘I wouldn’t recommend it,’ I said gravely.
She giggled. ‘You don’t mean to say those frightful stage hypnotists are fakes?’
I shrugged. ‘It depends. If you see inconsistencies, then it’s a fakery. If you don’t, it isn’t.’
‘Inconsistencies such as?’
‘If a hypnotized person picks up a glass of water that he has been told is battery acid and drinks it then he is not hypnotized. He is either pretending or a shill. If he refuses to drink it then he is, because he genuinely believes it is battery acid and it will harm him.’
She turned fully toward me. ‘How fascinating. And how does one become a hypnotist?’
‘I wasn’t always a hypnotist. I began as a neurologist.’
‘I like clever people and I’ve always made a beeline for them.’
I glanced at Beryl. She was now being ignored by the gentleman on her other side. Her shoulders were sodden with disappointment and humiliation. All around me bits of foreign conversation swirled. An old boy was talking about getting pissed in the Bullingdon Club, a woman had been served a nice fat red Margaux at lunch the day before, someone else was discussing his stock of rare breeds in his organic farm, another had spent fifty thousand pounds at an auction but could not remember what he bought. The hubris and rudeness of this group of people was just too much.
Beryl was a sweet person who had arrived in such high spirits, so excited to be in the presence of the ‘cream of society’. But the haves had thoroughly snubbed a have-not. I was furious on her behalf and I was damned if I would let these stuck-up bores treat her as if she was a non-person.
I picked up my glass and to the open-mouthed horror of the Baroness I excused myself, and, standing up, sauntered over to where Beryl was sitting. The entire table had fallen silent with shock.
I looked at the man on Beryl’s right. ‘I’d like to exchange places with you. I believe I’m offering a far more advantageous seating choice. You’ll be sitting next to a Baroness no less.’
There was a horrified gasp from one of the ladies on my left.
The man gaped like a caught fish. He looked around him and then incredulously at me.
‘Surely you don’t mean for me to move halfway through dinner?’ he asked as if doing so would be tantamount to committing a cardinal sin.
My eyes and jaw were answer enough.
Without another word and with stony-eyed resentment he pushed his chair back and walked around to my seat. I took his place and winked at Beryl. ‘I thought you looked a bit lonely,’ I said.
She grinned suddenly, her whole face lighting up. Around us servants were busy moving plates and cutlery to accommodate the switch.
I glanced up to catch the waiter’s eye and met Olivia’s eyes instead. For a second we stared at each other then I moved my gaze along and met Ivana’s regard. Her expression was carefully veiled. Only a mask of social politeness was on display. She raised her eyebrows slightly at me. It was impossible to say what she intended to convey with this subtle gesture.
After dinner the men and th
e women separated as if we were still stuck in Edwardian times. Without the sexual tension provided by Olivia or the warmth of Beryl I became quickly and intolerably bored. I consumed another dose of Lord Swanson’s fine Scotch and left. I couldn’t stand the smell of their cigars or their unsubtle attempts to turn me into an outsider by constantly referring to the charmed circle of people they all knew. I was an outsider. God, was I glad that I wasn’t a member of their exclusive club.
I made my way back to my room. Someone had come in, drawn the curtains, and added fresh logs to the fire. It looked cozy, but it was actually chilly. There was a distinct draft coming from somewhere. I retrieved the tooth glass from the bathroom and poured myself a glass of whiskey. I drank it by the fire staring at the dancing orange flames and considered the events of the evening.
What her brother told me put a whole different slant onto Olivia’s amnesia. I had to get to the bottom of it soon. There was very little time left before Olivia was going to insist on knowing exactly what was going on.
I felt the drink seep into my brain cells, relaxing me. I was starting to feel drowsy when there was a knock on my door. Surprised, I went to open it.
Young, haughty, dismissive, precocious Daphne was standing in the deserted corridor. I raised my eyebrows. She was the last person I expected to see outside my door. She had been such a bitch. ‘All well?’ I asked.
‘Can I come in?’
‘Sure,’ I said, opening the door wider.
She sailed in. I closed the door and leaned against it.
‘Dinner was pretty filthy,’ she said with her back to me.
‘I thought it was excellent.’
She swung around on one heel, like a dancer. ‘Are you sleeping with her?’
‘Whom did you have in mind?’ I straightened away from the door, my face expressionless.
‘My half-sister, of course,’ she replied, with a pleasant smile.
And I knew then without a shadow of a doubt that she hated Olivia with the fierce hatred that comes from excruciating envy.
I crossed my arms. ‘Not that it’s any of your business, but no.’
She smiled shyly, but her eyes were filled with malicious delight. ‘I saw her watching you.’
‘I don’t make a habit of sleeping with my clients. Far too confusing for me, let alone them.’
She smiled again, this time in that cold, aloof manner of hers. ‘What about their sisters? Have you slept with any of them?’
I stared at her. She was totally different from the girl/woman I had met in the Green Saloon. This was the Daphne Swanson with her well-bred spine exposed, without the pretensions or the aura of fake hauteur that her social set deliberately cultivated to place them apart from mere mortals. Here was the real Daphne, the central figure in her own drama.
‘I can’t say I have,’ I said mildly.
She bit her lower lip. ‘Would it be too awful to start tonight?’
My eyebrows shot up, but before I could answer there was another knock on my door.
She blanched, but in a flash she ran into one of the cupboards and shut the door on herself.
Bemused, I opened the door. Beryl was standing outside. Her cheeks were flushed and she looked glazed about the eyes. Why, she was as drunk as a skunk.
‘Oh good, you’re still awake,’ she slurred. ‘I was hoping you’d be.’ She proceeded to sway unsteadily into the middle of the room right where Daphne had been standing. She turned around and almost lost her balance.
‘Are you all right?’
She waved her hand and smiled benevolently. ‘I feel great. I just wanted to thank you for what you did tonight at the dinner table.’ She raised her forefinger and wagged it at me. ‘You rescued me.’
‘It was nothing,’ I said quickly.
‘No, no, no,’ she argued shaking her head. ‘No one else would have done such a thing. You’re a good man, Dr. Kane. A really good man. And handsome, too. You’re really handsome, you know. If I was twenty years younger…’
I looked at her with amusement. She was going to be mortified in the morning. If she remembered, that is.
‘It’s a lucky woman who gets you,’ she continued.
I shifted away from the door. ‘Where have you been all this while?’ I found it hard to believe she had been accepted into the club and had been getting sloshed with them all this time.
She grinned happily. ‘You’ll never believe it, but I found out that the cook is from the same little village in Devon that I’m from. Fancy that! I’ve been in the kitchen having a good old chinwag with her all this while. It was fun. She’s so nice. She opened a bottle of sloe berry vodka that she made herself and we had a few glasses. Phew! Potent stuff.’
‘I can see that.’
‘Right. The floor keeps tilting. I guess I ought to go to bed.’
I went to my bag and pushed out two tabs of headache tablets and dropped them into her palm. ‘Life won’t be worth it tomorrow morning if you don’t take these right away.’
She smiled dreamily. ‘You really are such a Prince Charming.’
I opened the connecting door.
‘See you at breakfast,’ she said and stumbled through the open doorway. I closed it and the cupboard door opened.
Daphne stepped out coolly as if hiding in cupboards was a thing she did every day. She walked up to me. ‘She’s quite right. You are quite the prince,’ she said, unzipping her dress and letting it slide to the floor. In that chilly room she stood as naked as the day she was born. I’ll admit she had a good body, a very good body.
She curved one corner of her lip invitingly and very deliberately began to walk toward me. I had the impression she could have been a good lay. Energetic and probably insatiable, but there was something viperish about her that made me think I’d live to regret any time spent in her pussy.
How did one politely reject a Sloane Ranger with a trust fund in the Bahamas? A vindictive one at that. Thankfully, I didn’t have to. There was a knock on the door and Lady Daphne became a flash of pale skin as she raced to her dress, picked it up and returned to the cupboard.
This was fast becoming a comical farce. I opened the door and Olivia was standing there in her coat.
She smiled. ‘Get your jacket on and come with me. I want to show you something.’
‘You make it sound dangerous,’ I said.
‘I’ll keep you safe,’ she said, with a smile.
‘Ah, but who will keep you safe?’
She blushed and I realized that I must have drunk far more than I thought. I was flirting with her! Every sober cell in my brain knew I shouldn’t go with her. It wasn’t prudent. But the alcohol was suddenly racing powerfully in my veins. I was surrounded by that horrid smell of her perfume that had actually started to grow on me and I fucking wanted to be with her.
Oh fuck it.
Chapter 16
Marlow
I pulled my jacket from the sofa back and shrugging into the coat went out into the corridor to Olivia. A few steps down the corridor I turned to her.
‘Can you hang on here for just a sec? Got to sort something out. I’ll be real fast.’
‘All right,’ she said, looking up at me with soft eyes.
I turned around and went back into my room. There was no polite way to do this. I closed the door, strode to my wardrobe and yanked it open abruptly. Daphne was standing inside clutching her dress against her body. She blinked up at me in surprise. Exactly the reaction I had hoped to achieve—disorientate her conscious mind. I reached in and took her left wrist in my right hand.
‘Keep your arm soft,’ I instructed, fixing my eyes on hers.
Taken by surprise she obliged immediately. I raised my other hand higher than her eye level so her confused eyes would automatically have to follow, and travel upwards. Smoothly I moved my hand toward her face knowing it would cause her to instinctively sway back slightly, an action that should have also brought on a mild sensation of dizziness.
It happened quic
kly after that.
My hand reached her forehead and I began to stroke it, creating both bewilderment and a rush of feel-good serotonin into her brain. As her eyeballs began to invert, I firmly issued the order, ‘Sleep.’
Her head lolled back just as I curled one hand around the back of her neck while my other caught her limp body as it slid downwards. Carefully, I leaned her against the back of the cupboard.
When you see those TV evangelists dropping people in waves, this together with sleight of hand is the procedure they are employing. Called the rapid induction method it can be done with an arm pull, a handshake, or even by just following the hand movements of an expert stage hypnotist. The effects are impressive, but they don’t last long. They were, however, sufficient for my needs.
‘Can you hear me, Daphne?’ I asked.
She nodded slowly.
‘Good. You will remain standing solidly on your feet for one minute. Then you will wake up feeling sleepy, get dressed, and immediately go to your room where you will fall into a deep and restful sleep. You will not ever remember being here or conversing with me.’
I left the cupboard doors open and went out of the room to join Olivia in the corridor.
‘Ready?’ she whispered.
‘Yeah, ready.’ A thrill of excitement coursed through my veins. We were both castaway people on a midnight adventure.
Silently we journeyed through deserted corridors and down an uncarpeted, wooden staircase at the back, which, I assumed, must be the servants’ staircase. We passed bare walls and plain tiles, a stark difference to the opulence and luxury we had come from. Then we crossed a large kitchen, dark and still and very clean, and then we were out into the night air. A cold wind blew at us. We rounded the corner and we were at the side of a large Victorian conservatory.
She turned around to me, her eyes shining in the dark. ‘We could have gone in through the house, but I much prefer this entrance.’
She opened the door and we entered the most beautiful garden I had ever seen. I mean, I’m not into plants in any shape or form, but this one had to be seen. Milky moonlight was flooding in through the windows and turning the interior into a hauntingly beautiful garden.
His Frozen Heart Page 42