A Suitable Mistress

by Cathy Williams

  She was in love with him now, but if she let this happen she would not only still be in love with him, she would be his and he would know it. She would become helpless and impotent against the addiction of being with him, and when the time came for him to abandon her, which it inevitably would, she would have nothing to fall back on, not even her dignity.

  She had a very vivid image of herself trailing behind him like a miserable, whipped dog, waiting for any little favour that he would care to hand out, except that by then he would probably be too irritable with her devotion to hand out anything at all.

  But how could she not turn into some pathetic creature living each day with the fear that it might be last, as far as Dane Sutherland was concerned? Falling in love with him had been fairly pathetic as it was. Making love to him could only compound the already complicated issue.

  Because, however much he wanted a dalliance with her, he would never marry her and it was just not in her to sustain a relationship with a man who had no intention of tying the knot at some point in time.

  And the only point in time that she could see them heading towards was the point in time when he became fed up with her, and then he would merely inform her in that dry, cold voice of his that he had never made promises.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said huskily. ‘I can’t.’

  She thought that he hadn’t heard her at first because he made no effort to create distance between them, so she said sharply, ‘No!’ which did stop him.

  His head jerked up and he looked her in the eyes.

  ‘No? No? What do you mean, no?’

  ‘I mean that I can’t go through with this. I’m sorry.’ She averted her face and he dragged it round with his fingers so that she had to look at him, albeit reluctantly.

  ‘Of course you’re joking.’

  ‘I can’t make love to you. I thought that I could because you were so persuasive and I am attracted to you, but—’

  ‘I will not be blackmailed into marriage,’ he grated,

  ‘if that’s the game you’re playing.’

  ‘I wasn’t trying to blackmail you into anything!’

  It felt very cold now that they were no longer clasped in an embrace, and she sat up and drew the covers around her.

  ‘There’s a name for women like you,’ he said cuttingly, standing up and shoving on his trousers but not bothering with his shirt. She looked at the bronzed, powerful torso and looked away quickly.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ was all she could whisper. She could feel tears springing to the corners of her eyes and she blinked them away rapidly.

  She half wanted to throw everything away and plead with him to stay after all, but she didn’t. Instead she stared down in silence at the covers spread around her and was only aware that the room was once again empty when she heard the bedroom door slam so hard that it made the window-panes rattle.

  Then she gave a deep sigh, lay back down on the pillow and wept.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  IT IS VERY difficult to measure the change in a person’s attitude. If she had sat down with a pencil and paper and tried to make a coherent list, she would not have known where to start, but Suzanne could feel the change that had now shifted the footing of their relationship as acutely as if Dane had suddenly transformed from Dr Jekyll into Mr Hyde.

  Over the next two weeks she rarely saw him, and when she did there was no overt hostility in his attitude, no aggrieved coldness, more a kind of shuttered politeness that was more cutting than outright anger.

  When he addressed her, and that was something which he appeared to do on the move, standing up, virtually heading for the door as he spoke, it was with a courtesy that had something deadly in it. She hated to think that she would never see that driving need in his eyes again, or be the butt of his teasing or even listen to the dry, witty way that he spoke about most things, as though his perspective on life was that of amused spectator, watching and taking it all in.

  When she had had all that at her disposal, when she had been wrapped up in her frantic world of hot and cold whenever he was around, angry and disturbed one minute, charmed the next, it had never occurred to her just how much she would miss it if it was taken away. Now he had taken it away and she was realising just how acutely deprived she felt at the loss.

  And that had nothing to do with the physical side of things. She missed seeing him, being able to look at him, indulging her fascination with his body. Did he miss her too? she wondered. At all? Did the image of her occasionally flit through his mind or had he been able to write her off without too much undue trouble?

  The problem was that whenever she asked herself questions like these the answers that flew into her head weren’t the ones that she wanted, but from the way he acted toward her she couldn’t escape the fact that he was a man who was busily getting on with his life and not a man trying to conceal a still burning flame of hunger for her.

  It was only when she lay in bed at night, with her eyes shut, that she could give in to a few private fantasies about him. In her fantasies he was always doing something utterly out of keeping with his character, like breaking down her bedroom door and declaring undying love. In all of them, he was transformed into a man who was a shadow of his former self—composure, self-control, arrogance, all thrown by the wayside because he was eaten away by love. Then, when she would see him the next day for three minutes on his way out, she would realise that his composure, his self-control, his arrogance were all as intact as they had ever been.

  So she began working much longer hours than she had done previously, simply to be out of the apartment, and she also began spending far more of her time digging into other files when her own assigned work was finished. She rummaged around in filing cabinets and in the empty office, deserted by Robert who felt that any overtime was a serious encroachment on his valuable arguing time with his girlfriend, read all about acquisitions which had not materialised, deals held in pending. She even unearthed Angela’s forecasts for the company for the year ahead, the details of which Angela had handed to Suzanne and Robert in skeleton form, probably because she considered them too insignificant in the company to be shown much more than that.

  It all helped to take her mind off Dane. She found the solitude of the office quite soothing and it was interesting to investigate work not directly related to what she was doing. There was nothing wrong in what she was doing, but there was a clandestine pleasure in it, and she doubted that she would have attempted to rifle through the filing cabinets with quite so much impunity if Angela had been on the scene. But she never was. Nothing had been said to either of them or, as far as Suzanne was aware, to anyone in the office about impending departure, but clearly Angela no longer saw much point to killing herself in a job from which she had effectively been sacked.

  If Angela needed to put in extra time, she came in very early. Suzanne knew that because she had come in at six-thirty once herself, after a particularly unsatisfactory night, and the other woman had been there, busy at her desk. She hadn’t seen Suzanne go by and Suzanne had not made her presence known.

  In her growing absorption with musty files, avidly read in the silent office, came the bombshell, and to begin with it never even struck her that what she was holding was a stick of dynamite.

  What caught her curiosity was the fact that the file was heavily incomplete. It had none of the usual company records and details of conversations and letters from financial directors and banks, just a few basic entries in Angela’s handwriting, and she got the uneasy feeling that what she was looking at on a Friday evening, at eight-thirty, when everyone else her age was probably out drinking and celebrating the end of the week, was not meant for her eyes.

  In fact, she got the uneasy feeling that the file was not actually meant for the filing cabinet at all. If it were, it certainly hadn’t been filed by Angela, who never reduced herself to mundane tasks like that but sent her secretary skittering off to do them. It hadn’t even been filed in any sort of logical manner and sh
e wouldn’t have come upon it if she hadn’t seen it stuffed at the back when she’d pulled the drawer open. Whoever had rammed it in there had missed the drawer completely and it had fallen behind, wedged between the back of the drawer and the wall.

  It couldn’t have been Joan, the secretary, whose precision was legendary, so it could only have been the dim-witted temp who had worked with them for two days before being summarily dismissed by Angela for incompetence.

  Suzanne could remember the girl in detail because she had actually rather liked her. Tall, outspoken, and sharp in a streetwise sort of way. Julia Fernes. But Angela had disliked her on sight, and had not taken too many pains to keep her thoughts to herself when it had come to sacking her.

  ‘Noisy’, was one of the labels she had used in that semi-patronising voice of hers, ‘and not quite up to dealing with the level of work given to her’. Suzanne had heard the whole conversation to the agency while she had been sitting by Angela’s desk, waiting to go through some accounts.

  Maybe the file had been stuffed down there in a fit of spite. Could have been worse. Julia could have dismembered the computer system. Suzanne gazed up from the file and spent a minute or so musing with delight on Angela’s reaction if their computer system had been wrecked.

  She didn’t get back that evening until after ten, to an empty flat, which remained empty for the weekend, and to fill her time she worked—back at the office, to which she had access using her coded pass card. It was a privilege given only to those in the management division and one which she had not exercised before.

  It took her five hours of checking and a few phone calls to realise that the company didn’t exist. It had been created. And it took her five minutes to realise that if she wanted to find an answer to that sticky problem she would have to penetrate the inner sanctum of Angela’s office. Which she did, but with the tiptoeing caution of a child entering a room which, though not strictly forbidden, didn’t have a welcome mat outside it either.

  Angela kept her office the way she kept herself—extremely ordered, very tidy. An impeccably groomed office. The two plants were made out of silk and there were no personal touches anywhere to be seen.

  There was also no information to be found in either of the two low black wooden filing cabinets which formed part of the office furniture. And over the next week what had started off as a bit of a puzzle developed into an addictive conundrum which had to be solved at all costs.

  Suzanne was all dressed—jeans, man’s loose-fitting striped shirt, weathered knapsack over shoulder—on Saturday morning to pursue the conundrum in the quiet confines of the office, and was drinking a cup of coffee standing up by the kitchen counter, when Dane walked in.

  She hadn’t seen him for the entire week, and seeing him now, when for once he hadn’t been on her mind, made her suddenly nervous in a way that she heartily wished she wasn’t, simply because it showed her how vulnerable she still was to him.

  He was as taken aback by seeing her as she was by seeing him, although he recovered quickly and moved to make himself some coffee. A few weeks ago he would have asked her to make him one but there was no such familiarity now.

  ‘Off somewhere?’ he asked politely, glancing across at her briefly before settling himself down at the kitchen table and opening the newspaper.

  Suzanne looked at his loose-limbed perfection and forgot the conundrum. Couldn’t he even give her the time of day now? Had all his charm been for the sake of trying to get her to climb into bed with him? The thought filled her with sudden anger.

  ‘Work, actually,’ she said stiffly.

  There was an inarticulate grunt while he continued to scour the newspaper and sip his coffee. He didn’t even bother to look up at her.

  ‘Thank you for taking such an interest,’ she said coldly.

  He took his time. He stopped reading the front page, which carried the usual headlines of death and government bungles, and sat back in his chair, crossing his long legs. Then he looked at her—possibly for the first time, she thought, since he had stormed out of her room, white-faced with rage.

  ‘Is this what you want, Suzie?’ he enquired baldly. ‘My undivided attention and a feigned interest in how you’re spending your Saturday?’

  ‘Oh, forget it,’ she muttered, dumping her cup in the sink and washing it. She turned back round to face him and he was still watching her, his eyes brooding, his mouth unsmiling.

  ‘Like all women,’ he drawled, ‘you’re cut to the quick to think that I’m not wringing my hands in despair over you.’

  ‘Of course not!’ she denied, but two patches of colour had appeared on her cheeks.

  ‘Were you hoping that I would try and force entry into your bedroom?’

  ‘I’m going.’ She went to walk past him and he caught her wrist in his hand, though he remained where he was, sitting on the chair.

  ‘Why are you going to work, Suzie?’ he asked, and after what he had just said she seriously doubted that there was an atom of genuine interest in the question.

  ‘Because the atmosphere there is healthier than the atmosphere around here,’ she said bluntly.

  ‘You made your position clear. No bed without love and marriage. So, please—’ his mouth twisted coldly ‘—spare me the female pique.’

  Through this icy little delivery the one desperate wish Suzanne had was that he were not holding her hand.

  ‘I might have guessed,’ she said without much care as to how she chose her words, ‘that once my usefulness in appeasing your conscience as a rescued damsel in distress had worn off, and the potential bed-partner idea had to be ditched, that anything I said or did would be utterly irrelevant to you.’

  ‘Poor little Suzie,’ he said, dropping her hand so that she immediately wished that he hadn’t. ‘Would you like me to be a father-figure now to you?’

  She looked away, unable to get her mind around the concept of that one. Father-figure? That would be like asking him to play Father Christmas in the local pantomime. Dane Sutherland and father-figure just did not combine. They could hardly be uttered in the same breath.

  Yet, in a way, perhaps he had put his finger on it. She had grown accustomed to his questions, to the way he’d listened whenever she’d said something to him, his eyes slanting across to her. He had been the first person since her father had died to really listen to what she had to say, and it was wounding to think that the only reason he had done it had been that he had wanted to seduce her eventually.

  ‘I’m stupid; I shouldn’t have said that.’

  He clasped his hands behind his head and looked at her without saying anything and without giving anything away. His eyes were absolutely fathomless.

  She nervously twirled her fingers in her hair, thought better of the gesture and replaced it with the equally nervous one of fidgeting.

  ‘I miss talking to you,’ she heard herself confess with horror. ‘Do you miss talking to me?’

  This, she thought, was what love and desperation made you do: say things that were better left unsaid, give yourself away in a million little gestures, a thousand little changes of expression.

  ‘So why are you going to work today?’

  If he had had a hundred years to think of something to say that would indicate to her how much her remark had displeased him, then that was it. She was a bore to him now. A few more outbursts about how much she missed talking to him—God, how could she have been so stupid?—and she would sink into the category of nuisance.

  ‘Working on something,’ she said, straightening and doing her best to get herself together.

  ‘What?’

  Suzanne shrugged, but her expression had changed from embarrassment to wariness. ‘Oh, this and that; nothing much.’

  ‘What are you hiding from me?’

  His voice was suddenly sharp in the quiet of the kitchen—sharp enough for her to take a couple of steps backwards. There was no point in voicing any of her suspicion to him until everything had been checked out.
r />   ‘Nothing,’ she said quickly.

  ‘Sure you’re going to work?’ he asked, swerving away from the topic with a speed that left her momentarily breathless. ‘No need to feel embarrassed if you’re going to meet a man. Do you think I might be jealous? Is that where you’re off to?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, flooded with relief at this abrupt appearance of a lifebelt. ‘Yes, that’s it. Silly me to have been embarrassed, but you know me.’ She gave a rather edgy laugh to which he didn’t respond.

  ‘And are you going to sleep with him? Forget I asked that.’ He stood up and walked to the sink so that his back was towards her. ‘If you want to bring him back here tonight, feel free. I won’t be around.’

  ‘Oh, sure, I’ll think about it. Thanks.’ She hovered for a while longer, wondering whether he had anything else to add, but he obviously hadn’t, because he just stood there, staring out of the window.

  Where was he going for the night? she wondered, frantic with jealousy, as she walked along the street towards the underground station.

  Angela was no longer around. Had he found himself another sleeping partner already?

  She tried to distract herself from the thought of that by thinking instead about the mystery of the non-existent company, but it didn’t work.

  She tried to remember every word of their short conversation, she tried to read clues behind what had been said and what hadn’t, and the harder she tried, the more fuzzy her memory became.

  The only two things she could remember with any clarity were his evasions when she had asked him whether he missed talking to her and had commented that her usefulness had now run its course.

  Now another thought came to her. Did he see her as a threat to him? Did he think, as Angela had, that she was after a wedding ring and his money?

  That unwelcome idea made her feel sick—she nearly missed her stop, in fact—and it played uncomfortably on her mind as she walked towards the office block.

  Chauffeur’s daughter trying to better herself. Had she assumed that status in his eyes now? He had firsthand experience of how a woman could inveigle herself into bed with a man simply because she wanted his money. Look at Martha and his father. If ever he wanted an example of a gold-digger, he had no further to look than his own front doorstep.