by Sara Craven
CHAPTER THREE
‘You―what are you doing here?’ High-pitched and frightened, it didn’t even sound like her own voice.
Logan put down the suitcase and the portable typewriter he was carrying.
‘I could ask you the same thing,’ he said evenly.
‘Where did you get the key from?’ she demanded,
‘From your aunt, four days ago, just before she left for the South of France.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘What’s your story?’
‘I used the spare key. The one that’s kept under the broken stone.’
‘So.’ He uttered a short, totally mirthless laugh. ‘Here we are, then.’
‘No, we’re not.’ she said between her teeth. ‘I’m getting out, right now.’
‘Like that?’ The cool aquamarine eyes raked her dispassionately.
‘You’ll be a sensation. And you’re going nowhere.’
‘You can’t stop me!’
‘I don’t even propose to try.’ he said indifferently. ‘But the weather will. Was that snow-covered lump I passed at the bottom of the track your car, by any chance?’
Briony suppressed an exclamation. ‘Is it that bad?’
‘It’s that bad.’ he said laconically, ‘and it’s going to get worse. I left my car on the other side of the village and walked the last few miles.’
‘Then I can do the same.’
‘My God,’ he said wearily, ‘then you really are a fool.’
‘How did you know I was here?’
‘I didn’t.’ It was a grim statement. ‘Your aunt played a neat trick on us both. I don’t know what she’s hoping for.’
Briony felt a flush stealing into her cheeks. ‘As a matter of fact . . .’
‘Yes?’ he prompted as she hesitated.
‘As a matter of fact, she didn’t know I was coming here. I knew she’d be away and that the place would be empty, I wanted to be on my own for a while. No one knows that I’m here.’
‘Well, that’s just hard lines, I’m afraid.’ he said. ‘And the place isn’t empty. It’s being occupied―by me, unlike you, with your aunt’s permission. I’m renting it from her.’
Briony sagged helplessly against the wall. ‘But for how long?’
‘As long as it takes.’ He shrugged. ‘I’ve been commissioned to write a book about my experiences in escaping from Azabia. I’ve come here to rough out the first draft. That’s why I wanted some peace and quiet.’
‘And you’ll have it.’ she said. ‘Maybe not tonight, but first thing in the morning I’ll be away and gone from here.’
Logan’s mouth twisted cynically. ‘I wouldn’t bank on it, sweetheart.’ He shrugged off the leather car coat he was wearing. ‘Your aunt said she’d make sure there were some stores in the place. Have they come, do you know?’
‘Everything’s in the kitchen. I―I put them away. I had no idea who they were for.’
‘Naturally.’ he agreed wearily. ‘It’s all an amazing coincidence, isn’t it, Briony? Like the time you followed me to that pub for lunch. Like the time you came round to the flat with those cuttings I’d asked for after I got back from Cambodia.’
‘You mean’―for a moment words failed her― ‘You think I came here deliberately―knowing that you were going to be here? You must be out of your mind! ‘
‘No.’ he said. ‘I’ve merely given up trying to figure what goes on in yours. Now if you’ll excuse me I’ll go and make myself a hot drink.’ He disappeared through the door leading into the living room.
Briony hesitated for a minute, then picking up the skirts of her housecoat she came down the stairs and followed him into the kitchen. He was standing at the sink filling the kettle, and he shot a look at her over his shoulder.
‘What’s this? Wifely solicitude? It’s a little late for that, isn’t it?’
‘Very probably.’ She moistened her dry lips with the tip of her tongue. ‘Logan, what are we going to do? We can’t both stay here―it’s impossible under the circumstances.’
‘I don’t see why.’ He put the kettle on the stove. ‘We’re legally married. We’re allowed to share a roof, even if we haven’t been in the habit of doing so. And you have my word for it that’s all we’ll share―just in case you were harbouring any delusions that I still lust after that expensively packaged little carcase of yours.’
‘It’s no wonder you’re a journalist, Logan,’ she said with gritted teeth. ‘You really have a way with words!’
‘Ain’t it the truth, lady?’ He gave her a derisive look.
‘And I’m not a journalist any more―at least not with the Courier. My services have been dispensed with, to poor Mac’s everlasting disgust―and we know whom we have to thank for that, don’t we?’
Mortification at her father’s sheer vindictiveness kept her silent.
Eventually she said, ‘I don’t know what to say.’
‘Don’t you? If this snow keeps up. you’ll have plenty of opportunity to think of something. But I’m afraid you’ll have to talk to yourself. I came here for some peace. I can’t work in London. The bloody phone never stops for one thing. Suddenly they want me to appear on chat shows. My God,’ he laughed shortly, ‘instant fame!’
‘It isn’t a very large cottage,’ she said coldly. ‘But I’ll do my best to keep out of your way.’
‘Thank you.’ He made her a slight, mocking bow.
‘What a pity you haven’t got the fells to escape to this time. What a sensation for the locals if history were to repeat itself!’ He spooned coffee into a mug and filled it with boiling water. ‘I’ve wondered sometimes, Briony, what would have happened that day if I hadn’t rushed off full of romantic ardour to fetch some champagne to toast you in―if I’d been here to head that Chapman bitch off. I’ve wondered if our―marriage, for want of a better word would have followed a different pattern.’
‘I doubt it,’ said Briony, conscious that her heart was hammering oddly. ‘And it’s a singularly fruitless form of speculation.’
‘You think so?’ He drank some of the coffee. ‘Yet it came into my mind quite often when I was locked up in that stinking jail―and afterwards when I was on the run. The curiosity of leaving a house with everything in the world to return to, then coming back half an hour later to find that in fact you have nothing. Nothing at all.’ He smiled reflectively. ‘An odd sensation, to say the least.’
There was a silence. Briony stared down at the stone flags, unwilling to look up and meet his gaze.
She said, trying to control her uneven breathing, ‘I know where Aunt Hes keeps the extra bedding. I’ll put some in front of the fire to air for a while. I’m afraid I’m using the bed Mrs Barnes made up for you.’
He said, ‘There’s no need to bother about extra bedding―at least tonight.’ He threw up one hand, his lips twisting satirically, as she looked up in swift alarm. ‘And no need for panic either. I’ll make do with a couple of chairs down here for what’s left of the night. I’ve slept in worse places, believe me, over the past few months.’
Somewhere inside her a little demon whispered, ‘And in the past few days―where have you slept? In Karen Wellesley’s bed?’ But she did not ask the question.
Logan said with sudden impatience, ‘Oh, get to bed, for God’s sake, Briony. Lock the door if you want and if you can’t take my word for it that rape isn’t imminent.’
A gust of anger shook her. ‘I wouldn’t take your word for what day of the week it is!’
‘It’s Tuesday,’ he said inimically. ‘But something tells me that knowing the names is going to assume less importance in our lives than simply getting through them, one by one. Now get out of here.’
It wasn’t until she was safely in her room with the door closed that Briony realised she was still clutching the rubber hot water bottle. It had lost much of its initial heat too, she thought ruefully, but she was reluctant to venture back to the bathroom and risk encountering Logan again.
She slipped out of her housecoat
and got into bed with a shiver. She could hear slight sounds of movement from downstairs, and tried to close her ears to them. No matter what he might say, what assurances he might give, she was going to do her level best to get out of here in the morning. It was a terrible, malicious fate which had driven Logan and herself to seek the same refuge, but she was not obliged to succumb to it.
She twisted and turned, punching the pillow into shape, trying to relax and get comfortable, but it was impossible. Out of the darkness, she kept seeing Logan’s face, frozen with shock as he registered her presence at the top of the stairs, and the bitter irony of his words, ‘Hello, wife.’
They’d been the first words he’d spoken to her at the start of their honeymoon in this very cottage. The first words of love—and the last. Just after that he’d gone off ―to fetch some champagne as he’d said―and by the time he’d returned she had gone, running out on to the fells like a mad thing, running from the things that Marina Chapman had screamed at her, from the poison and the hatred which had struck at the very roots of her love for him.
Love? she thought wryly. Looking back, it now seemed more of an obsession. Logan had not been unfair when he had suggested she might have pursued him here. She supposed that after his rejection of her at the flat, he had expected she would never want to see him or speak to him again, but he had been wrong.
She had returned home, hurt and humiliated, to find Sir Charles waiting for her grimly. She had, of course, been seen on her abortive visit to the U.P.G. offices and Sir Charles had lost no time in instigating enquiries as to exactly what his daughter had been doing there. The answers had not pleased him. And apart from that, he wanted to know where she had been since then.
Briony, still on edge over her treatment at Logan’s hands, answered him hotly, and before long a full-scale row was in progress. Hard things were said on both sides and the culmination came when Briony stalked out of the room, declaring that she was leaving.
An hour later she was sitting in the kitchen of Aunt Hes’s comfortable mews flat, swearing that she would never return.
Aunt Hes heard her out in a troubled silence. She had never liked her brother-in-law, but she had always taken a great deal of trouble not to interfere.
She said, ‘But my dear, you have nowhere to go, and no money except the allowance your father makes you. What are you going to do?’
Briony said with determination, ‘Well, the first thing I must do is find a job of some kind.’
‘Have you any idea what?’
‘I thought I might apply to ‘the Personnel Director at U.P.G. I have it on good authority that there are usually vacancies there.’
Aunt Hes frowned slightly. ‘My dear, is that wise?’
‘Probably not, but I don’t want to be wise.’ Briony’s tone was defiant. ‘Everything I’ve ever done has been safely mapped out for me, with no margin for error. Well, I want to learn by my mistakes the same as other girls do.’
‘As your mother did,’ her aunt observed, half to herself.
Briony leaned forward. ‘You never would tell me before.’ she said. ‘Was―was my mother happy with Daddy?’
‘She loved him.’ Hester Wyatt’s voice was dry. ‘That, I understand, is supposed to confer a kind of happiness.’
‘But did it?’ Briony persisted,
‘If it did not,’ Aunt Hes said slowly, ‘then your mother was too loyal ever to discuss the alternative. But I wondered-I wondered very much. She was impulsive like you.’ she added.
Briony’s eyes softened. ‘I wish I could remember her properly.’
‘I wish you could. I wish she was here now to stop you careering headlong to disaster.’, her aunt said vigorously.
‘What’s so disastrous about leaving home and getting a job?’ Briony gave her aunt a limpid smile. ‘Girls do it every day.’
‘It wasn’t that I was thinking of.’ Aunt Hes gave her a straight look. ‘It was the rest of the story―the part you haven’t told me.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’ Briony looked down at the floor, avoiding her aunt’s gaze, and heard her give a swift sigh.
‘Keep your secret, child.’ she said, after a moment’s pause. ‘But be discreet. Your father is a bad man to cross. I’m going up to Kirkby Scar for a few days, so if you want to use the flat, you may. Wasn’t that really what you came to ask?’
‘Oh, lord I’ Briony had the grace to look slightly amused. ‘Am I that transparent?’
Aunt Hes got up to clear the coffee cups, and patted her cheek affectionately. ‘You’re your mother’s daughter,’ she said. ‘And she was my only sister, after all. I knew her rather well. I knew the look when she was about to ask some outrageous favour ―and I knew when she was about to embark on some new love affair that she thought I wouldn’t approve of. But in your case, it’s not my approval that matters, it’s your father’s. I appeal to you, Briony, be careful.’
Aunt Hes’s warning was still ringing in Briony’s ears forty-eight hours later, as she became U.P.G.‘s latest recruit for the cutting library. She had no illusions about the job. She was a dogsbody, pure and simple, signing files full of cuttings on every subject under the sun in and out of a large book kept for the purpose, supplying background information on any subject required to the various editorial departments, and tracking files that had gone missing. The head of the department was a Miss johnson, an elderly Gorgon, round, whom even editors trod warily, and juniors as a rule did not stay more than a few weeks, Briony was rather wearily informed by her immediate superior jenny Braithwaite.
‘La johnson chews them up and spits them out.’ she explained, during Briony’s first coffee break in the canteen.
‘Although perhaps she’ll make an exception in your case.’
‘I don’t think so.’ Briony had already encountered the formidable Miss johnson and suffered a tongue-lashing from her over a file that had not been returned to its correct place on the bulging shelves of the library. The person who had returned the file had hardly had time to leave the room before the tirade began, and Briony suspected that Miss Johnson had orders from above to lean on her.
She had telephoned her father the previous night and told him she had persuaded Personnel to give her a chance, and to her surprise he had accepted her news almost genially, at the same time letting her see that he didn’t believe she would be able to hold the job down.
After a couple of hours with Miss Johnson, she knew exactly what he was getting at, but her determination hardened. She would not be driven out no matter how unfair the treatment might be. She would not return home with her tail between her legs, confessing her fault, and asking to be taken back into the fold like a black sheep. She had as much right to carve out a life for herself as anyone else.
She had naturally expected she would see Logan again quite soon and nerved herself inwardly for the inevitable confrontation, but it was not to take place, she discovered with a strange chagrin, at least not at once.
Logan was abroad again, and no one was altogether sure when he would be back, or what he was actually doing, although he was said to be in the Far East. Though she scanned the Courier every day, Briony saw no stories filed under his byline.
In the meantime she began to settle to the routine of her work better than she could ever have expected.
Miss Johnson, she realised, would never change, but she liked Jenny and got on well with her, and guessed that they might have become friends, perhaps even flatmates, if Briony had not been Sir Charles Trevor’s daughter. As it was, no matter how many breaks and lunches she and Jenny might share there was always an invisible barrier there, which Briony regretted.
She had been working at U.P.G. for three weeks when her father telephoned her at the flat to say that he was going to the States for a few weeks on business.
‘I hope by the time I return you will have got this nonsense out of your head once and for all, Briony,’ he said coldly, before he rang off.
Nonsense! Briony thought wit
h an inward sigh, as she laid her own receiver back on the rest. That was what her father thought of her bid for independence, of her attempt to earn her own living. She supposed it had its amusing side, but she was damned if she could see what it was at that particular moment. .
She had to start making other plans for herself anyway.
Aunt Hes would be returning soon from Kirkby Scar. Her aunt had been a widow for a number of years and had become a successful writer of children’s books, but she made no bones about needing solitude for her work, either in London or Yorkshire, and Briony suspected she would be dismayed to find her niece still in occupation when she returned. It had after all been planned only as a temporary arrangement. She wondered again about Jenny, who she knew shared a flat with two other girls. Would they have room for a fourth? she wondered rather dispiritedly. And would they even want her? Or she could always contact one of her former schoolmates, she supposed reluctantly.