‘No,’ she persisted quietly.
‘No!’ he roared. ‘It certainly wasn’t, was it? Ella is young and attractive. William Gresham is old and fat, but very, very rich. There’s no comparison to be made, is there?’
‘No. Because I turned up at a dinner-dance expecting you to be there, and when you weren’t I merely kept company with an old friend of the family. Whereas you lied and cheated and slunk off somewhere privately with Ella, and didn’t care that I would surely have found out, and if you think I believe for one moment that there was nothing going on between the two of you then you’re crazy. I saw the way you looked at each other!’
‘You’re just trying to justify yourself, little girl. You didn’t really imagine that I was having an affair with Ella—you couldn’t have! My God, Jane, if you really thought that then why the hell didn’t you say something? You were my wife! We’d only been married a matter of months and we spent every spare moment we could in bed together. The whole scenario doesn’t even make sense.’
‘Guy! You’d more or less told me that our marriage left you free to take a mistress. I couldn’t complain. I was simply keeping to my side of the bargain.’
‘Bargain? You wouldn’t know how to keep to a bargain if you took a degree in the subject. And as for my telling you…’ He clapped his hand to his forehead. ‘Where the hell would I have got the strength from for a mistress after the nights we spent together? Even if I’d been inclined to—which I most certainly wasn’t—I do have my limits, you know—though I used to doubt that some nights with you.’ He paused, his black eyebrows arched with incredulity. ‘And to think that I thought our lovemaking was special! I suppose, having never had a lover with whom to compare me, you probably just thought it was par for the course at the time.’ There was a contemptuous pause. ‘Though you’ll have learned differently by now, I don’t doubt. That’s why you couldn’t wait for a top-up when you came to my hotel in London, isn’t it?’
Jane sat in silence, blinking hard and staring at him with unfocused eyes. ‘You were having an affair. Or planning it. You said you would…’ she muttered wearily.
‘Said what? Good God, I even remember telling you one day that I was a man of my word. That as far as I was concerned I would abide by every one of our marriage vows till death did us part. But you weren’t listening, were you? You were trying to wriggle off the hook as regards having a baby and that was all you could think of, while I—fool that I was—was busy promising you my soul. But you were too busy conniving to listen.’
Desolation had crept into Jane’s heart. She clasped her hands between her knees and sat in silence. She hadn’t expected Guy to think well of her when she had reneged on their marriage pact, but she had never dreamed that he would have thought this badly of her. What reason had she ever given him?
‘Good lord,’ he continued angrily, ‘I would never have forced you to have a child you didn’t want. Didn’t you know that? You had only to say no, once and for all…I admit I would have been disappointed, but there was no reason to try to convince me that you were infertile, or whatever it was that you were up to that day.’ He shook his head. ‘You’re a bitch, Jane Garston. I’m well rid of you.’ Then he touched the pile of money with his toe as if it were something foul. ‘Use some of this to get yourself a better lawyer. The sooner we’re divorced, the happier I shall be.’
But Jane wasn’t really listening. ‘You…didn’t say you’d abide by all the marriage vows…’ she insisted ploddingly, her mind scarcely functioning.
He peered at her as if she’d just emerged from a fog into his line of vision. His eyes were almost black with rage. ‘Oh, no. So I didn’t. You’re right after all…’ he muttered in bitingly sarcastic tones. ‘I did let you off the ‘for richer for poorer” bit, didn’t I? But then, it would have seemed awfully mean to have forced you to stay if I’d ever lost my money.’
It was too much. Jane slid off the chair on to her knees and picked up one of the wads of banknotes and hurled it at him with all her might. White-faced and wild, her lips disappearing into a thin, taut line she began to hurl the money at him. ‘Keep it! I don’t know what you brought it here for anyway, but it’s the last thing in the world I want.’
He didn’t flinch. He just stood like granite while the money bounced off him and dropped once again to the floor.
‘Why don’t you want it? You got through the last lot quickly enough, after all. In fact, it was discovering how quickly you’d ripped through the cash which really opened my eyes at last. Until then I thought…oh, well, it scarcely matters what I was fool enough to think now. If you don’t want the money it can only mean that you’ve already fixed yourself up with Bill. Or is it Rupert? I keep forgetting.’
‘What the hell has Rupert got to do with any of this?’ shrieked Jane, confused and humiliated, and scarcely knowing what she was saying.
‘He was your first target, wasn’t he? And of course, it would have suited the Berringtons down to the ground. No wonder those wretched twins were so nasty when they found out you were seeing me. I feel really sorry for that young man. But at least he’s been spared the horror of being married to you.’
‘You’re crazy! Certainly Rupert and I went around together for a time—but marriage was never even a possibility. We were just good friends, as the saying goes. Good grief…he never even laid a finger on me. Not once. We were friends—but it was never any more than that.’
Guy shrugged, as if the information was neither here nor there. ‘If you’d really liked him, if you were really a good friend to him, you would have encouraged him to go his own way, come what may. If he’d been born into any other family in the land it wouldn’t have mattered one bit that he was gay. Instead of which the poor chap must feel that he has at least to put up a show for his parents’ sake. And you were more than ready to go along with it, weren’t you? What was the temptation, Jane? All that money? Or the title? Or was it perhaps the fact that Rupert wasn’t likely to force a baby on you?’
Jane put her hands over her face. ‘Oh,’ she whispered. ‘Silly Rupert. It never even crossed my mind.’ Then she let her hands drop away and looked up at Guy. ‘Though where you got the idea from that I was to have married him…?’
‘His sisters let me know. Those nasty little twins are very protective of their brother. They tried to warn me off. I should have listened, but unfortunately I have an antipathy to taking advice from little bitches like that.
Jane shook her head. She was utterly bewildered by the conversation. ‘I wondered why they wanted me for a friend…’ she muttered, perplexed.
Guy groaned. ‘Oh, I can tell you that. You’re three of a kind, aren’t you?’ He gave a scornful laugh. ‘That was the first thing I ever knew about you, as it happens. That you were a friend of those Berrington girls. I saw the three of you in Switzerland in February, you know, chucking lumps of ice at a bunch of frozen photographers. I swore to forget you then—but I’m afraid your face isn’t quite so easily forgotten, Jane Garston.’
‘Switzerland?’
‘Yes. You know. That rather hilly country smack bang in the middle of Europe.’
Flummoxed, Jane found herself struggling to recollect. .. ‘Were you there that day?’ she said heavily, remembering at last. ‘The ambulance took ages, didn’t it? That poor girl—she was in agony. And all that those wretched Pressmen could do was to try to get close-ups of her face. They were dreadful…they had those huge telephoto lenses…’
A look of mystification passed over Guy’s face. ‘Agony?’ And then he dismissed her comments. ‘Look, those photographers congregate there because the place is full of imbeciles like you who like nothing better than to be photographed cavorting with the rich and famous. They’re just doing their job—and a bloody hard job it must be when they get pelted with ice by a bunch of rich bitches just for the fun of it.’ He let out a scornful laugh. ‘I didn’t hear you complaining about the Press when they were busy plastering your face all over the societ
y magazines. ‘Love’s Young Dream”. Remember?’ And he gave another bitter, humourless laugh.
Jane shook her head as if to rattle her thoughts into order. This was one of his horrible misapprehensions which she had to put right. It wouldn’t be fair on that poor girl who had fallen, otherwise. ‘The Berringtons took me skiing with them, Guy. I went because I like skiing, as it happens, not to get noticed. But that particular day a woman fell and broke her leg. She started to miscarry while she was lying on the snow waiting to be taken to hospital. It was awful. She was breaking her heart and feeling so dreadfully guilty because she knew it was all her own fault, and those rats from the newspapers just wanted to turn it into a good story. They didn’t get their pictures, though. We made sure of that.’
She turned to Guy, her eyes bright with tears. ‘You didn’t keep your eyes and ears open that day, did you? Nor for all the days of our marriage. You haven’t got a clue about me, Guy. You’ve got me wrong from start to finish. Now why don’t you go away. Go back to Ella and help her with her back somersault or whatever it is you do together. But just leave me alone.’
She dragged the suitcase across the floor to where she was kneeling and began to load armfuls of money into it, tears beginning to drip off the end of her nose. ‘Take this away with you now. I shall sell this house and give you the other money back as soon as I can. I only spent it because of your note. I thought I was keeping faith with you in a stupid sort of way. Now that I know exactly what you think of me this house wouldn’t give me a moment’s pleasure.’
‘You’ve certainly had plenty of fun with it so far,’ he jeered. ‘Decorating…furnishing…gardening.’
‘So the bank has been feeding you details of my cheques? I’m surprised at them. Still, it won’t bother me any more. I shan’t be spending any more of your rotten money, so I won’t have to go near that bank ever again. Luckily there’ll always be a home for me with my parents.’
Guy bent down and grasped her wrist, pulling her to her feet. She didn’t mind being touched by him now. He could no longer move her. Not now.
‘Oh, no. You’re not going back there until I’ve spelled out a few home truths to you. Your parents are very exceptional people, and it’s about time you understood that, instead of grouching about the fact that they weren’t rich enough for your liking.’
That was when Jane hit him. She raised her arm and brought her fist crashing down against his jaw and then flew at him, fists flailing madly and even her teeth parted ready to bite. But he grabbed her by her arms and held her firmly at arm’s length.
When his fingers clamped hard against her flesh she felt herself shudder with revulsion. Whether it was that, or simply a return of her plain old common sense she couldn’t tell, but at any rate the fight abruptly went out of her. He was far too strong. It was pointless. She stood limply, allowing his hand to scald the fine bones of her wrist.
‘Don’t say that!’ she protested bitterly. ‘How could you? You don’t know anything about me!’
He shook his head wearily. ‘If I don’t, then it’s not for want of trying to understand you, Jane. I tore myself to shreds trying to understand the forces that had made you what you were. Mainly so that I could set about changing you, I have to admit—which was a crazy thing to do, because people never change. Not really. But at least I tried, Jane, which is more than you ever did. You never even asked me one single question! If you knew how I yearned to tell you about myself—but you didn’t give a damn, did you?’ He sighed. ‘I don’t suppose you liked the fact that I was a self-made man. You couldn’t bear to think of me, in a terraced house, being brought up by someone who soiled his hands as an engineer. You don’t even like to think of your own father working in an engineering plant, albeit in a collar and tie, so what you would have made of my father in his boiler suit doesn’t bear thinking about.’
Jane tried to swallow but her mouth was too dry. ‘It wasn’t like that. That wasn’t why I didn’t want to talk about your work.’
‘Wasn’t it? Right from the start you made it plain you hated anything to do with engineering. ‘Horrible place” you said when I mentioned your father’s works.’
‘Swarf…’ she found herself saying weakly, her eyes screwed tight. ‘I hated the swarf, you see. I was frightened—there was a nightmare—this monster with swarf for hair—I was only a little girl, but I can’t help the fact that it’s stayed with me. And on top of that, I thought you were going to buy Garston’s and you just wanted to get information out of me. That’s why I wouldn’t talk about it.’ She looked bleakly into his dark eyes. ‘And…oh, if you think that I’m a snob…oh, Guy, if you think that…that I’d…’ She started to cry properly then, great dry, racking sobs which made her face contort and her mouth open wide like a child’s.
‘You didn’t understand me…’ she gasped at last. ‘How can you say that you tried to understand…? When you think that all I’m interested in is money? When you think that I feel like that about Mum and Dad? How can you say that, Guy? How can you?’
He let go of her then, dropping her cruelly so that she crumpled into a heap on the floor. ‘Oh, I certainly did want to understand you, Jane,’ he sighed, and she sensed that he, too, was losing the spirit for this pointless, dreadful fight. His voice, at any rate, was low and expressionless, as if drained of vitality by a terrible fatigue. ‘That’s what I employed Ella for. That’s why I brought her out to meet you. You see, I was fool enough then to believe you when you said that you wanted a baby, but there was something deep holding you back. It hadn’t clicked then that you didn’t want children at all and were just stalling me. I thought…well, it occurred to me that maybe it was your background in Rio that was the trouble. So I employed Ella to try to trace your mother. Her firm specialises in that sort of thing. She’s the best.’
Jane looked up at him, startled. ‘You had me checked out? I knew you wanted to marry me for my social standing—oh, and maybe for my beauty too, if I’m honest with myself. But I didn’t know you’d go so far as to try to ascertain that all my relatives were also perfectly respectable people with perfect bone-structure and nice hair!’
‘Oh, good lord, Jane…’ Guy’s face contorted with exasperation. ‘Don’t be so stupid! I wanted you to be the mother of my children from the moment I set eyes on you in Switzerland. I didn’t know a damn thing about you then. I didn’t care who you were or where you came from.’
‘But you married me for my social standing, Guy! You made it very plain!’
‘Married you for your…’ He made a disparaging noise with his tongue and teeth. ‘Where the hell did you get that idea?’
‘When you asked me to marry you…that night…in the car…I asked you to spell out the reasons and—’
‘You asked me to have an affair! I was spelling out the reasons why I didn’t want an affair with you—why it had to be marriage!’
She shook her head, bewildered. ‘So why,’ she challenged bitterly, ‘did you check me out?’
Disdain began to creep back into the weary lines of his face. ‘Because I thought maybe you were frightened to have a child, knowing so little of your genetic inheritance. I thought maybe finding out would help.’ He paused for a moment and then said, ‘Of course, I guess I checked you out right from the start in Switzerland. But only to find out who you were and to figure out how to get to meet you. It seemed like a stroke of luck that you came from a family who were involved in engineering, too. Almost as if it were meant to be.’
A watery smile broke at the corners of his mouth and then fled. ‘I could have got to know you through those dreadful Berringtons, of course. I could have wangled an invitation to one of their parties and had myself properly introduced to you and invited you to the opera. But I much preferred the option of getting to know you through a man whose reputation I already held in great esteem. Because it was the knowledge that you were Sidney Garston’s daughter which foolishly led me to believe that you couldn’t be as shallow as you seemed. Wishful
thinking, I’m afraid.’
Jane closed her eyes. Then she put her hands over her face. ‘You were trying to take over the firm,’ she mumbled, her head spinning. ‘That’s how you got to know me.’
‘I wasn’t, as it happened. Though I was naturally very interested in your father’s work. I only bought the shares because you complained that you didn’t own a single one. And then when I realised why it mattered to you— because your father didn’t have a big enough holding to secure your inheritance, I started buying them with a view to giving them to you when I’d courted you.’
‘But you didn’t court me,’ Jane said sadly, as the picture began to come clear in her mind. ‘You gave up on it.’
‘Yes. Well. I tried telling myself that there was no such thing as love at first sight. That’s when I decided to get to know you properly. So that I could fall in love with you properly, you see, without any of this love-at-first-sight mumbo-jumbo clouding the issue. Though that plan had to be abandoned when you made it plain you didn’t want to know anything about me or my background or my work or my family or my schooling, or any other damned thing that might have concerned me. And then I discovered that you were already considering marrying Rupert Berrington and I figured that the courtship ritual wasn’t exactly necessary as far as you were concerned. You were already quite happy with the idea of a marriage of convenience—although you didn’t like having it put so bluntly, did you? Didn’t like it one bit. I was fool enough to be pleased by that. I figured I’d got you wrong…that it could all work after all.’
Jane twisted the stud in her ear so fast that it hurt. He had loved her from the start…? No…that wasn’t right. He had only thought he had loved her. Because if he had really loved her, then how could he have got her so badly wrong? And by the same token she must have got her own feelings for him just as badly wrong. She had never loved him, after all. Because if she had really loved him she would never, ever have misunderstood him in the way that she had, would she?
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