by Lynne Graham
The Kirbys were still in their rooms when they got back, and on the upper landing Dane turned to say, ‘Get your maid to pack for you, Claire. We might as well leave here after lunch.’
For a flight to Jamaica where the yacht awaited them. A cruise was to follow, stopping off at various pleasure spots. By the end of that she would be even more savaged by Dane’s emotional immunity to her. Add Mei Ling and she could end up ready to throw herself overboard. She wanted to leave now. It would be much harder to think up an excuse on the yacht. Yet wasn’t such determination now likely to look suspicious in itself? She didn’t want Dane to suspect that Mei Ling’s arrival was driving her away, for of course it wasn’t as simple as that.
Hannah gave her her mail while she was reluctantly packing. She sat down to read the two letters. There was a ten-line note from Randy, asking when she would be back in London and ready to introduce her to Dane.
‘Curiosity is killing me,’ she added as a postscript.
The other was from Maisie and it elevated Dane to sainthood. She wrote to tell Claire that Dane had arranged for their cottage to be repaired and modernised. She had finished reading and was staring unhappily into space when the solution to her plight came to her. If Dane believed that one of those letters came from Max, he could hardly pressure her into remaining.
She found him in his bedroom. ‘I needed to talk to you in private,’ she essayed at his questioning glance. ‘I’ve heard from Max and I want to go back to London.’
He eyed her composed face assessingly. She stood blade-straight, a soft smile pinned to her lips in lieu of excitement. It crossed her mind humourlessly that she ought to have gone on stage.
‘Immediately?’ he queried shortly. ‘Don’t you think that’s a little indecently premature? What did he write? “Come home, all’s forgiven"?’ His scorn was palpable. ‘I’d like to meet the guy first.’
Flames of pink lit her cheeks at his tone. ‘How very civilised. Unfortunately, neither I nor Max would enjoy that, and my relationship with him is none of your business.’
‘No, we’re just two people who accidentally shared a bed on a few occasions, not married people,’ Dane qualified with carrying sibilance. ‘If you were my wife, I’d feel differently, wouldn’t I?’
At that instant she did hate him for employing that rapier tongue upon her. ‘Would you?’
He sprawled down lazily along the faded window-seat, raising one knee. ‘You seem to have it in your head that I want rid of you. I don’t want you fleeing back to England because you feel you have to. I’d prefer you to deliberate carefully about what you’re doing first.’
‘I don’t need to deliberate, Dane. I’m not a silly teenager, although you like to treat me like one. I’m a woman,’ she stated with quiet dignity.
‘That did penetrate during one of those accidental brushes in the dark.’ His retaliation was smooth. ‘But you’re not the same woman you were a few months ago, and I can’t believe after the way you responded to me that you still want Max to the same extent.’
She bore his ungentlemanly reminder with tortured calm. ‘There is a subtle distinction between love and sex.’
Vibrant blue eyes zeroed in on her consideringly. ‘And I was the corrupting influence who taught you the distinction. Correct?’
‘It doesn’t matter any more,’ she stressed with sudden unsteadiness. ‘And I don’t know why you’re making this so unpleasant, unless it’s because you’ve decided that four weeks isn’t long enough for this fake marriage to last!’
‘I don’t give a damn what’s said in the papers!’ he raked back with contempt. ‘But I think you’re being childish. You’re not going to be free to marry Max for a long time. There’s no need for haste. If he’s still interested in you, he’ll wait.’
‘Maybe I don’t want to wait.’
His shrewd gaze shimmered. ‘OK,’ he capitulated abruptly, unexpectedly. ‘You can leave today if you like, but I want to know where you are the minute you land in London. Then you can get on with your life and make a mess of it if you want to.’
‘I started doing that the day I asked you to marry me!’ she informed him curtly and slammed out of the room. He had only put up those arguments against her leaving to conceal his relief. Just for a tiny moment she had almost believed he really wanted her to stay. But his reluctance had merely been a polite pretence.
Hannah came to her room when she didn’t appear at lunch. ‘Dane tells me you’re leaving.’
‘You can’t be surprised.’ Claire was rehanging garments in the wardrobe. Trailing home designer leisure wear and cases of glamorous evening clothes was a waste of energy. ‘You must have realised it wasn’t a normal marriage.’
Hannah’s broad face was openly troubled. ‘I can’t deny that, but Dane’s very attached to you, Claire. He’s made an enormous effort to please you over the past weeks.’
The hint of rebuke disconcerted her. ‘You don’t understand—–’ she began.
‘I have eyes and ears. Look at that jewellery you never wear,’ Hannah invited drily. ‘If that isn’t a kick in the teeth I don’t know what is. I don’t know what happened between you, and it’s not my affair, but Dane has taken the separate bedrooms without a murmur, and that amazes me.’
It would have amazed Claire too, had it not been Dane’s choice. She was feeling dizzy again and she lowered herself down on to the foot of the bed. ‘He feels guilty,’ she whispered miserably. ‘And I don’t want his guilt, or his gifts.’
There was a lengthy silence during which Hannah paced over to the window. ‘I don’t care what you say. Dane’s not riled by conscience. There have been times I’ve wished he was, but he’s not that scrupulous,’ she conceded wryly. ‘He finds it hard to show his feelings. He tends to make up for it by buying presents. That doesn’t make his generosity questionable. He married you. He must have cared for you. I really never thought Dane would marry but when it was you, well … I did feel it might work.’
Claire breathed in slowly until the light-headedness receded. What was wrong with her? Anxiety? Blood pressure?
‘Dane married me because I asked him to,’ she confided with a choked laugh. ‘So that I could qualify to inherit my grandfather’s estate. Now will you believe me when I tell you that Dane will be relieved to be released from what he finds a very onerous responsibility?’
Hannah had spun round, her face perplexed. ‘So that’s why!’
‘Yes.’ Doggedly she got up again to resume packing. ‘I’m not entitled to his generosity. I already owe him more than I could repay in a lifetime.’
‘But you love him. If you leave, you’ll never know whether or not he could have started to care for you,’ Hannah protested.
Claire’s strained smile was a plea for understanding. ‘He cares, Hannah, but he doesn’t love me and why should he? I couldn’t hold a candle to the sort of woman he’s attracted by.’ Her voice sliced off before she broke down. ‘Don’t you see that he’d blame himself for the way I feel, too? Please don’t make this any harder for me than it already is.’
Randy opened the door, still talking animatedly to someone to one side of her. She surveyed Claire and her three cases in forgivable astonishment. Then absolute fury glittered in her huge blue eyes. ‘That bastard!’ she pronounced, and enveloped Claire in a cloud of musky perfume and sympathy and a breathless monologue on the evils of the male sex, with not a question on the horizon.
Dane’s reputation had gone before him. Not for one moment did Randy doubt that Claire’s descent hinged upon Dane’s reputation as a womaniser. It was some minutes before the male, left to hover in the hall forgotten, entered the lounge.
Claire stilled as recognition darted through her. ‘Gilles?’
Randy relayed the pair of them an amused glance and laughed. ‘That’s right. You two have already met?’
‘Not really,’ Claire muttered, suddenly wondering what she had blithely walked into.
‘Not for very long,’ Gilles le Fren
eau drawled mockingly. ‘Randy and I occasionally work together. I’m a photographer. I live in the apartment on the top floor of this building.’
The proverbial coin dropped. Gil. The male Randy called Gil and was in love with. She had mentioned him several times in letters. He had clearly known about her friendship with Randy that day he had gone out of his way to speak to her and Hannah.
Randy sighed. ‘Gil, I …’
He inclined his dark head. ‘I’m going,’ he teased. ‘If I stayed, my sins would very likely be linked with Dane’s.’
‘I’m sorry, I seem to have—–’ Claire listened to the thud of the front door. ‘I shouldn’t have landed on you like this. It was just so late and I couldn’t face a hotel.’
Randy gave her an affectionate hug. ‘Gil and I don’t sleep together,’ she said frankly. ‘You didn’t disturb us. We had a meal out because he said he was at a loose end.’
Viewing the grim light in her friend’s eyes at that confession, she registered that the path of true love ran no smoother for her.
‘We’re really just friends,’ she continued. ‘He gave up switching on the Gallic charm ages ago. Would you like a drink? I know I would.’
Claire settled into Randy’s spare room with ease. They had always had the kind of friendship that neither distance nor time lapses altered, and within the first week she found a job. Ironically, it came courtesy of Gilles.
He was a frequent visitor to the flat and when he learnt that she was looking for a job he viewed her with lancing amusement, but tactfully made no comment. A couple of days later, however, he called in to leave a phone number with her.
‘John’s an archaeologist. I did some photographic work for his current book. He’s looking for an assistant to help him put together his material,’ he said. ‘His last one got bored with the isolation and left to work in an office. I mentioned your name. He suggested you ring if you’re interested.’
John Hawthorne was a portly man in his fifties with a pleasant warmth of manner, and he offered her the job at their informal interview. He showed her the tiny office off the library of his townhouse and the typewriter that she felt confident of mastering for the few letters he would require of her. She also decided to enrol in night classes.
She tried to count her blessings then. It was infinitely preferable to have left Dane with all flags flying. He was content to think her reunited with Max and she was lucky to have a job. It mightn’t last for ever but John would give her a good reference when he no longer required her services. The first few weeks of severance crawled past.
In low moments, she had a habit of staring out of her office window. It overlooked a walled garden and snowdrops were pushing their heads up bravely in the shelter of a wall despite the white carpet of a heavy ground frost. Dane was still whooping it up in the Caribbean with a variety of female companions. He had been photographed partying on the yacht. As sure as God made little apples Dane was not anywhere gazing out of a window watching snowdrops grow!
‘If you ever need anything,’ he had emphasised before she got on the plane, ‘call me.’
And what would he do if she did and told him that she couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, would never have believed that there was this much pain in loving? But of course she wouldn’t. At Christmas she would write. Christmas was a comfortable distance away. She might be capable of putting pen to paper by then.
She had sent a note of her address to Lew Harrison, receiving a reply by return of post that icily offered her an allowance per month which was more than her present salary would give her in an entire year. She had written back to say she was working and self-sufficent. At least she had made someone’s day of recent! A tense smile fleeted across her lips. She had called in at the doctor’s the day before yesterday on a much more enlightening mission, although she hadn’t known it at the time.
She had been half-way through a careful delivery of her dizzy spells, her poor appetite and feeling like the worst of malingerers when the doctor had cut in to say, ‘Forgive me, but is it possible that you could be pregnant?’
Claire had halted mid-flow. No, it hadn’t occurred to her. Not once had it occurred to her, and her periods had often tended to be irregular during times of particular stress, so she hadn’t paid any heed to the absence of one until the doctor drew her attention to the fact.
The possibility had shattered her initially. Old wives’ tale or not, she had never credited that two nights in a man’s arms could lead to such far-reaching consequences. And the news that she had to await the results of a test for confirmation had filled her with raw impatience.
John called in to remind her that she had asked if she could finish early. ‘You’d better hurry,’ he said, checking his watch.
She had to wait ages to see the doctor. Her nerves were stretched by the time she finally got into the surgery. Ten minutes later she floated out on air. The knowledge that she carried Dane’s child inside her was a guilty source of joy, for she had no doubt how he would react to such a bombshell. Her delight, however, was soon equal to blocking out that momentary sense of discomfiture. She had finally discovered something capable of keeping her sane. There would be no more sleepless nights or scratchy meals. No more wallowing in a bottomless pit of self-pity for what she couldn’t have. All of a sudden, she couldn’t stop smiling!
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘WHAT do you mean, now you’ve got something to look forward to?’ Randy still looked in need of resuscitation, her carrying voice piercing Claire’s ears so that she almost winced. ‘Are you out of your tiny mind? Life is just about to open up for you and you get a stab in the back like this … it doesn’t bear thinking about!’ she muttered feelingly, sinking down on the telephone seat.
Claire stifled her irritation. ‘The baby, or the life that was opening up?’ she teased. ‘Honestly, I’m delighted.’
Randy glanced up. ‘You came in here as white as a sheet.’
‘The lift made me feel sick,’ Claire admitted ruefully.
Randy shook her head. ‘You really are happy about it. How can you be?’ she demanded. ‘Who wants to be stuck with a baby after the shortest marriage on record?’
Claire straightened her shoulders. ‘I do and now you’ve said your piece, would you mind if we dropped the subject?’
She went into her room before her tactless friend could further detract from her pleasure. Randy had recently been plotting and planning to try and persuade Claire into accompanying her to parties and the like. To Randy, a pregnancy now, when her marriage was over bar the shouting, was a disaster. For Claire, a serene and softened smile on her mouth as she examined her still slender profile in the mirror, it was redemption. She couldn’t have Dane but she could have his child.
‘I’m sorry about last night,’ Randy said over breakfast the next day, her eyes rueful. ‘I put my foot where my mouth is. I thought about it. I talked it over with Gilles.’
Claire’s lashes swept up. ‘You did what?’
Her friend groaned. ‘He’s my best friend next to you.’
‘I wish you hadn’t told him.’
‘I guess we could have said you were comfort-eating when you expanded,’ Randy retorted sarcastically.
Claire smiled. ‘I wasn’t planning on staying here.’
‘Start planning. Things have to change.’ Randy had a managerial air about her now. ‘First though … the only conclusion I came to was that he must be one hell of a guy.’
Claire’s green eyes filmed over.
‘But I hate getting maudlin over the breakfast table,’ added Randy hastily. ‘How do you intend to tell him?’
‘I don’t.’
‘Claire!’
‘I know him. He doesn’t want children.’ Claire tilted her chin. ‘And it would devastate him.’
Randy regarded her dimly. ‘It does take two, you know. I assume he knew what he was doing …’
Claire was thinking back to their wedding day. No, he had not quite known what he was d
oing, and he had not expected her to be quite the innocent she had proved to be. ‘He would feel responsible,’ she murmured tautly. ‘God, I couldn’t take that again! Don’t you understand?’
‘I’m trying … really I am, but that was one weird relationship you had.’
Dane had his freedom back. He was probably thriving on it. As far as he was concerned, she too was perfectly happy. Why rock the boat? Hadn’t she already upset his life enough? Becoming a father would not be something he could brush aside and forget, and one of the facets she had always loved in Dane was his unfettered honesty. She didn’t want him to be forced to lie and pretend to protect her feelings. The baby would be an unwelcome surprise that would unleash a whole host of complications. Anyway, could anyone in their right mind imagine Dane warming to a baby?
She rubbed her brow tiredly. ‘The baby is my responsibility and we’ll get by without hanging on anyone’s sleeve.’
Randy bit back a tirade. ‘Dane has got so much money it wouldn’t make any difference to him if you accepted that allowance his solicitor offered.
‘Why should Dane pay, when I was never his wife?’ she parried stubbornly.
‘Did I hear that right?’ Randy hesitated. ‘I mean, it is his? Yes, of course it is, but really, Claire, you’re being very … secretive.’
Claire had no doubts about the decision not to tell Dane. She loved him too much to think of inflicting such news upon him in the name of honesty. It wouldn’t be fair. Dane would halt the divorce proceedings she presumed Lew had begun. He would take on an obligation he had never wanted, and deep down inside he would be stifling his anger.
The weeks drifted past and became months. Spring passed by and then early summer. She continued to work for John and indeed she was on a shopping trip for him when she bumped into Gilles one morning in Harrods. He set her back from him, smiling. ‘A most prophetic meeting,’ he teased. ‘It’s Randy’s birthday next week and I’m at a loss.’