Turbulent Covenant

by Jessica Steele

  name, I gave her the first name that came into my head.'

  There was a terse silence coming from across the table, and Tiffany had never felt so uncomfortable in her life. She had told Ben Maxwell everything—well, all he had a right to know—and sat there waiting for the biting indictment of her she knew he was capable of. It shook her to hear his voice sounding quite mild, as he asked :

  `And what will you tell your aunt when you make it up with this Nick? That you fell rapidly out of love with Ben Maxwell—that you ...'

  `I shan't be making it up with Nick,' Tiffany put in quickly. Then more slowly and bleakly, 'That's all finished.'

  `Finished?' He sounded as if he didn't believe it. 'You'll rush straight into his arms the minute he calls,' he stated, making no bones about the fact he didn't believe her.

  `I won't,' Tiffany returned, her face towards him, her eyes cold, her expression stony. 'Nick Cowley and I are through. If he came and begged me to go out with him I wouldn't.

  `He must have blotted-his copybook with a vengeance,' Ben Maxwell said, holding her eyes steadily. 'What did he do to make him fall off the pedestal you'd placed him on?'

  He was back to being his sweet, unlovable, sarcastic self, she thought, and since nothing was going to get her revealing her own naivety at what Nick had planned for that weekend, she returned Ben Maxwell's look coldly, and stared without emotion, 'That, Mr Maxwell, is none of your business.' She saw his jaw harden at that, and felt a fluttery sensation in the region of her stomach as with foreboding she realised one just didn't tell people like Ben Maxwell to mind their own business. She flicked her eyes away from him, glancing round the dining room and noting absently that they were the only people there now.

  `Allow me to put you straight on a few matters, Tiffany

  Nicholls,' he grated cuttingly, bringing her attention sharply back to him 'I came off duty today looking forward to nothing more than enjoying a few days off, am accosted, in a place where the conversation can be overheard and relayed to all and sundry, and find myself having a girl thrust on me as my fiancée—a girl, I might add, who has the power to rub me up the wrong way quicker than anybody else I know.' Tiffany tried hard to hide a swallow of nervousness at that, but if Ben Maxwell noticed it it had no effect on him, for he went remorselessly on, every word biting into her. 'I objected strongly to having you thrust on me, but out of consideration for Mrs Bradburn, whom I judged to be one of nature's gentle people, I didn't give you away. I thought I would wait first to hear your explanation—wait for the explanation I'd thought must be a matter of life or death to have driven you to tell Mrs Bradburn that I'm the man you're going to marry.'

  Tiffany's colour faded the more as Ben Maxwell continued to slate her, making it obvious their dislike of each other was mutual—but worse was to come, he hadn't finished with her yet. 'I've sat having dinner with you tonight, waited until I thought you were relaxed enough to tell me what had driven you to make such a wild claim, and have learned, to my disgust, that the only reason for your action was pure and utter cowardice, cowardice because you hadn't got the guts to tell your aunt you say you think so much of that your romance is off.' Tiffany winced at that, but Ben Maxwell went on without sparing her, telling her in a voice that lost none of its ice, 'After listening to you it crossed my mind to ignore the instinct that told me you must tell your aunt the engagement is off. I even gave thought to letting the engagement stand—even considered the possibility that we might play it along for a while. For that reason, and that reason only, I wanted to be sure your

  ex-lover wouldn't come creeping back on the scene, and for that reason alone I wanted to know what had gone wrong between you so that I could judge for myself the chances of his coming back into your life and so complicate the issue further.' He was enunciating every word clearly, and Tiffany didn't dare look at him as his remaining words seared right through her. 'And you have the audacity to tell me it's none of my business !'

  Tiffany would dearly loved to have run away from him. She had suffered from his tongue before, but never like this. Their meal was over, there was nothing further to say, nothing she could add that would make him feel any better about her. She thought he was waiting for her to say something, but what could she say? He'd had a right to trounce her. He had been right to call her a coward—even now, still quaking from his near-annihilation of her, she still didn't know where she was going to get the courage to tell her aunt what she knew had to be told. Since there were no words coming from her, Ben Maxwell stood up to indicate he too had nothing further to say, and silently Tiffany went with him out to his car.

  They had been driving for some minutes, with each second becoming more unbearable than the last, when Tiffany knew she owed him an apology. He was right in the middle of this whole mess and it was she who had put him there. But with him being so downright forbidding, he was making that apology difficult to put into words.

  `I ... I'm sorry I as good as told you to mind your own business,' she got out after a faulty start. Her apology was met with silence. But coward though she might be when it came to hurting her aunt, her courage was not lacking in any other direction. 'I didn't realise what you had in mind,' she began again, 'w-why you wanted to know about Nick and me.' She ploughed on, the pain of her words making

  her voice husky. 'I suppose it—it still hurts to talk about it—that's why I couldn't tell you.'

  Ben Maxwell's eyes left the road in front, and he turned to give her a brief look, his only indication that he had heard any of what she was saying before he returned his attention back to his driving.

  `You're in love with him still?'

  That she had to pause to think, am I still in love with Nick? jolted her. I'm too confused to know anything any more, she thought, when no answer came through to that question. When she didn't answer, Ben Maxwell must, she thought, have taken her silence for confirmation that she was still in love with Nick Cowley.

  `You said earlier you thought he loved you—do I take it he doesn't any longer?'

  `I don't think he ever did,' Tiffany said half to herself. Then realising that in the darkness of the car she could talk to Ben Maxwell and not be put off by any of the hard expressions she had witnessed in his face while they had been dining, 'Oh, he said he did, often, only—only I didn't know he was only saying it because ...' her voice tailed off. Ben Maxwell wouldn't be interested in any of that, besides which he was now drawing up outside the house where she had her flat.

  The car came to a halt, but before she could move, Ben Maxwell turned to her. 'Because?' he prompted.

  She was glad of the darkness, it concealed her suddenly high colour. 'Oh, you know what men are,' she said, a feeling of irritation creeping over her because she knew she was very close to telling him what she was determined he should not know.

  `I know what men are,' he agreed. 'But by the sound of it, you're trying to tell me you've only just found out.' His tone niggled her. It told her clearly he thought she

  knew all about men, and then some. 'How's this for your second surprise of the day?' she said, adopting an Icouldn't-care-less attitude. 'Tiffany Nicholls is so green that when a man tells her he loves her she's crass enough, to think he means it—crass enough to think a declaration of love is naturally followed by the sound of wedding bells.'

  `Stop trying to sound cynical,' Ben Maxwell's voice stopped her when she would have gone on. 'It doesn't suit you.' Then following up on what she had just told him, 'So this fellow told you he loved you, and when the first flush of romance had gone he ejected you out of his bed and out of his life?'

  `I was never in his bed !' Tiffany shot back, too angry at his interpretation of her affair with Nick to think calmly.

  `Never?' his tone was disbelieving.

  `Never,' Tiffany confirmed more slowly.

  `But you are in love with him—I thought bed was the natural sequence of events these days.'

  `Not for everybody it isn't.' She could feel her temper beginning to
slip and welcomed it; she was beginning to regret having ever apologised to him.

  `You're different, are you?' He didn't sound as though he placed any credence in the truth of that. 'Tell me, would your not going to bed with this Nick Cowley have anything to do with the reason for your splitting up?'

  Since Ben Maxwell as good as knew what he had asked back there in the hotel, Tiffany saw little point in withholding the rest of it, and in a few short words she told him about the planned weekend with Nick in Wales she had been looking forward to, ending with, 'His idea of a fun weekend, I discovered almost too late, was vastly different from mine.'

  `Good God !' seemed to be dragged from him. 'I never

  thought a girl with your looks could be so innocent. I'll agree with you—you are green, aren't you?'

  Feeling a gullible idiot, Tiffany could see no point in discussing it any further, and made to move from the car.

  'Stay where you are,' she was commanded. 'We still haven't fully sorted out what to do about being engaged to each other yet.'

  Tiffany subsided into her seat. She had forgotten for quite some time now that the whole purpose in Ben Maxwell taking her to dinner had been to decide what to do about it. About to open her mouth and say she would deny the rumours, would confess everything to her aunt, she found him speaking before she could frame the sentences.

  We'll let the engagement stand for a while,' he said decisively, and when she turned to stare at him it was to see the harshness gone from his face, either that or a trick of the interior light he had just switched on, but his voice was matter-of-fact as he continued, 'There's bound to be the odd remark here and there at Coronet, so just go along with it—it will soon fizzle out.'

  `But ...' Tiffany wasn't sure she wanted to let it stand after all—she didn't want to tell her aunt she wasn't engaged either, but of the two suddenly the thought of being engaged to Ben Maxwell, even if only to save her face, had her feeling more disquiet than even the thought of confessing to her aunt held.

  `No buts,' he said, going back to being her stern dinner companion again. 'I've told you nobody is going to make me look a fool—you, Tiffany Nicholls, are now engaged to me—deny it, and you'll regret it.'

  CHAPTER THREE

  TIFFANY was up early the following morning and began sprucing up her already tidy flat. She must take her uniform in to the cleaners today; being smart was part of her job, though it ran through a fortune in cleaners' bills. Had she really had the nerve to call Ben Maxwell 'Ben' last night? The whole evening seemed unreal this morning somehow. She couldn't quite connect the reserved girl she knew herself to be with the girl who last night had told the forbidding airline captain the more intimate details of her relationship with Nick.

  She shrugged thoughts of Nick away knowing that thoughts in that direction would get her precisely nowhere. She was sure this morning she was still in love with him, and put any doubts she'd had last night down to the fact that Ben Maxwell was enough to confuse anybody. She concentrated her thoughts on her engagement. As Ben Maxwell had intimated, it would be a nine-day wonder at the airport, and then something else would happen and take precedence and the engagement would be forgotten.

  A knock sounded on her door. Surely not Ben Maxwell? Her heart began thudding madly for no accountable reason and she opened the door to find Mr West, her landlord, standing there.

  `Good morning, Mr West,' she greeted the stooped -elderly man while pulling herself up sharply. She would be a nervous wreck if she went to pieces like this every time a knock sounded. Ben Maxwell had no reason to call and she wasn't afraid of his sarcastic tongue in any case.

  Realising Mr West was still standing she bade him sit down.

  `Have you come about the sash cord I reported to the estate agents?' she asked. It hadn't been repaired in her absence.

  `Afraid not, Miss Nicholls,' Mr West said regretfully, and began to look so uncomfortable that Tiffany just had to ask :

  `Is something wrong?' She had never seen him like this in the two and a half years she had known him.

  He cleared his throat, then said gruffly, 'Well, to tell you the truth, Miss Nicholls, I just can't spare the cash to have any more repairs done.' He cleared his throat again. `I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but—I've got to sell the place.' He looked away from her look of incredulity. `I'm sorry, my dear, but you'll have to find somewhere else to live.' And while Tiffany was still trying to grasp that in an already overcrowded city she was going to have to hunt for another flat, he went on to explain that with the cost of the upkeep of old property and taxes being what they were, he was having a job keeping his head above water. So there was nothing for it but to sell, and Morton's, the estate agents, had told him the property would sell better if it was empty.

  `I wanted to tell all my tenants personally, though Morton's will be sending you a formal notice through the post,' he went on abstractedly. 'They have to do that according to some Rent Act or other.' Mindless of her own plight, Tiffany's heart went out to him; poor man, he looked worried to death. 'I'm sorry about it, Miss Nicholls,' he apologised, 'but you can see how I'm placed.'

  Her household chores were forgotten after he had gone and the shock of his news began to fade. Getting other accommodation wasn't going to be easy, she'd only

  managed to get this flat because a fellow stewardess had tipped her off that she was leaving. She would have to start looking straight away. Being out of the country for weeks at a time made it extra difficult— And what about Janet and Bill downstairs? How on earth were they going to find somewhere, especially with a three-year-old son? Miss Tucker too on the ground floor, she would have to find somewhere. Thinking of the other residents made Tiffany realise her worries were small compared with theirs. And without thinking further she left her flat and went and knocked on Janet's door.

  `He's been to see you, then?' Janet said as Tiffany followed her into the kitchen. 'I'm just making some coffee —want some?'

  `Please.'

  Bill, Janet told her when they settled down, had been offered a job in Manchester by the firm he worked for. `We've been thinking about it for a couple of days now, so I expect this will decide things for us, especially as they'd said they'll help us with accommodation. Of course Bill doesn't know yet that we've had our marching orders, so I shall have to see what he thinks.'

  They chatted on for a while longer, Janet saying that rented places were snaffled up before they ever got on to estate agents' books, and flats advertised in the paper were taken before the printer's ink was dry. It was a depressing outlook.

  `What about Miss Tucker?' Tiffany asked. 'She'd been here years, hasn't she?'

  `She was here before we came, and we've been here seven years. But I expect she'll go and live with her sister on the coast. I know she'd been thinking about it, she was telling me so the other day.'

  It looks very much as though I shall be the only one on

  the flat-hunting trail, Tiffany thought, and with Janet's help she searched through the paper.

  The days remaining before her next flight were spent flat-hunting, but it was hopeless. She was out early, following up adverts in the paper, adverts in shop windows, trudging from estate to estate agent, and even put her own ad. in the paper, but so far no replies.

  The day before she was due to go back on duty Tiffany rang her aunt apologising for not ringing before and explaining what had happened. She had received her notice to quit from Morton's and her rent was paid quarterly in advance, so she had three months in which to find alternative accommodation.

  `How's Ben?' queried Margery Bradburn, completely ignoring Tiffany's anguish at the thought of being homeless.

  `Ben?-oh, Ben's fine.'

  `Such a nice man. I'm so pleased for you, Tiffany.'

  It just wasn't getting through to Aunt Margery, thought Tiffany, that her mind was more on finding somewhere to live than on Ben Maxwell. She gave up trying in the end and listened instead to her aunt going on for a full five minutes singing
the praises of Ben and what a lucky girl she was, and enquiring when the wedding was to be.

  Taken up as her off-duty period had been with her desperate search for accommodation, the fact that she was now engaged, and to whom, had taken a back seat in Tiffany's thoughts. But her first day back on duty she was met with comments such as 'Dark horse!' and 'How did you manage it, Tiffany?' and the remembrance that everyone knew she was engaged to Ben was brought fully to the forefront of her mind by overhearing Sheila Roberts saying to one of the other stewardesses, 'I've been angling for Ben Maxwell

  ever since I first clapped eyes on him.' She missed what was being said next as she clattered purposefully in the galley, only to stop and hear Sheila saying, ... so all that cold shoulder treatment they gave each other was pure camouflage.' The fact that she and Ben were nearly always at daggers drawn had not gone unnoticed, then.

  Tiffany visited many foreign countries in the next six weeks. Her rest days back in England had been spent in hunting for a flat, only to leave her more and more depressed at not being able to find anything. The teasing about her and Ben Maxwell had now died down, their engagement was now accepted and rarely referred to.

  She let herself into her flat, dumped her case down on the floor, and reflected that life was going to be very dull until her engagement 'fizzled out'. Peter Clarke, the navigator on the run she had just finished, had asked her out when they landed in Cape Town, and on the point of accepting, for Peter was good fun in a harmless way, she had found his invitation immediately withdrawn as he had remembered, `I'm sorry, Tiffany—I forgot you were engaged.'

  She hadn't given a thought to that side of her engagement, and paused to consider that since most of the men she knew knew Ben also, should some of the less principled ask her out, how in fairness to Ben could she accept? It wouldn't be fair to accept invitations out from any of the men they weren't mutually acquainted with either, she saw, and suddenly she was fed up. Nothing was going right.