It was just over a week later that Blanche burst into her bedroom. 'Mother's out,' she said, without preamble, 'I have to talk to you.'
Emma, busy mending a pair of the woollen socks she wore on the farm, glanced up frowning. Blanche's face wore an expression which was not unfamiliar. She was intensely excited about something. Just what was she up to? Usually Emma was left to guess, but she was nervous rather than gratified that, this time, Blanche apparently wanted to confide in her. Something warned her that she wasn't going to like what was coming.
Despite the haste with which Blanche had descended on her cousin, she appeared in no great hurry to unburden herself. She strolled to the window and stared out at the rolling downs which were so much a feature of the South Country. They weren't far from London, but no one could have guessed as the farm was lonely and isolated.
'You're back early today, aren't you?' When Blanche didn't speak, Emma made an effort to find out what all the agitation was about. She had no desire to be on the receiving end of Blanche's confidences and she wished the other girl had waited until her mother returned.
Blanche swung around, at the sound of Emma's voice, as though her mind was quite made up. 'I'm going to Paris for a few days. With Rex,' she enlarged coldly, defying Emma to query it.
Emma was too bewildered to say anything immediately, but the shocked apprehension in her eyes said it for her. She just blinked at Blanche and swallowed.
'I'm not a child, Emma,' Blanche exclaimed tartly, reading things in Emma's face she didn't care for. 'I know what I'm doing, so you needn't start asking what about Rick. He doesn't have to know a thing about it.'
'But—why?' Emma whispered, horrified. 'I mean, you're about to be married. And what if Rick does find out? What then?'
'He won't.'
'How can you be so sure?' Emma's voice was stiff with disapproval. 'Besides, it's not fair!'
'Shut up, you sanctimonious little saint!' Blanche was suddenly spitting venom. 'You don't know Rick. Once we're married he'll come down with a heavy hand. His wife will have to toe the line in every way, both in bed and out. He's not really the lazy, sardonic character you might think he is.'
Colouring vividly at Blanche's over-candid remarks, Emma chose to ignore what she considered the worst of them. Neither Rick nor Blanche had any qualms about embarrassing her, but it annoyed her nearly as much that they could so easily make her blush. 'If you feel this way about Rick, why marry him, for heaven's sake?'
'Haven't I told you before?' Blanche chaffed impatiently. 'Freedom from work, all that lovely sunshine and money, but you can believe he'll demand his money's worth!'
'You don't have to force me, I'm quite convinced,' Emma retorted dryly, recalling with a tremor the powerful littleness of Rick Conway's body, the decisive lines etched on his face. 'Yet money isn't everything, Blanche. Neither is a life of leisure, I shouldn't think.'
'I shan't complain,' Blanche sneered.
'I still don't understand how you can even consider marrying him when you love Rex.'
'Are you crazy?' Blanche cried. 'I certainly don't harbour any tender feelings for Rex. I'm attracted to him, that's all, and he's helped me a lot with my career.'
There was a lot here which was beyond her. Emma felt hopelessly inadequate as she gazed at her cousin. How did one even begin to deal with such a problem—if Blanche's imminent betrayal of her fiancé could be classed as such. One thing was quite obvious, Blanche wasn't looking for advice, good or otherwise. All the same, Emma tried to give some. 'Why not forget about Rex and concentrate on Rick's wealth?' Blanche had always been greedy. 'I'm sure he intends giving you a good time, and I don't think he regards you as a business proposition at all. In fact he did say he hasn't looked at another woman since he met you.'
'All of three months ago!' Blanche's mouth, a little on the thin side, curled.
'On an island like Barbados, surely that must prove that he cares for you. There must be plenty of lovely women, enough temptation?'
'I know perfectly well what there is on Barbados,' Blanche snapped, 'but he doesn't stay there all the time. He has other places in the Caribbean. One island in particular is completely isolated and he enjoys staying there for months on end. That's probably where he's been the last three months, avoiding temptation. There, I've been told, he often supervises the work personally, but if he thinks I'm going to bury myself there for weeks on end, he can think again!'
'It must be because he's interested in what he's doing there,' Emma suggested reasonably. 'I can't somehow imagine him doing anything he didn't want to do.'
'Don't ask me,' Blanche retorted sharply. 'It can't have missed your avid little ears that I scarcely know Rick at all. Sometimes I wonder if he'll suit me. I've heard a rumour that he's a very sensuous man.'
'Then if I felt that way, I wouldn't marry him!' Emma made an effort to emulate Blanche's disconcerting frankness. 'I would simply tell him I'd changed my mind.'
'You wouldn't say that if you had a chance of marrying him,' Blanche mocked.
'You seem determined to throw yours away.'
'No, I don't,' Blanche replied smugly. 'I certainly intend being Mrs Rick Conway, but I also intend having a last fling, first, even if it kills me.'
'Supposing Rick does?'
'He won't find out, not if you promise to help me.' . 'Me?' Wild fright tore through Emma's young breast as she visualised being on the receiving end of Rick's anger. Already she'd had one sample of his quick fury, she didn't want another!
Blanche ignored her protests as she had been doing for years. Emma couldn't expect her not to. 'All I'm asking you to do,' she said coldly, 'is to tell Rick, if he rings, that I'm visiting my aunt Helen, who we all know doesn't have the phone in. I'm taking Mother there tomorrow to stay with her for a few days as she hasn't been well and can't come to the wedding. So if Rick were to check in that direction, and I don't imagine for a moment he will, it wouldn't occur to him to check which of us was actually staying with Aunt Helen.'
Amazed at Blanche's barefaced duplicity, Emma exclaimed, 'What if Rick asks your mother about it, when he gets back?'
'Don't worry—he won't. Why should he?' Blanche, supremely confident, shrugged her shoulders. 'To make sure, I'll have a word with Mother later. She won't let me down.'
'And you're asking me to help deceive Rick, too?'
'Oh, come off it!' Blanche sneered with exasperation. 'Is there any need to be so dramatic? Why not pretend you have no wish to see him hurt, if it's your conscience that's worrying you? I'm sure if you look at it that way it won't be too difficult. You were always a charitable little thing.'
'I—I still don't know…'
'Well, tell him the truth—any damn thing you like!' Blanche flung out of the bedroom in a fury. 'Tell him what suits you. I don't care. But I'm going to Paris with Rex!'
As the door slammed behind her, Emma blinked at it in an agony of dismay, realising it would be impossible to tell Rick that kind of truth. She knew it and so did Blanche. If Blanche failed to get her own way by what she considered logical argument, she resorted to a craftiness which seldom failed.
The house was quiet with no one to occupy it but herself, and Emma's nerves grew jagged as she daily anticipated Rick ringing from Australia. He had been in touch once, just before Blanche went away, and it was unlikely, Blanche said, that he would ring again until the end of the week, but one never knew.
Blanche had, before she had left for Paris, broken the uneasy silence which had existed between the two girls ever since the scene in Emma's bedroom. She had reluctantly told Emma the name of the luxury hotel where she would be staying with Rex. She had parted with this information only because she and her mother had found Helen much worse than they had expected, and her doctor had warned she might not have long to live.
'Don't contact me unless the old girl pops off,' Blanche had instructed callously, while threatening dire repercussions should Emma dare divulge her whereabouts to anyone else.
&nbs
p; Emma, hearing Rex tooting loudly at the door, as if running off with another man's fiancée wasn't something to keep quiet about, had been inclined to go and confront him. He and Blanche might be a well matched pair, but at least Rex wasn't engaged to someone else. Somewhere under all that worldly, sophisticated boredom might lie one spark of decency.
'Don't you dare!' Blanche had hissed, as Emma hesitated, clearly guessing her intentions.
'It might be worth a try.' Emma had stared at her cousin bravely.
'What if you succeeded?' Blanche had mocked. 'Would you offer to take my place? Somehow I think you'd find Paris a bit too much for you.'
Ignoring the other girl's scorn, Emma frowned. Hadn't Blanche known she had been there several times? Emma's father had sometimes taken her to Paris during school holidays to stay with a relation of her mother's. Once they had spent Christmas there. Her mother's cousin had owned a rather grand house—she probably still did. Ruefully, Emma glanced down at her work-worn hands, wondering wryly what the so elegant Clarice would make of them. She remembered her as distinctly grande dame and very beautiful. There had been a time when Emma feared her father might be thinking of marrying her, and, though nothing had come of it, they had never gone back after Clarice had married another man.
While she had stood there pondering over the past and hesitating, Blanche had picked up her smart suitcase and gone, leaving Emma to realise unhappily that she had lost the only chance she was likely to get of making either Blanche or Rex change their minds.
CHAPTER THREE
Rick Conway didn't ring, after all. He arrived in person the morning after Blanche left, ten days before he was due back.
The shock was almost too much for Emma. He didn't bother to knock, which might, she thought, have given her intuition time to warn her. It seemed grossly unfair that the first intimation she had of his presence was when he opened the kitchen door and walked in.
In view of the terrible seriousness of the situation, Emma had great difficulty in restraining a hysterical laugh when he asked casually, 'How is it, if you're in the house, you're always to be found in the kitchen?'
She was too stunned to answer that. She had just been out in the fields with coffee for Jim and had been about to have her own before starting on the account books. 'You aren't supposed to be here!' she whispered.
'Well, I can't think of anywhere else I'd rather be at the moment,' he drawled. 'Where's Blanche?'
'Bl—Blanche?' In his rather expressionless face she sensed tension, but it couldn't be as great as her own.
Suddenly his eyes narrowed alarmingly as he threw off his coat. 'If she's out tell me where. And I don't want any more stories about not knowing!'
Oh, God, how did she get out of this one? Behind Rick's tension was determination. It stood out a mile. Joining it, as she stood gaping at him like a landed fish, was suspicion, which warned her she must act quickly if she was to avert worse. 'I—I think she's gone abroad, but don't ask me where.'
'Exactly what you said last time,' he rejoined grimly, 'only this time you've decided to have her abroad.'
'How would I know exactly where she's gone?' Emma gasped, her grey eyes flashing, knowing suddenly that aggression might be her only defence. 'It's none of my business and I don't ask. You'd better try London, her agency or somewhere. I'm busy—so if you'll excuse me?'
She would never have believed that in grasping her and whipping her off her feet, Rick could have acted so swiftly. One moment she was standing, defying him, the next he had caught her up, like a hurricane. In an instant she was over his knee, his hand descending without mercy on the seat of her pants, while she screamed with temper and pain.
'Let me go, you great brute, or I'll call the police!'
He was deaf. The hand continued to rise and fall with renewed vigour. 'I'll stop when you agree to talk,' he snapped harshly, ignoring her wild threats.
He meant it as well! Emma groaned aloud, choking. Hadn't Blanche told her he spent a lot of time in isolated, uncivilised places? She had been right about the veneer, too. Rick Conway's easygoing drawl was only skin-deep. The cruel savagery underneath it was being transmitted only too clearly through the force of his hand.
Tears were running down Emma's cheeks before she gave in. 'Please stop!' she begged, the hardness of his thighs pressing against her small breasts arousing a sensation almost as hard to bear as the pain he was inflicting on her delicately rounded posterior.
'Had enough?' he enquired laconically.
She nodded, blindly, in abject humiliation. 'I hate you!' she cried, as he released her.
'That's neither here nor there.'
As she stood up she felt dizzy and hurt all over. 'You can go to… No!' she shrieked, as his hand shot out to grab her again.
Pausing, he snapped, 'Then spill the beans. I'm not interested in where you'd like to see me.'
Emma was. She could have killed him! The horrible dizziness persisted, so she scarcely knew what she was saying. It took away any strength she had left to fight him.
'Where is she, Emma?'
'She's in Paris,' Emma hiccupped, feeling it had been torn out of her, but that was all she was going to say. She lifted huge, tear-drenched eyes to meet his, daring him to ask more.
'With?'
'With…?' Emma tried her best to look blank.
'Out with it!' The hard bones of his jaw and chin tightened. 'I want answers, Emma, not evasion—or else!'
The implications of that couldn't have been clearer. As it was she might not be able to sit down for days. More tears ran, she couldn't seem to stop them, but there was no pity in Rick's hard, unrelenting face. All the same, she did try to make one last effort on behalf of the girl who had always treated her as something less than human. 'I won't,' she gasped, 'I can't tell you!'
'Yes, you can.' He grasped her hair, this time, having some difficulty in getting his hands through the thickness of it, but succeeding painfully.
'Oh…' she moaned, hating him so much yet unable to retaliate. There was one way she could be revenged, but she was reluctant to take it. It took a second cruel tug on her hair to make her decide furiously that Rick deserved to be hurt, as much as he was hurting her. Fury and fright, momentarily eliminating discretion, she sobbed, 'She's with Rex!'
'Ah…' it was a long-drawn-out sigh of cold anger. For a second he stood so still Emma shuddered. 'So I was right to cut short my visit down under. The little bitch! I'd like to…'
Emma tried to close her ears to what he said next, but even if she had managed to do so completely it would have been obvious from his expression that Blanche had burnt her boats in every direction, so far as he was concerned. Anxiously she sought for something to say that might make him feel better, but could anything soothe a man in such circumstances?
'Blanche didn't mean you to know anything about it,' was the best she could manage. 'I'm sure she didn't mean to hurt you.'
'Is that supposed to help?' he snarled.
Emma spread her hands, her face pale. 'What more can I say?'
'I expect you knew what was going on?' he attacked her again, his voice harsh and grating. 'You must have known you were fighting a losing battle over Rex Oliver. You knew what might easily happen, yet you never thought to warn me.'
'Would you have listened?' she whispered, aghast at his twisted interpretation of things.
'If you hadn't been so busy trying to hang on to Oliver by the skin of your teeth, you might have had time to think of other people!'
'You don't exactly inspire anyone to worry over you, Rick,' she couldn't resist pointing out. 'You always seem capable of handling everything.'
'Are you being sarcastic?' he gazed at her, his eyes like steel. 'I can handle most things, but not something I know nothing about. Then I have to rely on instinct, which is what brought me back ten days before I was due.'
'If only I'd been able to speak to Rex!' Emma felt with anguished certainty that she should have made a greater effort.
; 'Would he have listened?' Rick Conway ran a contemptuous eye over her unprepossessing figure. 'It's quite clear to me now he was only using you for one thing, and I doubt if he derived much pleasure even from that.'
As Emma gasped in rage and horror, he continued, his anger apparently no less than her own, 'You could have come off worse. He could have persuaded you to go to Paris with him instead of Blanche. But before you begin congratulating yourself, don't think you're going to get away with it. You have a lot to answer for, bringing a man like that to the house, conspiring to fool me!'
'I—' Emma began, then paused. What was the use of trying to convince him she wasn't guilty? He would never believe her, and in another few minutes he could be gone. Yet suddenly, for all she hated him intensely for what he had just done to her, she knew an urgent desire to prove she was innocent, at least of most of the things he was accusing her of. After all, neither Blanche or Rex could have anything more to lose. She had to make sure, though.
'Couldn't you possibly forgive Blanche?' she whispered. 'Don't you still love her? Surely no one can stop loving, just like that?'
'Love?' he sneered mockingly, but when Emma waited to hear more, he changed the subject. 'I'm not good at forgiving people, least of all girls who go off with other men. I certainly don't intend forgiving Blanche, nor do I intend letting her go scot-free. Like you, she'll pay for her sins.'
'I hope you're not contemplating anything foolish,' Emma gulped miserably. 'It's so easy to do something we regret afterwards.'
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