Sian didn't look round at him. 'I'd rather be alone,' she said in a stiff, cold voice, then began to run, and this time he didn't follow.
It was a relief to be out of the house, in the sunlight, although she found herself surrounded by people at first. Workmen, ladies with armfuls of books, junk, plants which they were heaping up on the stalls, children setting up a crazy golf course on one lawn, while in another corner some boys were arranging coconuts on battered wooden cups for a coconut shy. She felt people looking at her, curious eyes following her. No doubt they wondered who she was—but she ignored them all, making for the distant part of the garden she could see: a wilder area of trees, rough grass, shrubs. At least there she could be alone to think.
One group of women discussed her so loudly that she could hear every word, and maybe was meant to! 'Is it her?' one asked.
Another said, 'No, she isn't old enough. The pictures in the papers made her look thirty, at least, and this one can't be more than twenty-five.'
Sian wanted to run, to get away from the speculative eyes, the faintly malicious voices, but she made herself walk steadily, her eyes fixed on nothing.
'I think it is her,' someone else said.
'Well, I don't think much of his taste! The other one was better-looking.'
'Men like blondes, though, don't they?'
Sian was almost out of earshot; the last words floated to her on the summer air, making her grind her teeth. What made people think that blonde hair meant there was nothing underneath the scalp? Why did people think in stereotypes?
The stuff of my trade, she thought cynically as she slowed down among the trees. Among them she saw a white ironwork seat against a swag of rich pink clematis, the flowers spilling down behind it from an old half-dead apple tree which looked as if it had been struck by lightning and no longer fruited.
Sian made for it and sat down sideways, her knees clasped by her two hands and her feet on the end of the seat, propped on the elegant curled ironwork armrest.
Cass was a ruthless man. He had used her without scruple whenever he felt it necessary—to distract the media from Annette, or in covering up what his sister had done. It didn't bother him that she might have been badly hurt by believing that it had been he who had forced her off the road and then driven on without stopping.
Did that mean he had no idea she was falling in love with him? Or merely that he knew, yet was still prepared to use her feelings for his own purposes without caring what that did to her?
She closed her eyes, then angrily opened them again and pulled a swathe of clematis towards her; she fingered one flower, played with the petals unthinkingly, shredding them and letting them fall lightly on the long grass—soft, velvety, pink drifts among the whiskery stems.
He was a mystery, a shadowed maze into which she had wandered, in which she was lost. She didn't understand him at all, nor did she think he wanted her to!
She ought to leave now, right away, without seeing him again. Why had he been going to marry Annette? Sian found it increasingly difficult to believe he had ever been in love. He didn't act like a man in love; he had made passes at her ever since they had met; and when he talked about Annette he didn't sound like a man in love. Sian heard more genuine excitement in his voice when he talked to her. In fact, he spoke about Annette kindly, patiently, as if she were a child he was responsible for—even his fury over her flight had not been quite in keeping with the way a jilted bridegroom would feel. It had been more the exasperation of someone who has been made to look a fool in public, and he had pursued her to bring her back only for her father's sake. Had he seen her since the day he'd driven Sian back to London from the hospital? Had he tried to see her? If he had, he hadn't mentioned it, but then, he was a secretive man who never mentioned anything if he could avoid it.
A movement among the trees made her stiffen and look round, expecting to see Cass and steeling herself to send him away.
It was a man hovering there, watching her among the leafy branches, but it wasn't Cass. For an instant Sian had a primitive flash of terror. She was alone and the unknown seemed sinister.
Then he came out into the sunlight of the little glade, and with a start of incredulity she recognised him.
'Louis?'
'Hello,' he said, strolling over, very London-dressed in a smooth pale grey suit with a pink shirt and a grey tie slashed with pink stripes. He looked totally out of place, totally wrong.
'What on earth are you doing here?' Sian asked.
'You don't seem too pleased to see me!' His voice had the familiar petulant ring, but she was long past the stage of placating him and she answered shortly.
'I don't know why you're here. I wasn't expecting to see you.'
'I'm not sure why I'm here myself—curiosity, I suppose.' He picked up her feet and held her legs up while he sat down on the seat beside her, lowering her legs again over his lap. Sian would have swung them free, but he held them firmly, one hand stroking along her calf.
'What do you think you're doing?' she said, struggling to break free, but then he took her breath away.
'When the invitation came, I almost threw it in the bin.'
'Invitation?' Sian gave him a startled look.
'From your editor… what's-his-name.'
'Leo?'
'That's it, Leo. Funny chap; what is he up to, anyway?'
'Leo sent you an invitation? To what?' she patiently persisted, and he gave a querulous sigh.
'To this garden party, of course!' he said, and Sian's eyes rounded in disbelief.
'He doesn't have the right to hand out invitations, and anyway, I don't think you need an invitation, it's a public event to raise money for charity.'
'But there are tickets to get in—and the press were given some free ones. Complimentaries. He sent me one of those.'
'Leo sent you a complimentary?'
He eyed her shrewdly, his hand wandering up and down her leg, because Sian had been too dumbfounded to notice what he was doing for some time. 'You never used to be this slow-thinking. What's happened to you lately? Your brain seems to have gone to seed. It must be all this mixing with the rich and famous; it's finally got to you.'
'Why on earth would Leo do that?' Sian slowly thought aloud, and Louis gave her a teasing grin.
'Isn't it obvious? He was mischief-making—what else? Heaven alone knows what he expected to happen, but I can tell when someone's hoping to cause trouble, and that's that he was doing. I just wondered why—is he afraid he'll lose the best girl reporter in Fleet Street, or something?'
The malice didn't bother her, nor did the sideways, satisfied look. Louis could be as sarcastic as he liked, make what fun he liked, he didn't bother her at all. She was over him, he meant nothing to her now, but she was annoyed with Leo. She knew her editor and his childish glee when he made the cauldron bubble, and that was, as Louis had just said, undoubtedly what he had hoped to do by sending Louis here. He wanted to stir up a storm, create a dramatic story for the paper. Cass had only wanted the media to swallow what he handed them; Leo was ruthless. He wanted to plant his own story with the ingredients he chose. He was quite cheerful about using her; like Cass! Were all men like that? Well, this time neither Cass nor Leo was doing it to her, not if she could stop it.
'Never mind what Leo wants, you aren't stopping,' she told Louis.
He raised his brows. 'I'm not getting orders, am I, darling? Because I don't take orders from my women.'
'I'm not one of your women, Louis, not any more.' She thought about it, then added angrily, 'And I never was!'
Maybe that was a tactical mistake, because his face darkened and he took on that familiar look of petulance. She had wounded his male pride, his precious ego.
'Weren't you, then?' he asked, and she tried to get up hurriedly, alarmed by his expression, but he reached up and caught her waist and yanked her backwards over his lap. She couldn't stop herself falling. He started kissing her hard while she was still off balance, her head back
over the iron armrest, her blonde hair spilling into the long grass. Sian fought him furiously, biting his lower lip until he gave a cry of rage and pain, his head shooting up.
'You little bitch!'
He fingered his mouth, which was bleeding. 'Blood,' he said, stupefied by the sight of it on his finger. 'Look what you did!'
Sian couldn't stay angry in the face of that incredulous, injured expression. She began to giggle.
That was when they both heard a rustling, the crack of a twig underfoot. Louis hurriedly looked across the clearing and went a funny shade of puce.
The next minute Sian was on the ground and rolling away, and Louis was on his feet, running. Sian scrambled up, ruefully rubbing her behind, laughing, but her laughter stopped as she looked up into Cass's face. It was leaping with black rage and there was no humour in it anywhere.
CHAPTER TEN
'So it isn't over, after all?' Cass's voice was congested, thick with rage or something else, and Sian stood there, staring at him, her nerves prickling as if she were in some sort of danger.
'Yes, it is,' she began.
'Don't lie to me!' he suddenly yelled.
She almost jumped out of her skin, and then grew angry too. 'Don't you shout at me!' she yelled back.
'I don't like being lied to!' he muttered, coming a step nearer. 'You told me last time we saw him that he was just an old flame—but obviously he's still burning.'
She sighed, shaking her head. 'Look, this is none of your business, but I was telling the truth—there's nothing between me and Louis any more.'
'No?' he sneered. 'Is that why I saw you sprawling all over him? And the two of you had been making love. Don't tell me you hadn't, because your lipstick is smudged to hell, and I saw it on his mouth.' His own mouth twisted in distaste and his eyes were contemptuous. Sian winced, hurt by that look, but then wondered why she should put up with having him talk to her, look at her, like that!
'What right do you think you have…' she began, but he talked on over her.
'And I'd like to know how he got in here; there are supposed to be security men on the gate. I'll have a few sharp words to say to them later! This is private property.'
'And so am I!' Sian said furiously, very red. 'My own property—nobody else's! Who the hell do you think you are, talking to me like this?' He stood there, listening, watching her with an odd, uncertain, almost puzzled look on his face, and she shouted at him, 'I don't have to explain myself to you, Mr William Cassidy, and I won't put up with being bullied.'
'Why did you lie to me? That's all I want to know,' Cass muttered, glaring down at her.
'I didn't.' He was much too close. He was making her light-headed merely by standing there, those grey eyes brilliant, that mouth pure temptation.
'I suppose you're telling me that there's something wrong with my eyesight! That I didn't see you lying across him, that he didn't have your lipstick on his mouth!' He had calmed down a fraction, but only because he had turned icy, his tone biting with sarcasm, and she curled her hands into fists, wishing she dared hit him, but afraid to take the risk because Cass was capable of hitting her back, and in this mood she thought he probably would!
'He grabbed me,' she admitted brusquely, 'I didn't want him to!'
Cass laughed; well, it was supposed to be laughter, but it sounded pretty unamused, a harsh bark of disbelief.
'Oh, of course!'
'And it wasn't my lipstick on his mouth—it was blood. His, where I bit him when he tried to kiss me!'
His brows pulled together, and he stared at her mouth, which contrarily began to quiver, although she tried to stiffen it.
'Now you come to mention it, your lipstick is more a pale pink shade, and that was red on his mouth!'
'My lipstick is lavender-pink, to be accurate!' Sian said coldly, turning to go, but Cass caught hold of her shoulder and spun her round again.
'But you still haven't explained what he was doing in my aunt's garden and how he got in!'
'He had an invitation to the garden party—and I've no idea why he was allowed through the gates before the party started. You'd have to ask him.'
'An invitation?' Cass scowled blackly again. 'From you?'
'My editor passed on to him one of the complimentary tickets your aunt sent the newspaper.' Sian gave him a barbed smile. 'Well, it was your idea to invite the press. Your idea that I should be here so that they could write about us! You get what you pay for in this world, and Leo was only doing what comes naturally to a tabloid editor!'
'Is that guy a reporter, then?'
She shook her head and he stared speculatively, watching the colour deepen in her face as he thought aloud. 'So if he doesn't work for your paper, why should your editor have given him a ticket? Shall I guess? Hoping to provoke a scene? Get a more dramatic story for your paper? What was he hoping I'd do, I wonder? Shoot the guy? Throw him in the pond? Or just beat him up?'
Sian laughed. 'Something like that. Editors have very simple minds, and they like their gossip colourful.'
'What a pity I saw you two when I did,' Cass drawled. 'If you hadn't sneaked in here to meet your old flame in private…'
'I didn't! There were too many people around the gardens, so I came here to be alone, but Louis must have seen me and followed me in here. I had no idea he was here; Leo didn't tell me what he planned.'
Cass considered her drily and her green eyes met his, her face serious. He put his hand on her bare arm and a little shiver ran down her spine.
'There have been too many people around ever since I met you,' Cass said softly. 'I haven't had a real chance to get you alone.' Her breath caught and she looked down, her lashes brushing her cheek. 'It's just as well I didn't catch you with the old flame in public, or I hate to think what I might have done,' he said, his fingertips sliding caressingly up and down her skin. 'When I saw you two just now, I was so jealous I wanted to kill you.'
She shook her head fiercely, tears burning behind her lids. 'Don't…'
'Don't what, Sian?' he murmured, his voice hardening.
'Say things you don't mean.'
'I mean them. Why should you think I'd say them if I didn't?' He sounded baffled, uneasy.
'What about Annette?' she cried, voice shaky.
'Ah,' he said on a long sigh. 'Annette.'
'Nobody gets over loving someone that quickly!' Sian whispered, a tear trickling out from under her lid.
'Darling!' Cass said on a deep, shaken sound, and then his lips were on her wet eyes and his arms round her, and Sian ached to let herself yield weakly to the comfort of his strength, but she wouldn't— she pushed at his shoulders and turned her face away from those hunting lips.
'Do I have to bite you, too?'
Cass laughed, surprised. 'Termagant! I believe you would.'
'You'd better believe it!' she said firmly, but she didn't meet his eyes as he let go of her, because he would be able to read too much in her eyes and it would be dangerous to let Cass know how he made her feel. She hadn't believed it possible to feel emotion like this; the painful, burning intensity was a shock to her, utterly new and bewildering. She had had men friends ever since she'd left school at eighteen, she had even thought she might be in love once or twice; she had suffered when relationships broke up, but she had never quite been able to give herself completely to anyone else. She had always had reservations, held back a part of herself that was essential, the core of her own being. She had thought it would always be like that; she had come to think she wasn't capable of a really intense emotion, but that was what she was feeling now. It had never happened like this before. Her whole body seemed raw, as if she were haemorrhaging internally at the very idea of ever saying goodbye to Cass.
Cass backed and sat down on the ironwork bench. 'Then we'd better talk.'
She stayed where she was, eyes lowered, the curve of her face stubborn. 'Talk away.'
'Come and sit down!'
It wasn't so much a suggestion or request as an order, a
utocratically given, and Sian stayed at a distance, grimacing.
'I'm fine where I am. I've already had one hand-to-hand combat on that bench. I can do without a repeat performance.'
He laughed shortly. 'Don't worry, I'll keep my hands to myself, but I'm not sitting here while you stand, so please sit down!'
'Oh, well, if you say please,' Sian said, deliberately provocative, and took a seat at the far end of the bench.
He eyed her sideways. 'Are you always this irritating?'
'Always.'
'I feel quite sorry for myself,' Cass murmured, and her colour rose again, but she kept her face averted, hoping he wouldn't notice. 'Can we get on with this, please?'
He sat sideways, facing her, his arm sliding along the bench, but his hand didn't actually touch her, just lay nearby, his fingers tapping on the back of the ironwork.
'When my mother died it left my father very lonely, but he wouldn't marry again, partly for Magda's sake, because she was very jealous and clinging even then, and he was afraid of what it might do to her if he remarried. After a while, though, he decided she needed female companionship, other girls to talk to, older women looking after her, so he sent her to a good girls' school. She hated boarding, but Dad insisted, although he missed her and he was alone even more. While she was away at school, he visited Annette's home several times a week, sometimes more often. He thought of Annette as another daughter, in some ways. He used to say to me that I must marry her when she grew up, so that she could really be his daughter.'
Sian looked incredulously at him. 'You aren't going to tell me you proposed to her simply to please your father?'
He laughed. 'Nothing that simple, no, but in a way he planted the idea in my head years ago. Annette was just a little girl then. I didn't take him seriously, and I don't think he meant it seriously either. But when Dad died and Magda got married and Malcolm looked as if he might be going to get engaged too any day, I suddenly felt lonely, the way Dad had been when our mother died. There I was in that big house, and half the time I seemed to be alone. I was working very hard and I was often too tired to go out in the evenings. At weekends it wasn't so bad, but even if I did go out with a girl after work I caught myself yawning, and they didn't like that much.'
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