Stranger in the Night

by Charlotte Lamb

  'Luke's a businessman, but he's very interested in the theatre,' Rowena told Macey, looking at him in surprise as she recognised that Macey was being difficult.

  'My firm make steel components,' Luke said.

  'How fascinating,' Macey drawled icily.

  Rowena gave a high, slightly artificial peal of laughter. 'Don't be naughty, Macey.' Her offended glance warned him to be more pleasant and when his face stayed immovable she glanced at Clare. 'I'd forgotten you, my dear. Luke, this is Clare Barry.'

  Clare slowly, tensely moved forward, her stomach churning with fear and shock. Luke Murry's grey eyes moved over her smilingly. He held out his hand and as she tremblingly put her own into his grasp one thought ran round and round her head.

  He didn't remember her.

  'I recognised you, of course,' he said, still holding her hand. The grey eyes glinted in a mockery she remembered clearly. 'New York was covered with posters of you last year. One couldn't drive a block without seeing that beautiful face.'

  She somehow found the strength to pretend light laughter. 'What a shame!'

  'Oh, I missed them when they came down,' he told her, one brow flickering. 'You brightened the mornings for me.'

  'How nice,' she said, fluttering her lashes at him and deftly detaching her hand from his possession. Her mind was dissolving in sensations of sheer loathing. She had to fight a desire to rub her hand against her dress to remove all taint of his fingers. He didn't recognise her at all, except as the star of that film. She could scarcely believe it. The grey eyes held nothing but charming flattery, the accustomed sexual invitation of a man who likes women and is usually liked by them.

  'What was it like shooting the film out in the desert? Not very comfortable, I imagine.' He watched her as he asked, smiling.

  'Not very,' Clare agreed. She lifted her bright golden head and gave him the benefit of her most brilliant, most artificial smile. 'Sand in everything you ate, like a picnic on the beach. Flies everywhere. Make-up running, and people always in a temper because it was so hot. I was always thirsty and always feeling grubby. I wouldn't want to work in those conditions again.'

  She was talking in a light, brittle voice which sounded as if it might snap at any moment. Macey was staring fixedly at her, and she carefully kept her eyes averted from him because Macey was too quick, too clever, too dangerous. She wasn't sure what he had already noticed, but she knew he had noticed something. She did not want him to get too much information from her face. Her eyes would give her away if Macey got the chance to see them.

  'It was a good film,' said Luke Murry. She had her eyes on his mouth, forcing down sickness because the movements of his warm, hard lips reminded her too vividly of the feel of them against her own, the incredible and destructive effect they had had on her that night.

  She had been kissed since, not very often in private, and never with any pleasure. Looking at his mouth as he spoke she hurriedly looked away, because her pulses were pounding stormily and she couldn't bear to remember how it had felt.

  He didn't even remember, she reminded herself.

  For nine years he had scarred her life, and he had forgotten it ever happened. She had been one of a long procession passing through his bed; a cheap little conquest picked up at a party who hadn't been as easy as he had expected. He probably hadn't even remembered who he had taken to bed that night. When he woke up in the morning alone, perhaps he hadn't spared a thought for what had happened the night before. She had been less than nothing to him, yet he had been the formative experience of her whole life.

  There was a peculiar silence.

  She looked up, her skin flushing. Everyone was staring at her. Glancing into Luke Murry's eyes she saw amusement and cynical irritation in them, and belatedly she realised that he had asked her a question and was waiting for an answer.

  Macey answered for her, his voice light and cool. 'She said he would eat garlic before their big love scenes.'

  Everyone laughed. Luke Murry still watched her, his mouth hard. He wasn't used to having women's attention wander while he was talking to them. He didn't like it.

  'You didn't tell him that? Good heavens, his ego will never recover!' Ray spoke brightly and Luke turned to look at her, his black brows flickering in a movement Clare remembered.

  She remembered everything, she realised. There wasn't a single thing about him she had not absorbed and retained.

  She had known Macey so well for so long, yet in one night Luke Murry had stamped his image so profoundly on her memory that even the fleeting expressions of his face seemed more deeply familiar to her than anything about Macey.

  She looked away and found herself facing Macey at that moment. She wished she hadn't looked in his direction. His eyes were hard and probing and he was frowning slightly. His mouth was straight and cold, a hard line which did not soften as he stared at her.

  He moved closer to her and in an instinctive attempt to distract him she ran her hand through his arm, hoping he would not be able to feel how it trembled or how cold her skin was, giving him a quick, upwards smile as she leaned against him.

  Macey did not smile back, but his arm closed on her hand, pressing it against him. He glanced down and at this angle she saw a hardness in the line of jaw and cheekbone. His blue eyes had a harsh light she had never seen in them before. They were unfamiliar to her. She did not know them. Staring at him, she could not imagine why she had ever thought she saw anything of Luke Murry in Macey. There wasn't even the slightest resemblance. Macey would never be handsome. His face was strong and compelling rather than handsome; there was no shadow of sensuality in it.

  She knew Macey was trying to work out exactly why she had reacted like that to the sight of Luke Murry. He had watched with fixed intensity as she shook hands with the other man and he must have realised that Luke, at least, had shown no sign of recognition. Macey was puzzled and he wouldn't give up until he knew what had made her go white and tremble at the sight of Luke.

  She swallowed, looking away. She couldn't bear to have Macey know. He must not find out. She had to act like mad to make him think he had imagined it all.

  Someone moved towards them and Macey looked at the newcomer with a warm smile. 'Hallo, Kate. How are you?'

  Clare glanced towards the other woman in surprise and Macey looked down at her again. 'You haven't met Kate, have you? She's Rowena's secretary. Kate, this is Clare Barry.'

  Kate offered her hand, her pale eyes pleasant. She was a woman in her early forties; thin, rather self-effacing in dress yet with clear intelligence in her eyes and the faintest gleam of a humour not openly expressed.

  'Kate's been with Rowena for years,' Macey told her.

  'Remarkable stamina,' commented Clare, meeting Kate's eyes with a quick smile.

  Macey threw a glance over his shoulder, but Rowena was talking loudly with graceful gestures while the others in the room stood around her laughing. Clare's remark had not been heard.

  'She's a phenomenon,' Kate said with an amused little smile, shaking her head. 'I love working for her. I could earn more and have a much easier life working for some vast organisation, but even in her toughest moods Rowena is still a genius, and I wouldn't have missed a day of it.'

  'I can imagine,' said Clare. 'I'd still require danger money if I worked for her.'

  'For God's sake, Clare!' Macey muttered.

  She was in a reckless mood. She laughed at him, her green eyes bright and dancing. 'She won't hear me.'

  They all paused, listening as the bell-like voice rang out behind them. Everyone around Rowena laughed obediently as she paused. Clare picked out another famous name from what Rowena said next, and wondered what that eminent actress would say if she could hear what Rowena was saying about her. Outrage would have been a mild reaction, she thought, suppressing a smile. Rowena was not sparing her.

  'He had put vodka in the lemonade,' Rowena said piercingly, 'and by the third act she was barely able to walk—not that it made much difference. Dr
unk or sober, she couldn't act her way out of a paper bag.'

  Kate met Clare's eyes. 'Totally untrue, of course, but funny.' She looked at Macey. 'Have you brought your play with you?'

  He grinned at her. 'Of course. I won't ask how she's viewing the idea.'

  'I wouldn't tell you if you did!'

  'I'm aware of that,' he returned, mocking her.

  'Or he'd ask,' Clare said sweetly.

  Macey gave her a threatening look and Kate laughed.

  'And I'm aware of that! I'm used to dealing with unscrupulous egotists.'

  'That puts you in your place,' Clare informed Macey, her smile teasing.

  Kate moved away, smiling, and Macey looked into Clare's green eyes with a twisted little smile. 'One day I'll put you in your place,' he muttered before turning away.

  She laughed, but a second later wondered exactly what he had meant. She had a feeling that that had been one of Macey's two-edged lines.

  The dinner table was dominated by Rowena's regal presence. She held them all, talking in her beautiful, sonorous voice and refusing to let anyone stray from the circle of her audience. Clare discovered that when the barbed thrust of her cruel wit came, it was delivered in a beautifully modulated voice which somehow sharpened the cut of the blow. Rowena used her voice as a weapon and it was fatally effective.

  Macey listened and laughed and looked as though the only thought in his head was of Rowena. Clare knew it wasn't the case. She could feel his attention even when he wasn't looking at her. Macey sent out thought waves and Clare received them loud and clear.

  He was curious, alert, busy putting two and two together and making God knew what. Quick, clever, dangerous Macey, Clare thought, drinking her wine with her eyes bent on her plate. She was going to have to guard her tongue. He could see through brick walls. She didn't want him so much as guessing at the truth.

  Macey had said to her once: 'It's the context that matters.' He had been talking about one of his ambiguous lines. Clare had complained that she didn't follow it. 'What does it mean?' she had demanded, and Macey had told her it was not so much what was said as how and why.

  That was how Clare felt about the night she had spent with Luke Murry. It was not so much what he had done to her, but how and why. If some genuine emotion had driven him, the searing brand would never have burnt her spirit. He had treated her like a little tramp, and she had behaved like one. It didn't help to remind herself that she had been very young and very innocent, that she wasn't accustomed to drink and that she had been alone in a vast city which, she found strange and disorientating.

  She couldn't shrug off what had happened. He had given her an image of herself which had horrified, scarred, disgusted her.

  She had determined never to let such a thing happen to her again. Whatever the cost in emotional emptiness, she had determined never to let a man get too close to her again. She wasn't ending up like the sad flotsam of her profession, drifting with the tide, sinking to the cold and lonely depths without a hand lifted to save them.

  Ever since that night, the very idea of a man touching her had made her shudder in sick rejection.

  Eating the bland lemon mousse which ended the meal, she decided she was relieved Luke Murry didn't remember her. It might make her humiliation worse, but at least he would never be able to tell anyone. She wouldn't have to endure the knowledge that Luke Murry could look at her and remember her in his arms that night.

  Her lashes lowered, she flicked a glance along the table to where he sat and found him watching her. She felt a cold shiver as she met the hard glint of the grey eyes.

  He didn't remember, did he?

  He wasn't an actor. He surely couldn't have been clever enough to disguise recognition in the split second between when their eyes met and when he spoke so casually and politely?

  The very thought that Luke Murry did remember and was hiding it made her feel so ill she could barely bring herself to drink the strong coffee which arrived a moment later.

  After dinner they all sat around talking while Ray took a seat at the piano and played some pieces of light operetta, gay waltz tunes to which her soft touch gave a muted nostalgia.

  Rowena tackled Murry about the new play. Playful, slightly coy, she shook her head over the very idea that she should play such a part. 'Do you see me in it? Do you really, Macey?'

  'She's pathetic,' said Macey, wheedling her silkily, his smile a miracle of flattery. 'A broken, wicked old thing, but you would have the audience in tears by the end of the play.'

  'She sounds appalling,' said Rowena, not displeased by the idea of making an audience weep. 'A strident old hag. Is that how you see me? I'm not noted for being strident, am I? I won't dispute that I'm an old hag.' Her laughter indicated that she did not believe a word of what she was saying.

  'You can become anything you want to become,' Macey told her, smiling at her with the deep warmth which drew people to him whenever they saw him. 'Nobody would ever try to typecast you, Rowena.'

  Rowena liked that. 'You think I could do it?' She moved her hands in a fluttering, silly way, her face suddenly stupid and vulgar yet pathetic, all her cold intelligence submerging. 'You think I could do the part? I don't know. I really don't know.'

  'You're stupendous,' said Macey, laughing. 'That's exactly how I see her. You see, you don't even need make-up. You're a chameleon.'

  It all fell away, dropping off like a discarded snake-skin, and Clare knew she had seen the first tentative groundwork of a performance. Rowena gave Macey a pleased little grin, oddly childlike and conspiratorial.

  'I don't like long runs, though, my dear. Too tiring at my age. That's why I prefer revivals. I already know the words and they don't run too long. Three months is the most I can stand.'

  'You'll be doing something new,' Macey agreed. 'I realise it will be a risk for you. I can understand it if you feel you don't want to work yourself to death, stretch yourself to the point of exhaustion.'

  Rowena eyed him admiringly. 'Oh, you're quite frightening! Too clever. The right words every time. How can I resist a challenge like that?' She looked at her husband. 'What do you think, Ted? I'm tempted, I think I'm tempted.'

  'You'll do it if you want to,' Ted Kilby said wryly. 'Don't pretend to ask my opinion. You know you never listen to a word I say.'

  'I listen to what everybody says,' said Rowena, her hand sketching a circle and her eyes smiling at them all.

  'And then you do just exactly what you want to do,' Ted finished for her.

  Rowena gave him a long look, then turned to Macey. 'I'll read it. I can't say fairer than that, can I, Macey?'

  'That's all I ask,' Macey said blandly.

  They regarded each other with smiling, distrustful faces. 'Oh, yes,' Rowena said softly. 'You're clever and I don't trust you an inch.'

  Rising to her feet, she crossed to the piano. 'Shall we have some Lehar? That won't bore everybody?' She didn't wait to be answered, flicking over the music on the piano.

  Macey patted the seat next to him and Clare went over to sit beside him. 'She's biting,' he whispered, his eyes amused.

  'And she's right about you,' Clare returned. 'You are clever and you can't be trusted an inch.'

  Macey's eyes shot to her face. 'I know what Rowena's afraid of,' he drawled. 'But what's scaring you, Clare?'

  She looked away, flushing, and saw the gleaming toecaps of Luke Murry's black shoes close behind them. He was standing with a glass in his hand and he was watching her and Macey. Clare felt a shiver run down her spine.

  It was hard to believe that she was actually sitting here in a room with him, breathing the same air, without showing a sign of the sickness which rose in her throat every time she glanced in his direction.

  Rowena was singing a cleverly fudged little song, blurring the notes because she couldn't hold them any more, yet with such clever technique that one was left with the impression that she could still sing. Ray's playing helped her, covering her lapses, rising to hide them. They had
obviously worked out a routine.

  Everyone clapped and Rowena gave them that satisfied little smile which made her somehow lovable. She had the childlike vanity of the very old combined with the love of applause which a life on the stage had given her.

  'Macey, have you brought your play with you?' she asked a few moments later.

  He nodded. 'It's in the car.'

  'Get it, get it. I can't wait to read it. I shall read it in bed before I go to sleep. I always go to bed at eleven and it's five to now.'

  Macey and Rowena went out to fetch the play. Clare watched Ted Kilby join Ray at the piano and suddenly began to feel nervous. She looked round to find Kate, and as she did so, Luke Murry sat down beside her, stretching his long legs with a lazy sigh.

  'I wondered when I was going to get the chance,' he said, his eyes smiling down into her own.

  Clare couldn't answer; her throat was too hot. She managed to lift her eyebrows in pretended surprise and Luke Murry laughed.

  'Don't pretend you didn't know I've been trying to get you to myself all evening!'

  The alarm she felt had become a nervous tension which was making her skin chill.

  She was on a rack of doubt. Did he remember? Was he playing a game, a cat-and-mouse game which would end when he tired of it?

  'Janson will be back in a minute,' he murmured. 'We must be quick. Have lunch with me tomorrow.'

  Clare threw him a searching look. His face told her nothing. He was smiling at her, his grey eyes revealing no hint which could confirm or deny what she dreaded.

  'I'm afraid—' she began, and he broke in on her stammered excuse with a smile which curled his lips and gave his handsome face that wry familiar mockery.

  'Don't say no. I insist.'

  For a moment her heart thudded too harshly for her to answer. She stared, seeing that charm displayed for her again, the laughter lines at the corners of eye and mouth, the sensual smiling amusement.

  Ted Kilby was playing ragtime, his strong wide hands deft and rhythmic, the heavy beat thudding beneath the melody.

  Luke Murry turned to look at him. 'I love ragtime,' he said, giving Clare a sideways smile. 'Don't you?'