Captive of Desire
Page 21
Laddy gasped. It hadn’t even occurred to her. Her father’s daughter? Was she? “I’m sorry, Richard, I had no idea they could use anythi…” she began, but Richard went on,
“His voice is a powerful one, and they would love to silence it—especially because they must be very worried about what is in To Make Kafka Live. Please in future check with me before running with whatever information you’re getting. I’ll be straight with you, Laddy—Mischa is furious about it, and though he doesn’t say it, I think rather hurt. He thinks you…well, never mind. But if you don’t take care, you’ll have a very irate Mischa to deal with when he comes back.”
Her heart kicked. “He’s coming back?”
“He gives his last lecture on November tenth in Seattle, flies back to New York for the launch party the American publisher is giving on the twelfth, and then straight back to London for another publication party on the fourteenth. A very big party, indeed; the media are invited as well as the reviewers. I hope we’ll see you there?”
“Of course!” she said, managing to inject enthusiasm into her tone. “The fourteenth—is that the publication date here? For both of the books?”
“That’s right,” said Richard.
“They’ve worked fast, haven’t they?”
“We had excellent translators, and the Americans were very definite about coming out in time for the Christmas market.”
“Oh, of course,” Laddy said. “I imagine he’ll get a good sale in the States, with his lecture tour just finishing.”
“We think so,” Richard agreed. “Although it’s a pity the tour wasn’t better timed for publication. I’ve had review copies sent to you, of course; if you haven’t received them yet, you will soon.”
The package arrived at the newsroom late that afternoon. Laddy tore open the end and was just pulling the books out of the wrapper when her phone rang. It was Margaret Smiley.
“My car’s gone in for service again,” she said. “Could you give me a lift home tonight? I’ll be a bit late.”
“Sure,” Laddy said. “I’ll wait for you in the pub.”
“And I’ll buy you a drink,” a familiar voice said as she hung up, and she looked up to see John standing over her desk. She wrinkled her nose at him. “In that case I’ll have something very exotic and expensive,” she said.
John sighed. “If only you wanted something home-grown—me, for instance. Come on, love, before the barbarian hordes move in and there’s standing room only.”
She sat at a corner table while John stood at the bar to be served and, her curiosity getting the better of her, she pulled off the wrapper to look at Mischa’s books.
To Make Kafka Live was a large volume of over four hundred pages, its dust jacket navy with gold lettering and trim. “Mikhail Busnetsky” took one-third of the front cover. There was a photo of him on the back, taken very recently. His dark hair was longer than the panther pelt she remembered, and his face looked fuller and healthier.
“My dear Miss Penreith, good evening,” she heard, and before she could look up, someone sank into the chair opposite and the face of Pavel Snegov slithered into her view. “I see you are reading our friend’s latest contribution to Western fiction,” he said.
“I will be,” she agreed, smiling blandly against the sudden tension that always gripped her in the man’s presence. “Have you read them already?”
“For what they are worth,” he shrugged. “I am afraid you will think that your father’s trouble was scarcely worth it.”
Her stomach heaved.
“That would not be for me to judge,” she said. “The choice and the judgment were my father’s.”
“And you ask no questions?” His accent thickened slightly with irony.
“Not of my father,” Laddy returned with emphasis, wishing John would come back with their drinks or Margaret would arrive.
“Of whom, then? Of Mr. Busnetsky, perhaps?” Snegov insinuated. “Can that be why you so obviously bear him a grudge?”
Laddy had been consumed with doubt and remorse ever since her conversation with Richard. Had she really been giving aid to this vile man and his bosses with her pathetic attempts at revenge? Unthinkable, no matter how hurt she had been by Mischa, how much she now hated him. Unthinkable. And that Snegov should imagine he could speak to her as if--
She fixed her eyes on him for a long moment and then said, “I really shouldn’t be surprised at your suggestion that I would blame Mikhail Busnetsky for my father’s death, should I? That’s just the sort of unspeakable, irrational obscenity your government practices every day. Let me jog your possibly failing memory, Mr. Snegov: my father and Busnetsky were friends, and when my father was murdered, Mr. Busnetsky was behind the barbed wire of prison camp number thirty-six in Perm province. He could hardly answer any questions about my father’s death.”
“Here’s your drink at last,” John said, and Laddy had never been so grateful to hear his deep, thick tones. “One glass of exotic, imported white wine. ‘Lo, Pavel.”
Pavel Snegov nodded and slipped out of his seat, which John immediately sank into.
“I was just having a word with Gerry,” he said. “Did you know he’s going to Canada?”
“Gerald Parker?” she asked, sipping her wine and trying to forget that Pavel Snegov had ever spoken to her. “That’s a surprise. Where’s he going?”
“Canada, I told you, love.”
“Canada is a very big—”
“Toronto. He’s going to one of the Toronto papers. I told him you were Canadian and could tell him all about it.”
“John, do you know how many miles Toronto is from Vancouver? And I left there when I was ten,” she said, smiling.
“Yes, I know that, but Gerald doesn’t, you see,” he said conspiratorially.
They were laughing together when Margaret found them, and there was a quizzical look in her eyes as she glanced from one to the other.
“I didn’t know you were seeing John again,” she commented to Laddy as they drove home in the wintry dusk.
“Mmm. Since a few days ago,” Laddy said. “He told me he wrote to Mischa to explain that it was his fault about the interviews getting into the Herald. And we’re just being friendly, not romantic.”
Margaret absorbed that in silence.
“And how did he explain away taking the photo credit?” she asked at last.
“He said he never thought of it, he was so concerned about Mischa and the interviews. He said he handed the film over and the next thing he knew, he’d got credit for those pictures and they were all over the wire services.”
“And you believe him?” asked Margaret.
“Don’t you?” Laddy glanced over at Margaret in the erratic glare of the street lamps.
“I don’t know. I suppose it’s possible. But…well, the alternative is not something I’d want to believe about anyone, so let’s hope it’s the truth. When did he tell you this?”
“A couple of days ago,” Laddy said. “By the way, have you heard about Busnetsky coming back to London?”
“For the publication party! Yes, we’ve had the invitation and the advance copies of the books. And you know, Laddy, I’ve been wanting to ask you—Do you remember last winter around about February, those manuscripts I found? Were they by any chance—”
“Not for publication, Margaret: yes, they were,” Laddy answered quietly.
“I say!” exclaimed Margaret in happy awe.
At home Laddy carried the books into the kitchen and filled the kettle for tea. Then she settled down at the table and opened the larger volume, turning over the prelim pages one by one.
To Make Kafka Live read the title page, and she thought of how she had knelt in her bedroom—such a long time ago—and had seen that title in Russian and the name beneath—M. Busnetsky—and she could not suppress a little burst of excitement at the thought of the journey that manuscript had made in order to arrive back in her hands at this moment.
Truly we were born
to make Kafka live, she read on the next page, a quote attributed to another well-known dissident whom her father had admired.
The next page held the dedication. To the memory of Dr. Lewis Penreith—humanitarian, scholar, martyr, she read.
Chapter 15
Mischa Busnetsky arrived at Heathrow Airport on a Friday morning in the middle of November, and once again the media were out in force to greet him. This time, however, they awaited him in the airport VIP lounge, comfortably at their ease as they adjusted cameras, mikes and notebooks and waited for a man who would not, this time, be “uncooperative.”
Laddy took a chair close to the cluster of microphones that marked where Busnetsky would stand. She was wearing a black suit of a smartly casual cut over a soft white silk shirt. With her black hair falling thick around her shoulders and her pale face, the only colour came from her cherry-red lips and the red pin on her lapel. She leaned sideways in her chair, talking to her neighbour, her crossed legs extended, her hair falling away from her ear to expose a hoop of thin gold.
She had not gained back the weight she lost during the summer, and she had bought this suit to fit and emphasise her extreme slimness. She looked chic, smart, dramatic. As she intended to look. And she stood out against the casually dressed, motley group of her fellow journalists like a full-colour fashion model against a sepia background.
When at length they heard footsteps in the corridor outside, the members of the media adjusted their attention and turned expectantly to face the door, and the loud murmur that had filled the room died away. Only Laddy did not move from her negligent posture, except to reach for a long yellow pencil from the little table beside her and absently begin to toy with it.
The door to the lounge opened, and a man in a well-cut suit and open-necked shirt first stepped in, then turned to talk to someone still outside the door. Laddy gazed at his back curiously, for this was no airport official, yet she should have heard from the New York stringer if Busnetsky was being accompanied by the British or American Secret Service. Maybe he had hired a bodyguard.
Very tall, with broad muscular shoulders, a flat waist, lean hips and strong thighs, and the physical air of a man who feared no one, the man was the sort to set old ladies pleasurably a-twitter and scare off potential troublemakers with a glance. Thick dark hair curled attractively over the collar of his open-necked shirt, and his skin was deeply tanned.
He was intensely masculine, entirely physical and somehow dangerous, and with a sudden light-headedness, Laddy discovered what a pleasure it was to watch him. She sat half smiling, her lips faintly parted, and it seemed to her that time slowed to a halt. During that altered time she could stare at him, feeling his raw, animal magnetism like a physical presence around her, feeling herself hypnotised. She could not have torn her eyes away from him if Mischa Busnetsky had come into the room at that moment arm in arm with Stalin.
When he turned back into the room, Laddy felt herself slowly and deliberately uncross and recross her legs, the smooth nylon of her stockings making a sensuous slithering noise that she thought the whole world must hear.
The man’s motion was briefly checked, and as if already aware of her, he turned his head a little and his black gaze slanted along her body from the tips of her smart stilettos, over the long, elegantly poised legs, over tilted hips, over waist and breasts and throat. As he reached her mouth and eyes, he turned to face her. Full face he looked even tougher, his mouth sensuous, the tanned flesh firm over hard cheekbones, the dark eyes....
The sound of the pencil breaking between Laddy’s hands was like a gunshot in the silence. Time abruptly returned to normal, and the man who was Mischa Busnetsky moved to stand behind the microphones amid a crazy babble of voices. No one in the room had noticed anything—in real time only seconds had passed since the door opened.
Laddy controlled her physical trembling by a huge effort of will, clutching the two halves of the pencil, her jaw tight.
Mischa Busnetsky, the man whom she hated with a cold passion she had never experienced for any other person, was now the most frighteningly attractive man she had seen in the whole course of her life. While he stood commandingly behind the microphones and answered questions from her colleagues, Laddy fought desperately against the clamour in her blood and forced herself to watch him.
He answered questions for fifteen minutes, and every time his gaze brushed over her, Laddy steeled her own gaze to watchful indifference against the indefinable emotion in his glance. She began to feel threatened, as though some danger that she could not understand faced her, and she had no defence.
At the conclusion of the session, Mischa Busnetsky left the room and everyone around her burst into sound and motion. Laddy stood up shakily, responding to greetings mechanically as she picked up her coat. She was stuffing her notebook into her handbag when she became aware of a man standing beside her.
“Miss Penreith, would you come with me, please?” he murmured, flicking a glance at the milling journalists as if hoping they wouldn’t overhear.
Startled, Laddy nodded and moved after him without question. He led her out of the room and down the corridor before she had mustered her presence of mind.
“What’s this ab--?” she began, but he opened a door for her to pass through, and closed it behind her, and she found herself in a small room furnished as an office.
Alone with the dark and dangerous man who stood in front of a window that looked out onto a damp, grey London morning and a silver jet idling in the distance.
For a second she was silent with shock, or maybe some tiny, treacherous sliver of hope—but then she saw his face, and it was as hard and cold and merciless as Siberia itself. Bile rose in the back of her throat, and the memory of Marcia Miller’s letter cut her wide open.
She almost gagged. She couldn’t talk to him now, she was too vulnerable, she would end up screaming the rush of hurting, hating anger that flooded her. She would be weak when she needed to be strong. Laddy whirled back towards the door, but Mischa moved first. A dark hand closed hard on her arm above the elbow.
The first time he had touched her in six months.
She mustn’t look at him. Her back to him, head high, she said woodenly, “Let go of me.”
“No,” Mischa said softly, and one word was enough to shoot panic into every cell.
“Let me go,” she repeated, after a dizzy moment when she thought she might fall. “Or do you want me to start screaming?”
“Yes,” he said. “Yes, I want you to start screaming. Then I would have an excuse to hit you.”
That brought her around to confront him, but he didn’t release her arm, and now they were face to face, and unbearably close. Her blood roared in her ears.
Struggling for control, she tilted her chin to look into his eyes, and said through her teeth, “I’m looking for an excuse to hit you, too, so take your hand off me!”
For an answer he moved to imprison her other arm and, with an effortless little jerk, pulled her a small step closer. Now there were mere inches between her chest and his, her only shield the bag and coat she held. Laddy breathed hoarsely.
“You—” she began.
“Shut up,” he said, and threaded through his tone and behind his eyes she sensed fire. She looked down at the powerful hands that gripped her arms and up again at the broad chest that was so suffocatingly close, and she felt suddenly that her bones would be like matchsticks in his hands.
“What do you want from me?” she demanded.
Contempt stretched the corners of his mouth into a humourless smile. “You think I want from you? Do you think you have something to offer?”
“To you? No, believe me!” she said. “You get nothing from me anymore.”
“I do believe you,” he said. “Nothing—no honour, no integrity, no justice.”
She gasped as if with a blow. “Me?” she repeated, almost speechless. “I have no justice, no integrity? How dare you say that to me! Do you remember what you—?”
“No,” Laddy admitted, outrage swamping all thought of remorse or apology for the unintended consequences of her actions. “That I call getting my own back.” With quick violence she wrenched out of his grasp and stepped back from him, her coat and bag clutched to her chest. “Could it possibly surprise you? You lied, you used me, you never meant one word you said, and now you talk about—”
His eyes blazed, and as if distracted from what he meant to say, he abruptly changed tactic. “No,” he interrupted. “Do not forget—this I said, and I meant it.” And he bent his head and his mouth brushed the side of her throat, and a white-hot flame followed its path. Every blood vessel in her sang with hunger, every cell yearned with memory.
Panic choked her. Whirling, she reached to open the door. But his instinct for speed was a hawk’s. He grasped her arm and pulled her around so that coat and bag flew from her grasp. As her back came up against the door, Mischa’s hands closed on her arms again, and his body came up against hers.
Then, oddly, after that scuffling flurry of activity, there was a moment of perfect stillness. Her heart pounded in hollow thuds like a huge, slow drum, and the whole room shook with the sound.
“You do not like to be reminded of that,” he stated flatly. “Why?”
“I can’t bear you to touch me!” she said.
His eyes narrowed. “No, Lady, tell me no such lies. In there, you invited me,” he said, his head jerking in the vague direction of the VIP lounge where the press meeting had taken place.
“I did not!”
“Oh, yes,” he said, and his aura of dangerous strength seemed to send out sparks. Her heart would not stop pounding, and she pushed once futilely to make him stand away from her. He didn’t move. “I did not imagine those signals, do you think me a fool?”