When she realised what he meant she bit her lip. “That wasn’t for you,” she snapped. Mischa laughed.
“It was for me,” he said.
“No!” she protested, for the heat coming off him was nearly overwhelming and she didn’t want him to think there was a breach in her defences. “I didn’t even recogni—”
That was a mistake. She broke off, but too late.
“You didn’t recognise me?”
“Just for a second,” she admitted unwillingly.
“You were looking like that at a stranger?” Understanding dawned in his eyes. “Do you look like that at every strange man in your path?”
“No, I do not!” she snapped. “At least....”
“No, I see.” He nodded, as if he really did see something. “You wouldn’t have given me such a look, if you had known who I was, isn’t it? The cold fire that followed was what you had waiting for me.”
“And it’s all you’ll ever get from me,” she declared, and struggled to dislodge his grip. “I hate you! And if you don’t know why, you—”
Something flashed in his eyes, and Laddy fell silent, gazing into his face, watching some decision form. Then he pulled her closer, and one arm encircled her back, hard and ungiving, while his right hand came up and half-gently cupped her neck. His thumb forced her chin up.
“You hate me?” he queried, with interest. “You hate this touch of my hand, my body?”
She felt tormented almost past coping. “Yes! Yes!” she declared wildly. Mischa turned her chin effortlessly with a strong, inescapable hand, and bent his head, and then his mouth trailed electric heat down the side of her throat again.
“Stop it!”
“This is torture to you?” he asked huskily as his lips explored the sensitive places he had discovered six long months ago, and Laddy bit her blood red lip and tried to hold onto sanity.
“Tell me,” he commanded in a hoarse whisper, lifting his mouth at last and staring down at her.
If he kissed her mouth, she would go mad. “Stop it!” she cried. “Let me go!”
“I want you to tell me that this is hateful to you,” he persisted, and both hands moved up to encircle her head as his body pressed her immobile against the door.
She closed her eyes against the sight of that sensuous mouth, his searching dark eyes. “I loathe you,” she said hoarsely, hardly knowing whether it was true or not. “When you touch me I want to die. Let go of me.”
“In a moment,” he said. “First I want you to experience exactly how much you hate me, so that you will be motivated to avoid it. Remember, in future, how much you dislike this.”
His head came down and his mouth was savage on her own, passionate, thrusting, wild, taking a pleasure from her that she had learned from him long ago was only a foretaste of what he wanted to take from her. She felt the urgency of that desire in his body then, and as an ungovernable answering clamour began in her, he lifted his mouth again.
“Remember this,” he said hoarsely, “when you are tempted again to write your subtle lies about me in your newspaper, my Lady. You will do well to remember.”
“What do you mean?” Laddy demanded, in a shaking voice. She was terrified of him now, of the power his touch had over her. Because she wanted to push herself into his arms and beg him again to love her, as if nothing had happened, that letter had never been sent. His black eyes narrowed as he watched her face, sensed her body’s response, maybe. How humiliating if he knew….
“I mean that I have the means of revenge and that I will use it if you write any more lies about me.”
“What are you talking about?” she almost shouted.
“I merely tell you that every time you lie about me or what I do in print, every time you give my enemies the ammunition that is so helpful to them, those monsters who have purchased your soul—wherever you are, that night you will wish that you had not.”
She gasped as her blood chilled down to the bone. “Are you threatening to rape me?”
He eyes narrowed at her and he shook his head in lazy contempt. “I have not forgotten the way you looked at me before you recognised me, Lady. I have not forgotten the language of your body. Of course I will not rape you. I will only make you forget that the man who touches you is the man you have decided to hate. You will not fight me.”
His thumb brushed her lower lip and she shivered. “I will never forget that you are the man I hate.”
Her words were half drowned by the roar of the silver jet on the distant runway. Rain spattered the broad expanse of glass. Everything was grey. Somewhere outside lights flickered to life, but inside the room grew darker.
“Shall I prove that you are wrong?” Mischa asked. She could hardly see his expression now. “Do you provoke me to that?”
“Take your hands off me!” she said, using rage to disguise her panic. “Just get away from me and don’t touch me ever again!”
He released her and stood back. “That is up to you,” he said, as she stood glaring at him, her breasts heaving.
She said, “I can’t believe I was ever so deluded as to think I loved you. You’re the most hateful, vile man who ever existed.”
“And you are a woman without honour,” Mischa returned flatly. “Therefore, I deal with you in a manner without honour. Remember what I said.”
She stared at him, her mind stunned and shaken with the knowledge that he could make good on his threat. He could make her forget. She would despise herself afterwards, but she knew he could do it. Laddy bent to collect her scattered belongings and, clutching them to her chest, wrenched open the door and stumbled out.
* * *
“Harry,” Laddy said, with a note of desperation in her voice, “Do you mind if I give the Busnetsky launch a miss? Claire’s going herself, and I’m tired.” Claire was the Books editor, but most papers would be sending a political reporter along as well.
A fat cigarette hung out of the corner of Harry’s mouth and he jotted a note with one hand and reached for the phone with the other. He dropped his pencil, took the cigarette out of his mouth, exhaled on a greeting into the phone all the while fixing his eyes on Laddy. He seemed to be only half listening to the voice on the other end of the phone, but that was one of Harry’s deceptive tricks: Laddy knew he wasn’t missing anything important.
He spoke briefly into the phone, hung up and, half turning his head, called out something to his deputy editor—all without removing his speculative eyes from her face.
“You know, dear girl,” he said, taking a long drag on his cigarette and exhaling, “in the past few months you’ve been looking less and less like an underpaid, dedicated reporter and more and more like a mannequin in a Harrods window. If you’re not careful I’ll have someone in the executive offices telling me you’re overpaid. Why are you tired of Busnetsky?”
It was the kind of thing Harry could always do to her—snap something at her that put her on the back foot. But this time she counted to three and resisted the compulsion to rush into explanations.
“I didn’t say I was tired of Busnetsky, but I do think he’s said everything of interest he’s going to say. It’ll be straightforward book promotion now, don’t you think?” she said.
“He hasn’t said anything on this side of the Atlantic for nearly six months,” Harry pointed out. “Give him a chance. This book of his is going to stir things up, you can be sure. A mere six months ago you were begging me for the assignment, and Brian wasn’t happy when you got it.” He butted his cigarette, exhaling a stream of grey.
She drew a breath, but Harry continued calmly, “He’s still news, Laddy. You’re going to thank me for this. There’s more to come, I can smell it.”
In a judgement of that nature, Harry was rarely wrong. Laddy sank into the chair at her desk and gazed blindly at the battered typewriter in front of her that should have been replaced long ago. Her breathing felt laboured, as though something were sitting on her chest. She didn’t want to attend the publication party
tonight. She didn’t want to see Mischa again.
Woodenly she drew the afternoon edition of the Herald towards her and gazed down at Bill Hazzard’s photo of Mischa Busnetsky.
A thick shock of black hair fell over his right eye, and he was listening closely to someone, an amused half smile stretching one half of his wide mouth. The open shirt collar framed his strong neck, and his broad shoulders disappeared out of the photo. He looked powerful. He looked like a king-maker. He looked like a man who kept his word. Laddy’s eyes flicked to the copy under the photo.
“Looking very much more the jet-setting author than the recently released Soviet dissident and exile, Mikhail Busnetsky arrived in London today to promote sales of his latest books....”
She had switched her angle, but she still had him in her sights. She thought it would pass under the Kremlin’s radar, but Mischa himself wouldn’t miss it, and what if he didn’t think so?
Laddy glanced at her watch and sucked in her breath. Four-thirty already. The cocktail party that the publisher was throwing began at five. She would arrive early and leave early, but something told her that such a tactic would not save her if Mischa Busnetsky had been angered by that article….
“Coming for a drink tonight, love?” John’s voice broke into her reverie, and she surfaced with a little shake of her head and blinked at him.
“What? Oh, no, John, I can’t. I’ve got to drop in on a publication party for Mikhail Busnetsky tonight.”
With a characteristic motion of his hand and his head, John tossed back his blond hair and stood looking down at her.
“I thought you’d done a story on him once already today.”
“You noticed. I still have to go to this thing tonight; I can’t get out of it.”
“Have you tried?” John asked.
“Tried what?”
“To get out of the assignment.”
“This is my job, John,” she said coldly, standing up. “And it’s got nothing to do with you. Excuse me. I want to get there early and get away.”
“Shall I come with you, love?” John asked with a sudden change of tactic. With her coat and bag in her hands, Laddy paused.
John had a grudge against Mischa. His presence might offer protection—or between them they might start something that would only embarrass her, and she had no doubt of Mischa’s coming out on top.
Besides, she preferred to fight her own battles.
“Thanks, but I won’t be there more than half an hour. And then I’m going straight home,” she added, forestalling him, “to clean house and do some laundry.”
“How about a show tomorrow night?” John asked. “I can get tickets for a musical. No strings.”
She needed something to take Mischa off her mind. “All right,” she agreed reluctantly, hoping that she wasn’t creating another problem. “Come around seven for a drink first!” she called, and headed across the newsroom to the door.
* * *
The launch took place in a hotel whose windows overlooked Hyde Park, and when Laddy was shown into the already well-populated reception room shortly after five o’clock, Pavel Nikolaivich Snegov was directly in her line of sight across the room. He was alone and he saluted her, and the first germ of an idea sprouted in her mind. With a smile that was friendlier than any she had previously given him, she collected a drink from an offered tray and crossed to Snegov’s side.
“Good afternoon,” she said. “I see that your distaste for his literature has not kept you away.”
Still smiling, she let her glance roam. Mischa was standing several yards away chatting with a few of her colleagues.
“In the West,” Pavel Snegov riposted, “one learns the advantages of social pragmatism.” It was said with dry self-deprecation, as though he were performing a necessary ritual, and the unexpectedness of it—it was something she had not thought Pavel Snegov capable of—made her laugh aloud. Her laughter fell into one of those sudden silences that sometimes occur in groups, and several people glanced her way. Mischa’s attention did not obviously waver from the group around him. But she knew from the tightening of his jaw that he knew the laughter was hers and with whom she was laughing. Laddy smiled grimly to herself, and continued in conversation with Snegov until she could stand it no more and moved closer to the growing group around Mischa Busnetsky.
The discussion was about To Make Kafka Live and Love of a Lady, and his audience was by no means restricted to literary reviewers. And as the circle increased in size, the conversation took on a more formal air. At length someone asked,
“Mr. Busnetsky, I’m wondering how you managed to bring your manuscripts out of the Soviet Union with you.”
Mischa laughed, his handsome head flung back. “No exile brings his manuscripts with him out of the Soviet Union,” he said. “My manuscripts were smuggled out of Russia while I was in prison.”
“You dedicated To Make Kafka Live to Dr. Lewis Penreith, who published some of your earlier work. Did he bring them out?” another reporter asked.
Someone protested, “Lewis Penreith has been dead nearly four years.”
“Dr. Penreith obtained these two manuscripts and brought them to the West before he died,” Mischa’s deep, commanding voice said, and it seemed to Laddy that there was an odd little silence, as though everyone in the room paused for breath at the same time. Or maybe it was just that she went deaf with anxiety for what might come next.
“So the manuscripts have been here in the West for several years at least?” prodded Larry Hague, a reporter who was well experienced in Soviet affairs. “Why weren’t the books published earlier, Mr. Busnetsky?”
“Dr. Penreith died very soon after he had obtained the manuscripts. They were not found again until well after his death—in fact, they were discovered only a few months before my exile,” Mischa said, and by now he was the only calm one in the room.
“You call Dr. Penreith a martyr in the dedication of your book, Mr. Busnetsky. He was killed in a hit and run. Do you have any comment about that?”
“A martyr is a person who dies for a cause. We all know what Dr. Penreith’s cause was,” Mischa replied, and Laddy felt the blood draining from her face. What could she do to stop him saying what he was going to say?
“So he died shortly after obtaining these two manuscripts?” Larry Hague headed straight for deep waters. “Do you feel there was a direct connection between the two events?”
Mischa gazed at him steadily. So in control, Laddy thought, and so very different from the man who had had his first meeting with the Western press at Heathrow only six months before. Half-unconsciously, she pushed closer to him, trying to catch his eye.
“Anyone who does not see a connection between Dr. Penreith’s work publishing Soviet dissident writers and the manner in which he met his death doesn’t know the Kremlin,” Mischa said, and the crowd erupted with a babble of questions from a dozen different directions.
A woman’s voice cut through the noise. “Who found the manuscripts?”
For a moment, he hesitated over the answer. His glance brushed fleetingly over Laddy, who stood a few feet away, staring at him, certain what was coming next and knowing herself powerless to prevent him.
“I understand it was Dr. Penreith’s daughter,” Mischa said.
It almost went by. Someone was already asking another question. But there were more than a few people in the group who knew whose daughter Laddy was. One by one, their faces frowning in perplexity, they turned to look at her, and as they did so, their neighbours also turned. Within a minute, though it seemed longer to Laddy, every head in the circle had turned, and every eye was on her.
Over the bank of amazed and fascinated faces, at last her eyes met Mischa’s. He sketched her a mocking salute.
“Anything to promote sales of my latest books,” he said, and now that she was the only person to see, his eyes glittered with anger.
Chapter 16
At ten-thirty that night the front doorbell rang. Laddy, stretche
d out in the sitting room with a book, stiffened and sat up, her heart beginning to pound. It couldn’t be! He couldn’t have meant it!
She moved into the hall and quietly opened the door of her flat onto the communal front hall. Then she stood a moment without breathing while the doorbell pealed again.
“Who is it?” she called.
“It’s Margaret, dear. I’ve forgotten my keys,” she heard, and exhaling with relief, Laddy pulled open the heavy front door. Margaret smiled apologetically at her. “I’m sorry, Laddy, I took the wrong set of keys. I’ve been standing here for ten minutes ringing our bell, but you know what Ben’s like—he must be sound asleep. Brr! I’m nearly frozen. Did I wake you?”
“No,” Laddy smiled. “I was just reading.”
They chatted in the hall for a moment and then Margaret said good-night and unlocked the door that led upstairs into the Smileys’ flat. Moving back into the sitting room lighted by a soft lamp and fire glow, Laddy flung herself onto the sofa and picked up To Make Kafka Live again. Her heart was still beating with the fright she had had. She was a collection of nerves tonight.
The book was absorbing and eye-opening on the subject of Soviet methods. And whatever she thought of the author personally, she couldn’t help a little twist of anxiety about what the Kremlin’s reaction would be.
Laddy had no idea how long she had been reading when she heard Margaret’s footsteps coming down the stairs again, but the friendly fire she had built had nearly died without her noticing. It was late for Margaret to want a chat, but Laddy hoped that was her intention. She needed to talk to someone to dispel the cloud of unease that had settled over her.
“Come on in!” she called when the knock sounded, and let the open book drop to rest on her stomach.
“Can’t sleep?” she called as her hall door opened and shut. “I hope you’re looking for cocoa and a long chat.”
In the same moment that she became aware of the sound of footsteps going back up the stairs, a deep masculine voice said, “I am sorry to disappoint you, but it is not cocoa or a chat that I want.” And in the shadowy doorway she saw the dark figure of Mischa Busnetsky.
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