Naive Awakening

by Cathy Williams

  ‘And then,’ he carried on, still staring at her as if he was trying to work her out, like a perplexing mathematical equation, ‘my instincts tell me to distrust you, that you’re quite prepared to take advantage of a situation to get what you can. After all, that cottage in Yorkshire needs some major repairs. Yet you don’t seem like an out-and-out opportunist.’

  He paused and the silence in the room wrapped around them. There was nothing deeply personal in his voice. In fact he spoke with what seemed to be only a mild curiosity, but all the same the atmosphere was disturbingly intimate. Maybe, she decided, it’s just my imagination playing tricks on me.

  ‘So can you explain it?’ he asked softly.

  She looked away, alarmed at the direction this conversation was taking. ‘Maybe you should stop trying to work people out as if they were tricky problems,’ she said calmly, slinging her bag over her shoulder so that he could be in no doubt that she was going to leave. ‘In your profession, I would have thought that the last thing you would have expected of people would have been for them to act according to the laws of logic.’

  ‘On the contrary,’ he returned drily, ‘you would be surprised how many murders were committed for the most logical of reasons. Money, revenge, passion.’

  ‘Passion isn’t logical,’ she muttered.

  ‘Maybe you have a point.’ He reached over and twisted a strand of hair around his finger, and she froze. ‘Or maybe you simply have a barrister’s mind—able to twist most things to support an argument.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’ She wished that he would stop doing what he was doing. She fought down the urge to run—not that her legs felt as though they could take her anywhere. In fact, they felt decidedly shaky.

  ‘So passion isn’t logical,’ he mused, his grey eyes still fixed on her face, ‘in which case, why are you going out with Gerry?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ His change of topic took her by surprise, and she looked at him wide-eyed.

  ‘Gerry,’ he said with a hint of impatience in his voice now. ‘Why are you going out with him? I don’t believe for a moment that you’re passionate about him.’

  ‘What I feel is very personal,’ she said, walking towards the door, but before she could flee he had covered the space between them and stood between her and the door, barring her exit.

  Was that what all this was about? she wondered. Had it all been leading up to another cross-examination on her motives?

  He stuck his hands in his pockets and looked down at her, his mouth twisting cynically.

  ‘That’s no answer,’ he said.

  ‘It’s the only one I’m prepared to give you.’

  ‘Have you slept with him? Does he turn you on?’

  She turned white. ‘That’s none of your business. You might be able to give orders when it comes to work, but what I do in my private life has nothing to do with you.’

  ‘Really?’ His voice was light enough, but there was a dangerous glitter in his eyes, which should have warned her, so that she could take the necessary evasive action.

  As it was, she was taken completely by surprise when his head swooped down and she felt his lips meet hers in a rough, demanding kiss. Instinctively she tried to draw back, but he reached out with his hand, cupping the nape of her neck so that he could control her movement.

  The force of his kiss was such that she could hardly breathe. Everything that was brutal and aggressive was in it, and just when she felt that her anger had reached boiling-point it changed subtly into something altogether more lingering and persuasive.

  She felt a nagging ache in her body, which she did her utmost to suppress, but as his mouth found her neck she arched back and groaned slightly.

  Everything inside her felt as though it was slowly melting under the impact of her desire.

  ‘You can’t possibly feel any passion for Gerry, when you respond to me like this,’ he whispered hoarsely into her ear, and immediately she felt her passion begin to ebb.

  How could she have allowed herself to get to this point, when cold reason had already shown her the foolishness of responding to him? What was the point of experience if nothing was learnt from it?

  ‘How would you know?’ she said unsteadily, stiffening and letting her hands drop to her sides. ‘You haven’t got some sort of monopoly over arousing women, you know.’

  He drew back from her, and all the fierce hunger had left his face.

  Right now, though, she could hardly see him. All she wanted to do was to hurt him for being able to manipulate her with such ease. Self-disgust was fanning her anger into an uncontrollable blaze, and she wanted to strike back at him.

  ‘What are you trying to prove anyway?’ she shouted. ‘That I’m attracted to you? Well, maybe I am, but that’s a passing inconvenience.’

  ‘And some women can suffer such passing inconveniences for any number of men,’ he bit out grimly. ‘Does poor old Gerry think that he’s the one and only? Or maybe I was right, and there was no passion there. Maybe, for all your protests, what you have in store for him is just a little more cold-blooded.’

  She raised her hand to strike and he caught her wrist. ‘Not again, lady,’ he snarled. ‘If you think…’

  She wasn’t to find out what he thought, because at that moment the door behind him opened and he dropped her hand as though it were red-hot.

  Gerry peered at them uncertainly. He had interrupted something, and Leigh could see that he wasn’t quite sure what he ought to do.

  She forced herself to smile, even though her face felt as if it would crack in the process.

  ‘Gerry,’ she ventured in a shaky voice, ‘what are you doing here?’

  ‘I phoned the house,’ he said, looking at them with the same air of bemusement. ‘Sir John said that you were still at work. If I’ve come at a bad time—’

  ‘No,’ she interjected hastily, ‘I was just about to leave. We were discussing…work.’

  Gerry looked unconvinced, and she could hardly blame him. She knew that her cheeks were burning, and no amount of heated discussion about work could account for their hectic colour.

  Nicholas lounged against the wall and surveyed her through narrowed eyes.

  There was something threatening about his brooding, watchful silence, and she knew that Gerry sensed it from the darting glances he shot in his direction.

  ‘Why don’t we go outside?’ she suggested, ignoring Nicholas’s presence, annoyed when he clicked his tongue and said under his breath,

  ‘Please, don’t let me frighten you away.’

  Gerry grinned uncomfortably, and Leigh thought, Poor chap, you probably feel like someone who dives into a swimming-pool only to find that there’s a barracuda hovering at the side.

  ‘Actually, I only came to throw you a proposition,’ he said. ‘Bit of a sudden thing, I know, but I hope that won’t be a problem.’

  She didn’t have to look at Nicholas to feel him listening in the background, and she took Gerry’s arm.

  ‘Proposition?’ she asked, intrigued. She began walking down the stone steps, helplessly aware that Nicholas was right behind him. She could hardly spin round and tell him to go away, and he knew it.

  ‘My parents,’ Gerry explained, ‘have suddenly decided to fly to Paris for the weekend, and I thought that we might go to the country house while they’re away.’ He must have sensed the refusal on the tip of her tongue, because he carried on quickly, ‘I’ve told you so much about it, and you yourself have mentioned that you’d love to visit it…’

  ‘Yes, I know…’

  ‘…that I thought that this was the ideal opportunity. We could have the place to ourselves. So what do you say?’

  ‘Yes, what do you say?’ she heard Nicholas’s voice from behind her, vibrating with mockery. ‘I’m all ears.’

  She had a childish impulse to turn around and tell him in no uncertain terms where he and his ears could go, but that would probably have thrown Gerry into a state of panic.

  But s
he didn’t want to go. Sure, she had told him that she’d love to visit his family house in the country. One day. One day in the hazy future. She never expected that he would take her up on it, and certainly not while his parents were out of the country.

  ‘Well?’ he prompted from beside her, his blue eyes looking at her beseechingly.

  From behind, she could feel Nicholas’s cold grey eyes boring into her back, and on the spur of the moment she said without thinking, ‘I’d love to go.’ Oh, lord, she thought, as soon as the words were out of her mouth, what have I let myself in for?

  Gerry was grinning.

  ‘You would?’

  ‘Why not?’ Leigh said unhappily. ‘It sounds like fun.’

  They stopped outside, the cool evening air whipping around her face, blowing her hair back, and Nicholas leaned towards her until his lips were only inches away from her ear.

  ‘Fun,’ he said in a hard voice. ‘How touching.’ Then he moved away and she watched in dismay as he walked away with that restless, graceful stride.

  Gerry cupped her elbow in his hand. ‘We’ll have a great time,’ he promised, and Leigh thought, Will we? Or has my misguided sense of defiance pushed me into something I’ll live to regret?

  CHAPTER SIX

  OVER the next twenty-four hours, Leigh had a good chance to mull over her rash decision to spend the weekend with Gerry.

  She thought up what seemed like several hundred excuses which she could use to back out of it, but even to her own ears they all sounded hollow. It would be difficult to sound convincing that something unexpected had cropped up, when only hours before she had informed him that she had no plans for the weekend. Besides, what could crop up with such suddenness? It was hardly as though she had any friends in London, and her life was inconveniently short of sick relatives.

  Of course, there was always a sudden bout of flu, but even that lie had its drawbacks. When she last saw him, she was in the pink of health. To be unexpectedly bedridden with flu would try the imagination of even the most gullible.

  In the end, she decided that she might as well face the music. She had got herself into the awkward situation, and it would be up to her to handle it as best she could.

  She only hoped that there would not be any disastrous confrontational scenes, that Gerry would not see the weekend as an opportunity to exercise a seduction routine.

  Oh, lord, she thought, returning from work, for once on the dot of five-thirty, how was it that Nicholas Reynolds had the amazing ability to make her act so out of character? Never in a million years would she have jumped into something unless she was absolutely convinced that it was what she wanted to do.

  Freddie’s quip, when she told him of her plans, that she was certainly settling down in London quickly, and Sir John’s glum disapproval, did nothing at all to ease her frame of mind.

  She had a bath and packed her overnight case with all the enthusiasm of someone packing for a stay in hospital.

  Gerry had told her that he would fetch her that evening, thankfully after dinner, and she watched the hands on the clock drag by with agonising inevitability.

  When Sir John called out that there was someone to see her in the lounge, she glanced at her watch in alarm. It wasn’t yet seven o’clock! She groaned inwardly and wondered whether the flu excuse really was as implausible as she thought.

  She went downstairs, into the lounge, to find Lady Jessica standing by the mantelpiece, her back to her.

  Leigh stopped in surprise. She had not seen the other woman at all over the past couple of weeks. She had almost reached the point of thinking that her antipathy had all been a figment of her imagination, something to do with her nerves after she had just arrived.

  Now, staring at that erect back, she had a sinking feeling that she had been right in her first impressions.

  ‘I don’t think Nicholas is here,’ she said, moving into the room to sit on one of the comfortable sofas, and tucking her feet protectively under her.

  Lady Jessica turned around, and gave her a cool, humourless smile. Leigh followed her movements towards the chair facing her, and thought that if there was one thing that she had remembered with faithfulness it was the other woman’s striking beauty.

  She was impeccably dressed in an off-white silk suit, with a gold-buttoned cardigan in a similar shade.

  ‘Actually,’ she said, ‘I didn’t come to see Nicholas. I came to see you. I thought that we might have a little chat.’ She withdrew a cigarette from a silver case and carefully lit it, tilting her head back to exhale a spiral of smoke.

  ‘I don’t think Sir John likes smoking in the house,’ Leigh said mildly, and Lady Jessica looked at her antagonistically from under her lashes.

  ‘Oh, I don’t think that he’d mind me smoking. Darling, in case you hadn’t realised, I’m practically part of the family!’ She gave a low throaty laugh and blew another spiral of smoke towards the ceiling.

  ‘Oh, are you?’ Leigh said politely. ‘I’m sorry, I hadn’t realised. I haven’t seen a great deal of you since I arrived.’

  That brought a sharp look from Lady Jessica. She flicked her cigarette against a little Wedgwood bowl on the coffee-table in front of her, making no attempt to disguise the acidity on her face.

  ‘Nicholas, poor lamb, has been terribly busy,’ she said with a thin smile. ‘Normally we can’t be separated. But he’s been away, and frankly, darling, I’ve been dreadfully busy myself. Or else I would have come to visit, to see how you were settling in. I know this whole thing must have been such an upheaval for you.’

  ‘I’m settling in just fine,’ Leigh insisted, hoping that this conversation was drawing to a conclusion. She glanced at her watch.

  ‘Yes, so I understand.’

  There was a heavy silence, while Leigh wrestled with the innuendo implicit in that simple statement. Was there some sort of double meaning there that was above her head? she wondered.

  ‘Yes, the job’s very interesting, and I’ve been trying to see as much of London as I can. The usual tourist sights, you know.’ She gave a little laugh, thinking that a pleasant, inoffensive approach might lighten the atmosphere which was hanging over them like a thundercloud.

  ‘Of course,’ Lady Jessica said, and Leigh sighed. So much for that line of optimism. She searched around for something inoffensive to say, and was about to comment on the weather, when Lady Jessica broke the silence.

  ‘Actually, I wasn’t thinking of the sights. I was thinking more of Gerry. A little bird tells me that you two have been seeing quite a bit of each other.’

  Leigh’s teeth clamped together. A little bird?

  ‘Really?’ she said in a flat voice.

  ‘Oh, don’t misunderstand me, darling,’ Lady Jessica soothed. ‘I think it’s marvellous. And such fast work, too. Of course, he’s a very eligible bachelor.’

  Leigh was beginning to feel faintly homicidal. She clenched her fists at her sides.

  ‘I hate to be rude,’ she said with a forced smile, ‘but I have quite a bit to do, and…’

  Lady Jessica stubbed out the cigarette and gazed abstractedly at her long, pale pink fingernails. ‘Just between the two of us, my dear, I’m really rather relieved that you and Gerry are seeing one another.’ She gave a little tinkling laugh. ‘When you first arrived, I thought that you might have been silly enough to develop a crush on Nicholas, and I know that would have been dreadfully embarrassing for him.’

  Leigh felt the blood rush to her hairline.

  ‘Well, you were wrong, weren’t you?’

  Lady Jessica looked at her, her eyes devoid of warmth, and Leigh felt a shiver run through her.

  ‘I certainly hope so. After all, teenage adulation is such a bore.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know. I’m not a teenager,’ Leigh retorted.

  ‘I was using the term loosely. Though you do look terribly young.’

  That, Leigh thought, made her sound as though she had only just advanced beyond the stage of playing in a sand-pit. S
he wanted to throw something very heavy in Lady Jessica’s direction, but common sense told her that the only way to endure this conversation was to hang on to her temper, even if it was fraying wildly at the edges.

  She stood up, placed her hands on her hips and said softly but emphatically, ‘I can’t imagine what your problem is, Lady Jessica, but, whatever it is, I would appreciate it if you would refrain from taking it out on me. I dislike your tone of voice, and I dislike your attitude. If you can’t muster up some semblance of good manners when you address me, then I would rather you didn’t address me at all.’

  Lady Jessica’s mouth dropped open. Her face slowly turned the off-white colour of her silk suit.

  ‘That’s very rude!’ she spat out, all pretence of politeness gone.

  ‘Which,’ Leigh murmured quickly, ‘is something you should know all about.’ She threw her a freezing, expressionless smile.

  This sort of interchange wasn’t her style at all, but she had to admit that it felt good. There was definitely something to be said for expressing anger, she thought.

  ‘Now,’ she went on, feeling wonderfully in control of the situation, ‘was that all? Because, if so, I really have a lot to do…’

  Lady Jessica looked at her with cold hostility. ‘As a matter of fact, that was all I came to say, and I must say that I wouldn’t have bothered if I had had any inkling of the sort of response I would get from you. That sort of rudeness might be acceptable where you come from…’

  ‘Where I come from,’ Leigh said, feeling as though she had somehow been relegated to some distant place on another planet, ‘there would not be the provocation.’

  She stood up and Lady Jessica followed suit, her body stiff as she walked towards the door.

  ‘Just one thing,’ she said coolly, turning round to face Leigh, ‘I thought you might like to know that we’ll be seeing quite a bit of one another over the weekend.’

  Leigh stared at her, puzzled. ‘I won’t be here,’ she stated flatly, and received a baring of white teeth.