Fever

by Charlotte Lamb

  The porter surveyed her thoughtfully. 'Have you an appointment, miss?'

  She shook her head and saw his face change. 'I'm sorry, miss,' he said. 'Mr. Rawdon doesn't see any­body without an appointment.'

  Sara almost smiled then because it was fate. She couldn't fight that. Silently, she turned to walk out and the porter stared after her, a frown on his face, his grey hair slipping back from his pink forehead like a mat on a polished floor.

  Sara heard the telephone ring and the porter walked away. She crossed the road and unlocked her car, glancing up briefly at the elegant building she had just left. The porter came running down the steps, waving towards her, but she got into the car and inserted the key into the ignition.

  'Miss!' the porter gasped, leaning on her door.

  She wound the window down and looked at him expressionlessly.

  'Miss,' he panted, 'Mr. Rawdon will see you if you come along back inside.'

  Sara felt the stiffness of her own smile as she shook her head. 'I've changed my mind,' she said. 'Tell him it doesn't matter.' She started her car and the porter stared down at her, moving back, scratching his head as though puzzled by the oddness of female behaviour.

  A large orange van moved in front of her, block­ing her exit, and she waited, nervously fingering the wheel. Suddenly Nick was beside the car. The porter stared at him and backed respectfully to give him room to speak to her. Sara stared at the orange van, her chin rigid.

  Nick looked at her, his hand on the top of her car, then yanked the door open. She turned, startled, a cry of protest on her lips, and his strong fingers curled round her wrist, pulling her out.

  'Let me go, damn you!' she muttered, glaring at him.

  He closed the car door with his other hand. 'Keys, Roberts,' he said, throwing her ignition keys to the porter. 'Lock it and keep them until I tell you to give them back.'

  'They're my keys,' Sara said furiously.

  Nick frog marched her across the road, his face implacable. 'Don't you dare manhandle me!' she bit out, struggling against his compelling grip.

  He pushed her up the steps and into the marble-tiled hall. A clock ticked solemnly on the wall as if to underline the cloistered calm of the place. A woman in a subdued grey dress sat at a wide desk underneath the clock with telephones beside her. She lifted her head to stare as Nick forced Sara struggling across the floor to the lift.

  The lift doors slid shut and Nick turned to look down into her face, his own expressionless.

  'What do you think you're doing? I haven't got an appointment, remember, Mr. God Almighty!'

  The blue eyes flared. 'Be quiet until we're in my office, you maddening little spitfire!'

  His office was on the top floor of the building, the corridor smoothly carpeted. Faces lifted as Nick pulled her along beside him into his office. Sara was aware of the stares, the raised eyebrows.

  She was thrust inside the room and the door shut. Nick leaned against it, arms folded, breathing heavily.

  'I almost broke the four-minute mile getting down there,' he said breathlessly. 'I must be out of condi­tion.

  'You needn't have bothered,’ she muttered, her face averted.

  He laughed curtly. 'The first time you've ever moved towards me of your own free will and you say I shouldn't bother?'

  Her face burned. She couldn't look at him.

  'Why did you come?' he asked after a pause, his voice now becoming level.

  'It doesn't matter.'

  'For God's sake,' he brushed it aside. 'It must matter or you wouldn't be here. It is what I said at the Zoo? Did some of it get home?'

  She swung round then, her face filled with spit­ting rage. 'Oh, it got home, Mr. Nicholas Rawdon. How dared you talk to me like that? How dare you jump to conclusions about me?'

  ‘You forget, I’ve personal experience of your ability to respond,' he snapped, his blue eyes biting into her.

  'That works two ways!'

  His lips tightened. 'I won't deny it. I've never hidden the fact that I want you, but I draw the line at jumping into bed with everyone who asks.'

  'So do I!' Hurt and temper made her voice shake.

  He laughed curtly. 'Why lie about it? Don't tell me Forcell hasn't had you—I saw the way he was mooning over you. Not to mention whoever you had at your flat that night.'

  'Lucy,' she said fiercely.

  He stared. 'What?'

  'Lucy, a friend of mine. She was staying with me while her flat was being redecorated.'

  For a second she thought he didn't believe that, either, then he shrugged, his hard mouth twisting. 'I suppose Halliday left her behind as a watchdog, did he? He knows you too well to trust you on your own in that flat. That was obvious the night you came to my place.'

  Her face was stiff, her eyes coldly angry. 'I'm tired of having you abuse me, Mr. Rawdon. I want to get this message home to you once and for all. Greg's not my lover, he's my stepbrother.'

  His black brows rose sardonically. 'That old story? You're a bit late with it, aren't you? You've already admitted to me that he's your lover, and the way you ran from my flat that night confirmed his hold over you.'

  'I told you what you already believed to stop you trying to seduce me,' Sara bit back contemptuously.

  'I had to fend you off somehow. You wouldn't have left me alone if I hadn't.' Her catlike green eyes flashed towards him. ‘Now would you? You made that very obvious.'

  He didn't move, his eyes on her face. 'The night you came to my flat, when Halliday rang, he threat­ened to leave you if you didn't go back at once.'

  'No,' Sara said forcibly. 'A friend of ours had died. That was what we were talking about, that was what that was all over. Rob had been ill for years, but it was very sudden at the end. Greg was very dis­tressed. But he didn't want me there on his own account, he wanted me to comfort Rob's wife. Greg loves Lucy deeply, but he couldn't cope with her grief. He is too involved. It tore him apart to see her so unhappy.'

  'He doesn't love you?' Nick sounded shaken, his voice rough.

  Sara met his eyes, her own filled with anger and contempt. 'No, Greg doesn't love me, not that way. He and I are very close, but there's no romantic feeling between us. I suppose Greg is a cross be­tween father and brother to me, and I'm a mixture of daughter and sister to him.'

  Nick took a step towards her, his face dark. 'You couldn't keep your eyes of him the night we met.'

  'He was worried sick about Lucy and he was drinking. Of course I watched him. I feel responsible for him. He feels responsible for me.'

  'You're hung-up on him,' Nick muttered. 'You always have been.'

  Fierce rage almost split her head open. She looked at him with sparks shooting from the vivid green eyes.

  'I might as well have saved my breath. You prefer your own version of the truth, don't you? Just don't come near me again. I never want to set eyes on you for the rest of my life. I won't be labelled as a tramp, Mr. Rawdon. In future keep your filthy thoughts to yourself!'

  As she moved to thrust past him, he caught at her arm, bending to say urgently, 'Wait, Sara.'

  She knocked his hand away, turning a blind, furious face towards him. 'Don't touch me!'

  His secretary stood outside the door, a large grey folder in her hand. As Sara swung open the door and walked out the woman sidestepped to avoid her. Sara moved towards the corridor and all the heads lifted again to stare. Nick brushed aside his secretary with a set expression and strode after Sara.

  The lift had just arrived at the floor as Sara ran towards it. The doors slid open and a woman got out. Sara hardly glanced at her, moving very fast, but she got the impression" of curious, staring eyes. Nick was leaping towards her as she jumped into the lift. The doors began to close and the woman who had just left the lift said sharply, 'Nick?' as his lean body dived towards Sara.

  Nick halted for a second, long enough for the doors to shut. Sara stood there, breathing rapidly, shaking. When she got to the marble-tiled hall she asked the porter for her
keys. His pink forehead gleamed as he smiled uncertainly at her, 'Mr. Rawdon will give them to you, miss.' His eyes passed over her shoulder and she looked back, too, seeing the light travel above the lift. Nick was in that lift, she thought. She turned and ran out of the bank. A taxi was cruising past. She pulled open the door and the driver looked round at her. She gave her address and he nodded. The taxi pulled away just as Nick dived down the steps and stopped short on the pavement, gazing after them.

  She didn't need to think twice about what she was going to do. Nick had her car and she knew he would follow her to her flat. She leaned forward and gave the driver fresh instructions. He dropped her at Lucy's flat and she sat on the doorstep until Lucy puffed up the stairs and stopped dead, star­ing at her.

  'What are you doing here?'

  'Waiting for you,' Sara said drily, standing.

  Lucy slid the key into the lock, eyeing her. 'You look ghastly. Oh, Sara, what's wrong? Something is, I can tell that. You look the way you did the night you fainted.'

  'Before you ring Greg, I am not, repeat not, preg­nant,' Sara said with a grim smile.

  Lucy's colour rose. 'I didn't say you were. I wouldn't make the same mistake twice.'

  'Then you're superhuman,' Sara muttered bitter­ly. 'I wish to God I could say the same.'

  Lucy moved to the little kitchen. 'Are you hungry? Can I get you something to eat?'

  Sara perched on the tall kitchen stool, her slender body draped gracefully on it, her red hair gleaming. Lucy eyed her as she moved about.

  'You and Greg are both so secretive,' she com­plained.

  'I could eat some toast,' Sara countered, knowing that that would sidetrack Lucy, who had a passion for feeding people, looking after them.

  While she was making the toast Lucy said: 'You don't eat enough, either you or Greg. Thin as rails, both of you.'

  'Greg needs looking after,' Sara agreed. 'I try to get him to eat properly, but he forgets once he has started work.'

  Lucy smiled and then turned away, the fine drift of her dark hair hiding her face.

  'Can I stay here tonight?' Sara asked, her head bent as she began to nibble at the toast she did not really want. Her stomach was heaving. The tension of her interview with Nick still hung over her and the last thing she wanted to do was cat, but she somehow forced herself to do it.

  'Of course,' Lucy said at once, but she stared, her face filled with curiosity. She was dying to ask further questions, but she knew better than to hope Sara would answer them. Lucy knew how secretive Greg and Sara were about their private lives, their feelings, and she had learnt to respect their refusal to discuss those things.

  She leant over to remove the toast Sara was try­ing hard to swallow. 'You don't really want that, do you? I don't know what's wrong, but it won't do you any good to eat when you feel sick.'

  Sara laughed wryly. 'How did you guess?'

  Lucy eyed her with rueful amusement. 'Look in a mirror.'

  Sara did so, later, and was horrified by the expression on her own face, the pallor and tension, the shadows under her eyes. Her normal vivacity had gone, leaving a mask she did not recognise. Nick Rawdon was having a catastrophic effect on her.

  She did not sleep very, well that night although she tried to lie still so as not to disturb Lucy, whose sleep pattern was just adjusting after her long grief for Rob.

  Sara went back to her flat next morning and found her car parked outside. The car keys were on her mat. Beside them lay a note from Nick asking her to ring him at the bank. 'I must speak to you,' it said. She tore it up and started work with a set expression on her face.

  That afternoon the telephone rang. She answered it absently and Nick said huskily, 'Sara, I must speak to you.'

  She put the telephone down without answering. As she turned away it rang again and she took it off the hook and left it off.

  She heard his car roar up the road an hour later. Standing in the room she listened to his footsteps, the prolonged ringing of the bell.-He went round the side of the house, as he had before, but Sara had locked up very carefully. She quietly slipped upstairs into Greg's flat and tried to ignore Nick's insistent ringing and knocking.

  He rang again that night. She couldn't leave the telephone oil the hook for ever. 'Stop ringing,' she said fiercely. 'Or I'll have to move out of here. I don't want to speak to you. I never want to see you again in my life!'

  The crash of her receiver must have deafened him. It must also have got the message home. He did not ring again, nor did he come to her home.

  She was glad about that, relieved, and the only reason why she felt, like crying all the time was be­cause she hated him. Every time she looked into a mirror she remembered to hate him because if was him who had put those shadows under her eyes, given a new fine-drawn tension to her face.

  She did not want to see him. She did not ever want to set eyes on him again. They were chalk and cheese, separated by deeply entrenched atti­tudes bred by their different upbringings, with nothing in common. They disagreed on almost everything, argued, quarrelled, fought. All that they had was based on a physical attraction which dragged them together whenever they met, but that was no basis for a serious relationship.

  She forced herself to work harder than ever be­cause that helped to shut him out and whenever she could she visited Lucy and kept talking to her about Greg, doing what little she could to improve Greg's chances, hoping that one of them, at least, could salvage something from the stupid wreckage of their emotional lives.

  Greg came back from France very brown and thinner than ever, his eyes carefully controlled when he first met Lucy, avoiding a direct glance at her.

  Lucy was very flushed that first time. She, too, could not look at Greg, but gradually the stiffness seeped out of her and she forgot Greg's feelings as she made the elaborate meal she had planned for his first evening home.

  She was so pleased by her success with the meal that she laughed as Greg plaintively complained that he could barely move afterwards. Sara caught her breath as Lucy allowed Greg to help her wash up. Discreetly she slid off and left them together. It wasn't going to be easy for Greg. He would have a long, long wait, but she sensed that one day he would get his wish.

  Greg insisted on taking both her and Lucy to the ballet one evening. The tickets had been sent to him by someone he had painted for, and he was lucky to get them, because it was hard to get tickets for the ballet during the summer season.

  Sara had a new dress for the occasion, a simple little white thing that gave her skin a glimmering pallor, throwing the blaze of her hair into dramatic relief. Lucy was excited, for once flushed as Greg seated her, smiling at him eagerly. Greg picked up her programme for the third time as she dropped it, laughing at her, and Sara gazed absently around at the throng of faces.

  In a box on the other side of the theatre she saw Nick, her eyes widening before she hurriedly looked away. He was studying his own programme, his black head bent, and the beautiful woman beside him was talking to him with the concentrated at­tention Nick always got from women, her eyes fixed on his hard profile in apparent rapture.

  Sara glanced towards the box again as the lights went down and saw Nick's outline in a black sil­houette, her heart aching as though it was being crushed.

  His companion was ravishing, her evening gown glinting in the light as she moved, the white shoul­ders enhanced by the diamond necklace she wore. During the interval Sara risked a glance at him again, catching him laughing at something his com­panion said, his face in amused relief against his white and gilt chair.

  Suddenly he turned his head in a restless move­ment, his eyes sweeping round the theatre. Sara abruptly bent to pick up her own programme from the floor.

  She did not want him to see her. She sensed he had not yet done so and she wanted to keep it that way. She fumbled blindly on the floor and Greg looked down, frowning, 'What's wrong?'

  Sara picked up her programme and slowly un­coiled. 'Nothing,' she said, hoping the
flush of her face would be taken for the natural result of bend­ing down for too long.

  She did not look at Nick, but some buried instinct warned her that he had now seen her. She stared at the gilded crowns on the curtain and a slow prickle passed down her spine. Without turning her head his way she managed to sneak a sidelong glance to­wards the box. Nick was leaning on the velvet para­pet with opera glasses in his hands, his eyes fixed on her.

  Greg leaned towards her, offering her a chocolate from the box he had bought as they entered the theatre. Sara Look a long time choosing one, aware, of Greg's perplexed stare.

  'Are you hot?' he asked. 'You're very flushed.'

  'No,' she lied.

  Greg put the back of his hand against her cheek. 'What do you mean, no? You're burning!'

  'It's stuffy in here,' she said. 'Don't you think so, Lucy?'

  Lucy leaned across Greg, frowning. 'I hadn't noticed.' Greg glanced at her, his brows lifted, and Lucy shrugged at him in a silent exchange which Sara vaguely noted.

  The curtain went up again, the house lights were lowered, and music stole softly up towards them. Sara slipped a look towards Nick's box and hur­riedly away again. He was still watching her, his opera glasses trained on her, apparently oblivious to what was happening on the stage. Sara saw the move­ment of his companion's hand in the darkness, her tap on Nick's arm, the swing of his black head and the slow lowering of his opera glasses.

  He did not turn to look at Sara again, but she sat stiffly, watching the dancers without seeing them, the wreathed and stylised convolutions of their movement like the flickering of white shadows to her, the music passing through her head in ironic counterpoint to her own emotions.

  Seeing Nick had brought home to her the depth of her love for him, the stupid wasted emotions he had aroused in her. She could have sat all night untiringly watching that dark profile. She wanted to cry, but she didn't. She sat with a faint, painted smile on her lips and hoped she was pulling the wool over everyone's eyes, afraid though that Greg, at least, was not fooled by her cheerful air.

  A movement in Nick's box attracted her atten­tion. She saw him lean over, his white shirt-front standing out in the dark box, and imagined him touching the woman with him, perhaps kissing her. Why else had he moved? Jealousy twisted down in­side her like a vicious corkscrew.