by Liz Fielding
Somehow, facing Gabriel MacIntyre’s searching blue eyes, she wanted to say much more.
‘You said it, Mac. She’s a hard act to follow.’
‘Then why bother? You don’t need a second hand identity.’
‘It was rather thrust on me. Sometimes I think that it’s all I’ll ever have. Years from now some stone mason will chisel it on my headstone. Here lies Elaine French’s daughter.’ She shrugged. ‘She had me trained from my cradle to be exactly like her.’
‘Just you? Not Fizz?’
At least he hadn’t told her she was being stupid. Paranoid.
‘Fizz was never really like our mother. Oh, don’t get me wrong. She went through the motions, in fact she was tremendously talented, a naturally gifted actress, but somehow she was never quite as dazzled by it all as I was.’ Claudia gave a little shrug. ‘Just as well, if she had, I wouldn’t just be Elaine French’s daughter, I’d be Felicity Beaumont’s sister as well.’
‘I’m sure you underrate yourself.’
‘No, it’s true. She had that something extra. She didn’t rely on technique.’
‘So why is she running a radio station?’
‘She had a bad experience right at the start of her career and I guess she saw it all for what it was. So she stepped back, let it go. For a long time I thought she had made a mistake. Now I’m not so sure.’ She gave an awkward little shrug. ‘I’m not deliberately trading on the likeness to my mother, Mac. I did Private Lives for Fizz.’
‘Oh?’ He sounded just a touch sceptical, as if he doubted her capable of an unselfish act. She stabbed at her salad with a fork and he caught her wrist. ‘I’m sorry, Claudia. Tell me about it. ‘
Claudia flickered a glance at him, uncertain of his motives. But he seemed sincere enough. ‘Fizz and Luke had the most enormous row after Dad collapsed from exhaustion back in March. The doctors said it was stress-related and she blamed Luke for it.’
‘Why?’
‘Oh, it was all to do with Melanie. Anyway, she wouldn’t see him, speak to him, even tell him that she was expecting his baby.’
‘Wouldn’t he have noticed, sooner or later?’
‘Well, no. That was the problem. When Fizz sent him about his business he went off to Australia to lick his wounds in the outback somewhere. And she wouldn’t let anyone else tell him. She was hurting so much that we didn’t dare take the risk of defying her.’
‘So, how did Private Lives help?’ Mac prompted, when she seemed reluctant to continue.
She straightened. ‘Luke had already put up the money for the show because he wanted something light to launch Melanie in the West End. Did I tell you that she’s his niece?’ Mac nodded. ‘She’d done plenty of television, soaps and such like, in Australia, but she wanted to get into real theatre. He insisted I play the lead opposite her.’ His brows rose insistently and Claudia pulled a face. ‘You suggested a while back that my tongue might get me into trouble. I’d been a bit rude about Mel’s acting ability in the past. Luke thought sharing a stage with her would teach me to be a little more polite.’
‘In other words you did it under duress?’
‘No. I thought it was the most likely way of getting Luke and Fizz back together. I knew that nothing would stop him from coming home for Melanie’s first night and I hoped, I believed, that once Fizz had had time to calm down, getting them together would be enough.’
‘It obviously worked.’
‘Oh, I’m sure it would have done. But Fizz didn’t wait. She realised all by herself that she couldn’t live without the man and flew out to the back of beyond only to find him packing up to come home. He’d decided that no matter what she had said, he was going to lay siege until she agreed to marry him.’
‘Make him a willow cabin at her gate?’
Shakespeare? A poet soldier? Perhaps he wasn’t so rough hewn after all. ‘Fortunately it wasn’t necessary. He’d have almost certainly developed pneumonia.’
‘It was a very damp spring,’ Mac agreed, solemnly.
‘And in the meantime I was stuck with Private Lives. Not that I’m complaining and Mel is a dream to share a stage with. But Dad, bless him, realised the publicity potential of me stepping into my mother’s shoes. Literally. The dress I was wearing in the photograph was one of hers.’
‘Really?’
‘They’re all still wrapped in tissue in Dad’s attic. All her costumes, all her gowns, lingerie, shoes in their original boxes, furs. They’d make a wonderful bonfire.’
In the silence that followed, the waitress brought them the next course. Claudia picked up her fork, speared a mange tout and ate it slowly. Then she said, ‘Now it’s your turn.’
‘You want to know about my mother?’ he enquired.
She had known that he would put up a brick wall. He expected her to ask him about his wife. About his leg. About the army.
‘Only if you want to. I’d rather you told me about your business. Security? What is it that you do exactly?’
‘If I told you exactly, I wouldn’t be in the security business,’ he pointed out.
‘If you want me to employ your company, I think I’m entitled to some details.’
‘I’ve changed my mind. This is personal. I’m still not happy about the way that photograph got into your parachute pack.’
‘Can you afford to get personal?’
‘Even the boss is entitled to a few days off. I’ll take a busman’s holiday.’
She was beginning to lose patience. Wasn’t he listening to anything she said. ‘This is my life, Mac. I thought I’d made my feelings plain.’
‘Ad nauseam.’
‘But I might as well have saved my breath?’ She tilted her head slightly, inviting contradiction.
‘I’m not holding mine. But I’m not wasting any more arguing with you, either. And since I still have your keys and you can’t get into your flat without me, you might as well stop being difficult and enjoy your lunch. I intend to.’
‘I enjoy being difficult,’ she informed him. ‘Being difficult is what I do best. It’s part of my charm.’
‘I agree about your talent, I don’t quite see the charm in it.’
‘You, I take it, majored in rudeness?’
His smile was slow and deliberate. ‘If it seems that way I can only put it down to your influence, Claudia. You just seem to bring out the worst in me.’
‘I had noticed.’ Then she gave a little shrug. ‘Since you won’t talk about your business can I ask one simple question?’
He looked at her warily. ‘You can ask. I’m not promising an answer.’
‘Trust is a two-way thing, Mac. You’re going to have to trust me a little, too.’
After the longest pause he finally nodded. ‘Go ahead. I’ll answer one question.’
‘Will you tell me your wife’s name?’
For a moment he stared at the plate in front of him and she thought he wasn’t going to answer. ‘Jenny,’ he said, finally, his voice catching on the word. Then he looked up, looked her straight in the face. ‘Her name was Jenny Callendar,’ he added, as if that should mean something to her.
For a moment her brain wouldn’t co-operate. Then she remembered. ‘The climber?’ she asked.
‘You said one question. That’s it.’
It wasn’t it. Not by a long chalk. The questions were tumbling around in her brain like the weekly wash in the dryer. Jenny Callendar had been killed a couple of years ago. How? Where? She realised that Mac was watching her. Knew she was trying to remember, but he didn’t help her out. Claudia let it go. It would come to her in time.
Instead she gave her full attention to the careful dissection of her lunch which provided the perfect cover to consider the enigma of the man sitting opposite her.
He had kissed her more than once and once was usually enough to make a man her willing slave. By now he should be eating out of her hand, promising her the earth.
The fact that she didn’t want it was unimportant.
She had learned to control men at her mother’s knee but she wasn’t controlling Gabriel MacIntyre. He was far too complex a character for that. He was keeping a careful distance, refusing to be twisted around her little finger. That he desired her, she knew by instinct, but for some reason he was determined to resist her.
Then she remembered his kiss and a small dimple appeared beside her mouth as she recalled just how difficult he was finding it.
She looked up to find him watching her and her heart gave an odd little flip. She wondered what it would take to seduce him. She was sorely tempted by the challenge but knew he wouldn’t like her, or himself, much afterwards. He was a man who needed to care for a woman he made love to.
Which brought her back to his wife. Jenny Callendar. But she kept her curiosity to herself. She had made a start and if he was planning to stick around there would be time enough to discover all Mr MacIntyre’s darkest secrets.
*****
There was another letter waiting at her flat.
Mac produced a serious-looking set of keys for the new locks and when he opened the door, it was there on the mat. A cheap white envelope with her name printed on it in large, plain letters using a black ballpoint pen.
For a moment Claudia simply stared at it, numbed, paralysed by the awfulness of the realisation that someone actually wanted to make her feel just this way. Sick, frightened and very, very alone. Her hand flew to her lips as the bile began to rise, then she choked out a little sound, something approaching an hysterical laugh as she realised her mistake.
It wasn’t the same at all. The others envelopes had been addressed in letters cut from newsprint. This time her name had been neatly printed in ballpoint. Relieved she bent to pick it up.
‘Don’t touch it,’ Mac warned, sharply, as he turned from the burglar alarm. ‘The police might be able to lift fingerprints.’ And he pushed her back out into the hall.
‘No, Mac. It’s all right. It isn’t the same,’ she protested, but he still held her back. ‘It isn’t,’ she said stubbornly, meeting his eyes. She didn’t want it to be the same.
‘The envelope’s exactly the same,’ he pointed out, gently. ‘I warned the rest of the tenants about letting in unidentified strangers. It may be that your correspondent was forced to leave this in the letterbox downstairs. Would someone have brought it up and pushed it through your door?’
‘Kay Abercrombie usually takes the newspapers and post around to everybody.’ She looked away, hope dying as she realised what must have happened. ‘She wouldn’t have touched something addressed with letters cut out from a newspaper,’ she said, slowly. ‘He would have realised that, wouldn’t he?’
‘This guy might be crazy, but he’s certainly not stupid. He wants you to think he’s been up here. Right up to your door. Touching it.’
He was being deliberately unkind. He wanted her to understand the kind of person they were dealing with.
‘But if he couldn’t get into the building-’
‘We mustn’t assume anything, Claudia. He may just have wanted you to believe that.’
‘Oh, God. I think I’m going to be sick.’
‘Don’t you dare,’ he said, sharply. ‘You’re going to stay right here while I look around.’ Too weak to argue, she leaned back and slid down the wall, wrapping her arms around her head.
Mac came back. ‘No one’s been inside,’ he said. He meant to be reassuring, but Claudia still felt as if her living space had been in some way defiled. He touched her shoulder and she looked up. ‘Come on,’ he said, more gently and she allowed him to help her to her feet before she shook him off and stepping over the letter she closed the door on the outside world and rammed home the bolt with shaking fingers.
All that casual bravado undone by the sight of something as innocent as an envelope lying on the mat. And suddenly she had to know what it said. Before Mac could stop her she had bent and picked it up, ripping it open savagely. For a moment she stared at it, uncomprehending, her hands shaking. Then she laughed. She put the back of her to her mouth to stifle the sound, but it gurgled from her, unstoppable as the tears that began to stream down her cheeks.
He took the paper from her unresisting hand. There wasn’t much. But then none of them had said much. It was what they said. And this one was no different in its sly nastiness.
HELLO CLAUDIA, HOW DOES IT FEEL TO BE HOME? SAFE?
He released a small, explosive sound and folding his arms about her, pulled her hard into the protection of his body, holding her tight, crooning softly to her until the hiccupping sobs began to subside and she laid her head into the curve of his neck, quietly resting against him until her own racketing pulse matched the slow, steady thump of his.
And even then she didn’t want to move. But she had to.
‘I’m sorry, Mac,’ she said, pulling away a little. ‘I know I’ve been nothing but a nuisance since the first moment you set eyes on me. I’d quite understand if you don’t want anything to do with me. You can go anytime. Really. I’ll be fine.’
He looked down at her, but her eyes were closed and she was unaware of the softening of his mouth, his eyes. She looked bruised. Nothing to do with slightly darker patch under one eye, or the slight swelling of her lip, but emotionally beaten. He could think of any number of ways to soothe her, bring the colour back to her cheeks. It took every ounce of willpower to reject every one of them.
Instead he said, ‘Do you remember what you said to me at the airfield on Friday morning? When you thought I was stringing you a line about changing the parachute?’ He saw from her blush that she did. ‘Then consider it returned with interest. Now why don’t you go and make yourself useful while I make some calls?’
She withdrew reluctantly from the comfort of his arms. ‘What do you want me to do?’
‘What every red-blooded English woman does in a crisis. Make a pot of tea.’
‘You’re joking.’ The moment of tenderness was over and he didn’t even bother to answer her. But even as she opened her mouth to tell him in no uncertain terms that he could make his owned damned tea Claudia realised that he was just giving her something to do, keeping her busy. She gave a little shiver, rubbed her arms, decided to find a sweater. She stopped in the doorway. ‘If you’re staying what will you do for clothes?’
‘You can leave me to worry about that.’ It hadn’t taken him long to return to his usual stonewalling.
Why wouldn’t he talk to her?
‘I suppose at the snap of your fingers one of your personal army will jump to attention and pack a bag for you.’ He took no notice of her, but lifting the telephone receiver he began to punch in a number. Claudia wasn’t used to being ignored. ‘I suppose they’re all ex-soldiers?’ she persisted.
He cut the connection and turned to her. She expected him to be angry, but he wasn’t.
‘They’re not my army, Claudia. They’re not my anything. We’re just a group of friends who do what we’re good at and help one another out from time to time. That’s all,’ he said, clearly trying to be patient, as if he was talking to a slightly tiresome child.
She didn’t think it was quite that simple but on the whole thought she preferred him mad. ‘Like your discreet chauffeur service for instance?’ she asked, provoking him further. She could be wrong but that had seemed just a bit too well rehearsed to be some casual arrangement.
‘It’s a perfectly normal car hire business, Claudia. In fact they specialise in weddings using vintage cars. But when I need a car and driver for something special I know I can count on them.’
‘I’m not sure that I believe you.’
The patience was wearing thin. ‘I’m not sure I care very much what you believe. It’s really none of your business.’
‘It is if you’re planning to take over my life.’
He was taking over her life? Did she think he had nothing better to do than play nurse-maid to a frightened actress? Mac felt the quick surge of anger drain away from him. Frightened. That was the key w
ord. She was frightened out of her wits and trying very hard not to let it show. Perhaps he was being a little hard on her.
‘We’re not some gung-ho outfit, Claudia,’ he said, more gently. ‘The whole thing is very low key. A group of communications specialists, transport experts, couriers-’
‘And security. They all fit together very nicely.’
‘When necessary. Mostly we do our own thing, but we complement one another and we work well together. Occasionally I put a team together for a special job but that’s the exception.’
She still looked doubtful. ‘I hope I don’t come under that category.’
‘That rather depends how sensible you’re going to be. If you insist on carrying on with nightly appearances in Private Lives I’m afraid you probably will.’
‘I don’t have a choice, Mac. People are relying on me. You should understand that.’
‘But you don’t have to stay here.’
Her mouth took on a stubborn line. ‘I won’t be driven out of my own home.’ Even when it felt comfortless and chilling. She shivered again. ‘But I’d be a lot happier if you’d stay with me.’
Mac noticed the shiver. Every instinct screamed at him to go to her; he ignored them all. It was tough, but he didn’t want to make it easy for her to stay put.
‘I suppose we could install CCTV on all the entrances,’ he offered, unenthusiastically. ‘And we’ll need a porter downstairs to monitor the post, check visitors in and out. You know your neighbours. How do you think they’ll react?’
‘By asking their insurance companies for a reduction on their premiums if they’ve any sense.’
He’d hoped this vision of disruption to other people’s lives would have given her pause. But she was probably right, the rest of the tenants would no doubt welcome the extra security, especially if they didn’t have to pay for it. ‘What about the landlord?’