by Penny Jordan
Perhaps her silence conveyed her feelings to him, because he suddenly added thickly, ‘I’m coming round now, Lark.’
‘Your mother will be pleased to see you,’ she told him weakly, still trying to come to terms with the jolt of emotions she had felt at the sound of his voice. ‘She needs to talk to you about some of the arrangements for the ball.’
After she had replaced the receiver, she went in search of Mrs Mayers.
‘James has just been on the phone,’ she told her, conscious of a slight flush staining her face. ‘He’s coming round.’
‘To see me?’ Mrs Mayers enquired, her eyebrows lifting slightly, and Lark felt her flush deepen.
‘I…I told him you’d probably want to discuss the arrangements for the ball with him.’ She knew that she sounded flustered, and felt even more so when Mrs Mayers laughed.
‘Did you? Well, I’m sure that’s not what’s bringing him hot-footing round here, Lark. Please don’t be embarrassed,’ she added in a gentle tone. ‘I have no wish to interfere between you, but it was rather obvious to me in Boston that my son was very smitten. He doesn’t make a habit of flying over to see me at a moment’s notice,’ she added in a rather dry voice.
‘I…I hope you don’t mind,’ Lark said awkwardly, but her hesitant words were brushed aside.
Mrs Mayers’ eyebrows rose sharply and she exclaimed very forthrightly, ‘Good heavens, Lark, of course I don’t mind! Why on earth should I? If James chooses to ask you out and you choose to accept, that is entirely your own affair, my dear. What on earth made you think I would mind?’ she questioned.
The court case, her own position in Mrs Mayers’ household, her family’s lack of status and wealth, all flashed through Lark’s mind, but she couldn’t say anything. As though Mrs Mayers had read her mind, her employer said in a very kind voice, ‘Lark, my dear, I like you. I liked you from the very first moment we met, and that liking has increased during the time you’ve worked for me. I’ve been telling James for a long while that it’s high time he found himself a wife and provided me with some grandchildren.’ She eyed Lark with a teasing smile, and then added in a more serious tone, ‘I’m glad that the two of you have been able to sort out your differences, Lark, and if my son does manage to persuade you to become a member of this family, I shall be delighted to welcome you to it.’ She gave Lark a kiss, smiling at her confusion and then said teasingly, ‘As far as the arrangements for the ball are concerned, I think I can probably leave it to you to discuss them with James, don’t you?’
Did Mrs Mayers really see her as a prospective daughter-in-law, or was she just being kind? Lark wondered as she walked back to the study. Had she perhaps realised how very deeply in love with James she was? But she had been wrong about one thing—she and James had not sorted out their differences.
She was still frowning when he walked into the office ten minutes later. He was dressed formally in a business suit of fine dark wool, cufflinks glinting in the crisp, white, starched cuffs of his shirtsleeves. Who was it who ironed them to such perfection? Lark wondered bemusedly, suddenly acutely self-conscious and shy.
Had she and this man really shared the most intimate physical act that there was? He reached out and traced the faint frown lines on her forehead, and at his touch her shyness disappeared.
‘Why the frown?’ he asked huskily.
‘No reason. I was just wondering who ironed your shirts?’
‘I have two live-in Filipino maids,’ he told her coolly. ‘Twin sisters of nineteen. They were working in a hotel I visited during a conference, and they were desperate to get work over here, so I brought them back with me. They’re extremely obliging.’
He said it in such a way, with such a look on his face, that Lark was instantly outraged, her eyes flashing dark with resentment both at his patronising tone towards her sex and at the thought of him sharing his home with two young and no doubt extremely lovely young women.
When he saw her expression he laughed, and Lark could almost have hit him.
‘Idiot,’ he told her softly, sliding his hand into her hair and tugging it gently. ‘I have them laundered at an establishment run by an extremely plump and middle-aged Chinese couple and their son.’
‘You deliberately tried to make me jealous!’ Lark stormed at him.
‘And succeeded,’ he agreed lazily. He was still holding her hair, and refused to let it go, even though she tried to pull away.
‘I don’t consider it was very funny.’ She was still too wrought up by the shock of her jealousy to react rationally. She actually felt almost shaky with relief that he had been teasing her, and yet resentful at the same time that he had taken advantage of her feelings for him.
‘I’m sorry.’ His instant apology and the serious note of concern in his voice disarmed her. ‘Call it a small recompense for the agony you put me through with Hunter Cabot.’
His reminder that he, too, had experienced jealousy was all that was needed to banish the last remnants of her anger. She was still in his arms ten minutes later, when the study door was opened peremptorily and Charlotte stalked in.
Immediately James released her, leaving Lark feeling vulnerable and at a disadvantage in front of the other girl. Today Charlotte was wearing expensive Italian casuals, a huge pink suede blouson jacket worn over an extremely short and tight-fitting black skirt and matching top. She shook her head slightly as she walked, so that her hair rippled sleekly.
Totally ignoring Lark, she said to James, ‘Ah, there you are, darling. I wanted to talk to you about this do we’re going to tonight. Your chambers said you were here.’
She linked her arm through James’s as she spoke, drawing him back towards the open door. ‘Do excuse us, won’t you?’ she threw over her shoulder in a sugar-sweet tone to Lark as they disappeared. ‘I expect that you have absolutely tons of work to do.’
‘Why didn’t you let me know you were back in town, darling?’ Lark heard her saying to James as they walked away. ‘I’ve missed our regular lunch dates.’
She ought to have realised that James was just teasing her about his Filipino housemaids, Lark reflected bitterly as she got up and slammed the door behind them with unnecessary violence. Why would he need them when he had Charlotte, ready and all too willing to provide whatever kind of services he wanted?
‘Bitch,’ she chided herself as she settled herself back behind her typewriter. There was a kind of family connection between James and Charlotte, that was all. It was hardly his fault if the woman deliberately teased and flirted with him every time she saw him.
But still Lark felt hurt that James had not made it more obvious to Charlotte that he did not appreciate her attentions. Any woman listening to that brief and very deliberate conversation would have been left in no doubt at all that the relationship between them was more than simply friends, and Lark was well aware Charlotte had wanted her to believe that she and James had been lovers. But was it true? Even if it was, was it any concern of hers? Lark questioned herself. It was unrealistic to expect that there had been no other women in his life, but did one of them have to have been Charlotte? she reflected savagely as she ripped the sheet of paper out of the machine and screwed it up.
What was really bugging her was Charlotte’s arch comment about their date tonight. When James had told her that he wouldn’t be able to see her in the evening, she had assumed that it was because of a business meeting of some kind, not a date with another woman.
It was nearly three-quarters of an hour before he returned, and by that time Lark had worked herself up into a state of furious resentment. She kept on typing when he walked into the study, stopping only to give him a cool smile as she shuffled some papers beside her machine.
‘Sorry about that,’ he apologised easily, ‘but Charlotte wanted to discuss a few things with me.’
Lark only just managed to bite back a cynical, ‘Yes, and I can imagine what they were.’ Instead, she offered a smile which merely stretched her lips and did nothing
to warm the coldness of her eyes.
‘Now…’ James said softly, perching beside her on the edge of her desk, one hand on her machine, the other reaching out deftly to twist an errant curl of hair round his forefinger.
Lark did not deign to react by tugging her head out of the way, as she felt inclined. It smacked too much of childish tantrums to behave like that, much as she longed to do so.
As he leaned forward she saw the fabric of his trousers pull against the solid muscles of his thighs, and against her will her senses stirred. Her unwanted reaction to him only made her the more determined to resist his attempt to take her back in his arms.
‘If you’ve got time, I need to discuss one or two points about the ball,’ she said swiftly, avoiding looking directly at him. She didn’t think she had the strength of mind to do that, not when she suspected that the look in his eyes was the same caressing and intimate one he had given her when he had first walked into the room. Then it had sent her pulse-rate rocketing out of control.
Now, now there was nothing she wanted more than the reassurance of his arms around her, but she was stubbornly determined to cling on to her pride. Why should she pretend that she didn’t mind that he was taking Charlotte out for the evening?
‘What’s wrong?’ he said quietly. ‘Is it because I’m taking Charlotte out this evening? If so…’
She immediately tensed and interrupted, ‘There’s nothing wrong. I’m just rather tired. I’ve been out myself for the last couple of evenings,’ she added, marvelling at her own ability to lie, ‘and I’m rather looking forward to an early night.’
‘I see.’ James released her abruptly, suddenly coolly distant.
‘I’ve got all the schedules for the ball,’ Lark told him briskly, deliberately ignoring the pain tightening like a band round her heart.
‘I’m afraid I don’t have time to see them now.’ James was equally brisk. ‘If you give my secretary a ring and discuss it with her…’
‘Your mother’s arranged for us to go down to your home on the eighteenth,’ Lark told him, her emotions betrayed by the sudden hectic spots of colour that appeared in her cheeks. ‘The caterers and the people who provide the marquee are going to be there.’
‘I’m not sure if I shall be free.’
This was the man she remembered from the court: arrogant, distant, totally different from the man who had held her in his arms such a very short time ago.
She let him go with her misery forming a tight, hard ball in her throat, determined not to call him back or to say one word that would acknowledge her pain.
He opened the door and hesitated briefly, but Lark had already bent her head over her typewriter. She could almost feel his anger. It filled the room, encompassing her in its heat, and yet for all that, when he left the room, he closed the door behind him as quietly and gently as though he had been afraid of waking a sleeping child.
And that was another thing—she had been going to tell him that they had been lucky, and that that first passionate but unprotected consummation between them had not resulted in a child. Hurt, and angry as much with herself as she was with him, Lark refused to leave the study until Mrs Mayers came in search of her, expressing concern when she discovered that she was still working.
‘Is James taking you out tonight?’ she asked.
Lark shook her head, unable to trust her ability to conceal her feelings from her employer. ‘He already had a commitment,’ she said when she could, adding bitterly, ‘with Charlotte.’
If Mrs Mayers was aware of the depth of her feelings, she didn’t let it show. Instead she said lightly, ‘Charlotte is extremely attached to him. I think she sees him as a substitute older brother.’ She smiled. ‘There was a time, shortly after she was born, when her mother and I planned for the two of them to be married,’ she chuckled, but Lark couldn’t share her amusement.
The cold fingers of doubt were growing, spreading long, icy tentacles that now reached out to taint every part of her relationship with James. What did she really mean to him—a momentary diversion?
Even though she wasn’t tired, Lark went to bed early, as she had told James she intended to. She didn’t sleep though, tormenting herself with mental images of him with Charlotte.
When she woke up, it was with half-remembered dreams about Charlotte, laughing at her, taunting her that James didn’t really care.
As though her dreams were in some way an omen, Charlotte arrived just after lunch, when Mrs Mayers was having her daily rest.
She walked into the study unannounced, wearing a clinging polka-dotted yellow silk dress that fitted every voluptuous curve. Lark felt dowdy in comparison, and for the first time in her life actively envied another woman’s wardrobe.
‘James isn’t here,’ Lark told her shortly, in no mood to pander to the other girl.
‘I know. Besides, it’s you I’ve come to see,’ Charlotte told her smoothly, sitting down on a hard-backed chair and crossing her legs elegantly to show off their slenderness. ‘Just a teensy word of warning…James is mine.’ She smiled, showing a row of perfect tiny teeth—like a crocodile’s, Lark thought miserably.
‘Does he know that?’ she responded drily, refusing to allow Charlotte to overpower her.
‘Oh, I think so.’ She sounded supremely self-confident. ‘You see, it’s always been understood that we shall marry… Of course, he has his little flings. It’s only natural, but normally with women who aren’t foolish enough to fall in love with him,’ Charlotte added maliciously. ‘Poor darling. It came as quite a shock to him last night when I told him…’
There was no way Lark could prevent the wave of faintness from engulfing her; she felt the blood drain away from her skin, leaving her feeling clammy and cold. She was glad that she was sitting down, but even so she had to grip her desk hard to stop herself from swaying.
‘What did you say to him?’ she demanded fiercely, when she could speak.
Charlotte gave her a supercilious smile. ‘Why, only the truth… That you’re in love with him. You are, aren’t you?’
Lark wasn’t going to lie, not this time.
‘And if I am?’ She tilted her chin firmly. She wasn’t going to allow Charlotte to browbeat her.
Charlotte shrugged her shoulders.
‘I should have thought a woman with your past would have more intelligence. Oh, I’ve no doubt that James enjoys taking you to bed. He’s a man, after all, and he’s always liked variety.’ She smiled, the secure, amused smile of a woman who knows her man. ‘But that doesn’t mean that he sees you as a permanent part of his life. James will marry me.’ She lifted her gaze and smiled at Lark with open malice. ‘Ask him. I promise you it’s the truth. Our engagement is being announced later this year. We’ll get married next June.’
‘And you’ll marry him, knowing that there have been other women?’
Charlotte raised her eyebrows. ‘But of course! How middle class you are. James is everything I want in a husband.’ She almost purred as she spoke, and a violent feeling of antipathy tore through Lark. She was like a cat enjoying torturing a mouse, she recognised sickly. Charlotte was enjoying doing this to her.
‘It’s such a very suitable arrangement. James and I will marry. Daddy will settle his estate on both of us. Daddy approves of James. He knows he isn’t a fortune-hunter.’ She gave Lark a malicious smile and added, ‘And of course it’s the same for James. He needs a wife who knows how things are done, how to entertain. Aunt Amy is a darling, but so very unworldly. James could go right to the top of the legal profession. Daddy says he’s one of the most brilliant prosecuting barristers in the country. But then, of course, I don’t have to tell you that, do I? Odd how the case was squashed at the last moment. I asked James if he thought you’d bought off the company…’
‘Bought off…’ Lark stared at her, unable to believe her ears.
‘Not with money, of course.’ She smiled acidly. ‘There’s only one commodity a girl in your position can capitalise on, isn’t ther
e? And I do sympathise with you, you know. James is lethal, especially in bed.’
Lark’s throat hurt too much for her to make any reply.
Charlotte stood up and smiled dazzlingly. ‘I felt it was only fair to tell you, but as I said, if you don’t believe me, ask James…’
She left and Lark got up slowly, moving over to the window, hardly able to breathe for the cloying scent of Charlotte’s perfume.
It couldn’t be true, and yet something deep inside her said that it was. No one, not even Charlotte, would lie about something like that, and challenge her to ask James himself as well. She sat down abruptly. She felt disorientated and confused.
Her first instinct was to confront James with what she knew, but she resisted it. Charlotte’s taunt about her falling in love with him had found its mark, and she knew that she couldn’t allow herself to be put in the humiliating position of being told that he had lied to her, that his saying he had fallen in love with her had never been anything other than a mere joke.
Much as she longed to just turn and run, she couldn’t… Where would she go? How would she live?
The telephone rang. She stared at it as though it was an unfamiliar object, before picking it up and speaking huskily.
‘Lark, it’s James.’
She gripped the receiver, wondering how it was possible to be so cold and yet perspire so freely at the same time.
‘I’m free tonight. I thought we’d go out for dinner, and then back to my place. It’s been too long since we’ve been alone.’
His voice caressed her and she shivered, unable to comprehend his duplicity.
‘Lark…Lark, are you still there?’
She could picture him frowning slightly, the dark brows drawn together, the grey eyes silvering with irritation.
It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him that she didn’t go out with men who were committed elsewhere, but she didn’t trust herself to say the words without bursting into tears. Instead she said huskily, ‘I’m afraid I can’t, James. A…a prior commitment.’
She hung up before he could argue, and then refused to answer the telephone when it rang again impatiently several minutes later.