Deceptive Passion

by Sophie Weston

  CHAPTER TEN

  DIANA flinched at the iciness of it. If Miles had spoken to her like that, she thought, she would have turned and fled. Susie, though she stopped screaming, showed no such inclination.

  She stared at him for a moment, her dark eyes huge. `Oh, Miles,' she said heart-rendingly. And flung herself into his arms.

  Diana flinched again, as his arms closed round the vibrant figure. She caught sight of the little tableau in the mirror behind them. They looked like three other people, actors on a screen, she thought. If she had been white before, she was now as pale as milk.

  Susie was weeping over his shirt-front, heedless of her eye make-up. She seemed genuinely distraught.

  `They were here, Miles. All night. Together.'

  Miles was impassive. He detached Susie's clinging hands without visible emotion, propelling her into a chair. Susie's weeping redoubled. She clutched at him but, though he didn't slap her again, he ignored her. He turned decisively to Diana.

  `Well?'

  There was no blaze of desire in his face now. He was utterly controlled. Diana made a helpless gesture. She looked at the cold, handsome face and could not believe that they had ever been close, that he had ever lost control in her arms.

  Her throat clogged. She couldn't speak. She shook her head.

  Behind Miles, Susie said, 'You see, she can't deny it.' She sounded both wretched and triumphant.

  Diana said, 'Miles please—' It was not much more than a whisper.

  He did not take those cool eyes off her.

  `Diana tells the truth.' It was very quiet, his dangerous quietness. He spoke over his shoulder to Susie, but it was Diana he was looking at. 'Even when it isn't what you want to hear. Only the truth.'

  It was not, she thought, looking at the handsome, indifferent face, a compliment. Yes, she must have been mistaken earlier. He looked like a man who would never desire her again.

  `They're lovers,' said Susie. 'She and Dimitri.' It was an accusation.

  Miles looked at Diana levelly. 'Is that true?'

  Her throat hurt. She shook her head. 'No,' she managed in a rasping voice she didn't recognise as her own.

  The brown eyes stayed cool. He didn't say anything. All he did was give a little nod, as if that was what he expected. It didn't seem as if he cared at all. Susie gave a shriek.

  `You don't believe her. You can't,' she cried.

  She sounded like a child. Miles turned to look down at her. He looked like a judge, calm and determined.

  `Susie, I've known you a long time but I know Diana better.' He sounded tired. 'I know the sort of woman she is.' His voice gentled. 'There's no doubt, my dear. If Diana says she and Dimitri didn't sleep together, then they didn't.

  Diana froze in astonishment. She held her breath as he turned Susie's mascara-streaked face up to him.

  `My dear,' he said again, very gently, 'this has got to stop. You're not fourteen any more. And I can't rescue you from every situation you can't handle.'

  Susie stared at him.

  `I have my own life to lead, you know. And I'm afraid you're beginning to make that difficult.' His voice was kind but quite implacable. 'My own wife thinks I'm having an affair with you, Susie. I'm very sorry, my pet, but this nonsense has got to stop.'

  Susie looked shattered. 'But she hates you, Miles,' she said, in a panting voice. She seemed on the verge of hysteria. 'She wouldn't have come to the castle if I hadn't sworn that you wouldn't be here and I didn't know where to get in touch with you.

  Miles looked like stone. His lips barely moved as he said, 'I know.'

  `Oh, lord,' said Diana, unheeded.

  His eyes flicked up and down her briefly. She could not discern any expression on his face at all. Then he turned back to Susie.

  `That's still our business, Susie. Not yours. Just as your problems with Dimitri aren't my responsibility.'

  Susie looked stricken. He had clearly shocked her. What he said must have registered for once, Diana thought, suddenly sorry for her.

  `I never..: Susie began.

  `Oh, but you did,' he corrected. His voice was gentle. But weary. 'Every love-affair, every failed job, every slight, every missed plane and unbooked hotel room — they've all been my responsibility to sort out, haven't they? And if I didn't come at once, then you went crazy.'

  Susie stared at him, silenced, her mouth working furiously. She no longer looked remotely attractive. Diana couldn't bear it.

  `Why?' she said, stepping forward impetuously. She was shivering. 'If you loved Dimitri, why on earth didn't you tell him? He wanted to marry you, for heaven's sake. Why keep dragging Miles into it?'

  For the first time since he had slapped her, Susie's eyes left Miles. She turned to Diana, her mouth twitching. She looked distraught. But she looked fierce as well.

  `Because he's mine,' Susie ground out. 'There were years when he didn't belong to anyone but me.'

  `You're wrong,' Miles told her evenly. 'I don't belong to anyone. I never have and I never will.'

  Diana's head went back as if she'd been hit. Susie saw it and laughed. There was something hectic in her laughter. She seemed to have lost all sense of normal restraint.

  `Did you think he was yours, then? He wasn't. Never for a minute. You're so pleased with yourself because he says you tell the truth, aren't you? You think you're going to get him back. But you're not.'

  Diana thought, This can't be happening. People don't say things like that, even if they think them. And with a sudden huge compassion, She's going to feel appalled when she realises what she's done.

  But for the moment Susie was on a high. The spite and envy were wincingly obvious.

  `He never trusted you. Never. He knew you thought he was old and boring. He knew you went out with his students, dancing with them, spending the night with them while he was working.'

  She came close up to Diana and hissed into her face, `He knew because I told him.'

  Diana felt the world begin to sway again. She closed her eyes.

  `That wasn't true,' she said quietly, opening them again.

  The horrible streaked mask of a face grinned at her. `I told him I'd seen you,' Susie said in triumph.

  The look of venom was horrifying. Diana's heart

  lurched. She put a hand to her throat.

  `Seen me?'

  `The green dress at Lalande's. Solange showed it to me and said you'd bought it. It was one of a kind, of course. I knew that. I knew Miles would too. I told him I'd seen a girl who looked like you and wearing a green cobweb Lalande coming out of Simon Herriot's flat at five in the morning. One of the nights he didn't come home, of course. You even told me when they were. I pretended that I didn't think it could be you. I said I didn't think you'd ever been to Lalande. I said I was sure you couldn't afford one.'

  And I, thought Diana, was so delighted with myself for wearing it on the night of the college ball. A surprise for Miles, who liked me to dress up. Out of character for me but a peace-offering to him, for a night that was intended to be a reconciliation. Reconciliation? Oh, lord! How he must have mistrusted me. She remembered the look on his face.

  `You were very clever, Susie,' she acknowledged. Her heart hurt. She put a hand to her side. Her pulses were fluttering wildly. 'I played right into your hands, didn't I?'

  Miles moved suddenly. He said, 'Understandably.' His voice was harsh. 'Tell me, Susie, did it ever occur to you that there might be occasions on which you weren't entitled to have your own way? Ever?'

  Susie turned to look at him. 'You don't understand...'

  He took a step forward. He looked, Diana thought with a sudden thrill of alarm, almost murderous.

  `Oh, but. I do,' he said, too gently. 'You have no scruples at all, do you? I knew you were clever and spoiled and didn't have enough to do with your time, but, God help me, I never dreamed of anything like this.'

  `You shouldn't have married her,' Susie said obstinately. 'She didn't fit in.'

  His eyes narrowed. 'And
you told her so, I suppose?'

  Susie gave him a smile that was pure malice. `I didn't have to.'

  Miles went white. Susie's eyes flickered. Watching, Diana saw her begin to realise what she had done. She backed away from him.

  `She's not stupid. She could see it for herself,' she gabbled. 'It was obvious. She could never give you what you wanted. What you were used to.'

  `What I wanted?' he repeated in that mild voice that sent ice down Diana's spine. 'And you told her that was you, I suppose?'

  Susie quailed. `Not—not exactly.'

  `What, then?'

  Susie's head came up. 'I didn't tell her anything,' she said softly. 'She could see.'

  He took a stride forward. 'There was nothing to see—unless you told her some fairy-story to dress it up.'

  Susie gave a harsh laugh. The sudden sound was almost shocking. Diana's sense of unreality increased.

  `Don't be a fool, Miles,' Susie said contemptuously. `She saw what any woman would have seen. You didn't go near her for days, but when I said I needed you, you rushed to my side. You don't have to be a genius to work out where your priorities lay.'

  He said quite gently, 'Not my priorities. My desire to minimise your nuisance value.'

  Susie winced. There was a perfectly horrible silence. Diana's head began to swim.

  `You know,' Miles said musingly, 'until I met Diana I thought most women were like that. Attention-seeking,' he explained with a cruelty that was all the worse for the considered, judicial tone in which it was uttered. `Self-willed. Trivial. Making trouble and requiring other people to sort it out. Basically a nuisance if a man let them get too close. Where I went wrong,' he concluded thoughtfully, 'was in not realising you were a dangerous

  nuisance. You really don't have any glimmering of a conscience about all this, do you, Susie?'

  Susie stared at him for an uncomprehending moment. Her eyes blinked convulsively. Then, all of a sudden, she whirled on Diana.

  `You!' she was shouting. 'It's all your fault. You've turned him against me ...'

  Diana had a snatched vision of a harridan's face with flying hair and vengefully reaching hands. She cried out just as there was a wild shriek and Miles caught Susie. He lifted her off her feet and away from Diana.

  But it was too much for Diana's uncertain hold on consciousness. Her blood began to thump until it was a pain in her head. She put out an uncertain hand. She thought she heard Miles cursing, fluently and at length. She wasn't sure why or whether it was her fault again. But she felt too faint to care.

  She put out a hand to the chair-back. Missed. And toppled sideways on to the rug.

  When she returned to her senses the sun was shining brilliantly through her open window. She lay for a moment, bemused. The wafting curtains and the elaborate furniture did not belong to the simple bedroom she had inhabited since she and Miles parted. Then she caught the scent of jasmine and everything came back with a rush.

  `Oh, good grief,' she said aloud, sitting up abruptly.

  `You're awake,' a voice said with satisfaction.

  She knew the smooth tones. Her heart clenched. She turned her head. Miles was sitting on the chaise-longue with his long legs stretched out in front of him. The cushions at his shoulder were flattened. He looked as if he'd been there some time.

  The white anger that he had shown Susie had gone. He looked tired but his face was no longer pinched and burning. She gave a shuddering sigh of relief.

  He stood up and strolled over to the bed.

  `Better?' he asked.

  Diana met his eyes and found a message in them that brought the blood surging into her cheeks.

  `Er—yes,' she said distractedly. 'Thank you.'

  He touched the back of his hand briefly to her cheek. `Good.'

  Did he sound amused? Diana was confused. Surely he had been angry—cold and angry, just as he had been on the night he left, as if he couldn't bear to see her ... Her thoughts stopped abruptly as she remembered everything that Susie had let fall. For no reason that she could think of she flushed again.

  `Well enough to talk?' he asked lightly.

  `About what?' she asked, wary.

  `Us. Don't you think it's time?'

  Her eyes fell. Was this where he agreed to a divorce? It was what she wanted of course, she told herself. Her heart plunged at the thought.

  She said past the constriction in her throat, 'Not here. Not now, this minute. Let me get up and collect myself.'

  There was a little silence. 'Time to get the armour back on, Diana?' he asked, an edge to his voice.

  She didn't look at him. 'A few clothes, anyway.'

  He gave a short bark of laughter. 'Well, that makes sense, I suppose.'

  Diana didn't pretend to misunderstand him. She lifted her eyes. 'If we're going to talk sensibly, you have to promise to... to...'

  `To keep my hands off you,' Miles supplied coolly. Diana stiffened. She refused to blush a third time. `Well, you haven't been very good at that in the immediate past, have you?' she reminded him.

  And I have the consequences to prove it, she added silently.

  Miles's eyes narrowed. But all he said was, 'Granted. OK—a nice neutral discussion in full armour with a ton of garden furniture between us. That make you feel safe? Or do you want a chaperon?'

  Nothing would make her feel safe with Miles. Her own heart betrayed her over and over again, she thought wryly.

  But she said with composure, 'That won't be necessary. Thank you.'

  `I'll get Maria to make up a breakfast tray. I'll be out on the terrace when you're ready.' He nodded to the open window.

  `Very well.'

  Their eyes locked. Diana clenched her fingers over the coverlet. She lifted her chin defiantly. He looked at her taut fingers. His mouth twisted. Then he shrugged imperceptibly, turned and walked out on to the terrace.

  As soon as the curtains billowed behind him, Diana darted out of bed, seizing a handful of clothes at random from her suitcase, and bolted into the bathroom.

  She took a long time over her bath. The early morning nausea to which she had become accustomed passed as she dallied in the lilac-scented water. She sank her shoulders under the warm water, relaxing her muscles deliberately. If she was going to negotiate with Miles, she would have to be as calm as she could manage. Calm, controlled and unemotional.

  Diana laughed bitterly. Was she ever going to feel unemotional in the same room as Miles?

  Anyway, she had to try. She put on a cool cotton blouse and workmanlike jeans. She brushed her hair till it shone and pinned it on the top of her head. Peering at her image in the mirror, she wasn't pleased with her

  pallor. She didn't look as well as she had when she left Greece, and there was no way to disguise it.

  Was it possible that Miles would be able to detect her pregnancy? Might he even suspect it already? And, whether he suspected or not, what ought she to tell him, now that they were to talk about their future?

  Diana bit her lip. She didn't know. And there was no disguising that either. She shook her head, sighing. She hadn't been particularly clear-headed on the issue in the first place. Seeing Miles had only thrown her into greater turmoil.

  Straightening her shoulders, she went out to him. The lemon grove in the distance looked golden yellow under the early morning sun, with the grey-green olives and nearly black cypresses behind them. It looked like a magic grove, Diana thought. The contrast between the beauty and the tense interview before her was all too sharp. She set her teeth.

  Miles stood up as soon as he saw her. He had been sitting at the white ironwork table, frowning into the middle distance. A tray containing bowls of yoghurt and honey, sweet rolls and a steaming coffee-pot stood in front of him. His expression, Diana registered, was carefully neutral.

  `Breakfast,' he said, indicating the tray. `Maria's most anxious that you keep your strength up.'

  In spite of her determined cool, Diana jumped. She didn't want to examine the possible implications
of Maria's concern. She saw his eyes narrow again and said quickly, 'That's kind of her. I got the impression that she didn't approve of me yesterday. She wasn't terribly welcoming.'

  `She thought you were here on a dirty weekend with Dimitri,' he said coolly. 'She didn't approve.'

  Diana gaped. `Why... ?'

  His eyebrows rose. 'Because you're my wife,' he said. `She's old-fashioned like that.'

  Diana said hurriedly, 'I didn't mean that. I meant why did she think it '

  He shrugged. 'It looked a bit like that, you have to admit. People don't believe in those sort of coincidences. Susie thought the same.'

  Diana swallowed. 'You didn't,' she remembered. His eyes were very steady. 'No,' he agreed quietly. 'I didn't.'

  Diana decided she didn't want to examine the implications of that either. She sat down. She chose the chair furthest from his own. She watched him register it and the thin mouth slant at her choice. She reached for coffee.

  `Susie—er—rather sees things from her own perspective, I think,' she said with constraint.

  Miles sat down too. 'Black,' he said absently. 'Doesn't she just, though? And then spreads it around. It's amazing that people still believe her.'

  Diana said gently, 'She believes herself. That's what makes it convincing.'

  `I suppose so.' He sent her a long look. 'She did quite a number on us,' he said carefully.

  Diana didn't answer immediately. She poured two cups of coffee and gave him his. She swirled milk into her own and stirred it, concentrating. She said slowly, 'If things had been right between us, Susie couldn't have done a thing.'

  His face was mask-like. He didn't touch his coffee. She could feel his eyes on her, even though she wasn't looking at him

  `So what was wrong?' he said softly at last.

  Diana tensed. She stirred the spoon round the boat-shaped coffee-cup as if her life depended on it. The sun

  was beginning to warm the back of her neck. It was going to be a blistering day, she thought irrelevantly.

  `Don't you know?' she muttered.