A Pretend Engagement (9 page)

Her white face told him that she was not, and he stared at her as if searching for words. Seconds, speechless seconds passed as he continued to stare into her white face. Then he drew a deep and controlling breath. 'I've-terrified you!' he managed at last, his words taut, sounding as if he could hardly believe what, in his anger with her for what she had done, he himself had done. `It's all right,' he told her urgently. 'Shh.' He tried to calm her. `You're all right. It's over. I won't harm you. I promise, you've nothing to fear from me.'

But Varnie was emotionally all over the place and wanted to be by herself. She pulled back from him. `Go,' she said, her voice barely audible.

`You're shaking. You're...'

`I want you to go,' she repeated. `I want you to go.'

He seemed torn about leaving her in the state she was in. 'You'll be all right on your own?' he asked, his eyes on her over-large wounded ones.

`I want to be by myself,' she insisted fixedly.

His hands fell to his sides, though for one most peculiar moment she had the feeling that he wanted to gently touch his lips to hers in a kiss of apology. His head did, in fact, come a fraction nearer. But, as if just then remembering how not many minutes ago he had half frightened the life out of her, he turned abruptly about and went striding from the room. As if to show that she was quite safe, he closed the door after him.

Varnie collapsed into a chair once he had gone, and gradually her shaking started to subside. She knew that what she should be doing was taking out her suitcase, packing and getting out of there. Surely even Johnny wouldn't expect her to stay after this?

But, strangely, something-she knew not what-seemed to be holding her back from taking that course of action. Most curiously, she found that she did not want to leave!

How long she stayed sitting there she had no idea. But as she recovered from the shock of Leon's retribution for what she had done Varnie began to doubt that he would have taken her by force-had it got that far.

As far as he knew, though, she was a woman of some experience. Hadn't she after all answered yes when he had asked if she had slept with John Metcalfe? She had deliberately withheld the information that she and Johnny were family and that they had been small children at the time.

Leon still thought her a woman of some experience anyway, yet the moment he had realised that she was going into some kind of trauma from what he was about he had on the instant called a halt.

Varnie knew that, unless she intended to creep out of the house with her suitcase when he wasn't looking, she was going to have to face Leon again some time. But, using delaying tactics, she went and took a shower and changed into fresh trousers, shirt and light sweater. She had been dressed and ready for ten minutes, though, before she summoned up the nerve to leave her room.

She'd expected Leon to be at work in the study. He was not. When she was not at all ready to see him, and just as if he was expecting her first port of call would be the kitchen, he was there waiting for her when she went in. He was standing staring moodily out of the kitchen window, but turned about at the surprised sound of her `Oh!' `Don't worry,' he said gruffly, as if believing her cry had been from alarm rather than the surprise that it was. `I won't be doing that again in a hurry.'

Varnie felt herself go scarlet as she recalled the warm touch of his hands on her naked breasts and lower belly. Never had she known such intimacy. She pulled herself together. `Can I have that in writing?' she asked waspishly. And, feeling choked all at once just from being in the same room with him, `I'm going for a walk!' she announced stiffly.

`You're not leaving?' he questioned sharply.

'What-and deprive myself of your delightful company'

He smiled. He actually smiled at her acid. `And there was I thinking I might have irreparably damaged you. You're still smart in the mouth department, I see.'

She gave him a disgusted look and went out into the hall. She grabbed up her jacket from a peg by the rear door and took herself off.

Toad, she fumed as she trudged along, everything that had happened churning over and over in her head. She wanted to hate him for the fright he had given her. Yet how could she hate him? He had never intended his lovemaking if you could call it that-to go very far. Just enough to pay her back, maybe.

Somehow on that walk-and she supposed she must have been out for a couple of hours Varnie slowly came to the conclusion that, given the lies she had allowed Leon to believe with regard to her love-life and the experience he must have assumed that she had she had got off more lightly than perhaps she deserved. She was dogged by an innate fairness that tripped her up to remind her that it couldn't be every day-or ever-that some female, without the least encouragement from him, piped up and claimed him as her fianc�. So ask yourself, Varnie Sutton, did you suppose he would meekly sit back and say nothing? Did you expect to escape without some kind of censure, some kind of punishment? Particularly when you were aware that at this present time he had had his fill of women? She supposed not.

It still didn't make what had gone on right, though. But as she returned to Aldwyn House, entering through the gates at the end of her walk, she found she had mellowed From being upset with him to being on the way to thinking that perhaps Leon was more sinned against than sinning.

And such way of thinking would never do, she told herself sternly. Had she forgotten that he was more or less blackmailing her to stay on? Yet, again, was he? She recalled how, up in her room, immediately after he had gone, she had somehow felt strangely reluctant to leave-and that had had nothing to do with her brother.

She recalled too, when she'd said she was going for a walk, how Leon had sharply questioned, `You're not leaving?' Just as if he did not want her to go...

Well, of course he didn't want her to go. Who else would cook and clean for him if she wasn't there? Who would feed the brute? It was only his stomach he was thinking about. Though as she entered the house she all at once realised that the brute had not been fed. She should have made him a sandwich over an hour ago! She went into the kitchen, mentally debating whether she felt forgiving enough to make him a snack, only to discover that she had no need to. He had made her one!

Feeling slightly stunned that in making his own sandwich he had made a sandwich for her too, Varnie experienced an overwhelming softening for him. He need not have. But he had. It was thoughtful of him, and it showed another facet of the man she was trying hard to hate, but who somehow she could not hate.

Weird, she decided. Perhaps his over familiarity with her had tilted her world temporarily sideways? She decided there and then to stay out of his way until her world tilted the right way up again.

To stay out of his way proved surprisingly easy. She was in the habit of serving his dinner in the dining room. Whether he thought that since their `engagement' she might take it upon herself to eat there with him, she did not know, but he surfaced in the early evening and came to the kitchen to tell her coolly, `I'll have dinner in the study.'

She nodded. If he wanted to work all night that was his business. `Thanks for the sandwich,' she said, making her voice deliberately off-hand. As if she wanted to eat at the same dining room table, for goodness' sake!

Varnie went to bed that night feeling restless and totally out of tune with her world. She could not rid herself of the notion that as she wanted to keep her distance from Leon, so he too wanted to keep his distance from her. Well, it was working. She had hardly seen him! When she had gone to deliver his meal tray and then to collect his used dishes they had barely exchanged two words.

She was up early the next morning, with the notion pushing and pushing at her that Leon would probably be leaving any time now. Most peculiarly, that notion, that would at one time have seen her leaping with joy, strangely did nothing to lift her spirits that Monday.

She showered used now to her shower throwing a temperamental fit halfway through and dressed and went down to the kitchen, feeling a total mixture of unsettled emotions. Leon had scared her yesterday-and yet she couldn't think that it was the way he had come to her bedroom and all that had followed that was responsible for how she was feeling.

For once she was first in the kitchen, and she tried not to look at Leon when he came in for his first coffee of the day. She did not wish him good morning, and he did not appear to notice. But she found she had to look at him. He looks tired, she found herself thinking as, cup in hand, he went from the kitchen. And for no reason because she was sure she didn't care if he worked every hour of every day on this, his 'holiday'-she discovered that she worried about him.

And that annoyed her. He was a grown man, for goodness' sake. If he wanted to spend his holiday working, that was up to him. Why on earth should that bother her?

But bother her it did. So much so that when, determined he was not going to have breakfast in his study too, she went and told him breakfast was ready, and he joined her in the kitchen, she found she was blurting out before she could stop it, `You should get out more!'

He looked at her-silent, watching, maybe calculating why she thought anything that he did was anything to do with her. `Jack's a dull boy?' he enquired, after long unsmiling moments of just looking at her.

She heartily wished she had kept her mouth shut. `It's not good for you-working all the hours you do!' she said bluntly.

`This advice is all part of your skivvying service?' he enquired, equally bluntly. Her face flamed. `You can work till you drop for all, I care!' she snapped, and, already having had enough of him-and the day had barely begun yet-she took herself off upstairs to do some tidying up.

She did hate him. But it did not last. By lunchtime she was again all out of tune, feeling very much mixed up-and rebellious. She had been here over a week now-ten days, in fact. And, while she was no stranger to hard work, and when the occasion demanded it no stranger to excessive work hours either, even skivvies thank you, Beaumont, for the reminder-were allowed time off.

Afraid her feelings of mutiny might be as brief as her feelings of hate, Varnie took a sandwich in to him and, having had to wait a minute while he finished some business phone call, the moment he put down the phone she launched in with, `I've decided not to cook tonight.'

He stared, unspeaking, at her. Clearly he was waiting for more. And at that moment she recalled how last night he had been at pains not to risk having to eat at the same table as her, and rebellion was joined by-devilment.

`Naturally I'd be lacking in my skivvying duties if I didn't make arrangements for you first.' His eyes glinted with something. She knew not what. `So?' Just that one clipped word and nothing else.

`So I can either take you for a meal-presumably I'm in for a handsome bonus at the end of your holiday,' she inserted, more from sauce than anything, `or I can bring you back a takeaway.'

He opted for neither, but studied her as if wishing she would clear off and leave him to get on.

`Right!' Varnie exclaimed, rebellion high again. `I'll bring you back a sweet and sour...' She paused, then added deliberately, `Though not too heavy on the sour.'

The implication that he was sour enough was not lost on him. But, when Varnie was expecting her ears to be singed for her nerve, to her amazement she saw she had reached his sense of humour. He laughed. He actually laughed.

She stared at him, her heartbeats suddenly dancing a jig, her spirits all at once lightening. `Without doubt, Varnie Sutton, you are the most impudent skivvy I have ever come across,' he informed her. Then, abruptly sobering, `I wanted you to be certain that I pose no threat to you whatsoever,' he explained-and Varnie went all soft about him inside. This was why she had barely seen him? `Because of-um-yesterday?'

He nodded. `It was an unfortunate-incident. On reflection, I believe I overreacted somewhat, and I'm sorry about that.'

By the sound of it, he had plainly been playing all that had taken place yesterday over and over in his mind. `Don't worry about it,' she said impulsively. `No permanent harm done.'

He eyed her seriously. `You're kinder than I deserve,' he said shortly. But then asked, `You feel-comfortable with me?"

'Of course,' she assured him.

He smiled a quiet kind of a smile, then, and she was glad to be friends once more-if they could ever have been termed `friends' in the first place, which was very much in doubt. But, to her surprise, on that score she was more than a little shaken that, after a moment's thought, he should all at once decide, `It seems to me, since you're determined not to cook tonight, that I'd better take you out to dinner.' Instantly she was embarrassed. `Oh, I wasn't angling for you to-'

`Do you think by now I don't know that' he butted in.

And that pleased her." Er -right,' she mumbled.

Though, just to make sure she knew that it was nothing personal, `As you observed-I should get out more,' he said.

Varnie dressed with care that evening. She told herself that she always dressed with care, and it had nothing to do with the fact that it was one Leon Beaumont who was to be her escort. Though for all the notice he took of her when, wearing a smart dress of a lovely shade of green that brought out the colour of her eyes, and with her long blonde hair about her shoulders, she went down the stairs, she might not have bothered.

`Ready?' was his only comment, and his glance barely skimmed her slender figure, curving beautifully in all the right places. `As it's a Monday I didn't think there'd be any need for me to book a table anywhere,' she trotted out from an unthought nowhere. He might not have noticed that she was out of her usual trousers and top, but that did not stop her from noticing him. `Most eating establishments are quiet on a Monday,' she heard herself rattling on. My word, was he handsome. She had only ever seen him in casual clothes, but suited, with collar and tie, he was something else again.

`At least-' she didn't seem able to stop babbling on `-that's my experience of the hotel trade.'

He could have told her to shut up, that she was giving him earache before the evening began. But he didn't.Though he succeeded in surprising her into speechlessness anyway when he affably informed her, `I've booked.'

He had earlier taken his car out from the garage and parked it on the drive, and they were out of the house and getting into the car before Varnie was over her surprise. `You've booked? You don't know anywhere!'

He turned in his seat, favoured her with a superior look and, turning back to start up his long, dark and sleek vehicle, instructed, `It's your night off-try to enjoy it.' It was not difficult to enjoy it. Varnie was thrilled and delighted that the establishment Leon had chosen for them to dine on her night off was the splendid Ruthin Castle. Parts of the castle, now a hotel, dated back to the thirteenth century. It was set in acres and acres of gardens and parklands, and yet still managed to be close to the medieval town of Ruthin, a centuries-old town that in 1400 had been attacked by the army of the Welsh chieftan Owain Glendower. It was a joy to Varnie to walk with Leon into the wood-panelled reception, and to go on to sit with him in a lounge area with a pre-dinner drink.