Every Woman for Herself (17 page)

Leopardskin prints and gold accessories complement each other perfectly.

The girls were hanging over the banisters in their pyjamas when I went up to the drawing-room floor.

‘You look like a flower fairy,’ Feeb said. ‘If there
are
green ones?’ she added doubtfully.

‘You’re
very
pretty,’ Clo agreed. ‘Mummy said you looked like a little ghoul in those baggy black things you used to wear.’

‘
My
daddy says she looks like an abandoned nymph,’ Caitlin said. ‘Is that good?’

I thought it was … so long as she didn’t get it wrong, and what he really said was ‘abandoned nympho’.

‘Em’s got a pretty dress too,’ Feeb said. ‘The vicar walked into the door-post when he saw her. Even Anne’s got her best denim shirt and trousers on!’

‘We like to push the boat out at Rhymer Birthday Feasts.’

‘Bran had his tea with us – he ate all the biscuits, but he let me hold Mr Froggy,’ Caitlin said importantly. ‘He says he hasn’t time for birthday dinners, he has to finish his book before anyone else gets in his head and interrupts.’

‘And Walter was there, too,’ Feeb said. ‘We had our own party!’

‘Why has Walter got no eyebrows?’ asked Caitlin.

‘It was the war – Gloria says he was a very sensitive young man and he found it so traumatic that his hair just fell out and never came back,’ I explained. My neck began to ache from tilting back to look up at them, so I was quite relieved when Gloria popped her head out of the drawing room and beckoned.

She was holding a tray of sherry glasses. (That’s how the Birthday Feast
always
begins – sherry and birthday cake
first
, then dinner.) ‘Take that glass nearest you,’ she instructed, ‘and go and give it to Em while she’s talking to the vicar.’

‘Right. Will it …?’

‘Just open her eyes to his good qualities.’

‘I can see most of those myself, even from here. And wasn’t it his goodness that was the stumbling block?’

‘Love will find a way,’ she said. ‘Better him than that actor – for either of my little chickens.’

‘I don’t know what you’ve got against Mace. What
did
you see in the tea leaves, Gloria?’

‘Trouble,’ she said heavily. ‘And that Mace – his first wife drove into a tree and killed herself.’

‘
Did
she? How awful! But you can’t blame him for that, can you? Poor Mace!’ No wonder the poor man was bad-tempered.

‘
Surprise!
magazine said she lost control of the car after a row with him,’ Gloria said. ‘After she found out about the other woman.’

I looked at her. ‘But how did she find out about the other woman?’

‘From the
Surprise!
“Stolen Secrets” column – though they can’t name names.’

‘I wondered what Mace had against women’s magazines, and now I know. Was it true, about this other woman?’

‘There’s no smoke without fire, and that one’s still burning,’ Gloria said cryptically. ‘Look at him!’

I turned; Jessica had cornered him, and he was standing, arms folded, glowering down at her. Tyger, tyger …

Then he caught sight of me, raised one eyebrow and smiled. It was the Ravaging Horde bit all over again.

‘Here,’ Gloria ordered brusquely, giving me a dig in the ribs with her sharp elbow. ‘Take that glass to your sister this minute! Bloody tea leaves – I’ll show ’em!’

Em and Chris seemed to be getting on fine without any herbal help, so it was easy to give Em the glass while she was looking at him.

They were in the corner, and Chris was leaning over her with one hand on the wall next to her head, in a very masterful way. I was sure Em was enjoying the novelty, because otherwise she would have released herself in a painful manner: painful to Chris, that is.

None of us except Father actually liked sherry, but Em was too engrossed to notice what she was drinking.

I’d evidently missed Father blowing out the candles on the cake, because Anne was now slicing it … and Gloria was purposefully forging down the room in the direction of Mace and the Treacle Tart, one solitary, twinkling amber glass left on her tray.

Something wicked this way comes.

She
wouldn’t
– would she?

She would.

Mace had just lifted the glass to his lips when I said urgently: ‘Don’t!’ and reached out for it – but too late.

He stared at me in mild astonishment.

‘Excuse
me
!’ Jessica said tightly, having been unceremoniously elbowed out of the way. ‘Mace and I were having a conversation.’

‘Sorry, was that your glass?’ Mace said, relinquishing it to me.

‘Yes. Gloria gave you mine by mistake,’ I said feebly. ‘Shall I get you another?’

‘No. I don’t really like sherry, though I don’t mind sharing this one – with you,’ he offered, with that irresistible smile –
and
smouldering dark eyes, so Gloria was right about the fire. ‘You look like a creature from another world tonight. Beautiful, fragile, insubstantial …’

Disconcerted, I found I’d taken a sip of the potentially doctored sherry myself – then Mace took the glass, turned it around, and drank from the very place my lips had touched, his eyes holding mine.

Do not ask me why this was the sexiest thing that ever happened to me, because I don’t know. Take it from me, it
was
.

I was dissolving faster than a love philtre – which is probably what we were drinking.

Whoops.

‘Do you feel all right, Mace?’ I asked tentatively.

‘Yes – in fact, I feel wonderful!’

‘Right. Er … Mace, I think Gloria put a little something of her own concoction into the sherry.’

‘I thought it tasted unusual – but pleasant. What does she use? I thought it was only liqueurs that had herbs added?’

‘I could have been wrong. Or got the glasses mixed up …’ I mused.

‘It doesn’t matter, does it? At least now I’ve got the chance to tell you how beautiful you look tonight.’

The slow-burning-fuse smile made my spine tingle and my toes sort of curl like Turkish slippers …

Jessica, who’d retreated to the other side of the room, was giving me the evil eye, and I didn’t think she even realised she’d taken a bite of birthday cake. Birthday cakes made by Em have one hundred calories per crumb.

The blissful moment was rudely shattered. ‘You made a right cock-up of that, you daft ha’p’orth!’ Gloria hissed in my ear like an angry wasp. ‘He was supposed to be looking at that Jessica when he drank it, not you!’

‘But, Gloria, wasn’t that a bit … underhand?’

‘Never you mind!’

I was about to tell her that I’d had a sip myself, then stopped. It
was
the tiniest sip and couldn’t possibly matter … could it?

‘Still, maybe …’ She sighed heavily. ‘I’ll brew him something tomorrow to cancel out the spell – but you can’t go against Fate; I should have known better. Time to start dinner.’

‘What’s the matter? What was she saying?’ asked Mace.

‘Everything’s fine,’ I assured him. And it would be once he’d had the antidote and saw me in my usual persona of boring old Charlie, sometime murderess and part-time children’s nanny.

Walter beat the gong with enthusiasm, and we all trooped into the dining room and seated ourselves under the birthday banner, Father at the head of the table, with Jessica sitting smugly at his right like a Borgia bag of secrets.

I don’t remember much about the rest of the dinner, except that Mace sat next to me and told me all about his first play, and the one he was writing now, which both seemed to be about guilt, and hasty actions leading to disastrous outcomes. But then, so is life.

Good, dry champagne ran like water, and Jessica drank too much, which is easy to do when there’s nothing else whizzing round in your system. She got a bit giggly and excitable. The sticky toffee pudding would have lagged her bones a bit, but she declined with horror.

‘Oh, no, I really couldn’t eat a stodgy dessert!’

‘You can’t seem to eat anything at all lately,’ Gloria said. ‘And when you do it doesn’t stay down. Happen you’re pregnant – unless it’s that bulimia.’

‘I have
not
got bulimia!’ protested Jessica. ‘And I’m certainly not pregnant. I had my tubes tied when I had the twins.’

‘Then I hope they were tied good and tight, flower, because there’s no knot that can’t be undone,’ said Gloria grimly.

Jessica stared at her, aghast. ‘Have you been putting something in my food? Or Em – she’s put a spell on me, so I get pregnant?’

‘Don’t be silly,’ Em said. ‘The last thing I want is for you to get effing pregnant and have any excuse for hanging around here.’

‘And it’s not what goes in your
food
that makes you pregnant,’ pointed out Gloria meaningfully.

‘Shouldn’t think she is,’ Anne said, busy surrounding her castle of pudding with custard prior to the initial assault. ‘We’ve all seen the backside of forty.’

‘
I
haven’t!’ exclaimed Jessica.

‘That could have been more felicitously put, but you’re right, Anne,’ agreed Em.

‘Ran, I’m not pregnant, am I?’

‘How should I know?’ he said irritably, looking up from his dinner plate. ‘Does it matter?’

‘Of course it matters! It took me a year to get my figure back after the girls were born, and I’m not getting married looking pregnant.’

The pause after that statement
was
pregnant, even if nothing else was.

Ran sighed and put down his spoon. ‘Well, I was going to save it for the birthday speech, but the cat is out of the bag now: Jess and I are getting married.’

‘What for?’ asked Anne.

‘We love each other!’ Jessica declared dramatically.

‘Good home and a meal ticket for life, for Jessie,’ Em said, looking grim. ‘Unlimited sex for ever for Father.’

‘Do we have to have this sort of family discussion in front of our guests?’ Father asked with some asperity.

Em looked suspiciously at the vicar. ‘Did you know, Chris?’

‘No, but I think it’s a good idea. I think marriage in general is a good idea,’ he added meaningfully, trying to hold Em’s hand.

She glowered at him, and then absently drained the wine glass Gloria had just refilled, although she’s not generally a heavy drinker.

‘Yes, congratulations,’ Mace contributed. ‘And on the baby, too, if there is one.’

‘There won’t be,’ Em said firmly. ‘She’s too old.’

‘I am not too old!’

‘If there is, it might not be Father’s anyway,’ Anne suggested.

‘If I had a baby it would be obvious who the father was – unlike Branwell and Charlie,’ Jess said. ‘Just look at them – they could be
anyone’s
!’

‘I don’t know what you’re hinting at, Jessica, but not all children take after their fathers,’ Em said.

‘Yes, there’s no Rhymer family birthmark shaped like a bloody strawberry,’ Anne contributed. ‘Chaz looks just like Mother.’

‘But no one seems to know who Branwell takes after!’

Father, who’d been ignoring the argument, looked up, frowning. ‘I can’t remember what Maria looked like after all this time – but no, the boy
has
to have got his brains from me.’

‘So that’s where they went,’ Em said.

‘Ho, ho,’ Father said, glowering.

‘I saw this really good programme on TV the other day,’ Jessica said brightly. ‘About a new test you can get to prove whether you’re the father of your children – and lots of men have found that they really aren’t. Have
you
heard of that, Mace?’

There was a small silence. I thought Jessica was just trying to get his attention, but it was an unlucky shot in view of what his ex-wife had said.

Mace turned and stared at
me
, like I was some kind of traitor. ‘You overheard what Kathleen said? And I thought—’

He stopped abruptly, and turned his head away as if he couldn’t bear to look at me.

‘No, Mace!’ I protested. ‘I haven’t – I didn’t …’

‘Only I always get
Surprise!
magazine on Fridays,’ babbled Jessica, ‘and today it says in “Stolen Secrets” that you had an argument about Caitlin with your ex-wife, and Caitlin’s quite plain, really, isn’t she? She doesn’t look like you at all. And then it said Kathleen Lovell hasn’t been seen since she visited you, so I wondered …’

She petered out in the face of the incredulous silence. Open mouth and insert both stiletto-shod feet.

‘Mace, I did overhear, but I didn’t tell anyone – no one at all!’ I said urgently, putting my hand on his arm. ‘It was obviously something she tossed out in the heat of the moment. Caitlin’s yours.’

He sort of shrugged me off, like an insect. ‘
Surprise!
magazine?
Again
? What did I ever do to them to be victimised like this?’

‘Didn’t you know about it?’ Jessica asked brightly. ‘There was a picture of Kathleen Lovell – she’s gorgeous, isn’t she? – but I still think she’s lucky marrying Rod Steigland. And a Christmas honeymoon on a Caribbean island, too!’

‘I think you’d better get this gossip rag and show the man, now you’ve gone this far,’ Father said, but Gloria had already fetched her own virgin copy and was thumbing through it.

Em, largely uninterested in the face of her other problems, had been having a muttered discussion with Anne from which I’d heard only odd snippets like: ‘evicted from my own home’ and ‘end of the whole effing family’ and ‘stay to be treated like a servant’ and ‘bloody invader!’

This time, when Chris tried to take her hand, Em let him.

‘Some Birthday Feast this turned out to be!’ muttered Father bitterly.

The magazine article was quite short. Father removed it from Gloria’s grasp and read it aloud.

‘“An anonymous source”—’

‘Not me!’ I put in hastily.

‘—“said dishy but notoriously bad-tempered actor Mace North had allegedly flown off the handle when ex-wife Kathleen Lovell told him he wasn’t really the father … blah, blah blah … daughter Caitlin was still staying at his country retreat, but no one’s seen Kathleen since … blah blah,”’ Father said, editing ruthlessly. He tossed it aside. ‘Load of poisonous rubbish.’

Mace looked up, his eyes dark and steely with anger, accusing me.