Substitute Bride (5 page)

The house was quiet with no one to occupy it but herself, and Emma's nerves grew jagged as she daily anticipated Rick ringing from Australia. He had been in touch once, just before Blanche went away, and it was unlikely, Blanche said, that he would ring again until the end of the week, but one never knew.

Blanche had, before she had left for Paris, broken the uneasy silence which had existed between the two girls ever since the scene in Emma's bedroom. She had reluctantly told Emma the name of the luxury hotel where she would be staying with Rex. She had parted with this information only because she and her mother had found Helen much worse than they had expected, and her doctor had warned she might not have long to live.

'Don't contact me unless the old girl pops off,' Blanche had instructed calously, while threatening dire repercussions should Emma dare divulge her whereabouts to anyone else.

Emma, hearing Rex tooting loudly at the door, as if running off with another man's fiancée wasn't something to keep quiet about, had been inclined to go and confront him.

He and Blanche might be a well matched pair, but at least Rex wasn't engaged to someone else. Somewhere under all that worldly, sophisticated boredom might lie one spark of decency.

'Don't you dare!' Blanche had hissed, as Emma hesitated, clearly guessing her intentions.

'It might be worth a try.' Emma had stared at her cousin bravely.

'What if you succeeded?' Blanche had mocked. 'Would you offer to take my place? Somehow I think you'd find Paris a bit too much for you.'

Ignoring the other girl's scorn, Emma frowned. Hadn't Blanche known she had been there several times? Emma's father had sometimes taken her to Paris during school holidays to stay with a relation of her mother's. Once they had spent Christmas there. Her mother's cousin had owned a rather grand house—she probably still did. Ruefuly, Emma glanced down at her work-worn hands, wondering wryly what the so elegant Clarice would make of them. She remembered her as distinctly
grande dame
and very beautiful. There had been a time when Emma feared her father might be thinking of marrying her, and, though nothing had come of it, they had never gone back after Clarice had married another man.

While she had stood there pondering over the past and hesitating, Blanche had picked up her smart suitcase and gone, leaving Emma to realise unhappily that she had lost the only chance she was likely to get of making either Blanche or Rex change their minds.

Rick Conway didn't ring, after al. He arrived in person the morning after Blanche left, ten days before he was due back.

The shock was almost too much for Emma. He didn't bother to knock, which might, she thought, have given her intuition time to warn her. It seemed grossly unfair that the first intimation she had of his presence was when he opened the kitchen door and walked in.

In view of the terrible seriousness of the situation, Emma had great difficulty in restraining a hysterical laugh when he asked casualy, 'How is it, if you're in the house, you're always to be found in the kitchen?'

She was too stunned to answer that. She had just been out in the fields with coffee for Jim and had been about to have her own before starting on the account books. 'You aren't supposed to be here!' she whispered.

'Wel, I can't think of anywhere else I'd rather be at the moment,' he drawled. 'Where's Blanche?'

'Bl—Blanche?' In his rather expressionless face she sensed tension, but it couldn't be as great as her own.

Suddenly his eyes narrowed alarmingly as he threw off his coat. 'If she's out tell me where. And I don't want any more coat. 'If she's out tell me where. And I don't want any more stories about not knowing!'

Oh, God, how did she get out of this one? Behind Rick's tension was determination. It stood out a mile. Joining it, as she stood gaping at him like a landed fish, was suspicion, which warned her she must act quickly if she was to avert worse. 'I—I think she's gone abroad, but don't ask me where.'

'Exactly what you said last time,' he rejoined grimly, 'only this time you've decided to have her abroad.'

'How would I know exactly where she's gone?' Emma gasped, her grey eyes flashing, knowing suddenly that aggression might be her only defence. 'It's none of my business and I don't ask. You'd better try London, her agency or somewhere. I'm busy—so if you'll excuse me?'

She would never have believed that in grasping her and whipping her off her feet, Rick could have acted so swiftly.

One moment she was standing, defying him, the next he had caught her up, like a hurricane. In an instant she was over his knee, his hand descending without mercy on the seat of her pants, while she screamed with temper and pain.

'Let me go, you great brute, or I'll call the police!'

He was deaf. The hand continued to rise and fall with renewed vigour. 'I'll stop when you agree to talk,' he snapped harshly, ignoring her wild threats.

He meant it as wel! Emma groaned aloud, choking.

Hadn't Blanche told her he spent a lot of time in isolated, uncivilised places? She had been right about the veneer, too.

Rick Conway's easygoing drawl was only skin-deep. The cruel savagery underneath it was being transmitted only too clearly through the force of his hand.

Tears were running down Emma's cheeks before she gave in. 'Please stop!' she begged, the hardness of his thighs pressing against her small breasts arousing a sensation almost as hard to bear as the pain he was inflicting on her delicately rounded posterior.

'Had enough?' he enquired laconicaly.

She nodded, blindly, in abject humiliation. 'I hate you!'

she cried, as he released her.

'That's neither here nor there.'

As she stood up she felt dizzy and hurt all over. 'You can go to… No!' she shrieked, as his hand shot out to grab her again.

Pausing, he snapped, 'Then spil the beans. I'm not interested in where you'd like to see me.'

Emma was. She could have kiled him! The horrible dizziness persisted, so she scarcely knew what she was saying. It took away any strength she had left to fight him.

'Where is she, Emma?'

'She's in Paris,' Emma hiccupped, feeling it had been torn out of her, but that was all she was going to say. She lifted huge, tear-drenched eyes to meet his, daring him to ask more.

'With?'

'With…?' Emma tried her best to look blank.

'Out with it!' The hard bones of his jaw and chin tightened. 'I want answers, Emma, not evasion—or else!'

The implications of that couldn't have been clearer. As it was she might not be able to sit down for days. More tears ran, she couldn't seem to stop them, but there was no pity in Rick's hard, unrelenting face. All the same, she did try to make one last effort on behalf of the girl who had always treated her as something less than human. 'I won't,' she gasped, 'I can't tell you!'

'Yes, you can.' He grasped her hair, this time, having some difficulty in getting his hands through the thickness of it, but succeeding painfuly.

'Oh…' she moaned, hating him so much yet unable to retaliate. There was one way she could be revenged, but she was reluctant to take it. It took a second cruel tug on her hair to make her decide furiously that Rick deserved to be hurt, as much as he was hurting her. Fury and fright, momentarily eliminating discretion, she sobbed, 'She's with Rex!'

'Ah…' it was a long-drawn-out sigh of cold anger. For a second he stood so still Emma shuddered. 'So I was right to cut short my visit down under. The little bitch! I'd like to…'

Emma tried to close her ears to what he said next, but even if she had managed to do so completely it would have been obvious from his expression that Blanche had burnt her boats in every direction, so far as he was concerned.

Anxiously she sought for something to say that might make him feel better, but could anything soothe a man in such circumstances?

'Blanche didn't mean you to know anything about it,' was the best she could manage. 'I'm sure she didn't mean to hurt you.'

'Is that supposed to help?' he snarled.

Emma spread her hands, her face pale. 'What more can I say?'

'I expect you knew what was going on?' he attacked her again, his voice harsh and grating. 'You must have known you were fighting a losing battle over Rex Oliver. You knew what might easily happen, yet you never thought to warn me.'

'Would you have listened?' she whispered, aghast at his twisted interpretation of things.

'If you hadn't been so busy trying to hang on to Oliver by the skin of your teeth, you might have had time to think of other people!'

'You don't exactly inspire anyone to worry over you, Rick,' she couldn't resist pointing out. 'You always seem capable of handling everything.'

'Are you being sarcastic?' he gazed at her, his eyes like steel. 'I can handle most things, but not something I know nothing about. Then I have to rely on instinct, which is what brought me back ten days before I was due.'

'If only I'd been able to speak to Rex!' Emma felt with anguished certainty that she should have made a greater effort.

'Would he have listened?' Rick Conway ran a contemptuous eye over her unprepossessing figure. 'It's quite clear to me now he was only using you for one thing, and I doubt if he derived much pleasure even from that.'

As Emma gasped in rage and horror, he continued, his anger apparently no less than her own, 'You could have come off worse. He could have persuaded you to go to Paris with him instead of Blanche. But before you begin congratulating yourself, don't think you're going to get away with it. You have a lot to answer for, bringing a man like that to the house, conspiring to fool me!'

'I—' Emma began, then paused. What was the use of trying to convince him she wasn't guilty? He would never believe her, and in another few minutes he could be gone.

Yet suddenly, for all she hated him intensely for what he had just done to her, she knew an urgent desire to prove she was innocent, at least of most of the things he was accusing her of. After al, neither Blanche or Rex could have anything more to lose. She had to make sure, though.

'Couldn't you possibly forgive Blanche?' she whispered.

'Don't you still love her? Surely no one can stop loving, just like that?'

'Love?' he sneered mockingly, but when Emma waited to hear more, he changed the subject. 'I'm not good at forgiving people, least of all girls who go off with other men. I certainly don't intend forgiving Blanche, nor do I intend letting her go scot-free. Like you, she'll pay for her sins.'

'I hope you're not contemplating anything foolish,' Emma gulped miserably. 'It's so easy to do something we regret afterwards.'

'You'll be with me all the way,' he promised, his eyes glinting coldly, 'so you'll see whether I have any regrets or not.'

What was he talking about? Not caring for the almost sinister ring in his voice, Emma wasn't sure she realy wanted to know. She was tired and wished he would go quickly and leave her in peace. There'd be more recriminations when Blanche came home and she didn't know how much more she could take. As she gazed in weary perplexity at Rick Conway all her former desire to vindicate herself in his eyes left her. If she had any desire now it was simply to see the last of him.

'I'm afraid,' she said numbly, 'I don't quite folow you, but I think it would be better if you went. I don't feel so good myself. In some ways I think I've suffered almost as great a shock as you have.'

'We have to talk,' he stared back at her coldly, without even the smalest flicker of sympathy in his eyes.

'All the talk in the world isn't going to make any difference,' she rejoined stubbornly. 'Before you say any more I feel you should see Blanche. There could be a very simple explanation.'

'Sex and a good time, with someone else's property,' he replied scathingly. 'On second thoughts, sex probably doesn't realy come into it. She was always a cold little b…'

'Don't dare say it!' Her cheeks burning, Emma cut in. 'I don't have to listen to that kind of talk. I refuse to speak to you again!'

'You're going to do more than that,' his mouth twisting savagely, he delivered a bombshel, 'you're going to marry me.'

'Just like that?' she gasped, unable to believe he wasn't joking.

'Yes, just like that,' he assured her, a hard glint in his eyes.

'I've always made decisions quickly and my intuition rarely lets me down. I could say never, but not after Blanche.

Blanche, I'll admit, didn't work out, but you wil, if I have to drag you to the altar. We'll be married and spend our honeymoon in Paris. At the same hotel as your cousin and your late boy-friend.'

Emma thought she might choke with stunned surprise. She still couldn't believe he was serious. Yet he had such a look of grim determination that in spite of herself she was half convinced. 'You must be crazy,' she whispered hoarsely,

'even to be contemplating such a thing!'

'I mean it, Emma,' he rasped, standing over her, very tall and formidable, giving more than a hint of what she would have to fight if she didn't immediately obey him. 'I have a marriage licence—your name fortunately is Davis, too, and I believe Blanche's second name is also Emma, after your paternal grandmother, so there shouldn't be any difficulty there.'

Staring at him, her grey eyes widening, Emma was suddenly afraid. 'The whole idea is ridiculous,' she faltered.

'Why don't you try being sensible for a change? How do you know Blanche didn't change her mind? She might still be in London, nowhere near Paris.'

'I can certainly check.' His voice vibrated with a derision which, spreading to his eyes, scorched her. 'Lead me to your telephone.'

Emma, wondering anxiously what he was going to say, showed him into the small study where the books she had been about to begin work on were piled on the desk. When she turned to leave his hand shot out to catch her wrist. 'Stay with me,' he commanded. 'I don't want you to disappear.'

What he meant, she supposed, was that he didn't want her disappearing into the countryside, leaving him to carry out his devious plans alone. On the way from the kitchen he had asked the name of the hotel where Blanche and Rex were staying, and while she had momentarily toyed with the notion of pretending she didn't know, a glint in Rick's eye had warned her it would be a waste of time.

Cynicaly, he had shrugged. 'It's one of the best. I haven't stayed there personaly, but I know of people who have.

Meanness can't be another of Oliver's vices.'

Waiting, while Rick put through his cal, Emma felt a mass of nerves. A de luxe hotel in most capital cities would have an international switchboard, but she wasn't realy surprised when he used fluent French. If the state of her nerves hadn't been good when he started, they were worse by the time he had finished. Blanche was there, she gathered, listening apprehensively as Rick Conway cunningly extracted the information. She had been there since last night. Emma's heart felt like lead, but before Rick put down the receiver something else was disturbing her even more.

'She is there,' he snapped, turning to her, his face taut with anger, 'staying quite openly as Mrs Rex Oliver.'

'Are you sure?'

'Sure!' he laughed curtly. 'I got an adequate description and I'm more than satisfied. Blanche was fond of saying that no one ever looks for the obvious, and your friend Oliver must believe he has nothing to lose.'

While trying to assimilate this, Emma heard herself murmuring in painful apprehension, 'Is it true you've booked rooms from tomorrow?'

Sharply he glanced at her shaken face. 'You could folow what I was saying?'

'A little.' She didn't bother explaining, although she sensed his surprise, 'Are you—' she swalowed and had to make another attempt, 'Are you going after them?'

'Not with a gun in my hand.' His black brows rose above eyes hard as steel. 'A wife will be a much better weapon, as I've already told you.'

'No!' Emma cried.

He took no notice of her protesting anguish, but continued ruthlessly as if she had never spoken.

'We'll leave for London this morning, after I settle things here. Tomorrow we get married, then pop over the Channel.

You might even enjoy the experience.'

'You're mad!' she repeated unevenly. 'Quite mad!' Her eyes darkened to twin pools of fear. 'I—I don't see how you can enjoy such a joke, after what's just happened!'

'It's because of what's happened, you little fool,' he snarled, while his grasp on her thin shoulders threatened to break her in two. 'Listen to me,' he said grimly, his dark eyes boring into hers. 'We both want revenge, but if that was all that mattered I have no doubt it could easily be achieved without marriage. Certainly I have no great wish to be tied to a pitiful little nobody like you, but I have no wish, either, to return to my home minus the bride whom a great many of my friends and relations are waiting to see. I refuse to become an object of ridicule.'