A Suitable Mistress

‘You’ve changed too, you know,’ she said accusingly, after a while.

And she was taken aback when he leaned back in the chair and said with an amused, lazy smile, ‘Have I? Tell me how.’

Suzanne stared at him with the drowning feeling of having got into something that was beyond her depth.

She tried not to look addled but the only thing her mind would tell her was that, if anything, he had become even more devastatingly handsome than she remembered. His dark good looks had hardened, taken on the indefinable edge of power and control.

‘You look older,’ she said lamely.

‘I am older.’ He waited, amused.

‘Of course, you’re still—still...an attractive man...’ She gave her full attention to a mouthful of spaghetti, thinking what an undignified meal it was, especially when only one of you was doing the eating.

He threw back his head and laughed. ‘Dear me, how embarrassed you sound saying that!’ He eyed her as though she was a charming curiosity. ‘Anyone would think that you had no dealings with the opposite sex.’ The grey eyes fixed on her face speculatively.

Suzanne felt her face go hot. Try as she might, she couldn’t find any serious recollection of dealings with the opposite sex. Nearly twenty-one and still a virgin. Boyfriends, yes. Her father had always been very indulgent about boyfriends; maybe, she thought now, because he could see that, despite the parties she went to occasionally and the boys she brought back home occasionally, she was still as innocent as a wide-eyed child.

Dane Sutherland had been the only one who had stirred her imagination. Everyone else had been little more than a bit of childish fun. True, when she was nineteen, she had had a fling with a man, someone who had worked with her, but she had never felt that driving passion which she had always associated with a serious affair, and she had not slept with him, despite his persistence. In fact, it had mostly been his persistence that had ended their relationship.

‘I’ve been out with men, yes,’ she told him coolly.

‘Slept with any of them?’

‘That’s none of your business.’

‘Just curious.’ He shrugged and laughed, not at all taken aback by her reply.

‘I don’t ask you about the women in your life,’ Suzanne muttered, irritated as much by his attitude as by his line of questioning.

‘Feel free to,’ he said, folding his arms and shrugging again. She caught his eyes and was struck, as she had been years ago, by his magnificent ability to make it seem as though one hundred per cent of his attention was focused entirely on her. A trick of sorts, she knew, a talent for pretence, but how she had once let it work on her. She couldn’t think back to her adolescence without cringing.

‘I’m not that interested,’ she said, wondering whether she should scrape her plate clean or whether that would appear greedy. The food had tasted wonderful—full of tomatoes and herbs. Far better than anything she could whip up. She had never been at her best in a kitchen. Things always seemed to go wrong whenever and wherever they possibly could. Sauces always curdled, or else became lumpy, meat always seemed to burn, and she always managed to forget whatever was boiling until the smell became unavoidable.

She stood up and began clearing away the dishes, vaguely piqued to realise that if she was uninterested in his women then he was even less interested in her response.

He employed, he told her, a woman who came in and cleaned every other day. She also did his ironing and cooked if and when he wanted her to.

‘Lucky old you,’ she said, watching him as he fixed them cups of coffee and nodded briefly in the direction of the lounge.

‘Shall we clear the air, Suzie?’ he asked with a resigned sigh. ‘Do you dislike me personally, or do you simply dislike the family I represent?’

He sat down on the chair opposite her and stretched out his long legs, crossing them loosely at the ankles.

‘How can you expect me to give you an honest answer to that question, when I am not renting a room in your house?’

‘Because,’ he said steadily, his expression shuttered, ‘you haven’t yet learned the art of deception. You would like to maintain some kind of dignified coldness, I imagine, but your need to express yourself trips you up constantly. Am I right?’

‘You’re always right, aren’t you?’

‘I think that that’s one reason why you’ve let yourself go so utterly for the past few months. You’ve not spoken to anyone about your father’s death. Instead you’ve bottled up your emotions, which is alien to you, and the result is that you’re still as maudlin and confused as you were the day he died.’

‘I am neither maudlin nor confused,’ she denied hotly.

‘You seem to think that I washed my hands of your father the day I left the house,’ he said, in a cool statement of fact. ‘I did write to him, you know, and a little over a year ago I sent him a cheque in case he needed money. I knew that he had put aside the small legacy my father left him for you. He returned my cheque with a friendly enough letter saying that he was fine.’

Suzanne stared at him, floored by this revelation about which she had known nothing. ‘Pride,’ she managed to say, recovering her power of speech.

‘Almost certainly,’ he agreed, either not noticing or else deliberately ignoring the effect that his words had had on her. ‘Still, I had no idea that my stepmother was giving him such a hard time.’

‘And if you had known, would you have rushed over to save the situation?’

He paused for a fraction of a second—a fraction long enough for her to know that as far as he was concerned he had divorced himself from his past and would not have reopened it willingly. She felt a surge of anger against him and her hand was trembling when she picked up the coffee-cup. He might have offered money to her father, but time was something which he could ill afford to spare.

‘I would have dealt with it,’ he told her grimly, which did very little to appease her anger.

‘From thousands of miles away? How compassionate you are!’

He would have thought about it, she told herself, and written a polite letter, but the urgency of it all would have been lost on him. He had been caught up in a different world and chauffeurs had no place in it. She felt tears of self-pity spring to her eyes, but for once the associated thought of nibbling some chocolate did not arise. She was far too busy feeling angry with him.

‘Why have you decided to come back?’ she asked. ‘If it was so exciting in America, why return?’

‘It was now or never.’ Five words that silenced her because there was something dark and menacing behind them. ‘And you never answered my question,’ he said, his features relaxing. ‘Do you dislike me personally or do you simply dislike what I represent?’

‘Do you care?’

‘I’m interested,’ he answered lazily, sidestepping the question, which, she knew, had been foolish anyway.

‘I don’t dislike you,’ she said, trying to sound more sophisticated. ‘Although, I admit that I don’t find your type attractive.’

‘And what type is that exactly? Using your vast knowledge of men as a starting point.’

This time she was certain that he was laughing at her. He was a mere nine years older than her but in terms of experience it was tantamount to a lifetime and she knew it. As he did.

‘Cruel,’ she said, ‘arrogant, too good-looking, too cut off from feeling any real emotion about anyone.’

‘You have no idea what emotions I feel,’ he murmured, sipping some of his coffee and looking at her over the rim of the cup.

She didn’t add the real reason that she disliked him—a dislike that she had nurtured over the years and one that had become more real to her with the passing of time, rather than faded—an overheard conversation, a few passing words before the door closed on her red-faced humiliation.

‘You’ll have to watch your chauffeur’s little girl, Dane.’ The merry tinkle of Martha’s laughter. She had a way of laughing that made it seem as though she was a vastly superior being. ‘She’s got a teenage crush on you.’

Suzanne had been hidden from sight, a loose-limbed girl of sixteen on her way to deliver a message from her father.

‘Don’t concern yourself over that,’ Dane had said. His voice had been indifferent, and although she hadn’t been able to see him she had imagined him strolling across to the patio doors, looking outside, his thoughts on things that had very little to do with an irritating adolescent and her fanciful illusions.

‘But darling,’ Martha had said, ‘you’re a very attractive man—’ her voice had been warm and amused ‘—and a child like that probably finds you irresistible. She peeps at you whenever you’re around. You must have noticed that she snatches every opportunity to visit the house when she knows that you’re here.’

Dane hadn’t answered, and Martha had said, which had been the final blow of mortification, ‘Besides, you must remember that she’s only the chauffeur’s daughter. You mustn’t let her get ideas above her station.’

And that had been that. Suzanne had turned away and heard the door shut before she had even made it down the corridor into the hall. The message she had been sent to deliver had flown out of her head completely. It had left a nice, tidy spot, just the right size for her disillusionment to set in.

‘And I hold you responsible for the way my father was treated,’ she told him bitterly. ‘You may not have been around, but you owed it to the people who worked for your father to see that they were treated properly, instead of just vanishing off the face of the earth and leaving your stepmother in charge. Did you even know that people who had worked for your father for years at the house were dismissed only weeks after your father died?’

She was gathering momentum now and was astounded when he said evenly, betraying no emotion whatever, ‘Yes, I did.’

‘You...you did?’

‘I made sure that they were all financially compensated. Very generously compensated.’

‘How on earth did you find out?’ Suzanne asked, frowning and trying hard to work out how a man thousands of miles away could have discovered that. Did he have some mysterious crystal ball in his New York penthouse, which he looked into every time he wanted to see what was happening on the other side of the world?

‘I have my ways.’

‘Spies, you mean?’

‘Nothing quite so dramatic.’ A shadow of a smile flitted across his dark features. ‘Someone there has been keeping an eye on things for me. He told me as soon as Martha began firing old hands.’

‘Why didn’t you return yourself to sort it out?’

‘It would have been impossible.’

Which, to her ears, implied that he hadn’t been bothered; but then, if he had been so unbothered, why would he have made sure that his father’s men were compensated? Why?

‘So you did know about the way Martha treated Dad, then?’ she threw at him in an accusing voice, and he shook his head.

‘As far as I knew, he was one of the ones who remained in her employment and, as I told you, my offer of money was amicably but firmly returned to sender. I will admit, though, that I was told of...changes, for want of a better word. Certain facts were reported back to me.’

‘What facts?’

‘Nothing that you need concern yourself with.’ His tone of voice did not invite lively debate on the subject. He had thrown her, she thought, a few scraps of information, but he had no intention of explaining any more to her. Probably because he felt no need to launch into any lengthy explanations to a girl who was, after all, beneath him in social standing.

‘What did you do with your father’s possessions?’ he asked suddenly, and she scowled.

‘There weren’t many. The few big things he had accumulated over the years, I left with a friend in Leamington Spa. I brought the smaller things to London with me.’

She looked down into her coffee-cup. There was a locket with a picture of her mother inside, a stack of old letters which she had written to Santa Claus over the years, and which he had assiduously kept in a scrapbook, all her report cards from school, a box of photographs, the watch which old Mr Sutherland had given to him on his fiftieth birthday and which he had worn every day of his life from the moment he had received it. She had packed them neatly into a small cardboard box and had kept them in her cupboard in the bedsit.

She hoped that he wasn’t looking when she wiped a tear away-from her cheek. She didn’t want him rushing across to her with a load of phoney sympathy and a handkerchief.

‘Now,’ he said, and there was, thankfully, no indication that he had noticed her brief lapse, ‘shall we discuss the job?’

‘There’s really no need—’ she began, thinking that this sounded like a rerun of what she had said when he had offered her a room in his apartment.

‘I realise that,’ he cut in abruptly. ‘Just as I realise what a bitter pill it is for you to swallow, taking anything that’s handed to you from a member of my family. But this isn’t the act of charity that you’d like to believe. I have several companies over here, all bought with some of my father’s inheritance two years ago. I took them over when they were in receivership and they’re all now thriving.’

He had bought companies in England after he had moved to America? Why would he have done that? And if he had done that, why bother to go to America at all?

‘You’ve been back to England since you went away?’ she asked, perplexed.

‘Oh, yes.’

‘And still you never came to the house to see your stepmother?’

‘No.’

‘Why ever not?’

‘Don’t,’ he said with a tinge of impatience, ‘ask so many questions.’

‘Yes, sir!’ she muttered under her breath, and he shot her a crooked smile.

‘Good girl. Now, there’s a position vacant in one of the companies for an assistant accountant How far had you reached in your studies?’

Suzanne tucked her feet up underneath her and leant forward, resting her elbows on her knees. Her long hair fell in an untidy tousle of ringlets down the sides of her face and she gave the question some thought.

‘I was on the verge of qualification,’ she admitted, steeling herself for another fight, but he made no comment, and she explained to him just what she could do, what areas of tax she felt qualified to cover, how knowledgeable she was on company litigation, all the aspects of audit control which she had found very simple at the time. While she spoke, he nodded, listening in silence until she had finished, and she gave a nervous little laugh.

‘Of course, I may have forgotten all of it.’

‘I hardly think so. If anything, you’re probably overqualified for the job I have in mind, but if you were temping then it’ll be more challenging that what you must have been doing.’

‘When it comes to photocopying and filing, most things pose a greater challenge,’ she said with a laugh. Strange, but it felt as though she hadn’t laughed in years. She could hardly believe that that carefree amused sound had actually come out of her. And in the company of a man who sat on the opposite side of the fence to her.

He told her how much she would be paid, and she looked at him with a fair amount of amazement.

‘That’s awfully high,’ she said at last, and he shook his head in genuine amusement.

‘You will never get far in business if you insist on being honest to that degree,’ he said. ‘I pay my workers well because I want their loyalty and hard work. After all, they are the backbone of the company and if they’re disgruntled they won’t stay. High turnover of staff is very bad if a company is to succeed.’

‘And success is what it’s all about.’

‘That’s right.’

She looked at him frankly. If success was what his priority was, then he had attained his goal, because it sat on his shoulders, followed him like a shadow, was there in the dark look of self-assurance and power.

‘Will I be working for you?’ she asked suddenly. For some reason she found the idea of that slightly alarming. She could cope with bumping into him occasionally in the apartment, but the prospect of having him around on a more permanent basis made her uneasy.

‘Oh, no.’ He reached forward and deposited his cup on the table in front of him, then he linked his fingers behind his head and surveyed her. ‘I am involved in a company that is quite removed from the one in which you will be working. I leave the running of this particular publishing company in the hands of my directors. They report back to me at frequent intervals.’

‘So who is going to be my boss?’ Just so long as he bore no resemblance to the odious Mr Slattery then she would be all right.

‘A woman by the name of Angela Street. She’s American. I sent her over about four months ago when I knew that I would be moving back here. She’s smart and efficient and doesn’t let the grass grow under her feet.’

A woman? From America? All the way from America when London was full of smart, efficient women?

Who was he trying to kid? She might be naive but she wasn’t born yesterday. Smart, efficient Angela Street was more than a work machine. Why didn’t he say so? Why didn’t he say that she was his lover?

CHAPTER THREE

WERE clothes for women anything over size ten designed to make them look dull? It appeared so. Suzanne looked at herself in the full-length mirror in the bedroom and decided that she looked frumpy. She had worn the suit for two months without that thought ever crossing her mind, but it crossed it now, and she tried, without much success, to smooth the skirt into a semblance of something chic.

It was a light summer suit but the colours were insipid and the overall grey effect didn’t do much for her.

She had tied her long, unruly hair back into a French plait which hung down her back, but strands kept escaping and short of gluing them to the side of her head there seemed little she could do to avoid it.

It was, all things considered, just as well that Dane wasn’t around. He was out of the country for a few days. He wouldn’t have said anything about her appearance but those cool, assessing grey eyes would have said it on his behalf anyway and she would have instantly retreated into a position of muted self-defence, which was childish, she knew, but which was something she couldn’t seem to prevent.

He had, he had told her, spoken to Angela and there was nothing to be nervous about.

‘Why on earth should I be nervous?’ she had asked him airily. ‘Does she bite?’

‘Nothing quite so dramatic,’ he had answered drily, his eyes resting on her and making her feel hot and bothered, and cross to be feeling that way. ‘But she’s extremely capable and quite intolerant of temper tantrums.’

‘I did not lose my last job because of a temper tantrum,’ Suzanne had told him hotly, but she was uncomfortably aware that her outspokenness to her last boss, justified though it had been, had stepped beyond the lines of good sense.

At the time she hadn’t cared. She hadn’t enjoyed the job, she had been paid a pittance and she had had no real idea of why she had stuck the damn thing out for so long, apart from the fact that it had been convenient

She found now that she cared a great deal about keeping this job. It might have been a charitable handout to assuage Dane Sutherland’s guilty conscience, it might have been offered out of remembered affection for her father and the daughter who had harboured a teenage crush on him, but she wasn’t about to live down to his expectations of her as a child by jeopardising it in any way.

She looked at the photograph of her father, which she had put on the dressing table, and for once she found that her eyes did not automatically fill with tears. She told the picture of the middle-aged man with the kind eyes and the self-conscious expression of someone posing for the camera that her personal dislike of Dane Sutherland wasn’t going to get in the way of doing a good job.

‘He won’t be able to think, even for a fleeting second, that I failed the test and what else could you expect of the chauffeur’s daughter.’ Her voice echoed in the silence of the room and she grinned and wondered whether she was going mad. Talking to photographs. What next?

The company was one of four that Dane had bought over the three years that he had been away and hauled out of the doldrums, back into mainstream life.

It was, she discovered as she stood in front of it later, larger than she had anticipated. For the first time she acknowledged a certain nervousness underneath the defiant desire to succeed.

She had expected something altogether smaller—a little building, in need of renovation because of its slow decline into debt. She hadn’t realised quite how drastic its kiss of life had been.

The office block was a large, three-storeyed building which seemed to consist mostly of glass—smoky-grey glass. There was a stream of people hurrying in. Suzanne stood for a while in the cool summer sunshine and watched the figures being absorbed one by one into the bowels of the glass building; then she took a deep breath and joined the throng.

She had brought her briefcase with her, partly so that she could carry in a couple of accountancy books and one law one, and partly because the briefcase had been given to her by her father as a present and she wouldn’t have dreamt of going into any job without it, even if the job had involved manual labour on a building site. It was her good-luck charm.

She laid it protectively on her lap as she sat in the reception room and waited to be summoned.

It was, she thought, very American in its decor, or perhaps the places where she had worked before—small, fairly stuffy offices—were just very English in their shabbiness.

There was a feeling of space and light and a great many plants everywhere. The three large paintings on the wall were all abstract, their colours strong and defined, red, orange and blue lines that swept across the canvases, conveying a message which, Suzanne thought, was lost on her. She personally preferred paintings which contained things that were recognisable—scenes of mountains or lakes or forests which seduced you into closing your eyes and imagining that you were far away from the hustle and bustle of the twentieth century.

To the far right from where she was sitting was a bank of four lifts. Angela Street, she thought, would emerge from one of those, and reluctantly she allowed herself to give free rein to the curiosity which had been gnawing away at her ever since she had drawn her conclusions on Dane’s relationship with Angela.

She had told herself that it was pointless speculating on the American, because she really couldn’t care one way or another whether he was sleeping with her, proposing to marry her, or even planning a brood of miniature Dane Sutherlands, but still she wondered what the other woman was like.

Would she be like the girls he used to bring back to the house? Small and pretty and with smiling, awed eyes that followed him around wherever he went?

Suzanne had observed them all from a distance, occasionally hearing more about them from her brother who had found it all wildly exciting, and she had hated them all.

She was still absorbed in her trip down memory lane when she saw a mousy-haired girl with earnest eyes approaching her, and she stood up and held out her hand.

‘Miss Street?’ she asked hesitantly, and the girl’s pale, thin face broke into a smile.

‘One of Miss Street’s secretaries,’ she explained, leading the way to the lift while Suzanne followed in her wake. ‘And she likes to be called Angela, by the way. She says that there shouldn’t be barriers between boss and secretary.’

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