Tempestuous Reunion

‘Hell’s teeth! They wouldn’t give you that extra week?’ Peggy exclaimed incredulously.

As Peggy’s mobile features set into depressingly familiar lines of annoyance, Catherine turned back to the breakfast dishes, hoping that her friend wasn’t about to climb back on her soap-box to decry the terms of Harriet’s will and their imminent move to city life. In recent days, while exuding the best of good intentions, Peggy had been very trying and very impractical.

‘We have no legal right to be here at all,’ Catherine pointed out.

‘But morally you have every right and I would’ve expected a charitable organisation to be more generous towards a single parent.’ Peggy’s ready temper was rising on Catherine’s behalf. ‘Mind you, I don’t know why I’m blaming them. This whole mess is your precious Harriet’s fault!’

‘Peggy—’

‘Sorry, but I believe in calling a spade a spade.’ That was an unnecessary reminder to anyone acquainted with Peggy’s caustic tongue. ‘Honestly, Catherine…sometimes I think you must have been put on this earth purely to be exploited! You don’t even seem to realise when people are using you! What thanks did you get for wasting four years of your life running after Harriet?’

‘Harriet gave us a home when we had nowhere else to go. She had nothing to thank me for.’

‘You kept this house, waited on her hand and foot and slaved over all her pet charity schemes,’ Peggy condemned heatedly. ‘And for all that you received board and lodging and first pick of the jumble-sale clothes! So much for charity’s beginning at home!’

‘Harriet was the kindest and most sincere person I’ve ever known,’ Catherine parried tightly.

And crazy as a coot, Peggy wanted to shriek in frustration. Admittedly Harriet’s many eccentricities had not appeared to grate on Catherine as they had on other, less tolerant souls. Catherine hadn’t seemed to notice when Harriet talked out loud to herself and her conscience, or noisily emptied the entire contents of her purse into the church collection plate. Catherine hadn’t batted an eyelash when Harriet brought dirty, smelly tramps home to tea and offered them the freedom of her home.

The trouble with Catherine was…It was a sentence Peggy often began and never managed to finish to her satisfaction. Catherine was the best friend she had ever had. She was also unfailingly kind, generous and unselfish, and that was quite an accolade from a female who thought of herself as a hardened cynic. How did you criticise someone for such sterling qualities? Unfortunately it was exactly those qualities which had put Catherine in her present predicament.

Catherine drifted along on another mental plane. Meeting those misty blue eyes in that arrestingly lovely face, Peggy was helplessly put in mind of a child cast adrift in a bewildering adult world. There was something so terrifyingly innocent about Catherine’s penchant for seeing only the best in people and taking them on trust. There was something so horribly defenceless about her invariably optimistic view of the world.

She was a sucker for every sob-story that came her way and a wonderful listener. She didn’t know how to say no when people asked for favours. This kitchen was rarely empty of callers, mothers in need of temporary childminders or someone to look after the cat or the dog or the dormouse while they were away. Catherine was very popular locally. If you were in a fix, she would always lend a hand. But how many returned those favours? Precious few, in Peggy’s experience.

‘At the very least, Harriet ought to have left you a share of her estate,’ Peggy censured.

Catherine put the kettle on to boil. ‘And how do you think Drew and his family would have felt about that?’

‘Drew isn’t short of money.’

‘Huntingdon’s is a small firm. He isn’t a wealthy man.’

‘He has a big house in Kent and an apartment in central London. If that isn’t wealthy, what is?’ Peggy demanded drily.

Catherine suppressed a groan. ‘Business hasn’t been too brisk for the firm recently. Drew has already had to sell some property he owned, and though he wouldn’t admit it, he must have been disappointed by Harriet’s will. As building land this place will fetch a small fortune. He could have done with a windfall.’

‘And by the time the divorce comes through Annette will probably have stripped him of every remaining movable asset,’ Peggy mused.

‘She didn’t want the divorce,’ Catherine murmured.

Peggy pulled a face. ‘What difference does that make? She had the affair. She was the guilty partner.’

Catherine made the tea, reflecting that it was no use looking to Peggy for tolerance on the subject of marital infidelity. Her friend was still raw from the break-up of her own marriage. But Peggy’s husband had been a womaniser. Annette was scarcely a comparable case. Business worries and a pair of difficult teenagers had put the Huntingdon marriage under strain. Annette had had an affair and Drew had been devastated. Resisting her stricken pleas for a reconciliation, Drew had moved out and headed straight for his solicitor. Funny how people rarely reacted as you thought they would in a personal crisis. Catherine had believed he would forgive and forget. She had been wrong.

‘I still hope they sort out their problems before it’s too late,’ she replied quietly.

‘Why should he want to? He’s only fifty…an attractive man, still in his prime…’

‘I suppose he is,’ Catherine allowed uncertainly. She was very fond of Harriet’s brother, but she wasn’t accustomed to thinking of him on those terms.

‘A man who somehow can’t find anything better to do than drive down here at weekends to play with Daniel,’ Peggy commented with studied casualness.

Unconscious of her intent scrutiny, Catherine laughed. ‘He’s at a loose end without his family.’

Peggy cleared her throat. ‘Has it ever occurred to you that Drew might have a more personal interest at stake here?’

Catherine surveyed her blankly.

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake!’ Peggy groaned. ‘Do I have to spell it out? His behaviour at the funeral raised more brows than mine. If you lifted anything heavier than a teacup, he was across the room like young Lochinvar! I think he’s in love with you.’

‘In love with me?’ Catherine parroted, aghast. ‘I’ve never heard anything so ridiculous!’

‘I could be wrong.’ Peggy sounded doubtful.

‘Of course you’re wrong!’ Catherine told her with unusual vehemence, her cheeks hot with discomfiture.

‘All right, calm down,’ Peggy sighed. ‘But I did have this little chat with him at the funeral. I asked him why he’d dug up another old lady for you to run after—’

‘Mrs Anstey is his godmother!’ Catherine gasped.

‘And she’ll see out another generation of downtrodden home-helps,’ Peggy forecast grimly. ‘When I ran you up to see the flat, that frozen face of hers was enough for me. I told Drew that.’

‘Peggy, how could you? I only have to do her shopping and supply her with a main meal every evening. That isn’t much in exchange for a flat at a peppercorn rent.’

‘That’s why I smell a big fat rat. However…’ Peggy paused smugly for effect ‘…Drew told me that I didn’t need to worry because he didn’t expect you to be there for long. Now why do you think he said that?’

‘Maybe he doesn’t think I’ll suit her.’ Thank you, Peggy for giving me something else to worry about, she thought wearily.

Peggy was fingering the solicitor’s letter, a crease suddenly forming between her brows. ‘If you have to move this week, you can’t possibly come up home with me, can you?’ she gathered frustratedly. ‘And I was absolutely depending on you, Catherine. My mother and you get on like a house on fire and it takes the heat off me.’

‘The news isn’t going to make me Daniel’s favourite person either,’ Catherine muttered.

Unexpectedly, Peggy grinned. ‘Why don’t I take him anyway?’

‘On his own?’

‘Why not? My parents adore him. He’ll be spoilt to death. And by the time we come back you’ll have the flat organised and looking more like home. I’ve felt so guilty about not being able to do anything to help out,’ Peggy confided. ‘This is perfect.’

‘I couldn’t possibly let you—’

‘We’re friends, aren’t we? It would make the move less traumatic for him. Poor little beggar, he doesn’t half take things to heart,’ Peggy said persuasively. ‘He won’t be here when you hand Clover over to the animal sanctuary and he won’t have to camp out en route in Drew’s apartment either. I seem to recall he doesn’t get on too well with that housekeeper.’

Daniel didn’t get on too terribly well with anyone who crossed him, Catherine reflected ruefully. He especially didn’t like being babied and being told that he was cute, which, regrettably for him, he was. All black curly hair and long eyelashes and huge dark eyes. He was extremely affectionate with her, but not with anyone else.

‘You do trust me with him?’ Peggy shot at her abruptly.

‘Of course I do—’

‘Well, then, it’s settled,’ Peggy decided with her usual impatience.

The comment that she had never been apart from Daniel before, even for a night, died on Catherine’s lips. Daniel loved the farm. They had spent several weekends there with Peggy in recent years. At least this way he wouldn’t miss out on his holiday.

Six days later, Daniel gave her an enthusiastic hug and raced into Peggy’s car. Catherine hovered. ‘If he’s homesick, phone me,’ she urged Peggy.

‘We haven’t got a home any more,’ Daniel reminded her. ‘Africa’s getting it.’

Within minutes they were gone. Catherine retreated indoors to stare at a set of suitcases and a handful of boxes through a haze of tears. Not much to show for four years. The boxes were to go into Peggy’s garage. A neighbour had promised to drop them off at Drew’s apartment next week. She wiped at her overflowing eyes in vexation. Daniel was only going to be away for ten days, not six months!

* * *

Drew met her off the train and steered her out to his car. He was a broadly built man with pleasant features and a quiet air of self-command. ‘We’ll drop your cases off at the apartment first.’

‘First?’ she queried.

He smiled. ‘I’ve booked a table at the Savoy for lunch.’

‘Are you celebrating something?’ Catherine had lunched with Drew a dozen times in Harriet’s company, but he had always taken them to his club.

‘The firm’s on the brink of winning a very large contract,’ he divulged, not without pride. ‘Unofficially, it’s in the bag. I’m flying to Germany this evening. The day after tomorrow we sign on the dotted line.’

Catherine grinned. ‘That’s marvellous news.’

‘To be frank, it’s come in the nick of time. Lately, Huntingdon’s has been cruising too close to the wind. But that’s not all we’ll be celebrating,’ he told her. ‘What about your move to London?’

‘When will you be back from Germany?’ she asked as they left his apartment again.

‘Within a couple of days, but I’ll check into a hotel.’

Catherine frowned. ‘Why?’

Faint colour mottled his cheeks. ‘When you’re in the middle of a divorce you can’t be too careful, Catherine. Thank God, it’ll all be over next month. No doubt you think I’m being over-cautious, but I don’t want anyone pointing fingers at you or associating you with the divorce.’

Catherine was squirming with embarrassment. She had gratefully accepted his offer of a temporary roof without thought of the position she might be putting him in. ‘I feel terrible, Drew. I never even thought—’

‘Of course you didn’t. Your mind doesn’t work like that.’ Drew squeezed her hand comfortingly. ‘Once this court business is over, we won’t need to consider clacking tongues.’

She found that remark more unsettling than reassuring, implying as it did a degree of intimacy that had never been a part of their friendship. Then she scolded herself and blamed Peggy for making her read double meanings where no doubt none existed. She had inevitably grown closer to Drew since he had separated from Annette. He had become a frequent visitor to his sister’s home.

In the bar they received their menus. Catherine made an elaborate play of studying hers, although she did have great difficulty with words on a printed page. The difficulty was because she was dyslexic, but she was practised at concealing the handicap.

‘Steak, I think.’ Steak was safe. It was on every menu.

‘You’re a creature of habit,’ Drew complained, but he smiled at her. He was the sort of man who liked things to stay the same. ‘And to start?’

She played the same game with prawns.

‘I might as well have ordered for you,’ he teased.

Her wandering scrutiny glanced off the rear-view of a tall black-haired male passing through the foyer beyond the doorway. At accelerated speed her eyes swept back again in a double-take, only he was out of sight. Bemusedly she blinked and then told herself off for that fearful lurch of recognition, that chilled sensation enclosing her flesh.

‘Take one day at a time,’ Harriet had once told her. Harriet had been a great one for clichés, and four years ago she had made it sound so easy. But a day was twenty-four hours and each of them broken up into sixty minutes. How long had it been before she could go even five minutes without remembering? How long had it been since she had lain sleepless in bed, tortured by the raw strength of the emotions she was forcing herself to deny? In the end she had built a wall inside her head. Behind it she had buried two years of her life. Beyond it sometimes she still felt only half-alive…

‘Something wrong?’

Meeting Drew’s puzzled gaze, she gave an exaggerated shiver. ‘Someone walked over my grave,’ she joked, veiling her too-expressive eyes.

‘Now that you’re in London, we’ll be able to see each other more often,’ Drew remarked tensely and reached for her hand. ‘What I’m trying to say, not very well, perhaps, is…I believe I’m in love with you.’

Her hand jerked, bathing them both in sherry. With a muttered apology she fumbled into her bag for a tissue, but a waiter moved forward and deftly mopped up the table. Catherine sat, frozen, wishing that she were anywhere but where she was now, with Drew looking at her expectantly.

He sighed, ‘I wanted you to know how I felt.’

‘I…I didn’t know. I had no idea.’ It was all she could think to say, hopelessly inadequate as it was.

‘I thought you might have worked it out for yourself.’ There was a glimmer of wry humour in his level scrutiny. ‘Apparently I haven’t been as obvious as I thought I was being. Catherine, don’t look so stricken. I don’t expect anything from you. I don’t believe there is an appropriate response for an occasion like this. I’ve been clumsy and impatient and I’m sorry.’

‘I feel that I’ve come between you and Annette,’ she whispered guiltily.

He frowned. ‘That’s nonsense. It’s only since I left her that I began to realise just how much I enjoyed being with you.’

‘But if I hadn’t been around, maybe you would have gone back to her,’ she reasoned tautly. ‘You’re a very good friend, but I’m…’

He covered her hand again with his. ‘I’m not trying to rush you, Catherine. We’ve got all the time in the world,’ he assured her evenly, and deftly flipped the subject, clearly registering that further discussion at that moment would be unproductive.

They were in the River Room Restaurant when she heard the voice. Dark-timbred, slightly accented, like honey drifting down her spine. Instantly her head spun on a chord of response rooted too deep even to require consideration. Her eyes widened in shock, her every sinew jerked tight. The blood pounded dizzily in her eardrums. With a trembling hand she set down her wine glass.

Luc.

Oh, God…Luc. It had been him earlier. It was him. His carved profile, golden and vibrant as a gypsy’s, was etched in bold relief against the light flooding through the window behind him. One brown hand was moving to illustrate some point to his two male companions. That terrible compulsion to stare was uncontrollable. The lean, arrogant nose, the hard slant of his high cheekbones and the piercing intensity of deep-set dark eyes, all welded into one staggeringly handsome whole.

His gleaming dark head turned slightly. He looked straight at her. No expression. No reaction. Eyes golden as the burning heart of a flame. Her ability to breathe seized up. A clock had stopped ticking somewhere. She was sentenced to immobility while every primitive sense she possessed screamed for her to get up and run and keep on running until the threat was far behind. For a moment her poise almost deserted her. For a moment she forgot that he was very unlikely to acknowledge her. For a moment she was paralysed by sheer gut-wrenching fear.

Luc broke the connection first. He signalled with a hand to one of his companions, who immediately rose from his seat with the speed of a trained lackey, inclining his head down for his master’s voice.

‘I’ve upset you,’ Drew murmured. ‘I should have kept quiet.’

Her lashes dropped down like a camera shutter. The clink of cutlery and the buzz of voices swam back to her again. One thing hadn’t changed, she acknowledged numbly; when she looked at Luc there was nothing and nobody else in the world capable of stealing her attention. Perspiration was beading her upper lip. Luc was less than fifteen feet away. They said that when you drowned your whole life flashed before you. Oh, for the deep concealment of a pool.

‘Catherine—’

Belatedly she recalled the man she had been lunching with. ‘I’ve got a bit of a headache,’ she mumbled. ‘If you’ll excuse me, I’ll get something for it.’

Up she got, on jellied knees, undyingly grateful that she didn’t have to pass Luc’s table. Even so, leaving the restaurant was like walking the plank above a gathering of sharks. An unreasoning part of her was expecting a hand to fall on her shoulder at any second. Feeling physically sick, she escaped into the nearest cloakroom and ran cold water over her wrists.

Drying her hands, she touched the slender gold band on her wedding finger. Harriet’s gift, Harriet’s invention. Everyone but Peggy thought she was a widow. Harriet had coined and told the lie before Catherine had even left hospital. She could not have publicly branded Harriet a liar. Even so, it had gone against the grain to pose as something she wasn’t, although she was ruefully aware that, without Harriet’s respectable cover-story, she would not have been accepted into the community in the same way.

Her stomach was still heaving. Calm down, breathe in. Why give way to panic? With Luc in the vicinity, panic made sense, she reasoned feverishly. Luc was very unpredictable. He threw wild cards without conscience. But she couldn’t stay in here forever, could she?

‘I think there must be a storm in the air,’ she told Drew on her return, her eyes carefully skimming neither left nor right. ‘I often get a headache when the weather’s about to break.’

She talked incessantly through the main course. If Drew was a little overwhelmed by her loquacity, at least he wasn’t noticing that her appetite had vanished. Luc was watching her. She could feel it. She could feel the hypnotic beat of tawny gold on her profile. And she couldn’t stand it. It was like Chinese water-torture. Incessant, remorseless. Anger began to gain ground on her nerves.

Luc was untouched. It was against nature that he should be untouched after the scars he had inflicted on her. There was no justice in a world where Luc continued to flourish like a particularly invasive tropical plant. Hack it down and it leapt up again, twice as big and threatening.

And yet some day…somehow…some woman had to slice beneath that armour-plating of his. It had to happen. He had to learn what it was to feel pain from somebody. That belief was all that had protected Catherine from burning up with bitterness. She would picture Luc driven to his knees, Luc humanised by suffering, and then she would filter back to reality again, unable to sustain the fantasy.

Religiously she stirred her coffee. Clockwise, anti-clockwise, clockwise again, belatedly adding sugar. Her mind was in turmoil, lost somewhere between the past and the present. She was merely one more statistic on the long Santini casualty list. It galled her to acknowledge that demeaning truth.

‘I’ve been cut dead.’ Drew planted the observation flatly into the flow of her inconsequential chatter.

‘Sorry?’ she said, all at sea.

‘Luc Santini. He looked right through me on the way out.’

She was floored by the casual revelation that Drew actually knew Luc. Yet why was she so surprised? Even if he was in a much smaller category, Drew was in the same field as Luc. Huntingdon’s manufactured computer components. ‘Is th-that important?’ she stammered.

‘It’ll teach me not to get too big for my boots,’ Drew replied wryly. ‘I did do some business with him once, but that was years ago. I’m not in the Santini league these days. Possibly he didn’t remember me.’

Luc had a memory like a steel trap. He never forgot a face. She was guiltily conscious that Luc had cut Drew because of her presence and for no other reason. And she wasn’t foolish enough to pretend that she didn’t know who Luc was. The individual who hadn’t heard of Luc Santini was either illiterate or living in a grass hut on a desert island.

Drew sipped at his coffee, clearly satisfied that he had simply been forgotten. ‘He’s a fascinating character. Think of the risks he must have taken to get where he is today.’

‘Think of the body-count he must have left behind him.’

‘That’s a point,’ Drew mused. ‘To my knowledge, he’s only slipped once. Let me see, it was about four…five years ago now. I don’t know what happened, but he damned near lost the shirt off his back.’

Obviously he had snatched his shirt back again and, knowing Luc, he had snatched someone else’s simultaneously. On that level, Luc was unashamedly basic. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and perhaps interest into the bargain. In remembrance she stilled a shudder.

As they left the hotel, Drew said in a driven undertone, ‘I’ve made a bloody fool of myself, haven’t I?’

‘Of course you haven’t,’ she hastened to assure him.

‘Do you want a taxi?’ he asked stiffly. ‘I’d better get back to the office.’

‘I think I’ll go for a walk.’ She was ashamed that she hadn’t handled the situation with greater tact, but the combination of his confession and Luc, hovering on the horizon like a pirate ship, had bereft her of her wits.

‘Catherine?’ Before she could turn away, Drew bent down in an almost involuntary motion and crushed her parted lips briefly with his own. ‘Some day soon I’m going to ask you to marry me, whether you like it or not,’ he promised with recovering confidence. ‘It’s nearly five years since you lost your husband. You can’t bury yourself with his memory forever. And I’m a persistent man.’

A second later he was gone, walking quickly in the other direction. Tears lashed her eyes fiercely. Waves of delayed reaction were rolling over her, reducing her self-control to rubble. He was such a kind man, the essence of an old-fashioned gentleman, proposing along with the first kiss. And she was a fraud, a complete fraud. She was not the woman he thought she was, still grieving for some youthful husband and a tragically short-lived marriage. Drew had her on a pedestal.

The truth would shatter him. In retrospect, it even shattered her. For two years she had been nothing better than Luc Santini’s whore, in her own mind. Kept and clothed in return for her eagerness to please in his bed. Luc hadn’t once confused sex with love. That mistake had been hers alone. The polite term was ‘mistress’. Only rich men’s mistresses tended to share the limelight. Luc had ensured that she’d remained strictly off stage. He had never succumbed to an urge to take her out and show her off. She hadn’t had the poise or the glitter, never mind the background or the education. Even now, the memories were like acid burns on her flesh, wounding and hurting wherever they touched.

Choices. Life was all about choices. Sometimes the tiniest choice could raise Cain at a later date. At eighteen Catherine had made a series of choices. At least, she had thought she was making them; in reality, they had most of them been made for her. Love was a terrifying leveller of pride and intelligence when a woman was an insecure girl. Before she had met Luc, she wouldn’t have believed that it could be a mistake to love somebody. But it could be, oh, yes, it could be. If that person turned your love into a weapon against you, it could be a mistake you would regret for the rest of your days.