Chapter 50
"The lady said 'no'."
The voice came from behind, somewhere in the trees.
Charlie paused, looking beyond me, his grip momentarily easing.
I took that opportunity and squirmed free, twisting, peering into the shadows.
A figure stepped forward. Dark suit, dark face, white turban. Maninder. Will's driver.
"And just what"
"Can it, Charlie," I said. I knew then that Maninder was far more than just a driver. Charlie was tall, but Maninder had a good few inches on him, and he was half as much again broad at the shoulders.
Will's driver stood there impa.s.sively, his hands at his sides.
My head was rus.h.i.+ng, confused. First Charlie and now this. I looked from Maninder to Charlie and then back again.
"Just leave me alone," I yelled. "All of you. Do you hear?"
I turned away from them both, and marched off through the trees.
I half-expected Charlie to follow, for it all to end in a fight.
I didn't look back.
I strode out of the park and was halfway home before I paused, gathered myself, realized that I was holding back the tears, tears of anger.
I looked down.
I was still clutching the bunch of roses, ragged now, shedding petals. Had I swung them against the trees as I pa.s.sed? Against the park railings, the walls and streetlamps?
I dropped them, backed away from them, then headed for my apartment.
The rest of the week at work, then a quiet weekend. Gym, shopping for essentials, cleaning. Vigorous, over-enthusiastic cleaning.
Diversionary tactics? Me?
I tried not to think about any of it. Tried to lose myself in work, in shopping, in exercise and G.o.d-d.a.m.ned cleaning.
So I didn't dwell on Charlie's cra.s.s, over-bearing behavior. On his a.s.sumption that he could just snap his fingers and I'd drop everything, including my panties. On that mad, power-fuelled look in his eyes as he had held me. On my response. Oh no, I didn't dwell on my response. Weak woman, powerful man. No, that wasn't me. That really wasn't me.
And I didn't dwell on Will G.o.d-d.a.m.ned double-barreled Bentinck-Stanley. What kind of name was that? He had that same arrogance that Charlie had, that a.s.sumption that I would drop everything for him. That he could have me whenever he wanted. He'd had his driver following me, for heavens' sake! The man who'd accused me of stalking him had paid someone to stalk me!
Did I feel protected? Well maybe, a little. I don't know what would have happened if Maninder hadn't stepped in that evening. Would Charlie have carried on? Would he have raped me and all the time thought I was just playing at saying 'no'? Or would I have succ.u.mbed, like I had before? And if I had succ.u.mbed, was Maninder under instructions to intervene, or to let me make my own choices?
I don't know. I really don't know where that evening might have gone.
But I'd learned my lesson. I'd learned from both of them, Charlie and Will.
I wasn't at anyone's beck and call.
I was strong.
I wasn't going to take any more of this.
So the flight to Innsbruck came as something of a surprise. The flight on a private jet, with a car to take me from my apartment to the City Airport, right in London's Dockland district.
A voicemail is all it took. A simple message, recorded while I was in an acquisitions meeting and my cell phone was tucked away in my desk. That slightly fl.u.s.tered manner was that genuine or just an affectation? and the apology, yet another apology.
That's all it took.
"Erm... Hi, Trudy Parsons-Editorial. It's Will. You know, the spoilt upper-cla.s.s k.n.o.b who keeps messing you around and making excuses for being just a little bit c.r.a.p. Well... a lot c.r.a.p. That Will. Anyway. I'd really like to talk to you. Make a clean breast of it. Let you find out a bit more about me, so you can see why I'm sometimes inconsistent and sometimes rude and most of the time more than a little bit c.r.a.p. Sorry, that sounds very egocentric, all me, and all that. But I'd like to talk. I'd like to do that selfish thing of just finding an excuse to spend some time with you and maybe convince you that I'm not the posh twit you far too frequently see before you. So... dinner, perhaps? I could have a man pick you up from work at four, if that would suit?"
Four for dinner? I should have guessed then. I should have realized that he didn't just mean dinner, he meant hop on a private jet, fly for two hours and emerge in a landscape where every direction you look there are white-capped mountains.
So that was how I found myself walking down the steps after the plane had landed, to find him standing there, waiting by a black Mercedes Benz.
"f.u.c.king Austria?" I asked, standing before him.
He shrugged. "I was tied up," he said. "And not in a good way."
"And my time was more expendable?"
This wasn't getting off to the best of starts.
"I'm sorry," he said. There: yet another apology. "I just wanted"
"You just wanted to show off, didn't you? Like all the paintings. A van Gogh in the bedroom, a Rembrandt on the stairs. A driver you can spare to do your stalking for you. I get it. I know you're rich, okay?"
He had his hands up. Defensive. Apologetic again. "Can we start afresh?" he said. That glint in those dark eyes, that smile. That hint of the predator about him. How could he switch from awkward to
He laughed. I laughed. I couldn't help it. Why did certain men have this effect on me? Why was I so weak before them?
We started over again.
We stood there, in a tucked-away corner of Innsbruck airport, surrounded by white-capped Alps, and Willem Bentinck-Stanley held out a hand for me to shake.
"I'm very happy that you could come," he said.
We shook.
I smiled. I said, "So... dinner? I don't have a st.i.tch to wear."
That luxury. That decadence.
Being able to step onto an airplane in one city, land in another. No luggage. Not even a carry-on other than my purse with my useless English money, a couple of cards, my cell phone, some lip gloss and powder, and some Handy Andy tissues.
That, and for it not to be a worry.
To know that I was being taken to dinner and that there would be clothes for me to change into, someone to do my make-up, someone for my hair.
Jeez, but he lived in another world entirely.
This was his normal. This was how it was for him.
My a.s.sistant an a.s.sistant to dress! told me the dress was by Jill Sander. Deep blue silk, off the shoulder with a sweetheart neckline and almost no back at all. The jewelry was simple, just a delicate Tiffany chain with three tiny diamonds and a matching bracelet. The make-up was Creme de la Mer and Dior, the hair by someone whose last job had been for minor royalty. And the shoes...
I wasn't going to be wowed. I'd already decided that.
It was just money. Stinking big piles of money. That's all it was.
I wasn't going to be impressed. Not even by a pair of black, lace and satin, crystal-encrusted Manolo Blahniks.
Everything fit like a glove, like a second skin. There had never been any question of that.
And no. I wasn't wowed.
I was beyond wowed.
If he was gaming me and this was his game, then I was along for the ride.
Does that make me sound shallow? Does it make me a tramp?
Maybe, in some people's eyes. But I still had my sensible head on. I knew my limits, my boundaries.
And now, for the first time in my life, I knew what it was to be dressed from head to toe in clothes that could have been made for me, in a costume that for probably cost more than a year's rent on my apartment.
My year had certainly turned around from that January that was only memorable for a bout of winter vomiting sickness and a burst water pipe. Whatever happened this evening, there was no denying that.
I stood at the window of my suite. The white mountains all around were lit up in gold and bronze by the dying embers of the late summer sun. The hotel was a short distance out of Innsbruck, a grand white building that commanded a breathtaking view down its own Alpine valley. The walls were clad in Italian Carrara marble, apparently Will had told me, before I'd reminded him about his tendency to show off. From the look on his face I wondered if he'd been about to tell me that he owned this place, another legacy of his family fortune.
Even as I watched, the colors on the mountain tops changed, softening and fading until the peaks were just dark, jagged shapes against the night sky.
A maid showed me to a private dining room a floor down from my suite. Will waited for me at a table set for two before French windows that gave the same awe-inspiring view down the valley.
"Okay," I said, as I lowered myself onto a chair drawn back for me by a tail-coated waiter. "So all this... it's on a par with your van Gogh and that little Rembrandt by the stairs in your ma.s.sive country home. So why? Why me? What are you after?"
He poured wine, something incredibly dark, almost black. He looked up at me after a few seconds, and smiled. "I love that you're so direct," he said. "I love that you're not fazed by any of this."
"But still you try."
The wine was heady, an intense hit of fruitiness and then something dry, tart almost. I'd never drunk anything like it.
"If you were hoping to get me into bed I know you told your buddies at the wedding that you would have me." He winced at that. "Well, it takes more than Rembrandt and private jets and incredibly drinkable and probably very expensive wine. Call me old-fas.h.i.+oned but I like to get to know a guy."
"The wine," he said, "it's actually very reasonable. I know what I like." Somehow he managed to put far more meaning behind that simple sentence than should have been possible. He knows what he likes, he gets what he wants. "And the rest? The Rembrandts are family heirlooms, the jet mere practicality, the best way to get you from London to here in time for dinner."
I noted the plural for the Rembrandts: I'd only seen one at Yeadham Hall.
"And old-fas.h.i.+oned? I would never call you that. It makes good sense to get to know someone before you get in too deep. To know their quirks, their idiosyncrasies, their desires..."
This was different Will. This wasn't the fl.u.s.tered, apologetic Will, the upper cla.s.s twit who stumbled through life. It wasn't edgy, predator Will either. This Will was in smooth control. His words were carefully chosen, every sentence like a thread in a spider's web, designed to entrap, enfold.
Their desires...
"You didn't bring me here to talk about the book, then?"
"Perhaps. I may have been too dismissive the other day." Yet another snare set for me: keep that professional interest alive too, as well as all... all this. The setting, the jet, the clothes. All of it. Did he know I'd always been drawn to mountains, that my favorite childhood vacations were when we went skiing in the White Mountains of New Hamps.h.i.+re? That little lodge we stayed in near Att.i.tash, where we could look out over the valley and make up stories about the twinkling lights of the other lodges and hotels. Was this all carefully chosen to play on that, or was that just coincidence?
And just where is that fine line between attention to detail and stalking?
Just then, the waiter returned with two plates. Diagonally across each plate was a line of delicate slices of pale meat, just a little pink in the centre, drizzled with a red wine sauce and accompanied by a few artfully arranged baby salad leaves and shoots.
"Quail b.r.e.a.s.t.s," said Will. "I ordered ahead."
The in-control Will. I didn't normally like to be treated like this, but sometimes... well, what's there to argue with a powerful man giving you what he knows you will love?
The meat was so tender it just dissolved on the tongue, and there was that subtle gaminess to it that I adored.
"So why all this?" I asked again. "It can hardly be that you need to get to know me. You've clearly done your research: what more is there to discover?"
He visibly winced again.
"I thought perhaps you could try your book pitch on me again," he said, pausing with a forkful of quail in mid-air. "I thought we could spend some time together, try to work out why it is that I feel this intense attraction to you and whether it might be mutual. That kind of thing."
Gaming me. Always gaming me.
"I have work in the morning," I said. "Does your plan include getting me home after dinner?"
"If that's what you want, yes," he said. "It's a two-hour flight, and then a car to your door. It'll be a late night, for which I apologize, and I really should have made it clearer when I invited you, but I was fearful that you might have turned me down."
"So, I can add deception to your list of crimes?"
"Economy with the truth," he said. "Not deception."
I looked down and saw that my plate was clean. I took my napkin and dabbed at my lips, then freshened up the gloss with the little Dior brush I'd been given back in the suite.
He watched me closely, which was just as well. He was meant to. He wasn't the only one who knew how to play games.
"So why Austria? What brought you here? Family business? More James Bond fun and games?"
I didn't expect the answer that I received. I expected him to be evasive, to drop hints about brave deeds, high-level negotiations. I expected him to tell me he was here to visit this little hotel he owned overlooking its own private valley in the heart of the Austrian Alps.
"A girl," he said. "A girl and blackmail."