Fugitive Wife (15 page)

Not a payment to rid him of a woman who had become an embarrassment, but a bribe-to someone who would readily understand such

things. Someone who knew about corruption. The widow of a corrupt man now living comfortably in tax exile on the proceeds of that

corruption.

Logan had wondered what could have brought her from Jersey al the way to Yorkshire. Wel, now she knew. It was money. Sir Charles

had been fuly aware of where they were intending to spend their honeymoon.

That was how Marina Chapman had known how to find them so easily-something she had never realy questioned before, although she had

not realy been in any fit state to question very much at al. Which her father, of course, would have relied on.

But to payout al that money, she thought, appaled, with no guarantee that the plan would work. I might have just shown her the door. He must have been very sure what I would do.

And something flat and cold inside her replied, ‘He was.’

She was stil sitting there when he came home several hours later. She heard his arrival, the impatience of his voice as he caled for her.

There was a note of triumph there too, and she guessed that the strike had been settled, and on favourable terms to the V.P.G. board. She knew that suppressed jubilance.

At last he tracked her down; ‘Are you there, Briony?’

He peered across the room. ‘What the devil are you sitting in here in the dark for?’

‘Licking my wounds,’ she said calmly. ‘Have you won again?’

‘Just about.’ He was making little effort to conceal his elation. Charles Trevor-Fleet Street’s union basher in another victory performance.

‘Get dressed up, my darling, and we’l go and celebrate.’ His hand reached for the light switch and clicked it on. Briony saw him look at her, register her white, frozen face; then look down at the desk, as if he too knew what he would see.’ She saw the guilt, folowed closely by the annoyance at his own clumsiness in not returning the file to the library. If he’d done so, she realised, she would never have known.

She put out a hand and touched the file. ‘When were you planning to celebrate this victory?’ she asked. ‘When I received my annulment decree?’

‘I know how it must seem,’ he began quickly.

‘There is no “seem”.’ She shook her head. ‘I know how it is. I know you paid that woman to come to Yorkshire and ruin my honeymoon.

She did a fantastic job, didn’t she? Even you couldn’t have hoped that I would actualy leave Logan.’ She laughed. ‘Lucky Daddy!’

‘I did it for your sake,’ he said, and quite suddenly he didn’t look like the successful chairman of a giant publishing conglomerate. He looked tired and elderly. ‘You couldn’t be happy with that man. He wasn’t fit to marry you. Everyone knows my opinion of journalists.

Can you imagine What I went through? The things in other newspapers? The jokes and snide remarks in my own offices that I wasn’t

supposed to hear. Everyone was laughing at me.’

‘And that was what mattered most,’ she said.’

‘No!’ He was vehement. ‘Al I ever wanted was for you to be happy, my darling. And you couldn’t be happy with him. Why, he was

having an affair with that Welesley woman when you first met. I know her type. She wouldn’t have alowed a little thing like his marriage to you to get in her way. You’d have sat alone night after night, wondering where he was, who he was with. You’d have been a novelty at first―someone innocent to make love to―and my daughter, which would have added an extra spice for him.’

‘Perhaps you’re right,’ she sighed. ‘Perhaps everything you say is true. But I would stil have had the chance of some happiness first. Your way―I’ve had nothing but misery.’ She stood up.

‘Where are you going?’ he said sharply.

‘To Logan.’ She did not look at him. She put the cuttings back in the file and replaced them exactly as she had found them. ‘To tel him what you did, and ask him to forgive me, if he can.’

‘Of course he’l forgive you.’ Sir Charles said roughly. ‘He’d be a fool not to. He’l stay married to you for as long as it suits him―while he colects the dossier of information which wil take him the next step up the ladder. That’s why Mackenzie hired him, you know because of his investigation into the Chapman business. You were stil at school when it al happened. You’re only a child now. You don’t know men like Logan Adair. You don’t know anything about the kind of world they inhabit. I wanted to protect you from that.’

‘You talk of protection,’ she said slowly. ‘You also mentioned a dossier of information. Just whom are you afraid Logan might conduct his next investigative campaign against, Daddy? You?’

She only put the barest necessities into her overnight bag. She could colect the rest of her things tomorrow, she thought.’ Al that mattered now was seeing Logan and trying to put things right between them.

She felt sick and nervous as she stood outside the door to the flat. It had been planned that Logan and she should live there after the honeymoon, and Tony had moved elsewhere. She hoped that Logan had not asked him to move back again. The last thing she wanted at a

moment like this was any kind of audience.

Once before she had stood here with shaking hands and rung this bel, she thought. And the wait for a response had seemed endless then too.

The door opened at last, and Briony’s little speech so agonisingly rehearsed over and over again in the taxi which had brought her here died on her lips as she saw who was standing in the doorway.

‘Good God!’ Karen Welesley said at last. ‘The blushing bride herself!’ Her eyes fel on Briony’s overnight case, and her catlike smile widened. ‘If you’ve decided this is reconciliation time, ducky, then you’ve picked a bad moment.’

Briony looked at her. Karen’s hair was tousled, and even the most casual observer would have known that she wore nothing at al under her loosely fastened bathrobe.

Briony moistened her lips. ‘Nevertheless, I’d like to speak to Logan, please,’ she said, trying to sound cool, as if she was quite used to trying to reach him past the hostile figures of semi-naked women.

‘Impossible, I’m afraid.’ Karen’s eyes never left her face. ‘He’s asleep, and he wouldn’t take very kindly to being woken up, I can promise you.’ She smiled with provocative reminiscence. ‘He’s had a very exhausting time just lately, poor sweet. I’m sure you understand me.

Why don’t I just tel him you caled, and let him get in touch with you later―if he wants to.’ She emphasised the ‘if’ very slightly, and smiled again.

‘On second thoughts,’ Briony said very calmly, ‘let’s just forget the whole thing, shal we? And thank you for making the situation so clear.

I was in grave danger of making an utter fool of myself.’

‘Oh, it was hardly that bad.’ Karen’s voice was like syrup. ‘You’re just a little out of your depth, that’s al. You were from the start.

Goodnight, Miss Trevor.’ But Briony had already turned away. She did not want the additional humiliation of having Karen Welesley shut Logan’s door in her face.

She never expected to see him again. Her father made no comment about her unexpected return home, and she offered no explanation.

Logan and her marriage became taboo subjects by tacit understanding.

Nothing very much seemed to matter any more, so she decided she might as wel conform to the pattern that her father had laid down. She enroled for a Cordon BIeu cookery course. She arranged flowers, and she became a demure and charming hostess. When he introduced

young men to her, most of them rising executives from the ranks of V.P.G. itself, she accepted their inevitable invitations politely.

Sometimes she felt she had become a marionette ready to dance to whatever string anyone chose to pul…

But she made no move towards obtaining her annulment, for reasons she wasn’t even prepared to discuss with herself. There had been a smal flurry of interest in the Press about the failure of her marriage, and even some cynical hints that the whole unlikely match had been a publicity stunt arranged by Sir Charles Trevor for some devious reason of his own. She didn’t want to arouse that interest again by applying for an annulment, when she could divorce Logan after two years’ separation without attracting very much attention at al.

She couldn’t avoid al mention of him, of course. He stil wrote for the Courier, and she had the pain of seeing his byline when she unfolded the paper. But each time, she told herself, the pain grew less. It was as if she was learning slowly how to distance herself from everything that had happened.

She had reverted to the use of her maiden name, but had not removed her wedding ring, an anomaly which she guessed Sir Charles found it difficult to understand.

But it was never mentioned. Relegated to the cupboard along with the rest of the skeletons, she thought cynicaly.

She was gaining a reputation for extreme coolness, she knew. Very few of her dates, having undergone an evening of her quiet politeness, ever asked her again, and she was content for this to be so. She wanted no lovemaking, no attempt at any kind of physical relationship. She was afraid of it, because she could remember only too clearly the wild response ,which Logan had ignited, and which must never be

alowed to happen again because it made her too vulnerable.

It was at a dinner party at the London house that she first heard the impending trouble in Azabia being discussed.

She knew very little about the place, except that it produced oil and was ruled by a despotic sheik who was amicably disposed towards the West. But al that, she heard, was due to change at any moment, as it had in other oil-producing countries, and no one knew exactly what the new regime would be or what its policies would be aimed against. It was then that someone inadvertently mentioned Logan. There was an immediate embarrassed silence and an instant change of subject.

Later Briony tackled her father. ‘Is there going to be some kind of uprising in Azabia? A war?’

He shrugged evasively. ‘It’s a little premature to state definitely that anything’s going to happen there, but there are―indications.’

Indications. Briony lay awake that night and considered.

It had seemed from the discussion over dinner that a revolution was a certainty and in the not too distant future. And it was obvious that Logan was being sent by the Courier to report on the troubles from Azabia almost from their inception, al of which speled danger.

She thought, ‘Why should I care? I don’t even want to care. Let Karen Welesley worry about what happens to him. They’re probably

together at this moment, bidding each other a fond farewel. I’m mad even to give him a second thought.’

But the events of the folowing evening forced her to do more than just think.

She had been to a rather dul party and had left early and alone. She was standing on the step, trying to fit her latchkey into the door, when a hand reached over her shoulder and took it from her. At the same time an arm like an iron clamp fastened round her waist propeling her forwards through the opening door. She was too breathless, too surprised to scream, even when she turned to see who her assailant was.

‘Your key, darling. ’ Logan said pleasantly, and tossed it to her.

‘Get out of here!’ she whispered.

‘Presently.’ He nodded towards the drawing room. ‘We’l talk in there.’

‘We have nothing to say to each other.’

‘Not even goodbye?’ he asked sardonicaly, and smiled as he saw her flush. ‘I guessed the word of my impending departure would have

got around by now. I see I was right. Aren’t you going to wish me luck in Azabia? I’ve the strangest feeling I’m going to need it.’

‘You can manage without my good wishes, Logan.’ she said coldly. ‘You can make your own luck.’

‘Then I can only hope the recent happenings in my life aren’t a sample of it,’ he said drily.

‘I wouldn’t have said you had a great deal to complain about.’ Her heartbeat was fluttering like a panicstricken bird, but she managed to face him inimicaly.

‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’ He raised his eyebrows.

‘Make of it what you wil. Now wil you please go?’

‘Not without what I came for,’ he answered calmly.

‘Which is?’

‘Among other things, this.’ One unhurried stride brought him to her, and it was too late to cry out, or run away or do any of the things she should have done at the very beginning of this preposterous confrontation, because his mouth was on hers, hard and warm and searching, and her body was locked against his as if she had been magnetised. When he eventualy released her, her mouth felt bruised and she was on the point of colapse.

He put her at arm’s length and studied her as if she was some kind of curious scientific specimen,

‘Interesting,’ he said at last. ‘And could become more so, I suspect. What a pity I have a plane to catch.’

‘You lay another finger on me,’ she raged, aware of her flushed face and hecticaly flurried breathing, ‘and I’l .. .’

‘You’l what? Scream for Daddy to rescue you, I suppose. Except that I happen to know that Daddy is otherwise engaged this evening. A Mrs de Bruce, I understand. And it’s the housekeeper’s evening off, too, so I might just go ahead and let you scream.’

‘Don’t you dare to touch me! ’

‘Why not?’ he asked derisively. ‘I’m not one of Daddy’s tame boardroom trainees. I’m your husband, remember? Or do you need a more

permanent reminder?’

‘No!’ she panted, and wrenched herself free, wiping her hand savagely across her swolen mouth as if such a gesture could erase the marks of his passion.

‘You’re a little hypocrite, Briony, but unfortunately I haven’t time to teach you the depths of your own hypocrisy. I have to get to the airport.’

‘Then go! ‘ She was shaking, partly in anger and partly through some other emotion which she could neither understand nor explain.

‘When I get what I came for,’ he said. ‘I want to hear you say that you love me.’

‘You must be mad,’ she said, after an astonished pause.

‘I think I was,’ he said. ‘To let you get away from me so easily. But I don’t intend to let you go again. Now tel me that you love me and that you’l be waiting for me when I get back from Azabia,’