Fugitive Wife (7 page)

‘The nerve of you!’ she said aloud; but she was smiling and the cat made not the slightest attempt to move.

It was cold upstairs, and Briony was glad to put her housecoat on over her nightdress as she made her way to the tiny bathroom, which Aunt Hes had converted out of the third and smalest bedroom, to wash and clean her teeth. There was a rubber hot water bottle hanging on a hook near the basin, and she filed it, hugging it to her as she walked back along the narrow landing to her room.

Her hand was on the landing light switch when she heard from the hal below the unmistakable sound of a key being turned in the front door. For a moment her knees turned to water as she stood there, then common sense reasserted itself. If the late night visitor had a key, then he or she had a right to be entering the cottage. It would be, inevitably, this unknown tenant of Aunt Hes’s, Briony told herself ruefuly, tightening the sash on her housecoat, whose food she had begun to eat, and in whose nicely aired bed she had been proposing to retire.

She would have to apologise humbly and do a quick rethink.

The front door opened and a blast of icy wind filed the narrow halway, together with a few odd snowflakes.

The shadow that came in was tal and distinctly masculine in shape, and Briony groaned inwardly. It would have been far simpler to have explained to a woman, she thought.

She peered down the stairs and saw that the shadow had turned into a graven image. Riveted to the spot, no doubt, she thought, by letting himself into an empty house to find a woman in a housecoat looking embarrassed at the top of the stairs. She began to hunt round for an appropriate phrase to begin the explanations and apologies, then the hal light clicked on and the words shriveled and died on her lips as she looked down into the face of the man standing below her.

For a moment, they stood in silence staring at each other.

Then, ‘Helo, wife,’ said Logan with no expression in his voice whatsoever.

‘You―what are you doing here?’ High-pitched and frightened, it didn’t even sound like her own voice.

Logan put down the suitcase and the portable typewriter he was carrying.

‘I could ask you the same thing,’ he said evenly.

‘Where did you get the key from?’ she demanded,

‘From your aunt, four days ago, just before she left for the South of France.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘What’s your story?’

‘I used the spare key. The one that’s kept under the broken stone.’

‘So.’ He uttered a short, totaly mirthless laugh. ‘Here we are, then.’

‘No, we’re not.’ she said between her teeth. ‘I’m getting out, right now.’

‘Like that?’ The cool aquamarine eyes raked her dispassionately.

‘You’l be a sensation. And you’re going nowhere.’

‘You can’t stop me!’

‘I don’t even propose to try.’ he said indifferently. ‘But the weather wil. Was that snow-covered lump I passed at the bottom of the track your car, by any chance?’

Briony suppressed an exclamation. ‘Is it that bad?’

‘It’s that bad.’ he said laconicaly, ‘and it’s going to get worse. I left my car on the other side of the vilage and walked the last few miles.’

‘Then I can do the same.’

‘My God,’ he said wearily, ‘then you realy are a fool.’

‘How did you know I was here?’

‘I didn’t.’ It was a grim statement. ‘Your aunt played a neat trick on us both. I don’t know what she’s hoping for.’

Briony felt a flush stealing into her cheeks. ‘As a matter of fact . . .’

‘Yes?’ he prompted as she hesitated.

‘As a matter of fact, she didn’t know I was coming here. I knew she’d be away and that the place would be empty, I wanted to be on my own for a while. No one knows that I’m here.’

‘Wel, that’s just hard lines, I’m afraid.’ he said. ‘And the place isn’t empty. It’s being occupied―by me, unlike you, with your aunt’s permission. I’m renting it from her.’

Briony sagged helplessly against the wal. ‘But for how long?’

‘As long as it takes.’ He shrugged. ‘I’ve been commissioned to write a book about my experiences in escaping from Azabia. I’ve come

here to rough out the first draft. That’s why I wanted some peace and quiet.’

‘And you’l have it.’ she said. ‘Maybe not tonight, but first thing in the morning I’l be away and gone from here.’

Logan’s mouth twisted cynicaly. ‘I wouldn’t bank on it, sweetheart.’ He shrugged off the leather car coat he was wearing. ‘Your aunt said she’d make sure there were some stores in the place. Have they come, do you know?’

‘Everything’s in the kitchen. I―I put them away. I had no idea who they were for.’

‘Naturaly.’ he agreed wearily. ‘It’s al an amazing coincidence, isn’t it, Briony? Like the time you folowed me to that pub for lunch. Like the time you came round to the flat with those cuttings I’d asked for after I got back from Cambodia.’

‘You mean’―for a moment words failed her― ‘You think I came here deliberately―knowing that you were going to be here? You must

be out of your mind! ‘

‘No.’ he said. ‘I’ve merely given up trying to figure what goes on in yours. Now if you’l excuse me I’l go and make myself a hot drink.’

He disappeared through the door leading into the living room.

Briony hesitated for a minute, then picking up the skirts of her housecoat she came down the stairs and folowed him into the kitchen. He was standing at the sink filing the kettle, and he shot a look at her over his shoulder.

‘What’s this? Wifely solicitude? It’s a little late for that, isn’t it?’

‘Very probably.’ She moistened her dry lips with the tip of her tongue. ‘Logan, what are we going to do? We can’t both stay here―it’s impossible under the circumstances.’

‘I don’t see why.’ He put the kettle on the stove. ‘We’re legaly married. We’re alowed to share a roof, even if we haven’t been in the habit of doing so. And you have my word for it that’s al we’l share―just in case you were harbouring any delusions that I stil lust after that expensively packaged little carcase of yours.’

‘It’s no wonder you’re a journalist, Logan,’ she said with gritted teeth. ‘You realy have a way with words!’

‘Ain’t it the truth, lady?’ He gave her a derisive look.

‘And I’m not a journalist any more―at least not with the Courier. My services have been dispensed with, to poor Mac’s everlasting

disgust―and we know whom we have to thank for that, don’t we?’

Mortification at her father’s sheer vindictiveness kept her silent.

Eventualy she said, ‘I don’t know what to say.’

‘Don’t you? If this snow keeps up. you’l have plenty of opportunity to think of something. But I’m afraid you’l have to talk to yourself. I came here for some peace. I can’t work in London. The bloody phone never stops for one thing. Suddenly they want me to appear on chat shows. My God,’ he laughed shortly, ‘instant fame!’

‘It isn’t a very large cottage,’ she said coldly. ‘But I’l do my best to keep out of your way.’

‘Thank you.’ He made her a slight, mocking bow.

‘What a pity you haven’t got the fels to escape to this time. What a sensation for the locals if history were to repeat itself!’ He spooned coffee into a mug and filed it with boiling water. ‘I’ve wondered sometimes, Briony, what would have happened that day if I hadn’t rushed off ful of romantic ardour to fetch some champagne to toast you in―if I’d been here to head that Chapman bitch off. I’ve wondered if our―marriage, for want of a better word would have folowed a different pattern.’

‘I doubt it,’ said Briony, conscious that her heart was hammering oddly. ‘And it’s a singularly fruitless form of speculation.’

‘You think so?’ He drank some of the coffee. ‘Yet it came into my mind quite often when I was locked up in that stinking jail―and

afterwards when I was on the run. The curiosity of leaving a house with everything in the world to return to, then coming back half an hour later to find that in fact you have nothing. Nothing at al.’ He smiled reflectively. ‘An odd sensation, to say the least.’

There was a silence. Briony stared down at the stone flags, unwiling to look up and meet his gaze.

She said, trying to control her uneven breathing, ‘I know where Aunt Hes keeps the extra bedding. I’l put some in front of the fire to air for a while. I’m afraid I’m using the bed Mrs Barnes made up for you.’

He said, ‘There’s no need to bother about extra bedding―at least tonight.’ He threw up one hand, his lips twisting satiricaly, as she looked up in swift alarm. ‘And no need for panic either. I’l make do with a couple of chairs down here for what’s left of the night. I’ve slept in worse places, believe me, over the past few months.’

Somewhere inside her a little demon whispered, ‘And in the past few days―where have you slept? In Karen Welesley’s bed?’ But she

did not ask the question.

Logan said with sudden impatience, ‘Oh, get to bed, for God’s sake, Briony. Lock the door if you want and if you can’t take my word for it that rape isn’t imminent.’

A gust of anger shook her. ‘I wouldn’t take your word for what day of the week it is!’

‘It’s Tuesday,’ he said inimicaly. ‘But something tels me that knowing the names is going to assume less importance in our lives than simply getting through them, one by one. Now get out of here.’

It wasn’t until she was safely in her room with the door closed that Briony realised she was stil clutching the rubber hot water bottle. It had lost much of its initial heat too, she thought ruefuly, but she was reluctant to venture back to the bathroom and risk encountering Logan again.

She slipped out of her housecoat and got into bed with a shiver. She could hear slight sounds of movement from downstairs, and tried to close her ears to them. No matter what he might say, what assurances he might give, she was going to do her level best to get out of here in the morning. It was a terrible, malicious fate which had driven Logan and herself to seek the same refuge, but she was not obliged to succumb to it.

She twisted and turned, punching the pilow into shape, trying to relax and get comfortable, but it was impossible. Out of the darkness, she kept seeing Logan’s face, frozen with shock as he registered her presence at the top of the stairs, and the bitter irony of his words, ‘Helo, wife.’

They’d been the first words he’d spoken to her at the start of their honeymoon in this very cottage. The first words of love—and the last.

Just after that he’d gone off ―to fetch some champagne as he’d said―and by the time he’d returned she had gone, running out on to the fels like a mad thing, running from the things that Marina Chapman had screamed at her, from the poison and the hatred which had struck at the very roots of her love for him.

Love? she thought wryly. Looking back, it now seemed more of an obsession. Logan had not been unfair when he had suggested she might have pursued him here. She supposed that after his rejection of her at the flat, he had expected she would never want to see him or speak to him again, but he had been wrong.

She had returned home, hurt and humiliated, to find Sir Charles waiting for her grimly. She had, of course, been seen on her abortive visit to the U.P.G. offices and Sir Charles had lost no time in instigating enquiries as to exactly what his daughter had been doing there. The answers had not pleased him. And apart from that, he wanted to know where she had been since then.

Briony, stil on edge over her treatment at Logan’s hands, answered him hotly, and before long a ful-scale row was in progress. Hard

things were said on both sides and the culmination came when Briony stalked out of the room, declaring that she was leaving.

An hour later she was sitting in the kitchen of Aunt Hes’s comfortable mews flat, swearing that she would never return.

Aunt Hes heard her out in a troubled silence. She had never liked her brother-in-law, but she had always taken a great deal of trouble not to interfere.

She said, ‘But my dear, you have nowhere to go, and no money except the alowance your father makes you. What are you going to do?’

Briony said with determination, ‘Wel, the first thing I must do is find a job of some kind.’

‘Have you any idea what?’

‘I thought I might apply to ‘the Personnel Director at U.P.G. I have it on good authority that there are usualy vacancies there.’

Aunt Hes frowned slightly. ‘My dear, is that wise?’

‘Probably not, but I don’t want to be wise.’ Briony’s tone was defiant. ‘Everything I’ve ever done has been safely mapped out for me, with no margin for error. Wel, I want to learn by my mistakes the same as other girls do.’

‘As your mother did,’ her aunt observed, half to herself.

Briony leaned forward. ‘You never would tel me before.’ she said. ‘Was―was my mother happy with Daddy?’

‘She loved him.’ Hester Wyatt’s voice was dry. ‘That, I understand, is supposed to confer a kind of happiness.’

‘But did it?’ Briony persisted,

‘If it did not,’ Aunt Hes said slowly, ‘then your mother was too loyal ever to discuss the alternative. But I wondered-I wondered very much. She was impulsive like you.’ she added.

Briony’s eyes softened. ‘I wish I could remember her properly.’

‘I wish you could. I wish she was here now to stop you careering headlong to disaster.’, her aunt said vigorously.

‘What’s so disastrous about leaving home and getting a job?’ Briony gave her aunt a limpid smile. ‘Girls do it every day.’

‘It wasn’t that I was thinking of.’ Aunt Hes gave her a straight look. ‘It was the rest of the story―the part you haven’t told me.’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’ Briony looked down at the floor, avoiding her aunt’s gaze, and heard her give a swift sigh.

‘Keep your secret, child.’ she said, after a moment’s pause. ‘But be discreet. Your father is a bad man to cross. I’m going up to Kirkby Scar for a few days, so if you want to use the flat, you may. Wasn’t that realy what you came to ask?’

‘Oh, lord I’ Briony had the grace to look slightly amused. ‘Am I that transparent?’

Aunt Hes got up to clear the coffee cups, and patted her cheek affectionately. ‘You’re your mother’s daughter,’ she said. ‘And she was my only sister, after al. I knew her rather wel. I knew the look when she was about to ask some outrageous favour ―and I knew when she