what we always did, after Haymarket, one of our special places—you bad thing!’ A tinkling laugh that carried no warmth. ‘I heard the unbelievable rumour. I simply had to find out if it was true—that you actually went and married— Oh, hi, Matilda, so we meet again. What a scream! Goodness, you’ve cut off some of that hair!’
Mattie felt ill. She was sure her face had turned green. She wanted to hide, fall through the floor. Dressing down, very down, had backfired on her. James would be comparing the two of them and feeling as ill as she was!
She had only met Fiona Campbell-Blair that one time, when James had brought her to Berrington to introduce her as his fiancée. She’d been the house guest from hell and both Mattie and her father had ended up disliking her intensely.
But looking at her—tall, elegant, so very beautiful, the pale satin sheath she was wearing showing her voluptuous figure to stunning advantage—she could see why James had wanted her as his wife.
But she’d jilted him and he’d married on the rebound, got himself landed with a very poor second best.
Courteously, he’d risen to his feet. Fiona was standing close to him. Too close? Yes, Mattie decided. Much too close. And he was hurting. James never showed his feelings but now his face was tight with some painful emotion, his lithe body tense.
Bristling, Mattie wanted to slap the other woman. Hard. Why couldn’t the hateful creature leave him in peace to get over her as best he could? Why eat up his features with those hard blue eyes, pout her lips at him as if she were waiting for his kiss? Why rub salt in his still-raw wounds?
‘Are you intending to join us? Or do you enjoy standing around so that other people can’t eat?’ Mattie asked with a withering rudeness that was completely alien to her.
‘What?’ Fiona gave her a look that conveyed the surprise of a woman who’d just been spoken to by an inanimate piece of furniture. ‘Good Lord, no! I’m with my own party.’ She tipped her blonde head on one side, a half-smile playing round her mouth as she trailed the fingertips of one hand down the stony cheek of the man she’d so cruelly and publicly rejected. ‘Just had to totter over to give my congratulations. I take it they are in order, James?’ Her tone implied the precise opposite. ‘Ciao, darling. Be happy. If you can!’
CHAPTER SIX
THE rest of the evening was a wash-out. The food was barely touched and the champagne went flat. Mattie was making uncomfortable small talk and James did his best to respond but knew he was failing miserably.
‘I’ll get someone to find us a taxi,’ he said when the silences between the spurts of stilted conversation became distinctly edgy.
Abruptly, he beckoned their waiter over, asking for the bill. The evening was unsalvageable while his mind was frantically trying to make some sense out of what was happening here.
He’d learned at an early age that emotions made you vulnerable; they were counter-productive, a waste of time and energy, energy that could be used along much more useful and controllable lines. It was a lesson he’d learned well.
So why, since Fiona’s interruption, was he in the remorseless grip of what had to be the mother and father of all emotion? It was anger, he recognised. Because Fiona had spoiled the mood of the evening? Because the wretched woman had sunk her barbs into Mattie, hurting her? Couple that with a fierce, gut-wrenching need to protect Mattie from anything and anyone who could hurt her and he was landed with something he was going to have to get his head around.
Wryly he noted the wash of relief that flooded her expressive features at his ending of the evening that had become so awkward for both of them. He slid his plastic credit card back into his wallet and told her flatly, ‘I’ll be flying out to Jerez tomorrow. The new hotel and leisure complex, remember?’
The ground work had been done, the deal signed and sealed. His site manager and the firm’s architect could manage perfectly adequately without him; nevertheless, he’d be with them in the company’s Lear jet tomorrow.
It would give him the necessary time and space to get his head straight, decide whether he and Mattie had a future together. Fiona’s brief intrusion, the unprecedented emotions it had aroused, had turned everything upside down.
‘For long?’ Mattie asked, trying not to sound too relieved about it.
She really did need some time without his forceful presence, time alone to get this feeling of draining misery under control. Before Fiona’s arrival she’d had the distinct feeling that he’d been suggesting that, some day in the future, their marriage could have become a real one, that he could have learned to love her.
A voyage of discovery, he’d said. It could have led anywhere.
But she’d been so wrong. He’d only had to see his ex-fiancée again, a reminder of what he’d lost—and a hammering home of what he’d actually got—for his relaxed, warm mood to change to something terse, unfalteringly abstracted. He couldn’t even pretend to be enjoying her company.
‘Difficult to say.’ He stood up, moving round to pull out her chair for her, wondering bitterly how he could ever have entertained the thought that he could seduce her, take her to his bed and after that everything would be hunky-dory, uncomplicated.
Life wasn’t like that, unfortunately. She deserved more than that. And he needed time to look deep inside himself and discover if the emotions he’d always steered well clear of, and had so recently hit him for six, were lasting and true. For both their sakes he had to find the answer to that.
He watched as Mattie scrabbled about beneath the table for her handbag, whipping the unnecessary disguise of her reading glasses off her nose, dropping them into the bag’s capacious depths. ‘I’ll keep you posted, of course,’ he told her. ‘And if you really don’t want to get back to your work just yet you could fill your time by helping with your father’s move.’
That could be weeks away! Mattie’s eyes widened with something approaching panic. Was he planning on staying away that long? Why? Because after seeing Fiona again he couldn’t bear to be anywhere near the woman he’d married on the rebound? Was he only now realising what a terrible mistake he’d made?
If he hadn’t leapt into this ill-considered paper marriage he could have bent his considerable will into the challenge of getting Fiona back. Was that what he was brooding on?
He’d already left before she surfaced the next morning. The house felt empty without him. She thought about contacting the agency, asking if they had anything for her, but knew she wouldn’t be able to concentrate her mind on anything cerebral. She acted on James’ parting advice instead and phoned her father.
Everything was moving more quickly than they’d dared to hope. The Sussex house had been on the market for less than forty-eight hours before they’d had a firm offer for the full asking price and the apartment near Sloane Square was secured. The formalities had been dealt with very quickly and it wouldn’t be long before they moved to London. So, yes, her help would be much appreciated.
Helping her father and Mrs Flax—‘Call me Emily’—decide what should go to the apartment, what go to auction, and what should be thrown out, helped take her mind off James’ prolonged absence and the probable reason for it.