Bittersweet Passion

‘He’s smirking!’ Zelda’s shrill voice carolled, the tap, tap of stilettos sounding on the open-tread steps. ‘That man is down in that kitchen smirking like his horse has won the Derby and he’s serving dinner now, he tells me. Why, it’s barely half-six!’

‘Perhaps they’re looking forward to an early night,’ her husband remarked drily.

‘Oh, don’t be vulgar, Matt!’ she snapped. ‘Why didn’t you tell me, Dane? Why all this heavy secrecy? And why does she look like … well, she doesn’t look happy, does she? You’d expect her to be crowing.’

Claire gave her a brittle smile. ‘About what?’ she inserted into the flood.

Zelda looked at her in astonishment.

‘I believe I’m the one who’s supposed to be crowing,’ Dane countered gently. ‘And we’re having dinner early because we skipped lunch, and “she” is the cat’s mother. Zelda. Anything else?’

‘Plenty!’ Now shorn of her coat, Zelda sat down, crossing long, shapely legs. Her smiling, attractive features were marred only by the hardness of her eyes. ‘Where did you meet?’

Dane was already calmly pouring her a drink. ‘Yorkshire,’ he said amiably. ‘Claire was ten. She had plaits and a stammer in those days.’

Zelda was still staring at Claire, her eyes skimming over the elegantly simple blue dress and her fragile features. ‘You never had a taste for little girls that I knew of, and what’s in Yorkshire? What were you doing there?’ Her brow furrowed. ‘Good God, she’s not one of those grasping Fletchers, is she? I never associated the name … Claire. She’s your cousin, Dane. That’s practically incestuous.’

Claire’s lips firmed. ‘I was adopted. There’s no blood tie.’

In the same moment, Thompson announced dinner and they all filed out to the dining-room.

‘So you met when she was ten,’ Zelda resumed at the table. ‘How did you arrive at today, when I happen to know that not three days ago you …’ She suddenly let out a yelp of pain.

‘Cat got your tongue, honey?’ Matt enquired with a benevolent beam. Claire registered that that alcoholic bonhomie was very deceptive, though it had come too late to deny her the knowledge that there had been another female in Dane’s bed in the very recent past. A tide of fury passed through her, so strong that she quivered.

‘Adam wouldn’t have me in the house,’ Dane drawled, his eyes coldly fixed on Zelda over the top of Claire’s downbent head.

‘That old miser would have put a red carpet down for you if you’d so much as shown a hint of interest. You’ll have to do better than that,’ Zelda challenged.

‘I married her for her money?’ Dane laughed. ‘No, that doesn’t wash either. To be brutally frank, Zelda, my marriage is none of your business.’

A chilly little silence fell. Claire, still reeling from that conscienceless laugh, caught the pain in Zelda’s dark eyes, a depth of pain and anger that had only one source. She looked away, too raw herself to experience any relish in ack

nowledging that she had let herself be hurt by the ravings of a very jealous woman.

Dinner was a culinary triumph. Thompson alone was set on celebration and it was obvious. There was a faint, revealing quirk to his normally bland mouth. He broke out champagne and Zelda talked, talked, talked, incessantly, like a tap without a washer, contriving often to be amusing while she name-dropped and listed snob resorts and pretended surprise that Claire had never travelled.

Dane never once betrayed the tension that lay between them. She recognised that he wouldn’t let anyone shoot her down even though he had no compunction about hurting her himself. It was an odd little twist in him that had always been there.

‘I think it’s time we left,’ Zelda said rather abruptly over the coffee cups and immediately stood up. ‘I left my coat in your room, Claire.’

She picked up her fur slowly. ‘You don’t bitch back, do you? He would like that. I suppose I ought to apologise but it was a shock to hear he’d got married. I had an affair with Dane before he introduced me to Matt,’ she elucidated almost defiantly. ‘I’m not envious now, because he doesn’t love you. He’s also constitutionally incapable of fidelity for any length of time, and I don’t envy you the competition out there. I’ll even give you a piece of advice for free. Don’t ever crowd him. He hates that.’ Raising the collar of her coat she gave Claire a cool smile. ‘You see, I’ve saved you asking any awkward questions.’

Strain showed in her tightened mouth and Claire, rather taken aback by that depth of brazen honesty, just followed her out to the hall where Zelda’s farewell to them both was a masterpiece of mocking amusment.

‘How long have they been married?’ The question got her up the stairs and back into a seat as distant from his tall, lean figure and her covert physical awareness of him now, as she could decently get.

‘About a decade. They don’t exactly improve one’s view of happily ever after, do they? Still, that’s their business,’ Dane retorted carelessly. ‘What are you planning to say to me, Claire? Where do we go from here? No place but where we are now. When I want a separation, I’ll tell you. Meanwhile, you stay.’

She interlaced her cold fingers. ‘I can’t live like that.’

‘You’ve already begun. I’d remind you that I didn’t invite you into my life. What you find there, and whether or not it’s to your taste is immaterial to me,’ he drawled flatteningly. ‘You were right. You’re not a child but I much preferred the child you were to the woman you’ve become.’

His words fell on her like separate blows. A terrible hollowness seemed to be opening up inside her as she grasped his implacability. She left her seat, her hands making a sudden desperate and silent gesture. ‘I didn’t know. What do I have to do to convince you?’

‘I’m going out for a while.’ He just walked away from her, and she wondered abstractedly if there could come a time when his ability to walk away would hurt. Dear God, it already hurt. Their old ease of communication was gone. Nothing she could say would penetrate Dane’s ingrained cynicism and, once he had vented his anger, it seemed that for him the slate was washed clean again. Damn him, how could he be so cool? Didn’t he know what he had done?

‘By the way—–’ he paused at the top of the steps, the long graceful sweep of his body momentarily captured beneath the arc of a light : he was golden and untouchable and she glimpsed that cold beauty with an apprehension she could not conceal, danger signals sparking in the air like warning flares because he was so still ‘—I told Thompson to shift your clothes into my room. You’ll sleep there from now on.’