Jennifer tossed her head, the tone of Katie's voice erasing all guilt from her face. 'A Mrs Staples. Penny Staples. She used to be a model before Carlton took up with her but then she dropped out of sight Perhaps he didn't want her working or seeing other men; I don't know. She's the original recluse now, anyway, but Carlton pays the rent each year; that much I do know for sure. And I thought it was my duly to make sure you knew,' she added tartly. 'We are sisters after all.'
'Yes, we are sisters,' Katie agreed dully as she rose slowly and left the room, her heart thudding so hard that it was a physical pain. Penny. Penny. It was too much of a coincidence for it not to be the same Penny whom Joseph had told her about So he had loved her all these years, biding his time until he could persuade her to belong to him again. But why hadn't he married her?
The thudding had transferred itself to her head now and she felt nauseous as she collapsed on to her own bed after locking the door. Perhaps she was already married; perhaps the 'Mrs' was real? Or maybe…
She sat up, the room spinning, as another thought occurred to her. Perhaps he had some hold on her too? Something that had forced her to leave the catwalk and all the glamour and allow herself to be incarcerated in what virtually amounted to a prison, just waiting for the moments when he could spare her some time and ease her solitude. Was it some form of weird punishment? A form of retribution for a love he couldn't let go?
And Maisie? The pain in her heart was so fierce that it was catching her breath. How did she fit into the scheme of things? Her knowing about his mistress suddenly made the close relationship Carlton had with the beautiful brunette even more suspect She felt that there was something between them, some secret; she had felt it all along but had tried to put it out of her mind. Perhaps she was his mistress too? A hundred little incidents she had noticed but dismissed returned to her mind with renewed vigour. He was so different with Maisie in a way she couldn't quite pinpoint.
When the tears came in a burning, blinding flood they didn't help. Even after she had cried herself dry the ache in her heart was savage. She lay on her bed, careless of all the bundled and one things she still had left to do, and watched the afternoon sky with blind eyes until the bedside clock told her it was five o'clock. He would be home now and she had to go and see him, confront him with the truth and tear away all the lies and meaningless promises he had made. 'Absolute fidelity'. She clenched her teeth and forced back the sudden rush of tears before washing her face and fixing her hair into a knot high on top of her head. When she faced him she wanted to be cool and controlled—an ice woman to match the ice man.
Jennifer was waiting in the hall when she ventured downstairs. From the pile of magazines by her side it looked as though she had been there all afternoon. 'I told Mrs Jenkins you had a headache and wanted to sleep,' she whispered nervously as Katie reached her side and picked up her car keys. 'And where on earth do you think you're going now?'
'Where do you think?' Katie asked dully.
'I wouldn't—'
'I'm not interested in what you would or wouldn't do.' Jennifer was still standing in the hall open-mouthed as she left the house. She had never spoken to her in such a cold tone before. Perhaps she should have done so a long time ago.
Carlton was in his study when Maisie led her through and as he looked up from his desk, his face breaking into one of his rare smiles when he saw her framed in the doorway, she knew a rage so strong that she had to restrain herself from leaping at his face like a wild animal. How dared he smile at her like that when all the time—? 'Katie?' His smile faded at the look on her face and as Maisie shut the door, leaving them alone, he rose swiftly from the desk. 'What's wrong? Is it David?'
'My father is fine.' Something in her voice brought him to a halt just in front of her, the arms that had reached out dropping back by his sides as he looked down at her. 'Who is Penny Staples?' she asked with icy control, and as she saw the blow register in his eyes she knew that Jennifer hadn't been lying, and the last tiny scrap of hope died.
'I don't know what you've heard, Katie, but I can explain.' He motioned her to the seat facing his desk but she remained standing, her eyes set tightly on his face. 'Penny is an old friend—'
'The old friend you were going to marry once?' she asked acidly, willing the anger to hold the trembling that was threatening to take over and render her useless. 'That old friend?'
'Someone has been very busy.' The surge of angry red colour that fired his high cheekbones didn't intimidate her at all—she was way, way past that. 'Dare I make a guess that Jennifer is home?' he asked coldly. 'The fount of all knowledge?'
'Do you keep an old friend in a flat in Mayfair?' she spat at him as she felt her control slipping and the urge to scream and tear at him with her hands grow. 'And I want the truth, Carlton,' she warned bitterly.
'Sit down, Katie.' As she still stood swaying in the middle of the room he reached out and forced her into the seat, only to have her spring up and away from him as his hands left her shoulders.
'Don't you touch me.' So great was her rage that she hit her hip on the corner of his desk and didn't feel a thing. 'I want to know about your mistress, Carlton—this old, old friend.'
'She is not my mistress.' The words were punched out into the room as he watched her through narrowed eyes. 'I can explain it all if you'll just sit in the damn chair and listen to me. Penny and I were close once but that
was a long time ago—'
'And she left you for someone else.' Katie stared at him, seeing all her tentative hopes for the future crashing down about her ears. 'I know that All I want to know now is if you pay the rent for her flat in Mayfair.'
'Yes.' His eyes never left her face as he spoke. 'I pay the rent I was going to explain it all when we had some time alone together in Spain after the wedding, when I could make you understand.'
'I'll never understand.' She drew herself up as her heart slowly broke, and faced him with an icy composure that was the result of shock and pain. 'I hate you, Carlton Reef. I thought that at least you would keep your word in this monstrous farce of a relationship but I might have known you would run true to type. You disgust me; everything about you disgusts me.' She was lashing out through her own hitter hurt and humiliation, trying to scourge the love from her heart with cruel words and an icy front, but inside she was screaming, dying.
'I know that.' As his control broke he leapt at her so savagely that her head jerked back on her shoulders when he caught her arms in his hands, shaking her like a dog with a bone. 'Don't you think I don't know that?' he snarled rawly, his eyes glittering with an unholy fire and his face black with rage. 'I've felt the way you tense every time I so much as lay a finger on you, seen the reproach and wariness in those damn great eyes every time you look at me. I know how you feel, Katie.'
'You were just waiting for something like this, weren't you—some excuse to get out of the commitment you made of your own free will?' He shook her again, his eyes lethal. 'You wouldn't unbend an inch, damn you. I've been turning inside out trying to keep to the softly-softly approach, to show you I'm not quite the animal you seem to imagine. I thought you'd begin to understand, that I could show you—' He made an exclamation of disgust as he threw her to one side.
'I've been trying not to come on too heavy, to frighten you, and where has it got me?' He swore, softly and succinctly, as his eyes washed over her white face.
'This is not my fault—'
He cut short her protestation with a bark of a laugh that grated harshly. 'I didn't say it was.'
Before she knew what he was going to do he had closed the gap between them, gripping her wrists as he hauled her against the hard wall of his body with ruthless ease. 'And you know the thing that really has been driving your ice-cool brain crazy, the thing you couldn't forgive me for?' he asked thickly as he looked down into her trapped eyes. 'You want me. Physically you want me as much as I want you. You might not like to hear that, my cold, suspicious little fiancée, but we both know I could have had you at any time over the last few weeks and you would have been there all the way.'
'No—' As he took her mouth in a fierce, contemptuous kiss that forced her head back she was conscious of one piercing moment of thankfulness that he hadn't guessed the truth—that she loved him—and then all her energy went into fighting him. The cold control of the previous weeks had melted like ice before fire and the raw, primitive desire that had him in its grip made him blind and deaf to everything but his own need as he sated his passion on her twisting form.