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Then she was saying lightly but with an odd, underlying note of urgency, ‘Pagan? That’s the would-be actress? Or singer? She doesn’t strike me as very talented, but she’s certainly well-publicised. Oh, sit down again, Loris; I’ve just remembered something I want to ask you.’
Pale with shock and humiliation, Bridget retained just enough presence of mind to understand that Virginia was giving her the chance to slip away without having to face Loris, and she accepted it frantically.
No wonder she had found his kisses so reassuringly undemanding! He wasn’t interested in her—yet, just expecting to be at some future stage when he tired of the other girl. Cynically, he had been keeping her on ice!
She was barely functional when she returned to her employer’s office half an hour later, the time too short for her to have come to terms with her hurt, its sting still fresh and poignant.
‘Don’t be embarrassed, Bridget,’ Virginia adjured kindly, noticing how she flushed self-consciously as she entered the office. ‘You’re not the first and you won’t be the last to discover what the Stirling men are really like behind their handsome faces. I didn’t bother telling Loris you’d heard, incidentally.’
‘I was in love with him,’ Bridget confided in a small voice, incapable of pretence, the exigencies of pride too new to her to be accommodated.
‘I know, but there’s not a one of them, not my brother or either of my cousins, who is capable of loving, although they all enjoy women.’ Virginia grimaced ruefully. ‘I’m sorry I’ve been too distracted lately to notice what was happening, otherwise I could have warned you. But things have… Oh, now that’s an idea! Or perhaps not. It would be a solution to my problem, but it might not be the right thing for you. On the other hand, I do think you need to get away from here for a while, Bridget, and as it’s through my preoccupation, not to mention my cousin, that you’ve been hurt like this… You’re almost ready to undertake overseas buying on your own now, only I’d meant to send you somewhere nearer to home and less exotic initially. But how would you like to go to India in my place? I’d better explain properly, but first I want you to swear that you won’t breathe a word of this to anyone unless I give you permission?’
Her employer was a kind woman, but Bridget had a feeling that she was being swept into some scheme that was more to Virginia’s benefit than her own, especially as Virginia was looking slightly guilty. Nevertheless, going to India would be a major step towards the independence she was aiming for, a goal she had temporarily lost sight of, thanks to the distraction Loris had provided. Additionally, in the newness of her humiliation, the idea of having to face Loris again was acutely distressing, and ‘Virginia did seem to be offering her at least a temporary reprieve from having to do so.
‘Of course I won’t,’ she promised shakily. ‘But I thought your trip to India was all arranged?’
‘It was! It is, but I can’t go! Oh, I wish I knew if I was doing the right thing asking you!’ Virginia sounded unusually confused, angry and amused at once. ‘I just can’t believe this has happened to me. I’m supposed to be like all the other Stirlings. We don’t fall in love! I never have, although I’ve had a few good relationships, and you’d think if I could get to the age of thirty-one without losing my heart I’d be safe from ever doing so, wouldn’t you? I’ve put up a good fight this time too, but that’s partly why I’m now required to prove my commitment.
‘After all my resistance and carrying on about how my work came first, Mortimer isn’t completely sure of me—and I want him to be, now that I’ve had to capitulate, because I know I’ll lose him otherwise. He’s a travel writer and he’s due at a convention in America at the same time I’m scheduled to start buying fabrics in India. I want to go with him, but it’s not fair to my designers and everyone else involved just to scrap or postpone that range after all the work they’re putting in, and my other buyers are all already committed elsewhere… You know, Bridget, I suppose that ultimately the difference between me and the men in the family is simply that I’m a woman. We’re victims—not of men, but of our own natures, and I’m still not sure if I like it!’
Such sentiments were alien to Bridget. In love with Loris, she would quite simply have been delirious with happiness had he returned her feelings.
‘Is that why you want to keep it a secret? Or—’ Natural delicacy made her break off as it occurred to her that the man might not be free.
‘Or is he married?’ Virginia laughed. ‘He and his wife separated many years ago, but they never bothered with divorce. Mortimer is seeing about it now, but I want our marriage to be a fait accompli before I tell anyone. That way, my brother won’t be able to interfere, and he’ll want to, I know. He’s so used to directing our lives, deciding things for us, and he’s likely to decide I’m making a mistake, especially as Mortimer is fifty. I’ve learnt not to confide in Nicholas, although there was a time when I was grateful for the way he’d take command and get us out of our difficulties. He got rid of my very first lover for me when I became unhappy in the affair because I wasn’t in love and the man was. I later found out that my next lover, who didn’t make the mistake of loving me, had been pointed in my direction by Nicholas, to keep me happy. I was furious, and it was after that that Nicholas set me up with Ginny’s, to keep me out of trouble and my mind off men, because I was never satisfied, he said.
‘But since then I’ve run my own life, started and ended my affairs for myself without any help from him. But this! I remember once some woman Nicholas was involved with had set out determined to join the Stirling family; it turned out she’d deliberately provoked her husband into giving her grounds for divorce so she’d be free before engineering a meeting—she actually admitted all this in a fit of pique when Nicholas foiled her.
‘Anyway, when Nicholas made it clear that he wasn’t interested in marriage, she quite coolly transferred her attention to Adrian—Loris’s older brother—as one Stirling was as good as another in her book. But Nicholas was even cooler, the way he extricated Adrian and sent him off to run the American office. I suspect he’d try the same on me and Mortimer. I can’t risk it!’
Virginia gestured expressively, and Bridget could see her point. Nicholas Stirling sounded the most ruthless of autocrats, at least where his family was concerned.
She liked Virginia, and if she herself couldn’t have the love she had dreamed of, so unrealistically, at least she could help Virginia have and keep hers.
Thus she had agreed to this Indian trip, confident that she could handle the buying and prove herself an asset to Ginny’s, doing her best to soothe the doubts Virginia so obviously had. She had arrived in New Delhi to find that Virginia did in fact still rely on her brother, or Stirling Industries, for some things in addition to using the company house, as the head of Stirling Industries’ Indian interests, Mr Bhandari, had insisted on making all Bridget’s domestic travel arrangements for her, brushing aside her embarrassed protests with the assertion that he always did the same for Virginia on her trips.
Tonight, thoughts of Loris were relentlessly intrusive again, invading her mind, tormenting her as they had done so persistently in the days and nights preceding her departure from England, which had mercifully coincided with one of those periods when Loris didn’t contact her—presumably in deference to the possessive Pagan. Since then, the novelty of her surroundings and the responsibilities of her job had provided some relief, but now the ache had begun again, somehow stirred by Nicholas Stirling’s arrival.
Surprisingly, Bridget had found herself unable to shed any tears over Loris, but that too was now suddenly at an end, she discovered as hot tears welled, filling her eyes irresistibly and tightening her throat. Her mouth worked and finally she had to yield to the hurt and humiliation she felt.
The house was situated towards New Delhi’s outskirts and not for the first time Bridget heard the howl of jackals from the hills outside the city, the sound seemingly so full of a profound, poignant grief that she felt her own to be trivial and was abruptly furious with herself—lying here in the dark, sobbing in her bed for an impossible dream, just like the teenager that horrible man Nicholas Stirling believed she was.
But crying had given her unhappiness a looser, more manageable feel, and the emotional release ensured that she slept well and woke with her plans for the day bubbling round in her mind.
Of course, Nicholas Stirling’s presence in the house remained a flaw, but perhaps he and Wanda would sleep late.
As she had formed the habit of doing, Bridget took a tray bearing a glass of mango juice and a pot of coffee out to the table on the long covered veranda with its ornately fretted arches on the side of the house away from the road. The garden here was a formal, symmetrical one, tiled walks running between massed roses which she had been told bloomed for most of the year, and the morning was already hazy with heat.
She had just put down her glass and was pouring coffee when Nicholas Stirling appeared on the veranda, carrying a tie and the jacket of his lightweight suit.
‘So you’re still around?’ He dropped them over the back of a chair and stood surveying Bridget challengingly. ‘I suppose you’ve also told Sita Menon that she’s not required in the mornings? Presumably you don’t eat breakfast either?’
Bridget experienced a frisson of complex emotion as she stared back at him, unable to look away although normally her natural shyness would have had her dropping her eyes after a moment or two. He looked so dark and strong, and yet the vigorous impression was at odds with the jaded, cynical expression in the grey eyeseyes that had seen everything and believed nothing.
‘I accept that I’ve inconvenienced you, but neither Sita nor I could know you were arriving,’ she submitted tightly. ‘Mr Bhandari didn’t mention that you were coming.’
‘He didn’t know,’ he admitted shortly.
‘I hope you’re not expecting me to provide breakfast for you?’ she mocked, adding gently, ‘Although I suppose it’s almost certain that someone like you can’t cook! What about Miss—Wanda? Is she still in bed?’
‘I wouldn’t know. She isn’t here,’ he returned caustically, and his sudden slashingly savage smile was a taunt. ‘She went to a hotel in the end. Your presence here must have inhibited her, or perhaps she balked at the idea of being a corruptive influence on one so young.’
‘Oh.’ Disconcerted, Bridget spoke without thinking. ‘Is that why you’re still in such a bad mood this morning?’
In talking about her brother on various occasions, Virginia had drawn a picture of a man accustomed to having women fall into his bed for his pleasure whenever he wanted them, although he seemed to be discreet in his affairs, his liaison with the fashionable wife of a mainstream rock star the only one to have invited the more prurient attentions of the media.
As she regarded him from beneath the screen of her long eyelashes, potent was the unsought word that came drifting into Bridget’s consciousness. Then her face flamed as she registered its true meaning.
Of course, the thought was prompted by the way he had suddenly been looking at her, as if his thoughts were a kind of reverse, or the other side of hers, and he was contemplating her as some kind of recipient of his maleness—and rejecting her!
‘No, you won’t suffice at all, although it seems you have heard of frustration, as I presume that’s what you’re alluding to,’ he observed with cold amusement. ‘But I’m not here to satisfy your juvenile curiosity. As for breakfast, I’ll get something when I go out. I want to talk to you.’
He had dropped easily into the chair opposite her, and now he took several seconds to scrutinise her once more, rejecting her all over again, Bridget noted with automatic relief. She probably still looked eighteen to him this morning, with her hair gathered loosely up into a ponytail that fell straight and silky from the top of her head, a few strands already escaping to frame her face, which was again untouched by make-up because she had discovered that even the little she occasionally wore melted in the Delhi heat. She was wearing a white sleeveless cotton top tucked into a short, straight skirt in dark pink, her low-heeled court shoes the same colour, her lightly tanned legs bare and delicately golden-brown, wonderfully long and slender, her arms the same shade and very slim. Earrings were her only jewellery, plain little hoops of fine silver.
‘Mr Stirling—’
‘I have to accept that you do work for my sister,’ he overrode her arrogantly. ‘Otherwise you wouldn’t be here, because Anand Bhandari wouldn’t have allowed you to have the keys. So what I want to know is how you conned Virginia into handing over one of her most cherished projects to you.’
‘I didn’t!’ Bridget began indignantly. ‘She asked me to do it because she couldn’t.’
‘Why couldn’t she?’
It was the question Bridget dreaded, and she hesitated, torn between her dislike of lying and loyalty to Virginia.
‘Because she… she has fallen in love.’ Surely it could do no harm to tell him that much?
Nicholas Stirling’s brief laugh was drily sceptical.
‘Virginia is no more likely to fall in love than I am. She’s far too intelligent.’
‘What has intelligence got to do with it?’ she wondered faintly.
‘Quite a lot, I’d say.’ Pausing, he let his eyes rest a moment on her mouth, its tender shape so expressive of her gentle nature, and his own tightened. ‘Now, will you kindly stop wasting my time, trying to see how far you can go with these wild stories, and tell me the real reason for Virginia’s change of plan?’
‘I have. It’s true—’ Seeing his disbelief, Bridget broke off, and finally came to a decision. ‘Mr Stirling, I’ve told you as much of the truth as I can, but I can’t go into any details because I promised Virginia I wouldn’t.’
Hard, compelling grey eyes held hers, searching their dark, shadowy green depths.
‘So break your promise,’ he invited her impatiently.
Bridget’s eyes widened, and now she was the one searching his face, endeavouring to gauge his seriousness.
‘I can’t do that,’ she protested eventually.
‘Why not?’
‘Break a promise—’
‘Everyone else does,’ he cut in on a note of finality, as if that concluded the argument and he was now waiting for her to proceed.
‘Well, I don’t,’ Bridget snapped.
She wasn’t exactly shocked, but the extent of his cynicism dismayed her as she had never encountered it in such total, unrelenting form before.
‘I could make you, quite easily,’ he observed softly.
‘You’re unbelievable!’ The words were torn from her. ‘No wonder you’re only ever called Nicholas, never Nick or Nicky.’
‘What has that got to do with anything?’ Nicholas demanded irritably, and Bridget had to acknowledge privately that she didn’t really know what she had meant by it either. ‘And what are you getting so emotional for? Did you think I was threatening you? I merely commented to the effect that I could make you tell me the truth, but it’s only an option I’m keeping in reserve for the future. An even easier one is to find out what Anand Bhandari knows about all this.’
It would solve her problem if Mr Bhandari could tell him what he wanted to know, but Bridget wasn’t sure how much Virginia would have confided when she had been in touch to warn him to expect her. At least she didn’t have to break her promise quite yet, although she supposed she would be driven to it if Nicholas looked like hindering her business here unless she told him everything, because she was determined to make a success of the task Virginia had given her.
‘Virginia did say she might phone, so perhaps you’ll be able to talk to her yourself,’ she offered, hoping it might act as a curb to his impatience.
‘You can’t phone her yourself?’ he probed, accepting it without comment when she shook her head. ‘Is this your first time in India?’
‘Yes.’
‘Who’s in charge of you?’
‘In charge?’ Bridget stared at him in astonishment. ‘What do you mean? I’m here—’
‘Do you have a family back in England? Parents?’ he elaborated.
‘Of course…’ She wondered what he was getting at with his peremptory questions.
‘There’s no “of course” about it,’ he retorted, and she stirred contritely, recalling Virginia telling her that their parents, along with Loris’s, had all been killed together when Nicholas was eighteen. ‘So what are they doing, letting you loose on your own like this?’
Bridget’s chin lifted. ‘They know I can cope.’
‘But can you? You’re not out of your depth and homesick?’ He continued the interrogation relentlessly.
‘Of course not!’ She denied it vehemently, incipient indignation making her eyes sparkle.
‘Then what were you sobbing your eyes out for last night? It didn’t sound exactly like coping to me,’ he announced sardonically.
Bridget had coloured sensitively.
‘You could pretend you hadn’t heard,’ she suggested resentfully. ‘Any nice person would.’
‘I’m not nice.’
‘Tell me about it!’ She was scathing.
‘So what were you crying for if you’re coping so well?’
‘Something personal—private,’ she emphasised pointedly.
‘A broken heart, I suppose,’ he guessed disgustedly, lips curved in mockery, and Bridget wondered if the hot, angry emotion suddenly choking her could be classed as hatred.
‘What would you know about broken hearts?’ she challenged scornfully.
‘Not much,’ he admitted coolly. ‘But I do remember glancing through some of the magazines my sister used to read as a teenager, and there’d always be some girl writing to the problem page convinced that her life was over because the boy of her dreams hadn’t even looked at her at a party.’
‘This would be when you were vetting her reading matter, I suppose?’ It was rare for Bridget to lose her temper, but now she discovered how exhilarating a sensation it could be. ‘I suppose you did it with a fat black pencil in your hand, ready to delete anything undesirable! She told me how you’ve always interfered, managing everyone’s lives for them!’
‘Back then, Virginia’s life required a considerable amount of managing,’ he informed her edgily, his glittering eyes making her aware that she had succeeded in provoking him. ‘But censorship was not part of it. The more she knew, the better she’d get at handling her own life—as she does quite ably these days, which is why I do not believe your pathetic story about her having fallen in love. She’s not that stupid. So if I don’t get the truth from Bhandari you’re going to have to break whatever promise you made and give it to me yourself. Will you be here today or are you going out?’
‘It seems to me that you’re still trying to manage her life by insisting on knowing things that are her private business,’ Bridget taunted but, seeing the way his eyes blazed, she added swiftly, ‘I’ve got a meeting with a man who sells fabrics in Connaught Place. He’s going to put me in touch with his suppliers. Virginia told me she always shops around rather than relying on the same people every time. Also, Mr Bhandari’s wife is taking me to the Rajghat as there’s a ceremony in memory of Gandhi today.’
‘Oh, you’ve got Mirabai looking after you, then,’ he registered in a neutral tone, but Bridget still resented the implication that she needed looking after. ‘One more thing, Bridget. I don’t want you sneaking off to a hotel now I’m here and asking questions. Until I hear from my sister what this is all about, I want you here under this roof where I can keep an eye on you—or on her interests, rather. I’ll want reports on what you’re doing, too, as the Indian lines have always been her pride and joy, the focal point of her collections, and I won’t stand by and let you sabotage her reputation.’
Sheer rage was choking her at hearing her professionalism so openly doubted. ‘Virginia herself trained me!’
‘And now you’re off to do business on her behalf,’ he murmured amusedly, his mood suddenly dramatically altered as his gaze dropped briefly to the white top she wore, his unexpected smile so full of wicked charm that Bridget’s breath caught in her throat.
Then she glanced down and saw what had caused it.
‘Oh!’
She must have been so preoccupied with her plans for the day that she hadn’t paid any attention to what she was putting on, and the pink and white candy-stripes of her bra were clearly visible through the thin white cotton of the shirt.
‘Where are you going?’ he enquired innocently as she leapt to her feet.
‘To put a plain white bra on, of course,’ she answered bitingly.
‘I never said a word,’ he protested, still using that mock-innocent voice and still with that smile that hinted at an aspect of his personality less impatient and cynical than that which he had so far shown her. ‘But fleshcoloured would be better. It won’t show at all.’
‘Well, I haven’t got one!’ She always bypassed fleshcoloured when shopping because it seemed so utilitarian, attracted by the more prettily frivolous colours. ‘You would be an expert on women’s underwear!’
She heard him laughing at her as she stalked from the veranda into the house, and she thought tempestuously that she had never met anyone so vile in her life.
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_89cc3f69-078c-5087-b3f0-822e581f536a)
‘You got my message, then?’ With a quick, raking glance for Bridget, Nicholas addressed Sita Menon, having found the two of them together in the cool, spacious kitchen on his return to the house that evening.
Bridget’s senses had given an odd little jump as he entered, and somehow the kitchen seemed smaller in response to the overwhelming vibrancy of his presence, as if he existed surrounded by an aura of energy that took up all the space around him.
