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She walked back to the office on legs which almost refused to support her, each breath a conscious effort. Her instinctive response was to grab her coat and leave before Doug and Kieron got back. But she could not.
On impulse she reached for a phone book, dialling the number of a well-known employment agency. The girl on the other end was helpful but regretful. In normal circumstances, she told Briony, they wouldn’t have the slightest difficulty in placing her, but the way things were at the moment it might be months before they could find her a job which came anywhere near approaching her present highly paid one.
She slumped in her chair, not entirely surprised, wondering what on earth she was going to do. She felt as though her life had suddenly turned into a horrendous nightmare. Beth Walker. When she had discarded that name she had discarded the past, or so she tried to persuade herself, but it hadn’t been easy. There were too many intrusive memories, too much that could not simply be forgotten. She had changed her name by deed poll after the attentions of the Press became too much to bear. It was ironic really that she should end up working for a newspaper. It had been from necessity rather than inclination. She had needed a job that paid well, and employers who were prepared to take her on without digging too deeply into her past. Doug had taken her completely on trust, and for that alone she felt she owed him a debt which could never be entirely repaid. One had to experience the contempt and loss in faith of others before one could appreciate fully the value of trust.
She had once trusted Kieron Blake. And not just trusted him. Even now it made her feel sick to think how gullible she had once been.
The first time she had seen him had been at the flat she shared with Susan Myers. He had come, so he told her, to interview Susan for a gossip column article, and she had not been surprised, because although she and Susan lived together, their life styles were entirely different.
They had been brought up in the same small village. Susan was the spoiled and petted daughter of the local ‘lord of the manor’, Sir Arthur Myers, and his wife, and Briony had got to know her through her father who was their doctor. They had gone to school together, although never particularly intimate—Susan moved in a different, faster crowd, and it was only the death of Briony’s parents within six months of one another—her father from a heart attack and her mother from a broken heart—that brought them together.
Briony’s father was not a wealthy man. There were some investments and the house, which on her solicitor’s recommendation Briony had sold. She had been contemplating going on to university after school, but fearing to use up her slender financial resources had decided instead to invest in a good secretarial course. It was then that Susan Myers, chaffing under the parental yoke, suggested that they ‘flat’ together. Not that Susan was contemplating a secretarial career. Her ambitions were nowhere near as modest. Her long-suffering parents paid for her to undergo an expensive modelling course from which she emerged sleek and soignée; the occasional modelling job and her father’s allowance giving her a far different life style from Briony’s steady nine-to-five routine. In fact long before her secretarial course was over Briony was regretting her decision to share with Susan. All-night parties; casual sexual morals; these had no place in her life, but she was unable to afford the expense of the flat without Susan and had perforce to endure her presence.
Susan’s brother she knew only by hearsay. Ten years separated them, Susan being the child of Sir Arthur’s second marriage, and although Susan was fond of boasting about her successful half-brother, Briony had never met him. Nor had she wanted to, disliking what she read about him in the Press, but when the story had broken, no one had believed her innocence, and the one person who could have substantiated it was missing.
Her mouth twisted bitterly. Kieron must have thanked his lucky stars that Susan was so conveniently missing that evening. She had told him when the other girl would be in, but he had shown a flattering disinclination to leave. They had talked—she couldn’t remember what about—only that for the first time since her parents had died she didn’t feel completely alone. When he asked her out, she hadn’t even hesitated, and had never once suspected that his questions were based on anything other than an interest in her own background. Later, of course, when the truth came out, she had realised that it was James Myers’ background he had been seeking, not hers.
He had taken her out to dinner the evening they came back and found Susan and her new ‘boy-friend’ in the flat. Briony had put Susan’s awkwardness down to the fact that she was merely playing one of her silly secretive games. Susan had a vivid imagination and liked to pretend her life was full of drama and suspense, but with hindsight she suspected that Kieron had known the truth right from the start.
It had said in the papers that James Myers was a master of disguise, and certainly it had never crossed Briony’s mind that he was Susan’s brother. He visited the flat quite often, and the two of them would retire to Susan’s room, talking together in muted whispers. Whenever Kieron had asked about Susan and her ‘boy-friend’ Briony had innocently supplied the answers. She had even been the one to tell him that Susan was due to go abroad on a modelling trip, never dreaming that it was just a cover to smuggle James Myers out of the country on the false passport and documents he had had prepared.
Kieron had been particularly passionate that night. They had driven out of town and stopped at a small Thamesside pub for a drink. It had been a long hot summer and she remembered she had been wearing a thin camisole top and a pretty cotton skirt. Kieron had traced the neckline of her top with one lazy finger, the casual caress sending her pulses racing with frightened excitement. How could anyone so attractive be interested in her? When he announced abruptly that they were leaving she had gone willingly. In the car he had pulled her to him, moulding her body against his own with a new intimacy that thrilled her. There had never been a second when she doubted his feelings. When he parted her lips in a passionate kiss she had responded without check, trusting him completely.
They had driven back to the flat in a silence which on her part was filled with tense excitement. Tonight was to be the climax to which their relationship had been slowly building. Her body felt curiously weightless, open adoration in her eyes as she turned them to her companion. She had remembered later how Kieron had stopped the car then, even though they hadn’t reached the flat, his voice rough as he said unsteadily, ‘Don’t look at me like that.…’
And she, little fool that she was, had thought he meant that if she did he wouldn’t be able to control himself! If only she had known! There hadn’t been a single occasion during their association when he hadn’t known exactly what he was doing, hadn’t been completely and absolutely in control of everything, including her. Manipulating her like a jointed doll, and she had let him.
It was dark when they got back, and the flat was empty. Susan had gone home for the weekend. Her father hadn’t been feeling well, and she had been furious when her mother phoned to beg her to return. She hated the country and seemed to have no feelings for her parents whatsoever.
The flat had been unpleasantly cool after the warmth of the car, and Briony had shivered slightly. Kieron had removed his jacket, draping it round her slender shoulders, and laughing gently because it drowned her. Then the laughter had died and he had taken her in his arms, kissing her with a new demanding force that overwhelmed her. She remembered that she had protested slightly and said something about making them some coffee, but Kieron had laughed, and said no, he had other things in mind.
Somehow his hand had slipped beneath the flimsy camisole and was caressing her breast, the sudden passionate surge of her own flesh taking her off guard. She had gasped slightly, her eyes wide and wondering, wonder giving way to a totally different emotion when Kieron slid the thin strap down from her shoulder, placing his lips to the burgeoning flesh his hand had just vacated.
‘You’re beautiful,’ he had told her slowly, his hands removing her clothes and his eyes doing incredible things to her emotions. She told herself that what she was doing was wrong, only her arguments were somehow less than convincing. How could the way she felt about Kieron ever be wrong? It was deliciously and passionately right.
She couldn’t remember how they got into the bedroom, but she could remember, with vivid clarity, the hard warmth of Kieron’s body against hers; the strangeness of his male flesh, and the aching sensation of intense need that seemed to start somewhere in the pit of her stomach and spread languorously all through her body.
Once, as his lips roved possessively over her skin, she protested, the small sound silenced as he cupped her face and kissed her lingeringly until there was no thought in her head but him.
He was beautiful, she had thought achingly, staring wonderingly at his body. He was like a Greek statue come to life, and she wanted to touch him and go on touching him for ever. As though he sensed what she was feeling he had guided her hands to his skin, murmuring soft encouragements whenever shyness made her hesitate.
The thought of his possession brought her no fear. His slow, expert lovemaking had expunged that, but what she had not expected was her own sudden passionate need, kindled by his touch and expertise, and pushing aside the barriers of innocence and inexperience.
When she arched against him, her fingers tensing into his back, he soothed her softly, driving her almost into a mindless frenzy of intolerable aching need, before finally parting her thighs with his full weight.
In confirmation of his greater experience he was ready for her sudden tremulous fear and clenching muscles, his hands steadying her and soothing her tension, as he kissed her softly, murmuring to her to relax. The pain was sharp and intense, and she cried out to him to stop, but her cry had been ignored and for a moment hurt and pain combined with outraged resentment to make her fight against his domination. But as though he had expected it, the rebellion was quelled, his body taking her through pain to pleasure—a pleasure such as she had never dreamed of, her cries of pain turning to soft moans of desire and those to hoarse, throbbing pleas for fulfilment.
She fell asleep in his arms, convinced that life could hold no greater happiness, her limbs tangled sleepily and trustingly with his. She felt no shame for what had happened. It had been natural and beautiful and she was filled with gratitude for his patience and skill. Her last conscious thought was that she could not imagine what she had ever done in her life to deserve him.
In the morning she felt exactly the same thing, but in a totally different context. While she slept, wrapped in pleasurable dreams, Kieron had searched the flat, and found, as he expected, the evidence of James Myers’ duplicity. He had managed to get the paper to hold the front page for him, but Briony did not see it until she got to work.
The article caught her eye while she was taking off her coat, and recognising the Myers name she had started to read it, work forgotten as numb, appalled realisation swept over her. The article bore Kieron’s name—as though he was proud of what he had done, she had thought bitterly. She had looked so ill that her boss had sent her straight home. When she reached the flat it was to find it besieged with reporters and police, and none of them had been gentle with her. ‘Kieron Blake’s informant,’ was how one paper described her. Others were less kind. Susan had returned from the country with her parents. Sir Arthur had been deliberately cruel and remorseless, and at the end of the week her boss suggested that because of the notoriety, it might be as well if she found another job. She worked in a solicitors’ office, and as he explained in great embarrassment, clients might not feel they could trust a firm which employed a girl known to have betrayed a friend’s trust.
She had wanted to scream that it hadn’t been like that, but pride held her silent. Her only crime was that she had believed herself loved; stupidly, criminally, foolish of her perhaps, but she had not and never would have breathed a word of anything that might have deliberately been construed as breaking a trust.
The police had questioned her for hours, and when Sir Arthur died from a heart attack just before the case came to court she had received an avalanche of poison pen letters. That was when she had decided to change her name.
For three months she had endured absolute hell, and not once in all that time had she heard a word from Kieron—neither of compassion, nor regret, not even of acknowledgement of what he had done. She had not tried to contact him. Pride alone had sustained her through the horror of it all, but her trust, her faith, and her innocence were smashed beyond repair.
The office door swung open, banishing the past. She looked up quickly, her eyes freezingly disdainful. Kieron had always been tall, but now he was broader than she remembered, filling the small space, his eyes deeply and darkly contemptuous as they looked at the open telephone directory. One lean finger ran smoothly down the page, stopping unerringly against the number of the employment agency.
‘No luck?’ he drawled sardonically. ‘Too bad.’
Briony forced herself not to respond, her eyes carefully blank as she removed the directory and put a piece of paper in her typewriter.
‘I’m sorry, Mr Blake.’
‘Mr Blake?’ he sneered coldly. ‘Oh, come on, surely we needn’t be so formal—Beth!’
The last word was said softly, almost a taunt, and Briony swung round, her eyes blazing with anger and contempt.
‘Don’t call me that!’ she snapped.
‘Why not? It’s your name.’
‘Not any longer,’ Briony told him crisply. How dared he deliberately remind her of the past! ‘I left it behind me.’
‘How convenient.’ Kieron had his back to her, his dark head bent over some papers, ‘Tell me, Briony, did you bring anything of Beth with you, when you decided to trade personalities?’
‘Not a thing,’ Briony assured him shortly. Why was he plaguing her with these questions, resurrecting memories she would rather had remained forgotten?
‘That’s a pity. At least she was a warm, living, breathing woman.’
‘Who you destroyed!’
The words were out before she could stop them, and Kieron’s eyes narrowed sharply as he swung round and stared at her.
‘What makes you say that?’
Sheer disbelief held her rigidly silent. How could he stand there and ask her that? Hadn’t he deliberately and coldbloodedly used her, and then when he had got his story, simply dropped her? He knew how she had felt about him—she had never made the slightest attempt to hide it. He was an intelligent man; he must have known how she would react, how shocked and distressed she would be. She had learned from a photographer who had worked with him, and whom she had bumped into by accident three months after he had left, that his career was flourishing. He had been posted abroad somewhere, although where the photographer had not said.
‘So, nothing of the Beth I knew remains?’ Kieron persisted.
He was watching her intently and Briony felt like a helpless little fly being pursued by a particularly relentless spider. What did he want? An admission of how close he had come to completely destroying her, to gloat over?
‘Nothing,’ she told him emotionlessly.
His anger seemed to explode over her.
‘Don’t lie to me, Briony!’ he gritted furiously, ‘I saw your face when you walked into that office and saw me sitting there. You hate my guts, don’t you. Don’t you?’ he demanded when she refused to answer.
‘Haven’t I the right?’ Her hands were curled into two small fists. ‘After what you did.…’
For a long moment he said nothing, merely watching her in a way that made Briony shiver with apprehension. Why should he examine her with such contempt? He was the one at fault. He was the one who….
‘You’re quite right,’ he said softly, cutting across her bitter thoughts. ‘The Beth I knew has gone completely. You’re quite a woman, aren’t you, Briony? A woman of iron and steel, according to the office grapevine. The Beth I knew would never have held on to a grudge so tightly, nor become so bitter. But then the Beth I thought I knew never.…’ He broke off and without warning leaned over her, watching her eyes spit defiance. It was only when he kept on coming, and Briony eventually shrank back, that she thought she saw some emotion flicker deep in the narrowed eyes, but it was gone almost instantly, his expression withdrawn as he said curtly, ‘You’re perfectly safe. You’ve made your point, but I don’t intend working with a secretary who looks at me as though I’ve crawled out from under a particularly slimy stone. So if I were you I’d have another look at this.’ He dropped the directory he had removed from the shelf behind her on to her desk with a derisive smile, and started to walk towards the door.
‘One thing at least hasn’t changed,’ he said unkindly, pausing to watch the wary expression creep into her eyes. ‘At least not if all the gossip one hears is correct. It seems you still enjoy turning men on and then freezing them off. With one notable exception.’
Briony gasped at the unfairness of the accusation, and the cynical, twisted smile which had accompanied his last words, and was just about to demand an explanation when Kieron added acidly:
‘You’ve made how you feel about me quite plain, Briony. You hate and loathe me, right?’
When she didn’t comment, he breathed out sharply, anger etched deep in his face.
‘God, you must want to keep this job very badly!’
‘Very badly,’ Briony agreed coolly, hoping that her voice wouldn’t betray anything that she was feeling. How on earth she was going to work for Kieron and keep her sanity she did not know, but work for him she must.
‘So that you can be with Matt?’
Before Briony could get over the shock of the accusation, Kieron was saying with bitter contempt, ‘Is that what your taste runs to these days? He’s not a man, he’s a babe in arms!’
Briony went white, but Kieron had already turned away. She fumbled for a piece of paper and put it in her typewriter, her fingers rattling over the keys in an even staccato rhythm, but the typewritten words were blurred by a mist of tears she was powerless to control.
CHAPTER TWO (#u3f9d3c85-193c-587f-ae0a-632dcc566fce)
IT was after seven when Briony stepped wearily off the bus at the end of her road. There had been a last-minute panic necessitating recall of an article and she had worked late to help Doug get the crisis sorted out. The adrenalin flow which had helped her through the day had abated, leaving her feeling drained and exhausted. Her feet dragged as she walked up the tree-lined avenue. It had been a perfect spring day, and now as long golden shadows fell across the pavement the last liquid notes of birdsong filtered sweetly through the air.
She had a long way to commute, but she had particularly wanted a house with at least some pretensions towards being rural. She knew North London wasn’t fashionable and people raised their eyebrows when they discovered how far out of town she was, but the house had a long back garden, which was enclosed with hedges and boasted half a dozen wizened apple trees, and in the spring when they were in blossom and the cherry trees flowered along the surburban pavements she could almost convince herself it was as good as the country.
She had bought the house three years ago, a necessity rather than a luxury, and as well as realising her modest investments she had had to take on a seemingly huge mortgage. House prices had soared since the sale of her parents’ old home, especially in London, and she had been desperate when she found this house. Split into two self-contained flats, it was ideal for what she needed and she occupied the lower flat, the upper being let to an Italian couple who were living in England on a temporary basis. They had a baby girl and Briony got on very well with them, especially Gina, who was her own age and very much on her wavelength.
Gina was waiting for her when she opened the front door, and her heart instantly started to pound with fear, her mouth dry with dread.
‘Has.…’
‘Everything is fine,’ Gina soothed her fondly. ‘Never have I known such an anxious mamma! It is because you cannot be with your child as you would wish. This I understand. I came down merely to get his night things, he is tired from playing in the garden.…’
Relief swept over her in a wave and she sagged against the door, her face white with strain. This was the penalty she must pay for being a working mother. Gina watched over Nicky as though he were her own child, she knew that, and yet always at the back of her mind was the consuming fear that something might happen to him through her inability to be with him; that he would need her and she would not be there. She was lucky to have Gina, she knew. The Italian couple had been desperate when they came to her, and she had let them have the flat at a very modest rent, but she had never regretted it, and in return Gina, who did not work, had looked after Nicky. When her own baby had arrived ten months after Nicky’s birth he had been fascinated by the child, and Briony bitterly regretted that he, like her, would never know the pleasure of having brothers and sisters.
They went upstairs together, Gina pushing open the door to her flat and standing aside as a small dark-haired tornado flung himself into Briony’s open arms. As she cradled the soft and infinitely precious body of her son in her arms Briony gave a tiny sigh of relief. He smelled of baby powder and clean skin, his dark, thick hair still damp from his bath, his eyes huge and reproachful as he asked where she had been.
‘I’ve been at work, earning lots of pennies,’ she told him softly.
Nicky knew that his mummy had to earn pennies, but Briony still felt an unbearable pang every time she had to tell him. She had already missed so much of his young life and he was growing up so quickly. Gina was more of a mother to him than she was.
‘He’s had his tea,’ Gina told her with a smile. Briony thanked her without taking her eyes off her son, her expression illuminated with love and pride. The people who worked with her would never have recognised Doug’s cold, withdrawn secretary in this adoring young woman. Tonight as she went over each belovedly familiar feature she found herself scrutinising them more than normal, her heart thumping betrayingly.
‘Have you been good for Gina?’ she asked him.
He nodded solemnly, eyes twinkling, and Briony’s heart contracted on a wave of love. He had wound his way so tenaciously into her heart and life, this child whom she had borne in such pain and despair, without realising that her love for him would far outweigh the circumstances of his birth.
‘Go and get your toys for Mummy,’ Gina instructed him, closing the living room door behind him as he toddled off obediently. Italian parents adored their children and spoiled them lavishly, and yet they were also wise in teaching them good manners and obedience. Briony too was firm about not giving in to the impulse to over-compensate for her absences by too much indulgence, and already Nicky knew what was and was not permissible.
He was an attractive child, with soft dimples and a roguish smile, his dark curly hair making him easily mistakable for Gina’s own child. Briony never made any attempt to hide her unmarried state. She was proud of her son and loved him dearly, but she also wanted him to grow up in truth.
‘What’s wrong?’ she asked Gina anxiously as she closed the door.
‘Nothing really. It was just that while we were in the Park today Nicky started asking about his father. He’s very intelligent, you know, Briony. He sees that Caterina has a mummy and daddy and constantly he asks me what has happened to his daddy.’ She saw the look of anguish in Briony’s eyes and mistaking its cause said gently, ‘Can it really be that his father does not want him? Surely.…’
‘His father doesn’t even know he exists,’ Briony told her harshly, taking a deep breath. ‘Oh, Gina, please don’t ask me about him. Not tonight of all nights. I just couldn’t bear it.…’
‘For Nicky’s sake you must,’ Gina said gently. ‘You cannot fob him off for ever. Soon he will be old enough for play school, and children can be so unkind.…’
‘One-parent families are nothing unusual these days,’ Briony defended, ‘and surely Nicky is better off with me than with two parents who fight continuously, or worse—–’
Watching her compassionately, Gina said softly, ‘He is a sensitive child, and when he asks about his daddy there is such a puzzled, hurt look in his eyes that my heart fails me. Today he asked me if his daddy didn’t want him.’ She spread her hands wide in a gesture of dismay. ‘What could I say? Fortunately I managed to distract his attention, but he is growing all the time. He is two; soon he will be three.… What are you going to tell him?’
‘What can I tell him?’ Briony asked bitterly. ‘He was conceived entirely by accident, and my… affair with his father was long over by the time I discovered I was expecting a child.’ Her lips twisted bitterly. ‘How do you tell a child that his father doesn’t care a row of beans for his existence, which is the truth?’ They heard the door opening and Nicky ran towards them clutching a huge teddy bear and a bag of plastic bricks.
‘Say goodnight to Gina,’ Briony instructed him.
Later, when she was tucking him up in bed, she inspected his features carefully. He showed his fathering, this child born out of what she had thought a night of perfect love and which instead had been an act of ruthless and deliberate expediency. He had nothing of her in him, unless it was his temperament. In looks he was all Kieron; his father in exact miniature from his dark blue eyes to his thick glossy hair.
When she first discovered she was pregnant she had been out of work and depressed. She had fainted twice in one week and put it down to nervous strain until, despite the fact that she had barely been eating, she discovered that her skirt wouldn’t fasten round her waist. She had known the truth then, but refused to accept it, confirmation finally coming in the shabby, impersonal interview room of a pregnancy advice bureau. They had been kind and helpful, offering to arrange for a termination of her pregnancy, despite its advanced state. They had probably considered that she wasn’t capable of bringing up a child, she thought wryly. She had been practically hysterical with all that she had endured from the Press and police, and the information that she was expecting Kieron’s child could have been the final straw which tipped her into insanity.
When it came to the point, though, she could not go through with it. As though bearing her child was some means of punishing herself for being so easily taken in by Kieron, she forced herself to accept it.
When he had been born, after a night of pain and anguish, she had not even wanted to look at him, but the midwife, experienced in the ways and mysteries of birth, had placed him in her arms, and from that moment she had been lost.
God had seen fit to grant her the gift of life, the midwife had said softly, and Briony had held to that thought in the long lonely months which followed.
Since then it had afforded her some slight satisfaction to know that Kieron had been deprived of this child, who must surely be the most perfect being ever created. It hadn’t been easy trying to bring him up single-handed, continually torn by the desire to be with him, gloating over every tiny step forward, and the need to earn sufficient money to safeguard their future.
Until recently he had accepted quite readily the fact that he only had a ‘mummy’, but as Gina had said, he was quick and intelligent, and it would not be long before he was questioning why he did not have a father.
It would not make any difference, she assured herself firmly; she would give him everything that two parents could, and never, never would he be allowed to know how callous had been his conception.
She watched him while he slept, wondering what little-boy dreams he dreamed, her forehead puckered in a faint frown as she contemplated the future.
Briony glanced at her watch and grimaced. Nicky was being unusually fractious this morning, and she wondered if he had caught her own tense mood. He had played naughtily with his breakfast, something he never normally did, his mouth sulky and pouting when she scolded him.
‘Don’t go to work, Mummy,’ he pleaded tearfully. ‘Stay with me!’
‘You know I have to go, Nicky,’ she reminded him gently, ‘but tomorrow’s Friday, and then after that Mummy will be at home with you for two whole days. Perhaps we’ll go somewhere nice, if you’re a good boy for Gina.’
‘Where nice?’ he breathed, tears forgotten. ‘To the Zoo to see the bears?’
