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In spite of her beauty and her success as an actress, Lucilla was one of those people, always restless, never contented, who go through life defensive and envious of anyone they believe has something they do not.
Quite why there had always been a thread of antagonism between them Beatrice didn’t know, but it was undoubtedly there. She knew that Lucilla resented her, but she could never understand why. If anyone, she ought to have been the one to feel resentful. After all, Lucilla had been Charles’s favourite, not her. Lucilla had inherited the looks and the talent. It was her own guilt over that tiny seed of enmity that always made her go to greater lengths to appease Lucilla than she would have done for anyone else, but it never worked. Lucilla was relentlessly contemptuous of her.
At seven o’clock, with everything for the dinner party under control, she produced pizza and salad in the kitchen for everyone else.
William, despite his earlier omelette, ate almost twice as much as the others. At the moment he was tall and gangly, but in a few years’ time he would have the same beautiful physique as his older brothers.
Oddly enough Elliott, who wasn’t as tall as the twins, being just under six foot, always somehow seemed to make them look smaller whenever he walked into the room. He dwarfed everyone around him with the power of his personality—and with his wealth, Beatrice thought bitterly.
Knowing that he would be here tonight was really the last straw. Her head was still pounding despite the tablet she had taken; it showed all the signs of progressing into a migraine. The smell of food almost nauseated her, and she longed to go upstairs and lie down.
‘Aren’t you going to get changed?’ demanded Miranda when she had finished eating. ‘You can’t sit down to dinner like that. You know what Lucilla and her friends are like. It’ll be designer dresses and everything that goes with them.’
Miranda was heavily into clothes. She was doing a course at college which she hoped eventually would lead to a career in theatrical costume design.
‘Oh, come on, Mirry,’ Sebastian cut in. ‘You know our dearest Lucilla would never allow Bea to sit down with her friends. You shouldn’t let her get away with it!’ He frowned, looking so severe for a moment that Beatrice couldn’t help smiling.
Of all of them Sebastian was perhaps her favourite: just a little less colourful than his elder twin, just a little less self-confident and consequently just a little less overpowering. He was the one she felt closest to. He came up to her now and hugged her.
‘Poor Bea, we all treat you dreadfully, don’t we? But despite it all you still love us, don’t you?’
Oh, so easily they tied her to them… How many times after their parents’ death had she heard those words? How could she have deserted them? How could she have been selfish enough not to care?
Very easily, if you’d been a true Bellaire, a surprisingly strong inner voice taunted, but she ignored it, quickly clearing the table and shooing them out.
A quick last-minute look at the dining-room showed her that Lucilla would not be able to fault a thing.
The dining-room was at the back of the house overlooking the gardens, lush now with early summer promise. The Hepplewhite table and chairs, discovered by her mother and bought for a song, gleamed richly in the evening sunshine. Snowy white linen napery, glittering crystal, shining silver. A bowl of fruit carefully frosted to look decorative added a touch of colour. She hoped Lucilla had remembered the wine.
After dinner, Lucilla would want to take her guests into the small drawing-room for coffee. Beatrice hurried into it, gritting her teeth against the pain as she rushed round picking up belongings carelessly scattered on the chintz-covered sofas. This room too overlooked the gardens, but on two sides instead of one. It was a warm, gracious room, and only this morning she had filled it with freshly cut flowers.
In the hall the grandfather clock chimed. Eight o’clock. Where had the time gone?
In the kitchen all was in order, but the heat from the oven brought a flush to her creamy skin. Her fine brown hair had escaped from its confining knot and was curling wildly round her face. She knew from experience that her nose would be shiny and that her soft hazel eyes weren’t as large or as lustrous as the magnificent dark blue orbs inherited by the rest of the family. A throwback, her mother had once laughingly called her. At the time it had hurt, but she had learned to smile and be grateful for what she did have. After all, it was scarcely her parents’ fault that she wasn’t like them… that she wasn’t a beautiful Bellaire.
She heard a car and then another, and wiped her hands before walking into the hall.
‘Ah, there you are…’
Tall and impossibly beautiful, Lucilla was glittering with malice as she swept in, her friends at her heels. Beatrice felt her heart sink. She knew Lucilla in these wild, almost dangerous moods.
Tonight her sister was dressed in dark pink silk, a perfect foil for her colouring and a clever choice. It made the other women in the party, both brunettes, fade into insignificance.
Lucilla had her arm draped through that of her companion, and Beatrice’s heart sank even further as she recognised the TV producer and the challenge in Lucilla’s eyes.
‘Elliott darling, where are you with that wine?’ she called over her shoulder.
Elliott brought up the rear of the party. Like the other men he was wearing a dinner-suit, but as always he seemed to dwarf the others with his presence. Without moving a muscle he somehow managed to convey an adult forbearance of the antics of other, lesser mortals.
It was that air of insufferable superiority about him that always infuriated her so much, Beatrice decided as Lucilla passed her the wine with one hand and waved the other to her friends, indicating that they should hand her their coats.
‘Still playing the Martha, are we, Beatrice?’ Elliott murmured to her as he handed her his. ‘You really ought to go for another role, my dear. This one’s getting rather wearing, although I must admit at times it becomes you.’
Beatrice could feel hot blood scorching her skin as she fought against her anger. Stiff-backed, she took the coats into the cloakroom.
Lucilla hadn’t introduced her to her friends, but then she never did. More than any of the others, Lucilla enjoyed being a Bellaire. She had even changed her surname from Chalmers to Bellaire. Beatrice risked a glance at Elliott and wondered sardonically how he had liked that. Although he had never expressed it, she sensed it was his opinion that a Chalmers was superior to a Bellaire any day of the week.
Yes, of all of them, Lucilla was the one who clung the most to their parents’ memory and reputation. She enjoyed being described as her mother’s daughter, and there were even times when Beatrice didn’t wonder if she would have preferred to be their only child, she was so fiercely possessive of her status.
By the time Beatrice had served the main course, her headache had worsened to such a degree that she could barely see. She took in the sweet, intending to tell Lucilla that she would have to attend to her guests’ coffee herself, when one of the brunettes piped up gratingly,
‘Lucilla my dear, you’re so lucky to have such excellent staff.’ She had a transatlantic accent which no doubt accounted for her lack of knowledge about Lucilla’s family background, but Beatrice stiffened with misery and resentment as she saw the amused smiles touch other more knowing mouths.
As though he was a magnet, she found her gaze drawn to Elliott. He was regarding her impassively, drinking the last of his wine, his eyes taunting her over the rim of his glass.
‘Oh, Beatrice isn’t the help, Angela,’ he drawled mockingly, looking at her. ‘She’s Lucilla’s sister.’
The brunette’s mouth fell open in shock.
‘Oh, but she can’t be…’ she began, and the TV producer smiled dazzlingly into Lucilla’s eyes and said with both relish and amusement, ‘Oh, but she is. The runt of the litter, isn’t that what you call her, darling?’
Later, Beatrice couldn’t remember anything about how she got out of the room. Somehow she found herself back in the kitchen, its familiar surroundings swaying horribly as the pain in her head reached crescendo proportions.
It was no use pretending that their laughter hadn’t hurt. It had.
Almost blinded by the pain in her head, she leaned her face against the cool wall tiles.
She supposed she ought to have expected something like this. Lucilla had been furious with her last night, and her friend’s ignorance had given her an ideal opportunity to get her own back.
‘It’s your own fault, you know. You should learn to say “No” and mean it!’ The coolly amused voice somewhere in the region of her left ear was the last straw. Elliott had followed her into the kitchen! Oh, he would… he would! It was either scream, Beatrice thought bitterly, or burst into tears, and she didn’t think she had the energy for the former.
To her chagrin, he turned her round. Elliott took one look at her tear-blotched face and burst out laughing.
‘Now I’ve seen everything,’ he told her unkindly. ‘A Bellaire who doesn’t cry beautifully. My poor Beatrice! You really are the cuckoo in the nest, aren’t you?’
It was too much. To be reminded of her lack of looks, now, when she was feeling at her most vulnerable, and by this man of all men! She wanted to scream and rage. She wanted to pick up something heavy and throw it at him. She wanted… She gritted her teeth and looked into his eyes.
Her own widened, and she stared at him blinking. He was looking at her with a mixture of encouragement and amusement as though… as though he wanted her to lose control. But why?
It was the final, but the final straw.
She launched herself at him like a small spitting cat, and would have raked her nails down his face if he hadn’t stopped her by gripping hold of her wrists.
‘Hallelujah!’ she heard him exclaim softly and inexplicably. ‘But you know, my dear Beatrice, I can’t let you get away with it—it wouldn’t be good for you. A classic production, none the less, and that being the case…’
He moved, shifting his weight somehow, so that she fell heavily against him. His arms tightened round her, and she could feel the steady drum of his heart.
She looked at him in bewilderment. Her head was still pounding. She wasn’t sure how she came to be in his arms or, more important, why.
He bent his head, his eyes silver grey and quite brilliant; her own widened as she realised that he intended to kiss her. She moved jerkily, but not quickly enough.
His mouth felt warm and surprisingly soft against her own. She could taste the wine he had been drinking. She felt dizzy… shaky and dangerously vulnerable. The sensation of his tongue-tip moving against her lips completely unnerved her. She was still trying to decide whether that was because she didn’t like it or because she did, when the kitchen door opened and Lucilla walked in.
‘Where’s the coffee?’ she began peremptorily, stopping abruptly as she saw Elliott holding Beatrice in his arms.
‘Oh, my God, now I’ve seen everything! Elliott, what on earth are you doing? You must be hard up for a woman if you’re having to resort to Beatrice! Honestly, she wouldn’t know what to do with a real man—you should see the wet specimens she brings back here.’
With a tormented sound, Beatrice tore free of Elliott and raced past Lucilla, not caring any longer what anyone might think of her odd behaviour. She was past caring about that. She had never felt so humiliated, or so… so disturbed in all her life.
In the sanctuary of her bedroom she sank down into a chair. Her whole body was trembling.
Elliott had kissed her!! Elliott, who she well knew disliked and despised her; Elliott whom she loathed and detested; Elliott, who had made her forget, however briefly, that she was plain, and remember only that she was a woman!
She couldn’t believe it… she didn’t want to believe it.
She would not believe it!
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_3e5f6d66-3a91-5371-80fc-f7d90053f17a)
THE NEXT MORNING, for almost the first time in her life, Beatrice overslept. She woke up and stared in shock at her alarm, her brain still fogged with the tablets she had taken for her headache.
It was almost nine. Why had no one been to wake her up? Where was everyone? Panicking, she got out of bed and hurried into her bathroom, dressing quickly in jeans and a bulky sweatshirt. She always wore loose tops; they disguised the lush fullness of her breasts. She always felt uncomfortable about the size of her chest, aware that if she didn’t wear something concealing men stared at her. She was too used to thinking of female beauty in terms of her mother and sisters to realise that, to some, her petite curvy shape was the embodiment of all their most private fantasies, and she would have been shocked had any of them told her so.
She could hear voices coming from the kitchen. At least everyone else had not overslept, although it was unheard-of for the rest of her family to even think about getting their own breakfast.
She pushed open the door and came to an abrupt halt. Sitting in the chair that had once been her father’s was Elliott Chalmers.
‘Good morning, Beatrice. Headache all gone?’
There was no sign of Lucilla, and the others were all watching her with varying degrees of curiosity.
‘Why didn’t someone come and wake me?’
‘Because I told them not to!’
Her eyes swivelled to meet Elliott’s, expressing their total disbelief.
‘Isn’t it time you went home, Elliott?’ she demanded frigidly, clutching at the frayed remnants of her dignity. What on earth was he doing here? He must have stayed the night.
‘Haven’t you heard? This is my home… at least for the next three months. Lucilla invited me to move in when she heard about the problems I’m having with the contractors.’
Dimly Beatrice remembered Lucilla mentioning something about the work that was being done on Elliott’s London apartment, but she had said nothing about inviting him to move in with them.
Anger burst into life inside her, and she longed to shriek that he was not staying, and that he could leave right away, but she knew that in an outright quarrel she had no hope of outwitting him. Elliott never lost his temper and was a formidable foe, as she well remembered from her teenage years.
‘Thoughtful of her to suggest I stay here, wasn’t it?’ he continued with a cool effrontery that took her breath away.
He must have heard her indrawn gasp—there could be no other explanation for the gleam she suddenly saw in his eyes as he drawled, ‘Yes, I knew you’d think so, Beatrice.’
‘Stay if you want,’ she said ungraciously. ‘There’s enough room.’ That wasn’t at all what she had intended to say, but it was too late to recall the words now.
The grey gleam deepened, making her suddenly feel acutely vulnerable for some reason.
‘Most gracious of you.’
‘Ah, but you haven’t heard the house rules yet, has he, Bea?’ Benedict teased, blue eyes dancing with amusement. ‘No reading under the bedclothes, Elliott—it’s bad for your eyes… and for your spots—depending on what you’re reading,’ he added incorrigibly, making Beatrice flush scarlet as she remembered her long-ago words to her brother when she had caught him sneaking pin-up magazines into his room.
‘No raiding the fridge at night. No drinking parties. No smoking—of any kind. And definitely no girls in your room after lights out. Have you told him that bit yet, Bea?’ Benedict was grinning irrepressibly at her.
‘Ben,’ she began repressively, but Elliott seemed unmoved by her younger brother’s disclosures and merely said affably, ‘Since I don’t date girls, I don’t think I’m going to have any problems.’
He stood up, brushing toast crumbs off his immaculate pin-striped suit. This morning he looked every inch the successful businessman that he was and Beatrice reflected darkly that it spoke volumes for the Machiavellian character she had always suspected he possessed that neither of the twins so much as tried to get a rise out of him over his sober attire. Had any of the men she had infrequently dated appeared at the house thus dressed they would have been baited almost to the point of insanity. Like their parents before them, the twins displayed a cheerful irreverence towards anything even remotely Establishment. But it was as though Elliott was protected by his own invisible radar, and, what was more, they seemed to know it because they treated Elliott with… with respect, she acknowledged a little resentfully, recalling how often she had wished they might accord her that same virtue.
‘Just as well you’re not starting the new job this morning, Bea,’ commented Benedict, lazily helping himself generously to the butter and plastering it on his toast. Without looking up from his task he added, ‘Did you know that Bea’s got herself a job, Elliott? Working for a famous composer, would you believe, or at least he will become a famous composer one day. Isn’t that what Uncle Peter says, Bea?’
Her muscles still felt stiff from the pain of her migraine, and for some reason it hurt to force the calm smile with which she acknowledged her brother’s comments.
She was conscious of Elliott watching her with the same unblinking intensity that a cat might watch a mouse. Already she was tensing her body against one of his mocking remarks, but when she nerved herself to look directly at him she saw that he had switched his attention from her to Benedict and, what was more, that the look the two of them were exchanging had for some reason brought a bright gleam of triumph to her brother’s eyes.
That made her frown. As far as she knew, Elliott had always got on reasonably well with the rest of her family. She was the only one of them who disliked him.
‘I suppose you know that Lucilla is leaving here to move in with her latest boyfriend,’ Sebastian commented, and, as Elliott’s attention switched from one twin to the other, Beatrice found she was expelling a faint sigh of relief.
She was a coward, she acknowledged wryly as she got up to make some fresh coffee; definitely one of the ‘peace at any price’ brigade, but why not? Not everyone could be a moral crusader, not just ready but eager to spring into battle at the slightest provocation. The twins, especially Benedict, thrived on conflict of any kind, and there was nothing Ben loved more than a stimulating argument, as she had good cause to know.
‘She is over twenty-one,’ Elliott pointed out.
‘Well over,’ Miranda added sotto voce to Elliott’s calm remark, earning herself a frown from Beatrice, and the lift of one faintly querying eyebrow from Elliott himself.
‘Even so, I don’t think her proposed move is a viable one,’ Elliott continued calmly, ‘and I’ve told her as much. Of course she’s a free agent, but…’
‘But you control her purse strings,’ Benedict put in a little crudely, adding, with a wicked gleam in his eyes, ‘and sanctions could be imposed…’
Beatrice tensed, but Elliott refused to rise to the bait.
‘Indeed they can,’ he agreed, ‘but sanctions, if indeed there are to be any, are a subject only for discussion between the concerned parties, if you follow me, Benedict. Which puts me in mind of another matter,’ he continued, before Benedict could make any comment. He glanced at his watch. ‘I don’t have time to discuss it now, which is perhaps fortunate. I’m going to the city if anyone wants a lift. I’ll be leaving in exactly fifteen minutes.’
Miranda stood up quickly, gulping down her coffee. This morning her black hair was arranged in a spiky halo around her face. Her lipstick was white, and she had stencilled a floral design around and beneath one eye.
Although she hated to admit it, Beatrice observed that the overall effect was unarguably attractive, but then Miranda would look good in a sack, and make-upless.
‘Yes, please, I’d love a lift, Elliott.’ She smiled winningly at him, the smile of a girl who had no doubt of her own attractions. ‘Could you drop me at Covent Garden? I want to browse round the market stalls. I need some antique lace…” Her smile switched suddenly to a frown. ‘Oh God, I’d forgotten. I’m going out tonight and I was going to wear… Bea, will you be an angel and wash and iron my black dress for me? I think it’s on my chair, or it might be on the floor.’ She frowned as she tried to concentrate, and, knowing her sister’s untidiness, Beatrice did not for one moment doubt that she was having difficulty in visualising exactly where she had dropped the obviously now all-important garment.
‘I’m afraid Beatrice won’t be able to do that for you, Miranda,’ Elliott said pleasantly, without taking his eyes from the newspaper he was scrutinising.
He spoke quietly, but it was as though he had shouted out loud, as five pairs of eyes mirroring different degrees of shocked disbelief turned in his direction.
Miranda was the first to recover.
