скачать книгу бесплатно
Light footsteps ran down the stairs, and a moment later a girl appeared in the open doorway—tall, slim, almost as tall as Caryn, in fact, who always considered her five feet eight inches to be less than an advantage, with straight fair hair and smooth pale skin. She was one of the most attractive young women Caryn had seen for some time, and her orange jump suit accentuated the slender grace of her figure while exposing more of the unblemished skin than was absolutely necessary.
She stopped short when she saw the other girl, and stared at her frowningly. Competition? wondered Caryn dryly, although she felt positively gipsy-dark beside such Scandinavian fairness. She tanned easily, and her skin was already brown, its texture caring nothing for the burning at of the sun. She guessed this girl would have to be careful, or she would burn all too easily. And she probably was, Caryn conceded. She looked as if she spent some time caring for her appearance.
‘Who are you?’ she demanded now, and relieved to find someone who was not averse to speaking with her, Caryn answered:
‘Susan—Mellor. I—I’m waiting to see Mr Ross.’
The girl frowned and came into the room. ‘Why?’
It was a leading question, and Caryn hesitated. She had no qualms about evading an answer, but she was curious to know who the girl was, and antagonising her was not going to help. In consequence she gave the answer Ross himself had suggested:
‘The—er—agency sent me.’
‘The agency!’
The girl stared at her, and Caryn realised in dismay that if the next question was ‘What agency?’ she was stumped. What sort of agency might a man like Ross have contacted? Hysterical humour bubbled in her throat. She ought to be hoping it was as innocent as it sounded.
But the girl said: ‘Do you mean the Llandath Agency?’ and that was even worse.
Crossing her fingers behind her back, Caryn nodded. ‘That’s right,’ she agreed manfully. ‘The Llandath Agency.’
‘You liar!’
It was worse than Caryn had imagined. The girl was staring at her unpleasantly, and what was worse, the woman Marcia had come to reinforce the opposition.
‘Tris asked me to call at the agency,’ the girl declared, glancing round at Marcia for her support. ‘And I forgot! So what the hell do you think you’re doing here? Are you a reporter or something? Or just one of those awful groupies?’
‘I’m not a groupie!’ exclaimed Caryn, fighting a ridiculous desire to laugh at the ludicrousness of the situation.
‘What are you, then? Because I’m damn sure you’re not a secretary!’
Caryn straightened her shoulders. ‘As a matter of fact, you’re wrong. I am a secretary,’ she stated, more calmly than she felt. ‘And—and Mr Ross—rang the agency.’
Half of it was true anyway, she consoled herself, but the girl wasn’t finished yet. ‘Tris wouldn’t do that. Not when he’d asked me to call. Why should he? He knew I’d be in Carmarthen all afternoon.’
‘Perhaps you’d better take that up with him,’ remarked Caryn equably, and then started as a masculine voice said:
‘Take what up with me? Angel, what’s going on here? Why are you arguing with Miss Mellor?’
Tristan Ross came into the room. At some point on his journey home he had loosened his tie and unfastened the top button of his shirt, but he still managed to look calm and unruffled. Caryn noticed that contrary to tradition, the bottom button of his waistcoat was fastened, but his jacket was unfastened. Raking back the thick straight hair that was inclined to fall across his forehead, he regarded the two antagonists wryly, waiting for an explanation, and Caryn waited for ‘Angel’ to act entirely out of character.
‘I didn’t go to the agency, Tris!’ she declared. ‘I don’t know what this woman’s doing here, but she’s not from Llandath.’
Caryn silently acknowledged the girl’s attempt to classify her. Angel, if that really was her name, was younger than she was, but twenty-four didn’t exactly put one in the middle-aged bracket.
Tristan Ross had listened expressionlessly to what Angel said, and now he turned to Caryn. ‘Is that right? Are you not from the Llandath Agency?’
‘I never said I was,’ Caryn ventured slowly, and then when Angel began to protest, added: ‘Not to you anyway. You—just—assumed that.’
His mouth turned down only slightly at the comers. ‘All right, I’ll assume some more. You chose not to enlighten me because you wanted to get in here, is that right?’
‘Oh, I’d have got in here, Mr Ross,’ declared Caryn levelly, ‘whether you assumed I was from the agency or not.’
‘Is that so?’
She barely acknowledged the edge of steel that deepened his voice now. ‘Yes, that is so.’
‘I see.’ He glanced frowningly at the two other women. Then: ‘You sound very sure of yourself, Miss—Mellor, is it? Or is that assumed, too?’
To her annoyance, Caryn coloured again. ‘Yes, as a matter of fact it is. My name is Stevens, Caryn Stevens. Loren Stevens’ sister.’
She watched him carefully as she said her sister’s name, but it aroused no great reaction. A flicker of his eyes was all the notice he gave it, and then he shrugged and said:
‘Forgive me, but I’m afraid I don’t see the connection. Why should the sister of a girl who left my employ more than six months ago want to see me? Or are you looking to take over your sister’s position?’
Caryn gasped. ‘How dare you!’
At last she aroused some reaction, and the thin lips tightened ominously. ‘How dare I?’ he demanded harshly. ‘Come, Miss Stevens. I think this has gone far enough. Either tell me what in damnation you want or get out of here!’
Caryn gazed at the two women watching them so intently. ‘I would rather say what I have to say in private,’ she declared unevenly.
‘Would you?’ He made no attempt to dismiss their audience. ‘Well, I wouldn’t. Whatever it is, spit it out. Here! Where I have some witnesses.’
Caryn licked her lips. This was not what she had intended. She shrank from exposing her sister before two strangers. It was bad enough having to tell him. She could not bring herself to speak the words in front of anyone else.
‘I—I can’t,’ she said at last. ‘I—I won’t.’
Tristan Ross’s teeth ground together. ‘Miss—Miss Stevens: I don’t know why you’ve come here, but I should tell you that I have no secrets from either my daughter or my housekeeper.’
‘Your—your daughter!’ Caryn swallowed convulsively.
‘Angel—Angela. Angela Ross. Didn’t your sister tell you about her?’
‘No.’
‘Or about Marcia?’
‘No.’
‘You don’t have to worry about her carrying tales, or isn’t that what’s troubling you?’
So the woman couldn’t speak! Caryn felt a rush of sympathy, but then she gathered her small store of confidence about her. She straightened her spine, but even in her wedged heels he topped her by several inches, which was a disadvantage, she found. However, she had to go on:
‘Mr Ross,’ she said slowly, ‘what I have to say concerns my sister, not me. Please—’ She hated having to beg. ‘Give me a few minutes of your time.’
Impatience hardened his lean features. ‘Miss Stevens, I’ve just spent an uncomfortable half hour interviewing a man who refuses to admit that he’s a bloody Communist, and I’m tired! I’m not in the mood for play-acting or over-dramatisation, and if this has something to do with Loren then I guess it’s both—’
Caryn’s hand jerked automatically towards his cheek, and he made no attempt to stop her. The sound of her palm rang in the still room, and only his daughter’s protest was audible.
Tristan Ross just hooked his thumbs into the back waist-band of his trousers under his jacket and heaved a heavy sigh. ‘Is that all?’ he enquired flatly, but Angela burst out:
‘Are you going to let her get away with that?’ in shocked tones.
In truth, Caryn was as confused as the other girl. The blow administered, she was disarmed, and they all knew it.
With a sense of futility, she would have brushed past him and made for the door, but his hand closed round her arm, preventing her from leaving.
‘Not so fast,’ he said, and she noticed inconsequently how the red weals her fingers had left in no way detracted from the disturbing attraction of his dark features. Such unusually dark features with that light hair. The hair he had obviously bestowed on his daughter. His daughter! For heaven’s sake, why hadn’t Loren mentioned that he had a grown-up daughter? Did he have a wife, too? Was that why …
‘Where do you think you’re going?’ he demanded, and she held up her head.
‘I—I’ll write to you,’ she said, saying the first thing that came into her head, and he stared at her frustratedly.
‘Why? What have we to say to one another? If Loren has something to say why the hell didn’t she come and say it herself?’
Caryn’s jaw quivered. ‘Loren is dead, Mr Ross. Didn’t you know?’
At last she had succeeded in pricking his self-confidence. His hand fell from her arm as if it burned him, and feeling the blood beginning to circulate through that numbed muscle once more, Caryn felt a trembling sense of awareness. She was too close to him, she thought faintly. She could almost share his shock of cold disbelief, feel the wave of revulsion that swept over him.
‘Dead!’ he said incredulously. ‘Loren—dead? My God, I’m sorry. I had no idea.’
‘Why be sorry?’ Angela spoke again. ‘She was nothing but a nuisance all the time she was here—’
‘Angel!’
His harsh interjection was ignored as Caryn added bitterly: ‘Why pretend to be sorry, Mr Ross? You never answered any of her letters.’
‘Her letters?’ He shook his head. ‘All right, Miss Stevens, you’ve won. We’ll go into my study. We can talk privately there—’
‘You’re not going to talk to her, are you?’ Angela’s dismayed protest rang in their ears, but Tristan Ross just looked at his daughter before walking past her out of the room.
Caryn hesitated only a moment before following him. This was what she wanted, wasn’t it? Why then did she feel so little enthusiasm for the task?
They went across the hall and down a passage that descended by means of single steps at intervals to an even lower level, and he thrust open a leather-studded door and stood back to allow her to precede him inside.
The room was only slightly smaller than the living room, with all the books Caryn could have wished for lining the walls. Paperbacks there were in plenty, as well as every issue of the Geographical Magazine for years past. A honey-brown carpet supported a leather-topped desk, a pair of revolving leather chairs, and several armchairs. A smaller desk in one corner held a typewriter and a pair of wire trays, with metal filing cabinets completing the furnishings. Here again, the windows overlooked the estuary, but it was dark and Ross drew the venetian blinds.
‘Won’t you sit down?’ he suggested, indicating one of the armchairs, but Caryn preferred to stand. ‘As you wish.’ He took off his jacket and draped it over the back of one of the leather chairs. ‘But if you’ll excuse me …’
‘Of course.’
He lounged into one of the revolving chairs, behind the desk, and in spite of his informal attire he was still the Tristan Ross she knew from so many current affairs programmes. Calm, polite, faintly sardonic; using his grammar school education to its fullest potential while still maintaining the common touch that encouraged the most unlikely people to confide in him.
‘Right,’ he said, and she thought rather hysterically that all that was missing were the television cameras. ‘Suppose you tell me why you wanted to see me.’
Taking a deep breath, she decided to come straight to the point. ‘You—knew about Loren, didn’t you?’
‘What did I know?’
He was annoyingly oblique, and she clenched her fists. ‘She wrote and told you about—about the baby—’
‘The baby!’ His indolence disappeared. ‘What baby?’
Caryn suddenly found she had to sit down after all, and backed until her knees came up against the soft velvety cushioning of an armchair. She sat down rather weakly on the edge of the seat.
‘I said—what baby?’ he repeated, getting to his feet to rest the palms of his hands on the desk in front of him, leaning slightly towards her. ‘I warn you—if this is another of Loren’s tricks—’
‘I told you. Loren’s dead!’ she reminded him tersely, and his jaw clenched.
‘So you did.’
‘Why didn’t you answer any of her letters?’
‘For God’s sake! I don’t remember seeing any letters from her. And even if I had—’
He broke off abruptly and Caryn guessed what he had been going to say. ‘You wouldn’t have answered them?’
‘Look,’ he sighed, ‘Mrs Forrest—that’s the name of the woman I employed on a temporary basis to take over after—after Loren left—she had orders to deal with—well, that sort of thing.’
‘Fan mail?’ demanded Caryn bitterly, and his eyes held hers coldly.
‘Why not?’ he challenged, and she wondered how she could have thought his eyes were dark. They were light, amber-coloured, the alert eyes of a prey-hunting animal at bay.
‘She told you she was expecting your child and you ignor—’
‘She did what?’ He came round the desk towards her, the muscles of his face working tensely. ‘Say that again!’
Caryn licked her dry lips. ‘She—she was expecting your—’
‘The bitch!’
Caryn came abruptly to her feet. ‘Don’t you dare to speak of my sister like that!’
‘I’ll speak of her how the hell I like!’ he retorted savagely. ‘God Almighty, what a bloody cock-and-bull story that is! And you came here to tell me that—’
‘Not just for that,’ she got out jerkily. ‘Not just for that.’
He made an effort to calm himself, but he began to pace about the room and she was reminded of a predator once more. He moved so lithely, so naturally; with all the grace and none of the nobility of the beast, she thought fiercely.
‘Of course,’ he said coldly. ‘You came to tell me she was dead. Well, perhaps it’s just as well.’ He stopped to stare into her working features. ‘Perhaps it’s just as well. I think if she’d still been alive, I’d have killed her!’
Caryn backed off again. ‘And—and what about your son?’ she got out chokingly. ‘What about him? Do you want to kill him, too?’
CHAPTER TWO (#u5efb46c8-4029-5693-a85a-285e6c7bd4c4)
SHE saw the colour leave his face as he looked at her. Even his tan took on a jaundiced appearance, and she realised what a tremendous shock this must have been for him.
‘My—son?’ he echoed faintly. ‘You mean—there’s a child?’