A Scandalous Engagement

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‘Sure,’ he said genially, moving towards her. ‘Forget I’m here. I know how you artists like peace to work in, and I wouldn’t want to get in the line of any artistic temperament.’

‘I don’t possess any such thing.’ Jade stayed her ground, out of politeness and a desire to prove to herself that she could remain unruffled by this man.

‘No?’ He looked at her sideways and she was uncomfortably aware that from where he was standing she had done nothing but react with artistic temperament, from the minute she had laid eyes on him. Pointless to try and explain that she was normally as calm as a lake and that all that brimstone and fire was not part and parcel of her emotional make up. He had simply managed to bring out the worst in her.

‘Absolutely not. None at all. I rarely raise my voice, in fact. I’m a very calm person.’ He continued to look at her with amused disbelief and she could feel a lot of that so-called calm ebbing out of her.

‘Maybe it’s just me, then,’ he told her piously, and she glared at him from under dark eyebrows.

‘Yes, it is just you, actually!’ she snapped. ‘What do you expect? You show up here out of the blue and proceed to subject me to a tirade of unfounded accusations!’ She could hear her voice spiralling higher and she took a deep, steadying breath.

The man was insufferable.

And why was he just standing there with that stupid grin on his face, as though he was the cat that had managed to corner the bowl of cream?

‘You don’t know how relieved I am to hear you say that.’

‘What? What are you talking about now?’ She was finding it difficult to keep up with his rapid shifts in mood. It was like being on a rollercoaster. No wonder he was such a big name in business. He probably addled his competitors to death!

‘Well, I might have to readjust my ideas if I thought that you were acting out of character simply because of my personality…’

‘I have no idea what you’re on about.’ She began walking out of the door, aware of him a few paces behind her.

‘I mean,’ he said to her back, ‘if I addled you, then I might jump to the conclusion that it was because I turned you on. Sexual electricity manifests itself in myriad ways, you know.’

That had her spinning back on her heels to confront him, her body arched forward belligerently.

‘You? Turn me on? Ha! In case no one’s ever mentioned it before, you are the most infuriating human on the face of this planet! Not to mention the most egotistical!’

‘So I can look forward to a calm little stay here, then, with no jealous sibling rivalry?’

She was still fuming over his arrogance and it took her a few seconds to absorb what he had said. When she did, her eyes opened wider in horrified disbelief.

‘Calm little stay here?’ she asked, bewildered. ‘What do you mean by little stay?’

‘Well, Miss Summers, you can’t expect me to rush back to New York when I have to step into my brother’s shoes now that he’s left his job to become an artist, can you?’ He shrugged and gave her a long-suffering look which did not meld well with the aggressive lines of his face. Humility, she thought sourly, was an emotion he only occasionally flirted with. If that. ‘Unless I can persuade him to knock all these stupid daydreams of becoming another Matisse on the head…’ He paused to allow his words to sink in, in all their sickening detail. ‘And, however much I want to give you the benefit of the doubt, I know you’ll appreciate that I might want to linger on here, keep an eye on the situation until I’m fully satisfied that you are what you say you are.’ The blue eyes were rueful, but underneath the phoney expression of regret she could see the hardness all too clearly.

‘So you’ll be hanging around,’ she said dully.

‘That’s right! Might be just for a few days…might be a few weeks…who knows? Might even be for longer…I’m a man who likes to go with the flow, so to speak.’ He eyed the staircase, then her. ‘Hence my desire to become reacquainted with my house. See where I’m going to sleep.’ He flashed her a broad, dazzling smile. ‘Have fun drawing!’

He headed up the stairs, his long legs covering ground rapidly until he was out of sight, while Jade remained where she was, dumbstruck, and wondering how the day had ended on such an awful note.

When the doorbell rang, she answered it with the resignation of someone expecting the worst.

‘Morning, love.’ The man was short, ruddy complexioned and dressed in overalls with an off-colour bomber jacket. He consulted the piece of paper in his hand. ‘Got the right ’ouse, ’ave I? I’m the plumber, ’ere about a leak.’

CHAPTER THREE

IT WAS a little after nine in the evening when Jade quietly opened the front door, risked a nervous glance at the hallway and the staircase winding temptingly up to her bedroom. With a little sigh of relief, she closed the door very silently behind her, standing still as it clunked firmly shut. Just in case. Just in case Curtis came bounding out from behind a door somewhere like a bloodhound on the scent of something tasty and her peace of mind was shattered. Yet again. For the sixth day running.

If she had hoped that his appearance at Stratton House might have caused a few ripples before ebbing away into a relative state of calm, then it was becoming increasingly clear that this was not to be the case.

‘This is ridiculous,’ Andy had complained the day before, over a cup of coffee in one of the college canteens. She had watched the droop of his mouth as he listlessly stirred his coffee with concern. ‘He’s been working all the hours God made from as far back as I can remember. Yet he now chooses to saunter back home at seven in the evening so that we can all sit down to a cosy little family meal. What a joke!’

It didn’t take a genius to figure out his tactics, Jade had thought sourly. Curtis Greene, empire-builder and workaholic, was trooping home so that he could keep an eye on them, not that dear Andy suspected a thing. She hadn’t mentioned any of his brother’s grim accusations and she had no intention of doing so. As far as she was concerned, the boat had been rocked enough already, without her adding to the general seasickness.

‘Maybe he’s trying to bond,’ she’d suggested, and they had looked at one another with glum, resigned understanding.

‘Bond, flond. All I’ve had off him are lectures on responsibility and growing up. I’m twenty-two years old!’ He’d raised aquamarine eyes to hers and grimaced. ‘He just can’t seem to get it through that thick skull of his that I’m determined to pursue my art!’

‘Well, you’ll just have to prove to him that you mean business,’ she had said gently.

Easier said than done, she thought now. The only business Curtis understood was the complex business of making money, and after his initial flaming row with Andy he had subsided into the age-old water-dripping-on-stone routine. Over drinks, he would sit, cradling his gin and tonic with a vaguely glowering expression, and refer to the importance of keeping their vast business under family control.

Over dinner, he would punctuate the stilted conversation with observations on the harshness of life and the necessity of confronting it and controlling it, by which he meant packing in thoughts of painting and doing what his family legacy dictated, and over coffee he would throw dark hints about hangers-on, apparently rife in the world of art, who would see the heir to a fortune as easy game. These remarks were the ones that Jade found most difficult to deal with, because she knew that they referred to her but were never couched in terms that would allow her a say on the matter. Not without stirring up a hornets’ nest.

So far Andy had stuck his ground, but for how much longer? Curtis was forceful, and determined to have his way, and she knew that he was just biding his time, confident that he would get precisely what he wanted in the end.

They could leave the place, and in fact they had discussed this option, but, as Andy had said, that would be tantamount to running away, and he had spent his life running away. And Jade, he had informed her desperately, couldn’t leave him alone with Curtis. She was his moral support, and he needed her.

So here they were, the three of them, stuck in the rambling house, with the Master Puppeteer waiting for his chance to pull some strings.

She was tiptoeing up the stairs, gaining confidence that she would make it to bed without obstruction, when, from the foot of the staircase, she heard that dark, velvety voice call out.

‘You’re back. I’ve been waiting to have a word with you.’

She spun around guiltily and remained in frozen animation, with one hand on the banister, the other clutching the lapels of her jacket.

‘I’m kind of tired. Can it wait?’

‘I’m in the blue sitting room.’

So much for deigning to answer her question. She watched, in frustration, his vanishing back, and then reluctantly made her way back down the stairs and towards the sitting room, divesting herself of her jacket en route.

She really was tired. Andy was not back home this evening, and in an attempt to defer her own moment of return she had slugged it out at college, gone to the library and then forced herself to go for drinks with a group of students whose high spirits had only made her feel old and washed out. It was bad enough that she sported none of the prerequisites of the struggling art student. Her hair was its natural colour, her make-up was subdued, her clothes made no statement whatsoever unless you called feeling comfortable a statement, and getting drunk on a regular basis was something she viewed with horror rather than delight.

She walked into the sitting room to find Curtis standing by the bay window with a glass in one hand.

‘I’ve poured you a drink.’ He nodded to the glass on the table in the centre of the room. ‘Take it. Might relax you. You act as though I’m about to eat you the minute you’re within five feet of me.’

Jade snatched up the drink and swallowed a couple of large mouthfuls, then sat down rapidly as the burning liquid shot through her system like fire.

‘What did you want to talk to me about?’

‘Where’s my brother?’

‘Isn’t he at home?’ she asked innocently, wishing that he would do the polite thing and sit down, because he looked even more forbidding standing by the bay window, his body thrown into irregular shadows.

‘No, and you know it. Isn’t that why you made sure to stay out of the house for as long as possible?’ He looked at his watch and gave a theatrically overdone frown of perplexity. ‘If this is the latest you can do, then your social life could do with an injection. Where is he, anyway? I wanted to discuss some business with him.’