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‘He came with the penthouse.’ Then, with no change of tone, he added, ‘Your salmon will get cold.’
Uncomfortably, she asked, ‘Aren’t you eating?’
‘I had a late lunch a couple of hours ago, when it appeared that you were still in shock and were going to sleep the clock round.’
She glanced at her bare left wrist before asking, ‘What time is it now?’
‘Nearly four-thirty.’ Lifting her hand, making the huge diamond solitaire flash in the light, he asked, ‘Do you remember what happened to your watch?’
‘Do I usually wear one?’
‘Yes. So far as I know, always.’ Letting go of her hand, he urged, ‘Do eat something or you’ll upset Roberts.’
Feeling suddenly ravenous, Clare began to tuck in with a will. Glancing up to find Jos’s eyes were watching her every move, she hesitated.
‘Don’t let me put you off,’ he said abruptly. ‘You must be starving. It’s over twenty-four hours since you were knocked down.’
Glancing once again at her empty wrist, she suggested, ‘Perhaps I left my watch behind when I... with my rings...’
He shook his head emphatically. ‘You wouldn’t have left it behind.’ Dark face thoughtful, he went on, ‘When you arrived at the hospital you had no handbag with you. Didn’t you think that was strange? Don’t most women carry a bag?’
Putting down her knife and fork, she agreed, ‘Yes, I suppose so.’
‘It’s my belief that when you were knocked down, by the time the cabby had pulled himself together and got out, your bag and watch had been stolen. It’s a pretty rough area... Have you any idea what you were doing there?’
‘No.’ Then, harking back, she asked curiously, ‘What makes you so sure I wouldn’t have left my watch behind?’
He rose to his feet and, lifting the tray from her knees, set it aside before answering, ‘Because it was a twenty-first birthday gift from your parents.’
‘My parents?’ Her heart suddenly lifted with hope. ‘Where do they—?’
‘They’re dead,’ he said harshly, resuming his seat. ‘They died in a plane crash in Panama a few months ago.’
‘Oh...’ She felt a curious hollowness, an emptiness that grief should have filled. ‘Did you know them?’
After an almost imperceptible hesitation, he said, ‘I knew of them.’
‘Can you tell me anything about them?’ she asked eagerly. ‘Anything that might help me to remember? Our family background... where they lived?’
This time he hesitated so long that she found herself wondering anew if he would prefer her not to remember.
Then, as though making up his mind, he said, ‘Yes, I can tell you about your family background.’ His face hard, his green eyes curiously angry, he went on, ‘Your father was Sir Roger Berkeley, your mother, Lady Isobel Berkeley. He was a diplomat and she was a well-known hostess, prominent in fashionable society.’
Clare could sense an underlying tension in his manner, a marked bitterness.
‘You were born and brought up in a house called Stratton Place, a mile or so from Meredith.’
‘Meredith?’
‘A pretty little village not too far from London. A lot of rich people live there—bankers, stockbrokers, politicians... You went to an expensive boarding-school until you were eighteen, then a Swiss finishing-school.’
He sounded as if he resented their wealth and position, and she wondered briefly if he’d come from a poorer environment. But that didn’t tally with his voice and his educated accent.
‘You were an only child—and a mistake, I fancy.’ Chilled both by the concept and Jos’s deliberate cruelty, she asked, ‘How could you know a thing like that?’
He shrugged broad shoulders. ‘I’m judging by the type of woman your mother was, and the fact that you were pushed off to boarding-school at a very early age...’
Clare felt impelled to defend the mother she couldn’t remember. ‘But are you in a position to judge? If you didn’t really know her...’
‘I know all I need to know. When your father was posted to the States she joined him in New York. The society gossip columns had a field-day. Men swarmed round her like flies, and she soon got quite a reputation as a goer...’ There was contempt in the deep voice. Softly, he added, ‘You’re very like her.’
Every trace of colour draining from her face, she sat quite still. Surely she couldn’t be the kind of woman he was describing?
Watching her expressive face mirror her consternation, he allowed a scornful little smile to play around his lips.
In response to that smile, she lifted her chin. No, she refused to believe it. Some fundamental self-knowledge told her he must be wrong.
‘I can’t answer for my mother,’ she said calmly, ‘but I’m sure I’m not like that.’
‘You’re the image of her in looks...’
‘That doesn’t necessarily make me like her.’
As though she hadn’t spoken, he went on, ‘You both have the kind of beauty that can drive any man wild.’
Clare shook her head. ‘When I woke in the hospital I had no idea what I looked like. The nurse gave me a mirror. I’m not even pretty.’
‘You’re far more than pretty. You’re fascinating. Wholly bewitching.’
But the way he spoke the words made them a damning indictment rather than a compliment.
A shiver ran through her. ‘I didn’t bewitch you,’ she said with certainty.
His voice brittle as ice crystals, he contradicted her. ‘Oh, but my darling, you did.’
She didn’t believe it for one moment. Almost in despair, she asked, ‘Why did you marry me?’
‘Why do you think?’
‘I don’t know. If I’m like my mother—’ She broke off in confusion.
‘You mean it wouldn’t have been necessary?’ He smiled like a tiger. ‘If I’d only wanted a casual affair, it wouldn’t have been.’
He spoke with such certainty that her blood turned to ice in her veins.
‘But I wanted a great deal more than that...’
Without knowing why, she shivered. ‘So what did you want?’ Perhaps she needed to hear him put it into words, like some coup de grâce.
His mouth smiled, but his eyes were cold as green glass. ‘I wanted to own you body and soul.’
She shivered again. Then slowly, almost as if in accusation, she said, ‘You didn’t love me.’
With no reason to dissemble, he told her matter-of-factly, ‘I never pretended to. On the contrary, I went to great lengths not to mention the word “love”, so there would be no possibility that you could have any illusions, be under any misapprehension...’
Filled with a lost, bleak emptiness that was far worse than anything she had yet experienced, she accepted the fact that he had never loved her and she must have been aware of that.
Then why had she married him?
Recalling the overwhelming effect his kisses had had on her, one reason immediately sprang to mind. Yet surely common sense would have prevented her marrying a man simply because he attracted her physically?
Unless that attraction had developed into an infatuation and, more like her mother than she wanted to believe, she’d been unable to help herself...
‘And neither was I...’ Jos was going on, his voice like polished steel. ‘I knew perfectly well why you agreed to marry me.’
Shrinking inwardly at the realisation that her sexual enslavement must have been obvious, she waited for him to crow.
Incredibly, he said, ‘I was wealthy, and you wanted a rich husband.’
At that moment all she could feel was relief. The fact that he didn’t realise how obsessed she must have been went some way towards salving her pride.
‘Someone who could give you the right kind of lifestyle.’
‘It’s my impression that I already had that.’ Somehow she kept her voice steady.
‘Ah, but you didn’t. When you left your smart finishing-school, for some reason—you never told me exactly what—you struck out on your own. You rented a small cottage in the village and took a job in a real estate office while you waited for the opportunity to catch a suitable husband.’
‘Did I tell you that?’ she asked sharply.
‘You didn’t need to.’
‘And I suppose by “suitable” you mean...?’
‘Stinking rich.’ He spoke bitterly. ‘Because of the kind of life your parents led—jet—setting, champagne parties, lots of entertaining-they always lived above their income, and I suppose you must have realised there’d be nothing left when they died. Therefore, you needed to hook a man with money.’
The picture he was painting of her was a far from pleasant one. Pushing back a tendril of dark silky hair, she objected, ‘If I was an ordinary working girl, what chance would I have had of ever meeting any rich men?’
‘Hardly ordinary. You still had that air of good breeding, that finishing-school gloss, and Ashleigh Kent, the firm you worked for, was an up-market one, dealing mainly with wealthy clients wanting country estates and the like. In fact that was where I met you—when I was over in England on a business trip.’
‘And you blame me for hooking you?’ That explained at least some of the hostility she sensed in him.
To her amazement, he shook his head. ‘No, I don’t blame you for that. It would be different if you’d used your wiles to try and captivate me, but you didn’t, did you?’
‘I don’t know,’ she admitted huskily. ‘I don’t know what I did, how I acted...’
‘Like a perfect lady.’ His lips twisted into a smile that wasn’t a smile. ‘You intrigued me from the first moment I laid eyes on you. Though you were obviously attracted to me, you looked at me with such composure, such cool reserve.’
Whereas a lot of women, she guessed, would drool over a man with his kind of looks and that amount of blatant sex appeal.
Slowly, she said, ‘You seem pretty sure I was looking for a rich husband...so if I didn’t, as you put it, use my “wiles” to try to catch you...’ She hesitated. ‘Why didn’t I?’
‘When I first asked you to have dinner with me, you refused without giving a reason. I found out later that you already had Graham Ashleigh—who was worth quite a bit—in your sights.
‘Though I didn’t think the...shall we say attachment... on your side, at least, was too serious, and I had a great deal more to offer financially, it still took me over a week to persuade you to go out with me.’
He sounded annoyed.
Her smile ironic, she suggested, ‘Perhaps I was just playing hard to get.’
Privately she thought it far more probable that she’d been chicken—scared stiff by all that overpowering masculinity.
He shook his head. ‘Somehow I feel that playing hard to get isn’t your style... It certainly wasn’t your mother’s.’
She flinched at his deliberate unkindness.
‘But that’s enough delving into the past for the moment,’ Jos said decidedly. With a short, sharp sigh, he rose to his feet and stretched long limbs. ‘Now I suggest a breath of air. If you have no objection to New Yorkers en masse, Saturday afternoon is a good time to take a stroll in the park. Feel up to it?’
His tone was neutral, neither friendly nor unfriendly, and, only too happy to leave the confines of the bedroom, she agreed eagerly. ‘Yes, I’d like that.’ Then, unwilling to get out of bed while he was there, she added, ‘If you’ll give me a few minutes...?’
His smile sardonic, he said, ‘I’ll use the dressing room to change.’
As soon as the door closed behind him, Clare got out of bed and made for the sumptuous bathroom. Whether it was due to the food or to the prolonged sleep, she was pleased to find that the worst of the weakness had gone and she felt much better.
After cleaning her teeth and taking a quick shower, she donned a terrycloth robe while she looked for some fresh undies and something to wear.
A look at the clothes hanging in the walk-in wardrobe suggested that her tastes were quiet and classical rather than flamboyant. For which she was truly thankful.
Trying to rid herself of the feeling that she was rifling another woman’s things, she took out a grey and white patterned dress, a white jacket and a pair of high-heeled sandals. Rather to her surprise, everything fitted her perfectly.
When she was dressed she brushed the tangles from her shoulder-length hair. Seeming to be naturally curly, it settled in a soft, dark cloud around her face.
Wrinkling her nose in the mirror at the bruise on her temple, she looked for some tinted foundation to mask it. There was a range of light cosmetics in a pretty, daisy-strewn bag—cream, cleansing lotion and lip-gloss. No sign of any foundation or mascara. Perhaps with dark brows and lashes and a clear skin she didn’t use any?
In a side pocket of the bag she came across a narrow flat packet, and froze. Each pill was packed separately and marked with a day of the week.
But that didn’t necessarily mean she was like her mother, she told herself firmly. After all, she was a married woman—even if she didn’t feel like one...
Hiding her nervousness, her uncertainty, beneath a veneer of calm, she squared her shoulders and went to find Jos.
Everything was quiet and in perfect order. Too perfect. It struck her that the penthouse, with its impersonal opulence, was more like a luxury film-set than a home.
Without her knowing why, the thought made her sad.
In the living room, the long glass panels had been slid aside and he was standing on the terrace looking out across the green leafiness of Central Park. He’d changed into a lightweight suit, the jacket of which was slung over one shoulder and held by a crooked finger.
Clare could have sworn she had made no sound on the thick pale carpet, but, as though some sixth sense was at work, he turned to face her.
Though she didn’t know him, he was no longer a stranger. Outwardly, at least, he was achingly familiar, and she could have picked him out unerringly from a thousand other tall, dark men.
