Robyn Donald - Mistresses - Blackmailed With Diamonds / Shackled with Rubies

I leaned back, sipping champagne.

I WAS drowning. Perfumed suds were going up my nose and I was floundering about, submerged in water, not knowing where I was, getting scared.

Just in time a pair of hands grasped me and hauled me out of the water.

‘What happened?’ I choked, sending suds everywhere.

‘You must have fallen asleep and slid underwater,’ Jack gasped.

I had a violent coughing fit, clinging to him for dear life, too frightened by what had nearly happened to care that I was naked. Jack had climbed into the bath with me, and now he was sodden, his shirt transparent. Without letting go of me, he reached out and pulled the plug so that the water drained away.

‘Thank goodness you came in,’ I spluttered.

‘I nearly didn’t. I called something through the door. When you didn’t reply I got worried, but I didn’t know what to do. I felt kind of shy about bursting in on you.’

If I hadn’t been recovering I might have said something like, In a pig’s eye, you were shy! The one thing this man could never be was shy with a naked woman. But I held my tongue. After all, he’d just saved me for the second time that evening.

‘I must have fallen asleep,’ I said. ‘Another moment and—’ I shuddered.

‘Let’s get you out of here.’ He hauled me out of the bath so that I could sit on the carpet, then tossed the robe over me and headed for the door

‘Selina’s sent you some of her clothes,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘I’ll hand them through.’

A moment later the door opened. His hand appeared, dropped a bag on the floor, and retreated.

If they were Selina’s clothes, I was a monkey’s uncle. She must have had a maid with her, and this was one of her uniforms—grey, shapeless and too big.

It was a declaration of war.

Fine! If that was what she wanted, I was up for it.

I opened the bathroom door and called out, ‘Are you ready for this?’

‘Yes,’ he called back.

Without a word I walked out and presented myself to him, turning very slowly so that he could view the dress in all its ghastliness, while his eyes popped and his jaw dropped.

‘I don’t know what to say,’ he said at last. ‘Except that I’m sorry.’

I’d recovered my sense of humour by this time. ‘I suppose you could see this as a positive sign,’ I pointed out. ‘It means she’s taking me seriously, which is what you want.’

‘That’s the spirit. And I’ll buy you a new wardrobe tomorrow.’

Jack had also changed, since his clothes had got wet. Now he was in casuals, but he still managed to look as though he owned the world.

I don’t know what I ate, I was too tired and hungry to care. Jack served me himself, as tenderly as a mother, eating little and always watching out for my needs.

‘More champagne?’ he asked me once.

‘I could murder a cup of tea,’ I said.

He was on the phone to the kitchens at once. Just as he finished there was a knock at the door. He was scowling as he went to open it, but he smiled when he saw who it was.

‘Jenny, Charles—come in.’

It was the man and girl I’d seen holding hands on deck, and then later when they showed Vanner below.

‘We’re not disturbing anything, are we?’ the girl asked, coming in and smiling at me.

‘Not a thing,’ I said, liking her at once. She was in her twenties, very pretty, with real warmth in her smile.

I liked her even more when I learned why she’d come.

‘We’re the same size,’ she said, opening a bag and showing me the contents. ‘So I brought you some of my clothes. I thought Selina would try something, and I can see she has.’

‘Bless you, Jenny,’ Jack said.

I blessed her too when I saw the clothes. They were beautiful, and they fitted.

Jenny was a darling. She could see that I was almost asleep, and she took Charles away quickly.

‘You need some sleep,’ Jack said. ‘Get to bed.’

‘What about you?’

‘I’ll sleep on the floor.’

I looked at the bed. It was vast.

‘That seems a bit unfair,’ I mused.

‘There are some spare pillows I could put down the centre,’ he offered.

‘Sounds a good idea.’

It didn’t seem such a good idea when I looked at the nightdress Jenny had brought me. It was nightwear for a bride, low at the front and transparent everywhere. It forced me to reconsider the situation.

Jack undressed in the bathroom. When he returned and saw me dressed for the night, his eyebrows went up. I looked awful—shapeless and sexless. But that was probably a good thing.

‘Don’t tell me Jenny brought you that old sack?’

‘No, this comes from Selina’s maid. Jenny’s nightdress wouldn’t fit me.’

‘But you must be the same—’

He stopped quickly and I saw his face change as he realised that there was more to this than being the same size.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes—right—’

He was actually turning pink, which I reckoned didn’t happen very often.

He had some trouble finding his pyjamas, which puzzled me until I realised that he probably didn’t wear them much. They were white silk, and he looked just as good in them as he had in everything else. They were also semi-transparent, which might have been why he got into bed quickly, looking even pinker.

I climbed in the other side, wishing I could have worn Jenny’s sexy nightie. In these surroundings, and getting into bed with a man whose body I already knew so incongruously well, it would have been the right thing to wear. And if it did leave me half naked—well, he was getting used to that too.

I reasoned it wouldn’t have been fair to give him the wrong impression. Hell! What wrong impression? We’d got past that stage in the first five minutes.

So here I was, lying in bed with the sexiest man I’d ever met, with a pillow between us, trying desperately to think pure thoughts.

It was very, very difficult.

I wondered if he was having the same trouble.

Perhaps not, since he’d just seen me dressed in sackcloth and looking like King Kong’s mother.

Pity!

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a prude, no matter what previous events might suggest. I’ve lived around some very charming people. Too charming, some of them, and they could leave you wishing you hadn’t listened to a word they’d said. But it had been fun while it lasted.

I’m not what Vanner thought, but I like do fellers. I flirt and fool around, dress to catch their eye, and when I’ve done that—well, things happen. Nice things.

Unfortunately my romances have tended to be very short-lived, for reasons I can’t go into here. But I knew a fantastic guy when I found myself in bed with him, even with a pillow between us.

‘All right to turn out the light?’ he asked, in a voice that I thought sounded tense.

‘Yes, fine,’ I said.

He turned it out and for a while we both lay in the darkness, listening to each other’s breathing.

I had a problem. I usually slept naked, and the sackcloth I was wearing made me as hot as fire. Well, something did, anyway. And I began to sense that it was the same for him, if his movements were anything to go by. He tossed and turned and finally pulled off his pyjama jacket.

So then I had to start thinking pure thoughts all over again.

But I had my moment. Half an hour later, after a lot more fretful tossing around, he suddenly leapt out of bed and shot into the bathroom as though all the devils in hell were after him. A moment later I heard the unmistakable sound of a shower.

I slept happily after that.

I awoke first, in the early light, and propped myself up to look at him.