CATHY WILLIAMS - A Suitable Mistress

‘I thought that your father left you everything?’ He had drawn the lines and she knew that she was overstepping them but he was right, tact never had been one of her strong points, and besides, she had no intention of allowing him to think that she had to be subservient simply because her father had worked for his.

She was grudgingly aware that she was being slightly unfair in this generalisation, but every time she thought of him she thought of his stepmother and the blood rushed to her head with angry force.

‘He left me the estate and a fair-sized inheritance, but control of the company went to Martha.’

‘I’m surprised that she didn’t ask you to take over,’ Suzanne said. He had run it virtually single-handed for the four years before his father died.

‘Oh, there were a lot of things that Martha wanted,’ he said coolly, and this time the warning in his voice left her in no doubt that he did not intend to develop the conversation further. ‘But we don’t always get what we want in life, do we? I decided to make my own fortune in America.’

‘And you did.’

‘And,’ he said, turning to her briefly, ‘I did.’

They had been driving through a very exclusive part of London for the past few minutes. The sort of place that made a very convincing show of being in the country somewhere. Lots of trees and houses hidden from public sight by walls and hedges and long, swirling drives.

The car turned into one of the long, swirling drives and her eyes widened as she took in the proportions of the house. It was huge. A great Victorian building that had been converted into apartments.

No wonder the pitiful increase in rent with which Mrs Gentry had threatened her had seemed a paltry affair to him.

There was a security guard on the ground floor, sitting at a desk and surrounded by various strategically placed plants and a few pieces of discreet furniture here and there. It looked like someone’s lounge.

‘Are you allowed to have guests staying with you?’ she asked in a whisper as they took the lift up to his floor, and he looked at her with a mixture of amusement and irony.

‘This entire block of apartments belongs to me,’ he said. ‘An investment purchase made two weeks after I left the country.’

‘You knew you would come back?’

‘Oh, yes,’ he said with a smile that held no warmth, ‘I knew that I would come back. The only question was when.’

She looked at him, vaguely feeling that there was something here, something not being said, that carried a wealth of hidden meaning, but she couldn’t put her finger on it and he was not about to elucidate. He would never reveal anything unless he wanted to. It was what, she suspected, made him so formidable.

She followed him out of the lift, along the thick white carpet, and it transpired that the entire floor of the building comprised his apartment.

Four bedrooms, two bathrooms, an office, a lounge, a kitchen, all beautifully furnished, ready and waiting, she thought, for Dane Sutherland when he decided that the time was right to return.

Suzanne dropped her little battered case in the lounge and looked around her with amazement.

‘No wonder you thought that the bedsit was dingy,’ she said, turning to face him.

‘The bedsit was dingy,’ he drawled. He had removed his jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his white shirt to the elbows so that his powerful forearms were exposed, and she ignored the sudden quickening of her pulses.

‘Well, it’s certainly an eye-opener to see how the other half lives,’ she said honestly, and he frowned with impatience.

‘Let’s get one thing straight,’ he said, not moving from where he was standing, tall, muscled and disturbing at the other end of the room. ‘You’re going to be living here. Your rooms will be quite separate from mine, and I shall be out of the apartment most of the time so we probably will only see one another in passing, but when we do cross paths I do not expect to be bombarded with a litany of badly veiled insults. Do you understand?’

‘There’s no need to talk to me as though I was a child,’ Suzanne said, mouth turned down.

‘Then you’ll have to get out of the habit of acting like one.’ He walked towards her, picked up her three suitcases and said, over his shoulder, ‘I’ll show you to your room.’

He’d been right about her being separate from him. Her room, which also included a bathroom and another small room off it which had been converted into a sitting room with a television, was at the opposite end of the block.

She looked around her and said, with her back to him, fingering the wonderful patchwork bedspread, which looked as though it had leapt straight out of the pages of an interior decoration magazine, ‘How much rent would you like me to pay?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ There was impatience in his voice and she spun round.

‘I have to pay you something,’ she answered stubbornly. ‘I can’t live here for nothing.’

‘I don’t want your money,’ he grated. ‘I’ve known you since you were in nappies. Do you think I expect you to pay me for the privilege of being provided with a roof over your head?’

‘No more charity from your family,’ she muttered, meeting his hard grey eyes levelly.

I’ve learnt a lesson from my father, she thought. What’s given with one hand is taken with the other.

‘There’s no point in letting pride get in the way of judgement, Suzie,’ he said, not angrily but as though he was explaining something to a child.

‘Without pride, we are nothing.’

‘And from what book did you pick up that little gem?’

She flushed angrily, thinking that she had read it somewhere and it had seemed like a damned good piece of wisdom at the time.

‘I’ll pay you what I paid Mrs Gentry,’ she told him. ‘I know it’s not a quarter of what it’s worth, but it’s all I can afford. Don’t think that you can ease your conscience over my father’s treatment by letting me live here free of charge.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake! Buy something for the place once a month. Would that satisfy your pride?’

She gave it some thought and nodded. ‘All right,’ she conceded, lifting her chin, and he ran his fingers through his hair.

‘Now would you like something to eat? Or would the food stick in your throat?’

Was he laughing at her? There was no smile on his face, but it was difficult to tell with him.

‘Would you like me to cook?’ she offered, and he raised his eyebrows sceptically.

‘Can you cook? I remember when you were thirteen you cooked something for Tom and me and it was a bit of a struggle to get through the meal.’

‘Very funny.’ Why did he still treat her as though she was a child? she wondered crossly. Rescuing her from her unpleasant bedsit, talking to her as though her wits were very slightly scrambled.

‘What was it you cooked?’ He was still amused at the memory, and she followed him into the kitchen, watching the lean build of his body, the way he moved with panther-like grace, every movement silent and economical.

‘Roast chicken,’ she replied, determined not to act the sullen child any more than she could help. ‘It burnt.’ Everything had burnt. She had turned the oven too high. The only salvageable item had been the gravy. She could remember how mortified she had been, infatuated with this dark, devastatingly handsome university graduate, clumsy and thirteen, with long, gangly limbs and long, unruly hair which she had tied up because she had thought that it made her look older.

‘Your father was a superb cook,’ he said, extracting various things from the fridge after he had made her sit down. ‘When you were very young, he used to try out dishes on your brother and me. At the time we thought most of them a bit odd, but they tasted excellent.’