Sandra Marton - A Woman Accused

‘Edward made some insinuations,’ Charles said tightly.

Ria’s brows rose. ‘Did he?’

‘Yes,’ Olivia said. ‘Of course,’ she added quickly, ‘I know they were lies. I mean, Charles never even suggested...’

‘He’d better not have.’ Ria leaned across the table and reached for Charles’s hand while Olivia stared in surprise. ‘Charlies and I have become very close, Livvie,’ she said softly. ‘Did he tell you?’

‘No.’ Olivia swallowed hard. ‘No, he didn’t.’

‘Well, it’s true.’

‘I see,’ Olivia said, although she didn’t. Ria and Charles? There had to be thirty years separating them, at least. ‘Well then, why would this Edward person have acted as if he thought Charles and I were—as if he thought we were...?’

‘Edward is—he’s actually related to Charles’s wife. And Charles is separated from her.’ Ria flushed when Olivia looked at her. ‘Don’t look like that, Livvie. This is the twentieth century. Besides, it happened before we met.’

‘I—I’m just surprised, Ria,’ Olivia said slowly. ‘You never said...’

‘Well, we don’t talk much any more, do we?’ Ria said defensively. ‘Anyway, Edward doesn’t really care about our situation.’ Her pretty face set in grim lines. ‘I told you, all he wants is to get his hands on Charles’s money—as if what he already has weren’t enough. And he’s got an attitude about women that went out with the cavemen.’

Olivia’s mouth thinned. ‘Yes.’ Her fingers went to her wrist and rubbed lightly over the bruised flesh. ‘I’ll agree with that.’

‘Look, what can I tell you? Edward Archer was born with a silver spoon in his mouth.’ Ria made a face. ‘You know the type, Livvie. He resents anybody who doesn’t fit the mould.’

Yes, she knew the type. She knew it all too well. She’d grown up around boys like that, ones who came from families with old names and older money, who saw girls like her as toys. They were boys who grew into men with the same attitude.

Had Edward Archer seen right through all the layers added to herself over the years, the clothes, the sophistication, the quietly flawless make-up? Olivia’s mouth narrowed. Was that why he’d thought he would come on to her when they’d first bumped into each other, why he could insult her, why he’d misunderstood her relationship with Charles? Did she still somehow bear the mark that set her apart, that showed that she was not ‘to the manor born’?

‘Livvie, you’re not going to be foolish enough to let someone like that stop you from accepting Charles’s loan and changing your life, are you?’ Ria took Olivia’s hand in hers. ‘Are you, Livvie?’

Olivia looked at her friend. Ria’s smile was open and warm; Charles was looking at her with love shining in his eyes, and she thought suddenly of the way Edward Archer had looked at her, as if she were dirt beneath his feet.

‘Certainly not,’ she said without any more hesitation, and in that instant sealed her fate.

DAMN Edward Archer to hell! She barely knew the man with eyes like winter ice, and yet he’d managed to reduce her, a self-assured woman, to the shy, awkward girl she’d been years ago.

The knowledge, lodged like a stone in her breast, was enough to steal some of the pleasure from Ria’s ‘gift’. But as the days passed, Olivia was too busy to dwell on anything as insignificant as an encounter with a rude bully.

There were meetings with lawyers and with accountants, with real estate agents and painters and plasterers, and one memorable half-hour with Monsieur Pierre during which he first accused her of being an untalented, ungrateful upstart—and then all but got on his knees and begged her to accept a huge rise and stay on in his employ.

It was that acknowledgement of her worth that convinced her that leaving Interiors by Pierre and opening her own shop was the right thing to do.

It all came together quickly. Olivia fell in love with a narrow, four-storey town house on a tree-lined Manhattan street. She took a deep breath, put down a chunk of Charles’s loan, and the place was hers. The top floor became a small but comfortable flat that put an end to years of living in a cramped bed-sitter. The lower three levels were transformed into a design studio and showrooms that had, until now, only been a dream.

And that was what she named her shop: Olivia’s Dream.

She designed every square inch of it herself, so that it wasn’t only the showroom that had flash and dash, which was the way it had been at Pierre’s. He had been big on dazzling the customers, but he hadn’t cared a damn for his designers.

‘Life in the salt mines,’ Dulcie Chambers, who’d worked with Olivia, had said of their cramped, rather grim studio. They’d both tried to make the place more cheerful, but potted geraniums and framed prints had not been able to do the impossible.

‘When I have my own place,’ Dulcie had said wistfully, ‘it’ll be a million feet square, with wall-to-wall windows and hundred-foot ceilings.’

Olivia had smiled archly. ‘When I have mine,’ she’d said, ‘it’ll be a zillion feet square, with thousand-foot ceilings. I won’t have any walls at all, I’ll just have glass, glass, and more glass. How’s that sound?’

‘Like heaven,’ the other girl had sighed—and now, thanks to Ria and Charles, it had all come true.

Well, perhaps not quite all, Olivia thought, smiling a little as she looked up from her drafting table. The room on the second floor in which she and Dulcie worked now—the other girl had leaped at Olivia’s job offer—was a bit shy of being a zillion feet square and a thousand feet high. But it was big and bright and filled with cheerful colours, and, if it wasn’t a zillion square feet, it was as close to it as the architect could manage.

‘Are you happy, Livvie?’ Ria had asked just yesterday, when the two friends had met at the Plaza for drinks after Olivia’s Dream had closed for the day.

Olivia had smiled. ‘Do you really need to ask?’ she’d said, and Ria had beamed with delight.

And she was happy, Olivia thought as she picked up her sketch-pad, pushed back her stool, and walked slowly to the window. Most of the time—and, if there were occasional shadows and misgivings, she could hardly mention them to Ria.

Charles had been a perfect gentleman in the weeks since he’d offered to back her financially. He’d never given her a moment’s reason to regret her decision to accept his loan. Nevertheless, she couldn’t escape the feeling that the Charles she did business with and the Charles who was courting Ria were in some ways different men. And why was Ria so intent on keeping her relationship with him a secret?

Because Charles’s lawyers had advised it, until his divorce was final, Ria said. And then, she’d added with a sigh, and then there were her parents.

‘You know how they are, Livvie.’

Olivia did, all too well. The Bascombs had always treated her pleasantly, but they’d never quite let her forget that she was their housekeeper’s ward and living in their house on sufferance.

‘You mean,’ she’d said after a moment, ‘that they’re a bit conservative.’

Ria had sighed. ‘Stuffy and uptight’s a better way to describe it. If I tell them about Charles, they’ll go crazy. They’ll say he’s too old for me, they’ll be horrified that he’s still married...’

‘Maybe you ought to think about those things, too,’ Olivia had said gently.

‘Come on, Livvie, you’ve come to know him. Why, he’s got more energy than some men half his age. As for his marriage—I’ve told you, it’s been unhappy for years.’

‘Still, all this—this subterfuge is—is—’