Susan Napier - Mistress Of The Groom

‘I know he was big. Dark. Chunky.’

She was in too much pain to take offence, as he clearly intended her to do. She was big-framed but she wasn’t fat, and in the last few stressful months she had actually dropped below optimum weight for her height.

‘So are you.’

She opened her eyes and found him contemplating the similarity with distaste, absently manipulating his bruised jaw with his blunt fingers.

‘Does it hurt?’ she asked involuntarily, jerking upright as she realised the vulnerability of her position.

‘Yes,’ he growled.

‘Good.’ There was a small silence as they measured glances, blue on blue. ‘You’ve still got blood on your mouth,’ she felt driven to add. ‘In the corner, on the right’

He probed the place with his tongue. ‘Sure it’s not your lipstick?’ he jeered, taking the immaculately folded white handkerchief out of his jacket pocket.

His answer caught her by surprise, and because she wasn’t sure she flushed. She felt again the hard, crushing grind of his mouth, the fierce stab of his tongue impaling her senses, filling her with the angry taste of him.

He studied her hectic colour for a moment before wiping the stain from his lips with a taunting slowness. ‘Better?’ He held out the handkerchief. ‘Your turn.’

‘For what?’ she said suspiciously.

‘Your lipstick’s smudged. It’s obviously not kiss-proof... not that it would need to be. You usually just freeze off any man who gets within touching distance, don’t you Lady Sherwood?’

Normally the snooty nickname didn’t bother her, but this man gave it an extra bite that made her snap. ‘If he’s anything like you—yes!’

‘You haven’t dated the same man more than twice in the last two years...they can’t all be like me!’ he said drily.

‘I’ve been too busy,’ she replied icily, and immediately regretted it as his eyes narrowed in sly triumph.

‘Have I been working you too hard? Were you afraid that I might sneak in and snatch your business while you were otherwise engaged? Too bad, since it happened anyway. Maybe you shouldn’t have cold-shouldered all those likely prospects that Daddy tried to set you up with... Oh, yes, Ava told me all about them. But none of them could compete with your ambition, could they? All work and no play...no wonder Jane is such a dull, lonely girl—’

‘Go to hell!’ she flashed for the second time that night, aware that in her inarticulate rage she sounded more like a sulky teenager than a seasoned businesswoman renowned for her acid wit. She should be immune to his insults by now—but her sense of self-worth was badly damaged and she no longer seemed able to maintain the icy, unemotional façade that had been her vital strength during the last two years of ceaseless pressure from Spectrum Developments and its charismatic owner.

‘Why, I do believe we’re already there,’ he murmured in mock surprise, looking out of the window as the car slowed down outside a strip of rundown wooden buildings. ‘Or someplace very much like it. Parkhouse Lane is a bit of a misnomer, isn’t it? I’d call it more of an alley than a lane. Quite a come-down from the Sherwood mansion. Who would have thought three years ago that Lady Jane would one day be living in a poky one-bedroomed flat above a greasy take-away joint?’

He looked at her sitting rigidly on the edge of her seat as the chauffeur turned into the kerb. ‘Still, it’s not as if it’s for much longer, is it...? Has your landlord given you your notice yet?’

She ignored him, trying to hide her growing panic as she fumbled for the doorhandle with her uninjured hand. The letter she had received the previous day had literally been the last straw. She had figured that she had nothing left to lose from one last, futile act of defiance.

Big mistake.

Ryan Blair evidently thought otherwise.

To date their battle had been conducted publicly, their poisonous exchanges filtered through clients, employees, lawyers, banks, formal letters, contracts and writs. Personal contact had been minimal. But, having won their public war, it seemed he was now preparing to transfer the battleground to the private arena, where Jane was frighteningly vulnerable.

‘I understand the poor man has been having a bit of trouble with council inspectors...something about fire regulations, I believe?’ he said, catching her by the left hand as she finally got the heavy door open and attempted to slide past him to the dubious freedom of her new and soon to be former neighbourhood. Jane almost screamed at the pressure of his iron fingers, vaguely aware of the chauffeur standing by the open door, a witness to Ryan’s oozing sympathy.

‘That’s something they’re very strict about, so I suppose your landlord has told you he won’t be able to give you the usual two weeks’ grace to find somewhere else to live. You don’t seem to be very lucky in your search for permanent accommodation since the bank sold up the old man’s pride, do you? Most places you enquire about you miss out on and those you do manage to get... Well, this is—what?—the third time in just over a month that you’ve had to move due to unforeseen circumstances arising with landlords or flatmates—’

Jane’s head whipped round, her hair swirling like a black storm around her pale face. The fact that the council inspections had been conducted on a secret tip-off and that her flat was the only one that couldn’t be occupied while being brought up to ‘complying standard’ had clearly borne the mark of Ryan Blair’s influence. But all those other times, when she had presumed she’d been simply unlucky...

Damn him!

‘Are you beginning to feel you might be jinxed, Jane?’ he enquired silkily. ‘That maybe you’re on a slippery downward slope to nowhere?’ He raised her throbbing hand to within a hair’s breadth of his mouth in a parody of polite salute. ‘It’s a long, dark, dirty, dangerous way...but perhaps someone’ll catch you before you hit rock bottom. Who knows? If I’m feeling generous, it could even be me...’

Jane twisted her hand away and stumbled out of the car on unsteady heels, his dark laughter following her into the ill-lit street.

‘Goodnight. Sweet dreams.’

Her dreams that night were anything but sweet. It took her ages to undress, and by the time she was ready for bed her hand was hurting so much that she had to take the last two aspirins in her medicine cabinet.

They didn’t seem to help much and she tossed and turned for hours on the hard sofa-bed that had come with the partly furnished apartment, worried about the stack of bills that she could only afford to pay if she used the bond her landlord was obliged by law to return. But that would mean she wouldn’t have the money to offer as bond on another flat. Even in shared accommodation one was expected to pay a lump sum up front.

Worse, her small reserve of cash was dwindling alarmingly fast, and the company was continuing to accumulate debts against her name even though it was no longer operating. Since she was directly responsible for all monies owed by Sherwood Properties, and lawyers’ and accountants’ fees had already eaten a huge hole in the surplus from the sale of the house and unhindered personal assets, the threat of bankruptcy loomed ever closer. Without a car it was going to take longer to get around the sprawling city, hampering her search for a job, but at least she would no longer have to contemplate skipping meals to pay for petrol!

When she finally fell into a troubled sleep Jane was tormented by lurid monsters who gnawed at her fingers, and when she woke in the morning she was horrified to find that her left hand had swollen like an overripe piece of fruit. The blade of her hand was blue and pulpy, her skin feeling as if it was stretched to bursting point and the fingers almost impossible to straighten. Moving carefully, she showered and searched her wardrobe for a dress that didn’t have a back fastening.