CATHY WILLIAMS - Accidental Mistress

So she found herself accepting his invitation. It was as easy as that. Something stronger than common sense, some powerful emotional urge, tipped the scales, almost when she hadn’t been looking.

She called the number on the letter, spoke to an efficient-sounding woman who informed her that she was Mr Hamilton’s personal assistant, and threw caution to the winds before she could work out all the pros and cons and ifs and buts.

And here I am now, she thought three weeks later, paying the price for a few moments of recklessness. Feeling nervous and sick and apprehensive and knowing that I’m not going to enjoy a minute of this. It will be an ordeal.

The only saving grace was that there would be lots of people around on the liner so if she found the company of Angus and his friends too uncomfortable she could always lose herself in the crowd. No one would think her odd. Cruise liners were always full of solitary women.

She closed her eyes when the plane took off and for an instant she stopped thinking about what lay ahead of her and thought instead about the dynamics of something as heavy as this being able to travel in the air. She hoped that all the nuts and bolts were firmly screwed together and risked a quick look through the window, openmouthed at the sight of land fast disappearing beneath her, to be replaced by an infinity of sky and clouds.

She hadn’t felt nearly so nervous about Lanzarote. She wondered whether the captain would turn back and let her off at Heathrow if she asked nicely. Failing that, she could hop it back to England when they landed at Barbados and Angus Hamilton, with his far-fetched notions of applying a balm to his guilty conscience, would be none the wiser. He would shrug those powerful shoulders of his and get on with his holiday knowing that he had tried to make amends and she had rudely refused.

He probably would not even miss the money he had spent on her airline ticket.

But since she knew, deep down, that she would obey the instructions kindly laid out for her in the letter from his secretary she didn’t feel much better.

She arrived at Barbados feeling rather ragged and, as the unknown secretary had helpfully advised in the letter which had accompanied the airline ticket, made her way to the transit desk and eventually onto the connecting flight to St Vincent.

This time the scenery through the window was rather more spectacular. She left Barbados looking down at glittering blue sea and strips of white sand and landed in St Vincent to the same staggering view.

The taxi driver was waiting outside the airport for her—just as the secretary had said he would be—when she emerged with her suitcase and her holdall.

She had worn a loose, flowery skirt and a shortsleeved shirt, but nothing had prepared her for the heat that hit her the minute she was in the open. It was the sort of all-enveloping heat which she had never before experienced in England, not even when it got very hot during the best of the summer days.

There was a great deal of activity outside the airport, taxi drivers waiting hopefully by their cars to take tourists to their destinations, but there was nothing frenetic about any of it. No one seemed to be in any kind of rush to get anywhere.

‘Where are you taking me?’ she asked the driver as he cruised off at one mile per hour.

‘Not far.’ He looked at her in the rear-view mirror, showing two rows of gleaming white teeth. ‘The hotel, it just along the south coast. Very nice place.’

Lisa lapsed into silence to contemplate the scenery, leaning forward slightly in her seat with her hands nervously clutching her bag.

Outside, the marvellous vista unfolded itself. Everything was so lush and green, heavy with the scent of the Tropics. She half wished that it would go on for ever, partly because it was so beautiful and partly because she was beginning to feel sick and nervous all over again.

What on earth was she going to say to him? She wasn’t accustomed to mixing in sophisticated circles. She would be completely at a loss for witty, interesting topics of discussion. After one hour, she would no longer be the novelty which had amused him months ago in a hospital ward. She would revert to being just an ordinary young woman without much of a talent for being in the limelight.

The taxi driver pulled up outside the hotel, which appeared to comprise a collection of stone cottages strewn with well thought out randomness amongst the lush vegetation.

He helped her with her luggage and she was almost sorry to see him depart into the distance, driving away as slowly as he had arrived.

She looked around her helplessly, noticing with a sinking heart the other visitors at the hotel who seemed to waft past her, laughing in their elegant attire. Would they all be on the liner? she wondered. Was this hotel one of the stops between ports? She had no idea. She glanced down at her clothes self-consciously, and when she raised her eyes to the reception desk there he was, standing there, just as she remembered him.

He was wearing a pair of light olive-green trousers and a cream shirt and he was, thankfully, alone.

As he approached her, she noticed how the other females strolling through the foyer darted glances at him, as if they couldn’t help themselves. ‘I thought,’ he said, ‘that you might back out at the last minute.’

He was taller than she remembered. From a supine position on a hospital bed, it had been difficult to get a good idea of his height, but now she could see that he was over six feet tall, and already bronzed from the sun, so that his eyes looked bluer and more striking than she remembered.

‘I take it that your leg has now fully recovered from the experience?’ One of the hotel staff hurried up to gather her luggage and she followed him as he checked her in.

‘Yes, it has,’ she said to his profile, watching as he smiled and then turned to look at her. ‘Thank you very much for...this.’ She spread her arms vaguely to encompass everything around her. ‘It was very kind of you.’

He was watching her as she said this, with a small smile on his mouth, and it was a relief when the porter interrupted them to show her to her room, which wasn’t a room at all, but in fact one of the stone cottages with a thatched roof and a marvellous view overlooking the sea. Blue, blue sea and white, white sand.

‘Was your trip all right?’

‘Oh, yes, thank you very much; it was fine.’

‘There’s no need to be quite so terrifyingly polite,’ he said, amused.

‘I’m sorry. Was I?’

‘You were.’ He folded his arms and looked at her. ‘You haven’t been invited along to be thrown to the sharks.’

‘No, I know that.’ She tried a smile.

‘That’s better.’ He smiled back at her. ‘You’re here to enjoy yourself. That’s why you came, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, of course.’ Her replies sounded stilted and she glanced around her for inspiration.

‘I’m surprised that you came at all, I don’t mind admitting. After what you had told me at the hospital about not accepting charity, I thought that you’d run a mile at the prospect of a holiday at my expense.’

She resisted the temptation to apologize once again, but his remark filled her with dismay. Had he been banking on her not coming? Was that it?

‘I...accepted on impulse,’ she admitted, looking down to where her fingers were twined around the handle of her bag.

‘I’m glad to hear it. Now,’ he continued briskly, ‘I expect you’re feeling rather tired. He leaned against the doorframe and stared down at her. ‘There’s absolutely no need for you to emerge for dinner. They will happily bring you some food here if you’d rather just stay in and recover from the trip. Tomorrow morning we’re hoping to set sail.’