Stephanie Howard - The Lady's Man

At least Caterina, white with fury, was confronting Matthew, her hands tight fists as she glared at him across the desktop, wishing she could pluck his arrogant head from his shoulders, bury it at the bottom of some dark and spidery hole and never have to look at his hateful face again.

Matthew, for his part, was having no such violent fantasies. As he sat in the tan leather armchair opposite her he was feeling thoroughly pleased with the way things had turned out. And he was aware—though he really wasn’t looking that way on purpose—that his air of quiet satisfaction was simply driving Caterina crazy.

‘Dishonest?’ he queried, not quite managing to suppress a smile. ‘What on earth makes you come to that conclusion?’

‘Secolo Designs of Geneva! That’s what makes me come to it! That was a pretty shameless bluff!’

‘Bluff? Why do you call it a bluff? It’s the name of one of my companies.’

‘Oh, yes! I know!’ Her blue eyes sparked angrily. ‘How clever, and how convenient for you to pull that out of the bag! Did you invent it specially for the occasion?’

It had been the shabbiest trick. Only someone like Matthew Allenby could have stooped so low as to pull a stunt like this. Caterina shuddered, remembering how her blood had turned to powder when she had read out the name of the winning company and seen Matthew rising to his feet.

Just for a moment she hadn’t believed it. She’d blinked. Thought she must be dreaming. But no, there he’d been, mounting the steps up to the stage, coming towards her with a smug, triumphant smile to accept the contract for the Bardi extension. It hadn’t been a dream, after all. It had been a waking nightmare!

After that, she’d had to endure the torture of a photo-call. She’d had to stand there shaking his hand before a battery of press photographers, a smile pinned to her face, going through the motions of pretending to be delighted that this perfectly monstrous man had just walked off with her precious contract.

It had been ghastly. Utterly ghastly. Her flesh had crawled just to think of it. And as soon as it was over she had taken him to one side and demanded that he see her in her office back at the palace immediately. Before this thing went any further, she wanted a few explanations.

Needless to say, he had kept her waiting. She’d been wearing out the carpet for at least fifteen minutes, pacing backwards and forwards, steam coming out of her ears, before he had deigned to poke his arrogant head round her office door.

‘Sorry,’ he’d offered, clearly not sorry in the slightest, ‘but I got tied up with a bunch of reporters. They wanted to know how I felt about winning the contract.’ He’d smiled into her black face. ‘I told them I was over the moon.’

Caterina had known, of course, that he would enjoy rubbing her nose in it. For his triumph wasn’t just triumph at winning the contract, it was also triumph at having so roundly trumped her. He knew how she felt about him and he was loving every sordid minute of this.

He said now in response to her accusation, ‘It’s not my fault you didn’t know Secolo was one of my companies—and has been, as a matter of fact, for the past two years. You see, it wasn’t just invented for the purpose of hoodwinking you.’

And from the slight edge of admonishment in his tone as he said that Caterina deduced that she was actually supposed to believe that he was totally incapable of such deceit. Hah! she thought scathingly. He must think I was born yesterday!

‘If you’d done a bit of checking up,’ he added, ‘you could easily have found out.’

That had occurred to Caterina too, but there had been no cause to check up on the various contestants who’d entered designs for the competition. The designs, after all, had been judged solely on merit. Any additional information just hadn’t been deemed necessary.

All the same, she observed now, bitterly, ‘I very much wish I had checked up.’

‘You mean you would have voted differently if you’d known?’ He made a pretence of looking quite shocked at this notion. ‘For someone with your high moral standards, surely that would have been unthinkable?’

Caterina eyed him. Let him mock her and make fun of her if he liked—they both knew that he didn’t suffer from moral scruples!—but it did genuinely trouble her that when she’d asked herself certain questions earlier she hadn’t been at all sure of her answers. Could she really have voted knowingly for Matthew Allenby? Could she posssibly have done otherwise given that his design was by far the best?

‘I think,’ she said, frowning, coming to a decision, ‘that I would have had no choice but to resign from the panel of judges.’ It sounded rather extreme, but what else could she have done?

‘I see.’

Matthew seemed to contemplate her answer for a moment. Was he offended Caterina wondered, to know the strength of her antipathy? With anyone else she would have avoided such callous bluntness. But not with Matthew Allenby. She didn’t care if he was offended. And anyway, as she well knew, he could take it.

Which was one of the reasons why it was almost a pleasure to clash with him. When you were mad with Matthew Allenby you didn’t have to hold back. You could just say what you were thinking and go straight for the jugular.

He continued to watch her in silence for a moment. Then he pointed out, ‘But you didn’t resign over the Tad UK entry... and I think you knew my connection with that company?’

Caterina could not deny it. ‘Yes, I knew it was one of yours.’ Then she looked at him and smiled. ‘But there was no dilemma with that one. I wouldn’t have voted for that design whoever’s it had been.’ And her smile turned unrepentantly malicious as she added, ‘You must have been having an off-day when you did that one.’

‘It wasn’t that bad. It had one or two good features.’ Then, seeing her expression turn openly disdainful at this apparent display of self-justification, Matthew smiled and informed her, ‘I had no hand in it, however. It was the work of one of our new trainees. Not bad at all, I thought, for a beginner.’

Caterina was careful not to let her expression alter. So she was to be denied even the small pleasure of having thwarted him on that one! Damn, she was thinking. He was as slippery as an eel!

She leaned back in her chair and narrowed her eyes at him. He was totally maddening. Irritating beyond reason. What she really ought to do was wind up this meeting and spare herself the displeasure of another moment of his company. But she felt disinclined to do that. There was something about him. Something that seemed to stir in her a strange and fierce compulsion. The irritation and antipathy that he aroused in her was so acute, it was like an itch that simply had to be scratched.

And, besides, she hadn’t finished with him yet. Not by a long shot.

She told him, her tone accusing, ‘I really think you should have told me that you’d entered a design for the competition. Surely that’s what any normal person would have done?’

Matthew eyed her and smiled. ‘I had my reasons for keeping silent. After all, I wouldn’t have wanted people accusing me of seeking favours by making my interest in the contest known. I am close to the Duke, after all, and you are his sister. People might have thought I was seeking special consideration.’

Yes, that was possible. People might have thought that. Though it hadn’t even crossed Caterina’s mind until this moment. For it was actually a totally ludicrous notion. Pigs would fly before she would give Matthew Allenby ‘special consideration’, and these days virtually any associate of her brother’s would be liable to receive exceedingly short shrift from her. It was sad, but true. Their once close relationship really had sunk that low since the bust-up over Orazio.