She thought, without surprise, that it was probably from the PR department that the rumours about her sexual favours to customers had first emanated. She couldn’t pretend that she was the flavour of the month with many of her colleagues. In fact, she heard herself described as ‘Lady Muck’ on more than one occasion when they thought she was out of the way. At the time, it had hurt, but she had made herself laugh it off. She was Lisle Bannerman, and nothing they could say could touch her.
Only now she knew differently. Mud had been thrown, and some of it had stuck as it had a habit of doing. The kind of things which had been said about her, the kind of implications which had been drawn from her behaviour made her feel unclean, and the thought that some of these vile rumours had found their way back to her grandfather and distressed him was intolerable. Yet he had never uttered one word of warning or reproach, she thought numbly.
Mrs Peterson’s soup was everything she had remembered and more, and the cold roast chicken which followed was accompanied by a salad made infinitely more exciting by a selection of exotic ingredients. Jake asked for cheese to follow, but Lisle succumbed to the blatant temptation of a slice of home-made treacle tart, accompanied by thickly whipped cream.
Afterwards, Mrs Peterson deposited a tray of coffee in the drawing room and wished them goodnight.
Lisle poured the coffee, conscious of a feeling of awkwardness. Supper had been easier than she anticipated, with Mrs Peterson bustling in and out, making sure they were enjoying their food, and that they had everything they needed.
But now they had been left almost pointedly alone, and it made Lisle uneasy.
Jake on the other hand looked perfectly at ease. He had removed his jacket and slung it over the back of the big leather chesterfield and loosened his tie, and now he was leaning back, waiting for his coffee.
She handed him his cup, almost slopping it into the saucer in her haste, then got up to add another log to the already adequate fire, and fussily adjust one of the ornaments on the mantelpiece.
Jake gave her a bored look. ‘Relax, for God’s sake,’ he told her. ‘Rape is not imminent.’
‘I never imagined it was,’ she snapped, re-seating herself behind the coffee tray, and adding cream to her own cup.
Jake grinned suddenly. It made him look younger, and even more attractive, and Lisle decided she preferred him scowling. ‘Then you should have,’ he said. ‘After all, we have the perfect set-up—a flickering fire, a beautiful girl, and damn all on television.’
In spite of loathing him, she felt her lips quiver. ‘Aren’t you the flatterer!’
‘Not usually,’ he said. He drank his coffee, and set the cup down on a table near his seat with a deliberation that she found slightly unnerving. He looked at her, and she thought confusedly that the lamplight had softened the colour of his eyes to silver. He held out his hand, and his voice was very gentle suddenly. ‘Come here.’
And the shattering thing was that it would have been the easiest thing in the world to have got out of that chair and gone to him. It was unbelievable that she could feel that way, but she did. He was her enemy, and she hated him. He had insulted her and outraged all her feelings ever since he had walked into her life, and yet she remembered the way his mouth had scorched her hand, and knew that, in his arms, her whole body could turn to living flame.
And remembered too, just in time, that he thought she was the worst kind of tramp.
She said huskily, ‘I’ll see you in hell first.’
‘Heaven might be more enjoyable,’ he suggested, but she could hear the cynical note. He thought she was just playing hard to get, and that sooner rather than later she would let him make love to her.
She rose to her feet with a faint smile. ‘Heaven?’ she queried. ‘Now you’re flattering yourself, Mr Allard. I’ll leave you to your fantasies, and go to bed. Alone.’
‘What a waste,’ he said softly. ‘You wouldn’t be disappointed. I’m sure my performance would reach the standard you’ve come to expect.’
‘A personal guarantee,’ she marvelled. ‘Now there’s a novelty! But I’m still not tempted. Goodnight.’
‘One thing I would guarantee.’ His voice was silky. ‘That—come the dawn—at least you’d remember my bloody name. There’s another novelty.’
Lisle, walked to the door, nerves jumping at every step, in case he came after her. Because in spite of everything that had happened, she wasn’t sure how she would react if he touched her, seriously wanted her. She hoped she would kick and bite and scratch to be free, behave like the vixen he’d called her, but she wasn’t issuing any guarantees at all, and she knew she wouldn’t feel safe until she was safely up in her room behind a door which, for the first time in her life, she would lock.
LISLE woke with a start in the pitch dark, remembering she had forgotten to telephone Gerard. Well, not forgotten, simply had no opportunity to do so without Jake guessing what she was up to. And she didn’t want him to know. She wanted to be able to speak to Gerard in perfect privacy without Jake being able to overhear so much as a word.
Not for the first time, she sighed over Murray’s intransigence on the subject of phone extensions in bedrooms. He thought they were immoral, a blatant temptation to people to be idle and run up enormous bills at the same time.
‘A telephone’s place is in the library,’ he said. ‘Let people make their calls at a civilised hour or not at all.’
The middle of the night was hardly a civilised time, Lisle thought ruefully, but it was all that was available.
She had fallen asleep at once, behind that safely locked door, so she hadn’t heard Jake pass her room on his way to bed, but he would be sound asleep by now.
She sighed as she pushed back the covers and reached reluctantly for her robe. The first thing she would have to do was go to Gerard’s own room, find his address book, and hope that Carla Foxton’s Barbados villa was in it. If that address book ever fell into the wrong hands, it would probably be grounds for a dozen divorces, she thought as she padded softly across the carpet to the door. She stood for a moment on the landing, listening intently, but the house was at peace, not a light showing anywhere.
She found the address book in Gerard’s bureau, and slid it into the pocket of her robe, before beginning the journey downstairs.
The drawing room door was open when she reached the hall, and she could see the remaining embers of the logs still glowing red in the wide hearth. She wondered if Jake had remembered to set the spark guard in front of the fire, and decided she would see to it on the way back.
She closed the library door behind her noiselessly, and switched on the light, blinking for a few seconds at the sudden glare. Murray’s big desk was set in the window recess, and the telephone was perched on one corner of it, trim scarlet lines looking strangely out of place among the antiques and rubbed leather which surrounded it.
After some initial difficulty in dialling, she managed to get through to the villa. The phone rang for a long time, and she was just about to give it up as a bad job, when the receiver was lifted and a woman’s voice said, ‘Yes?’
Lisle spoke politely, ‘Good evening, Mrs Foxton. I wonder if I could speak to Gerard Bannerman.’
Silence crackled at her. Then, ‘Who is this?’
‘I’m his sister, Lisle. We met once, actually,