With a tormented sound, Beatrice tore free of Elliott and raced past Lucilla, not caring any longer what anyone might think of her odd behaviour. She was past caring about that. She had never felt so humiliated, or so… so disturbed in all her life.
In the sanctuary of her bedroom she sank down into a chair. Her whole body was trembling.
Elliott had kissed her!! Elliott, who she well knew disliked and despised her; Elliott whom she loathed and detested; Elliott, who had made her forget, however briefly, that she was plain, and remember only that she was a woman!
She couldn’t believe it… she didn’t want to believe it.
She would not believe it!
THE NEXT MORNING, for almost the first time in her life, Beatrice overslept. She woke up and stared in shock at her alarm, her brain still fogged with the tablets she had taken for her headache.
It was almost nine. Why had no one been to wake her up? Where was everyone? Panicking, she got out of bed and hurried into her bathroom, dressing quickly in jeans and a bulky sweatshirt. She always wore loose tops; they disguised the lush fullness of her breasts. She always felt uncomfortable about the size of her chest, aware that if she didn’t wear something concealing men stared at her. She was too used to thinking of female beauty in terms of her mother and sisters to realise that, to some, her petite curvy shape was the embodiment of all their most private fantasies, and she would have been shocked had any of them told her so.
She could hear voices coming from the kitchen. At least everyone else had not overslept, although it was unheard-of for the rest of her family to even think about getting their own breakfast.
She pushed open the door and came to an abrupt halt. Sitting in the chair that had once been her father’s was Elliott Chalmers.
‘Good morning, Beatrice. Headache all gone?’
There was no sign of Lucilla, and the others were all watching her with varying degrees of curiosity.
‘Why didn’t someone come and wake me?’
‘Because I told them not to!’
Her eyes swivelled to meet Elliott’s, expressing their total disbelief.
‘Isn’t it time you went home, Elliott?’ she demanded frigidly, clutching at the frayed remnants of her dignity. What on earth was he doing here? He must have stayed the night.
‘Haven’t you heard? This is my home… at least for the next three months. Lucilla invited me to move in when she heard about the problems I’m having with the contractors.’
Dimly Beatrice remembered Lucilla mentioning something about the work that was being done on Elliott’s London apartment, but she had said nothing about inviting him to move in with them.
Anger burst into life inside her, and she longed to shriek that he was not staying, and that he could leave right away, but she knew that in an outright quarrel she had no hope of outwitting him. Elliott never lost his temper and was a formidable foe, as she well remembered from her teenage years.
‘Thoughtful of her to suggest I stay here, wasn’t it?’ he continued with a cool effrontery that took her breath away.
He must have heard her indrawn gasp—there could be no other explanation for the gleam she suddenly saw in his eyes as he drawled, ‘Yes, I knew you’d think so, Beatrice.’
‘Stay if you want,’ she said ungraciously. ‘There’s enough room.’ That wasn’t at all what she had intended to say, but it was too late to recall the words now.
The grey gleam deepened, making her suddenly feel acutely vulnerable for some reason.
‘Most gracious of you.’
‘Ah, but you haven’t heard the house rules yet, has he, Bea?’ Benedict teased, blue eyes dancing with amusement. ‘No reading under the bedclothes, Elliott—it’s bad for your eyes… and for your spots—depending on what you’re reading,’ he added incorrigibly, making Beatrice flush scarlet as she remembered her long-ago words to her brother when she had caught him sneaking pin-up magazines into his room.
‘No raiding the fridge at night. No drinking parties. No smoking—of any kind. And definitely no girls in your room after lights out. Have you told him that bit yet, Bea?’ Benedict was grinning irrepressibly at her.
‘Ben,’ she began repressively, but Elliott seemed unmoved by her younger brother’s disclosures and merely said affably, ‘Since I don’t date girls, I don’t think I’m going to have any problems.’
He stood up, brushing toast crumbs off his immaculate pin-striped suit. This morning he looked every inch the successful businessman that he was and Beatrice reflected darkly that it spoke volumes for the Machiavellian character she had always suspected he possessed that neither of the twins so much as tried to get a rise out of him over his sober attire. Had any of the men she had infrequently dated appeared at the house thus dressed they would have been baited almost to the point of insanity. Like their parents before them, the twins displayed a cheerful irreverence towards anything even remotely Establishment. But it was as though Elliott was protected by his own invisible radar, and, what was more, they seemed to know it because they treated Elliott with… with respect, she acknowledged a little resentfully, recalling how often she had wished they might accord her that same virtue.
‘Just as well you’re not starting the new job this morning, Bea,’ commented Benedict, lazily helping himself generously to the butter and plastering it on his toast. Without looking up from his task he added, ‘Did you know that Bea’s got herself a job, Elliott? Working for a famous composer, would you believe, or at least he will become a famous composer one day. Isn’t that what Uncle Peter says, Bea?’
Her muscles still felt stiff from the pain of her migraine, and for some reason it hurt to force the calm smile with which she acknowledged her brother’s comments.
She was conscious of Elliott watching her with the same unblinking intensity that a cat might watch a mouse. Already she was tensing her body against one of his mocking remarks, but when she nerved herself to look directly at him she saw that he had switched his attention from her to Benedict and, what was more, that the look the two of them were exchanging had for some reason brought a bright gleam of triumph to her brother’s eyes.
That made her frown. As far as she knew, Elliott had always got on reasonably well with the rest of her family. She was the only one of them who disliked him.
‘I suppose you know that Lucilla is leaving here to move in with her latest boyfriend,’ Sebastian commented, and, as Elliott’s attention switched from one twin to the other, Beatrice found she was expelling a faint sigh of relief.
She was a coward, she acknowledged wryly as she got up to make some fresh coffee; definitely one of the ‘peace at any price’ brigade, but why not? Not everyone could be a moral crusader, not just ready but eager to spring into battle at the slightest provocation. The twins, especially Benedict, thrived on conflict of any kind, and there was nothing Ben loved more than a stimulating argument, as she had good cause to know.
‘She is over twenty-one,’ Elliott pointed out.
‘Well over,’ Miranda added sotto voce to Elliott’s calm remark, earning herself a frown from Beatrice, and the lift of one faintly querying eyebrow from Elliott himself.
‘Even so, I don’t think her proposed move is a viable one,’ Elliott continued calmly, ‘and I’ve told her as much. Of course she’s a free agent, but…’
‘But you control her purse strings,’ Benedict put in a little crudely, adding, with a wicked gleam in his eyes, ‘and sanctions could be imposed…’
Beatrice tensed, but Elliott refused