Only it wasn’t Daniel who was standing there. It was Emma. She stared at her cousin, her smile dying, to be replaced by bitter disappointment.
‘Emma,’ she said dully, standing to one side so that her cousin could come in. ‘What brings you here?’
Her cousin, as always, was dressed in the very latest designer-label fashion, her face perfectly made-up and her hair immaculate.
She raised her eyebrows as she stalked in—no other word could adequately describe the hauteur with which she moved, the very definite ‘look at me’ aura she deliberately invoked.
‘A duty visit to my godmama.’ She pulled a face. ‘I thought I might as well call in and see you on my way back,’ Emma told her smoothly. ‘You don’t look very pleased to see me, though. Perhaps you were expecting someone else,’ she added archly as she followed Jessica into the kitchen-cum-living-room, grimacing faintly as she did so, and saying, ‘Honestly, Jess. I can’t understand how you can live somewhere like this. It’s so small and ordinary. When I think of Uncle James and Aunt Harriet’s house in Kensington…’
She gave a delicate shudder and then turned to Jessica, giving her one of her brilliantly unkind smiles, so that Jessica felt her toes curling in anticipation of one of Emma’s more cruelly acid jibes.
‘Still, it won’t be for very long, will it?’ Emma said softly. ‘Aunt H. is cock-a-hoop about the whole thing. A summer wedding next year—just nice time to get everything organised. I expect the engagement will be announced at the usual family Christmas shindig. Quite a feather in your parents’ cap. And, of course, so clever of darling Uncle James to keep it all in the family, so to speak. I must say, though, that I was surprised.’
Eyebrows raised, mouth pursed, eyes cold as winter ice, she turned to Jessica and said sweetly, ‘Do you know, darling, I always thought that if you did get married, it would be someone frightfully worthy and intellectual. I never imagined for one moment that you’d fall in so easily with your parents’ plans. Not after all the fuss you made when you decided to leave the bank. Of course, your father had to put a brave face on it at the time, and I know the whole family were rather miffed when he didn’t take Cousin John’s Paul into the bank in your place, but then I suppose he’s always had something like this in mind. Finding himself an ambitious man, clever enough to take into the bank as a partner, and ambitious enough to actually accept such an archaic condition. It’s all so frightfully Victorian, isn’t it? And I suppose I shouldn’t be all that surprised about Daniel’s decision to go along with your father’s plans. After all, he is frightfully hard-edged and ambitious, and he’s never made any secret of the fact that money is very important to him, but you…well, my dear, you have surprised me,’ Emma told her, folding herself elegantly into a chair and crossing her legs so that she could admire the silken elegance of their slenderness.
A smile of pure catlike pleasure curled her mouth as she removed one of her leather gauntlet-style gloves and drew her slender, long-nailed fingers along one slim calf.
‘There’s always something about black silk stockings, don’t you think?’ she said to Jessica and then smiled again. ‘Oh, but then I forgot, since you became so independent and bucolic I don’t suppose your budget stretches to such luxuries. Personally I’d rather die than wear those appalling nylon things you see so many people wearing—even with quite good clothes. You can’t imagine the number of people who simply have no idea of real style.’ She raised her head and studied Jessica’s paper-white face with apparent surprise.
‘Jess…what on earth’s wrong? Have I said something I shouldn’t? I must say I was surprised when I heard the news, but I didn’t think you’d react like this to my knowing. Heavens, Uncle and Aunt seemed delighted. Uncle James opened a bottle of champagne when Daniel told him, and not just any champagne either. Vintage and absolutely delicious.’
Her small pink tongue touched her heavily glossed mouth as though remembering the taste of that very expensive champagne.
Something moved sluggishly and sickly in the pit of Jessica’s stomach. She wanted to scream at her cousin to go away and leave her—leave her to come to terms with what she had just learned, leave her to rationalise all the disjointed information Emma had just given her—but Emma wasn’t waiting for her reply, she was pouting and saying with a frown, ‘And to think I was the one who introduced Daniel to your father.’
‘You know Daniel?’
Jessica wasn’t aware of speaking the words until she heard them resounding hollowly and painfully into the room.
Emma’s eyebrows rose.
‘But of course…I met him at Meriel Faber’s divorce party. Meriel was furious when he took me home. She’d got her own eye on him. You’ll have to be very careful, darling,’ Emma warned Jessica. ‘He’s frightfully attractive, and very, very sexy…but then, it isn’t as though you’ve fallen madly in love with one another, is it? So clever of Uncle James to offer to make Daniel a partner in the bank. I mean, there’s no other way he could ever have achieved that kind of status off his own bat, and with the added promise of his son inheriting the whole lot…I promise you that will really put Cousin John’s nose out.’
Jessica knew that if she stood there listening to much more she was going to be sick, no longer caring about anything other than the appalling ache burning inside her, the sick shock which had turned her skin clammy and her brain to papier mâché.
‘Darling, you look so pale.’As Emma glanced at her watch, Jessica had the feeling that her cousin was secretly laughing at her, as though she knew. But how could she?
‘I’m so sorry I can’t stay longer, Jess, but I’ve got a date this evening.’ She made a brief kissing noise in Jessica’s direction, and pulled on her glove, her smile faintly malicious and triumphant as she paused by the door to say, ‘Oh, and one word of warning, darling—don’t be silly enough to fall for Daniel, will you? He’s a real heartbreaker, or at least he was. I suppose he’ll have to reform now that he’s about to be a married man. Well, at least you’ll be sure of one thing—you’re getting a husband who’s an excellent lover.’ She was almost purring, and Jessica felt her nausea increase.
She waited until she was quite sure that Emma had driven away before staggering upstairs to her bedroom. Once there she crawled into the middle of the bed and lay there, her eyes burning and dry, her stomach still churning nauseously, her mind wrestling with the enormity of her own stupidity.
Daniel had not approached her as a stranger, but as part of a deliberate plan—a plan no doubt set up with her parents’ approval, a plan to deceive her in the most cruel and destructive way there was.
And for what? So that her father could have his grandson, and so that Daniel—Daniel whom she had admired, whom she had liked, whom she had loved—could have a partnership in her father’s bank.
She closed her eyes, aching to have the power to send herself back to a time before sh
e had known Daniel. How gullible she had been! How stupid! There was no chance that Emma could have made up what she had told her. It had all rung too true. And yet…
She opened her eyes and stared at the telephone beside her bed.
It would be so easy to pick up the receiver and telephone her mother, ask her—ask her what? If she and her father and Daniel had deliberately deceived her? She started to shake, and curled herself up into a small ball of agonised misery.
What a fool she had made of herself, listening to him, believing him, opening her most private self out to him, loving him, and all the time he had been lying to her, letting her believe that he loved her.
When had he intended to tell her? After he had made love to her? she wondered cynically. After he had made sure of her, after he was confident enough of her to believe that she would accept his deception? Maybe he wouldn’t even have told her until after he had married her—but no, that would have been impossible. He would have had to tell her beforehand…How sure of her he must have been.
Too sure. Much too sure…
Thank heaven she had found out the truth before it was too late.
A small voice mocked her inside, taunting her with the knowledge that it was already too late, but stubbornly she refused to listen to it. She and Daniel had not yet been lovers. She had still not given him that final commitment, and now she never would. Never. Never…
* * *