A Bad Enemy

‘It could be.’ Janie gave a little shake of her head. ‘I’m sure Gerard would rather be here, fighting, than coming back to salvage what he can from the wreckage. For that’s all there’d be, and you can ask Graham if you don’t believe me.’

‘Oh, I believe you,’ Lisle said bitterly. ‘I believe you only too well. The Allard man looks capable of anything.’

‘And in this case appearances aren’t deceptive,’ Janie said grimly. ‘According to all reports, he’s fought his way single-handed up a very steep ladder, and you don’t do that these days without stepping on a number of faces.’

‘By the look of him, he’s also been trodden on in his time,’ Lisle said caustically. ‘I’d like to shake the hand of the man who did it.’

‘I don’t recommend it.’ Janie shot her a minatory glance. ‘My advice is to forget that you don’t find him the flavour of the month—particularly if he’s going to be a force to be reckoned with in Harlow Bannerman. Graham says that Jake Allard can be a good friend—but a very bad enemy.’

‘Indeed?’ Lisle had discarded the black dress by now, and was pulling a cashmere sweater over her head to match the olive green corded jeans. She tugged the sweater into place, and raked her fingers carelessly through the heavy waves of copper hair, pushing it back into shape. ‘Well, perhaps he’ll discover the same can be said of me.’ She cast a swift glance over the contents of the case and remembered her toilet bag from the bathroom. ‘He doesn’t frighten me,’ she flung over her shoulder as she went to the door.

Jake Allard was coming down the passage, glass in hand. There was no way he couldn’t have heard her last remark, and his teeth glinted momentarily in a faint, hard smile as he held the glass out to her.

‘Your brandy, Miss Bannerman, or perhaps the need for it has passed.’

She said curtly, ‘Yes, it has,’ and went on down the passage to the bathroom.

It was unoccupied, and obeying an impulse she hardly understood, she closed the door behind her, and shot the small bolt, shutting herself in away from the rest of the world. There was a mixture of exotic scents in the warm air, and several of the towels lay damp and crumpled on the floor. Automatically she retrieved them, straightening them and returning them to the heated handrail. There were mirrors everywhere and she seemed to catch sight of herself in them all, a myriad reflections of Lisle, two bright spots of colour in her pale face, her green eyes glittering like a cat’s.

She’d spoken brave words, but they had been a lie. Of course she was frightened, with a deep gut-wrenching panic which was totally outside her experience. She felt as if every prop and stay to her security were being knocked away one by one, and there was nothing she could do to prevent it.

She sank down on the high-backed wicker chair and tried to think, to reason out everything which had happened in the past hour.

Grandfather, she had been told, could be dying, but then his doctors had written him off before, and been wrong. As Janie had said, Murray Bannerman was immortal. He didn’t believe in illness, or particularly in safeguarding his health against the march of time either.

‘If you lived as these damned medicos want you to, you might as well be dead,’ he had growled testily more than once.

The doctors grumbled too about his refusal to follow their advice, his frankly avowed aversion to hospitals, They complained it was impossible to give him the treatment he needed, but Lisle knew that secretly they admired his stubbornness and his fighting spirit.

She tried to imagine life without him—Harlow Bannerman without him, and the exhilarating boardroom battles he had always enjoyed. She had often felt he secretly relished the covert sniping between Gerard and Oliver Grayson, but she had never until then doubted for a moment whose side he would be on if ever the chips were down.

Now she was not so sure.

Jake Allard at the Priory—on a private visit. And just what discussions had gone on under the shelter of that privacy? she wondered desperately. It was surely beyond coincidence that all this should have taken place when Gerard was safely out of the way, so what could her grandfather have been thinking of?

She would have to telephone Gerard somehow, get him back into the country before it was too late.

He’d covered his tracks well if Jake Allard had failed to find him, she thought, but it was hardly surprising. Harry Foxton wasn’t over-jealous, or particularly suspicious, but he was no fool either, and any hint that Gerard and Carla were enjoying a break from a damp English autumn on the same Caribbean island would set all kinds of alarm bells ringing. Few men with very attractive wives trusted Gerard, she was forced to admit.

But it wasn’t altogether his fault, she thought loyally. Since childhood, he had always been too–good-looking and possessed of far too much charm for his own good. His hair was darker than hers—a kind of rich chestnut, and his eyes were bluer, and he had the look of a young Renaissance prince. Women had begun drooling over him in his pram, and almost before he had left adolescence the admiring looks had become frankly speculative. It was like letting a child loose in a sweetshop, Lisle thought ruefully. And so far he had shown no sign of surfeit ….

She sighed. She knew the fact that Gerard had laughed to scorn any idea that he should settle down and give some thought to the next generation of Bannermans had distressed her grandfather. Murray Bannerman believed in the family, and the stability of marriage. He had said openly that a wife and child might give Gerard the sense of responsibility he so often seemed to lack, and yet at the same time he usually greeted the rumour of some new romantic adventure by his grandson with a muttered, ‘The young dog!’ and a hoarse chuckle.

Lisle’s attitude to Gerard’s constant affairs fell a long way short of approval, but he was her older brother, and although there was now no trace of the hero-worship with which she had regarded him when they were much younger, she loved him and made mental excuses for his faults, even when his selfishness and lack of consideration impinged upon herself.

And if there was to be a battle between him and Jake Allard for the control of Harlow Bannerman, she would be fighting at Gerard’s side all the way, she told herself angrily.

Someone rattled the bathroom door and retreated with a muffled curse, and Lisle started to her feet, seizing her brown quilted bag and filling it rapidly with essential toilet items. She wondered how long she would be staying at the Priory. Until. … Her mind closed down, refusing to admit the rest of the thought.

Her only comfort as she unbolted the door and went slowly back to the bedroom was that Murray was a fighter too.

Janie was alone when she went in, and she looked at her, a mute question in her eyes.

‘He’s gone to get his car.’ She zipped the case shut and held it out to Lisle. ‘You’ll need a jacket or something.’

‘Yes.’ She had a new one, dark brown supple suede with a deep fur trim on the collar and cuffs, and now seemed as good a time as any to wear it. She needed the reassurance that something new, expensive and glamorous could give her.

She swung her bag over her shoulder, draped the coat over her arm and picked up her case. Janie followed her out of the room and along to the front door. Lisle gave her a taut smile.

‘Perhaps you should get back to our guests,’ she said, ‘before they drink us dry and start wrecking the place.’

Janie nodded, biting her lip. She said gently, ‘Take it easy, love. Remember what I said.’

‘I’m not likely to forget it,’ Lisle said ruefully.

As she pushed open the glass door and emerged on to the street, the car pulled up at the kerbside, and Jake Allard got out. He opened the passenger door, and stood impassively, waiting for her to cross the pavement to his side, the slight chill of the breeze ruffling the thick blackness of his hair.

Lisle had to force herself to move. She felt drained of strength so that walking became almost an effort of will alone. The only thing which kept her from falling down was the sure and certain knowledge of who would pick her up again, because, crazily, the prospect of being touched by him was suddenly the worst threat of all.

When he reached for her case, to stow it in the boot, she pretended she hadn’t seen the gesture, and put it down on the pavement in front of him instead. She was so uptight that even an accidental brush of fingers could well make her fall apart.

The car was capacious, the front seats well spaced, but when he closed her door and came round to take his place behind the wheel, she felt claustrophobic. She lifted a hand and eased the high collar of her sweater away from her tight throat, making herself breathe deeply.

Jake Allard gave her a frowning glance. ‘You should have had that brandy,’ he said curtly. ‘There’s a flask in the glove compartment.’

‘I’m fine,’ she said off the top of her voice, then added, ‘Thank you.’

‘You look like hell,’ he informed her brutally. ‘What good is it going to do Murray to see you like this? Or is he used to it?’

Lisle set her teeth. ‘If we could just go?’

She’d hoped, childishly, that he would turn out to be a lousy driver, flashy, aggressive and impatient with other motorists, but of course, he was none of those things. Of course. She sat, hating him, across London, glad to be able to build on her anger because it kept the anxiety at bay.

He didn’t say much. Once he asked her if she had any preference as to the route they took, and later, if she wanted some music.

She said, ‘The quickest, preferably,’ to the first question, and, ‘Yes, please,’ to the second. Otherwise there was silence, only faintly disguised by the music.

In other circumstances, in other company she would have enjoyed the tapes. They were obviously of his own devising, and expertly done, and she couldn’t fault the choices he’d made either, although she wasn’t familiar with them all. Jack Jones, she recognised, and Carly Simon and Judy Tzuke. With any other man, that could have been a talking point, the first tentative stage in an acquaintance that might or might not develop into a relationship. But not with this man.

Every word he had said to her, every look he had given her was etched on her mind, and the acid had bitten deep.

Darkness had closed around them, and the street lights dwindled as the roads narrowed into lanes.

Lisle sat up suddenly, peering around her. ‘This isn’t the way to the Priory.’

‘He isn’t at the Priory,’ he said shortly. ‘He’s in intensive care in hospital.’

Lisle’s hand stole to her lips, stifling a sharp sound of distress. She said, ‘He hates—machines.’