Fugitive Wife

‘Brave words.’ He smiled faintly. ‘But you’ll need more than that to stand up against your father. Believe me, I know.’

She was just going to ask him how he knew—to demand the information if necessary, when a woman’s voice said impatiently, ‘Logan, so this is where you’ve got to!’

Briony recognised her instantly. It was Karen Wellesley, the Courier’s women’s editor, a slim shapely blonde in her late twenties, with one broken marriage already behind her. Karen moved forward to Logan’s side, sliding an openly possessive hand through his arm.

‘Good God,’ she remarked rather blankly as her exotic-ally made-up eyes fell on Briony. ‘I do hope I’m not interrupting anything.’

‘Nothing at all,’ Logan assured her coolly. ‘Miss Trevor and I were just having an interesting discussion on the nature of choice, but we’d reached stalemate.’

‘That’s all right, then.’ Karen smiled blindingly up at him. ‘The party’s beginning to break up, and I thought you might like to take me somewhere to celebrate your award.’

He said lightly, ‘I’d be more than delighted, my love, if Miss Trevor will excuse us.’

Briony said, ‘Of course.’ She gave them both a taut little smile. ‘If the party’s breaking up, then my father will be ready to leave.’

She walked past them, her chin in the air, and made for the lighted doorway. She was thankful to see her father absorbed in conversation with some of the members of the Board, his bad humour apparently forgotten for the moment.

‘Hello, sweetheart.’ His glance smilingly embraced her as she joined him. ‘Where have you been?’

‘I—I went out to get some air,’ she said. ‘I think I have a headache starting. Do you think we could leave soon?’

He was all concern, immediately getting someone to ring down and have his car brought round to the main entrance of the building, fussing protectively as one of the maids hired for the evening went to fetch Briony’s wrap. They were standing waiting for the lift to come up, surrounded by a small group of her father’s colleagues from the upper echelons of management, when Logan came out of the penthouse suite into the corridor, with Karen moulded so closely to his side that a casual spectator might have assumed she was welded there. And Briony discovered to her acute vexation that she was far from being a casual observer.

She transferred her attention almost painfully to the row of lights which indicated the floor that the lift had reached, and saw with relief that it was almost at the top.

She heard Logan say, ‘Come on, love. We’ll walk down two floors. There’s something I want to fetch from my desk.’

She felt them move away. She wouldn’t let herself turn and look, because she knew it would cause her pain.

As the lift descended Sir Charles said abruptly, ‘You behaved very well this evening, Briony. I was pleased with you.’ His brow darkened. ‘I’m sorry that Adair fellow couldn’t behave himself.’

Briony said with difficulty, ‘It—it really doesn’t matter, Daddy. It wasn’t important.’

Her father snorted, but made no further comment, to her relief. In the car the inevitable briefcase was produced, and he became immersed in his papers while Briony sat quietly, a prey to her thoughts.

There had been a lot of first times that evening, she told herself. Her first really adult party, her first kiss, and now the realisation that one’s first awakening to the demands that passion might impose was not necessarily a happy one, because where passion went, jealousy and loneliness trod on his heels.

And lying in bed that night, Briony thought of Logan and Karen together, and was both jealous and lonely.

Briony roused herself with a start, becoming aware of her surroundings again, dragging herself back half-unwillingly to the present.

Jealousy, loneliness and pain, she thought unhappily, as she knelt to tend the fire which had burned low during her reverie. Those ugly words seemed to encompass the whole miserable history of her brief marriage. Why hadn’t she realised that first night what would happen, and held aloof? But she knew the answer to that—because she was already in the thrall of an attraction which she was not experienced enough to resist. And besides the undoubted glamour of Logan Adair’s personality, there had also been the beguiling prospect of living dangerously, of rebelling against her father’s plans and prejudices. It was a situation fraught with pitfalls, but quite irresistible to the child she had been.

If her marriage to Logan had taught her nothing else, she thought detachedly, it had taught her to put away childish things.

But, if this was true, why had she run away? That was the act of a child, not the woman she believed she had become.

It had been the shattering shock of Logan’s return which had forced her into flight, she thought. For months she had lived with the knowledge that he was dead—executed in the Middle Eastern oil state of Azabia where he had been covering a revolutionary coup by the new government. ‘A spy for the Western powers’, the brief communiqué had stated. No further details had been given, and his body had not been returned. The Embassy could do nothing because they were themselves enduring a state of siege for some weeks following the coup, and were later evacuated.

But the report of Logan’s death had seemed more like an epilogue than the finale to the tragic farce that had been their marriage. The news had shattered her, yet their relationship had finished long before Logan ever left for Azabia. Over, she thought, her lips twisting painfully, almost before it had begun, in disillusionment on her side and contempt on his.

But even if things had been different, could such an ill-matched marriage ever have stood a chance? she wondered sadly.

Even on the first evening they had met, she had been aware of the gulf which yawned between them. Logan at thirty-four was a man of the world, cynical, knowledgeable and experienced. She had been a naïve schoolgirl, looking for a hero to Worship. Only Logan had no wish to be cast in the heroic mould. He’d made that clear from the beginning, but she wouldn’t listen. She’d been deaf to every hint, every warning except the clamouring of her own instincts, and they had played her false.

She had found it difficult to sleep that night after the party—the first of many sleepless nights. And she was being a fool, she told herself, as she viewed the shadows that sleeplessness had left under her eyes. So she had been kissed. So what? A lot of girls her age were already married, and mothers, not necessarily in that order. Just because she had spent the last few years at a school where even the most casual relationships with the opposite sex were frowned on it didn’t mean she had to make a big emotional deal out of one kiss.

She found herself wondering if she would have been doing all this heart-searching if she had been kissed by one of the young executives who had been discreetly clustering round prior to the awards presentation.

She sighed as she picked up a brush and began rather listlessly to stroke it down the length of her dark copper hair. The only way she could find out, it seemed, would be to allow herself to be taken out by one of U.P.G.’s bright young men and kissed so that she could compare notes. It was not a prospect that held any appeal for her at all.

What she really wanted, she thought quite calmly, was for Logan to kiss her again. She leaned forward, peering at herself intently in the dressing-table mirror, touching her fingers to the softness of her lips, and wondering why a girl’s mouth should be so vulnerable when a man’s was hard and bruising. She began to wish she had emulated many of her contemporaries at school, and had secret romances concealed at peril of expulsion from the staff. At least now, she would not feel so totally confused and at a loss. She knew all about her body’s biological processes, but very little about its emotional needs, which, she had begun to suspect, were far more complex.

She was quiet at breakfast, causing her father to enquire anxiously whether her headache was still persisting.

‘No, I’m fine,’ she assured him, pushing aside her boiled egg, untasted. ‘Daddy, I’ve been thinking. It’s time I started work—got myself a job.’

Sir Charles touched his table napkin to his lips and laid it to one side.

He said with a hint of impatience, ‘My dear Briony, I thought we agreed that you should spend this year at least working for me—learning how to run this house, and how to act as my hostess.’

‘That’s hardly a fulltime occupation,’ she protested. ‘And I have to find something to do.’ She picked up the silver pot and added more coffee to her cup. She said too casually, ‘My English marks were always good. I was wondering if I couldn’t become a journalist.’

She stole a swift glance at her father and saw his brows had drawn together in a thunderous frown.

‘You can’t be serious,’ he said at last.

‘Why not?’

‘If you need to be enlightened on the point, then I will do so. A newspaper office is no place for any woman, and particularly not for my daughter.’

‘But lots of women work on newspapers,’ she said. ‘Many of them work on your newspapers.’

‘Not at my wish,’ he said coldly. ‘But in these days of sex equality, it’s impossible to exercise any proper discrimination.’

‘Oh, Daddy!’ Briony suddenly didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. ‘You really are appallingly prejudiced!’

‘Am I? Perhaps so, but I stand by every word I’ve said. Newspaper reporters are hard—the nature of the job they do makes them so, and whereas a degree of toughness and cynicism is acceptable and excusable in a man, it cannot be so in a girl.’ He folded his newspaper and rose to his feet. ‘I would not wish to see you losing your essential sensitivity, my dear, becoming coarse and uncaring in your attitude. I …’

‘Daddy,’ Briony cut in impatiently, ‘I can’t believe what I’m hearing! You’ve been in the newspaper business all your life, yet you give the impression that you hate it.’

‘Sometimes I do,’ her father said quietly. ‘Particularly I hate what it does to people. I’d hate what it might do to you.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘I must be going now. I have a full day ahead of me.’

And I have an empty one, she thought soberly, as the door closed behind him. She had not been altogether serious in her suggestion that she should become a journalist. It had been more of a passing thought, than a burning ambition, but the idea seemed to gain in attraction as she considered it. Besides, it was time she began to think for herself and plan her life. Many girls whose examination results had not nearly been as good as hers were starting at university, and in some ways she wished she had insisted on going too, but Sir Charles had been so emphatic that he wanted her at home, that it had seemed ungracious to persist. And at that time, the prospect of several more years in academic pursuits had not seemed very alluring.

But her father surely couldn’t expect her to spend all her time sitting round the house twiddling her thumbs. He knew perfectly well that all the real work was done by Mrs Lambert, with the assistance of a daily help, and that Briony’s place in the scheme of things was a supernumary one. Or did he think she was going to get married almost at once?

Unwillingly she found herself recalling what Logan Adair had said about her choice of a husband, and a sudden image rose in her mind of herself, white-gowned and bridal-veiled, walking up an aisle of a church to where a faceless man awaited her by the altar, waited for her to be handed over to him by her father—untouched by human hand or by life itself.