Fugitive Wife

‘Do you live here alone?’ She tried to sound casual in her turn, but there was a tell-tale quiver in her voice, she realised with vexation.

‘I share with Tony Ericson, but he’s in Zambia at the moment,’ he returned laconically.

So although he might have a relationship with Karen Wellesley, they weren’t actually living together. Briony experienced a spasm of relief at the realisation. She followed Logan into the living room. It wasn’t large, and it was furnished in a spartan manner which suggested that its occupants spent little time there. The main items of furniture were a rather battered sofa drawn up in front of the fireplace and a large office desk in the window, supporting a litter of papers and two sturdy portable typewriters.

‘Yes, I work here as well as at the office.’ Logan deftly forestalled her next question. ‘The kitchen is through the door opposite.’ He pointed. ‘Perhaps you’d like to make that coffee I mentioned while I have a shower.’

She was glad to have something to do. Filling the kettle and setting it to boil, and finding mugs and the jar of coffee occupied her hands, but did nothing to ease the mounting uncertainty within her. And she had no one to blame but herself for the current situation, she told herself, her shaking hands spilling coffee granules on to the worktop as she attempted to spoon them into the mugs. It was entirely of her own making. She’d followed Logan and thrown herself at his head, and if she turned and ran now, she would only be making an even bigger fool of herself. Yet if she stayed…. Briony’s imagination refused to consider the implications of the next hour or two. She made the coffee and carried the mugs into the living room, but it was deserted. He was still in the shower, and now, if ever, was the time to beat an ignoble retreat. She set the mugs down on the corner of the desk and looked round for her bag. She’d put it down on the sofa as she’d come in, but it wasn’t there. Nor was it on the desk, or on the floor, or on any of the shelves of the fitment which covered one wall, and housed books and a complicated-looking stereo player. It had vanished.

Or had she simply left it on the small table in the hall, she wondered desperately. She opened the living room door and peered out, but the table was bare except for the discarded envelopes from Logan’s letters.

There was only one other explanation. Logan had taken her bag with him when he went off to have his shower, in order to prevent her from running out on him. The realisation set the match to her temper, relegating her fears and forebodings to a poor second. How dared he? she raged inwardly. She had taken several impetuous steps along the hall when one of the doors opened and Logan emerged, and the sight of him halted her dead in her tracks. He was wearing a damp towel hitched loosely round his hips, and his tawny hair was darkly streaked with water. His eyes, as they encountered Briony’s openly hostile gaze, were enigmatic.

He said smoothly, ‘Coming to meet me halfway, sweetheart?’

‘I was coming to find my handbag.’

He gestured towards the door opposite him. ‘It’s in there.’

After only a second’s hesitation, she turned and walked into the room he had indicated. She had guessed it was his bedroom and she was right. Her bag was there, lying in the middle of the bed—a double bed, she registered in silence. There was little other furniture. Like the living room, it suggested that its occupant was someone constantly in transit, living out of suitcases, and there were few personal touches.

She picked her bag up from the bed, and turned. Logan was lounging in the doorway watching her, and she could read nothing from his expression, but his presence there meant that her retreat was effectively cut off.

‘You didn’t bring the coffee.’ His tone was almost conversational.

‘I—I didn’t want any.’ Damn! she thought in vexation. Why hadn’t she said it was waiting in the living room, and thus made good her escape?

‘Then I won’t bother either,’ he said affably, and walked forward. ‘After all, why waste time when we have more important things to do?’

She took a step backwards. ‘No,’ she got out. ‘I—I can’t!’

‘Can’t you?’ He didn’t hurry as he covered the distance between them. He didn’t have to. It wasn’t a large room, and she was standing with her back against one wall. There was simply nowhere else to retreat to. ‘You can,’ he said. ‘It’s easy—I’ll show you.’

He detached the bag from her suddenly nerveless fingers and tossed it on to a nearby chest of drawers, following it with her suit jacket which he slipped expertly from her shoulders, almost before she realised what he was doing, and then he was unfastening her shirt—as casually as if he was changing a dummy in a shop window, and with about as much feeling, she realised, a sense of hysteria rising deep within her. Her hands came up to push him away, her fingers fumbling as she sought to thrust the buttons he had undone back into their buttonholes.

‘What’s the matter?’ He made no attempt to stop her. He was even smiling faintly.

‘How dare you?’ she choked.

‘I wasn’t aware that daring entered into it,’ he said, his voice cool. ‘You made it quite clear what you wanted, and I’m more than willing to provide it. So what’s the problem?’

‘The problem?’ She stared at him helplessly. ‘You’re behaving as if—treating me like …’

‘Like the spoiled brat you are?’ he cut across her stumbling words with merciless harshness. ‘What’s the matter, darling! Isn’t it all romantic enough for you? But what did you expect? It’s ladies who are being seduced who get the flowers and champagne treatment. Little girls who throw themselves at men merely get laid. It may not be the lesson you expected to be taught this afternoon, but I hope it will prove a salutory one all the same. Now I suggest you get out of here before I forget you’re your father’s daughter and give you the beating you so richly deserve.’

For a minute she stared at him, then with a little inarticulate cry, she struck him across the face and ran past him out of the room and down the hall. She was struggling with the stiff catch on the front door when he caught her.

‘You forgot your handbag.’ His tone was soft and jeering. ‘And your jacket.’

‘Thank you.’ She snatched at them, her face crimson with humiliation, suppressed tears stinging her eyelids.

Logan swore under his breath. ‘Oh God, Briony!’ He turned her to face him. ‘You got off lightly,’ he told her harshly. ‘Just be thankful that I didn’t take advantage of you, and for God’s sake don’t go round offering yourself to any other man who happens to take your schoolgirl fancy unless you want to end up as yet another unpleasant statistic for the sociologists to mull over.’

‘Suddenly everyone feels they have a right to lecture me—to feel responsible for me,’ she said stonily. ‘Now please take your hands off me. I’d like to go home.’

He released her immediately. ‘That’s the best idea you’ve had yet.’ He sounded weary. ‘Go and play in your own league, sweetheart, and leave the adult games until such time as you’ve learned the rules.’

And the flat door slammed behind her.

The remembered sound seemed to strike an echo closer at hand, and Briony stirred in her chair, dragging herself almost reluctantly back from the pain of the past to the reality of the present. She soon saw what had roused her—the noise of a piece of coal falling out on to the hearth—and she knelt down to replace it on the fire and sweep up the resultant ash.

She was shocked when she glanced at her watch and saw how long she had been sitting there, remembering. A pointless exercise if ever there was one, she thought ironically. As she’d told Logan all those months ago, the past wasn’t very productive. Only no one had warned her that the future could be even less so.

She got to her feet, stretching wearily. Now was the time to go and see about her room, otherwise she could well end up spending a cramped night in that very chair. But there was a surprise in store for her when she reached the top of the stairs and turned into the main bedroom at the front of the house. The bed was already made up and waiting, with crisply ironed sheets, and an old-fashioned eiderdown covered in flowered cotton.

Briony frowned as she set down her case and looked around her. Could it be possible that Aunt Hes was expected after all? But that was ridiculous, she knew. Aunt Hes rarely visited the cottage after the beginning of November, because she said frankly that the cold of North Yorkshire seemed to eat into her bones these days, apart from the fact that Kirkby Scar was often cut off by snow for days on end.

On the other hand, could she have let the cottage, perhaps? If so, when the tenant arrived, Briony would simply have to apologise and withdraw. She could spend a couple of days in York, she thought. Now that the tourist season was over, she would enjoy a leisurely tour of the Minster and the museums. It wasn’t what she had planned, but was that necessarily a bad thing when most of the things she planned went so utterly and disastrously wrong?

She took a nightdress from her case and threw it across the bed, then walked to the window to draw the curtains. The second surprise was more in the nature of a shock. The darkness outside was full of the wild swirl of snowflakes, and the ground beneath as well as the kitchen roof and the neighbouring trees were already crusted in white. A swift sigh of exasperation escaped Briony’s lips. She remembered now the forbidding leaden sky which had greeted her arrival, and realised she should have guessed its significance. She could still leave, of course. She could repack her case and find the car and drive to a slightly more accessible hotel. She glanced at her watch again, imagining the reaction if she turned up at this time of night without a booking. She might even end up spending the night in the car. No, she would stay where she was for tonight at least and risk being able to get out in the morning. It was surely too early in the winter for a really heavy fall, she argued to herself without a great deal of conviction. The real trouble was the isolation of the cottage from the village, and the difficulty of stocking up with fresh food if the weather was really turning nasty. She couldn’t subsist for ever on a diet of black coffee.

They said everything came in threes, and the evening’s surprises proved to be no exception. When she returned downstairs, the room was occupied. A large black cat with enormous green eyes was sitting in the middle of the hearthrug washing itself as if it had every right to be there. It turned its head gracefully as Briony came in and gave her a long speculative look before returning to its toilet.

Briony paused and watched it, her mouth curving upwards in amusement. Aunt Hes didn’t own a cat, but she was probably notorious to the neighbouring feline population as a soft touch who could always be relied on for a saucer of milk, and this handsome beast had obviously realised the cottage was occupied again and drawn its own conclusions.

The only thing was—how had he got in? Briony went out into the hall again, but the front door was securely shut. She had opened no windows, so the cat must have got in via the kitchen. But how? Puzzled, she walked out into the kitchen and looked around. The back door was shut and the place was deserted, but someone had been in, presumably while she was upstairs, because a large cardboard box full of groceries now reposed in the centre of the kitchen table. A piece of folded notepaper was stuck in one side of the box and Briony unfolded it.

‘Saw the car and thought I would bring these things up before the weather got worse,’ she read. ‘Hope all is satisfactory. Yours truly, N. Barnes.’

She looked into the box, her spirits lifting. Bread, butter, cartons of long-life milk, bacon and a couple of boxes of eggs. She wouldn’t starve even if the blizzard outside raged for a week. But how had Mrs Barnes known? Perhaps she had simply seen the car parked at the foot of the track and decided to bring up some supplies. It could all be as simple as that, and Briony would take it for granted that was what had happened until she knew differently. Perhaps Mrs Barnes was naturally psychic, she thought grinning slightly to herself, as she unpacked the provisions and put them away. There was even a frozen chicken and a small joint of beef at the bottom of the box, so whoever was expected was apparently planning to stay.

The cat stalked into the kitchen and pushed itself against her legs, purring vociferously.

‘Cupboard love,’ Briony accused as she bent to fondle the glossy head. ‘But we’ll both have a drink in a minute.’

A hot milk drink for herself, she thought, and one of those tablets the doctor had prescribed for when she could not sleep, as something told her she would not do tonight. All this time she had survived by shutting out the past, refusing to admit its existence. Now she had allowed it back to torment her with a vengeance, and it was not done with her yet.

‘Go and play in your own league,’ Logan had said to her, she thought as she stood waiting for the milk to heat, and it was sound advice, although she had not realised it then. Christopher had been far more suitable in every way. Christopher who would be now telephoning vainly round all her friends in an effort to find out where she had gone. Christopher whom she had seriously been considering marrying until that unbelievable evening almost a week ago when she had gone to the head of the stairs, drawn there by the sound of her father’s voice raised in anger, and seen Logan standing there. Logan who was dead—who’d been shot as a spy by Arab guerrillas. A much thinner Logan, his deeply tanned skin fine-drawn over his bones, lines of weariness etched around the grimness of his mouth as he stood quite immobile, his hands resting on his hips, his head bent slightly listening as her father raged at him.