Stronger Than Yearning

She got up and opened her wardrobe. What should she wear? She had several elegant formal dresses especially bought for these sort of dos and eventually selected a plain black silk skirt topped with a white silk jacket. The jacket had wide revers and a fitted waist. The skirt was straight with a discreet pleat at the back. To go with it, she chose very fine silk tights. She styled her hair in an elegant French pleat and then stood back to study her reflection with approval. Elegant and businesslike. No one looking at her tonight would mistake her for someone’s wife — or someone’s mistress.

The invitation had been for eight-thirty and it was just gone nine when she rang the doorbell of the Billingtons’ apartment.

Margery Billington greeted her, hugging her theatrically. ‘Jenna, darling. I’m so glad you’re here! Everyone adores your décor.’

Jenna smile diplomatically and followed her hostess into the drawing-room. It was full of dinner-suited males and designer-clad women. Margery had specified something eye catching and different that also looked expensive and Jenna had done her best to oblige. The walls had been dragged in a soft aqua greeny-blue effect and then veined in gold to produce a delicate shimmer almost like a translucent pearled marble.

The carpet echoed the base colour of the walls; the furniture a matt off-white — to Jenna’s critical eye the scheme was rather theatrical but Margery had loved it. As she acknowledged several people she knew, she edged her way over to the fireplace to study the huge giltwood mirror she had commissioned from a young student at the Royal College of Art. He had done an excellent job, she noted approvingly, seeing that the cherubs holding the frame had Margery’s features. The mirror had been expensive, but …

‘Jenna, I absolutely adore it. You must do something similar for me.’

She turned away from her contemplation of the mirror to talk to the woman who had come to join her. She was the owner of an extremely successful New York-based boutique which sold British designs at a horrendous mark-up.

‘I’m thinking of buying a pied-à-terre over here … Just something small to use while I’m here on buying trips.’

They chatted for a while, Jenna making a mental note to follow up their talk.

‘Jenna, I’m so thrilled,’ effused Margery. ‘Maison want to do a feature on the apartment. One of the directors has a filly with us, and they’re contemplating a horse-racing issue — You know … noted trainers and their lifestyle, owners, races, that sort of thing, and he wants to feature us.’

Jenna knew the magazine, an upmarket glossy which would do her no harm to be seen in.

‘It would be fantastic advertising for you,’ Margery pressed. She looked sly as she added. ‘We’re thinking of redoing the cottage. I’d like you to do it for us, but you know what men are … he’s kicking a bit over the cost. With the business that will come your way from the Maison feature I’m sure you could see your way to, well … compromising a little.’

Jenna didn’t let any reaction show on her face. The Billingtons were multi-millionaires and could well afford a designer four or five times as costly as herself, but she had no wish to offend Margery, and she thought wryly that there were ways and means of offering a discount that was not always what it seemed. She never had, and never would, seek to make outrageous profits, and charged what she considered to be a reasonable fee for her services. That way she believed she was preserving both her integrity and her reputation, but people like the Billingtons were so used to being ripped off that it probably never occurred to them that she wasn’t jumping on the bandwagon.

‘I’m sure we can work something out,’ she agreed with a smile. ‘Why don’t we get together after the Maison feature is finalised?’

A subtle way of letting Margery know that she hadn’t been born yesterday: no feature, no discount!

She came up against a good many Margery Billingtons in her work and had learned to accept that to succeed she often needed to employ a degree of subtlety.

There were quite a lot of people at the party whom she knew. In the dining-room, hired staff were serving a buffet — the fashionably de rigueur wholefood-cum-nouvelle-cuisine type, Jenna noticed, accepting a glass of wine from a passing waiter. She had nothing against wholefood per se, and indeed was extremely particular about what she and Lucy ate, but most of the people at the party had probably dined well at lunchtime and would go on to consume another hearty meal later. Gluttony for food was like gluttony for sex, she thought distastefully, wondering as she did so why it was she who always seemed to stand apart from the rest of the human race.

Bill and Nancy were the only people she was really close to, and she kept even them at a distance. Sometimes she suspected from the sharp looks that Nancy gave her when she was particularly scathing about the male sex, that the older woman was about to take her to task. There was no one with whom she could share her innermost thoughts and fears — no one at all. She frowned, wondering why she should have such a depressive thought. Her lack of intimate relationships had never bothered her before, in fact she had deliberately cultivated it. The crowd round the buffet table thinned and her frown deepened as she caught sight of a familiar dark head. James Allingham — here?

She was just about to dismiss her suspicion as the product of an overworked imagination when he turned round and she realised she was right. He was looking straight across at her, and she flushed, knowing that to ignore his pointed scrutiny as she wanted would be both rude and gauche. There was a girl with him, a tiny blonde, with a carefully tousled mane of blonde hair, and the sort of immaculate make-up that shrieked model. She might have guessed he would go for that type, Jenna reflected, allowing herself a cool smile before letting her eyes slide away. However, she was not allowed to escape quite so easily. As she made for the drawing-room, Margery came up to her with James and his pocket Venus in tow.

‘Jenna, darling, let me introduce you … James …’

‘Jenna and I have already met.’

Jenna was aware of the hard speculation in the blonde’s eyes and grimaced inwardly. The girl had nothing to fear from Jenna, if she did but know it.

‘James has a horse with us, darling. He’s just moved into a new apartment. James …’ she turned towards him, ‘you simply must get Jenna to decorate it for you.’

Jenna saw the look in his eyes as they studied the drawing-room, and seethed inwardly, recognising it. How dare he sit in judgement on her? Didn’t he realise that a good interior designer always took note of the client’s own taste? She had never sought to impose her own taste on anyone and never would.

‘Jay, darling, there’s Naomi … do let’s go over and talk to her.’ The blonde’s pointed determination to ignore her only amused Jenna, as did her affected, breathy way of speaking. As she watched them go, it gave her quite a degree of pleasure to be able to reflect scathingly on James Allingham’s taste in women. Somehow it reduced him to the ranks of other members of his sex whom she also despised, making her feel … safer. Safer? What possible danger could he be to her? It was probably a hang-over from her fear of losing the Hall to him, she reflected, sipping her wine slowly.

At ten-thirty she was ready to go. Cocktail parties bored her in the main. She recalled that Nancy had been shocked to hear her say so. ‘You’re getting too high-falutin’ ideas about yourself, my girl,’ she had told Jenna bluntly. ‘You’re only human like the rest of us, you know.’

Even Bill had remonstrated gently with her, reminding her that she was a member of the human race. ‘You can’t always remain aloof from life, Jenna,’ he had told her quietly.

But Jenna had learned the hard way that by remaining aloof she remained safe. If Rachel had been more aloof … less naïve …

‘Ah, there you are, Jenna …’ It was too late to escape, being thoroughly embraced by the man bearing down on her, although Jenna held herself rigid beneath his embrace, turning her face so that his kiss landed on her cheek instead of her mouth.

‘Roger …’ Her eyes and voice were cool, but he appeared not to register that fact. Roger Bennett, supermarket entrepreneur extraordinaire was probably too used to riding roughshod over people to be put off by anything less subtle than a sledgehammer, Jenna thought, asking sweetly, ‘Maria not with you?’

Maria was his long-suffering wife, to whom he was constantly unfaithful with a parade of starlets and pseudo-débutantes. Jenna detested him, loathing his arrogance and the way he had of reducing every member of her sex under forty to a sex object. Roger Bennett had never respected any woman in his life and would have laughed himself sick if anyone had suggested that he should. He was everything Jenna most disliked in a man, and her mouth curled disparagingly as he said, ‘Saw you talking to James Allingham. Now there’s a pretty piece he had with him. I bet she keeps him warm in bed at night.’

‘I’m sure.’ Jenna’s voice was cold. ‘Excuse me, Roger, but …’

‘No, don’t go yet, I want to talk to you. I’m moving into the property market — apartments abroad — upmarket stuff, and I could be in a position to put some business your way. Why don’t we go into the study and talk about it?’

Little though she wanted to, Jenna felt she had to agree. A contract like that was something she couldn’t afford to turn down right now. Since her talk with Gordon Burns, the burden of the loan she had taken out to buy the Hall was weighing heavily upon her.

She glanced at her watch and said coolly, ‘Well, I was just about to leave, but I can manage half an hour.’

Men like Roger were impossible to deal with once you let them get the upper hand. Jenna had had to learn to deal with many Rogers during the course of her career and she had found that a schoolmistressy bossiness was the best answer. For some reason it always de-sexed her in their eyes and once that had happened they became far less of a nuisance. She preferred to work for married couples and even then with the woman, but one couldn’t always choose one’s contracts.

The study was decorated in the traditional manner complete with a mock fireplace. Roger went to stand by it, one foot on the fender, his arm on the mantelpiece. Jenna stayed several feet away from him as she listened to him talking about the proposed contract. It sounded extremely promising, and whether because of that, or because her mind was still on the burden of the loan hanging over her, she failed to notice that Roger had moved, until she felt his arm slide round her.