Wild Melody

‘Oh, I believe you,’ she said with bitter sarcasm. ‘I'm sure you're an expert. It must run in the family.'

‘You little bitch,’ he said slowly. ‘But even if you were right, at least I conduct my affairs with women who know what the score is. I don't take sweets from babies. Only a child could have been taken in by someone as callow as Jeremy.'

‘I suppose I deserved that,’ she said wearily. She held out her hand. ‘Goodbye, Mr Lord. It's been salutory, if nothing else.'

He ignored the gesture. ‘How do you intend to leave here, and where do you propose to go?'

Catriona was taken aback. ‘There are taxis, I suppose. And hotels.'

‘There are,’ he agreed. ‘But only if you have money. And some of the more respectable hotels also like you to have luggage.'

Catriona was silent. It was like playing chess with an expert, she thought. Every move she tried to make was anticipated and blocked.

‘So let's look at the alternative,’ he went on calmly. ‘Go upstairs and repair your make-up and have the inevitable confrontation with Jeremy. Oh yes,’ he took her chin in his hand as she flinched involuntarily, ‘you can tell him what tale you like, as long as it's not the unvarnished truth. Don't let him have that satisfaction. And then I'll take you home, pride intact.'

It did not occur to Catriona until she was sitting in one of the elaborately furnished bedrooms, renewing her lipstick, that Jason Lord had not specified precisely where ‘home’ was.

As he had predicted, it was inevitable when she emerged from the bedroom that Jeremy was waiting outside.

‘Trina!’ His face was white, and he moistened his lips nervously. ‘I couldn't believe it. What on earth are you doing here? Who brought you?'

Afterwards Catriona was amazed at the way the lie sprang so readily to her lips.

‘Oh, I know it was mean,’ she said, smiling radiantly at him. ‘But Jason and I just thought what a joke it would be if I—turned up, like a skeleton from the past. And your face was marvellous when you saw me. I wouldn't have missed it.'

Relief was struggling with incredulity on his face. ‘You're Jason's girl?’ he queried sharply.

‘Quite correct.’ Jason himself joined them, looking faintly amused. ‘I don't think you realise just what you've let slip through your fingers this time, dear nephew.'

Jeremy laughed uneasily. ‘Oh, Trina's an angel. I—I don't blame you at all. It was just such a—surprise.'

‘Well, the world's full of surprises,’ Catriona said gaily. ‘Poor lamb, I should have let you know I was here, but Jason has hardly given me time to breathe since I got to London.'

Jason came to stand beside her, dropping his arm lightly across her shoulders. She felt the usual urge to draw away, but was forced to stand still in his embrace, trapped by her own pretence. She noticed he was carrying her stole over his arm.

‘Are you leaving already?’ Jeremy asked, his voice sharp with curiosity.

‘Why, yes.’ Before Catriona could move, or protest, Jason bent and kissed her slowly and deliberately on the mouth. ‘It's time, I think, that all good little girls were in bed,’ he went on, smiling down into her outraged eyes.

Jeremy flushed, and he looked at Catriona with unmistakable speculation.

‘So that's how it is. Fine. Be happy,’ he said, with a fair attempt at nonchalance.

‘Besides,’ there was no disguising the amusement in Jason's voice, ‘Sally would never forgive me if I kept Catriona out too late.'

Jeremy looked at him quickly. ‘Sally Fenton? Is Trina staying with her? I—see.'

‘I doubt it,’ Jason said lightly, and took Catriona's hand. ‘Come on, love, time to go. Tell your mother I'll phone her,’ he added to the nonplussed Jeremy as he led Catriona away.

In the car she turned on him furiously. ‘How dared you?'

‘How dared I do what?’ He was infuriatingly unruffled as the car moved down the drive and nosed out on to the road.

‘Paw me in that insulting way!’ she raged, and was further incensed by his laughter.

‘You flatter yourself, Miss Muir.’ He flashed her a swift glance. ‘Surely that can't have been the most strenuous embrace you've experienced. I must have a word with Jeremy.'

‘Oh, shut up,’ she said bitterly. ‘At least with Jeremy I never felt—besmirched.'

Something came and went in his face, but his voice was still amused. ‘I'm sure you would have done—in time.'

She sought for a retort that would silence him once and for all, but none was forthcoming, so she retired behind a hostile tight-lipped barrier of silence.

Jason Lord seemed totally unconcerned. He hummed snatches of tunes, commented on the road conditions and eventually with a courteous, ‘I hope you don't mind,’ switched on the radio. It was a foreign station. Catriona could not recognise the announcer's accent, but the music they were playing had an oddly soothing quality. The street lights and the white lines on the road became fused in a soft blurring of consciousness. Her head slipped sideways on to her companion's shoulder, and her breathing became soft and even.

She was floating on a cloud, weightless and carefree. Jeremy was beside her, his kisses light as Highland mist on her face. How warm she was, how safe. Then a shadow came between them, and someone was shaking the cloud, which was breaking up and dissolving. It was Jason Lord, his face satyr-like. ‘Come down off Cloud Seven, Miss Muir,’ he was saying. ‘Come down. Come down.’ And his hands were hard on her shoulders, shaking her so that she tried to cry out, only the cloud was muffling her.

Gasping for breath, she struggled out from under the Continental quilt to find Jason Lord standing over her with a cup and saucer.

‘You are a violent little thing in the mornings,’ he commented sarcastically. ‘Do you want this coffee in bed or over it?'

Catriona stared at him for one panic-stricken moment, then huddled the quilt over her bare shoulders.

‘It's all right,’ he said with studied patience. ‘It's only your dress that's missing. I assumed you wouldn't want to ruin it by sleeping in it, so I put it on a hanger in the wardrobe.'

‘You did—what?'

‘Oh, grow up,’ he snapped. ‘You surely don't think there's anything indecent in that boned effort and long waist slip you're wearing. There were women at the party last night showing twice as much.'

Catriona was crimson from head to foot. ‘Do you mind telling me what I'm doing here?’ she inquired icily.

‘With pleasure.’ He sat down on the edge of the bed, to her immediate alarm. ‘You're here as a very temporary lodger, and as soon as I can get Sally Fenton on the telephone and talk her into taking you on, you're leaving.'

Catriona quivered. ‘I don't know that I care to be passed on like an unwanted package,’ she began.

‘And I don't know that you have any choice,’ he interrupted. ‘I happen to know Sally is looking for another girl to share with, and it could be a way out of the woods for us both. I'm not happy at the idea of you drifting out into the city jungle with no one to keep an eye on you.'

‘I'm not a child,’ Catriona said defiantly.

‘Oh, no. Your actions have been characterised by your maturity since you got off the train,’ he retorted.

‘But I don't know this Sally,’ she protested.

‘You know her as well as most girls who share flats these days. Often they just answer each other's ads. In your case, it's me doing the arranging instead of a newspaper. And I'm sure you'll like Sally.'

‘Well, that makes everything all right, doesn't it?’ she said, trying to emulate his sarcasm.

‘Only you can do that,’ he told her. ‘You say you have nowhere to return to in Scotland. You may as well live up to the story you told nephew Jeremy and try enjoying yourself in London for a change. Sally'll help you find a job of some kind. She's an actress, so she's used to finding herself temporary work between engagements.'