A Whirlwind Marriage (7 page)

Her father glanced at her, and as she met his gentle eyes she read in them that he was aching to advise her to go back to her husband. But, to give him his due, Josh Kirby held his tongue on the matter, merely murmuring, ‘I’m sure it’s very nice, Annie.’

Zeke said nothing, but his cynical profile—as she risked a quick glance at him from under her lashes—said volumes.

Marianne could feel her heart thudding against her rib
cage as she unlocked the street door, and as she led the way up the stairs towards the bedsit’s front door there were a thousand emotions tearing at her. But when she inserted the key into the lock and swung the door wide before clicking on the light she raised her head high.

She walked across the room and closed the curtains, which, courtesy of Mrs Polinkski’s iron, were now creaseless, and she blessed the fact that a couple of days before she had bought a woven linen throw in burnt orange for the sofa, obtained from the charity shop at a fraction of the price it was worth. Nevertheless, no number of throws or bright clean curtains could disguise the overall meanness of the surroundings, and Marianne took a long deep breath before she turned round.

Her father looked shocked—there was no other word for it—and Zeke had his blank face on. Their combined silent censure brought her chin up another notch or two as she faced the two men.

She knew her father wouldn’t say anything hurtful but she was preparing herself for one of the biting, caustic comments Zeke did so well. But it didn’t come. Instead he slowly met her eyes, and she found the expression in the smoky grey depths brought her hand to her throat as he said quietly, with a vulnerability she hadn’t thought him capable of, ‘You would rather live here, like this, than have to live with me again.’ And it was a statement, not a question.

She couldn’t drag her gaze away from his stricken eyes, although she wanted to, and it was only her father—clearing his throat and speaking gruffly into the taut silence—who brought things back to a more normal footing as he said, ‘We’ll wait in the car, then, Annie.’

‘Yes, yes, all right.’ She wanted to cry, she wanted to cry
so
much, but she managed to keep a check on her
feelings until the door had closed behind them and she was alone. And then the tears came, hot, burning, desolate tears, even as she told herself that she mustn’t cry—they would be sure to notice and that would be the final humiliation.

She pulled herself together fairly quickly. She could cry tonight, and all the other nights, but for now she had to get through this evening with a modicum of dignity. What had just happened—it didn’t alter the
facts
. He had taken Liliana to Stoke with him; they had been going out to dinner when he had called her. And that man, Liliana’s boyfriend, he had been very specific as to the manner of Zeke and Liliana’s liaison. And Zeke hadn’t been compelled to employ the stunning redhead, especially knowing how Liliana felt about him. It had been asking for trouble, and Zeke Buchanan wasn’t a naive teenager who didn’t know the ways of the world. He had deliberately chosen to play with fire and it had burnt both of them.

Thoughts were swirling around in her head as she hastily splashed cold water over her face and whipped off her creased work clothes, only to come to an abrupt halt as she opened the wardrobe and surveyed the meagre array of clothes inside.

She had absolutely nothing which was suitable to go out to dinner in. The clothes she had purchased in recent days had been bought purely for their suitability for working at the supermarket, and were functional at best.

Her eyes alighted on the dress she had been wearing when she had left the apartment, a beautiful long-sleeved cashmere in chocolate-brown, and then moved to the jumper and skirt she’d thrown in the overnight case. They were expensive, and they looked it, but they belonged to her old life. She had only kept them because it seemed
ridiculous to get rid of them until she’d purchased a few more bits and pieces.

Her hand reached out to the cashmere before falling to her side. Somehow, and she couldn’t explain it even to herself, let alone anyone else, it would seem like a betrayal of everything the last miserable, lonely two weeks had stood for if she put on clothes Zeke had bought for her.

She hadn’t asked to be taken out to dinner tonight, and if Zeke was ashamed of how she looked then that was his misfortune, she told herself stoutly. She wasn’t the long-suffering, obedient little wife any more, who couldn’t say boo to a goose, neither was she a sleek, exquisite, designer-dressed Liliana de Giraud.

She had been wearing a pair of old jeans and a skimpy, much washed little top that summer’s day when she had first seen Zeke, she remembered flatly. Her hair had been loose in silky disarray and her only jewellery had been large silver hoops in her ears. Where had that carefree, happy-go-lucky girl gone?

She looked again at her wardrobe, and then her mouth lifted slightly at the corners. She knew what she was going to wear now.

The BMW was parked outside the house when Marianne exited ten minutes later, and Zeke leant across from the driver’s side and opened the front passenger door for her. She slid into the front seat, turning briefly to smile at her father, and then said calmly—as though her stomach wasn’t turning over and over— ‘Where are we going to eat?’

‘Salamanders,’ Zeke said shortly.

Thank you—oh, thank, God, she prayed fervently. She had been worried he was going to say Rochelle’s, and the jeans she had bought for weekends and the waist-length bubblegum-pink cardigan—another acquisition from the
shop below that she had spied the previous Saturday and leapt on as soon as the shop had opened—were definitely not Rochelle material. Salamanders… Yes, Salamanders encouraged their clientele to be different. She could pass for capricious at Salamanders and it would be to her credit.

Salamanders was
the
restaurant of the moment, and when Zeke drew up outside its relatively innocuous portals and a doorman leapt to take care of the car, she gave a secret nod of acquiescence to the little voice in her head that said, You’re back in
his
world now, even if it is only for one evening.

Well, yes, she might be, she agreed silently, but this time she was going to make darn sure it was on her terms.

She had fixed her hair in a cute 60s ponytail on the side of her head, her make-up was discreet but flattering, and as she walked into the restaurant on the arms of her father and her husband she knew she looked good. She might not look like a millionaire businessman’s wife, or the latest designer clothes-horse, but she looked good. As
she
wanted to look, like the person she was inside.

Their table was waiting for them—Zeke would have expected nothing less—and as Marianne followed Zeke, her father making up the rear, her eyes suddenly become riveted on the woman the waiter was walking towards. It couldn’t be! He wouldn’t have! She kept on walking but her mind was screaming a warning. How could he? How
could
he do this? Surely her father hadn’t agreed to this?

‘Zeke, darling.’ As they reached the table Liliana’s heavily made-up eyes flicked over Marianne and her father, and Marianne realised the lovely redhead was as taken aback as she was. ‘We’re going to have a little party! How lovely.’

‘I thought so.’ Zeke inclined his head towards Liliana’s table companion as he turned to Marianne and Josh and
said coolly, ‘Marianne, you know Liliana, but not her brother, I think? Josh, may I introduce you to Liliana and Claude de Giraud?’

‘Good evening.’ Josh was nothing if not a gentleman, but Marianne could tell he had recognised the name as the third corner in his daughter’s particular little triangle, and also that he didn’t appreciate her being put in such a position. The look he bestowed on Zeke was piercing, and it was not amiable.

‘Trust me.’ Zeke answered the beetling eyebrows quietly, his voice flat but holding a message Marianne didn’t understand.

‘This had better be good, Zeke.’ For once Josh was not his easygoing self. ‘I believed you were genuine when you said you had Marianne’s best interests at heart.’

Josh’s voice was too low for the two sitting at the table to hear, but her father had drawn Marianne to him with a protective arm and she heard every word. She didn’t know what to do or think. If her father hadn’t been there to give her moral support she had to admit she would have probably turned tail and run—despite the satisfaction that would have given the beautiful redhead. As it was, she forced herself to smile politely and incline her head just the slightest as she said, ‘Liliana, Claude, good evening.’

Once they were seated there was a split second of screaming silence before Zeke said, ‘A cocktail, I think, before we order?’

Marianne eyed him balefully. If he wasn’t too careful he might find one particular cocktail ended up all over his dark, adulterous head, she thought viciously. ‘Lovely.’ She smiled sweetly. ‘I’ll have a Pink Slammer, to match my top.’

She had been aware of Liliana’s eyes on the jeans and cardigan, and it didn’t need an expert in psychology to
work out Liliana was doing her sums. Marianne had decided attack was the best defence.

Liliana was dressed to kill in a black slinky number that fitted where it touched, with a hairstyle that must have taken her hairdresser hours. Her brother was equally expensively dressed, his suit clearly handmade and his shirt and tie in raw silk.

‘What a darling idea!’ Liliana seemed to have recovered her poise, her ice-blue eyes deadly as she allowed her gaze to rest on Marianne’s jeans for one moment before she said, with a little tinkling laugh, ‘A Black Widow for me, sweetie.’

The waiter was at their elbow taking orders in the next instant, and it was a second or two before he moved away and Liliana said, resting a red-taloned hand on Zeke’s arm as the opaque gaze flicked round the table, ‘It was just so sweet of you to invite Claude and I along tonight, darling, but what’s the occasion?’

‘I rather thought you could provide the answer to that, Liliana. You and Claude, of course.’ Zeke’s voice was silky-soft but Marianne glanced at him sharply. She knew that tone; she’d heard it once before, in the early days of their marriage, when they had been sitting in the garden of a riverside pub and some youths—aged fifteen or sixteen, certainly old enough to know better—had thought it good fun to throw stones at a swan and her signets.

They had been seven to Zeke’s one but he hadn’t had to swing a punch. The look in his eyes and the tone of his voice had had the bunch of yobbos all but crawling in the dirt in front of him.

Liliana wasn’t exactly crawling in the dirt, but she was intelligent enough to know that all was not well. The hand was removed from his arm and she settled back in her
chair, glancing round the table once more before she said, ‘I don’t understand?’

‘Now, isn’t that strange.’ Zeke glanced from her to her brother. ‘I thought you might just click on when you saw us come in. And you, Claude? You also do not understand?’

‘Zeke…’ Claude’s voice trailed away, but the one word was enough to make Marianne’s eyes open wider. She knew that voice.

‘Yes?’ Zeke had fixed Claude’s eyes with his own and the Frenchman was wilting.

‘Zeke, this was not of my doing. You must understand that. I did not want to be a party to it—’

‘Shut up!’ Liliana’s voice was malignant. She said something in French to her brother that was clearly not complimentary.

‘Go on.’ Zeke hadn’t taken his eyes off the Frenchman when his sister had spoken. ‘You did not want to be a party to what, exactly?’

‘You know what.’ Claude had gone ashen. ‘I tell her. I tell her that this is not good, that it will end badly. I tell her but she won’t listen.’

‘Elucidate,’ Zeke bit out savagely.

Claude darted a glance to the left and right of him, clearly terrified. ‘She wouldn’t listen,’ he whined nervously. ‘She said if I still wanted money I had to do it. She said you would never find out.’

‘You made the phone call.’ Marianne had half risen in her seat, one hand gripping hold of her father’s arm and the other pointing at the big florid Frenchman in front of her. ‘You said that you were Liliana’s lover, that she was having an affair with Zeke.’

‘Of course he did.’ Zeke’s voice was full of contempt. ‘I have known Claude for years, and he does whatever his
sister tells him to do. That is so, isn’t it, Liliana? Claude has a little problem, an expensive little problem, and big sister provides the cash for his habit in return for his absolute devotion to the cause of promoting Liliana de Giraud at all times and giving her exactly what she wants. He would murder his own grandmother if Liliana required it.’

‘A slight exaggeration.’ Liliana’s head was up and she was far from beaten.

‘I don’t think so.’ For the first time Zeke glanced the redhead’s way and there was a dangerous glitter in his eyes. ‘You tried to set me up that day when you said you had an appointment in Stoke, didn’t you, Liliana? And no one—no one—does that to me and gets away with it. By the time I’ve finished with you you will be lucky to get a job anywhere in England, let alone London. But you made a mistake in using Claude. I keep my ear to the ground and I knew damn well you hadn’t got a lover at that moment; the rest, as they say, is history.’

She had thought Zeke looked at her strangely last night when she had mentioned Liliana’s ex phoning her, Marianne thought numbly. He had guessed then; she was sure of it. And so he had organised what the redhead and her brother had thought was a nice cosy meal for just the three of them. And that meant… The numbness was beginning to wear off. That meant their affair was purely in Liliana’s dirty little mind.

‘I could say we’re having an affair anyway.’ Liliana’s red-painted mouth was white round the edges with rage and furious resentment at the position Zeke had placed her in.

But now it was Josh who spoke, and he sounded very much the doctor as he said quietly, ‘Why humiliate your
self any further, Miss de Giraud? It seems to me it is not only your brother who needs help.’

‘Zeke does love me. He does. We should never have parted; he knows that at heart. I’m far better suited for him than her!’