Act of Betrayal (14 page)

needed a shave. 'How are you feeling?' His hand, warm and strong,

covered hers. 'All right.' Her eyes searched his face.

'Jason—the baby?' His silence gave her the answer she'd been

expecting, and she sank back against the pillows, tears beginning

to trickle down her face. <. _ 'He said, 'Laura, I've been

talking to Dr Murdoch. He says when these things happen early

like this, it can sometimes be for the best. He's bee* anxious

about you from the beginning.' He lifted her hand to his lips.

'Don't cry, my darling . . . Dr Murdoch says you're going to be

fine, and there's little chance of anything like this happening

again. We've just been unlucky this time.' 'Yes,' she said. She

couldn't stop the tears, but inside she felt numb. The last

twenty-four hours had been a nightmare, and it wasn't just the

loss of the baby she had to adjust to. She was allowed home the

following day. Jason fetched her in a taxi and when they got to

the house he carried her upstairs to their flat. There were

flowers in a vase, and a home-baked sponge from Lucinda among the

tea things on the neatly laid table, but thankfully nothing to

remind her of her short-lived pregnancy. She hadn't begun to shop

for the baby almost as if she'd known, she thought wincing. Jason

made her lie on the sofa, and brought her tea. He said ' I phoned

your uncle.' 'What did he say?' 'He was upset, naturally. He sent

his love and asked if you wanted to go down and stay for a few

days?' 'What did you tell him?' ' I said it was up to you.' He

was silent for a moment. 'Perhaps a change of scene might do you

good.' 'It would certainly stop me asking awkward questions,' she

said coolly and deliberately. 'That too,' he agreed

expressionlessly. They were antagonists again. She looked down at

her cup. 'Then perhaps it would be a good idea—for a few days.'

' I said you'd 'phone him later.' 'Yes.' They were talking like

strangers, and there was nothing she could do to bridge the gulf,

because he was a stranger. Anyone who could behave as if his

parents had never existed had to be a stranger, not the man who'd

taught her all the intimacies of passion. She felt a kind of

desperation settling on her. She said 'I'll need some money.' 'Of

course.' Another brief silence. 'I've had to draw on our account

lately, quite heavily.' She shrugged. 'It's our money.' She felt

very tired. She put down her cup of cooling tea. Martin Caswell

sent a car to collect her and Jason put her into it. His kiss was

brief, but the look he gave her before he turned away was

searching. She sat staring out of the window, watching the

suburbs fade with a guilty sense of relief. It was wrong to want

to be going home like this, because her real home was with Jason,

or should be, but she was thankful to be escaping even for a

little while. Her uncle's greeting was as warm as she could have

wished. Her old room was waiting, as if she'd never been away,

and even Mrs Fraser was almost cordial. He even had his own

doctor examine her, even though she protested that Dr Murdoch had

given her a clean bill of health. 'You can't be too careful, my

dear,' he brushed aside her objections. 'There might be some

inherent weakness . . . ' But the new doctor was as optimistic as

his colleague in London. He talked of 'bad luck' too, but assured

Laura she was as strong as a horse. 'No reason why you shouldn't

have half a dozen children, if you want,' he said. 'And don't

leave it too long before you try again.' We didn't try, Laura

thought. The baby wasn't planned, or even particularly

convenient. She wondered whether Jason would want to 'try again'.

It didn't seem very likely. She ate all the delicacies Mrs Fraser

took the trouble to concoct and walked in the garden. She was

afraid, she told herself. There was nothing the matter with her.

She 'phoned Jason to tell him she wanted to come back, but there

was no answer, neither ftom, the flat nor the studio, even though

she tried several times. As soon as her uncle came home that

evening, she knew there was something wrong. His greeting was

subdued, his ruddy face unusually sombre. She supposed that

something had happened at Caswells, and resolved to ask him about

it over dinner, but the only reply she got was 'Not now, my dear,

later.'

She made his coffee for him in the way that he liked it, and

brought it to him with a brandy. He took them from her with a

word of thanks, then said, 'Sit down, Laura, I have some things

to say to you which I'm afraid are going to distress you.' 'About

the company?' He shook his head. 'About the man you married.' He

paused, then said abruptly, 'I've been having some enquiries made

about him, and I've learned something which will be a shock to

you.' Laura moistened her dry lips with the tip of her tongue.

'If it's the fact that his parents are alive . . . ' 'It isn't.'

He stared at her. T understood from you that he was an orphan, so

it never occurred to me to have any checks made of that kind.'

She sat very still. 'What are these checks—these enquiries?

Uncle Martin, you have no right... .' T have every right,' he

said testily. 'You're my poor brother's child. Just because

you've allowed yourself to be rushed into a disastrous marriage

doesn't mean I have to wash my hands of you. You're a Caswell and

your interests have to be protected.' 'By setting private

detectives on to Jason.' A shiver of distaste went through her. '

I don't think I want to hear. ..' 'And I think you must.' His

voice was inflexible. She had half-risen, and he gestered

impatiently to her to sit down again. 'Believe me, child, I would

never have done this if I hadn't believed it was essential. And

even then, I might have held back if he hadn't started asking me

for money.' She was shaken to the core. 'Jason—asked you?' He

nodded. 'On more than one occasion. At first I complied for your

sake, but his demands became excessive and arrogant, and that was

when I decided to have him watched.' She sat rigidly, watching

him, unable to speak.

I've received a number of reports from the agency I engaged to

act for me, and my worst fears have been confirmed.' He shook his

head heavily, 'Laura, your husband is supporting a mistress a

woman calling herself Clare Marshall. She has a child aged about

three, and Jason Wingard's name appears on the birth certificate.

She lives quite affluently, I understand, in a block of flats in

Belgravia, and he has been visiting her regularly there since

your marriage.' Laura said, T—don't—believe it.' ' I f you

want proof, I can supply it.' The florid face was crumpled,

pitying. 'There are the written reports— and photographs. On

one occasion as he was leaving, the child called him "Daddy".' He

paused. 'Apparently there is an unmistakable resemblance.' He put

the photographs into her hands and she looked at them. She wanted

to say that photographs could be forged, but she couldn't find

the words and anyway the pictures were obviously real. The woman

was dark, slim, attractive in her middle twenties. The child was

Jason in miniature. In one photograph, Jason was carrying him in

his arms towards a car an Alfa Romeo, she noted in passing and

the likeness they shared made her heart turn over. There was more

damning evidence in the reports 'the subject' leaving their own

tiny, unfashionable flat or his studio and being followed, dates,

hours and destinations all meticulously listed. Among them, she

saw brief visits to a West End clinic, usually measured in

minutes, as if Jason had been establishing the alibi of the sick

father to account for his actions. She thought, 'I'm beginning to

think like one of Uncle Martin's enquiry agents.' Aloud, she

said, 'This must have cost you a great deal of money.' 'The cost

is immaterial,' he said. 'The essential thing was to show you the

kind of man you had married. I

imagine this woman has some money of her own. Your husband would

hardly be able to support her in this kind of style merely on

what he makes from the sale of his work, and whatever money he

can scrounge from Caswells.' 'If this is his child, then he's

morally and legally obliged to support him.' Laura hardly

recognised her own voice. 'We can't blame him for that. And

naturally, he'll want to see him sometimes. But why didn't he

tell me there'd been this relationship?' He said heavily,

'Because it's still going on, my dear. The latest reports state

that the Marshall woman is pregnant—between four and five

months, it's estimated.' Laura said hoarsely, 'But that's not

possible. It would mean . . .' She was unable to go on. Martin

Caswell nodded. 'It would mean the child had been conceived since

Wingard's marriage to you.' There was a long pause. Then, 'Laura,

my dear, I would have given a great deal to be able to keep this

from you. But against the hurt you will inevitably suffer, I must

balance the fact that you've been disgracefully insulted, and it

cannot be allowed to continue. You do see that?' She said, 'Yes.'

But all she saw was images of Jason and this woman together,

their bodies entwined. She made a little sound and pressed her

hand against her mouth. 'Are you all right?' Martin Caswell got

ponderously to his feet. ' I think I'd like to be alone for a

while.' She rose. 'May I take these things to my room and look at

them?' 'Of course. My dear, I'm more sorry than I can say. The

fellow is a blackguard—a scoundrel. He should be horsewhipped

for treating you like this.' She said, ' I don't think they allow

you to do things like that these days. Good night.' Up in her

room, she spread the typewritten sheets and the photographs on

the bed, and looked at them until she felt that every black and

white image, every sordid word was etched on her brain in acid.

She studied the address of the flat, and noticed that Clare

Marshall was visiting a Harley Street gynaecologist. Was it to

pay his fees that their savings had gone? It didn't seem

possible. Yet the evidence was there in black and white day and

hour, chapter and verse. Had Jason really imagined he could

string her along in ignorance forever, she asked herself

wretchedly. Did he truly think she was such a blind besotted

fool? The honest answer to both questions was probably 'Yes'.

She'd had not the slightest idea that there was any woman in his

life but herself. She found herself remembering those days at the

studio, and the 'phone calls which had made her so jealous, and

wondering if Clare Marshall had been among the callers. The

question she could not find an answer to was why Jason had not

married Clare instead of herself. If she was a woman of

independent means, as seemed likely, then what had stopped them?

On purely mercenary grounds, she seemed a better bet as a wife

than Laura Caswell, the poor relation of the rich Caswells.

Perhaps Uncle Martin had been right about that too, she thought

unhappily. Maybe Jason had pursued her thinking she was an

heiress, and had turned back to his former love in disillusion

when he discovered the truth. She wished she could cry, but she

was hurting too much. How he must have been laughing at her, with

all his talk of 'Laura alone'. How clever he'd been to seduce her

first, then Win her mind with all that idealistic garbage about

'mutual needs'. He'd never, she realised for the first time,

actually said he loved her, merely implied that it was so. 'Oh

God,' she whispered. Grief was scalding her, twisting at her

throat, but her eyes were dry and burning as she slid the

scattered papers back into the folder, and closed it.

'So,' Bethany said. 'You went and got a divorce.' 'Not

immediately. First, I went back to London. I went to the flat in

Belgravia, and hung about for most of the morning. I hated myself

for doing it, but somehow I had to see her in the flesh know what

I was up against.' Laura frowned and shook her head. 'It was a

mistake.' ' I can imagine,' Bethany said drily. T suppose you

ended up liking her.' 'She looked nicer than she did in the